Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain: 17.12.20

Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

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

 

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*  

A HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for some of today's items. 

 

Covid

Here's what you need to do to 'keep Covid at bay' over Xmas, says ThinkSpain. Right at the top of the list is avoiding all unnecessary contact with other people in the days leading up to Christmas, and always using a mask when in the company of others.

And here's the Huff Post on the Government's Xmas Plan. Though your region might have fiercer restrictions.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

Should you want to know where the Western Sahara is and what's been happening to it over the years - and especially the last week or so - scroll down to Lenox Napier's account, taken from this week's Business Over Tapas. Basically, Anglo perfidy for the benefit of Israel. And Morocco, of course. 

Do you want to:-

. Be a good expat? Click here.  

- Work here at something other than teacher or translator? Click here.  

- Stop those pesky cold phone calls? Click here. 

The UK and the EU

It's official . . . Brexit is a chapuza*. Richard North: Courtesy of Boris's Botched Brexit, we can look forward to endless fun and games.

Spanish

*Just a reminder . .  Chapuza: Botched/bodged job.

Allegados - An important word this Xmas, though Lenox says it's a rare bird in Spanish. Means 'close friends and family. People you're allowed to meet.

 

Finally . . .

The UK government sent me my new passport on 9 December, by 'secure delivery'. Mail usually takes 2-3 days but, after 7, it's yet to arrive. Maybe it's securely glued to the back of a snail. Or it's the fault of the UK Post Office and/or Correos here in Spain. And, of course, 'Covid'. Not to mention 'Christmas' 

More amusingly, a religious cartoon:-

THE ARTICLE

What’s the deal with the Western Sahara?  Lenox Napier

It was one of Spain’s possessions in northern Africa, and, following the peculiar Green March of November 1975, as Franco agonised on his death bed – when 350,000 Moroccans advanced several kilometres into the territory – the region was finally ceded, not to its inhabitants, but to two of the neighbouring countries: Morocco and Mauretania (which dropped its claims in 1989). 

Morocco occupied most of the territory, claiming it as a Moroccan province, but was faced with both the indigenous Sahrawi population, who wanted independence; neighbouring Algeria, who supported the armed Sahrawi Polisario movement; and certain international agencies that supported the indigenous peoples, culminating in the proposal of an UN-backed referendum (rumours had the Moroccans filling up the region with somewhat unwilling settlers to help along the eventual vote), which so far, has never been held.

While Morocco claims various bits of its territory held by the Spanish and known in Spain as plazas de soberanía – off-lying islets like Perejil, the Chafarinas islands and the isthmus of La Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera (1.9 hectares in size, with a small military presence), and more importantly, Melilla and Ceuta and even the Canary Islands for future discord, the larger and easier prize of the rich-in-resources Western Sahara (it’s about half the size of Morocco) has kept that country distracted. 

The Spanish have quietly ignored the plight of the Sahrawi people, beyond inviting many of their children to stay in private homes in Spain during the summer, as the Americans were in support of the status quo. There are sound business reasons for doing so. 

But . . . Suddenly, last week, Donald Trump gave his nation’s official recognition of Morocco’s claim to the region (in exchange for Rabat recognizing Israel as a nation). Minutes later, the proposed meeting for December 17th between President Sánchez and King Mohammed VI to discuss illegal immigration was dropped.  

The Americans had been involved with the Western Sahara issue from the beginning, and it’s known that Henry Kissinger influenced Juan Carlos I to drop Spain’s claim on the region as ‘the Green March began and Franco slipped into a coma’. With Trump’s ‘surprise’ recognition of the Moroccan claim, the Spanish media went into a frenzy.  elDiario.es says that the USA has favoured Morocco for the past 45 years, while Ejercito warns of the ‘imminent regional military supremacy’ of the Moroccans as ‘a grave problem for Spain’. The Moroccan air force, for example, is equipped with ‘better fighters’. 

The British quickly backed the American view (‘to isolate Spain on the Sahara question’ says El Español), while Russia (and Sweden) just as quickly rejected the policy.  

De Verdad Digital explains here that the American master-plan is to ease tension between Israel and the Arab nations while trampling on the rights of the powerless (‘…the Sahrawis and the Palestinians are twinned in ignominy…’). 

In Morocco, ‘Jewish history and culture has returned to the school-books’ says Israel Hayom and the ‘great plan’ of Mohammed VI to bring fertile growth back to the dry desert with Israeli technology is the subject of an article in El Español here. 

The American ambassador to Rabat gave a framed map of the expanded Morocco to the Moroccan king last Saturday (here) and we end with an article from the Spanish-language Sahrawi newspaper EcSaharaui titled ‘Noam Chomsky: Trump makes the criminal occupation of Western Sahara by Morocco, official’. 

* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious

Protestant.