Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain: 2.12.20

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'*  

  

Covid

The UK: Very good to know the Pfizer vaccine will roll out there from next Monday. There is, of course, controversy over the priority groups. 

But unedifying to see the Secretary of Health unable to say this morning whether it's legal or illegal for someone to (legally) buy a takeaway meal and then take it to a (legally open) 'wet pub'. Or whether a Scotch egg is a 'substantial meal'. Farcical but critically important to the hospitality industry:-

Spain: The health authorities are testing everybody in the small town of Cuevas Del Becerro (near Malaga) after a random screening suggested over 70% of people there are infected. Won’t this help to answer questions re herd immunity?

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

This won't go down well with Vox supporters and a minority - and I stress a minority - of Spaniards, much the same people I suspect: UNESCO  has rejected an application for bullfighting to be classified as a “cultural heritage in urgent need of protection”.

I mentioned Galicia’s curse of Feismo yesterday. My first ever reference to this was in my 2001 diary: We then moved to a discussion of architecture, more specifically the reasons why houses in Galicia are (rightly) considered to be the ugliest in Spain. I can’t recall these but one of them was surely the tendency to leave the ground floor apparently unfinished, as if it were still the traditional place for animals.

María wrote yesterday of the challenge of getting Spanish citizenship. Which reminded me I'd written of this back in February, contrasting the Spanish and Irish processes. Twelve months after applying, I'm still waiting for Irish nationality, the process having been hit by Covid, of course. It used to take only 6 months.

 

Here's María's Riding the Wave - Day 18  

The Way of the World

Britain’s only NHS gender clinic for children has suspended referrals for hormone therapy after a ruling on the experimental use of puberty blockers. Judges at the High Court found it was “highly unlikely” that 13-year-olds, and “doubtful” that anyone aged 14 or 15, would understand the full implications of the hormone treatments, and therefore could not give informed consent. 

The Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny has been unveiled as the most-streamed global artist of 2020 on Spotify. I'm guessing that, like me, few readers of this blog will ever have heard of him. Or her.

Spanish

Treta: Ruse; Trick; Ploy

Finally . . .

Amusing aphorisms number 3: Age 60 might be the new 40, but 9:00 pm is the new midnight.

 

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