Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain

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'*  

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

 One major effect of the virus has been to expose the inadequacy of government administrative systems around the world. Nowhere more so than here in Spain, where there's long been a consensus that we have too many layers of government - national, regional, provincial and municipal - and, thus, too many politicians. All of whom - in times of crisis - feel the need to be seen be 'doing something'. However bloody illogical.

Yesterday, around midday, the Galician government - the Xunta - announced that, as of 3pm, entry into and exit from all 6 of our cities would be prohibited. This measure - described even by the mayor of Pontevedra city as mad - led to immediate confusion and panic. When I left the city at my normal time of 2.30, I joined a throng of drivers trying to get out before our ever-officious police started fining them. And it was hours before it became clear that we were allowed to travel between the city and its contiguous barrios/suburbs, such as mine of Poio. And that the measure only covered the weekend and the Monday holiday.

Well into the evening it was still not clear whether one could still sit at a terrace bar with people you don't actually live with - a not easily checkable fact, of course. Anyway, what I saw as I came into town for my coffee this morning suggests that, whatever the law is, it's being comprehensively ignored. Perhaps because - as some claim - the measure is really meant to stop large family gatherings over the holiday weekend. If so, will the police be knocking on doors to check?

As I said yesterday, lunacy.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

The Collegiate Church of Santa María del Sar - a good 15 minute walk from the centre of Santiago de Compostela - is famous locally as the the equivalent of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. This is because, thanks to subsidence, the pillars of the nave are no longer parallel. Here’s an article on the place.  

A couple of paras on Spanish culture, the first from someone else and the second from me:-

The celebrations associated with All Saints' Eve/Hallowe'en are a very new phenomenon in Spain. Barely 20 - or even 10 years ago - you hardly saw a single witch's hat in the shops. Hallowe'en was considered a foreign concept. It has always been the following day – All Saints' Day, on November 1 – that was celebrated instead, and which is a bank holiday in the country. Nowadays, both are celebrated. For All Saints' Day, tradition dictates that everyone makes a pilgrimage to their local cemetery to lay fresh flowers on the graves of their departed loved ones. For florists, it's one of their busiest trading seasons of the year.  [Here in Pontevedra main square . .]

I visited an ironmongers - or ‘f’rretería’ - in the old quarter today. What a wonderful experience. Like Aladdin's cave. Or a pharmacy in the Tehran bazaar. Row upon row of little boxes on the wall behind the counter, each containing a collection of screws, nails, blades, door handles or whatever. And they will sell you just a single screw, if this is all you want - and wrap it in brown paper - not insist on you taking a set of 10 in pre-shrunk plastic wrapping which drives you mad. And all of this at a price which hardly seems economic. They won't survive long term, of course, but there's life in them for a while yet. Hopefully enough to see me out. There are several such little shops in Pontevedra - haberdasheries, seamstresses, picture-framers and the like. I don't know whether I love them just because they remind me of the way life used to be when I was a kid or because I think it is the way life should be. Probably both. [That was written 15 years ago but it remains pretty true, despite the impact of the internet on the retail trade. Only the picture-framers has gone. These days, of course, one sees queues/lines of people 1-2m apart outside the ferreterías.]

Maria tells me, rather to my surprise, that Spanish TV hasn’t improved since I stopped watching it 10 years or more ago.   

The UK

Our leaders should admit they’re totally lost, writes Matthew Parris in today's Times. Britain. He adds, isn’t suffering from lockdown fatigue; it has just lost faith in the cocksure claims of politicians and scientists. The truth is they’ve lost their way and the public has rumbled them.

The EU

Matthew Parris again: President Macron in France and Prime Minister Sanchez in Spain are in at least as much of a mess, their populations at least as restive. And now Germany, too. Governments all across our continent are stumbling around in the dark, just like ours.

The Way of the World/Social Media 

A secretive corporate detective agency known for its work pursuing white-collar fraudsters has a new target in its sights: Instagram influencers with scandalous pasts. “We find about a quarter of influencers we check are problematic,” said its MD. Adding that:  'Jokes about rape, gender stereotyping, misogyny, antisemitism, Nazi imagery, cultural insensitivity. Those are the kind of things we find reasonably frequently.'

Spanish

Following up my citation yesterday of Cazar, a reader has kindly advised that, in South America, this is pronounced the same as Casar, To marry.  

Finally

There are said to be 7 types of people you find in bookshops. In the UK at least. Dunno about Spain:-

Expert

Young Family 

Occultist 

Loiterer

Bearded Pensioner

Not-So-Silent Traveller, and 

Family Historian

THE ARTICLE

Our leaders should admit they’re totally lost:  Britain isn’t suffering from lockdown fatigue, it has just lost faith in the cocksure claims of politicians and scientists      Matthew Parris

"Weary” is the word of choice on the lips of politicians and commentators. In this pandemic the public is said to grow weary of lockdowns. Fatigue has set in, we’re told, and we the people are tired of trying to understand and comply with tier upon tier of fresh restrictions. Apparently it’s all too much for us. Like children with short attention spans, we’re wandering from the paths of prudence.

What patronising nonsense. Nonsense that distracts from an inconvenient truth, embarrassing to the political class and its attendant priesthood of medical and epidemiological experts. The truth is they’ve lost their way through this pandemic, and the public has rumbled them. That’s why attention wanders from the intricacies of the latest rules. Restrictions don’t seem to be working. So “why bother?” people ask. “I’m giving up.”

It’s true, of course, that some of us always doubted the wisdom of wrecking-ball lockdowns. But my sort were and still are a minority. The big (and, for government, worrying) change is among the ranks of the sizeable majority who, persuaded that the government knew how to beat this virus, were at first enthusiastic to obey even draconian rules. If still persuaded, they’d still be enthusiastic. But they’re growing sceptical. Confidence is waning that these rules will work. People are wary, not weary.

Let’s then be honest about our ignorance. Why beat up the prime minister or his medical advisers for not knowing how best to respond? I don’t know either. You don’t. Sage doesn’t. Nobody does. President Macron in France and Prime Minister Sanchez in Spain are in at least as much of a mess, their populations at least as restive. And now Germany, too. Governments all across our continent are stumbling around in the dark, just like ours.

The beginning of wisdom would be to admit as much. European leaderships should cease the pretence that medical science has already worked out how to beat Covid-19, the only problem being compliance: us, in other words, not them. Instead, they should confide in us.

What do I mean about the electorate “rumbling” the experts’ and politicians’ claim to have a workable plan? I don’t mean the ordinary citizen has systematically deconstructed official claims and arguments and found them wanting. I mean we’re beginning to smell a rat, beginning to think “Oh dear, we’re back where we started; this doesn’t seem to be working”. Half-unconsciously we’re noticing statements that don’t add up. We hear some professor announcing that the country is at a “tipping point” and seem to remember that he or his colleagues announced the same ages ago. Whereas the proverbial little boy cried wolf, the epidemiologists now cry “tipping point”. But if you pass a tipping point, you tip. So have we tipped? Is all lost? That would seem to be the implication.

We hear politicians and scientists talking about cases “doubling every fortnight” — and seem to remember some of them saying “every week” some time ago; in which case, is “every fortnight” good news, not bad.

We hear Imperial College’s Neil Ferguson making a projection. “If the rate of growth [of hospitalisations] continues as it is,” he told the BBC on October 24, then “in a month’s time we will not be able to cope.” And that’s true. But we reflect that on this reasoning one can extrapolate forward to a point when the entire population is in hospital, which we all shall be if the rate of growth “continues as it is”. But it won’t. You can’t just project. Or, rather, you can — but at some point your projection must part company with practical prediction. What the politicians need to know is when that point will arrive, and viral spread decelerate. Shroud-waving projections offer no answer.

All sides in this pandemic, including my own, need to sober up and admit to ourselves how little is known so far. Here are just a few of the (to the best of my knowledge) huge unanswered questions that occur to me — and there will be many more. And I don’t suggest scientists aren’t working on them. Of course they are. Frantically.

What do we mean by “immunity”? Is it all or nothing, or are some people less immune than others? Does resistance come just through antibodies or are there other kinds, and, if so, how important are they?

What, if any, is the relationship between the growth in the numbers who have had the disease, and the slackening of the pace at which it spreads? Why hasn’t London, where compliance is (anecdotally) weakest, so far suffered a second wave on the scale of some northern cities?

How long does “immunity” last, and how long will a vaccine-given immunity last? Does continued exposure to the virus prolong immunity, and is the corollary true?

If, or when, an effective vaccine becomes widely available, will the virus die out, or just skulk? And if skulk, why aren’t we thinking about how to distinguish between the vulnerable minority and the rest, and how to protect the vulnerable through this decade? Can we yet ascribe relative levels of importance to different means of transmission? Eyes? Mouths? Noses? Surfaces? Touching? Aerosol? Banisters? Embracing? Which are the priority prohibitions? Is it true that the size of a “viral load” influences the severity of the disease once caught, or is it either completely caught or completely not caught?

How effective are masks, and why do we have no results from “human challenge” trials to test this? If some willing volunteers catch the disease, so what? Answering the facemask question could save millions from doing so.

Does “super-spreading” come from a human type or a human activity? Is it true children don’t easily spread Covid-19? Why not? Why do some countries (Spain, France) that went into lockdown early and stayed there longest appear to be experiencing the worst “second waves”?

Though ignorance about facemasks really is reprehensible, I’m far from wishing to suggest I’m ahead of the game in posing these questions. Scientists know how central they are. But so far we’re short of answers, and our ignorance remains immense. Western attempts to contain this virus look like playing darts in the dark. We can’t see where we’re going, and know it, and for our leaders and some expert advisers to pretend otherwise invites contempt.

If there’s any truth in the observation that electorates are growing tired, then it is the sweeping statements and cocksure reprimands we’re growing tired of. The most an honest prime minister or health secretary should say is: “Bear with us: this is a mess but we’re doing our best.”

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

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

See the interesting article below: There is no reasonable scientific or medical justification for lockdowns, convoluted social distancing rules, masks or travel restrictions

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

The Galician president says Galicia is going to pass a law arrogating to the Xunta the power to declare total lockdowns, etc. So, if you thought it was crazy having 4 different regimes in the UK, just wait until we have 17.  Lunacy.

Ancient cave drawings in Spain reveal a Europe-wide artistic style that existed 25,000 years ago, as they bear striking resemblance to styles throughout Europe as far back as that. The engravings, mostly of bison, have a distinct style suggesting that region was more connected than archaeologists had previously thought.

The latest AVE forecast, I think, is the 2nd half of 2022. But what does it matter; no one believes it. Especially not whoever issued it.

This comment is also from early 2004. As I haven't watched Spanish TV for more than 10 years, I have no idea if things are still as bad. Possibly most previous advertising has moved to the internet. . . 

All Spanish TV channels are commercial and so carry advertisements, which take up a significant proportion of each hour of what might loosely be termed viewing. And then there are the product endorsements issued out of the blue by the programme hosts, gushing with specious conviction about some product's merits. When I came to Spain. this mid-programme puffery was relatively infrequent but now it is almost common-place. If you really were desperate for a reason not to watch Spanish TV, this might just be the answer to your prayer. Worst of all, though, are the cash-strapped local TV stations. Their speciality is a banner ad running along the bottom of the screen during soccer matches. Three years ago, these only used to appear when play had actually stopped. They has since progressed - through discrete stages - to their current permanent status. I'm not sure that the situation is as bad on radio but last night I was listening to a soccer match when the main commentator suddenly burst into song, to be joined a few seconds later by his companions. This turned out to be a jingle for some product or other. Seamlessly, they then shifted back to the usual semi-histrionic chatter that characterises soccer commentaries here.

The UK

One side effect of the Covid-19 epidemic has been a plague of rats and mice infesting private homes,. . . . There is a range of possible reasons for this but the most obvious and plausible is the closure or reduced activity of restaurants and pubs. Rats and mice which have hitherto been reliant on food waste from these premises have found these sources drying up, triggering migration in search of new food supplies. .  . .  The lockdown has created an ideal habitat for the rat with careless waste habits, vacant shops and quiet streets leading to a breeding frenzy across the country. Technicians out on the road are said to have seen nothing like this before.   Stand by for the return of the Black Death

The EU

Good question - Why doesn't the EU support France more against Turkey? German economic self-interest?

Our resident Cassandra writes today that the ECB fears Covid could trigger a financial crisis . . . There is a clear danger that the eurozone could relapse into a double-dip recession before it has regained more than half of the output lost during the first wave of the pandemic.  . . . The risk is that thousands of businesses hanging on by their fingertips will see credit lines cut as banks move preemptively to build up their own safety buffers, leading to a vicious circle.  . . . It is unclear whether the ECB's ritual moves have much more efficacy than a rain dance at this juncture.  See the full article below.

English

My daughter once found, in a guide to English written in 1918, that back then ‘today’ is written 'to-day' and 'tomorrow' 'to-morrow'. I told her that I had never seen this done Then the very next day I received an email from my mother with 'to-day’ in it.

Spanish

Cazar: Both To hunt and To catch, as least when it comes to speeding drivers.

Finally

A nice maxim about admissions of guilt/apologies: Anything before the word ‘but’ doesn’t count. 

THE ARTICLES

1. Britain's Covid response is utterly mad – here are 10 reasons why.

There is no reasonable scientific or medical justification for lockdowns, convoluted social distancing rules, masks or travel restrictions   Dr John Lee

This year, like many years, there’s a new respiratory virus on the block. But this year, unlike any year ever before, the world has gone mad. Governments around the world have decided that their remit extends to micromanaging risk on behalf of everybody, for just about everything: where and when you can travel, what you must wear, what you can buy. Even in your own home, for goodness sake, amongst your own family, the state thinks it is “right” to regulate who you mix with, who you can see and who you can touch.

How did we come to this? Could such an approach ever be regarded as genuinely reasonable? To be honest, I think that it would be a stretch under any circumstances. But I could envisage a situation where a new pathogen was so nasty – say highly transmissible and reliably killing 30 per cent of people of all ages that it infected – that the very fabric of society would be at stake unless the state acted decisively.

But even in such dire circumstances the state would need to understand very clearly indeed what it was doing, in order to be absolutely sure that compelling populations to act in one way or another would definitely cause less harm than giving people the facts and letting them make their own decisions about risk. After all, what other justification could there reasonably be for trying to restrictively rewrite the rulebook of human interaction?

Of course, this has been tried before for all sorts of ideological reasons, and resulted in a 100 per cent track record of failure and disaster; responsible for untold misery, suffering, tragedy and deaths. One would have thought that there is a lesson there somewhere. Suffice it to say that Covid is orders of magnitude away from causing the level of societal damage that would justify even considering such a response.

Current consensus on the infection fatality rate (which has been continually falling as better data arrives) is 0.2 per cent. When we look back at this period any visible mortality signal will be well within the envelope of the last 30 years when deaths caused by lockdown are excluded. The average age of death from Covid is actually above the average age of death from all causes.

So why are governments around the world persisting in, and indeed elaborating, responses that are progressively being seen, as evidence accumulates, to be fundamentally wrong?

You don’t have to listen too hard to hear the sound of many, many pigeons coming home to roost simultaneously. I think this is why it has been so hard to explain what is happening, and why so many people remain deeply unsure as to what the right course of action should be. Any given article or interview tends to deal with only one or two key points, leaving so many unanswered questions for most people that doubt and confusion fill the gaps. Neither governments nor their advisors seem able to see the big picture, let alone explain it. So here is my attempt to assemble, in one place, the most important of the very many drivers of the Covid response. 

1. Preconceptions

Current ideas about how to “control” viruses are based on Spanish flu, smallpox, SARS, MERS, HIV, influenza and Ebola, among others. This coronavirus isn’t the same as any of them. The idea of “controlling” an airborne, easily transmissible virus on a population basis, beloved of “public health” “experts”, is largely myth, based on mediocre observational or questionnaire-based studies using unverified and unverifiable methods.

2. Incorrect framing

Television pictures from China, Italy and New York painted a picture of a deadly new global plague and were highly instrumental in determining the initial response. But TV pictures are highly selective and often unrepresentative, as was the case with coronavirus. Months ago, real-world evidence conclusively disproved initial perceptions of this virus, yet the initial framing still seems to be a key driver of government responses around the world.

3. Fear

It is a strong and evolutionarily valuable human emotion. Broadcast and social media are effective in maintaining it, especially with government backing aimed at generating the “correct” reactions from people. Written media is often more nuanced and thoughtful, but narrower in appeal, and slower to take effect. It has struggled to balance the broadcast narrative, which has thrived on highly selective presentation of information.

4. Poor quality data

The prerequisite for our current shambles of rubbish-in, rubbish-out, affecting all areas of our understanding of Covid. Suspension of peer review in the name of speed has removed a crucial quality control, undermining much research in the field and encouraging false consensus.

5. Excessive risk aversion

The anti-scientific Precautionary Principle* has become so entrenched in public decision-making that it seems almost normal to respond to an unquantified threat with responses that have had no prior assessment for either effectiveness or harm.

[* Big in the EU].

6. Suppression of debate

In their eagerness to entrench the “right” course of action, governments have radically reduced the chances of it being found by suppressing contrary views. There is also an inability to have a grown-up and measured public conversation about human lifespan, illness and death. What does “saving lives” actually mean? Whose lives, and saved for what? And where is the discussion about quality of life? Old people do die, and we all are, in fact, more susceptible to dying of everything with advancing age. Covid is no exception to this.

7. Flawed testing

Detailed technical problems with the rapid development and mass rollout of tests (by technicians who are often marginally trained), without a sound biological understanding of the tests’ basis or meaning. Few are armed with the knowledge needed to understand (among other things) the technical subtleties of PCR or antibody tests, the meaning (if any) of weak positives, the relevance of antibodies versus T-cell reactions, the statistical invalidities of test and trace, the inadequacies of death certification, or the details of why get-out-of-jail-via-vaccination has such a low probability of success. These details matter.

8. Perpetually moving goalposts

Save the NHS, save lives, reduce “cases”, reduce positive tests, “control” the virus….

9. Focus on a single threat

And the virtual exclusion of everything else. How “public health” doctors can claim to be protecting “public health” with this approach seems incomprehensible, as well as being medically negligent.

10. Skewed motives

Political desire to be seen to be taking action. Media-driven and short-term, taking action is apparently politically desirable even if it means subjecting entire populations to experimental, unverifiable, oppressive methods of viral “control”. This also mirrors a cultural divide in medicine between interventionists and nihilists. 

There are probably more drivers of the Covid response that could be listed, but you can see the many-tentacled head of the medusa that is petrifying society.  It seems pretty clear that if we are asked to make major sacrifices there should be solid, quantifiable evidence of benefit to justify them. Unfortunately the solid, quantifiable evidence of benefit of the current approach to Covid simply does not exist.

The secrecy surrounding the basis for the government’s decisions speaks volumes. In fact, real-world data suggests that the harms caused by current actions outweigh the benefits when measured even in terms of deaths, and massively outweigh the benefits when measured in terms of quality of life – which, after all, is central to the human experience at all ages.

How can we know what would have happened if we had never locked down? The simple answer is that, for our particular circumstances, we cannot know for sure. But countries which have not enforced lockdowns, of which Sweden is the nearest, have not been noticeable outliers in terms of deaths or illness. 

More importantly, by allowing the virus to spread in the way that viruses do, these places are now in a much better position than countries which made major economic sacrifices, but still have to face the virus. Lockdowns may (perhaps) slow down slightly our arrival at herd immunity (through exposure of a large enough proportion of the population), but we will all get there in the end.

The only differences will be the extent of the own goals caused along the way by restrictions. Countries that have isolated themselves, such as New Zealand, will have to face the virus in due course or remain isolated from the world (their only get-out-of-jail-free card would be an effective vaccine). Yet the costs of such isolation seem highly suspect, since data suggests that very few cases of Covid are caught or spread by travellers. This virus has already circled the globe while we have been largely staying put. So we might as well start travelling again, since the risks, in a majority of countries, are rather similar.

So how can we find the right way forward? Revocation of progressively inappropriate emergency powers, with restoration of parliamentary scrutiny, accountability, transparency and debate must be part of it, along with involvement of a more diverse base of scientific and medical advisors.

If the NHS is struggling for capacity – which is debatable, and anyway substantially due to self-imposed rules related to “controlling” Covid – then sort it out: build more capacity, and remind NHS workers that they are there to look after the sick. 

The bottom line is that, at the present time, there is no reasonable scientific or medical justification for lockdowns, convoluted social distancing rules, masks, travel restrictions, quarantines or most of the rest of the flotsam that has attached itself to the Covid response. The sky is not falling. And the more people who understand the multifaceted reasons why this is the case, the sooner we will all get our lives back.

2. The ECB fears Covid could trigger a financial crisis     Christine Lagarde indicates that circumstances have suddenly become treacherous with far more fiscal and monetary support urgently needed: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The European Central Bank is increasingly worried that economic damage from Covid-19 could mutate into a full-blown financial crisis, setting off a second downward leg in the recession and deep scarring of the productive system.

Christine Lagarde, the ECB’s president, warned that risks are “clearly, clearly, tilted to the downside” and pledged a fresh blast of stimulus in December using “all instruments”. Such a clear signal breaks with the institution’s long-standing rule that it never commits in advance. 

