Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spanish/Galician Life
- One gets inured to the bizarreness of Spain's multitudinous fiestas but then one comes along and takes your breath away. In a certain town in Castilla La Mancha the Carnaval procession the year was - believe it or not - on the theme of the Holocaust. And it featured:-
- Prancing kids in striped pyjamas with a yellow star pinned to their chest
- Nazi SS troopers with machine-guns doing a dance routine
- A unit of German tanks, manned by uniformed kids
- A float carrying a mock-up of the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei gate, and (per The Local)
- A swastika-wearing dominatrix brandishing a whip and flanked by dobermans atop a float [of a train] designed to recreate Auschwitz, complete with twin chimneys.
Needless to say, there was adverse reaction from - inter alia - the Israeli embassy in Spain and apologies have been issued by the (We had no idea . .) town council. Will heads roll? As usual, I rather doubt it. It will all blow over and life in the town will return to normal. Though they might think a bit harder about next year's procession theme. Hopefully not the Spanish Civil War. Meanwhile, if you can bear it, there's a short video of it all here. The onlookers don't seem very enthused. Which is about the only positive comment one can make on this astonishing lapse of judgement.
- Another observation from Tim Parfitt's 'A Load of Bull': The family unit is far more important than material gain in Spain. So much so that moving away from comfort and security is regarded as a failure rather than an achievement. This might well be even more true of Pontevedra - where life can be very comfortable - than it is of anywhere else in Spain. As a young man said to me years ago: Why should I move away to 'achieve my potential' when life is so good here?
- How the electricity companies are - understandably* - viewed in Galicia. As a profiteering cartel, essentially:-
Note the compulsory top hat of the (always) fat plutocrat, whose bags of cash normally feature the dollar sign. But not in this case.
* Our prices are higher than Germany's.
- Insults of the Day:-
- Ordinario: Coarse, vulgar, rude, common, earthy.
- Cursi: Corny, cheesy, tacky, kitsch.
- Basto: Coarse.
- In the WhatsApp group created for reports to my Pontevedra friends on the short camino I'm doing this week, I was counselled early yesterday to stay clear of Chinese 'pilgrims'. I replied that I'd confine myself to South Koreans. Barely had my co-walker and I left our hotel than we were joined by a young woman who hailed from Seoul and who was well-dressed to withstand the morning rain. Having lived in Malaysia and New Zealand, she spoke excellent English and proved a charming companion throughout the six and a half hours to Padrón. Helping to make the time fly. The camino at its - non-religious - best.
FOTO GALLERY
1. The Korean lady and new friend, pretending to be happy despite the rain:-
2. The cover of the posthumously published novel of my Dutch friend, Peter Missler, aka Alfred B. Mittington. Availability details very soon . . .
Peter spent 35 years on this, his magnum opus, but never saw it published. Back in late 2010, I edited many of it chapters. Or tried to. Peter could be a stubborn bastard at times. But that's quite normal in a writer, I guess. Fittingly, his last blog post as Alfie Mittington was on the theme of dealing with editors.
Today, I will walk past the turn-off to his village, which be a sad event for sure.
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