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'*

Life in Spain: What has changed? 

• Customer Service: In the light of my saga with Movistar and O2 - see below - I’m not really in the best state of mind to address this subject but, hey ho . . .  Once again, I first wrote on this in June 2001, after 9 months here: To date – while I’ve had exceptionally pleasant service in a many (small) shops, petrol-stations cafés, and bars – I’ve found little evidence of a belief that the customer is king in Spain. Certainly not amongst the protected fiefdoms (or medieval guilds) such as the pharmacists, notaries, opticians and the utility companies. Truth to tell, I have recollections of very bad experiences in my early years here with banks, utility companies and Movistar’s predecessor Telefónica. Or ‘thieves in white gloves’, as one one my new neighbours described them all. Particularly irritating was my chosen bank demanding a percentage of the proceeds of the sale of my UK house that I was proposing to deposit with them.** I think it’s fair to say there’s been an improvement with all of these operators, largely because there’s now more competition between providers. The internet has, of course, given them the opportunity to at least play at offering better customer service. But then there’s the bloody machines which answer your phone queries. Which is not unique to Spain, of course. There is, in fact, a consumer rights organisation - FACUA - and a national ombudsman but both of these seem to be weaker entities than in other countries, meaning that Spain remains behind the game in this area. Eighteen years later, the customer is still not king. Or queen. Though I return to my initial comment that you can get exceptionally pleasant service in a many (small) shops, petrol-stations cafés, and bars. Especially if you talk in Castellano of course. And smile when you speak it.

** Solved in the traditional Spanish why of having a friend of the bank manager having a word with him.

Current Life in Spain  

• The saga of a switch from Movistar to O2 . . . Today will be the 4th day without internet in my house and there’s no sign yet of being able to solve this problem. In short, I’ve fallen between the 2 stools of Movistar and O2, even though they are companies in the same group. Early this morning, Movistar sent a message to my phone suggesting I download their app and manage things through that. After 7 or 8 failed attempts to log in via my NIE or my mobile phone number and then a call to their customer service number 1004, it became crystal clear that - despite sending me the message re their app and despite have a breakdown report on their books from last Saturday, Movistar regard me as an ex-customer. Of course, getting hold of a real Movistar employee to discuss this is impossible as, in a catch 22 situation, I have to go through a machine which no longer recognises my direct line or mobile numbers as belonging to Movistar, so won’t connect me with someone. Assuming Movistar still employ real people. So, today I will attempt again to get  hold of someone in O2. Where they’ll doubtless decline to recognise the reference number for the breakdown given to me on Saturday by Movistar. Looking back, it’s clear that it was unfortunate that this breakdown caused me to get O2 to recognise I had a contract with them, leading to them ending my contract with their parent company, Movistar, just after I’d reported the problem. And it’s salutary to note that, if 4 weeks ago I’d applied to join, say, Vodafone and not O2, none of this would have happened. As of right now - because it’s been impossible to get through to anyone on O2’s customer service number of 1551 - I’m heading for the Movistar shop in town, after posting this. I have 2 expectations based on experience there - one high, one low. The first, that they won’t solve the problem; the second that I, the customer, will be blamed. Which, in a way, is fair - for being dumb enough to attempt a trouble-free switch of provider . . .  But ya veremos.
• I’ve often wondered why saffron is relatively cheap here. Perhaps the answer has been given by a report in yesterday’s press that: Back in 2010, Spain exported 190,000 kilos of saffron, worth $50 million, but the country's total production amounted to only 1,500 kilos. At the time, a local farmers union reported that up to 90% of Spanish saffron exports were fraudulent. Shades of the massive flax fraud of 1999. It’s possible this sort of thing is still happening, leaving me wondering what I’m actually putting in my rice.
• On Sunday - during our 4 days of rain - I saw the first 2 camino ‘pilgrims’ of our Adjusted Normal. They looked miserably drenched and - suitably attired pioneers as they were - they brought the words cape crusaders to my lips. 
• I’ve said that the Tax Office ( La Hacienda) is one of the (few?) organisations not to extend their deadlines by 3 months because of Covid. Today is the last day for tax returns for 2019 and many (older?) folk would have spent June trying to get a last-minute appointment with someone in the national and/or regional tax office to complete their forms. This year, I read, this has led to greater problems that usual, with many people needing to have recourse to asesores (accountants) to get their forms submitted on time. This is important to those contribuentes - the majority - expecting a rebate of the amounts deducted at source, most obviously by their banks on the (miniscule) interest payments made to them.
• My daughter and grandson are coming here by train on Friday. Hopefully, they won’t have to suffer the inconvenience inflicted on last weekend’s passengers of having to take a coach from Zamora to Ourense because the AVE high-speed train works weren’t completed by last Friday. And haven’t yet been finished this week . . .
• Here’s María’s  Day of said Adjusted Normal. Rule bending.

English/Spanish

• English: Child gate. 2 words,  2 syllables. Spanish (according to Amazon, at least): Barrera de seguridad de niños, 5 words, 11 syllables . . . . No wonder they talk fast.
• Another 3 refranes.  As ever, I can’t vouch for exactitude of equivalence:- 

-  If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again: El que la sigue la consigue/Persevera y triunfarás.

-  If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride: Si con desear bastará.

-  If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen: Si, quítate en medio.

Finally . . . 

• Here’s what my neighbour’s hydrangea (hortensia) looks like:-

And here’s what the sole flower on my surviving hydrangea looked like yesterday evening:-

At least it improved when I watered the plant:-

 * 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'*

Life in Spain: What has changed? 

• Corruption: Is Spanish society as corrupt some say?, I asked in a post a few years ago. Or is it - as a Spanish reader once wrote merely ‘a country of low ethics’? Click here for my answer to this.
• I wrote yesterday that the most important thing for Spaniards is having fun. And then I read of the comment of Ayatalollah Khomeini that: There is no fun in Islam. Which left me wondering if modern Spanish culture is a long and deep reaction to almost 800 years of Islamic rule/influence . . .

Current Life in Spain  

• The saga of a switch from Movistar to O2 . . . I wrote this yesterday but it mysteriously disappeared from my draft, so I had to rewrite it this morning from memory . . . Well, there's still been no progress since I made an application to O2 on June 4 for a switch in telecoms provision from them to their parent company Movistar. Worse, the absence of an internet connection yesterday led to conversations with both companies, in which O2 denied having got an application (despite having confirmed it in an email) and Movistar denied I'd cancelled my contract with them. Even worse, O2 advised me that, if I'd cancelled my contract with Movistar - as they'd asked me to do - then O2 would take no further action. I can't say I can understand this nonsense but it's hard to avoid the temptation of concluding it's down to dishonesty rather than 'mere' inefficiency. With the objective of making me stay longer with the more expensive company in the group. Certainly, it looks - on the face of it - exactly like the sort of thing Vincent Warner complains about in this book 'It Is Not What It Is: THE REAL (s)PAIN OF EUROPE'.  Either incompetence or duplicity. Though I guess it's more probable it was the former, not the latter. Well, possible.    So, that was Saturday. Yesterday - armed with all the emails between us - I called O2 again and this time was told I did have a contract with them but things had been slow - more than 3 weeks! - because I'd asked for a new number. This was untrue and my suspicion is that it's the staple spurious ‘excuse' given to people who complain about delay. Interestingly, within seconds of this call, my phone showed O2 as my new provider. But I still don't have an internet connection at home and now wonder if Movistar will send the technician they promised to send when I spoke to them on Saturday morning . . .
• Incidentally, it’s surely ironic that, at the time I’m contending with these problems with Movistar and its subsidiary O2, I should have coincidentally cited this refran yesterday: ‘His left hand doesn't know what his right hand is doing’: Borra con el codo lo que escribe con el mano. 
• Here's María's Day 14 of her chronicle of these adjusted normal times. Love is Love.
• I used to complain that the (Pelican?) crossings I use every day before/after crossing O Burgo bridge were confusing for both pedestrians and drivers, as the respective lights were in conflict. And so, dangerous. But now they’ve been replaced by new lampposts and the solution has been adopted of switching off the pedestrian lights and leaving the drivers’ lights permantently flashing orange. Which is an advance. And conceivably less dangerous.
• No, the works on said bridge still haven’t been completed. I suspect a problem with the ‘first-in-the-world’ lighting system - of garish read and green bulbs - in the base of the railings.
• Which reminds me . . . The last official forecast for the completion of the AVE high speed train between Galicia and Madrid was 31.12.19, though - with elections imminent - I suspect it’s now 31.12.20. Against an original date - I kid you not - of 1993. And multiple dates since then.