The ultra-dovish language pushed the euro to a four-week low of €1.1659 against the dollar and sent sovereign bond yields plummeting to historic depths. German 10-year Bunds dropped to minus 0.64pc. Even Portuguese bonds fell below zero for maturities out to nine years.

Mrs Lagarde said the recovery is “losing momentum more rapidly than expected” and tacitly admitted that the bank’s rosy forecast of 3.1% growth in the fourth quarter now lies in tatters. She may regret having said in June that the “lowest point” of the Covid crisis had already passed.

There is a clear danger that the eurozone could relapse into a double-dip recession before it has regained more than half of the output lost during the first wave of the pandemic. 

Her tone was a crystal clear message to governments that circumstances have suddenly become more treacherous and that double-barreled fiscal and monetary support is urgently needed, with national treasuries carrying most of the burden.  

Krishna Guha from Evercore says a further €500bn of pandemic bond purchases is likely in September, buttressed by a fresh round of ultra-cheap lending to banks (TLTROs) at rates of minus 1pc or even lower.

Lagarde says the ECB is on high alert in case the second wave of Covid-19 triggers retrenchment by banks and a destructive squeeze in lending: “The whole eurosystem will be extremely attentive. We need to make sure that there is ample liquidity to respond to any kind of shock.”

Pablo Hernández de Cos, Spain’s central bank governor and chairman of the G20’s Basel Committee, said there is a risk that banks will become the channel for a further contractionary shock. 

“There’s no room for complacency. This began as a health crisis and then turned into an economic crisis, and it is vital that it doesn’t turn into a financial crisis,” he says. 

The ECB’s chief regulator, Andrea Enria, warned this week that non-performing loans (NPLs) in the eurozone could surge to €1.4 trillion in a “plausible scenario”, dwarfing losses seen after the Lehman crisis. He called for a pan-eurozone "bad bank" to clean up balance sheets and recapitalise troubled lenders. 

The International Monetary Fund said in its Stability Report that a double-dip downturn could set off a cascade of bankruptcies and blow through the loss-absorbing buffers of the banks, with contagion ripping through “the entire financial system”.

"Renewed liquidity pressures could easily morph into insolvencies, especially if the recovery is delayed," it said. 

The ECB’s latest bank lending survey recorded a “considerable tightening” in credit over the third quarter despite the economic recovery during the summer, with 19pc imposing tougher loan terms.

It is clear that lenders were already looking beyond the mechanical effects of the V-shaped bounce, fearing a wave of defaults as support schemes wind down and debt guarantees expire. Spain faced an incipient credit crunch even before it spiralled back into a health emergency this week.

The risk is that thousands of businesses hanging on by their fingertips will see credit lines cut as banks move preemptively to build up their own safety buffers, leading to a vicious circle. 

The ECB has relaxed rules on capital ratios and non-performing loans, but banks know that tougher conditions will snap back sooner or later. Consultants Oliver Wyman says half the European banking system will emerge broken from the pandemic, forced to cut their balance sheets by 10pc to 15pc to stay afloat.

It is unclear whether the ECB's ritual moves have much more efficacy than a rain dance at this juncture. 

It cannot do much to prevent a wave of business failures and a slide into protracted stagnation. Interest rates are already minus 0.5pc. There is nothing left to extract from the bond market by pushing down yields.  

The ECB has so far bought almost €3 trillion euros of bonds and owns a large chunk of the Spanish and Italian debt market, yet it has nevertheless failed to meet its inflation target continuously or ignite self-sustaining recovery. The eurozone has slipped ever deeper into a Japanese deflation trap with corrosive pathologies. Inflation has dropped to minus 0.3pc.

Lagarde insisted vehemently that there is no deflation “at all” in the eurozone, sticking to the house mantra that the region is merely going through a bout of “negative inflation”. 

Deflation veterans in Japan can only smile.  

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

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'*  

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

Optimism re the Spanish language.   

Pessimism re the Spanish economy. The consequence of sapped confidence. In her politicians mainly.  But also in the previously much-admired health system.

An enforced change in Spanish culture? Not before time, some of us would say.  

María's Day 45      

More Diary entries from early 2004:

Down in the very centre of the old quarter of Pontevedra there is a small grocery shop-cum-bar. By this I mean that behind the counter is the entrance to what must be the most decrepit bar in Galicia, if not Spain. The clientele would be truly frightening, if it weren't for the fact that they are clearly permanently incapacitated by one chemical substance or another. The owner is an old dowager whom my English neighbour - with some justification - thinks is an uglier version of Mrs Thatcher. She is followed around by a spaniel of a son of about 35, who may well be one prawn short of a paella. If they think you are important, they put a sheet of newspaper on the table in your honour. Other than an urge to immerse yourself in Dickensian England, the sole reason for braving this place is to partake of the raisin wine this odd couple serve from filthy barrels. Contrary to all expectations, this sweet concoction is truly delicious and seems to have an alcoholic content closer to whisky than grape wine. Despite this, they virtually give it away. In every sense a knockout. It doesn't take long to forget about the decor. Or, indeed, everything. 

The Minister of Development has unexpectedly quit politics, laying some blame on intrusions into his private life by the pink press. This had become rather interested in the details of his 4th partner in 10 years and, even more so, in the fact that his ministry had recently bought an awful lot of pictures from the gallery she owns in Madrid. She was pictured in the papers at his final press conference and I have to say that I have never seen anyone looking quite so miserable at the prospect of being photographed, especially in this celebrity-obsessed country. The government TV channel reported the outgoing Minister as being 54 and born in 1947. I trust they have a higher degree of accuracy elsewhere. Mind you, El Mundo got on the bandwagon yesterday, reporting a survey of attitudes towards to foreigners in which the various groups totalled 140%. Albeit not to two decimal points. 

The USA

Are you ready for this? . . . On Tuesday, the White House issued a press release on the Trump Administration’s accomplishments  in science and technology. The first one on the list was. “Ending the Covid-19 pandemic.” Can anyone but Trump have written this?

Finally

By and large, I’ve been very happy using the OCR program included with my HP printer to convert documents into computer files. But you wouldn’t believe how wrong it gets simple words like ‘Spain’ (usually Spam); ’The' (usually Tile, but many other variations); and nearly all words ending in ‘ing’, (mg’. Very frustrating, revising them all. In one single-page document, I had ‘Tile’ 14 times . 

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

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

Good-ish news: People who suffer the most from Covid-19 are almost twice as likely to be deficient in vitamin D, a study has found — implying that supplements might help to protect against the disease. The findings, from a study of 216 Spanish patients, are the latest to suggest a link between low levels of the vitamin and serious cases of Covid-19.

Decidedly bad news: We are reaching the stage where the cumulative effect of lockdown and partial lockdown measures is going to inflict catastrophic damage on the economy. Companies could survive a certain period of inactivity, but are coming to the end of their resilience, of their financial reserves, and of effective government support. Unemployment and bankruptcies are set to soar, with all the human misery and indeed of deleterious health outcomes that will entail.

That second quote is taken from this article, of which the take-home messages - to me - are: 

1.Given the probabilities as they now are, can anyone justify draconian, non-specific (panic?) measures that mean immense economic damage and personal pain for years to come?, and

2. Are governments mostly concerned with 1. saving their own skins by avoiding the collapse of inadequately financed/badly run healthcare system,  and 2. saving the face that should have been lost because of their incompetence to date?

I’m sure you can guess accurately my own answers.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

Correction: There are not only 8  (unread)information boards at the Lérez end of O Burgo bridge but 17. Duplicating the pages of the ridiculous glossy  brochure.

By the way, 1: Both the boards and the brochures are only in Gallego. Which can’t be right. Except to a Galician nationalist.

By the way, 2: I didn’t t know the word Berce on the front of the brochure, which I initially took to be Berge. I believe it means something akin to ‘cradle’. 

Diary entries from January 2004:

A high court in Andalucia on Friday pronounced that the owner of a brothel was obliged to include his employees in the social security system and, thus, pay taxes on their income. The inference to be drawn from the analogy the judges made with illegal immigrant labourers was that this was so despite the fact that prostitution itself was against the law. Three of the twelve judges went out on a limb and said they had misgivings about the brothel owner being able to dictate working hours [and practices?] to female employees. I wonder whether he will be similarly liable for accidents at work, whatever these might include. Pregnancy, for example. The mind boggles, 

Later: The Association of Brothel Owners [yes, there really is one] is up in arms against the decision of the Andalucian court I cited earlier. They say that it institutionalises pimping. For their part, the Association of Progressive Women say that it is a small step in the right direction but that they reject the suggestion that the work of prostitutes is analogous to that of  [illegal] waiters. The brothel owners also claim that the decision infringes the human rights of the prostitutes to work the way they want to but so far the press has not been able to find any prostitute who shares this view. And the Red Queen says that the  law is whatever she says it is. To be honest, it's not called the Association of Brothel Owners. It's called the Association of  Owners of Places of Sexual Contact. Or Locales Alternes, in [unusually brief] Spanish 

As of this month, it is illegal to have either your car engine, your mobile phone or your radio switched on when you are filling up with petrol. Plus it will be an offence to have switched on anything such as a DVD or TV which might distract the driver. I will think of these safety-oriented rules - and the likely compliance rate - each time I see a car flash past me at 180kph with the driver talking on the phone while his wife bounces a toddler up and own on her lap in the adjacent front seat. Strangely enough, the one thing that can be guaranteed to distract the driver an onboard - a GPS system - is exempted from this ban.  In addition it will soon it will be compulsory to carry a luminous jacket in your car, for the use thereof if you exit the car at night. Or possibly if you just sit in it when the car is stationery. There is some confusion on this point. Anyway, this jacket now joins quite a long list of things one is compelled to have in one's car in Spain, others being not one but two warning triangles and a set of fuses. In a country where the mortality rates are very high, l would have thought there was a good case for concentrating on a few essentials, such as staying on your side of double white lines or not being blind drunk - but there you go. That's why l'm not a politician. 

Here's María's Days 43 & 44.    

Spanish

Some (alleged) Spanish proverbs:-

- A buxom widow must be either married, buried or shut up in a convent 

- Never advise anyone to go to war or to marry 

- A woman's advice is a poor thing but he is a fool who does not take it 

- By the street of By and By one arrives at the house of Never 

- Forgive any sooner than thyself 

- God comes to see us without a bell 

- Honour without profit is a ring on the finger (Marriage??)

- If fools didn't go to markets, bad goods wouldn't be sold 

- Let that which is lost be for God 

- Many go out for wool and come home shorn 

- Many things grow in the garden that were never sewn there 

- There is no friend like the penny [centimo, now. I guess] 

- One and none is all the same [i e negligible] 

- Beware of an ox in front, an ass behind and a monk from all sides 

- Tel a lie and find the truth 

- The devil lurks behind the cross 

- The diligent spinner has a large shift (=Industry gives comfort, it says here) 

- The foot on the cradle and the hand on the distaff is the sign of a good housewife ('distaff' = a cleft staff on which the wool or flax is wound)

- There are no buds in last year's nest 

- Those who live longest will see most 

- Though the sun shines, don't leave your cloak at home [Written by a Galician, I imagine] 

- Too much breaks the bag 

- When one door shuts another opens 

- White hands cannot hurt (??)

Finally . . . . 

A very funny guy I seem to have missed to date.

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

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'*  

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

It’s been my view for months now that the majority of people don’t realise just how difficult things are going to be - economy-wise - because of Covid. Or, perhaps more accurately, because of government reactions to Covid. As regards Spain, here’s a taster from The Corner, on the imminent rise in poverty. 

I've said more than once that the Spanish are not terribly considerate towards folk they don't know. Absent the vital 'personal factor'. Against this are the little acts of generosity I doubt would be seen in the UK,

Yesterday, for example, I asked the owner of a café I patronise about his coffee, as I quite liked it. Whereupon he gave me a kilo bag and said I could take it away and pay him for it later, if I liked it. Which I do. Likewise, the owner of my regular bar will add an order from me to her regular meat and fish orders to her suppliers. Of course, the personal factor is at work in these cases, as I’m an established customer.

Talking about Spanish society . . .  Not everyone will have seen the Comments to recent posts on the professions here. So, I’ll just say that I was surprised to read that not only your basic (high street) lawyer but also your basic doctor (the GP) have a much lower status (and income) here than in the UK. Despite the fact that, in the case of doctors at least, you need high marks in the Selectividad to get to study Medicine

And talking further of Spanish culture . . . 2 small examples:-

- At 11.23 last night my neighbour messaged me to say, if it wasn’t too late, I might like to come round and collect some of the biscuits she’d just baked. I got them at 6.45 this morning . . .

- Later this morning I went to a sort of municipal tip with a friend, having 2 old TVs to get rid of. She warned me they’d need to see my ID card, to prove I lived in the barrio of Poio. In the event, neither she nor I was asked to show a card. She was asked for a a number, which was written down with a pencil. What possible purpose could this serve? Other than to satisfy a national obsession with citing one’s ID number?

In the past week, I’ve twice crossed - on the infamous O Burgo bridge - with a burly chap in a kilt. I'm not at all convinced he's Scottish but am reluctantant to ask. Perhaps it's the ('Celtic') Galician version and he’s an aggressive Galician nationalist who might kill me if I laughed.

In the covered market this morning, there was a pile of brochures about said bridge. . . .

24 glossy pages, to go with the 8 (un-perused) information boards about it on the Lérez side of the bridge. Why? Glorification of the local council? More likely of the EU, which part-funded the expense of (pointless?) renovation. Other people’s money. So easily spent. Especially when you can’t be kicked out of office.

I mentioned our ugly-ish new museum and art gallery. I’m not 100% sure but I think this M has just appeared outside it. To rival the MacDonalds arch:-

The UK 

It beats the hell out of me . .  English bulldog puppies sell for thousands of pounds. After all, who on earth actually needs an astonishingly ugly dog bred to kill bulls, and which can't breathe properly?

The Way of the World

Not sure if this is parodic or not . . . greygender, intergender, maverique or astrogender (a fluid gender identity that transitions from male to female according to the configuration of the night sky)

Finally . . .

Tom Lehrer's famously clean dirty song. 

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

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

Back to my comment re Easter road deaths in the UK and the need to check stats and/or put them in context . . . When the government tells you that ICU beds in hospitals are running at 90% capacity, it might add the contextually useful statistic that they usually run at about 90% capacity (and that, by and large, this is a good thing,).

France has taken over from Spain as the country hardest hit by the long-forecasted second wave.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

Here's advice on what the latest restrictions mean for us here in Galicia.   

Local news that's more positive. . . . It’s been announced - again - that we’re going to have an AVE high speed train between Oporto and Vigo. If so, let's hope it doesn't involve the 28 years of delays we've endured waiting for the Madrid-Vigo AVE. So far.

Good to see that a Galician company which made super-fast speedboats for drug dealers has been closed down by the Guardia Civil. But I imagine it’ll spring up again somewhere else. Quite possibly in Galicia.

Really local news . . . The old San Francisco convent in Pontevedra city used to be the Tax Office (La Hacienda). It's been empty for 11 years, the rumour long being it was going to be converted into luxury flats. Today's news is that it’ll house the city's archive and library. The former is currently to be found in the old Jesuit convent next to our ugly newish museum and art gallery. Vamos a ver.

Here's María's Days 41&42. Shining a bit of light on those new restrictions. Someone has asked me this morning if the max of 5 people meeting includes their kids. Does it depend on their age? María??

The UK/The EU/France/Spain

Richard North today: Very few people have any idea of where the talks stand at the moment, and even those directly involved in the talks probably could not predict their outcome. It seems a pretty safe bet, though, that there will be a deal of sorts, even if it is a "bare bones" tariffs and quotas deal, with the UK giving away the family silver and part shares in the kitchen sink in order to get something which will largely favour EU-based traders. In brief , pretty thin gruel, giving something that Boris Johnson can big-up as a "victory". There again, even now there is the outside possibility of a no-deal outcome, especially if Macron, at the very last minute, refuses to give way on fish. But even if he does, there is Spain looming in the background, which also has strong fishing interests.  t is often the case in EU politics that one country will make the running – in this case France – while other Member States keep quiet as long, as their interests are being served. Overcoming the French resistance, therefore, may simply expose a new level of intransigence, from Spain.

The USA

The outcome of next week’s US election could be decided by a few million fervent folk who support Donald Trump because, astonishingly, they see him as a moral crusader, especially for gun-owning, aggressively heterosexual white people obsessed with the cause of a Greater Israel.   Put on the earth by (the Christina) god, obviously.

Quote of the (Last) Century

When told the Wright brothers were going to attempt flight - in 1903 - a bishop angrily protested. “Heresy! Flight is reserved for the angels! If God had intended for man to fly, He would have given him wings." This was Bishop Wright and, yes - believe it or not - he was the father of Wilbur and Orville Wright. He eventually took to the air in his 80s.

Finally . . .

My recommended Tom Lehrer song.

And another of my favourites.    

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

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

I'm confused about the latest measures here. If only because the Galician government is taking a different stance from Madrid and several other regions. For example, only 5 of us can meet here, against 6 or even 10 elsewhere. Anyway, here's the latest from El País, in English.    

Sweden.  Still ploughing/plowing its own furrow . .  Sweden Refuses to Impose New Lockdown Measures, Saying People Have Suffered Enough   . . . As Newsweek acknowledged, Sweden’s COVID-19 death rate is lower than those of Spain, the UK and Italy, countries which all imposed draconian lockdowns. Unlike the rest of the continent, Sweden’s economy is also in a far better position to make a swifter recovery. More here.

Living La Vida Loca in Galicia/Spain

More here on dispiriting Spanish politics/politicking. 

Talking of lawyers and notaries. . . . I am regularly amused by the reaction of Spaniards to the news that notaries - the institution which dominates their lives - are virtually unknown in the Anglo world. Where lawyers carry out most of their functions - in the interests of their clients, not the state. Most obviously by checking out the outrageous claims - or unrevealed  facts - of estate agents/realtors. British lawyers are either barristers, (high street) solicitors or corporate creatures, as commercial lawyers. Normally students take a degree in Law(s) and then take the (non government) entrance exam for the branch they've chosen. Solicitors can then start earning money, as 'articled clerks' in a firm of solicitors (un bufete in Spanish) but new barristers join a 'Chamber' and might not earn anything for a while, if ever. Should they succeed, barristers can end up earning a lot more than solicitors. As in Spain, there are an awful lot of lawyers among the members of parliament and the executive branch of government.The difference might well be that, in Spain, many of these will never have actually worked as lawyers, having been too busy swotting for the various exams that they can take. For example to be a judge at 30. Unthinkable in the Anglo world, Or Britain, at least.

There's nothing like Spain's dreadful/dreaded Oposiciones in the UK. These, as my reader pointed out, are vital to one's future employment in several fields. Things might have changed but years ago I was told they were locally marked, providing opportunities for corrupt favouritism. One famous case, as I recall, involved members of the family of the mayor of Ourense. All of whom proved to be geniuses when it came to exams.

Not many people at Pontevedra city's week flea market today. I see the gypsies have once again colonised it with junk worse than anyone else's. None them is wearing a badge showing they have a licence. So, all illegal. But I'm sure one of our several police forces will come along one Sunday and boot them off, without sanction. And the game will continue into perpetuity.

Here's María's Day 41. She mentions a zealous/officious cop in my barrio, Poio. In fact this idiot fined several drivers in one hour for 'Turning their heads more than the 28% permiittd by the law'. Such was the ensuing fuss, all the penalties were annulled. Which never would have happened under Franco!   

Germany

This was meant to be yesterday's quote: German is a language  which was developed solely to afford the speaker the opportunity to spit at strangers under the guise of polite conversation.

The USA

The view of a BBC columnist of the consequences of Trump's presidency to date.  

Finally . . .

For those of you too young to know of the genius of Tom Lehrer, this is a useful catchup article. If you've never heard him sing, I recommend Poisoning Pigeons in the Park as your first experience . . . 

Tom Lehrer’s genius went viral before its time:   Ben Macintyre, The Times

The great American pianist singer-songwriter was, of course, mocking the spread of sexually transmitted disease. I Got it from Agnes is one of the most explicit songs ever written while containing not a single rude word. It combines, as Lehrer’s songs always do, the jauntiest of tunes with the grimmest of subjects. And as a prolonged joke about the casual way humans contrive to pass on a dangerous illness, it seems bizarrely relevant today.

Lehrer, now 92, has just announced that he is surrendering the rights to his songs so that everyone can help themselves to his “catchy and savage musical satire” without fear of breaching copyright. His timing, as ever, is perfect, because what the world needs urgently is a strong dose of Lehrer.

The musician is often said to have given up political satire and returned to teaching mathematics because, after Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize, it had become obsolete. But Lehrer’s brand of humour remains as pertinent and pointed today as it ever was.

He took some of the most unpleasant, frightening, idiotic or sacred aspects of modern life and lampooned them with merciless cynicism, to a tinkling piano accompaniment of cheerful ballads, lullabies and parody showtunes. Nothing was off limits: nuclear Armageddon, Southern racism, drug pushing, and the simple romantic pleasure of poisoning pigeons in the park: “My pulse will be quickenin’/ With each drop of strych-a-nine/ We feed to a pigeon/ (It just takes a smidgen)”

He ridiculed Catholicism (“First you get down on your knees/ Fiddle with your rosaries…”), cheerleading, and the boy scout movement in Be Prepared (“If you’re looking for adventure of a new and different kind,/ And you come across a girl scout who is similarly inclined,/ Don’t be nervous, don’t be flustered, don’t be scared./ Be prepared!”

