Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain: 16.8.19

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.   

                  Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain

Note: A few of the items below have been borrowed from Lenox Napier's Business Over Tapas of yesterday.

Spain

• An outfit call UDEF puts the Pujol family’s ill-gotten gains at €290 million. Given that they know where a lot of bodies are buried both inside and outside Cataluña, no one expects any of them to end up in clink. Not even a short stay prior to a 'suicide'.
• On this site, you can determine how you'd get on with the exam taken to get Spanish nationality. You have 45 minutes to achieve at least 15 correct answers out of 25. I was pleased that I got 20 in about 5 minutes. Failing to know, for example, how to label the weather in Las Canarias or what the biggest fiesta in Cádiz is.
• Returning to the Pontevedra fiesta music scene . . . Last night's 9pm concert in the main square - 60 metres from my table -  was even more deafeningly loud and cacophonous than the last one I mentioned. It came from a Pontevedra 'rock' group of young women aged 15-16, plus their 'music' teacher in a monkey mask - the Svengali responsible for forming the group - Furious Monkey House - almost 4 years ago. When the girls were 11-12. You can hear offerings here and here. Imagine these played several times louder and distorted through the huge amps.
• Talking of performers . . . Someone told me last night they'd seen my interview on Galician TV earlier this week. At least, I think that's what they were saying. They might have been only a few centimetres from my ears but, thanks to the infuriating Furious Monkey House, I could hardly make out what she was saying. 
• Talking of the Pontevedra scene . . . I was trying last night to find the web page of a cultural association called Amigos de Pontevedra. Its apparent Facebook page turned out to be in Argentina and referred me to an inoperative web page. A google search first turned up a beach resort in the USA, and then this page of ladies interested in having a 'casual encounter' with me.  Which was not exactly what I was looking for. Who are these - probably less 'liberal' - folk.

Portugal

• Someone has written that: Tautology is the equivalent of having chips with rice. Clearly, they've never visited this fine country, where this 'carbohydrate overload' is standard fare. Not exactly something that never occurs.

The UK

• There's a UK city which allegedly beats all Spanish cities in the Good for Expats stakes. You're never going to guess which one it is.
• They used to say here in Spain that our TV ads would have you believe that every family comprises blond kids with blue eyes. In similar vein, in the UK you'd be forced to conclude every family is multi-racial. Here's a relevant cartoon from the latest issue of Private Eye:-

• Still on the theme of UK TV ads . . . The relevant authority is cracking down on the several  companies whose ads portray all males as utterly incompetent fathers. Not before time.

The USA

• You have to laugh . . . 

Social Media 

• As if you hadn't guessed . . . Obsession with social media ‘fuels anxiety in teenage girls’: Teenage girls who check social media more than 3 times a day are more likely to be unhappy, anxious and dissatisfied with life, a study suggests. Maybe they'd be better off forming a rock group.

Finally . . .

• This is the roundabout at the bottom of my hill:-

As you can see, it has 2 lanes for cars approaching from the left.

And here it is from that road, where you can see the single lane opening up to 2 lanes on the roundabout itself:-

Over the years, I've had to train myself not to assume that cars in the right hand land are going to turn right up the hill. This is because the majority, though going straight on, will eschew the (more logical) inner lane for this purpose. In fact, it occurred to me yesterday that, in 19 years, I've never seen anyone use the inner lane - such is the obsession in Spain with using only the outer lane wherever you're going. Which - despite this no longer being compulsory under the law - is clearly 

how learners are still being taught to negotiate roundabouts. At least here in Pontevedra.

Of course, by training myself to make the correct but counter-intuitive assumption, I've been able to avoid any 'casual encounter' with another driver . . .