Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain: 30.12.20

 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 Astra-Zeneca vaccine has been approved in the UK - paving the way for a mass rollout, beginning on January 4. I wonder if the government can achieve efficiency this time round. The experiences of 2020 render this rather doubtful but vamos a ver. Meanwhile, it's reported that: The UK has ordered 100m doses - enough to vaccinate 50 million people.

 

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain 

As part of what seems to be an EU-wide policy, the Spanish government will initiate a register of those who decline a vaccine jab. Presumably this will have, as yet undefined, consequences. I fear errors.

Here in Galicia, our latest Covid restrictions have been announced. Of our cities, Lugo has joined Ourense in having few of these, and Santiago and La Coruña remain in the Medium category, meaning restaurants can stay open until 23.00. But, for reasons I don't understand, Vigo and Pontevedra remain in the worst box, with maximum restrictions. The respective infection rates determine the rules, of course, but why are they so different? And are the measurements really so accurate? 

Here's a comment I happened on yesterday which confirms what I see several times a day - Learner drivers here are taught to go round the entire roundabout in the outside lane. As long as they signal to indicate that they're not intending to leave the roundabout, this is permitted. I'm not sure what the last bit means, as I never see learners signalling anything as they circumnavigate these hazards. Are they supposed to keep their left indicator on until they signal right to exit? Anyway, For those few interested in this perennial subject, there's a Special at the end of his post-

Another nice post from Mac75, on Spain's Epiphany Cake - El Roscón de Reyes 

And here's María's Riding The Wave: Day 46. A failure to learn.    

The Way of the World

There's a nice article below on the return of an old sin . . . Spiritual' pride has come back to haunt a new generation, only this time in yoga pants rather than veils and wimples. 

Finally . . .

On the Smithsonian channel last night, there was a review of the 19th century trial of an American woman called Lizzie Borden. Which immediately brought to mind this doggerel learned - for some reason - as a child in the UK:-

Lizzie Borden bought an axe 

and gave her mother 40 whacks.

When she saw what she had done

she gave her father forty-one

This was written during her trial and is, the say, inaccurate. She was acquitted, by the way. Though perhaps should not have been, it seems.

THE ARTICLE

Be mindful you don’t sound self-obsessed: A new study suggests the modern practices of mindfulness, meditation and yoga feed into some very old-fashioned sin: Libby Purves, The Times 

Long ago, Catholic schoolchildren like me were instructed in how to do a proper examination of conscience. I still have my French school missal with its terrifying lists beginning: “Have I . . . ?” followed by an enumeration of possible sins committed, duties omitted and bad thoughts indulged. Moreover, in the unlikely event of finding yourself clear of all self-accusation, you then had to dodge round the most heinous sin of all: that of “spiritual pride” and exalting in your own humble purity.

Some will tell you that this sort of religious upbringing was abusive, blighting their lives with guilt and “low self-esteem”. Certainly, if you were raised in the sort of school which demonised every childish slip, that could be the result. But in more normal and humane Christian settings that examination-of-conscience thing was actually rather therapeutic. There is no harm in reminding yourself that you are neither perfect nor unique. You’re just another schmuck of a sinner, who hopes to do better tomorrow but is more than likely to fall at one of its moral hurdles.

So it was with glee that I learnt that the more modern creeds of enlightenment — the inwardness of mindfulness, meditation, yoga and cherry-picking mysticism — have embarrassedly rediscovered that hoary old Christian concept: spiritual pride. A wide psychological survey found that people deepest in modern spiritual-training cults were the most likely to be narcissistic and arrogant. Far from banishing the demands of their ego in favour of a higher consciousness, they gave it free rein, albeit with a saintly smile.

The report comes from the Netherlands: Professor Roos Vonk of Radboud University, writing in the European Journal of Social Psychology. This feels fitting. I have sailed often with Dutch crews on the tall ship Europa and I recognise the national tendency to pragmatic, team-minded kindliness, fellowship and gentle scepticism. They were always refreshing people to be with after one had been dealing with some friend convinced that their “practice” made them spiritual winners in a sordid world.