He sang happily about masochism, necrophilia, pollution and the Oedipus Complex. His songs were furious, profound, brutal and joyful, all at the same time.

Lehrer won a place at Harvard to read mathematics at the age of 15, and it was to mathematics that he returned, as a teacher, when he stopped performing and writing in the late 1960s. He wrote just 37 songs in all, while working on such arcane problems as “the number of locally maximal elements in a random sample”.

Mathematical rigour lies at the heart of Lehrer’s work, and some of his greatest songs are really precise multisyllabic equations, most famously his fitting of the chemicals in the periodic table to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Major-General Song. The Elements became a cult anthem for geeks, and Lehrer’s response was typical: “It spreads like herpes rather than ebola.”

Lehrer swiftly became extremely famous, and infamous. Time magazine dubbed him a “sicknik”, dispensing “social criticism liberally laced with cyanide, partly a Charles Addams-kind of jolly ghoulishness, and partly a personal and highly disturbing hostility toward all the world”.

His rhymes were sublime, his musical versatility remarkable, but it was the sliver of cruelty beneath the jollity — a trait shared with Roald Dahl — that made children and adults both wince and snigger.

And then, at the height of his notoriety, he gave it up, quietly, completely and still-mysteriously. No performer of the modern era has entered the limelight and then renounced it so suddenly and absolutely. He spread the rumour that he was dead, to discourage junk mail.

Thereafter he was content for anyone and everyone to plunder his work. When the American rapper 2 Chainz asked to adapt his song The Old Dope Peddler, Lehrer immediately granted permission, adding: “Please give my regards to Mr Chainz, or may I call him 2?”

Lehrer has not written anything (except mathematical papers) for more than half a century, yet his acidulous take on provocative subjects from plagiarism to pornography has lost none of its bite. As modern world leaders continue to brandish their nuclear arsenals, Lehrer’s song about global annihilation in a nuclear war might have been written yesterday: “When the air becomes uranious/ We will all go simultaneous/ We will all go together when we go.”

Music is a balm. Mozart, Abba and Louis Armstrong may help persuade us that it is a wonderful world. But frequently the world is far from wonderful, which is why we need songs that are prepared to laugh at its sheer unpleasantness, and ours. “If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while,” said Lehrer.

While we await a medical antidote to Covid-19, as a temporary solace try watching the YouTube clip of Tom Lehrer performing I Got it from Agnes, a song written in 1952 about foolish human insouciance in the face of a highly contagious disease, and another form of infection-tracing that doesn’t work.

“It might have been at the club

Or at the pub, or in the loo

And if you will be my friend

Then I might … give it to you!”

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

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'* 

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

Take a history of tribalism and then. on this base, design a café para todos Constitution which involves 17 Autonomous Communities, each with a President and a government, some of one party and some of another. Some supportive of the central government and some not. Some rich, some poor. Delegate wide powers to each AC, including the responsibility for healthcare. Then stand by and see how well all this works both before and - especially - after the arrival of an incurable, almost unstoppable fatal virus. Anyone surprised? A worse recipe would be hard to imagine. 

Spanish banks are rapacious, perhaps even more than in other countries. For my cash withdrawals, I believe I'm paying charges both to my bank and the banks whose ATMs I use, my bank not having any of its own, Lenox Napier has some choice comments on the banks here. And, in his latest Business Over Tapas, he cites this article from El Periodico on the banks' maltreatment of small customers.

Lenox also pointed me to this Guardian article on accusations of misogyny directed at the Prado.

A reader has kindly supplied interesting info on Spanish lawyers:- Comparing Spanish lawyers to lawyers in the UK is like comparing apples with pebble stones. In Britain, there is a specific exam that must be passed in order to qualify to become a barrister - for example. Not so in Spain. I do not know if in the UK there is anything extra required to become a judge, a notary or a simple solicitor. However, in Spain any of the elite professions require passing an "oposición". One must pass one of these exams in order to become a Juez, Notario, Inspector de Hacienda, Abogado del Estado, Letrado del Estado, Registrador de la Propiedad and so on - I don't know all them. These exams are horrendously hard to pass. Generally, only 3%-5% of those attending do pass. And they all have law degrees already. It is a sort of mandarinate, if you want. I reckon there is nothing in the UK comparable in the degree of difficulty and hardship that these exams entail. Absolutely nothing. Not that I consider this necessarily a good thing, or that I would recommend to anyone locking themselves up for years in a room just to memorise tomes and tomes of legalese, like a Rabbi learns the Torah. But this explains why ordinary lawyers do not enjoy much standing at the beginnig of their careers- they have to work themselves up their professional ladder by other means, and that might take years. I'll respond to this tomorrow, with some comments of my own.

Germany

Lenox yet again . . . My German step-mother would say 'A German joke is no laughing matter'. 

The USA

Finally . . .

Some excellent news . . . Tom Lehrer's marvellous stuff is available free here. I must dust off the piano . . . And take singing lessons.

And here's a web site dedicated to the unabashfully liberal comedy and political songwriter Tom Andrew Lehrer. 

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

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

Sometimes, when I read the stats, I’m put in mind of my youth when the UK government used to make a huge thing of road deaths over the Easter holidays. When I checked, I found these were the same as every other weekend in the year. So, not really newsworthy. Everything’s relative. And some things aren’t as absolutely bad as they’re made out to be. Context matters.

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

Vox is the far-right populist party here. This week it initiated a vote of censure against the governing PSOE left-of centre-party. As expected, no one from any other party voted in favour of it. The belief is that its sole purpose was to show how week the right-of-centre parties (PP and Ciudadanos) are when it comes to populist issues.  Spanish politics . . . 

Lawyers - for one reason and another - don’t have in Spain the status and the income they have in the Anglosphere. Far from it. I regularly shock my Spanish friends with data on this. But even I was surprised to read today that, driven by US firms, newly qualified lawyers in the UK are being offered starting salaries of between 100,000 and 150,000 euros.

I’m pleased to say that the (No. 4) blinds company came back yesterday and fitted my large salónblind. They’ve been even quicker with the bill . . . 

María's Fallback chronicle: Day 37 & 38    

The UK

So . . . Not only in Spain . . . HM Revenue and Customs have estimated that between five and ten percent of the £39 billion in payments made under the Treasury’s job retention scheme are likely to have been claimed fraudulently by organised criminals posing as legitimate businesses. 

The USA

As far as I can tell, Trump’s pitch for presidency goes something like: America is the greatest country ever. I am the greatest person ever. Joe Biden is the the worst person ever. If you elect me, you'll go to capitalist Heaven. If you elect him, you'll go to Hell in a malfunctioning communist handcart. Oh, and by the way, China is responsible for everything wrong in the world. 

It will be fascinating - and possibly depressing - to see how many Americans buy such shoddy goods.

Spanish

Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas has cited an article which lists English words which are part of the Spanish business lexicon - Briefing;  Call, CEO; Workshop; Startup; Deadline; Feedback; Staff; Stock and (why?) Backstage.  Bizarre.  

English

In her latest post, María cites the Brit word knackered, for ‘very tired’. This sent me down the rabbit hole of the root, which confirmed:-

Knacker: A person whose business is the disposal of dead or unwanted animals, especially those whose flesh is not fit for human consumption.

To knacker: 1. To tire (someone) out.  2. To damage (something) severely.

But then I was led to knackery, knackiness and knackish. Not to mention the still-used knack: ‘An acquired or natural skill at performing a task. A tendency to do something’. I’m not sure I’d have come up with that spelling . .  

Spanish

That explosive letter T again . . . I had trouble yesterday asking about tamarind paste. And I was trying really hard to spit it out . . . 

Finally . . .

German humour: Lenox advises. My German step-mother would say: A German joke is no laughing matter. 

Here’s an obit about the sort of person the world needs far more. Especially now, The Age of the Antivaxxers/Irrationalists.

James Randi, illusionist dubbed ‘the man no jail can hold’ who exposed psychic fraudsters: He performed Houdini's perilous escape acts and worked with scientists in investigating phenomena of apparently paranormal nature

James Randi, the psychic and illusionist, who has died aged 92, called himself the Amazing Randi and billed himself as “the man no jail can hold” in the tradition of the escapologist Harry Houdini; but above all he crusaded as the world’s pre-eminent debunker of pseudoscience and fraudulent magic.

As the scourge of dishonest psychics, hoaxers, fakers and charlatans, Randi claimed to speak on behalf of rationalists, and rejected the existence of psychic phenomena, which he believed were nothing more than “flim-flam” that could be explained by simple skulduggery or cheating.

One particular target was Uri Geller, the Israeli-born British illusionist who shot to fame in the 1970s with his spoon-bending act which featured on television all over the world. Although Randi was able to demonstrate how the illusion could be achieved using an ordinary magician’s sleight-of-hand, he believed that in a credulous age, many viewers were gulled not only into accepting what they were seeing as literal truth, but also – in some cases – they abandoned life-saving medical treatment in favour of what he called “the latest miracles”.

In 1975 Randi demonstrated Geller’s methods to a group of eminent British scientists, including Maurice Wilkins, the Nobel Prize-winning co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, at King’s College, London. “We believe that in investigating phenomena of apparently paranormal nature,” the scientists subsequently affirmed in a letter to Randi, “a qualified conjurer must be closely involved.”

Four years later Randi initiated his “Uri Awards”, which he distributed every April Fool’s Day to assorted scientists, journalists, and faith healers who claimed to be able to perform “psychic surgery” using paranormal powers.

As a performing magician and escape artist in his own right, Randi appeared all over the world, from Manila and Sydney to Paris, New York and London. In 1975 he toured with Alice Cooper as an executioner who simulated a guillotining of the rock star on stage every night.

For World of Wizards on Canadian television, Randi was filmed suspended above the raging Niagara Falls while wriggling out of a straitjacket bound in chains. In 1985 he escaped from another straitjacket while dangling from a helicopter over Tokyo.

He regularly performed the Milk Churn escape borrowed from Houdini’s act, Houdini himself having once almost come to grief at the Empire Theatre, Leeds, when he accepted a challenge from the Tetley brewery to escape from a beer-filled galvanised metal container, only to fail after being overcome by the fumes and having to be rescued unconscious by an assistant.

James Randi was born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge in Toronto on August 7 1928, the son of a telephone company manager. He became hooked on magic as a child when he watched a friend perform a billiard-ball illusion. Scouring department stores for magic tricks to buy, he was 13 when he discovered the Toronto Arcade Magic and Novelty Store, and spent every Saturday there learning new tricks.

A child prodigy with an IQ of 168, James was bored and disruptive at the Oakwood Collegiate Institute, and often cut class to educate himself at Toronto’s public library, where, among other things, he learnt to read hieroglyphics.

When he was 15 he was arrested for disrupting a meeting at his local spiritualist church, where the pastor’s party piece was reading out the contents of sealed envelopes. Young James rushed on to the stage and demonstrated how the trick worked, spending four hours in a police cell before his father collected him.

A shy child who stuttered and stammered, Randi found that performing magic tricks boosted his self-confidence, and at 17 he left school to join Peter March’s travelling carnival. His initial persona was as a conjurer, Prince Ibis, complete with goatee, turban and a mouldy suit of tails, but by the age of 20 he was styling himself The Great Randall, Telepath. His displays of “mentalism” (extrasensory perception or ESP) so convinced onlookers that he was asked to help find missing children and even pick winning horses; failing to convince people that his psychic powers derived from trickery, he returned to his rabbits and wands.

By the mid-1960s he had his own all-night radio show in New York, drawing up to 150 letters a day. It was then that Randi, realising the growing scale of public credulity about clairvoyants and faith healers, decided to mobilise a campaign against charlatanry.

As an illusionist he starred in his own television specials around the world, and made a memorable appearance in Britain on Paul Daniels’s television show, when he apparently passed through the solid wall of a partly demolished building.

Having completed three world tours as a performer and lecturer, in 1974 Randi performed for President Ford at the White House. He became a prolific journalist and writer of books, the most celebrated of which was Conjuring (1992), acclaimed as the definitive history of “the venerable arts of sorcery, prestidigitation, wizardry, deception and chicanery, and of the mountebanks and scoundrels who have perpetrated these subterfuges on a bewildered public”.

Indeed, he became a recognised authority on the history of stage magic and an even more celebrated debunker of false claims about the paranormal. Discussing Randi’s 1982 book The Truth About Uri Geller, the astronomer and author Carl Sagan acclaimed it “a witty and fascinating dissection of Uri Geller’s humbuggery … a healthy antidote to charlatanry at all levels”.

A more sweeping indictment of the paranormal was contained in Randi’s Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and Other Delusions (1980). His other works included Harry Houdini: His Life And Art (1976); Test Your ESP Potential (1982); The Faith Healers (1987); The Magic World of the Amazing Randi (1989); The Mask of Nostradamus (1990); and James Randi, Psychic Investigator (1991).

His Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural was published in 1995 and he was the subject of a biographical film documentary, An Honest Liar, in 2014.

Like his hero, Houdini, James Randi escaped from notorious jails around the world, having been bound with ropes and handcuffs and entombed in boxes and coffins. It is likely, however, that Randi will be remembered more as a writer and a zealous guardian of legitimate stage magic than for his own performances.

He continued his campaign against bogus practitioners well into old age, holding forth on their devious methods at such institutions as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Institution in London and even at the American Parapsychological Association, an experience Randi likened to “Martin Luther walking into the Vatican for lunch”.

In 1987 the Academy of Magical Arts in Los Angeles created a special fellowship for Randi in recognition of his efforts to preserve the art of conjuring as an entertainment rather than for deception and fraud.

Randi considered hate-mail an occupational hazard, and dealt with several threats to his life by fortifying his house, wearing body armour and surrounding himself with large bodyguards in bulky suits. Whenever he was pointed out as a representative of Satan, he would bow and wave.

He became a naturalised American citizen in 1987 and settled in Florida in the company of “a mellow old red cat named Charles, several untalented parrots, numerous other unnamed creatures and the occasional visiting magus or sorcerer’s apprentice”.

Randi was a founding fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), and received a “genius grant” from the American MacArthur Foundation.

He also set up the James Randi Educational Foundation, which gave prizes and scholarships, provided data for researchers and the media – and offered a $1 million (£750,000) reward to anybody who could prove supernatural or paranormal powers under scientific conditions.

The foundation stopped taking applications when Randi stepped down in 2015, and the money remained unclaimed.

James Randi, born August 7 1928, died October 20 2020     

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

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

More analysis of Spain’s failures, here and here.  Fingered: Spain's bitter political polarization and its devolved model of state. . . .  The problem here is that of confrontation and there are no mechanisms of cooperation between the institutions. Shades of Manchester v London in the UK.   

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

The AVE high speed train to Madrid. Was originally promised for the 1990s but now for ‘next year’. BUT . . . The stretch between Zamora and Pedralba has finally been opened and this will take 1.5 hours off the 6-7 hour journey from Pontevedra to Madrid. Twelve hours in the case of the night train. Shame none of us are allowed to go to Madrid,

Early 2003: It's actually the anniversary of the Prestige disaster today. One of the papers has stressed that none of the various measures proposed - special harbour, more tugs, etc. has yet been introduced. If it happened again tomorrow, Galicia/ Spain would be just as exposed to the consequences. There was another good cartoon today. It showed pictures of the various organisms that are affected in various degrees by the hydrocarbon residues. Some seafood was said to be very affected and some relatively unaffected. The most unaffected organisms were national and local politicians. 

Mid 2003: The local paper says that the gypsy encampment at the bottom of the hill will give way to a block of flats by 2005, which itself will be surrounded by an industrial park. Wonder what happened to that plan. We still have the gypsies but I believe the expansion of the small industrial park we do have has been in negotiation for 15 years now. Decathlon is on hold . . .

December 2003: I wonder whether the pedestrian-killing season has begun in Pontevedra. I say this because yesterday I twice had to take evasive action on a zebra crossing and this morning I witnessed the ultimate in confrontation. Just after I had negotiated a crossing, I heard a strident car horn and looked over my shoulder to see a young driver gesticulating and shouting at an old man who was rather slowing making his way across the road. The gestures and the language made it quite dear that the latter was being berated for not stopping in the middle of the crossing to make sure that the former had enough time in which to stop. The clear inference was that the young man had every right to drive exactly how he liked. In fact, he was advertising this belief by driving a garish red sports car. Others of this ilk drive customised cars with ludicrous spoilers fore and aft and speakers that seem to direct all their sound outwards for our benefit. More often than not their cars are painted yellow, not a colour I would previously have associated with naked aggression. They are not unique to Spain, of course, but seem rather numerous here. The local word for them is 'morulos', which doesn't appear in my dictionary but which seems to mean something like 'country bumpkin'.

Cooking octopus in copper pots.  . .  Reader Perry says that a tin lining is one answer to alleged coper toxicity, as is stainless steel. And ‘ceramic-tech’. And here’s a top-of-line option:-

María has commented that some Portuguese coffees are available in Galicia, so I will keep looking. She’s also said you can get wine from other parts of Spain but I’m sure she means in the supermarkets, which is true. I really meant you’d get a blank stare from a bartender or waitperson in the region.

This would be fascinating. I wonder if it’s true.  

The USA

I have to admit that I've been amazed at the brilliance of Donald Trump in the last week or two, as - stoked up on steroids - he's shown other comedians just how to do improv and parody. His "Suburban mums, please love me!” was a stroke of pure genius. How we laughed. What a comic career he has ahead of him! Or will it shortly be behind him? What a loss to the world that would be.

Finally . . .

Talking of humour . . . Reader sp has given a very funny alternative to the German language quote I cited:

Why do Germans look so serious when you tell them a joke?

They're waiting for the verb.

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

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

Screams an El País headline: The Spanish government is considering nationwide state of alarm to implement a curfew. But the text adds this rider: Sources from the central government said today that it would not go ahead with a country-wide curfew, if there is not an agreement to do so among all of Spain’s regions – some of which, like Madrid, are led by the [Opposition]PP party. So I wouldn’t bet my house on this coming to pass, whatever the case for it is.

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

Well, the 4th blind company did come, and gave me an acceptable estimate. But I’ve been here before . . .

Let’s  hear it for these Spanish folk.

Err . . . Another El Pais headline: Italian mafia boss mistakenly released after his arrest in Barcelona. The 'explanation' is here.   

I  share the view that coffee is better in Portugal than in Spain. Here's an article on their superior stuff, though it doesn't mention that the Portuguese don't go in for the dreadful torrefacto stuff that the Spanish have grown to like. Anyway, my problem is that - as with Portuguese wines such as vinho verde - it's almost impossible to find their coffee here, only 55km from the border. In truth, in Spain it's pot luck what you can get, even as regards Spanish wines. In Madrid, for example, it's usually possible to get Galicia's ('premium') Albariño but not our other whites (Ribeiro and Godello), nor our red Mencía. Ironically, you can get red Rioja and Ribera del Duero wines here in Galicia but I suspect asking for white Rueda or Catalan wines would produce a blank stare.  BTW . . . Portugal's vinho verde is produced just south of the border and uses the Albariño/Albarinho grape. Too competitive, I guess.

María's Fallback chronicle: Day 36 

Italy

Interesting to hear a historian say that, if Mussolini hadn't made the massive strategic error of backing the wrong late-1930s horse, he would - like Franco - have ruled his country for decades and died in his bed. And would now be a national hero. As it is . . .

Finally . . .

I don't speak much German. And, if I wanted to do so, this brilliant Mark Twain article might well  put me off. But I do know enough to find this comment - from the Irish novelist, Flann O'Brien - both amusing and accurate: Waiting for the verb in German is the ultimate thrill.

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

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'* 

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

Sometimes coincidences are very hard to believe . . . Following on from the lawn disaster of last week - when a mini-JCB had to pass through my garden and fence into next door - I last night read this diary entry of mine, from mid 2003: Faye tells me that someone came this morning to say that I would be receiving a letter about something all the 4 families in the next 'block' want/need to do. I suspect that this is connected with some flooding in their basement they had a year or two ago. I seem to recall that there was something said about a pipe which goes under my lawn. I fear that they will want to dig up the lawn to take a look at it. I will be very annoyed if this means either destroying the vines that I have trained on the link fence in the last 2 years or taking up any part of my hand-laid terrace at the bottom of the garden. I won't be too pleased about it even if it doesn't.  So . . . It took 16 years for this to happen. Which makes this comment - from the same year - seem rather premature: The walkways behind the house are still not finished. It's coming up for 3 years now since the Community meeting we had to discuss their repair. 

Life moves at a different pace here . . . 

But good news . . . You’ll all be thrilled to know that the blinds company of July, revisited last week, are coming today. So, I won’t have to go to the 4th company kindly cited by a reader. Yet.

I’ve been a fan of John Carlin ever since I read this marvellous piece 20 years ago. Here’s a commentary of his on the scandal of a politically biased Spanish justice and a nonchalant public. It’s in Spanish but there’s a (tarted up) Google translation below. It reminds me of my comments over the years that Spain doesn’t regard things like promptness, efficiency and meritocracy as things to be pursued at any price. Which can have its positives as well as its negatives.