English/Spanish

• Another 3 refranes:- 

-  Honesty is the best policy: Lo major es ser franco. [Really quite the same???]

-  Hope for the best and prepare for the worst: Procura lo major, espera lo peor, y toma lo que viniere.

-  If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well: Si vale la pena hacerlo, vale la pena hacerlo bien.

The USA

• Trump and the paper towels.

The Way of the World

• UK celebrities are making humungous amounts of dosh by charging idiots for personalised videos to show their friends. And who can blame them? A refrain I cited other day remains as true as ever - A fool and his money are soon parted: A los tontos, no les dura el dinero.

* 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'*

Life in Spain: What has changed? 

• I've claimed more than once that you'll never understand the Spanish until you appreciate (in at least one sense) that their superordinate goal is to have fun, in one way or another. Looking for my first reference to 'fun' in my blog over the last  18 years, I came across this paragraph of February 2002 and decided to change the theme: The Spanish have a cavalier disregard for laws which they regard as personally inconvenient. This gives them huge scope, of course. It includes such serious things as blatantly ignoring the building regulations - I was in a village earlier this week where I was told that all the houses were illegal - and such regulars as paying no attention to parking fines. Well, I was playing around with a computer programme I have which advises you of the best routes between places in Spain. This is supplied by a major petrol company, by the way. I discovered that there's a facility for setting your average speed for the various types of roads. More interesting was the discovery that the pre-set [or default] speed set by the company for the motorways was 150 kph, which is 30 kph above the legal limit! I imagine that, if a company did this in the UK, it’d face at least a good deal of adverse press comment and quite probably a legal suit for negligence. None of my Spanish friends seemed to think there was anything untoward about it. I rather got the impression they thought it was sensibly pragmatic. Accurate, even. Verdict: You won't get away with 150kph on Spanish motorways these days, or even 130. As for the question of whether Spaniards are better rule-obeyers now, the scene is clouded by the recent high level of observance of the lockdown rules. I suspect not. This comment of Angel Ganivet possibly remains as true as when he said it  in the 19th century: Every Spaniard's ideal is to carry a statutory letter with a single provision, brief but imperious: "This Spaniard is entitled to do whatever he feels like doing”.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Current Life in Spain

• More praise for (unexpected) Spanish Covid discipline/restraint has come from the WHO.
• Will all the perspex screens remain when we're no longer terrified of the Covid virus? I suspect many of them will. Why subject yourself to the risk of (potentially fatal) winter flu, after all?
• Here's María's Day 13 of her chronicle of these adjusted normal times.  It’s still raining.

Quotes of the Day:

1. Camilla Long: On the Bournemouth beach billions . . . The idiots are those who didn’t predict it.

2. Rod Liddle: In these woke times . . . The greater the truth, the less one is allowed to say it.

English/Spanish

• Another 3 refranes:- 

- Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned: No hay mas de temer que una mujer despechada.

- His left hand doesn't know what his right hand is doing: Borra con el codo lo que escribe con el mano. 

- Home is where he hangs his hat: A donde el corazón se inclina, el pie camina/El verdadero hogar es donde uno tiene a los suyos.

* 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'*

Life in Spain: What has changed? 

1. Begging: I first wrote about Pontevedra’s beggars in July 2001: This appears to be one of the more efficient industries in Spain. There are 3 main categories here in Pontevedra. First there are the scruffy drug addicts. Then there are the slightly less scruffy gypsies, who live in a permanent encampment on the other side of the river from the town and who have a monopoly on the let-me-guide-you-into-this-free-parking-place-and -guard-your-car scam which takes me back to visits to the Everton and Liverpool football grounds in my youth. Thirdly, there are the well-dressed, middle-aged panhandlers who stand at the road junctions and meekly approach each car in turn. A variant of the latter is the immaculately turned-out chap who sits (head down) outside my bank with a small placard. Actually, a 4th category appeared on the street this morning, reminding me of tube rides in London. As I was drinking my coffee in an outdoor café, I was accosted by a man distributing a ‘free’ newspaper and seeking a contribution towards the living costs of himself and his family, of whom a representative sample (a young boy) was standing at his side. After a while, I told him that I was English so couldn’t read his bloody newspaper. Unfazed, he whipped out a laminated card which said in English, ‘I am a Rumanian and I have no money. My family are falling like flies around me. Please give me some money or we will all starve to death and you will be solely responsible’. Or something like that. I told him to bugger off. But not quite as rudely as I imparted the same sentiment last week to a gypsy hag who had cursed me for refusing to buy her pegs in the main square. Verdict: The first 3 categories are still with us, worse than ever these days, at least in Pontevedra. I can’t speak for the rest of Spain, or even Galicia. The old gypsy crone has disappeared, possibly to another world. But we actually have a 5th category - a middle-aged woman who’s an ex-drug addict and who trails a dog after her and chats to her regular contributors. Being successful, she’s a lot less thin that she was 5 years ago.
2. Smoking: I also wrote this in the same month: Spain is not only noisy but also a smoky place. Women in particular appear to believe that a fag draped from the corner of one’s gob is the height of sophistication. No Smoking signs are treated with contempt. Verdict: Smoking was banned several years ago, or at least exiled to outdoor terraces. Unlike in neighbouring Portugal, you’ll never seen anyone smoking inside any sort of public establishment these days. Except possibly in a private room, thereof. A massive improvement. Though the incidence of smoking - especially among women - is still higher than in other Western European countries. Which is hard to understand, as smoking - plus sunbathing - does terrible things to facial skin. But who thinks of the future when seeking beauty and (specious) sophistication when young?

Current Life in Spain 

• María bring us Days 11 and 12 of her chronicle of the adjusted normal. I endorse her comment os Puebla de Sanoria, a pretty place.
• Spain’s future will be more dismal than most commentators expect, says the writer of this article. Thanks largely, he says, to resource-wasting on tribal politics and the blame game. But who knows right now?
• Meanwhile, social distancing looks as much a minority interest on the streets of Pontevedra’s old quarter as it does on the beaches of Bournemouth. But our region does have - did have? - a relatively minor virus incidence.

English/Spanish

• Another 3 refranes:-  

- He that fights and runs away lives to fight another day: Quien en tiempo huye en tiempo acude.

- He who pays the piper calls the tune: Quien paga, elige.

- Health is better than wealth: La salud es la mayor riqueza.

The USA 

Donald Trump is overheard destroying Brad Parscale and Ron DeSantis.

Finally . . .

• We had a very sunny spring but now, while the rest of Spain - and, indeed, the UK - swelters in temperatures above 30, we have something less than 20 and the 4th day of rain. No wonder 95% of Spaniards believe that what Americans call ‘precipitation’ never stops here. But it isn’t remotely true and the occasional does make the region - like Ireland - beautifully green. And granite glistens when it’s wet . . .

* 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'*

  Life in Spain: What has changed? 

• Roundabouts . . . I first wrote of my problems with the way these were negotiated back in October 2004: It was reported today that 90% of Spaniards have mobile phones, though I suppose this really means Spaniards above a certain age. Say, 8. Of course, this finding would neither surprise nor interest many people. What we'd really like to know is what percentage of the populace have phones super-glued to their ears. Or navigate roundabouts or blind corners while using them.  My next comment was only a month later: An article in one of the local papers today was headlined ‘Those Cursed Roundabouts’ and its theme was the high number of accidents on these new-fangled things. It ended with the peroration – Something must be done! A good first step would be to teach all the driving instructors how to approach and exit them. Their pupils might just then stand a better chance of learning how to negotiate them. Then they could move on to the examiners, who currently seem to pass people who have absolutely no idea what to do when confronted with one. As long term readers will know, I’ve returned to this subject many times over the intervening 15 years - recording, for example, that the advice/instructions of the Traffic Department were being ignored, at least in Galicia. And that learners here are still being taught to enter and leave incorrectly and unwisely. But that’s (more than) enough on this subject. At least for now . . . 
• Verdict: Nothing has changed.

Current Life in Spain 

• Giles Brown has written, in respect of our severe lockdown: Spaniards demolished the stereotype of rowdy, rule-breaking anarchists. Instead, they observed lockdown with fortitude and discipline.  Speculative explanations for this display of national restraint abound, including a culture of obedience inherited from a 40-year dictatorship. More probably, it is because Spaniards have a deep, unquestioning respect for science, medicine and doctors.  I can’t help wondering whether the existence of several officious police forces only too willing to impose fines of up to €30,000 was more of a factor than he suggests. When I was in Jávea in early March, you couldn’t walk 20 metres without being challenged as to why you were on the street, so frequent were the police patrols.
• Sadly, Spain’s success is seriously threatened by British louts, whom the tourist industry feels must be let back into the country. See the Guardian on this here.
• María has pointed out that the Hacienda is a lot less speedy when you're due a tax rebate.
• Briefly back to driving here - and to officious police forces - Here's s a list of ‘unbelievable’ driving laws here:-
• Still on Spanish ’culture‘ . . . Says the relevant Minister: Bullfighting will be excepted from the future Animal Welfare Law and bullfighting professionals entitled to the Government’s special aid for 'artists.'

