Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain: 25.8.1925

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

                  Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain

Spain

• A month or 2 back, I passed a 'rope shop' in Madrid outside which there was a long queue of folk apparently interested in exchanging money for old rope. But, in fact, it was these they were buying, at a place considered the best outlet in Spain for them. Or at least the most fashionable.
• Talking of shopping . . . Pontevedra's Sunday flea-market was far busier today than last week. I can't say I know why, but one factor is that the unlicensed gypsy stalls were not just down at one end but at both ends and on all sides. This encroachment will surely go on until the legal traders again call in the police. Who won't act until they do.
• Just in case you need to know, the most expensive place in Galicia in which to buy property is not one of the major cities or one of the centres of drug-smuggling but in the little coastal town of Nigrán. Which I'd thought was just conveniently placed for a large beach and for surfing. Can't see surfers paying millions for a house but perhaps I'm wrong.
• Our local farmers are reported to be close to giving up in the battle against the wild boars and abandoning their crops. Which will doubtless please the extremist animal adorers of PETA, I imagine. The folk who've accused a British school of 'speciesism' because they have a pet alpaca for the kids. Should be shot. Not the alpacas, of course . . . 
• I wrote recently of an example of strange local praying habits, in respect of potholes in a road. The latest case is of the faithful praying for the 'miracle' of our football team ascending back into the Primera Liga. Something which they must have been doing since the mid 1950s. Without Anyone heeding their pleas, it seems to me. Too much to do, perhaps. Or is concentrating on stopping mass slaughters by Christian nutters in the USA. Not terribly successfully, it has to be said.

Spanish 

• Word of the Day: Un see-day-kah.  Heard in an exchange between father and son at the flea-market this morning. A 'sidecar'. 
• The correct Spanish word, by the way, is un sidecar. 

USA

•  This is a truly astonishing article. Can it really be true. A taster:- This tale of intrigue fully reveals the extent to which this decades-old alliance between organized crime, the CIA, and Israeli intelligence has corrupted and influenced politicians of both political parties, both through the use of sexual blackmail and through other means of coercion. 

Finally. . . .

• Not a challenge I normally facd when driving down into town . . .

In truth, far less irritating than drivers mis-signalling  on roundabouts . . .