I’ll never get over the range and turnover of beggars in Pontevedra. These possibly reflect the fact we have a (gypsy) drug-dealing operation on the edge of the city, in my barrio. It brings all sorts of folk who need cash to finance their habit. Two of the latest are 1. A clearly ‘touched’, bizarrely-dressed and loud-mouthed foreigner (who’s threatened to relieve me of my cojones), and 2. A well-dressed, middle aged woman who trawls the old quarter continuously and who, in the last week, must have asked me for money at least 20 times. Without success so far.

María's Fallback chronicle: Day 35. As Maria says: There was a winter at the beginning of this century when it was storm after storm. We would celebrate a day in which we could see blue sky and remember what the sun's warmth was like. Wind and rain was our lot during the worst of the winter months. . . .  My husband remembers winters where the norm was that it would start raining in September, and it would continue until May. Well, that was exactly how my first winter - of 2000/1 - went. Forcing me to spend 3 months in Andalucía during the next winter. And to consider moving South permanently. Read all about it in my forthcoming book, of which the working title: So, you really are thinking of moving to Spain . .

The UK

Thousands of male teachers are leaving secondary school classrooms every year, fuelling fears that a lack of role models is contributing to the under-performance of boys. The exodus over the past decade means that men comprise slightly more than a third of teachers in secondary schools nationally, and only a quarter in some regions. In primary schools only one in seven teachers is male. The figures prompted calls for greater efforts to encourage men into the profession as its leaders warned that a shortage of them was contributing to white working-class boys struggling to keep up with girls.

THE ARTICLE

A national scandal: John Carlin

The scandal of the Rosell case is that there has been no scandal. Or not in proportion to the magnitude of the crime that the Spanish judicial system has committed against him. And the fact that there has been no scandal, that its story has not dominated the headlines and has left the political world indifferent shows how far Spain is from the modern European nation that it claims to be.

The prison newspaper that the former president of FC Barcelona Sandro Rosell has just published, A Big Hug, which serves three purposes: 1. self-therapy after 645 days of kidnapping (or “preventive detention”) for an alleged economic crime in which there was no victim and of which he was finally acquitted; 2. to raise funds for the book's hero, the Soto Real jail chaplain, Father Paulino; and 3. a complaint, an "I accuse", against a State institution that, instead of fulfilling its alleged mission of protecting the citizen, abused him, as it has abused others.

The third point is by far the most important. May Rosell be more at peace after recounting his experience in pleasant, fresh and direct words, good. Better that Father Paulino has money to help those prisoners who do not have the necessary resources to defend their legal interests. But, if the message of the book does not shake the national conscience, if it remains no more than a entertaining read, the conclusion will have to be that the Spanish have resigned themselves to living in a half democracy, in a country where, according to Rosell, Father Paulino says "justice is shit."

In those European countries where they understand that without justice there is no democracy, the noise in the media regarding a case like Rosell's would have been deafening. An Commission of Inquiry would have been required to elucidate why a judge of the National High Court denied Rosell bail 13 times, registering a historical record of preventive detention for an alleged private economic crime whose alleged victim in this case, the Confederación Brazilian Soccer, stated that it had no complaint against him. 

One theory that has spread is that the judge and the prosecution were responding to pressure from the FBI. If true, Spain would be a country that puts its obedience to the United States before the freedom of its own citizens, just like Honduras or Guatemala in the 1960s, when Washington did what it wanted in its Central American "backyard."

A smell of bananas emanates from the upper echelons of Spanish justice. The Rosell case makes it clear that disinfection is necessary. Whoever thinks otherwise, should ask himself the following question: In the absolutely hypothetical case that the president of Real Madrid had been charged with the same crimes, would he have spent a day, an hour, a minute in preventive detention? We all know not. 

Justice in Spain does not pretend to be impartial. The scandal is that almost nobody cares.

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

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'*  n'* 

Covid

Here’s another of those articles which are both fascinating and possibly true. If so, it would certainly answer some obvious questions about the spread and  non-spread of the virus.

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

It's hard to read or talk about politics in Spain without coming up against the phrase 'political dysfunction'. This article plus this one will explain why. In the former, the estimable Guy Hedgecoe points out that: The economic crisis of a decade ago revealed thick seams of dishonesty and amateurism running through the revered financial system. The glut of corruption scandals that followed did much the same for the political class, as well as tainting the monarchy. Meanwhile, the Catalan crisis has put in question the country’s territorial model. And GH endorses the comment of 'a senior cabinet minister' that: Spain’s democratic institutions are too weak to be sure of them following through on an election result. In a word, says GH, it's time for a change'. But you know this because I said it a few days/weeks ago, when I added it was unlikely to happen. On this, GH opines: A full-blown new constitution would be a tall order, especially right now. But surely it is time that Spain faced up to the fact that, beyond the glaring weaknesses of its politics and monarchy, the institutional bedrock of any democracy – the judiciary – is desperately ripe for an overhaul. 

GH cites the article by the equally, if not more, estimable David Jimenez. If you haven't read it yet, this is his opening para: Politicians here seem to be mystified as to why Spain is, once again, the European country hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. They have blamed the recklessness of youth, our Latin inability to keep our distance, and even immigration. And yet all this time the answer has been right under their noses: Nothing has eased the spread of the virus as much as their own incompetence.    

It's said that countries get the politicians they deserve. One looks at Spain, the UK and the USA right now and wonders how to change the people into a more deserving group . . .

By pure coincidence, here's Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas on Spanish politics a few days ago.        

Footnote: Talking of 'the revered financial system', I recall laughing out loud at (then)Prime Minister Zapatero's boast that Spain had the strongest financial system in the world and so would emerge from the 2008 global crisis unscathed. But he was even funnier with his earlier claim that Spain, having overtaken both Italy and France, would soon have a per capita GDP higher than Germany's. What a joker that Bambi was!

Less controversially . . . María's Fallback chronicle: Day 34     

The UK

The government has an app which allows you to determine what jobs would suit you if Covid has left you unemployed. Someone filled in the form as if she had Boris Johnson's attributes. The resulting recommendation was . . . . estate agent(realtor).

Spanish

The word extranjero can mean stranger, foreign or alien. I checked on because of this entry in my diary of 2003: There was a headline in the local Galician paper last week which read 'Foreign banks now control 65% of the market in Galicia.' 'Foreign' turned out to mean banks from other parts of Spain.

From a film (Crazy, Stupid Love) last night . . Integral: Fully nude; stark naked; starkers. Short for desnudo integral, I believe.

Finally . . .

I was talking to a Spanish friend re football yesterday and then, as so often happens in Spain, we switched to the subject of food. I asked if he knew that Carballiño was famous for the cooking of octopus. He denied this was true. Turned out that when I said pulpo, he heard football. Maybe he was 'sensitised'; or maybe I didn't spit out the initial P in pulpo. Which, as with the letter T, you have to do ifSpanish ears are going to pick it up.

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

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

Spain: Two critical articles - here and here - on the performance of the government. A taster from the first one: While the reasons behind this poor outcome are still to be fully understood, Spain's COVID-19 crisis has magnified weaknesses in some parts of the health system and revealed complexities in the politics that shape the country. How very true.  

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

Two items of good news:-

1. The Spanish government is moving to outlaw the wage gap between men and women, making mandatory for companies to disclose the salaries of their employees or face fines. Click here.

2. Teens will be taught about the Civil War, Franco's dictatorship and the Transition to democracy involving the signing of the Spanish Constitution as part of a new 'Law of Democratic Memory' passed by the national government. At present, the Second Republic, Civil War and Francoist régime are included in History for ESO (Spain's equivalent of GCSEs) and Bachillerato (A-Levels), although the latter would only be taken if the student follows the 'arts route' rather than the 'science route' through 6th form.

But bad news, perhaps, for Brits . . . on British banks and their possible closure of accounts of folks resident in the EU. 

Years ago, the president of Pontevedra's English Speaking Society told me that the place to have great octopus - which, incidentally, I don't much like - was not along the coast but up in the hills, in a place called Carballiño. There, he said, they obeyed the 11 strict rules of preparing octopus Galician style. One of these was the use of a copper pot. And, indeed, I've seen many large examples of these outside local bars and restaurants over the years. 

But, yesterday, I was told that copper is now forbidden and the pots (ollas) are made of stainless steel. I'll have to walk past one of the city's pulperías to day to check this out. 

María's Fallback chronicle: Days 32 & 33     

The Way of the World 

This is an article with which I have total sympathy, knowing of a case that, fortunately, happened 25 years ago. And which was easily resolved with the help of a ('traditional'?) psychiatrist. God knows what would happen now.

Social Media

Back in 2013, Christmas Island had a ad directed at birdwatchers, with the line: Some gorgeous shots here of some juvenile boobies. Facebook's computer banned the ad and the company refused to reverse its decision, even after the background was explained to it. Arrogant or what? 

Finally . . . 

4Chan. International. I don't really know what it is but it keeps cropping up in my news feed, with lines that don’t tempt me to read more. Yesterday, I noted that the item was: Spain is just a poorer and browner France. Portugal is just a poorer and browner Spain. Which is more than a tad controversial. Unless they mean just the countryside, of course.

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

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'* 

Today is a Special but, first, I'll just mention that I did go to the blinds shop to ask why nothing had happened since my request, back in July, for a visit and estimate. There was no explanation or apology - which is par for the course - but only a (slightly embarrassed?) comment that she didn't have her July notebook any more and so couldn't check anything.

THE SPECIAL: THE PRESTIGE DISASTER

These are bits of my Newsletters to my family of late 2002 and early 2003. They reveal quite a lot about Spanish politics and culture. At least of 17 years ago. People will have different views on how much has changed since then. The Spanish government - also of the PP under Aznar - tried the same senseless, knee-jerk, diversionary/exculpatory tactics in 2004, prematurely blaming ETA for the Madrid bombings. That time, though, it cost them the imminent election. 

2002

November 

16

Speaking of storms and the damage therefrom . . . There is an oil tanker foundering off the coast of Galicia, threatening terrible destruction of wildlife. The Spanish government is blaming Britain but I am not clear why. Something to do with the fact that the ship was not properly repaired in Gibraltar. This seems strange as the ship was heading south, towards Gib, not away from it. It looks more to me like a play aimed at getting support in Brussels for Spanish control of Gibraltar since the locals can't be trusted. And I see this morning that the Spanish government is now including Lithuania, Greece and the Bahamas in its list of guilty countries. And they have arrested the captain of the tanker for lack of co-operation. Nothing if not comprehensive in their reaction. 

19

It's impossible today to talk of anything but the disaster off the coast that now looks like becoming a catastrophe. The talk this afternoon is of this becoming the world's worst ever ecological disaster and of the whole of the Galician coast being smothered in fuel oil, which turns out to be the worst kind of oil you can have coming towards you. 

Once can only hope that some of the fears and predictions are exaggerated but right now it is all profoundly depressing. Accusations and counter-accusations are being hurled around like confetti. The latest one is that the Portuguese navy caused the tanker to break up today when it tried to push it out to sea. Prior to this, we have had the Spanish government blaming the British government - because the tanker was due to call in at Gibraltar and then the Greek, Honduran and Lithuanian governments for being involved in keeping an old tanker on the water. Despite reading the papers for three days, I am not at all clear why its destination is even a factor but the implication seems to be that it regularly calls into Gibraltar and that it is never properly checked/repaired when it is there. Against this, today we hear that its regular port of call for this is in Greece.

Today's papers are saying - with some justification, I suspect - that the Spanish government reacted very slowly and didn't do enough when the ship was first damaged almost a week ago. And in one of the papers today I have read an interview with Spain's leading scientist in this field who said it was utter madness to tow a sinking ship out into the sea and southwards as the break-up was inevitable and the oil slick would now, not only be vastly greater than it needed to have been, but also would make its way inexorably to the entire Galician coast because of the prevailing winds and tides at this time of year. He said this, of course, before the tanker actually split in two today and one now fears that the rest of his terrible predictions could prove true, including the forecast that it will take 2 years before the coast returns to normal. Even the 'best case scenario' of not much more damage will be utterly devastating to the fishing and seafood industries in Galicia. So the worst case scenario is just too horrible to contemplate. It will mean the lifeblood being drained out of this entire coast for at least a year and possibly a great deal more. Tourists come here (mainly from within Spain) for the fabulous beaches and for the seafood. Even if the former are cleared up for next summer, it is hard to see how the latter can be secured. 

I guess the only thing which is certain is that prices will rise. It's an ill wind . . .

The only bit of silver on the horizon is that the ship could sink without its oil leaking out, even from the tank which is gashed. This theory runs that it is now in such deep, cold water that the oi1 will quickly solidify and go down with the ship. One can only hope and pray that this is the case. But a Dutch expert just interviewed on the news sounded anything but optimistic in this regard.

Meanwhile, politics being a dirty game (and the likely cost of compensation so high), I suppose it is not surprising that the Spanish government couldn't resist using last week's events to play the Gibraltar card - even to the extent of suggesting that the tanker was simply sailing back and forth across the oceans as part of a money-laundering operation masterminded by the criminals who, they frequently claim, run Gibraltar. I can't help feeling that they will come to regret this initial response, especially as Spaniards are instinctively suspicious of anything the government claims, seeing conspiracies everywhere. They are likely to conclude that this was a smokescreen intended to mask the government's own complicity in the initial dilatoriness and in the later disastrous decision to take the tanker out into the open sea. As for criminals and money-laundering, most Spanish can hardly be unaware that the headlines of every newspaper on every day of the week centre on allegations of corruption and dishonesty in the higher reaches of Spanish commercial and political life. 

Ironically, one of my colleagues in the ESS had drawn me a map last week of a stretch of coastline which he described as the finest along this beautiful coast and this turns out to be the very area which is already devastated by the incoming oil. I was planning a trip in spring.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that it doesn't turn out to be as bad as it currently looks like it will. 

To end on a note of black humour  . . .  A paper in Barcelona yesterday had a woman asking for Galician seafood. The shopkeeper asked her whether she wanted 'normal, super or diesel'. I don't think this has gone down awfully well here. 

Just in case you don't understand this, these are the 3 types of fuel available at all Spanish petrol stations. 

22

The news about the oil is mixed. The slick has now hit more than 200 miles of coast and fishing is banned for an even longer stretch. The ría (estuary) north of this one has been affected und there are still fears that the 'old' oil will drift south to here and then to Vigo Bay and beyond that to north Portugal. On the other hand, the severe storms of last night appear to have pushed the major slick northwards and there is now talk of it heading off into the Bay of'Biscay (and France!), provided that the wind doesn't change again.

The major unknown is what will happen to the oil that was in the tanks when the ship went down. The Spanish and Galician governments are insisting that it is frozen solid and that there is no risk. Others are not so sure. And I think everyone agrees that, even if there isn't a massive new slick, the oil in the tanker will leak out slowly over the years ahead, causing severe damage to the ecosystem 

Controversy continues to rage over a number of things but especially the decision to take the tanker out to sea mid increase the risk of it breaking up, whilst simultaneously ensuring a massive slick in its wake. There is clearly huge anger here in Galicia about what is seen as Madrid's criminal neglect at the start of the crisis and the pointless smoke-screening about the role or otherwise of Gibraltar.

Here is a translation of part of an editorial in today's copy of Galicia's biggest newspaper:- Galicia is once again suffering from the curse of improvisation, idleness, abandonment, incompetence and the absence of politicians who measure up to their public responsibilities. Attempts during the first 12 days to offer a low profile as the crisis developed and to move the conflict in the direction of the ever-effective scolding of London and Gibraltar have been inadequate in the face of a disaster of this magnitude. They have tried to limit the political damage and have lost the opportunity to adopt decisions co-ordinated with Brussels and with other Atlantic countries who advised of their willingness to respond to requests from the Spanish government.

Most astonishing, though, are the reports of chaotic (mis)management of the efforts to deal with the catastrophe. Incredibly, despite the fact that this is the third, I think, leak of oil along this coast in the last ten years or so, there was no contingency plan in place a fourth. They have, it seems, been making it up as they go along and find themselves hopelessly under-equipped and resourced for the task they face 

Seafood prices have inevitably begun to rise and some are predicting that the highly prized 'goose barnacles' which, in all honesty, look repulsive and taste of nothing but rubber and sea water - will rise from 50 pounds a kilo to over 200 pounds a kilo. 

From a very narrow British point of view, one of the oddest things about this crisis has been the attempts in Brussels to back up the apparently incorrect statements of the Spanish government that the tanker has been negligently checked in Gibraltar in the last year. In contrast, the truth appears to be that it has never docked in Gibraltar in the last five years but has twice docked in Spain, as well as in France and Greece. And it was repaired in China last year. The EU official who has been responsible for this highly emotionally charged red-herring is not only Spanish but also the sister of Minister of Justice and, they say, the heir apparent to the current President Aznar. If my memory serves me correctly, she was kicked upstairs to Brussels a few years ago after presiding, as Minister of Agriculture, over the biggest fraud in the history of the EU. This centred on tile (non)production of vast quantities of (heavily subsidised) jute in (non-existent) factories which 'belonged' to the wives of people in her own ministry. Perhaps not surprisingly - as well as being very lucky - she is also known as an Anglophobe. It certainly seems that she has done Anglo-Spanish relations a power of no good. But, compared with her past record, I don't suppose a few useful lies on a Hitlerian scale are much to worry about as she heads for the presidential election contest of 2004

It's a wicked world. 

25

The President of Galicia is now saying that he disappeared from here on the first weekend of the crisis to go to Madrid to have a 'long and serious' chat with the Minister for Fishing. This turns out to be his daughter, with whom he stayed on Saturday night. Then, on Sunday morning, he just 'fired off a few shots with his friends' before quickly departing for Galicia. He definitely didn't hang around to go hunting. Nonetheless, the opposition parties in the Galician parliament have initiated a censure motion for later this week. Doubtless he will survive it. For someone who is still in power (at 80) despite the fact that he was one of Franco's ministers in the 70s, this can only be a flea bite. 

Putting aside the question of what will happen to the 60,000 tonnes of oil in the sunken ship, the optimistic view is that the oil from the second slick will not now hit us here in the Rias Baixas [see colindavies.net for more information on this region]. But this depended on the wind continuing to blow from the south west. Today is beautifully clear and cold, which means only one thing the wind is now blowing from the north. So, we wait on the next twist in the saga. 

Meanwhile, fishing restrictions have been extended along the north coast of Galicia, as far as its border with Cantabria, and the French government is now on full alert. Keep praying. 

29

Even though the news around the tanker is no longer international news, it is, I’m afraid, all bad:- 

- the slick that occurred when the boat went down is 11,000 tonnes, not 6.000.

- the winds have now blown this huge slick to within 10 miles from the coat, having been over 100 miles away a day or so ago

- the several 'oil-sucking' boats have not been able to do much because of high seas.

- the slick is expected to hit the Galician coast over the weekend. Depending on the winds/tides. 

- it will either hit the stretch already devastated or worse - it will hit us in the Lower Estuaries. Frantic efforts are being made to harvest the seafood against this possibility 

- a French submarine says that more oil is leaking from the sunken tanker, which suggests that the oil has not solidified as it was hoped it would 

Everyone is powerless, of course, to do anything other than continue praying and waiting. 

December

4 

Well, all the worst fears are being realised. For more than two weeks, the national and local governments have done little but pray to God that he would send the approaching black plague back out to sea but their prayers have not been answered. 

The wind from the north has now blown the huge oil slick to the edge of the Rías Bajas (Lower Fjords) and fishing has been banned along the entire Galician coast, from Cantabria down to the river Miño, which separates Spain and Portugal. 

Frantic and desperate efforts are being made to stop the stinking, thick sludge reaching the mussel and oyster beds in the estuaries but it is a hopeless task. It is heartbreaking to see the TV pictures of the bespattered local fishermen trying to scoop oil out of the open sea with pots and pans. The richest fishing grounds in Europe are on the point of being completely devastated and no one can do anything about it. Whatever should have been done wasn't and now it is too late to do anything but weep. And to prepare to clean the beaches when the nightmare is finally over. 

God only knows when - and if - the local shellfish industry will recover. And what all this will mean for the tourist industry, the other mainstay of Galicia's economy. 

Needless to say, there is immense local anger at the destruction of the economy. And there is matching uncertainty and fear about the future. Many fishermen are talking of emigrating - the traditional Galician response to large scale disaster. It' a cruel cosmic joke that the preferred country for this Argentina - is currently trying to re-patriate to Spain large numbers of its Galician immigrants because of its own economic problems. 

The king and the geriatric local president put in their first appearance on the coast two days ago but the prime minister has yet to appear. And the rest of his government have - to say the least - kept a low profile since they initially tried to lay all the blame on the UK and Gibraltar and then took the fateful decision to have the leaking tanker not just towed out to sea but towards their neighbour, Portugal. It is hard to imagine how much more effectively they could have alienated both their own people and their closest political allies. And their incompetence has not been lost on those parts of the media which are not government owned and controlled. 

Of course, it's true that Nature is powerful and that these ecological disasters are rarely as bad as they are forecast or feared to be. At least not in the longer term. But, in the shorter term, it is impossible to feel anything other than foreboding. And growing anger. 

I am desperately trying to imagine what good this ill wind might bring Galicia. Perhaps it has brought its beautiful beaches and scenery to the attention of more potential tourists. Perhaps it will, perforce, widen the range of tapas dishes available in the local bars. Some consolation. And today the Dirty Grey Blanket of thick cloud is sitting on the town once again, though the forecast is for sun. So much for forecasts. Not a good day in Pontevedra. 