English/Spanish

• I used the expression ‘with his wife of 20 years’ when writing to a Dutch friend. Her response made it clear that this is ambiguous to non-native speakers . .
• Another 3 refranes:- 

- Give a dog a bad name (and hang it): Cría fama y échate a dormer.

- Great minds think alike: Los genios pensamos igual.

- Half a loaf is better than none: Algo es algo; menos es nada/Peor es nada.

The USA

• Donald Trump meets the Poles
• At a session in Palm Beach, Florida giving residents the chance to oppose a law obliging the wearing of masks, one contributor angrily insisted “'They want to throw God's wonderful breathing system out of the door’. Another accused the authorities of “obeying the devil, by imposing a communist dictatorship and dishonouring the American flag.” The backcloth is a massive increase in infections.  

Finally . . . A nice series of contrasting scenes . .

* 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'*

Life in Spain

What has changed? Driving in Spain 

• My first reference to this was in July 2002: Spain's statistics of death from driving are among the worst in Europe, particularly among the young, who have a reckless disregard for safety. Maybe they don't attend bullfights these days. Verdict: Things have improved drastically, thanks mostly to police campaigns and a range of new and ruthlessly applied laws, on driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, for example.
• In April 2004, I wrote: It continues to amaze me how Spanish drivers will quietly tolerate the most flagrantly stupid and obstructive driving of others, whilst getting very irate if you delay a micro-second at the traffic lights. I’m not so much talking here about blocking the road with inconsiderate parking or coming the wrong way down a one-way street. My impression with these [relatively] minor misdemeanours is that other drivers don’t complain because they know very well they would do the same thing if they had to. What I mean is imbeciles who drive down the hard shoulder when there are long delays on the motorway and then signal that they intend to rejoin the traffic when they get to the head of the queue. Without fail they are immediately let in, even by someone who's resisted the temptation to do the same thing. Verdict: Things have improved, in Pontevedra at least, possibly because our mayor is anti-car and has made driving in the city a massive challenge. And where you can still drive, every street is only one lane wide, reducing the opportunities of doing something truly stupid or inconsiderate.
• In June 2004, I made my first of many references to roundabouts: I've decided to stop signalling at roundabouts. This clearly confuses other drivers as, when I signal that I'm turning left, it incites them to rush in front of me. I'm told that this is because they assume that I'm going right round the roundabout and, therefore, the same way as them. So they accelerate to get ahead of me. Better to leave them guessing as to where I might actually end up as this forces them to hesitate. Stop even. The most astonishing thing about this advice is that it works. I will return to this theme tomorrow, with my verdict.   
• Meanwhile, here's an entire blog I wrote back then on How to Drive in Spain.

• Yesterday I was approached by someone whom I thought might be a tad 'touched'. He was pushing a bike, trilling on a luminously green set of pan pipes and shouting something indeterminate. But as I passed the rear of the bike, I realised he was an itinerant knife grinder. Of the sort that's been on Spain's streets for hundreds of years. And which I used to see when I was very young in the UK. No longer, I suspect.
• I mentioned yesterday that the virus had slowed down all the country's service providers. But that's not entirely true. Within seconds of making my annual tax declaration to the Hacienda on line on Tuesday, I got confirmation that money was being taken from my account. There's simply nothing more efficient than the Tax Office in Spain. Certainly not bloody Renfe, with whose webpage my Madrid-based daughter has had the usual problems this week. 
• Here's Day 9 and 10 of María's Adjusted Normal chronicle. Christian and pagan practices. Very Spanish.

English/Spanish

• Another 3 refranes:-

- Faint heart never won fair lady: El mundo es de los audaces.

- Fine words butter no parsnips: Las cosas no se arreglan con palabras elocuentes.

- Fools runs in where angels fear to tread: El necio es atrevido y el danio comedido.

The USA

1. Donald Trump delivers the Arizona church rally.

* 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'*

Life in Spain

• What has changed? It's said that Japan is the noisiest country in the world, with Spain only in 2nd place. Having been to Japan thrice, I beg to differ. Perhaps it's a question of machines rather than  people, as there's no doubt in my mind that Spain takes the biscuit in this regard. Here's my earliest note on the subject, from mid 2000: Spain is a noisy place. Bars almost invariably have a TV blaring in at least one corner. People talk loudly and simultaneously. Sometimes it is hard to believe that anyone is a group is listening to anyone else. A single table of four Spaniards can easily make more noise than a whole restaurant full of Portuguese. One wonders at this stark difference between neighbours. Even on a quiet night in a small bar the music will be at a level that forces one to shout at the only other person there. No-one seems to notice that this is going on, which gives a surreal quality to the evening. The verdict? Nothing has changed; Spain remains in first position. The best place in the world to listen to - or at least overhear - private conversations in public places.
• The virus has affected a lot of businesses, of course, and surely accounts for delays in deliveries of magazines and parcels from Correos, for example. But does it explain why, more than 3 weeks, after applying, I still haven't got 02 as my telecoms provider? Or is this because O2 is a subsidiary of the more-expensive-for-the-same-service Movistar? So it's in the latter's financial interest to stretch things out?
• This (pretty universal) cynical (Spanish) attitude was reflected in (British) comments to a Guardian article on the latest desecration of a religious painting. One person suggested the renovated' Murillo was actually a copy, with the original having been sold by the (alleged) restorer for a fortune. Which seemed credible until someone else pointed put that the original is, in fact, in the Prado. So  . . .This poor restoration happened on a copy of that painting. Or the copy was sold as the original to some credulous fool and a new (crap) copy made.

English/Spanish

• Another 3 refranes:-

- Eat, drink and me merry for tomorrow we die: A beber y a tragar, Que el mundo se va a acabar.

- Every dog has his day: A todos les llega su momento de gloria.

- Every law has a loophole: Quien hace la ley hace la trampa.

The USA

• The re-election of President Trump would be a “danger to the republic” and would have “grave consequences”, Mr Bolton has said. As if we needed to be told.
• Someone else has opined: There's never been a president like Donald Trump. And there'll never be another one. Unless, of course, the mystifying American electorate keep him in power in November.  

Finally . . . A relatively new (but 'truly authentic) camino has brought income to a tiny village below the monastery of Oia, on our coast between La Guardia - at the mouth of the Miño - and Bayona. Where, incidentally, Columbus made footfall on his return from 'India'. It's a lovely place but this wouldn't be Galicia if there weren't nearby examples of the region's (in)famous feismo. Or 'ugliness':-

* 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'*

Life in Spain

• Have Things Changed? It's reported that nearly 75% of Spaniards don't believe the government's virus stats. This got me wondering about when I'd first written on this subject, and it appears to be this post from November 2003, almost 16 years ago: To say the least, the Spanish are not the most exact race on earth. One of the first expressions one learns is ‘Más o menos´. Or ´More or less´. This is what accompanies every forecast, prediction, promise and, indeed, restaurant booking. “12 people at 10pm” can easily turn out to be 4 at midnight. So it is all the more astonishing that every statistic in the papers is given to at least one decimal point. More usually two. Sometimes three. So, today’s elections in Cataluña resulted in voting shares, we are told, of 36.27%, 33.46%, 15.79%, etc. One struggles to understand the rationale for this. Maybe it reflects the fact that no-one much believes any statistics here, so a specious validity is sought by providing numbers apparently accurate to two decimal points. Some credence for this view is given by the fact that the results of the last election were only given to one decimal point. As these numbers are now pretty irrelevant, it doesn’t matter whether anyone believes them. So accuracy is not even suggested.
• Bullfighting (La corrida) is nowhere near as popular in Spain as is thought outside the country. Essentlally, it's facing a slow death. Though this might well have been accelerated by the virus crisis. See this New York Times article on this demise.
• Here and here are Days 7 and 8 of María's chronicle of our Adjusted Normal.
• To amuse . . . Yet again, religious art at its worst. I guess the parsimony is akin to using your cousin to translate your menu. So that you come up with - for example - Cod to the seaman's blouse.**

English/Spanish: Another 3 refranes:-
- Dead men have no friends: El muerto al hoyo, el vivo al bollo.
- Different strokes for different folks: Sobre gustos, no hay nada escrito.
- Discretion is the better part of valour: La prudencia es la Madre de sciencia.  