Maybe, at this season of locked-down irritability, there are households at this very moment being annoyed at the way that certain people won’t disturb their sacred hour of mindfulness by helping with the washing up or making that duty call to Aunt Mabel who never stops talking. Even gospel Christians, after all, sometimes roll their eyes in irritation at the story of the spiritual Mary, who sat entranced at Jesus’s feet, getting praised above Martha who did all the damn housework.

Anyway, Professor Vonk first started wondering about this enlightened but unbearable phenomenon when a student boyfriend went to a spiritual training camp for a week. He returned, she says, “with an enlightened, elevated look in his eyes. He had been in touch with what really matters — things he couldn’t explain to me, with my trivial earthly concerns and my analytic scientific reasoning.” Later, she found that others who embraced everything from auras to yoga were similarly “hijacked” into arrogance. The ego is a powerful force, she warns: it watches you seeking enlightenment, then butts in with: “Hey, I’m doing very well, in fact I’m probably doing better than others.”

See? Spiritual pride comes back to haunt a new generation, only this time in yoga pants rather than veils and wimples. In Professor Vonk’s questionnaire the trained self-improvers tended to be keenly willing to describe their own awareness, empathy and spirituality, and had no trouble explaining they had more of these things than most others. Asked whether the world would be a better place if more people had their insight, they agreed.

In the age of Goop and Markle and Instagram yoga, the report squirts acid lemon-juice into the syllabub of performative self-sanctification. There are wonderfully deadly phrases about the human “tendency to distort reality in a self-flattering way” (ah, everyone has an inner Trump). It explains how “self-compassion tends to reduce defensive responses to self-threat”: in other words, being lovingly in touch with your own beautiful perceptions may blind you to the fact that you are being a selfish pig. Genuine reflective and logical meditation is proven to be calming and focusing, but also grounds the individual in reality and duty. But get too soulfully fond of yourself and “spiritual attainments allow room for wishful thinking, thus easily lending themselves to the grip of the self-enhancement motive”.

While the phenomenon of self-absorbed sanctimony has been recorded in anecdote, fiction and drama for centuries, the authors cheerfully point out that this is the first empirical study to confirm the “sovereignty and tenacity” of egotism in this area. We all need some reflection, and perhaps a touch of yoga and a tree to hug, but the report is an awful warning.

It even opens the door to another layer of the old sin of spiritual pride: “Being aware of the risk that my beautified soul might make me arrogant, I have carefully made sure to stay humble. Well done me!” For that, I suppose, the only answer is to rise briskly from your Sukhasana pose, willingly do everyone else’s washing up, make that phone call to infuriating Aunt Mabel and try not to notice how wonderful you are.

A ROUNDABOUT SPECIAL

Key points from this article cited above:-

- Unless otherwise indicated, the person on the right ALWAYS has priority.  

- You must drive anti-clockwise around a roundabout

- Traffic already on the roundabout has priority

- You must only leave the roundabout from the outside lane

- If you can't get into the outside lane [because of a learner coming from your right?], then you should go round the roundabout again. 

I've been told recently that insurance companies won't pay out if you disobey these rules but I don't know if this is true. It certainly sounds plausible. I recently cited the case of the foreigner who offered to pay €200 to cover damage to the bumper(fender) of a Spanish driver who'd hit him from the left. She declined and called the police. They told her she was in the wrong and fined her.

There are DGT diagrams here and here, showing how to drive round roundabouts correctly. Interestingly, although there are only 2 lanes in the approach road, there are 3 on the roundabout and I'm not convinced there are many of the latter in Spain. I don't find the diagrams totally clear but I think one important point is that, if the green car B when exiting at its second exit is hit by car A going all the way round in the outside lane, then B is at fault. Meaning, as indicated, possible insurance problems for driver B. 

My basic advice is, whenever you're leaving a roundabout in Spain look in your wing mirror and check your blindspot to see what's happening on your right.

Oh, and be prepared for a driver in the outside lane who's indicating right, as if exiting, to stay on the roundabout and cut across in front of you. As stressed, you'll be adjudged to be at fault, not the mis-signalling driver coming from your right. This is so even the when there are arrows on a 2-lane road indicating you can go straight on when in the inside lane. We have some of these in Pontevedra city and I approach them with the utmost care. I am rarely ‘disappointed’.

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