As I write this, the TV is showing pictures of violence being directed at one of the local mayors during a morning visit to the harbour. It's the first but not, I suspect, the last incident of this nature. 

9

We have had 3 days of respite. with the relatively gentle winds from the north bringing both sun and calm waters. This has allowed an 'army' of 10,000 young volunteers from all over Spain to work around the clock on the Galician beaches Likewise, an armada of small boats has been out to sea, trying to collect the oil by hand. The ‘black tide' has not yet penetrated the estuaries but it has covered the beaches of all the beautiful islands just off the coast. 

And now the wind has changed and is forecast to get much stronger by Wednesday. As if this wasn't bad enough, the Spanish government has finally confirmed what the Portuguese have been saying for days that there are three huge oil slicks not far off the coast These have come from the sunken tanker and give the lie to statements that the oil had hardened in the tanks and would cause no further problems. There is now talk of blowing up the ship and releasing all the fuel so that it can be vacuumed up in one go.

The Spanish government continues to sink into the mire it has created for itself. Apart from coming clean about the new oil slicks, it has confirmed that it did, in fact, have a contingency plan for just such a disaster but chose to ignore it. And it has admitted that the decision to tow the damaged tanker out to sea has had consequences far worse than those envisaged. 

In one of the main newspapers yesterday, the government was described as having the instincts of the Franco administration: First blame a foreign country (this time the UK/Gibraltar instead of Franco's traditional scapegoat Russia), then impose a media blackout, then deny all responsibility and, finally, characterise all criticisms as almost traitorous because "solidarity' is required in the national interest. In a nutshell: 'For one reason and another, we are above criticism'. 

I rather get the impression that they have not quite realised the point of either democracy or an official opposition. They would prefer the sort of cover-ups that routinely follow the reports of political and financial skulduggery here. All of which are assisted by wide-scale membership of Opus Dei. Or perhaps this is just a coincidence. 

Ludicrously, a common statement has been along the lines of  'No government in the world could have handled this better; no-one has the power to command Nature'. Not even, apparently, members of Opus Dei with a direct line to the Almighty.  

12

Well, Galicia may no longer feature in the British news media but I'm afraid things continue to get worse here. We are now awaiting the third 'black tide'. This is is expected to move past the natural barrier of the (besmirched) Atlantic Islands off the coast and to enter the Bays of Pontevedra and Vigo, where Europe's richest seafood beds are to be found. 

This is the nadir we have all been fearing for more than 2 weeks now. Of course, we were told back then that it just couldn't happen, the Spanish government having acquired powers denied to King Canute. 

The French submarine says that the oil has definitely not frozen and that the tanker is leaking 125 tonnes of oil a day, through I4 cracks in its hull. Some forecasts suggest that this will mean 3 years of regular black tides unless something drastic is done to prevent them. 

The affected coastline now stretches from Portugal to France and it can only get worse. 

The national and local Presidents have finally suggested that they might just have made some mistakes - ‘quickly corrected' - but the former still seems to think his most important task is slagging off the leader of the opposition for his failure to show 'solidarity'. An article in yesterday's Wall St. Journal is said to have reported on his apparent arrogance, indifference and incompetence in the face of Spain's worst ever ecological disaster and to have forecast that it will affect his party's chances in the next elections. People here are not so sure. There have been huge demonstrations in the major cities of Galicia in the last 24 hours, under the banner Nunca Mais' (Galician for 'Never Again’) and there are calls for resignations and votes of censure. But a cartoon in one of the national papers yesterday was probably close to the mark. It showed the President, Aznar, relaxing in a large chair, admitting that mistakes might have been made and assuring us that those responsible would be severely punished - they wouldn't be getting their Christmas hampers this year. 

There does seem to be widespread fatalism here, which may or may not be Galician rather than national. People in power in Spain seem to be able to avail themselves of a high degree of immunity when things go wrong. Or when they get caught with their hands in the till. Recent examples of the latter include the head of the National Police and the Directors of two large charity organisations, both female incidentally. Crime is an equal opportunities employer here, 1t seems. 

In circumstances where promotion and position do not depend on merit, it is unlikely that you are going to have the best brains at the top of any organisation. Perhaps this is why incompetence is thick on the ground when things go wrong. And why things go wrong in the first place. Which reminds me - I haven't volunteered to do any of the oil-picking so far, as friends keep telling me. there are far more volunteers than they can cope with. People are being sent home because there aren't enough masks, boots, gloves, etc. I suppose it could happen anywhere. 

14

More 'oil revelations· in the press the minister who gave the disastrous order for the tanker to be towed to sea didn't consult with the President or, indeed, with any external experts. He asked 5 people in his own department what they thought was best. If the Spanish hierarchy is, as I suspect, almost as bad as that of'Indonesia, my guess is that they told him that whatever he thought was was the wisest thing to do.

Intriguingly, the name of this minister is Cascos, which amongst other things - means 'hulls' in Spanish. He is at the centre of a row about tankers with single and double 'cascos'. Mind you. the name of the minister of the Environment is Matas, which means 'you are killing' in Spanish. A couple of God's little jokes, one assumes. 

Local TV and radio personnel have complained about the pressure they have been put wider to peddle the (less than totally honest) government line in the Galician media. This is owned and run by the national and local governments, of course. 

Polls reported on in today's papers reveal a very degree of national dissatisfaction with both the President (who has yet to set foot in Galicia) and the president of the local government, who is over 80 and, if you recall, was a minister in the last Franco government. In contrast, the king has come out of things well because he came here early on. Perhaps he had an emptier diary. 

Among several of the major questions to which people would like the answers is:  'Why did it take you nearly 3 weeks and the example of 10,000 civilian volunteers to get the army onto the beaches’’. I hope they aren't holding their breath for an answer. The Spanish government had little need for the modern vice of spin, for the simple reason that it tends not to answer questions it doesn't like. 

16

The oil news in brief is that it has not yet penetrated the estuaries. There is a huge, deep slick just beyond the natural barrier of the Atlantic islands which is l8 miles long by 6 miles wide. We continue to wait on the weather. 

The minister responsible for taking the fateful decision to have the boat towed out to sea has made his first visit to Galicia and pronounced that he is guilty of nothing worse than not having been a prophet. The President/Prime Minister made his first visit on Saturday, exactly a month to the day since things began. He chose not to visit the towns or beaches - for fear of violent demonstrations - but, instead, flew over them in a helicopter.

22 

The gentle weather has allowed the volunteers and soldiers - to continue with the tasks of cleaning the beaches and dragging globules of fuel oil out of the sea It is hard to describe Just how thick and viscous this stuff is. And how evil smelling, they tell me. Like very thick black custard. Or molten tar. One of the ESS members has been on one of the Atlantic Islands and she told us at dinner on Friday that many of the volunteers had had to go to hospital, having collapsed as a result of breathing the fumes. She herself had had a headache for 3 days. 

Right now, the huge slick is drifting north again. I just keeps on going. 1t will reach the UK and I guess it will feature in your media again. But I don't suppose this will happen. Meanwhile, the sunken tanker continues to leak more fuel from its 14 cracks, one of which is several meters wide. The government has contracted the French submarine to seal the cracks but God alone knows how long this will take. Meanwhile the geriatric local president has said that he sees no reason to fear that his party will lose out in the next elections since ‘We didn't after the mad cow crisis which hit Galicia two or three years ago'. Sadly, he's probably right in this rather backward part of Spain - especially in the mountains - they appear to prefer dictators to democrats. All rather feudal. 

27

The huge oil slick has been blown north over the last week and is now in the Bay of Biscay and heading for France. Naturally, no one here is, unduly concerned about that. I wonder what the French press say.

2003

January

3

Well, the oil has finally reached France and they are said to be very unhappy there. The objects of their anger probably include Spain - because of the decision to push the boat out of their waters and let it drift - but we don't read much about that in the Spanish press. Let's see what legal action the French take. Meanwhile, back here 1t seems that at the last moment the wind changed and we avoided the calamity of having the sludge right inside the river mouths themselves, where the oyster and mussel beds are. But, of course, the sunken tanker is still leaking large quantities of oil. So, who knows what is going to happen in the future. Beaches are still being cleaned and, even if no more oil arrives, it will take many months to get these clean. Especially the rocks. On the sand, it seems that the stuff is so viscous it can almost be rolled up Or at least picked up with a large shovel. Slow but effective work. Meanwhile, fishing for both fish and shellfish is banned along the entire coast and will remain so for some months.

9

The newspapers here continue to carry long reports on the progress of the oil. The main slick is now off the west coast of France, of course, but the sunken tanker continues to leak 80 tonnes a day, from numerous cracks. Only 6 to 8 of the latter have been sealed, by a French submarine.The bad weather has made it difficult for work to progress and they have now given up on the aspiration to seal all the leaks by the end of January. This week a large group of small whales have washed up on the beaches on Galicia but a connection with the oil leaks has been discounted. 

14

There is something of a scandal brewing around an organisation set up to collect funds for those wanting to give money for the oil clearance. I'm not sure whether the accusations are that the money has been routed into personal pockets or 'merely' diverted into the coffers of the left wing Galician 'nationalist' party.

17

The really big news is that the oil disaster has finally produced a political victim. I have been predicting for some time that someone would be sacrificed and it turns out to have been not the geriatric president of the Galician government but his first lieutenant and predicted successor. Mind you, the latter seems to have been asking for it. He has been notorious for several years on account of the fact that his 80 year old mother and brother control 8 or 9 companies which have been delivering services to the local government for several years. A blind eye has been turned to all this, mainly because there is a widespread attitude here that politicians are allowed/expected to use their power to enrich themselves. But of course, they couldn't restrain themselves and it was discovered this week that one of these companies had been selling all the masks and protective clothing used by the army and the volunteers. Normally, 1 suspect they would have got away with this but in the heightened atmosphere of the anger generated by tile catastrophe this proved just a bridge too far. 

The other local scandal has been the divergence of funds raised ostensibly for the victims of the slick into the coffers of the local nationalist party, BNG. They have answered that they never said it would go to anyone in particular and people just assumed it would go to the sufferers. So they look like getting away with this. 

18

To my surprise, a second politician has bitten the dust as a result of the oil catastrophe and there is talk of a 'political crisis'. Yet again, the president has survived - despite vicious criticism in the national press - and a second of his lieutenants has gone. Interestingly, both he and yesterday's casualty accompanied the said president on the ill-fated hunting trip he made on the first weekend of the saga. Perhaps he has sacrificed them to save himself, showing the sort of ruthlessness which must have served him well for the past 30 odd years. Hard to believe now that he won't retire before the next election. Not that there will be anybody to succeed him by the time he has finished knocking off his potential successors. 

February

7

The oil continues to leak from the sunken tanker, though in reducing quantities. Fishing is still banned along the coast here though it may become possible quite soon, after tests have been made of the fish and seafood. Meanwhile, the major slick continues to hit the coasts of north Spain and south west France. Here, they are optimistic that all the local beaches will be clear by the summer season of July and August. 

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

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

So . . . Ending Covid via herd immunity is a dangerous fallacy. Everyone on board with this?           

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

There's no shortage of pessimistic forecasts for Spain's economy. Here's one from The Corner and and there's a Times article below. 

So . . . . how to square this negativity with yesterday's paean of praise from Christian Bungard? Well, it's the gap I bang on between the macro and the micro. Since 2000 - and for various reasons, one of which is large scale corruption - companies and the rich have got more profitable/richer but the middle and lower classes have got poorer. And life has become very much more precarious - the favoured adjective - for the majority. Covid has exacerbated this. Hence the pessimism. And, truth to tell, god knows where Spain would be without continuing huge subventions from Brussels.

As for day to day life . . . As Mr Werner says, It is How It Is.  . . . .Dalor is the 3rd company I've tried to get to fix the large blind in my salón. The first was sent by my insurance company but refused to deal with me after I'd rejected a very expensive quote for an aluminium blind and asked them to quote me for a normal blind. The second, I visited the day after the lockdown ended in July. They said they'd come but it wouldn't be 'immediate'. They never came. So, after they'd put a flier in my buzón, I called Dalor. A chap came in August, measured up, and later called me with me a quote. I accepted this but he warned me - not to my huge surprise - that nothing would be done in August.  The work would be done in September, he assured me. But it wasn't. However, I haven't been too bothered about this because, as the mornings get colder, I need the sun to warm up the salón. But I just called him now, to be told that the office hadn't said anything to him about my acceptance of the quote given to him by phone. If you're wondering why on earth, after 19 years here, I'm surprised at this saga, I have to tell you this isn't remotely the case. But, just for fun, I'll re-visit today the company who told me in July that they'd come 'soon'. To see what ridiculous excuse they come up with for their non-appearance. And maybe to try again to get them to give me a quote.

Which reminds me . . . The plumber I asked 4 or 6 weeks ago to replace parts in 2 toilet cisterns in my house is in charge of the work in my neighbour’s garden. When he came yesterday for this, he said he could do the work now . . . I told him I'd given up on him weeks ago and got someone else to do it. He just smiled. 

Postscript; Even I find this hard to believe . . . Yesterday I made the workmen use planks under the caterpillar tracks of the JCB, to avoid my new lawn being churned up. I've just been out and seen that the didn't use them when they took it away last night! 

It's very hard to credit such stupidity and a lack of consideration for others. Or it would be if only . . . 

María's Fallback chronicle: Days 29, 30 and 31. 

The UK

Boris Johnson: A sympathetic portrait. See the second article below.

The EU/Brexit

Richard North today: President Macron may be using [the fishing] issue as a proxy for a wider set of objections, not least over the access of the City of London to EU capital markets. If Paris is intent on blocking any deal that is not struck on French terms then a benign outcome to this process will be impossible to achieve.  Plus ça change . . . The French are regarded by all European businessmen as the most difficult to deal with. Amour propre plus La Gloire . . 

The USA

Really worth a read. 

The Way of the World 

A Russian disinformation campaign designed to undermine and spread fear about the Oxford University coronavirus vaccine has been exposed by a Times investigation. Pictures, memes and video clips depicting the British-made vaccine as dangerous have been devised in Russia and middlemen are now seeking to “seed” the images on social media networks around the world.

Finally . . . 

Flashback to November 2002 . . . Speaking of storms and the damage therefrom - there is an oil tanker foundering off the coast of Galicia, threatening terrible destruction of wildlife. The Spanish government is blaming Britain but I am not clear why. Something to do with the fact that the ship was not properly repaired in Gibraltar. This seems strange as the ship was heading south, towards Gib, not away from it. It looks more to me like a play aimed at getting support in Brussels for Spanish control of Gibraltar since the locals can't be trusted. And I see this morning that the Spanish government is now including Lithuania, Greece and the Bahamas in its list of guilty countries. And they have arrested the captain of the tanker for lack of co-operation. Nothing if not comprehensive in their reaction. 

THE ARTICLES

1. Poor, divided Spain may be the sickest man in Europe  Isambard Wilkinson, Madrid. The Times

The worst recession since the civil war and a bitter power struggle over Covid-19 restrictions are undermining the response to the second wave

Spain marked National Day on Monday, but there has been precious little to celebrate in recent years:

Rafael Nadal’s 20th grand-slam victory in Paris at the weekend gave Spain cause for jubilation but there was little else to cheer about afterwards when King Felipe VI and the country’s leadership marked the country’s national day.

Spain has led Europe’s second wave of the coronavirus pandemic with an estimated 896,000 infections in total since the outbreak began. Some experts claim that the economy is in the worst recession since the start of the civil war in 1936. A bitter feud between the government and the opposition over imposing restrictions in Madrid has worsened political polarisation. Officials in Germany, which will stump up most of the massive European recovery funds, question the country’s stability.

As coronavirus is again surging across the continent, concerns are mounting that Spain may become the sickest man of Europe. Many are asking if its problems are too great to heal.

At a first glance the signs do not give grounds for optimism. Poisonous divisions between left and right are hampering efforts to fight the pandemic and rebuild the economy. The Catalan regional government is led by secessionists calling for independence. Allegations of corruption against the former king, Juan Carlos, have deepened a constitutional crisis.

“It’s a crucial, historic moment. What’s needed is political will to avoid confrontation and find what unites us,” Inés Arrimadas, the leader of Citizens, a centre-right party, told The Times. “I’m calling for a truce among all Spain’s political parties to stop fighting among ourselves and understand that the only enemy is the virus.”

The weeks-long clash over social restrictions in the Madrid region culminated on Friday when the Socialist-led government of Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, declared a state of emergency and imposed a partial lockdown on the capital and surrounding towns against the will of the local authority, controlled by the conservative Popular party (PP).

The government imposed a ban on people entering or leaving the city except for work or essential visits, arguing that it feared the outbreak might spread to adjacent regions. Madrid officials wanted to use lockdowns in only the most affected neighbourhoods. They argued that the authority’s measures had already proved effective. The rate of infection has dropped from 750 cases per 100,000 people over 14 days to 500 for every 100,000 people in the past two weeks. Pressure on the region’s intensive care units has eased. Yet critics argue that the number of infections has dropped because fewer people are being tested.

“It’s a political struggle,” said Pablo Simón, professor of politics at Carlos III University in Madrid. “The national government wants to blame Madrid for not improving the healthcare system and the regional government does not want to lock down Madrid as they want to blame Sánchez, saying it will endanger the economy.

“The result of this game of chicken is that nobody is taking care of the pandemic. They are being totally reckless and stubborn.”

The chaos dates from when Mr Sánchez hastily ordered the end of the strict national lockdown in June. The PP, Catalan and Basque nationalists had refused to support the renewal of the state of emergency under which the government could impose restrictions such as household lockdowns. The prime minister gave control of the health system back to the 17 regions and went on holiday.

Several of the regions, including Madrid, failed to strengthen healthcare services, particularly contact tracing. The government failed to call out the regions’ weak response or set rules for handling outbreaks, which started in July and resulted in Madrid becoming the epicentre of the second wave by last month.

The declaration of the state of emergency in Madrid, which will last for two weeks, has not ended the Punch and Judy show. Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the regional head, said this week that “the justice system, the Madrid region, the king and the law are standing in the way of Pedro Sánchez, who’s trying to change this country through the back door”.

The comments strike at the deeper problems in Spain. Mr Sánchez’s government, the first run by a coalition in its modern democratic history, had been in office for only 15 days when the country recorded its first coronavirus case in late January.

Spain has not had a stable government since 2015 and the new one, which was formed after an inconclusive election — the fourth in as many years — was sworn in with aid of Podemos, the first far-left party in power since 1936, and deals with Basque nationalist and Catalan separatist parties.

Mr Sánchez’s non-consensual presidential style, his plans to investigate the crimes of General Franco’s dictatorship and his reliance on separatists to pass votes have goaded the right wing. So too has criticism of the monarchy by Pablo Iglesias, the deputy prime minister and the pro-republican leader of Podemos. The prime minister today accused the PP of being “anti-system” for its role in the Madrid debacle and its refusal to agree to a judicial reform.

Ana Pastor, an MP and former PP health minister, said: “Confrontation comes not from us but from within the government, whose members attack the King and constitutional monarchy.

“Never in Spain have we seen such populism and a government with communists in it that is supported by separatists.”

After corruption scandals and a substantial economic slump from 2008-13, which led to social tension and years of austerity, the PP, the main opposition party, and the Socialists lost many voters to new parties such as the ultra-nationalist Vox, Citizens and Podemos. Since then the old consensus of the post-Franco years has been increasingly challenged.

The radicalised political tone is at present only softly echoed on the street. About 85 per cent of people recently polled agreed that squabbling among politicians had undermined efforts to curb the virus from spreading. Yet populist nationalism is again growing, with more Spanish flags hanging from balconies, as they did during the height of the Catalan crisis in 2017 when the region’s parliament illegally declared independence.

On Monday Vox staged a protest against Madrid’s partial lockdown and next week it will call for a vote of no confidence against “the totalitarian and criminal government”. The PP is divided over whether it should back the move because although it fears losing more votes and its position of “defender of the state” to its rightwing rival, it also realises that Vox’s antics mobilise leftwing voters.

The Socialists and Podemos thrive on the heightened tension. Another poll this week found that more than 40 per cent of Spaniards favour a republic after Juan Carlos fled to the United Arab Emirates in August to avoid causing further embarrassment to his son, Felipe. Some 34.9 per cent said they supported the royal family.

Analysts fear the present economic crisis may prompt further upheaval. The government forecasts that unemployment will rise in the eurozone’s fourth-biggest economy to 17.1 per cent. The IMF predicts that GDP will fall by 12.8 per cent this year, the hardest-hit among advanced economies, and its budget deficit will stand at 14.1 per cent, the worst figures since the outbreak of the civil war. The tourism sector, one of the country’s main industries, is expected to contract by as much as 25 per cent. Thousands of businesses have closed.

“If we have another social crisis this winter things are going to be even more complicated,” said Juan Moscoso, an economist and former Socialist MP. “For the first time we are decoupling from the EU in economic recovery. Now we see the union is recovering and Spain is lagging behind.”

Mr Simón said that the economy was particularly vulnerable to the pandemic because of its dependence on tourism and services. Yet the state has also been found wanting. “This situation is a stress test, not only for the leadership, but also for the political system, the bureaucratic and state system in Spain,” he said. “We are now seeing the effect of all the different reforms we have not done over the past 20 years.”