The USA: I've added 'shallow showman' to my long list of derogatory adjectives applied to Fart. Seems fair, after Tulsa. I guess I should add 'self- deceiving' too. All under S, of course.

The Way of the World: The West seems more concerned with raking over its past than helping living Africans. While the British and American public argue over the statues of colonial figures, in Nigeria, Christians are being slaughtered

Finally . . . A plug for my younger daughter, who writes beautifully here on the enjoyment of passing stuff to others, and here on the challenge of negotiating the 'minefield' of potential support for an autistic 4 year old. The latter being of less interest than the former, I guess. To the majority, I mean.

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

** There's a prize for the first person to guess the derivation of this.

Note: This blog has long appeared on Blogger here,  where you can choose to subscribe by email or via the Feedly RSS reader.

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'*

Spain; Have Things Changed?

• A November 2003 post: One of the more arresting sights of modern Spain – where Archbishops’ opinions are still sought by TV interviewers - is the number of roadside brothels just outside each major town. These days they are not called American Bars but Clubs and they nearly always have their name emblazoned in garish pink neon lights. I have sought opinions on this from Spanish friends but have never gained a clear view of whether they are legal or not. My guess is that they are but that the employment of foreign workers without papers certainly isn’t. I base this judgment on the fact that every now and then the police raid a local establishment or two and arrest the owners for employing illegal workers. The usual excuse given is that the owner of the ‘hotel’ was simply renting rooms to the 20 or more foreign ladies and had no idea what they were using them for. One strange thing about brothels in Spain is how openly Spanish males talk about them. And about visiting them. This contrasts with my experience of never hearing a single Anglo Saxon friend mention even a massage parlour. Perhaps I have led a sheltered life. Or perhaps it is a reflection of British hypocrisy. Or perhaps there is an absence of shame about the activity in ‘Catholic’ Spain. Quite rum, really.
• One recent change . . .  There's been a 400% increase in the demand for bikes since the beginning of the lockdown. So, does this mean there's also been a massive increase in sales of all the clingy, fluorescent gear that most Spanish cyclists think is de rigeur, even for just going to the shops?
• Here's María's Day 6 of the Adjusted Normal. 

English/Spanish

• Another 3 refranes:-

- Beggars can't be choosers: A mucho hambre, no hay pan duro.
- Better late than never: Nunca es tarde si la dicha es buena.
- Brain is better than brawn: Más vale maña que fuerza.

The USA

• Donald Trump goes after KPOP fans.

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

Note: This blog has long appeared on Blogger here www.colindavies,blogspot.com  where you can choose to subscribe by email or via the Feedly RSS reader.

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'*  

As we all enter The New Normality, today I'm just posting this terrific article of weeks ago, by Annie Bennett of the Telegraph . . ., which I wholeheartedly endorse. My addenda follow it:-

20 reasons why we'll all return to Spain when this is finally over.

1. To do a pilgrimage 
A lot of us are going to come out of this feeling thankful for a lot of things and might feel like undertaking the challenge of a pilgrimage to process it all. It doesn’t have to be 500 miles across Spain to Santiago de Compostela – you can just do manageable chunks and there are lots of other possible routes too. I once spent a week walking through the wilds of Extremadura along the Vía de la Plata – the old Roman road that scores the country from north to south – with a pack of rescue dogs. Don’t ask. 

2. The fiestas
It is nigh on impossible to be in Spain for more than 10 minutes without hearing some sort of procession or festivity going on around the corner, particularly if you are in Andalucia. Drums, trumpets, a bit of wailing – you know the drill. Soon the band hoves into view, often followed by a figure of Christ or the Virgin atop an elaborate float. It might be Easter, Whitsun, the Assumption or the veneration of a local saint but you don’t have to be even vaguely religious to get merrily carried away with the whole thing. 

3. The long lunches 
I actually mean long, boozy lunches of course. Lunches that roll on until 6 or 7 in the evening, only petering out as people slump into siestas on sun-loungers and hammocks. Or sometimes never actually end at all and just slide into dinner. A paella in the countryside or by the beach is a good way to go about this, with jugs of tinto de verano (red wine, lemonade and ice), with the odd gin and tonic to punctuate proceedings. 

4. The Alhambra
Gazing at the Alhambra palace in Granada from the Albaicín hill opposite, glowing gold as the sun sets over the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada, is something you will never forget. If you’re looking for a romantic setting for a special moment, look no further. I find a glass or two of rosé intensifies the drama of the experience. But get inside too and wander through the courtyards and gardens for the full sensual onslaught.

5. Jamón
I mean, come on. While we can obviously have a platter of marbled magenta jamón ibérico in the UK – at least we will be able to when the bars reopen – but it’s never quite the same and therefore counts as a good enough reason to travel to Spain. A few slivers with a glass of wine – I’m thinking a velvety Ribera del Duero right now, possibly in Salamanca on a crisp winter’s day –  is so simple but so utterly delicious. 

6. The Gaudí architecture 
Seaweed, warriors, bones, petals, dragons... just a few of the random things Antoni Gaudí somehow managed to conjure up out of stone, wood, iron and tiles. As we’re all planning future trips, put 2026 on your calendars for a Barcelona jaunt, as it’s the year the Sagrada Familia cathedral is scheduled to be completed and is also the centenary of the great architect’s death. Beyond the Catalan capital, you can see buildings by him in León and Astorga as well as in Comillas in Cantabria.  

7. To go somewhere new
You may have been to Spain dozens of times, but there’s always somewhere else to discover. I’ve got my map out and see that I could do with a mooch around the province of Palencia in the north, as I haven’t been there for decades and it doesn’t often pop up on the travel pages, even though they’ve got tons of Romanesque churches, and even wolves. 

8. White hilltop villages
I know they’re a bit of a cliché but who can resist the lure of a pueblo blanco? There you are, pootling along a winding country lane in Andalucia, when you round a bend and a village comes into view, like sticky sugarcubes stuck onto the hillside. As you approach, there may well be a donkey or two, several sleepy dogs and three old men sitting on a bench (this last one is an obligatory requirement in all pueblos I believe). There will be a bar with a few plastic tables outside under umbrellas too. You want to go right now, don’t you? I know I do. 

9. Paradors
Staying in Paradors is one of my favourite ways to explore Spain, as you are soaking up history and culture even while having your breakfast. Some are former monasteries and convents, some are castles and others palaces. Some are modern buildings but in spectacular locations, such as the new Parador de Costa da Morte by a splendid beach in Muxía in Galicia, which should have opened this Easter but is ready to welcome guests the minute restrictions are lifted. I’m also planning a return visit to the Parador de Jaén, on the crest of a hill overlooking this undervisited city, which has just emerged from a revamp and would be great for an autumn weekend break. 

10. The fast trains
We were already going off flying, so having a bit of time on our hands gives us the chance to look at how easy it is to travel by train. You can get to Spain from the UK in a day and then plan a route using the 2,000 miles of high-speed train tracks. The journey across the country from Valencia to Seville takes just four hours, which you can while away by gazing out of the window at orange groves, vineyards, the plains of La Mancha and hilltop castles. Have a look here or here for tickets and information.

11. The slow trains
If you’re in no rush to get from A to B – or would prefer to avoid cities – you can also trundle around on less swish trains that stop every five minutes. The FEVE narrow-gauge network, for example, travels slowly along the coast of northern Spain from Bilbao to Ferrol in Galicia, with panoramic views of the green hills of Cantabria, the Picos de Europa mountains and the fabulous beaches of the Rías Altas. If it sounds a bit too basic for you, consider taking the Transcantábrico, a lavishly refurbished vintage train.

12. Social distancing without even trying
Two metres? Don’t make me laugh. In some parts of Spain you’d be lucky to see another soul within a 20-mile radius. In the middle of nowhere, between Madrid and Valencia, the Montes Universales in the vast Aragón region is the least populated corner of Spain, if you really want to get away from it all. 

13. All that wine
There is always another wine region to discover in Spain and talking to passionate producers while tramping through a vineyard never fails to lift the spirits. Safe in the knowledge that before long you will be tasting the stuff, obviously. You can follow wine routes all over the country, maybe driving from La Rioja to the Ribera del Duero region through bucolic landscapes of rolling hills. See here for more ideas.

14. The prawns
While cooped up indoors, I’ve been thinking a lot about prawns. Well, not just the prawns, the whole experience really. That box of fabulously red La Santa ones that I scoffed standing up at the Lanzarote food festival last November. Those juicy Sòller ones by the sea in Mallorca. A single enormous one at Quique Dacosta’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Denia. A platter of sweet, firm langostino prawns devoured by the mouth of the Guadalquivir river in Sanlúcar de Barrameda. That bag of pallid frozen specimens in my freezer just isn’t cutting it, obviously. 