Spain has been promised €140 billion in EU recovery funds but German experts doubt its capacity to use them effectively. Friedrich Sell, professor of economics at Bundeswehr University Munich, wrote last week that the country was “politically too unstable” to justify the massive disbursement of funds. The government is negotiating with Brussels to secure the early release of the money.

Several other flashpoints are imminent. A fight has broken out over control of the judiciary; Podemos and its leader are under investigation over party finances; Catalonia is due to hold elections; and the government must pass a budget, a feat that has not been achieved since 2018. The second wave surges on in Navarra and Catalonia, where the number of people being hospitalised has increased by 40 per cent in the past week.

Yet not all are pessimistic. Jordi Canals, professor of strategic management and economics at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, said that any analysis of the economy needed a long-term perspective. He pointed out that the performance of the economy three months ago was not much worse than that of France or Italy. “Spain, like Italy and Germany, is very much export dependent so if the world economy slowly turns around by spring 2021, it will benefit,” he said.

Although Mr Sánchez will struggle to surmount the hurdle of passing a budget before the end of the year, most experts say he will succeed eventually. “The litmus test of the prime minister will be whether he has been able to build a consensus over how to resolve the economic and institutional crises we have by the end of 2021,” Mr Canals said.

Politicians parrot that because Spain is a “great country” it will overcome the crisis. Ms Arrimadas, the leader of Citizens, said that what the country needed was “big vision and statesmanship” . These qualities appear to be in short supply.

2.  Boris Johnson: The Gambler by Tom Bower — A sympathetic portrait

The prime minister’s flaws are treated kindly in a new biography exploring the impact of a miserable childhood

Boris Johnson is a perpetual paradox for admirers and opponents alike: a loner who cannot bear to be by himself; a man of genuine intellect who still prefers to wing it; a figure of ferocious ambition and great laziness; someone desperate to lead but unwilling to manage and mindless of consequences; the liberal Brexiter; the low-tax, big-state interventionist; and a man determined to be marked in posterity but reluctant to put in the hard yards to ensure that he is remembered kindly. 

The quest to find the last Russian doll inside the British prime minister has now been joined by the investigative journalist Tom Bower. The news that Bower, a noted literary hitman — previous targets have included Robert Maxwell, Richard Branson and Jeremy Corbyn — had turned his sights on Johnson will have left the prime minister’s enemies licking their lips. But those looking for a character assassination are going to be disappointed. 

This is more an emotional than political biography. While Johnson’s flaws are never ignored, they are invariably described with mitigation in this surprisingly sympathetic work. The generosity appears to spring from what Bower regards as the book’s big reveal, namely the prime minister’s miserable childhood in a broken home with a neglectful, solipsistic and adulterous father who assaulted Johnson’s mother. Stanley Johnson emerges as the true villain of this story, though few will fail to note that his son has inherited some (though mercifully not all) of his less loveable traits. 

The emotional neglect combined with academic brilliance and an obvious admiration for his father’s charisma and refusal to be bound down, has, Bower suggests, given us a little boy who never quite grew up — a damaged man kicking against all the restraints of life: rules, marital vows, honesty; a man whose need to be loved in the moment explains almost all his moral flaws. 

But while Johnson’s emotional turmoil may explain his many infidelities, it will not do in explaining his other deficiencies. While not an authorised biography, it patently has not been obstructed. The author has clearly benefited from substantial access to relatives, ex-partners and allies.

Tellingly, Bower refers to him throughout as “Boris” — a decision perhaps explained by the curiously opaque declaration at the end of the book that Johnson is “not a stranger in my home”. Apparently in the spirit of openness, the author explains that his wife Veronica Wadley, former editor of the London Evening Standard, has known Johnson for more than 30 years — though he describes their relationship as “one of colleagues not friends”. This seems an understatement: Wadley served for four years as a senior adviser to Johnson when he was London mayor and he this year elevated her to the House of Lords.

Political opponents are derided in a series of low swipes, which Bower rarely bothers to justify.

Johnson’s time at the Foreign Office, widely considered an embarrassment, is blamed less on the man than on officials led by the “unctuous” Simon McDonald, who failed to protect him. That some delighted in his mistakes, is unarguable, but this analysis goes beyond the benefit of the doubt. Johnson’s damaging misstatements on Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman detained by Tehran, are for Bower only a “supposed gaffe”.

Governmental failures that cannot be blamed on officials are often down to the weak ministers rather than the man who appointed them. Political opponents are derided in a series of low swipes, which Bower rarely bothers to justify. Amber Rudd is a “perfidious lightweight”. Brenda Hale, president of the Supreme Court, which ruled Johnson’s prorogation of parliament to be unlawful, is — horror — “a feminist campaigner”, and had “rarely concealed her contempt” for Johnson (though how this explains the other 10 judges in a unanimous 11-0 verdict is unclear).

The author looks to have absorbed the opinions of Johnson’s closest allies rather than simply reporting them. Foreign Office staff are dismissed for their “timidity, unimpressive intellect and limited education”. Education officials were “lazy and incompetent”. It is, it seems, everyone else’s job to make up for the PM’s unwillingness to dirty his hands with detail. 

Many criticisms of officialdom are at least arguable, but the combined effect of all the digs is to unbalance what would otherwise be seen as an attempt to present a fair portrayal. Perhaps the most unedifying moment is when Bower takes potshots at Sonia Purnell, Johnson’s previous and less forgiving biographer.

For all this, Bower does not ignore his subject’s political weaknesses, recounting how often Johnson arrives in a job he has sought with no plan for what he wishes to do and no instinct to find out how the structure works. Bower is merciless on Johnson’s failures to address the shortcomings of the Metropolitan Police and on his over-reliance on others. 

The section on the run-up to Brexit is also convincing. Opponents have been quick to accuse Johnson of opportunism in backing Leave but Bower argues persuasively that while it served his political ends, he also believed it. Yet the book also shows just how ideologically light Johnson travels. Whether this is pragmatism or roguishness rather depends on your starting point.

The book will change few minds. Brexit has led most people to a firm position on Johnson, but this is an attempt to offer a nuanced account — supportive but critical — of a man Bower calls an “intelligent patriot”. The voters, he concludes, “still wait to see if he is a leader”.

The overwhelming impression is of a man Bower likes and pities. The arc of this story is of a brilliant child trapped inside a prime minister, a victim of an atrocious father still searching for approval. But if Johnson does not soon become the leader that Bower clearly believes he can be, then Stanley’s victims will not be limited to his family.

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

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''

Note: A HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for one or two of today's items. 

Covid

The  UK: What's in a phrase? Anyone know of any substantial difference between a 'lockdown'(bad, apparently) and a 'circuit breaker'(good, apparently)?

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

Being very positive about Spain . . . See the article below.

Changing the tone . .  I am not a happy camper . . . Yesterday my neighbour asked me if some workmen could enter her garden through mine this morning, to replace some sewer pipes. Naturally, I agreed. What she didn't explain - perhaps because she didn't know - was that this would involve the destruction of part of our ivy hedge and the metal fence, the cutting of the bottom half of our shared bougainvillea and - to top it all - the passage over my recently replanted lawns of an effing 'mini' JCB!

To add insult to injury, they told me that, as my pipes feed into my neighbour's, I can’t use the bathroom today. So much for my shower! Inter alia.

My neighbour and I will be having words later in the day!

Fortunately, this won't affect/annoy me but - if you have property here and are non-resident - it might well annoy you . .  .The Tax Office (La Hacienda) will demand up to better than triple taxes from British citizens who own rental properties in Spain. It is already preparing to change the status of British citizens, whom it will treat as "non-EU" as of January 1, 2021. The measure implies large increases in the Non-Resident Income Tax (IRNR)’. A report in El Economista says ‘Spanish tax legislation establishes differences between EU citizens and those of the rest of the world, with a tax of 19% on net income for Europeans but 24% on gross income for foreigners’. Additionally 'foreigners' won’t be able to claim on repairs, community fees, mortgages, town hall taxes and so on in respect of rented properties. Brussels has said that it is against this discrimination and threatens to fine the Spanish Government. Which will achieve absolutely nothing, As with the appalling - and 'illegal' - sneakily introduced 2012 law on overseas assets. 

I might already have cited this advice from Mark Stücklin: British residents in Spain, don’t forget to apply for your TIE this year, just to be on the safe side. See  here.

I see from my 2000-2005 Diary that, back in 2001, I concluded it was a waste of time giving your phone number to shopkeepers who'd promised to call you when what you wanted was in stock. A friend recently commented this wasn't true any more. I beg to differ, at least in the majority of cases. The devil still takes the hindmost here. Both as regards retailers and folk such as blind-repairers, central heating engineers, chair-restorers and plumbers. At least in my life. And to mention only the current bunch.

English/Spanish

I was going to post 3  more refranes today but I've just had a chat with a (foreign) friend who's been here as long as me on the theme of people not calling you when they've promised to. He's just experiencing this with a car dealer and offered me the refrain: Por interés, te quiero, Andrés.  . . 

Finally . . .   

Flashback to my Diary of October 2002: I have just discovered in reading a book about old village accounts that 'ago' comes from 'agone'. I had always wondered. And that, say, 'John's book' comes from 'John his book'. Which is more or less how it's done in Gallego, but not Spanish. His book: O seu libro v. Su libro.

THE ARTICLE

Some interesting figures and facts for those who think Spain only survives thanks to the British tourists:  Christian Bungard

Don’t underestimate Spain

Let’s start with industry:-

- It's the 2nd largest car manufacturer in Europe, 6th globally, 1st in the production of industrial vehicles. 

- Acciona is 1st renewable energy company worldwide and Spain is the global leading country in renewable energy production. 3 of the 5 leading thermal-electrical companies are Spanish. You might like to see who are the main contractors of the wind parks in the North Sea and the English Channel. You’ll be surprised. 

- ACS, Abertis and Ferrovial are the largest infrastructure management companies worldwide! Yes, 4 British airports are managed by them, but also other airports all over the world, as well as ports, motorways and railway and subway systems. Just think of México City, Panama, Bogotá, Santiago or Lima as some examples. 

- It's also one the world main high speed train constructors.Not only the trains (with several manufacturers - CAF is world’s 6th largest) supplying underground networks like Riyadh , Washington DC, Santiago de Chile or Mexico City (amongst many others) but also the construction of the railway network (Saudi high-speed rail, Istanbul-Ankara or Seattle-Portland, for example). 

- It's the 7th producer of satellites in orbit. It’s also Europe’s main military transport aircraft manufacturer, as well as one of NATO’s main military vessels constructors. 

- It has some of the world’s main banks, like Santander, BBVA, Caixa or Sabadell, with subsidiaries in most Latin American countries, as well as USA and the UK. 

- It's a leading player in the biotechnology and health industry.

- It’s the third largest global manufacturer of industrial tooling equipment. 

- Regarding the dynamic fashion industry, it's home to Inditex, the world’s largest fashion producer and distributor, with production plants in 8 countries and over 5,500 stores in 82 countries.

- It's number 4 in the printing and editorial industry. 

- It's the world’s number one exporter of fruit and vegetables and amongst the top in pork, chicken and rabbit production. It’s Europe’s number one in game production -being the second European country with the largest number of natural parks and protected areas, this is a huge contributor to distant rural areas. 

- World’s largest fishing company is Spanish and Spain is amongst the top 4 in this industry. 

- It ranks three business schools amongst the world top 15. Number one for executive education is IESE. 

- It’s also a leader in sports business. Real Madrid and Barcelona FC are renowned brands worldwide. Also Nadal, Sergio García, and many others in less “obvious” sports. 

And finally, tourism:- Spain welcomed over 86 million visitors last year (2019). Have you any idea of the degree of the enormous infrastructure, labour, specialisation and coordination, also between different industries, administrations and regulators it takes to manage this volume of visitors in a safe, efficient and “normal” environment? Have you ever imagined what it takes? And we are not only talking about beers on the terrace by the sea. Some of Spain’s cities are amongst the most visited worldwide. Spain is the 2nd most visited country globally, the first for holiday tourism and the 3rd for business travellers (congresses, fairs and exhibitions). Spain has the 2nd largest number of World Heritage sites in the world, after Italy. It alsohas with the 2nd largest number of protected areas in Europe. 

Spain is also home to the Spanish language, spoken by over 500 million people worldwide. Guess how many thousands of students come to Spain every year from all over the world to learn the language. 

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

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

Europe is turning into a patchwork of rules and regulations as local, regional and national authorities grapple with the second wave of the pandemic. Bar closures and restrictions on social interactions are high on each country’s new rules but there are key differences in implementation. Everywhere, however, the political norms are being stretched. 

Amid the confusion, the EU has agreed a “traffic-light” coding system to act as an advisory guide for governments or people wanting to rate the risk of travelling across the continent. EU governments have agreed to provide information to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to produce a weekly map with countries coded, green, orange or red.

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

Twice in the last week I've  had the problem of people trying to find me in a computer being confused by my non-Spanish single surname and 2 forenames. I see from my 2000 diary, this has been going on a long time. As if I didn't know. Anyway, as I lay dozing this morning, my brain asked: Why don't they just use your effing ID number? They all have it in the machine? I had no answer to this. And still don’t, now that I’m fully awake.

I wonder if anyone here would be surprised  by these headlines in a local paper:-

I confess that I am surprised that many Galicians don't apply for the dependency benefits they're entitled to. Which the regional government puts down to 'the influence of attachment to the environment and family reluctance'. Which I don't understand either. 

The EU/Germany

In his 2011 book How Civilisations Die, David Goldman (`Spengler’) went so far as to predict that, on current trends, Germany - having reached the point of no return on the road to senility and depopulation - would gradually cease to function. And in the 22nd century would even 'cease to exist'. Some felt this is why Mrs Merkel invited in 1 million refugees a couple of years ago And maybe this is the first bit of evidence for the validity of Goldman's fears/predictions: The population of Germany has fallen for the first time in a decade, as a dip in net immigration compounded the effects of a long decline in the birth rate.

The USA

A morsel of good news: Florida’s tide of grey voters is turning against Trump.

From one of these: If you’re still voting for Trump in 2020, you’re one of 4 things: a racist, a bigot, a greedy son of a bitch — or just stupid. Can anyone gainsay this? 

The Way of the World 

Anyone who's asked for a glass of wine in a UK pub will be aware that: In Costa Coffee; medium is the smallest they do. As with T-shirts, we’re all medium, large or extra large. 'Small' is too downbeat for the marketing psychologists.

Oh so predictable. . .  Apple customers will have to pay extra for a charging adapter and headphones when buying the new iPhone, as the company will no longer provide them in the box

Finally . . .   

Interesting  comment: Syncopation has been defined as the slight, calculated violation of what would otherwise be a metronome’s mechanical beat. You can make an adult smile, or a toddler laugh with delight, with a syncopated beat. I believe there are pathways in the brain between rhythm and humour, rhythm and suspense, rhythm and surprise. Who can gainsay that?

And another one: Humour, whether satirical or surreal, depends on perceiving absurdity in people or situations.  the modern workplace is a hostile environment for humour. Po-faced office culture is killing our sense of humour.

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

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

From immunity to 'long' Covid: the key dates in the human body's battle against coronavirus: See the article below

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

I could swear that Storm Alex smashed into Spain a week or two ago. Indeed, I see there are several Youtube videos which confirm my recollection. And yet the Guardian talks only of France, Italy and the UK being hit by it. I mentioned years ago that there's an inequality of  media treatment between the UK and Spain. News re the UK features far more in the Spanish media that Spain does in the UK media. Perhaps it's because of Brexit these days.

I'm reading through my regular Newsletters to my family during my first four and a half years here - not to mention this. I have to admit that - among the many positive comments - there are also those which sound rather familiar to the negative comments of Dutchman Vincent Verner in his book It is not what it is.  I also have to confess that the question  keeps cropping top - Has much changed in almost 20 years?   

María's Fallback chronicle: Day 28    

The UK

The USA

Writing from Spain and seeing how well things turned out, it's very hard to believe that Attorney General Barr’s vision is an Americanized version of something akin to Franco’s Spain. Click here for the rationale for this statement. And much, much more. Fascinating but shocking.    

The Way of the World 

Well, I never . . . Seeking a partner just for the winter used to be called ‘cuffing’. But doing it as lockdown looms, it's dubbed ‘coving’ and  it has taken on a new urgency . . . 

English/Spanish

Three more less-common refranes:- 

- Married people need a home of their own: El casado casa quiere.

- Never give advice unasked: Consejo no pedido, consejo mal oido.

- Never spend  your money before you have it: A quien no le sobra pan, no crie can.

THE ARTICLE

From immunity to 'long' Covid: the key dates in the human body's battle against coronavirus: As Donald Trump returns to the campaign trail after infection, here's what we now know about how the virus travels through our bodies: Anne Gulland  

Donald Trump is returning to the campaign trail today having made a seemingly miraculous recovery from Covid-19. 

The US president said contracting the disease, which has killed more than 200,000 Americans, was a “blessing from God” and pledged the “miracle cure” he received would be available to all in the United States free of charge, while a tweet in which Mr Trump claimed to have developed immunity to the virus has been labelled misleading by Twitter.

But contradictory statements from his doctors last weekend, plus the administration of therapies usually reserved for much sicker patients, has left many wondering how ill the president actually was and at what point he was infected with the virus.

What is for certain is that in a man of Mr Trump’s age and weight - he is 74 and in the obese category - the coronavirus is a risky illness. So how does Covid affect the body at different stages of the disease and at what stage does recovery happen?

Covid-19 spreads between people through direct, indirect or close contact. As an infected person coughs, sneezes or speaks they release droplets - these are then transmitted to others through close contact or may land on a surface. A passer by may brush their hand on the surface, pick up a droplet and then touch their face, allowing the virus to enter the body through their mouth, nose or eyes.

At this point the virus begins to replicate in the upper airway and the carrier may be infectious but not displaying any symptoms - known as pre-symptomatic. It is thought that 40% of infections are asymptomatic - so you may have had the virus but not know about it. 

Viral load - how much virus you have in your body - starts to build and this is the time when “peak shedding” or the point when you are most infectious occurs. This is why self isolation is so important if you have come into contact with someone who has the disease to avoid passing the virus further.

This is when symptoms typically begin. Most people report a cough, loss of taste and smell, fever, fatigue and aches and pains. Other symptoms include stomach pains, confusion and laboured breathing. 

Researchers at King’s College, London who track coronavirus symptoms and infections via the Covid Symptom app, which has been downloaded by more than four million people, report that symptomatic individuals fall into six broad categories. And those with severe fatigue, confusion and respiratory or abdominal problems are most likely to develop a severe form of the disease and be hospitalised. 

However, 80% of those who develop symptoms are able to fight the virus on their own and do not need any treatment. 

Whilst not yet in widespread use it is at this point that monoclonal antibodies could be administered. These are the first treatments developed specifically for the virus and hailed by the US president as “key” to his recovery. 

These are laboratory-produced injectable antibodies specifically created to treat Covid and work by kickstarting the immune system or giving it a boost in patients who have already started producing their own antibodies.

Like our own naturally producing antibodies the synthetic ones attach to the spikes on the outer surface of the virus and stop it entering the body’s cells.

President Trump was treated with a cocktail of two antibodies produced by US-based company Regeneron which preliminary studies show to have been effective, particularly in patients who have not started to produce antibodies of their own against the disease. 

Some patients in the UK will also be given the Regeneron antibodies as part of the Recovery trial, which is investigating a range of potential treatments for Covid-19. 

The virus enters the lungs and is the point when patients with more severe forms of the disease are most likely to be hospitalised. 

White blood cells called chemokines will start to fight the virus and kill infected cells, leaving fluid and pus behind.

The patient will develop breathing problems and may need oxygen. At this point the administration of the antiviral Remdesivir could begin. This broad-spectrum antiviral, initially developed to treat Ebola, works by blocking a key enzyme the virus needs to replicate its genetic material and proliferate in our bodies. Remdesivir is expensive and also needs to be given intravenously so is not a quick fix. Studies have not shown it to be the game changer many hoped it would be and a paper in the British Medical Journal found that it "may have little or no effect on the length of the hospital stay".  

A cocktail of several different antivirals may be the best solution for Covid-19 - a mix of different antivirals are used to treat HIV and hepatitis C - but there is nothing else promising on the horizon.  This is a crunch point for coronavirus patients - some may start to recover at this point but others deteriorate and may develop acute respiratory distress syndrome where the lungs cannot provide the body’s lungs with enough oxygen - this triggers an immune response but in some cases the patient’s immune system can go into overdrive, setting off a cytokine storm.

Cytokines are small proteins released by many different cells in the body, including those of the immune system. But in some patients, excessive or uncontrolled levels of cytokines are released which then activate more immune cells, resulting in hyperinflammation. This can seriously harm or even kill the patient as it can lead to multi-organ failure.

At this point the patient is admitted to ICU - they will be given the steroid dexamethasone, which dampens the immune system and was shown by the Recovery trial to cut the risk of death in severely ill patients by a third.

President Trump was given dexamethasone early on in his illness which many experts believe is dangerous as it may stop the immune system work. 

Blood clotting is also a problem so anti-coagulants will be administered at this point, while patients may also be given broad-spectrum antibiotics to fight any secondary infections as well as fluids. 

A stay in ICU can last days or even weeks - in the UK,  2% of patients spend more than 28 days in intensive care.

However, death rates in ICUs have improved across the world as the pandemic has progressed. One reason for this is that doctors know a lot more about the disease and have learned new techniques. For example, patients on ventilators are “proned” or laid on their fronts as this aids lung recovery, a technique that was not widely practised, particularly in the UK, at the beginning of the pandemic.  

A study published in July showed that 60%of patients admitted to ICU died at the beginning of pandemic, compared to 42% at the end of May. That study was done before the widespread introduction of dexamethasone so death rates may improve further still. However, if ICUs are overwhelmed death rates may rise again. 

Recovery, immunity and ‘long Covid’ 

Anyone who ends up in intensive care will take time to recover - regardless of whether they have had Covid-19 or not. Patients admitted to ICU tend to be older so recovery will take a while. 

Because Covid can progress into a multi-organ disease long-term consequences can include scarring of the lungs and long-term decreased oxygen function, blood clots and heart problems.

But even people who only suffered a mild form of the disease report a range of ongoing symptoms such as fatigue, breathlessness, “brain fog” and loss of appetite weeks or even months after recovering from the more acute phase of the illness. 

So-called “long Covid” is not recognised as a syndrome and Professor Trish Greenhalgh, a researcher at the University of Oxford, estimates that just one% of people who recover will still be ill six months later. Further studies into this phenomenon are beginning and scientists are hoping to build a better picture. 

There are also outstanding questions about whether an individual is immune to Covid-19 after an infection. Mr Trump landed in hot water over the weekend for his unequivocal tweet, suggesting that his doctors have given him the all clear and “I can’t get it (immune), and can’t give it”.

While experts hope that a coronavirus infection confers some immunity, at least in the short term, it’s still not clear how long this lasts for. Antibody studies have shown that immunity wanes over time, while there have been a handful of confirmed cases of reinfection, including in Belgium and the Netherlands.

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

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 

That trust thing that I stressed yesterday . . . Spain's is  not the only government which is struggling to maintain or retrieve this:-

The UK:  . .  Although there have been improvements, the accumulation of blunders has cost the government trust, credibility and authority. And no government can create a consensus behind tough decisions unless it commands confidence that it knows what it is doing. As government credibility drains away, we are beginning to see a series of challenges mounted, the latest a legal challenge mounted by business leaders over lockdown restrictions which have so damaged the hospitality industry. . . Trust in government is a hard-won thing and, in only a few months, Johnson has squandered the massive reserves built up by his predecessors. And, in the longer run, trust might prove to be the biggest casualty of the epidemic, apart from those thousands who die untreated of non-Covid disease, because the NHS has been hijacked.

The USA: Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy. . . The magnitude of this failure is astonishing . . .  Covid-19 is an overwhelming challenge, and many factors contribute to its severity. But the one we can control is how we behave. And in the United States we have consistently behaved poorly. . . The response of our nation’s leaders has been consistently inadequate. . . Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government, causing damage that will certainly outlast them. . .   More here.          

Spain:  The Lancet has published a second article on what needs to be done in Spain.      

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

Inevitably . . . 

The UK

Johnson started to lose the public some time ago. Voter approval of his handling of the crisis turned negative in mid-May and has been on a downward path since. Trust in the government has been exhausted, not just by the many examples of ministerial ineptitude, but also by rule-breaking by public figures. That's been compounded by confused and contradictory communication.

The Way of the World 

The evolution of Airbnb from its original 'hippy dreams' over 10 years or so:-

- Anyone who uses the site will tell you how rare it is now to meet an actual resident owner. 

- There are entire blocks being run as de facto unregulated hotels from remote call centres, on behalf of well-disguised corporate owners.

The result . . . The collision between a sweet little idea and a capitalist economy has swallowed up a third of short-term rentals in London, Brighton and Bristol and is ruining the legitimate, safety-regulated hotel trade and pushing up prices in hotspots around the world.  . . . As we now see, tax authorities have brought an end to any pretence that this is some cool, friendly hobby-hippy game. It’s a financial transaction as cold and hard as any.

English/Spanish

Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas has given me 2 more Spanish refrains which include there name of a place:-    

- Albacete, caga y vete.

- Los perros de Adra; los que no muerden, ladran. 

Finally . .  . 

A bit of Iberian history . - . . In 1252 Alfonso (eventually El Sabio/The Wise) was crowned King of Castilla y León. His first monarchical act as was to invade Portugal, forcing King Afonso there to hand over his kingdom. Alfonso (being wise) then did a deal with Afonso, under which the latter would divorce his wife and marry Alfonso’s illegitimate daughter, Beatrice. Afonso had no option but to comply, meaning that Beatrice would be queen of Portugal and any children would both inherit the crown of Portugal and be allied to Castilla y León. I doubt that Alfonso is as popular in Portugal as he is in Spain and may well have another nickname there. Like 'Bastard, father of a bastard', for example.

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

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 

This excellent article from The Atlantic raises several interesting - not to say, vital - questions.   

And makes some interesting points . . . 

Spain?: If the bar has a person infected with COVID-19, and if it is also poorly ventilated and loud, causing people to speak loudly at close range, almost everyone in the room could potentially be infected.

South Korea: In Daegu, just one woman, generated more than 5,000 known cases in a megachurch cluster.

Generally: In study after study, we see that super-spreading clusters of COVID-19 almost overwhelmingly occur in poorly ventilated, indoor environments where many people congregate over time—weddings, churches, choirs, gyms, funerals, restaurants, and such—especially when there is loud talking or singing without masks. 

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

Talking of key questions . . .Here's El Pais - in English - on one of  the most important to be posed in the last 100 years. At least. 

It's well known that trust arrives on foot and departs on horseback. And is hard won, but easy lost. Writing about modern democracies, a columnist yesterday made the point that trust - as in Sweden -is key for conformity to rules. People need to trust, not that a government’s policy is necessarily right, but that the government does have a policy. I mention this now because I've long had the view that trust is a commodity in relatively short supply in Spain. Perhaps even less so at the  moment. It’s certainly lacking in respect of Johnson’t government in there UK.

I confess that, even after 19 years, I  still have to think about who are the Moriscos and who are the Mozarabs. Much the same happens these days with transgender folk. Was a transgender man/woman originally a man or woman? I'll get the hang of it one day.

María's Fallback chronicle: Days 26 and 27 

The USA

Something that came to mind this morning . . .Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

White Houses staff who are not in close contact with Trump require only a “surgical mask” and hand sanitiser. Any closer, though, and they are encouraged to avail themselves of personal protective equipment from “isolation carts” in the foyer area of the residence and the outer Oval Office. This equipment includes a “yellow gown”, “protective eyewear” and “gloves”, all of which can be disposed of at a sanitisation station.

The White House has reportedly hired a “wellbeing consultant” with whom staff can discuss their mental health concerns anonymously. With as many as 34 White House staff and related contacts infected by the virus, the consultant will doubtless be busy. 

Finally . .   

I  use a VPN to get UK TV programs. Ironically, it seems to stop me getting BBC Sounds. I wonder if anyone else has this experience.

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

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 

Here's the BBC on the latest (confusing) developments in Madrid. And here's their overview: Ahead of a long holiday weekend, with many people planning to leave the capital, it was unclear how that might be reinforced. However, the interior minister said some 7,000 security forces would be deployed around the city to ensure measures were respected. 

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

I'm not sure which country's system of government would be considered the best in the world. Perhaps the federal system of Germany, as it seems to have handled the Covid crisis better than any other. It certainly ain't the pseudo/partially de facto federal/devolved Spanish system. The country - witness the BBC article - seems to be in need of wholesale constitutional change. But is very unlikely to get it. Perhaps come the Revolution.

The wearing of masks seems to have affected the concentration of Spanish drivers. Twice this week one of them has crossed right in front of me as I was turning left on a roundabout. Perhaps my signal confused them. If you think that I'm joking when I say that, think again. 

I've  been reviewing my diary of my first years here in Spain - 2000-2005. I note that the first time I railed against the unreliability of Spanish dinner guests was in late 2001. And I'm still doing it. Though I learnt early on, when entertaining at home, to only cook dishes that could be frozen after no-shows.

And I long ago came to admire the Spanish (much practised) gift of spontaneity. Or, putting this another way, their hatred of planning. Luckily for them the sun is more reliable than they are. As have been EU subventions so far.

The USA

I was looking at the schedule I've produced over the last 3+ years of all the adjectives applied to Donald Trump, none of which seem out of place. Especially after his behaviour of the last week. But, in truth, what can be more accurate than the short phrase: Mad, bad and dangerous?

Timely . . .

English/Spanish

In his latest Business over Tapas bulletin, Lenox Napier pointed me towards this article - in Spanish - on refrains here which include the name of some place or other. One of these is something cited here only few days ago:- If you go away, you can't expect anyone to keep your place for you: El que se fue a Sevlla perdió su silla.

This is tje text on this - and a roughish translation.

QUIEN FUE A SEVILLA, PERDIÓ SU SILLA 

Se ha convertido en un clásico universal, y esto hace aún más sorprendente la terrible verdad que encierra: la frase es incorrecta, al menos, atendiendo a su origen histórico.

Tal y como cuenta el Centro Virtual Cervantes "durante el reinado de Enrique IV (1454-1474), rey de Castilla, se concedió el arzobispado de Santiago de Compostela a un sobrino del arzobispo de Sevilla, Alonso de Fonseca. Dado que la ciudad de Santiago estaba un poco revuelta, el sobrino pidió a su tío que ocupara él el arzobispado de Santiago para apaciguarlo, mientras él se quedaba en el arzobispado del tío, en Sevilla. 

Y así fue hasta que Alonso de Fonseca, una vez pacificada Santiago de Compostela, quiso volver a Sevilla. 

Como su sobrino se negaba a abandonar Sevilla, hubo que recurrir a un mandamiento papal, a la intervención del rey castellano y al ahorcamiento de algunos de sus partidarios".

De esta forma, de la frase original 'quien se fue de Sevilla, perdió su silla', se fue derivando a la frase que conocemos hoy día.

WHOEVER WENT TO SEVILLE, LOST THEIR CHAIR

It has become a universal classic, and this makes the terrible truth it holds even more surprising: the phrase is incorrect, at least, considering its historical origin.

According to he Cervantes Virtual Centre: "During the reign of Enrique IV (1454-1474), King of Castile, granted the archbishopric of Santiago de Compostela to a nephew of the Archbishop of Sevilla, Alonso de Fonseca. 

Since the city of Santiago was a bit upset about this, the nephew asked his uncle to occupy the archbishopric of Santiago to appease the citizens, while he stayed in the archbishopric of his uncle, in Sevilla. 

And this took place and continued until Santiago de Compostela was placated and Alonso de Fonseca wanted to return to Sevilla. 

As his nephew now refused to leave Sevilla, it was necessary to resort to a papal commandment, the intervention of the Castilian king and the hanging of some of the nephew’s supporters”.

In this way, the phrase we know today was derived from the original phrase: 'Whoever left Sevilla, lost his chair'. 

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

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'* 

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

An alleged good trend.

And excellent news. A real Spanish plan. Quite rare creatures. Of course, there’s always many a slip twist cup and lip. Thanks mainly to the infamous tribal politics.

More traditional news. . . Corruption . . .  A big local scandal. A major fish firm driven into bankruptcy by Board fraud. Here's the Guardian on one aspect. The main developmesnt is that several directors were jailed this week. 

Some sound advice for resident Brits. But I believe the fee is only 12 euros, though the online form is certainly confusing on this.

For last night, I’d re-arranged the dinner with Spanish friends postponed 2 weeks ago because of so many last-minute no-shows. This time it was for 8, which, during the afternoon, was progressively reduced to 5 and then 4. Each of the 3 friends remaining gave me different ETAs between 8 and 8.45. And each of them arrived at least 20 minutes 'late'. When I remonstrated with them, each claimed I'd misunderstood what they'd said. The truth is I'd understood their words but not their (subconscious?) thoughts/assumptions. It's the last time I'll try to herd cats. Especially the Spanish breed.

María's Fallback chronicle: Day 25    

The USA

An 'attack ad' on Fart. From Republicans! The latest in their fabulous series.  

This should go down well with his base. Which is well versed in sophistry, of course. 

The Way of the World 

HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for advice that this is available now. Though you might need to use a VPN.

Spanish/Gallego 

A challenge: Amenacer. Amenazar. Amenizar  To dawn, liven up, threaten. But not necessarily in that order . . . The C in the first one is pronounced like the Z in the second two. What a difference a little vowel sound makes . . 

English/Spanish

Three more less-common refranes:- 

- If you think the worst, you won't be far wrong: Piensa mal y acertarás.

- If you want to watch, you'd better keep quiet: Los mirones son de piedra[?]

- if you want good advice, consult an old man: Quien quiere saber, que compre un viejo[!]

Finally . .  

My OCR exercise yesterday ended with the last page of my diary for 2001 being so indistinct it took me over an hour to correct the mare's nest produced by scanning and downloading an RTF version for conversion to Word. Along the way, the word Spam was added to Span, as a machine reading of Spain.

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

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.  

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.  
- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'* 

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

Spain has a second pandemic, even worse than the Covid variety, says a ‘writer' here. Taster: Spanish politics is as destructive as the coronavirus. There will one day be a vaccine against the latter, but there seems to be no remedy for the former If we don’t do something, these people will be the ruin of us all.

I'm very confused about doctors and nurses in Spain. A couple of weeks ago, I cited an article saying there were several/many thousands of these unemployed here, whereas both this article and this one talk of a great shortage. Can both claims be true? Is there some healthcare 'structural' problem which allows this to be so?  

There have been 33 orca attacks around the Spanish coast since mid year, 22 in Galician waters. A group of scientists investigating this has said said that their unprecedented behaviour may be a form of revenge from the whales after being injured by humans. Three juvenile orcas from the same pod are responsible for the ramming attacks and these all show signs of being injured by boats. Maybe orcas would make a better fist of managing Spain than her politicians.

Hallelujah! Spain is finally planning change in Social Security contributions for freelancers (autónomos). The self-employed could soon pay according to their real income, rather than a fixed monthly amount regardless of how much they make.  More here. 

The drug smuggling Wiki article yesterday mentioned that it all started Following the crippling of the fishing industry. What isn't mentioned is that, as with the UK, it was the EU who done it. En passant, here's something from Madrid-based Giles Trmelett on our drug scene. It was written a few years ago but I doubt things are anything better now. 

María's Fallback chronicle: Days 22 and 23  

The USA

They have a Donald Trump puppet, a Joe Biden puppet, even a Michelle Obama puppet. What the Spitting Image team don’t have, at least for now, is an American broadcaster brave enough to show them. The revival of Britain’s satirical series is not being screened in the US after the television network NBC backed out at the last moment for fear of offending powerful people. A democracy?

America Is Having a Moral Convulsion: Now, as we enter the final month of the election, this period of convulsion careens toward its climax. See this fascinating essay here.   

The Way of the World 

A pioneer 'contemporary philosopher and feminist theoretician - Rosi Braidotti - says we need more diversity of categories - thousands of sexes and genders. Does anyone have any idea of where this will end? Will we all be issued with sex and gender cards at birth which we can change at will during our lifetimes? Sorry, can't resist . . . Dotti by name, dotty by nature???

A nice thought below . . .

Finally . . . 

Anyone got any idea why this face was felt appropriate for this ad . . .?

THE ARTICLE  

Long live Rupert and Tom: Carol Midgley

I can’t decide who I love more this week, Tom Hollander or Rupert Everett. Hollander, who said in a Sunday Times article that on a slack afternoon if it’s sunny he might go for a bike ride or if it’s raining “I might masturbate”. Or Everett, who admitted in The Times Magazine that in a Florida sex shop he was once asked by a fan for an autograph and bellowed: “CAN’T YOU SEE I’M BUYING PORN?” He then felt bad for shouting and offered to sign it, which was somewhat awkward when he was holding his new purchase, Take It Like a Man: All Nine Inches.

God keep and preserve these celebrities because they are almost extinct. For most of today’s bland-as-blancmange, insipid tribe of Insta-drones the idea of giving an edgy, real interview that might actually entertain people is worse than death. They want PRs to sit in, fending off questions and ensuring the conversation stays “on track” (translation: kill-me-now dull) or “on brand” (translation: plugging a face cream).

You know the types. They say things like “I’m blessed” and bore on loftily about “self-care” while plugging freebies. A journalist friend once interviewed a well-known model and said that the PR declared beforehand that she would not discuss her famous ex or her love life. “What will she talk about?” my friend inquired. “Her love of airbrush make-up,” came the reply.

So thank God we still have the likes of Hollander, who is prepared, self-deprecatingly, to admit to a leisurely “flute solo” and Everett, who is happy to let us know he buys mucky mags featuring well-hung gentlemen. And all without their agents screaming in horror: “No! That might put you out of the running for a floor cleaner ad!” Long may their libidos live.  

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

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

Oh, dear. Bad news for those of us in wetter climes: According to the WHO, rain can limit the effectiveness of protective masks and these must be replaced if they become damp. In France, where it's compulsory to wear masks outdoors in many cities, local guidelines encourage users to carry a second mask because of the risk.

The UK: The extraordinary failure to report — and then trace the contacts of — almost 16,000 cases is only the latest “glitch” from a government that seems increasingly shambolic.

Brazil: The bad news is that, along with several other Latin and South American countries, Brazil has rocketed up the deaths per million table to pass even the US total. The good news, as suggested here, is that one of its cities might have achieved herd immunity. 

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

More on the attempts to compensate for the Franco years. 

A nice note on proposed motoring madness from Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas. It has to be said that aged Spanish drivers have a penchant for going the wrong way down a motorway. Once in  wheel chair on the way to a brothel. I kid you not.  

I'm not sure what the law is here re e-scooters on pavements. Judging from the fact that riders weave in and out of pedestrians in 'humanised' areas of Pontevedra city, I guess they're either legal or, as with ordinary bikes, transgressors are ignored by the police. In the UK, though, they have a speed limit of 25kph and they're confined to private land, low-speed roads and bike lanes. And now a US company is promising technology which will switch off the motors within a second of bikes leaving these. I wonder if it'll ever reach Spain.

Cocaine News: The Wiki article below is about one of our 'star' narcos. In fact, I think he might have been the mayor of O Grove during one of his prison spells. But maybe this was someone else. We have a lot of narcos around here, what with an alleged 33 drug clans  in the region. I think the series Fariña/Cocaine Coast was based on his activities. And you thought we were famous for our Albariño wine . . .

Canine News: Jerez de la Frontera has bestowed an honour on a breed of terrier partly of British origin which keeps sherry cellars free of rats. The breed - el ratonero bodeguero andaluz - has been declared a part of Spain’s cultural heritage. It's described as a short-haired medium-sized terrier, bright and excitable and great companions for children.  And looks like this:-

María's Fallback chronicle: Days 20 and 21. 

English/Spanish

Three more less-common refranes:- 

- If you go away, you can't expect anyone to keep your place for you: El que se fue a Sevlla perdió su silla.

- If you live like that, you're bound to come to a bad end: Quien mal anda, mal acaba.

- If you talk too much, you're likely to give yourself away: La perdiz por el pico se pierde.

Finally . . . 

As it happens, I went to Manaus once. Or to the airport at least, for an unscheduled wait for another plane. During which all our bags were broken into. So . . . Not my favourite place on the planet.    

THE ARTICLE   

José Ramón Prado Bugallo - better known as Sito Miñanco - a Spanish smuggler and drug trafficker.

He was born in a family of sailors of humble origin, who was known in Cambados as “Os Miñanco". In the early 1980s he began smuggling tobacco through one of the three strongest organizations of the time, the ROS. In 1983 he was arrested for a blond tobacco operation, spent six months in La Parda prison and then was transferred to the Carabanchel prison (Madrid), where he was detained for two more months. He established contacts with members of the Medellín Cartel, such as Jorge Luis Ochoa.

Upon leaving prison, Sito Miñanco was introduced to the world of drug trafficking, and although he continued to use tobacco as a social cover, he began trafficking other drugs such as cocaine, through a network that operated from Panama, where he also met to his wife, Odalys Rivera. 

In 1986 he bought the football team of his city, Mocedá Cambados.

He was arrested in Pozuelo de Alarcón in 1994, for introducing 2.5 tons of cocaine into Spain in 1990, and the National High Court sentenced him to 20 years in prison for drug trafficking, tax evasion and forgery of documents. At that time, Miñanco began a lawsuit against the wiretaps authorized by instructor Baltasar Garzón, considering that they violated his intimacy. The trial ended in 2003, when the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights forced the Spanish State to compensate the drug trafficker with 7,000 euros, although it did not have criminal effects.

Miñanco was released on parole after serving 7 of his 20 years in prison, but was arrested again in his villa in Villaviciosa de Odón (Madrid), when he supervised the operation of trespassing 5 tons of cocaine in international waters, near French Guiana. In June 2004, the National High Court sentenced him to 16 years and 10 months in prison and a fine of 390 million euros, as the alleged leader of an international drug trafficking organization.

In 2010, he was sent to Huelva prison. At that time, the Tax Agency dismantled a corporate plot that managed businesses and shops in Vilagarcía de Arousa, through which Miñanco would launder money from drug trafficking.