15. The beaches
I bet this is what a lot of you are dreaming about, being back on your favourite beach, plunging into the sea and lolling on a sunbed without a care in the world. You might be thinking about kiteboarding on the Costa de la Luz on the Atlantic, surfing on the Costa Trasmiera in Cantabria, kayaking on the Costa Tropical or diving in the pristine water of Cabo de Gata in Andalucia. Or, more likely – in my case at least – just sitting gazing at the horizon on the Costa del Sol with a cold beer or a cocktail. 

16. Tapas in Seville 
If things seem a bit flat right now, just let your mind drift to the glorious exuberance of the Andalucian capital. Yes, there you are, in a traditional tiled tavern, with a glistening glass of sherry and a little dish of something absurdly tasty. You might want to pour yourself some sherry right now at home just to get into the swing. 

17. The nightlife
In Spain, going out out, rolling back to your home or hotel at dawn, is not the domain solely of the young, the cool or the hot. As it is perfectly normal for dinner to go on until well after midnight, it’s often three o’clock in the morning when the dancing starts. Just go with the flow; it really doesn’t matter how old you are or what you’re wearing.   

18. The art
From cave art in Cantabria and Asturias to funky galleries in Barcelona, Bilbao and Malaga, Spain is one of the best countries in the world for art lovers. You could spend weeks just in the Prado in Madrid, looking at paintings by El Greco, Velázquez and Goya, before strolling down the road to the Thyssen-Bornemisza and Reina Sofía museums to see mindboggling works by Dalí, Miró and Picasso. Right now, I’m looking online at the soothing seaside paintings by Joaquín Sorolla from Valencia at regular intervals. 

19. Aperitivos
Not being able to meet for an afternoon beer or a glass of wine is what my Madrid friends are missing more than anything. Me too. My body is so attuned to this civilised custom that I swear an inner alarm goes off at aperitivo time (about 1pm in Spain), wherever I am. 
  
20. The mountains
I can’t wait to get my hiking boots out of the cupboard to spend a few days walking in the mountains. The Alpujarras in the Sierra Nevada, with views across to Africa on a clear day, always take my breath away – but maybe that’s more to do with the seriously steep slopes and the shape I’m in. The Somiedo Natural Park in Asturias is also high on my list for places to return to, with its limestone peaks and glacial lakes, not to mention the brown bears that roam the alpine landscape. Don’t worry, they keep themselves to themselves – most of the time.  

My addenda

• I've done 15 caminos of 3-15 days. Don't imagine I'll ever do the whole thing.
• I especially endorse the bit on Jamón in Salamanca - my favourite city - in a particular tapas bar.
• My longest Spanish lunch ended around 11pm
• Coincidentally, I'm planning a trip to the Palencia area.
• I won't be visiting the parador in Muxía; it's modern.
• I've been on the Bullet train in Japan but not yet on Spain's AVE. I agree the normal trains are excellent, and I loved the FEVE rides I've taken.
• Sadly, I've not yet had the prawns she cites, but am defrosting some smaller ones for a curry today.
• I don't do beaches, but am happy to sit looking at one with a glass of Godello in hand.
• I've said a couple of times I won't be going back to Sevilla, regardless of its attractions. Possibly a mistake. Will reconsider.
• Nightlife is a thing of my past. Though late dinners are unavoidable, if you have Spanish friends, who think eating before 10pm is decidedly odd.
• Aperitivo Time at 13.00 follows Coffee Time at 11.00. Which tells you a lot.
• I still have to visit the Alpujarras. One of many, many things still to enjoy in Spain. It takes a lifetime.

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

Note: This blog has long appeared on Blogger here, where you can choose to subscribe by email or via the Feedly RSS reader.

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'*

Life in Spain

• I often wonder how much things have changed over the 19 years I've been living in Spain. So I am revisiting stuff I wrote in the early years of my blog. Here's something from January 2004: I visited an ironmongers – or ferretería – 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 of these 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.    As of today, only the picture framer has gone
• As for these strange times, María here addresses one aspect of our normal summer entertainment. Or, rather, the lack of it this year. 

English/Spanish

• Another 3 refranes:-

- An apple a day keeps the doctor away: A diaro una manzana es cosa sana.
- Any port in a storm: Cuando hay hambre, no hay pan duro/En el amor y la guerra, todo hueco es trinchera.
- As sure as . . . 1. eggs is eggs. 2. God made little green apples 3. Night follows day. 4. The day is long: Como dos y dos es quatro/Tan cierto como que yo me llamo X.

More tomorrow.  

• Talking of Spanish sayings . . . I was given this one yesterday: La lengua es la castigadora del culo. At least, I think that's what it is; I actually wrote down castilladora. The literal translation is: 'The tongue is the punisher of the arse' but I don't know what it really means. Any suggestions?

The USA

• Trump talks about his upcoming Tulsa rally,
• In case you're wondering what Juneteenth is  . . .It's a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. Originating in Texas, it is now celebrated annually on the 19th of June throughout the United States, with varying official recognition.

The Way of the World:  

• We’re Gwyneth’s fools: Carol Midgely, the Times:  I take it all back. Gwyneth Paltrow is a genius. Like you, I scoffed at her candle called This Smells Like My Vagina. “But how do we know?” I wondered, “and can we return it if it is not vagina-ey enough?” But at £60 it sold out and now she has another candle called This Smells Like My Orgasm (“tart grapefruit” FYI) which costs even more. It proves there is literally nothing this woman can’t sell. “This Smells Like My Bra After Six Weeks Without a Wash”? Gwynnie could shift it. Ditto: “This Smells Like My Thong After a Tube Commute and 20 Lunges”. The public mocked and called her an idiot but, counting her money, it is she who is making idiots of the public. 

Finally . . .

• My sister challenged me to post this:-

As she's been married 50 years, she should know . . .

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

Note: This blog has long appeared on Blogger here: www.colindavies.blogspot.com   where you can choose to subscribe by email or via the Feedly RSS reader.

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'* 

• Yet another new beggar here in Pontevedra yesterday. What has the city done to deserve this plague? Apart from being on the Cocaine Coast and a few hundred metres from the drug-dealing centre in the gypsy settlement in my barrio.
• Only in Galicia? . . . A newspaper headline: Una 'brass band' feminina que rinde homenaje al grelo triunfa en toda Galicia. A female brass band which honours turnip tops triumphs throughout Galicia.
• Here's Days 3 and 4 of María's Adjusted Normal chronicle.
• If you're thinking of buying property here in Spain, you should take note of this (very valid) advice posted by someone on FB this week:-

- I would never buy off plan again; what they promise is highly unlikely to be what you get.
- If you're buying on a community, ask to see the minutes of the last AGM; by doing this you'll find out how the finances      are, who's not paying and what grief is going on between the owners.is 
- If you're considering spending winter time, make sure your property will get plenty of sunshine, ie south facing.
- If you're buying rural property -  check, check and treble check that everything is legal and all the property is on the deeds and there are no extensions without planning permission.
- If you can't handle lots of racket in the summer months, don't buy anywhere near a hotel or bars, 
- Get a surveyor's report on the property you're interested in before considering an offer.
- Consider what the fiscal consequences are; the Spanish have a harsh tax regime and they'll happily take your hard-earned cash.
- Definitely do not buy until you've rented for a while and have a good feeling for both Spain and the area. You'll need to spend time at different times of the year to get a true reading. 
- Another concern is health of course; the system here is great if you speak Spanish

The USA

• Donald Trump complains about DACA and Tulsa.
• Is anyone remotely surprised or shocked by Bolton's 'revelations'. Or by Fart's reaction?

English/Spanish

• Another 3 refranes:-

- Actions speak louder than words: El movimiento se demuestra andante.  Las palabras se lleva el viento.

- All mouth and no trousers/All talk and no action: Much ruido y pocas nueces.

- All work and no play makes jack a dull boy: Hay que dejar tiempo para el esparcimiento.

The nice thing about many of the Spanish refrains is that, although longer, they rhyme. More memorable perhaps. Three more tomorrow. Meanwhile . . . Two Spanish words new to me: 1. Un thriller. 2. El merchandising.

The Way of the World:  .

• See the pungent article below on how to respond to current cultural trends.
• My RSS feed yesterday warned me that one of the items was potentially dangerous, as possibly containing a virus. It was from the BBC website . . .
• The Times yesterday had an article which featured 'Arteta has strived . . .'. when you all know it should have been 'has striven'. But it was by a sports commentator.

THE ARTICLE

Let’s take this vanity of the bonfires to its logical conclusion: ban all culture!

First Little Britain, then Fawlty Towers, why doesn't Generation Bedwetter ban David Bowie, John Lennon, and Dickens, whilst they're at it? Julie Burchill, Telegraph

When we consider the phrase “Flaming June” we might think of the famous portrait by Frederic Leighton showing a sleeping woman in an orange dress that Samuel Courtauld once called “the most wonderful painting in existence”. But the June we’re living through now isn’t a month of sensual slumber and molten gold sunsets. It’s a conflagration of sensibilities as one cultural artefact after another – from the sublime to the ridiculous – goes up in flames lest it offend some petulant cry-bully. This June will be remembered for the vanity of the bonfires.

As luck would have it, I’m writing a book called Welcome to the Woke Trials published by Constable in the spring of next year. You’d think that everything happening would make it a piece of gluten-free cake to dash off at top speed but I’m finding it something of an embarrassment (literally, for the perpetrators and capitulators when they look back on this shameful summer) of riches. Each morning I read back the previous day’s work – only to find that half a dozen new acts of idiocy have taken place while I slept. Writing this book feels like the fabled painting of the Forth Bridge: no sooner completed than in need of attention once more as you see a bit you’ve missed.

Little Britain (blackface), Fawlty Towers (“racial slurs”), The Dukes of Hazzard (Confederate flag). One Little Indian record label to become One Little Independent – the whole lazy lip-service aspect of virtue signalling summed up gloriously by the NME headline “One Little Indian change name to help fight racism”: yep, that seems sensible, never saying the word “Indian” again will surely defeat one of the greatest evils on earth. Gone With the Wind. DAVID ATTENBOROUGH! I’ll leave it there, but by the time you read this it’s a fair bet that something which made you think or made you laugh will have been cancelled or castigated for fear of attracting the wrath of a group of people who appear to have a deep distrust of both thinking and laughing.

Monstrous regiments of Violet Elizabeth Botts have joined the Stasi and started up a series of deranged sideshows detracting from the very real ills of a society with a risible level of social mobility all across the colour chart – white working-class boys do worse in education than any other group, don’t forget. The star turn of these witch trials is, of course, J K Rowling, who has nothing to do with racism but who has attracted the considerable ire of the small, well-financed, extremely loud trans lobby, who have never seen a drama that wasn’t about them, even if it was the killing of a black man in Minneapolis.

After a period of attempting to placate the geek chorus, Rowling was recently reborn as a fearless and funny feminist who responded to the proposed book-burning of her Harry Potter bestsellers with: “Whenever somebody burns a Potter book the royalties vanish from my bank account. And if the book’s signed, one of my teeth falls out.” That the Harry Potter actors who turned on her are from privileged backgrounds while as an impoverished single mother she once wrote in cafés as she could not afford to pay her electric bills (and went on to drop from billionaire to mere multi-millionaire status due to the sheer amount of money she gave away) has made the situation even more grotesque. This is a generation coddled by stupid mothers who treated their offspring like royalty and chauffeured them everywhere – even to climate-change protests. They could do no wrong and even when they failed at something they were praised.

They believe they’re special due to social media where you can get affirmation for simply being as opposed to doing; the funniest thing I’ve seen during the Rowling affair was a social media pile-on by thwarted Harry Potter fans in which a horde of no-marks opined that this self-made super-successful woman should educate herself simply because she knows the difference between fairy tales and facts and they don’t. Told by their thick parents how perfect they are since birth, these moaners totally lack the inquiring minds that inspire art and culture; they’ve never heard the word “no” but ironically “no” is all they contribute to the world.

When I was young, how we mocked Mrs Whitehouse! But she asked merely for the nine o’clock television watershed, which anyone who isn’t a dribbling sex-pest approves of. It’s interesting how drill/gangster rap music and pornography are perfectly OK with the woke, despite their depictions of black men as thugs and women as orifices, the effects of which on their somewhat inadequate fans may well be less than healthy. It’s savagely amusing how women have had to put up with repulsive rap lyrics calling them bitches and whores for decades without rioting – and now we’re informed by anti-racist statue‑daubers that Queen Victoria Woz A Slag.

But where there is destruction there will be pushback – and the violent virtue signallers are going to get a whole lot more than they bargained for. As the black social commentator Mo Kanneh tweeted over a photo of John Cleese as Basil Fawlty: “This is all going to negatively impact on black people – we didn’t ask for, or want, this cultural purge.” Maybe I’m an old cynic, but I sense that a backlash against blameless BAME citizens isn’t the first thing on the collective mind of the culture trashers; the heady dopamine hit of their performative rebellion almost seems like a grab-back of attention on the part of a highly entitled group piqued by the communal appreciation of front-line workers over the past three months. It’s almost like the bourgeoisie can only stand the actual working class getting credit for being the really important people who make our society work for a few weeks – and then it has to be all about them again.

What I coined “The Big Sulk” (Le Bouder Grand) has been going on ever since the working class refused to vote on Brexit the way their betters and bed-wetters told them to; now it has transformed into The Terrible Toy‑Throwing. But let’s try to think well of them; Christopher Hitchens’s great line of the Not In My Name mob – “The silly led by the sinister” – is surely applicable. The majority are more moronic than malevolent and one expects the young to be daft – I certainly was, though as I recall I was keener on experiencing things rather than banning them.

But now that I’m old, I’m no stick-in-the-mud. So here’s a suggestion: in the interests of harmony and time saving, shall we just cut to the chase and ban everything – every book, film and TV show, reinstating each one in turn only when a worldwide referendum has established that no one in the world is offended by them? Because surely if some people are offended by a statue of a man who led the armies that defeated Hitler, then they can be offended by anything; I fully expect Flat Earthers to start pulling down statues of explorers soon. Swan Lake has the good white swan and the bad black swan, David Bowie had sex with under-age girls, Manet used prostitutes, John Lennon used the N-word and Dickens was mean to his wife.

Yes, there will be a huge void where entertainment used to be, even before we take into consideration the research from Oxford Economics released yesterday on behalf of the Creative Industries Federation, which shows the projected economic impact of Covid-19 on UK culture and the creative industries. Over 400,000 jobs will be lost and there will be a revenue drop of £1.4 billion a week, the creative sector being hit at least twice as hard as the wider UK economy; some creative sub-sectors such as music and film will be hit even harder, with half of all jobs expected to go. Also announced yesterday was the parking of four of the biggest ever musicals – Mary Poppins, Phantom, Les Mis and Hamilton – until some unknown point in 2021.

But I’m sure that Generation Bedwetter can easily replace all that with ukulele solos and social-distanced dancing flash mobs. So let’s give it a try – everything must go! Because it’s not like burning books ever leads to anything bad – is it?

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

Note: This blog has long appeared on Blogger here: www.colindavies,blogspot.com   where you can choose to subscribe by email or via the Feedly RSS reader.

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'* 

• The Spanish government - doubtless as part of its fight against the country's enormous tax-light black economy - is said to be planing to eliminate cash, in favour of bank cards. I can't see it happening any time soon, especially as it would be contrary to current EU law.
• A Spanish archaeologist who perpetrated a huge fraud/'joke' back in 2006 has just been sentenced to (theoretical) jail, 14 years later. 
• HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for news of this Irish film about an exceptional Spanish sea captain.
• And another HT for this gem: The president of the UCAM (Catholic university in Murcia) is sure that the Covid-19 is the work of "the antichrist" and that Bill Gates and Soros are "Slaves of Satan". Possibly a Vox voter.
• See below for an article on the (alleged) corruption of Spain's ex king. This week a proposal from the far-left Podemos party the he be subjected to a governmental inquiry has been rejected by all the other parties, including Podemos's coalition partner, the PSOE.  
• If you live here - or own a holiday property here - you can be sure your taxes are going to rise. Though perhaps not if you're a large company, as you'll have better tax advisers. And more influence at court.

The USA

The Way of the World

• The UK football team, Arsenal, is  is offering to triple Thomas Partey’s wages to £195k a week to persuade him to move from Atlético Madrid.

English/Spanish

• Another 3 refranes:-

- A rolling stone gathers no moss: Hombre de muchos oficios, pobre seguro.
- A miss is as good as a mile: De casi, no se muere nadie.
- Absence makes the heart grow fonder: La ausencia es al amor lo que al fuego el aire; que apaga el pequeño y aviva el grande.
More tomorrow.

THE ARTICLE 
 
Sex, lies and Swiss bank accounts — the allegations against Spain’s ex-king that are rocking his son’s reign. The former king of Spain Juan Carlos is facing a storm of allegations over his financial dealings and his private life. Now his son, King Felipe VI, is fighting to preserve the monarchy. Isambard Wilkinson. The Times

Breakfast at Zarzuela Palace, where the Spanish royal family reside on the outskirts of Madrid, must be a tense affair these days. With Juan Carlos, the former king, facing a storm of allegations over his financial dealings, the ruling Bourbon clan may dread the morning papers.