In May 2011 he was transferred to the Algeciras prison. On June 10, 2011, he was granted a three-day prison leave, which in principle was sheltered on the basis of the high risk of escape, and in view of the fact that from prison he continued his actividaes delictives, finally granting this permission by the National Court in consideration of the favorable report issued by the prison d'Huelva, in which he had previously been imprisoned. He also did not intervene in his telephone conversations, except for his condition as a FIES prisoner (Ficheru d'Internos d'Especial Siguimientu). The director of the Onubense prison, Francisco Sanz, was dismissed from his post on the 21st of the same year for "loss of focus". According to Penitentiary Institutions, Sanz would receive gifts, as in the case of two Mercedes-Benz vehicles, from drug traffickers, for better prison conditions.

In February 2018, he was arrested in Algeciras, a city where he lived in the third degree of penitentiary, and sent to prison on charges of being the main perpetrator of a plot that distributed cocaine to Italy, Albania and the Netherlands. At his feet, another 20 people who were allegedly part of the organization were sent to prison. While the National Police agents found a plasticized dossier with the script of the television series Fariña, d'Antena 3, during the recording, before the broadcast. Later, Miñanco was discovered trying to enter 6,000 euros in prison to "make clear his status" among the rest of the prisoners. 

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

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 WHO has admitted it doesn’t know why Spain has Europe’s highest incidence of Covid-19.  I wish I could help them out but I’ve no idea either . . . 

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia

Spain is paying a hefty price, says Bloomberg here, for its broken political system, and is rapidly becoming the euro’s problem child. 

Hmm. Madrid authorities warn that the government’s coronavirus restrictions will cause ‘chaos’. My daughter returns there on Wednesday, hoping that her son's nursery will remain open - the only factor in favour of going back to Madrid right now.

Last Thursday, I learn, was International Coffee Day. Por si acaso, here's some of the many variations of the basic drink you can get here in Spain. A bit of advice - avoid the torrefacto stuff, for reasons given here. Incidentally, my daughter is lucky enough to live a few doors away from Toma. 

On the Lerez side of the O Burgo bridge, they've decided to ape the mayor of Pontevedra and change the one-way direction of the main thoroughfaret. Which is confusing, and more than a tad irritating, as it lengthens my journey home from the Mercadona supermarket there.

I noted this vehicle in a public car park yesterday and naturally wondered who'd taken all the wheels, the owner or a gang of thieves:-

María's Fallback chronicle: Days 20 and 21. 

The USA

Anyone surprised that: Donald Trump's drive-by during treatment was 'insanity', says a health expert?

English/Spanish

Three more less-common refranes:-

- Hunger is good kitchen/Hunger is the best sauce/Hunger never saw bad bread: A buena hambre no hace falta condimento/A pan de quince días, hambre de tres semanas.

- I don't care what people say as long as I get what I want: Dame pan y dime tonto.

- If you don't have what it takes, you won't get on in the world: El que nace para medio nunca llega a real.

Finally . . . 

Someone invented the foot-operated toilet door a couple of years ago. Needless to say, at the time of a very infectious virus, it's come into its own. Not that I've actually seen one yet. . .     

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

Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain: 4 October 2020

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

Italy: I don't know the details but it's said to be the only country now where 'the dial is shifting'. Which seems to mean: There, even without symptoms, it’s easy to get a test, local tracing works, while public health messaging is clear and consistent. Brits - and very possibly Spaniards - can only look on in astonishment at a government which knows what it's doing. And is successful at doing it. As in Sweden, it seems.

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia   

A Madrid-centric overview from the Times: Spain had Europe’s strictest lockdown rules in the spring and the government is starting to impose restrictions almost as severe on Madrid again now. Covid infection rates are by far the worst in Europe and in Madrid they are by far the worst in Spain. Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the right-wing president of greater Madrid’s regional government, has been at war with the socialist central government and in a bitter personal feud with the health minister, Salvador Illa. Ayuso is almost a lone voice in Spain in pressing for priority to be given not to fighting the pandemic but to the defence of the crumbling economy. After 2 weeks battling to prevent them from being implemented, she was forced on Thursday to bend before the law of the land but then vowed angrily to take her case to the courts “to defend the legitimate interests of the Madrileños”. Interesting - and confusing - times. My daughter is planning to return to Madrid on Wednesday but wonders what awaits her and her toddler.

Ourense - up in the Galician hills - has become the first city in Spain to ban meetings of ‘non-cohabitants', though it seem those in the education, transport, and dependent care fields are excepted.

Next year is Un Anó Jacobeo/Ano Xacobeo, when the feast of St James (Santiago) falls on a Sunday and all sorts of holiday/commercial activities are indulged in. Pre-Covid, camino numbers were expected to be well up on the previous record, and in their hundreds of thousands. Which won't now happen. So, naturally enough, the President of the Galician government has asked the king to help him get the special year moved to 2022. Which doesn't seem quite right to me. Is it a Holy Year or a Money-to-be-Made Year? I think we know the answer to that . . .

María's Falling Back chronicle Day 19.   

The EU

See the article below on its possible economic future.

Nutters Corner

In contrast to intelligence, there really is no limit to stupidity: Advocates of the popular QAnon conspiracy theory, who believe that Donald Trump is waging a heroic war to defeat a secret ring of Satanic pedophiles who control the world, claimed to have decoded Mr Trump’s tweet announcing his infection and concluded it was part of a brilliant plot “TO GET HER” – that is, to arrest Ms Clinton.

The USA

I've heard it all now . .  If you wanna know the truth . . From the mouth of Donald Trump.

Someone other than Trump: If the events of the past week don’t make Americans wake up, what will? 

Pseudo Trump.

English

Thanks to an article on a book called Word Perfect: Etymological Entertainment for Every Day of the Year, I’ve become aware not only of lost words such as mumpsimus(someone who insists they're right despite clear evidence to the contrary) and ultracrepidarian (someone who holds forth on subjects they know absolutely nothing about) but also that these were the positive antonyms of what are called 'orphaned negatives' - those in the brackets - for all these words:-

pecunious (impecunious), 

toward (untoward)

ruth: (ruthless) Ruth was to be full of compassion, obliging and hopeful.

wieldy: (unwieldy) Wieldy was to be handy with a weapon. 

mayed (dismayed)

ept (inept)

flappable(unflappable)

peccable (impeccable)

bridled (unbridled)

descript (nondescript)

promptu, (impromptu)

petuous (impetuous)

shevelled (dishevelled)

chalant (nonchalant)

nomer  (misnomer)

plussed (nonplussed)

couth (uncouth). To be “couth”, back in the 4th century, was to be affable and agreeable 

kempt (unkempt) Kempt is from the German for “combed”, and is a useful byword for being neat and tidy.

gormful (gormless). ‘To gaum’, for the Vikings, was to take heed; to be gaum-like was to have an intelligent look about you. 

gruntled (disgruntled)

ruly (unruly).  

Finally . . . 

Can it really be true - as said to be rumoured - that Queen Letizia's 2004 wedding dress by designer Manuel Pertegaz cost around $8 million???

THE ARTICLE  

Deepening deflation pushes southern Europe closer to a debt spiral: Eurozone slides further into a debt-deflation trap, risking a protracted economic depression in the south and slow-motion insolvency crisis:  Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The eurozone is sliding further into a debt-deflation trap, risking a protracted economic depression in the southern countries and a slow-motion insolvency crisis. 

Headline HICP inflation dropped to minus 0.3pc in September, reaching minus 2.3pc in Greece, minus 1.1pc in Ireland, minus 0.9pc in Italy and minus 0.6pc in Spain. The core rate fell to an all-time low of 0.2pc.

“The European Central Bank has completely lost control of the inflation process. It is very serious,” said Professor Ashoka Mody, the International Monetary Fund’s former deputy director in Europe.  

The downward lurch comes as a second wave of Covid-19 threatens to truncate the fragile recovery before it has reached "escape velocity". Madrid is back in quarantine. Paris is on “maximum alert” after the ratio of coronavirus patients in intensive care reached the danger threshold of 30pc.

The North-South divergence is toxic for the eurozone’s one-size-fits-all monetary regime. By twist of fate, those countries with the highest debt ratios have suffered the greater economic shock from Covi-d-19, pushing debt dynamics towards the point of no return. “Our concern is that Italy and Spain will be left behind,” said David Owen from Jefferies.

Large areas of the eurozone are at risk of debt deflation, a term used by Irving Fisher in the 1930s for when falling price levels cause real debt burdens to deteriorate in a vicious circle. It is extremely hard to break out of such a self-feeding process. It ends in mass default. 

The OECD’s worst case scenario sketches debt-to-GDP ratios next year reaching 229pc in Greece, 192pc in Italy, 158pc in Portugal, 152pc in France, and 150pc in Spain. “Unfortunately, this is becoming plausible,” said Owen. “We’re seeing a storm building up that may come to a head over the next six months,” said Mody. “Debts have to be repaid and a lot of new debt has been guaranteed by governments that can’t pay.” “The ECB has already bought 25pc of Italy’s debt and they will have bought half by next year. They will own Italy and they will own Spain. There may be no technical limit but the ECB is not a normal central bank: it is a bank for a confederation of states, so there is a political limit.”

Mody said lenders have been pushed into buying government bonds and are now enmeshed in an even more dangerous doom loop than in 2012. “They are highly stressed. Their value-to-book ratio - the best gauge - tells you the market thinks debts on their books are worth just 20 or 30 cents on the dollar. The ECB is trapped into having to buy up everything to stop the banks blowing up. How is this story going to end?”

Bank of America said the eurozone will soon be flirting with core inflation rates of zero. “There is no reflation. Markets seemed to be waking up to a weak recovery. A reality check is probably in the pipeline for year-end,” it said, predicting that the ECB will be forced to double down on stimulus in December. 

Robert Sierra from Fitch Ratings says the pandemic has left a “negative output gap” roughly four times the shock from the Lehman crisis, leading to permanent scarring in the labour markets and holding down prices whatever the ECB does. “We expect headline inflation to fall to -0.6 by the end of this year,” he said.

The ECB has played down the slide in inflation as a temporary distortion from falling commodity prices at the outset of the pandemic but its narrative is rapidly being overtaken by events. Copper and iron ore prices have been slipping for weeks. Brent crude has fallen 15pc since late August and is back below $40.  

Christine Lagarde, the ECB’s president, told the ECB Watchers forum this week that the central bank would follow the US Federal Reserve and allow inflation to overshoot the 2pc target, effectively letting the economy run hot for a while. Such rhetoric is academic at this juncture since the ECB has no means of achieving it. The key policy rate is already minus 0.5pc. 

Mrs Lagarde insisted that it could go as low as minus 2pc before hitting the "reversal rate" where it does more harm than good. Her claim has raised eyebrows since the Bank of Japan’s foray in negative rates is widely viewed as a failure, and deeply negative rates would in any case be viewed by Washington as an attempt to drive down the euro. 

A further €500bn of pandemic bond purchases in 2021 is now almost certain. This may lift asset prices and keep indebted corporations afloat but such QE no longer has traction on the real economy.

Markets have invested much faith in fiscal stimulus from the EU’s €750bn recovery fund. However, leaked plans from the Italian Treasury show how disappointing this is likely to prove once the money is spread across 27 countries and stretched to 2026.

Italy is the biggest recipient, yet net grants will be just €10bn in 2021 and €15bn the following year. It will eschew loans from the fund because they come with troika-like conditions. Portugal has rejected loans as well. 

Nor is it clear when the Recovery Fund will see the light of day since Poland and Hungary have threatened to block approval over a "good behaviour" clause, and Finland and The Netherlands may be heading for referenda. 

In the meantime, rating agencies warn that there could be a wave of defaults when furlough schemes and debt holidays expire. Most cliff-edges hit in December. Banks are already tightening credit terms pre-emptively.

Paul Watters from Standard & Poor’s said blue chip companies increased net debt by 8pc in the first half of 2020, mostly to build cash safety buffers, not for investment. These precautionary savings have flattered the money supply but they may contract again as these firms repay loans. 

The worry is the surge in "fallen angels" - companies degraded to junk status rated B- or lower. Numbers have doubled since early 2019 and reached a record high 32.6pc at the end of August. 

A disturbing number entered the pandemic with both poor cash flow and a debt-to-earnings ratio of five or six times. Watters said negative rates can no longer protect these walking dead once their revenues shrink. Deflation will push them to the wall even sooner. 

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

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

One of the best overviews of developments comes, every 2 weeks, from the medical correspondent of the British satirical magazine, Private Eye. Here's a few points from the latest edition:-

- 27% of patients (mostly the elderly ones) don't have the 3 'core' symptoms of high temperature, persistent cough and loss of smell and taste. They 'merely' feel awful.

- The most frequent symptom is actually fatigue, both in adults and in children. 

- The best advice is: If you have any symptoms you can't explain, get a test. [Assuming this is possible where you live!].

- Some combination of hand-washing, social distancing, masks and room-ventilation has dramatically slowed the spread, as has localised test, trace and isolate. "These simple measures reduce infection, harm and death, Keep it up."

- Perspective: In the UK, 999 out of 1,000 citizens haven't died from Covid, and only 1 in 100 death certificates mention Covid. So: "Keep the kids at school, keep protecting the vulnerable and keep your distance."

The UK: The main point made by Private Eye is that the government there has made a complete hash of the Covid challenge, to the extent that the country - still lacking effective test and trace capability - continues to 'fly blind'. In brief, a scandalous 'debacle'.

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia   

This article reminded me that this sort of thing happens in Pontevedra city whenever they take up pavements(sidewalks) or road tarmac. Perhaps the best was when, similarly, they were going to make a roundabout at the city end of the (infamous) O Burgo bridge and found the Roman and medieval approach roads to earlier bridges at the same spot.

Brexit and Spanish properties . .  HT for this article cited by Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas. 

And another HT for this site on British expat rights in the EU as of next year.

Portugal

It seems that I have more than one reader called María . . . Here's a message that arrived yesterday from one of them, along with one of the regular spam messages about brothels in India:- Olá, bom dia. Eu estou fazendo uma campanha para arrecadar fundos para voltar para minha terra. Porque estou com problema de saúde e gostaria de ficar perto da minha família. Desde já agradeço! muito obrigada... E se você puder colaborar clique aquí..  

Our Sunday lunch of suckling pig, near Viana do Castelo. Could have done without the orange:-

And, in truth, it could have been larger, for 4 people. But, as ever in Portugal, we did get both rice and chips(French fries). ‘Carbohydrate overload’.

Galicians seem to be very upset that Portugal should have the effrontery to build up economic capability near its northern (Miño/Minho) border with Spain. They clearly regard it as 'desloyal', the Spanish word for ‘unfair’ in the context of competition. Particularly when they 'copy Galician successes’ around car component companies. Of course, this doesn't only attract investment but also qualified Galician personnel.

Which reminds me . . . There was - and maybe still is - a large sign in Oporto's hugely successful airport stressing that it's 'The international airport for all Galicians'. Which is a (justifiable) dig at our region's 3 pathetic airports that will never be consolidated (in Santiago de Compostela?) because of 'localism'. And quite possibly political corruption.

Spanish

En toples: Toplesss

English/Spanish

Three more less-common refranes:-

- Hope deferred make the heart sick: Quien espera, desespera.

- Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper; Con esperanza no se come.

- Hunger drives the wolf out of the woods; Mas discurre un hambriento que cien letrados[!]

English

A paper from Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment: Inhabiting the Chthulucene: Forging Tentacular Intimacies in 'Edgy Times'. Anyone got any ideas what this might mean? Here's something that might help: Chthulucene, ‘A word derived from chthon, meaning “earth” in Greek and which is associated with things that dwell in or under the earth’.

P. S. You can get a free download of the article here. Don't overwhelm the site . . .

Finally . . . 

Another nice quote from Richard Ford, based on this travels around Spain in the 1840s:- Spaniards never fidget themselves to get quickly to places where nobody is expecting them: nor is there any good to be got in trying to hurry man or beast in Spain; you might as well think of hurrying the Court of Chancery.

And just in case that's a repeat . . . "Mas vale vino maldito, que no agua bendita," "Cursed bad wine is better than holy water;" at the same time, in their various scale of comparisons, there is good wine, better wine, and best wine, but no such thing as bad wine; of good wine, the Spaniards are almost as good judges as of good water; they rarely mix them, because they say that it is spoiling two good things. 

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

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'*  

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia   

It's hard to believe any Spanish bank is anything other than greedy and duplicitous but here's a puff piece on health insurance from one I've never heard of, Holabank. Which claims it's specifically organised to cater to the needs of expats and second-home owners from abroad. In fact, Holabank is a subsidiary of the Catalan Caixabank and the insurance comes from the well-known company, Adeslas. It seems  to be something Caixabank inherited from Barclays, after its purchase in 2014.

Illegal searching for shellfish - by furtivos - isn't exactly unknown along our coast but these are the legal, licensed folk, waiting to be told they could start, Combarro a week or so ago:-

And  here they are engaged in the work:-

As I understand it, the numbers are limited via a daily lottery draw, though participants must have purchased a licence first. But I might not have got this entirely correct

María's Falling Back chronicle Day 18 

Portugal

Great value for money! These are our glasses of vinho verde last Saturday night, at least twice as much as you'd get in Spain. And at a cost of only €1.50 . . .

Incidentally, one of our objectives in going there was to enjoy leitão assado à bairrada, or suckling pig. We had to visit 4 restaurants before we finally got exactly what we were craving. On our way home in Viana de Castelo . . . 

The UK 

Sic transit gloria mundi . .  I see the ex Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is reduced to appearing in Spanish press ads . . .

The USA

During that 'debate', Trump said there’d been 'no negative effect" from his rallies. God laughed and gave him the lurgy. Or that, at least, is what his Evangelist Christian fans should be saying. But aren't, of course.

I wonder if they've treated him with hydroxichloroquine and/or injected him with bleach. You'll recall he once claimed he was taking the former daily but there's just a possibility this wasn't totally true.  

The Way of the World

There’s a long-running arbitration case in London over 9-10 billion dollars being claimed from the current Nigerian government by a company with only 2 employees, no web page and no track record in the field of the contract signed with a previous administration. Some say it's a sophisticated money laundering scheme under which money stolen from Nigerians will end up in London, cleansed and tax-free. If so, it begs a lot of questions re London-based professionals who are either complicit or stupid.

English/Spanish

Three more less-common refranes:-

- He that would have the fruit must climb the tree;  El que algo quiere, algo le cuesta.

- He who excuses himself accuses himself; Excusa no pedida, la culpa manifiesta

- Honour buys no meat in the market; Con esperanza, no se come/Con la honra no se pone la olla.

Finally . . .  

One of Richard Ford's less controversial observations: Fine weather is the joy of the wayfarer's soul, and nothing can be more different than the aspect of Spanish villages in good or in bad weather; as in the East [a comparison Ford is obsessed with], during wintry rains they are the acmes of mud and misery, but let the sun shine out, and all is gilded. It is the smile which lights up the habitually sad expression of a Spanish woman's face. The blessed beam cheers poverty itself, and by its stimulating, exhilarating action on the system of man, enables him to buffet against the moral evils to which countries the most favoured by climate seem, as if it were from compensation, to be more exposed than those where the skies are dull, and the winds bleak and cold.

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

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'* 

Note: To avoid a possible months-long lockdown in Madrid, my daughter and her 20 month old son have come to live with me in Galicia. So  . . . My  mornings - while she home-works - are no longer my own. If you’ve expected to date to be able to read my posts before midday, now is the time to suspend this anticipation . . .

A HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for one or two of today's items. 

Covid

Is it really true that silk masks are the most effective? For reducing virus risk, of course. Not for attracting admirers.

Living La Vida Loca in Spain/Galicia   

The New York Times: The incompetence of Spanish politicians can be as deadly as Covid-19. The citizens did their job, accepted the confinements and followed rules such as the use of masks. Politicians fought each other, broke promises and repeated the mistakes of the first wave of the virus. Richard Ford wasn't too impressed by Spanish politicians either.

The current left-of-centre government is trying to remove all references to Franco and his generals and ministers from Spanish life. In retaliation, the far right Vox party - with the support of the right wing PP party and the 'centrist' Ciudadanos party - is arranging for the names of Republican ministers of the 1920s and 30s to be removed from street names in Madrid. This tells you a lot about Spanish politics. 

It’s clear that Spain - over the years - really hasn’t tried at all to solve ‘the Catalonian Question’, opines Lenox Napier. Correctly, as far as I can see.

Smack on the first day of autumn (21 September here in Spain), the chestnut seller re-appeared in Pontevedra's main square. Things can be very traditional here.

María's Falling Back chronicle Day 17   

The USA

That (un)presidential 'debate' . . . The whole thing was a live re-enactment of social media wars: shouting over one another, refusing to listen or engage in nuanced debate, hurling insults and operating under the illusion that who shouts the loudest should be heard the most.

You'll recall Sacha Baron Cohen's 'breathtakingly offensive' mockumentary Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Well, now he's made another one about Trump’s achievements of the past 4 years. To be screened around the world days before the US election on November 3. Should be fun.

The Way of the World

‘Influencers’ are being paid by UK universities to plug degrees they never took, at places they never set foot in.

Finally . . .  

Believe it or believe it not, there used to be a real ‘numbers person’ called Al Gorithmi. Really a 9th century Arabic mathematician called Al Khwarizmi.

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