This year a series of reports have linked Juan Carlos, 82, who abdicated after a series of scandals in 2014, with multimillion-euro payments into offshore accounts. Swiss prosecutors are investigating them and the source of a €65 million payment he made to his former mistress, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein.

As more allegations emerge about secret accounts and funds, the royal household fear their patriarch may end up in the dock. In March his son, King Felipe VI, 52, disinherited himself and cut Juan Carlos’s annual stipend in an apparent bid to buffer the crown from the allegations.

The corruption claims have stoked republican sentiment. Felipe, helped by Queen Letizia, his wife, a former television journalist, is fighting to save the monarchy’s reputation. Speculation is rife in Madrid that Juan Carlos may flee Spain to save his son further embarrassment.

Tensions are running high at Zarzuela, where the king and queen and their two young daughters, the princesses Leonor and Sofía, live with Juan Carlos and his wife, Sofía, the former queen. The former king’s fate hangs in the balance.

“The king has had to put a formal distance between himself and his father,” said a source close to the palace. “But Juan Carlos needs his son to try to limit the damage done to him.”

The family and Juan Carlos himself may well be ruing his affair with the 56-year-old Sayn-Wittgenstein. The former lovers are now engaged in a bitter feud, with allegations of harassment and leaks over alleged links to offshore funds further tarnishing his name and endangering the monarchy.

They met at the Duke of Westminster’s shooting estate in Spain in 2004 when she was still married to Casimir zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, a Bavarian prince. The businesswoman, who was born into a middle-class German-Danish family and baptised Corinna Larsen, was divorced soon after. Her affair with Juan Carlos is reported to have lasted from 2004 until 2010.

King Juan Carlos and his son, Prince Felipe, in 1977GETTY IMAGES

However, the mutual fascination seems to have outlasted their “formal” relationship. In 2012 Juan Carlos invited her and her son on an elephant hunt to Botswana. She accepted, her public relations representatives say, because her son had formed a bond with the king.

The trip was to prove the king’s undoing. Juan Carlos fell, injuring himself. The media caught wind of it after he had to be flown home to Madrid for an emergency hip-replacement. The Spanish press, breaking the taboo of printing Juan Carlos’s reported affairs, published photos of Sayn-Wittgenstein. The holiday came in the middle of an economic crisis. The press castigated the king for his excess.

It also came as Iñaki Urdangarín, his son-in-law, was under investigation for corruption. The reporting of Juan Carlos’s affair with Sayn-Wittgenstein and his family’s financial dealings led to him abdicating in favour of Felipe in 2014.

Felipe came to the throne with the aim of restoring the crown’s reputation. Immediately he set about trying to fireproof it from any fallout from the investigation into Urdangarín, the husband of Princess Cristina, his sister. He stripped them of their ducal title and withdrew royal duties from Cristina and his other sister, Princess Elena.

In 2018 Urdangarín was sentenced to serve nearly six years in jail for crimes including tax fraud and embezzlement. Princess Cristina, who now lives in Geneva with their four children, was acquitted of being an accessory to tax fraud after a year-long trial.

Felipe also made attempts to make the royal household more transparent. Well educated, formal and reserved, a very different character from his back-slapping and jocular father, Felipe decreed that his family could not accept “gifts that exceed the usual uses, social or courtesy”.

Deemed to be more like his mother, Sofía, the former queen, to whom he is very close, Felipe was once criticised as being too aloof and Germanic. Now the mother and son’s moderation is seen as a prized asset.

But his father’s legacy has returned to haunt him. In 2018 recordings emerged of a conversation between Sayn-Wittgenstein and a former Spanish police officer taped three years earlier. In the tapes she alleges that Juan Carlos had asked for a share of a secret €80 million payment by Spanish businesses to win a deal to build a high-speed AVE rail line in Saudi Arabia in 2011. She also alleges that the former king and his cousin, Álvaro de Orleans y Borbón, tried to use her to hide assets abroad.

In March this year Switzerland’s La Tribune de Genève newspaper reported that in 2008 Juan Carlos allegedly received $100 million from Saudi Arabia’s king. It also reported that he gave $65 million to Sayn-Wittgenstein in 2012, months after the Botswana elephant hunt.

A Swiss prosecutor is investigating whether the Saudi donation (€65 million at the exchange rate at the time), which was banked in a Geneva account held by Lucum, a Panamanian-registered foundation, was linked to the alleged payment of illegal commissions for the construction of the high-speed railway in Saudi Arabia by a Spanish consortium.

The prosecutor is also investigating the origin of the bank transfer made by Juan Carlos to Sayn-Wittgenstein. Robin Rathmell, her lawyer, denied the payment was related to the AVE deal. “In 2012 our client received an unsolicited gift from the king emeritus who described it as a form of endowment for her and her son of whom he had become fond,” he said. “It followed several years of ill health when our client cared for him.”

Leaks to newspapers revealed that Juan Carlos was named as a beneficiary of the multimillion-euro Zagatka foundation, which was formed in Liechtenstein in 2003 by Orleans y Borbón. His cousin told El País newspaper that he had paid for several private flights for him, but denied that the former king had access to the foundation’s money.

Then the leaks targeted the king himself, revealing that Felipe was named as a beneficiary in the event of his father’s death to both the Zagatka and Lucum foundations. Immediately, Felipe announced that he was disinheriting himself from his father and stripped him of his stipend.

But the king’s statement raised several questions. Felipe said he had been made aware of the Lucum fund in a letter from Sayn-Wittgenstein’s lawyers last year and had sworn in front of a notary that he did not want to be its beneficiary. Why, critics asked, had he not informed the courts?

The letter to the palace, sent in March 2019, also pointed to offstage negotiations between the feuding ex-lovers. The source close to the royal family describes the letter as “blackmail intended to put pressure on the monarchy to try to make sure Sayn-Wittgenstein does not face money laundering charges”.

Her lawyer denied that “improper demands (financial or otherwise) have ever been made of the royal household”. He added that the letter requested “a good faith dialogue in the context of the campaign of abuse being waged against our client which has led to her being dragged into Swiss proceedings”.

Unknown to the public at the time, it appears that the letter had prompted Juan Carlos to withdraw completely from public life. It also led him to travel to London to share an amicable lunch with Sayn-Wittgenstein at her home in an attempt to resolve their differences. But despite the meeting, the feud worsened.

Sayn-Wittgenstein, who declined a request for an interview, alleges that in 2012 Spain’s intelligence chief ordered private security guards to take over her apartment and office in Monaco. The aim, she says, was to take control of documents about personal and business matters relating to Juan Carlos and other members of his family, which she has taken to London, where she lives.

Her lawyers are now threatening to bring a case with as yet unspecified accusations against Juan Carlos in London.

In Spain, so far parliament has blocked demands for an inquiry made by members of left-wing and regional parties along with the far-left Podemos, which governs with the Socialist party. But further allegations of financial impropriety have emerged suggesting that Juan Carlos allegedly received a $1.9 million donation from the king of Bahrain, which he carried in banknotes in a briefcase to Switzerland.

The payment from Bahrain was paid into the same account as a donation from Saudi Arabia of $100 million. A Spanish judicial probe into the Saudi payment has been announced. Constitutionally a monarch cannot be prosecuted, but debate is focused on whether that can be overridden in the courts or whether Juan Carlos could face charges for any alleged crime committed after his abdication.

The present woes of Juan Carlos are a far cry from the heady days of his popularity when his stock was still high from his handling of the transition from dictatorship to democracy.

The choice made by Juan Carlos to reside at Zarzuela reflects the modest tone of the early days of his rule. A former royal hunting lodge set in El Pardo national park, it was badly damaged during the civil war, but was restored for Juan Carlos to move in with his new bride Sofia in 1962.

That was during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who groomed Juan Carlos for power. Born in exile in Italy, where his grandfather Alfonso XIII fled in 1931, Juan Carlos was sent to Spain aged nine on his own to start his education under Franco as part of attempts by his father to restore the monarchy.

After Franco’s death in 1975 Juan Carlos helped to restore both the monarchy and democracy. Initially, conscious of Spaniards’ intolerance of royal excess, he set a low-profile tone. He remained at Zarzuela rather than move to the vast Royal Palace in central Madrid, a contrast to Franco, who had resided at the far grander Royal Palace of El Pardo.

In 1981 Juan Carlos won international acclaim when he faced down a military coup. He informed one of its leaders he would not leave Spain and that for them to succeed the rebels would have to shoot him.

He subsequently built an enormous amount of goodwill as an ambassador-at-large winning Spain state contracts abroad. But this stockpile dwindled throughout the 1990s as his association with a cabal of businessmen and absolute monarchs in the Gulf and his reported amorous exploits began to overshadow his reputation.

Now the scandals over Swiss bank accounts, secret foundations and untaxed multimillion-euro payments may force him to face trial or leave the country.

And the monarchy has been tainted. A televised address to the nation in March by Felipe, intended to unite a country in the grip of coronavirus, instead drew protests, with people banging pots and pans from balconies to express their anger over the alleged corruption.

Moderate critics of the monarchy contend that for the institution to survive it must be subject to sweeping reforms to introduce greater transparency over its finances and end the king’s immunity against prosecution, which would require changing the constitution.

“The strategy of the royal household, which seeks to protect the son by sacrificing the Bourbon patriarch, is doomed to failure,” said David Jiménez, a prominent commentator and former newspaper editor. He added that once the reforms are enacted, the monarchy should be put to a referendum.

But loyalists are optimistic for the monarchy’s survival, pointing out the social work done by the king and Queen Letizia and the increasingly public profile of the photogenic and modern young princesses.

“Felipe managed to fully restore the popularity of the monarchy on coming to the throne and now it’s threatened again,” said Ramón Pérez-Maura, an aristocrat and executive editor of ABC, a conservative newspaper. “But it will survive this crisis because Felipe is proving its usefulness.”

However, at Zarzuela Palace all eyes are on prosecutors in Switzerland and Spain, and of course on Juan Carlos’s former mistress, Sayn-Wittgenstein.

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

Note: This blog has long appeared on Blogger here: www.colindavies,blogspot.com    where you can choose to subscribe by email or via the Feedly RSS reader.

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'* 

The Bloody Virus 

• Good to know that:-

1. The common steroid dexamethasone - an anti-inflammatory has been shown to radically improve the chances of survival for the most ill patients, and
2. Studies have suggested that healthy levels of vitamin D might help to prevent cases turning critical and could help to mitigate a second wave.

Life in Spain

• Thanks to conflicting statements from Spanish politicians, there's still no clarity re Brits being compelled to go Inyo isolation when they arrive after 1 July. 
• Got an old banger and want a new new, low-emission car to replace it? Well, if so the Spanish government is willing to throw taxpayers' money at you. What's to lose? 
• I'm on record ad saying that, thanks to tourist throngs, I'll probably never visit Sevilla  again. Ironically, the article below is about the city as it ain't these days. Well, not usually.
• Day 2 of María's Adjusted Normal chronicle.

Portugal

• Not the best of news: Portugal can't shake the virus, even at the beach.

The USA

• Donald Trump issues police reform executive order.

The Way of the World

• The Worldwide Trade in Relics is Booming; You Too Can Own the Finger of a Saint.

English/Spanish

• A trio of refrains from a list I came across in my files the other day:-

- A change is as good as a rest: Con un cambio de actividad se reneuevan las energias.
- A fool and his money are soon parted: A los tontos no les dura el dinero.
- A friend in need is a friend indeed: En las malas se conocen a los amigos.

More tomorrow.

Finally . . .

• It dawned** on me last night that this is the the month during which I have to make a tax return. Una declaración de la renta. Normally, I'd be well aware of this but this year it's as if my subconscious felt there'd been a suspension of time during 3 months of the lockdown, so that the deadline had become end September. As, indeed, is the case with driving licence expiry dates, I discovered yesterday. In the past, I received a reminder letter from the Hacienda - with all my data and and a draft return -  but these days it's all done on the internet and it's totally down to me. Or you.Progress.

** Probably not the best verb, as I was dropping off to sleep after midnight.

THE ARTICLE 

Europe's most sensuous city in a time of social distancing: Alexander Fiske-Harrison. The Telegraph.

Six weeks ago I wrote about a dream of wandering the streets of Seville, far away from my prison quarantine in Jimena de la Frontera in the forested wilds of central Andalusia. But no imagining could have been quite as dreamlike as finally stepping off the bus at the Prado de San Sebastián, where they once burned heretics, but now welome tourists.

The Sevillian sunlight in late June has that perfect golden slant, between the chilling white of winter or the infernal yellow of true summer which comes at the end of July. The temperature here is already mid-30s in the shade and a coronavirus cleansing 40 degrees in the sun.  

I am met by my old friend, Nicolás Haro, a native of the city, who I have not seen since the pandemic began. “It has been strange, mi amigo, to be locked away because the government lacked the hospitals and personal protective equipment to allow us to be together. After all, we will all catch this virus.” 

I agree with his fatalism, but, for the moment at least, Seville is one of the clearest places on Earth, with a mere seven Covid-19 hospital patients in a city of over a million, and just two in intensive care. 

Despite this, we drive down almost deserted streets and those people we do see are masked and separated. The bars and restaurants for which the city is famed are shuttered. “It is Sunday, and tomorrow phase three of the de-escalation of confinement begins. You will see a difference, I hope,” Nicolás tells me.

I hope so as well, but also I cannot help feeling that I have never seen Seville so alluringly peaceful. With its bustle and feverish heat, rendered in purified form by its twin emblems of bullfighting and flamenco, Seville has always struck me as an overwhelming sensuous city. Now it is its grandeur that is on show, the remnants of a wealth that once outstripped all other cities on Earth. 

In over 20 years of visits, I have never seen it look so striking. 

“It is waiting,” says Nicolás simply. 

It will not have to wait for long, for all the signals are that by the end of June quarantine-free travel will occur between Seville and the rest of Europe, possibly even the UK. For now I have the city to myself and am determined to take full advantage. 

I decide to retrace the steps of my usual pilgrimage, as described in these pages, and am delighted to find Bodega Antonio Romero open, even if I begin the evening as the only customer there. 

However, my other favourites – Casa Matías, Casa Morales, Las Teresas – we find shuttered, and I retire to bed. 

Even that is trickier than usual: the owners of my two mainstays, the Hotel Inglaterra and Las Casas de la Judería, had both told me they were closed. So I reach out to an old friend, Patrick Reid Mora-Figueroa, whose family owns the exquisite boutique Hotel Corral del Rey. To no avail. “Sorry my friend, I’m in Marbella – we’re closed until September.”

Deciding to put to an end to further exchanges I contact Marriot International, which runs the largest, grandest and most historic of all the hotels in the city, the Alfonso XIII. Closed until July 1. 

Luckily, Nicolás’s brother Kinchu owns the nicest short-stay apartments in town, Almansa 11, a series of rooms carved out of the Marqués de Villamarta’s former mansion in the old El Arenal district of the city, so I finally find my rest.  

The next day, Monday, Spain begins to reopen, including the Balearic Islands to certain forms of foreign tourism. But in Seville, where the Alcazar welcomes visitors for the first time in months, hearing the exclusive use of the Spanish language in the streets and bars has its own charm. 

“It is as though the Sevillanos have reconquered the old city centre, where once it was so filled with tourists many locals stayed away,” says Nicolás.

We start the day at the usually packed El Rinconcillo, the oldest tapas bar in existence (founded in 1670) where Javier de Rueda, whose family have owned it for the last seven generations, greets us at the bar. 

From there we crisscross the city, from the taurine characters who prop up the Bodega San José next to the bullring, to Casa Cuesta over the river in old Triana, at each stop meeting with more and more people – although all distanced, all protected, all obeying the measures which finally brought the virus in Andalusia to its knees. 

And as the day draws to a close, and we sit down to dine at the finest white table cloth restaurant in the town, Casa Robles, with its perfect chuletón steak and its exhaustive list of riojas, I once again quote to myself the motto of the city which is engraved on every lampost and manhole cover, and which occurs to me each time I visit: Sevilla no me ha dejado, “Seville, she has not deserted me.”

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

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

 The Bloody Virus 

• Headline: Swedes round on Sweden’s corona approach. Opposition leaders and the public are increasingly critical of the government’s controversial approach to the virus. More here.

Life in Spain

• A graphic representation of our New Normality. in Gallego, not Casteallano . . .

• Here's Day 12 of María's new chronicle on life in Galicia.
• Pontevedra's new normality naturally includes new beggars. The latest of which sports a Mohican and probably has a dog and 'plays' the pipes.
• It's been clarified that Spain will accept tourists from the UK as of July 1. Meanwhile - in what the Germans have called a Krautentest - the Balearics received hundreds of German holidaymakers yesterday, in an 'experiment' to see how things go.
• I'm moving from Movistar to its subsidiary O2, because it's cheaper for the same telecoms service. So far, it's taken 11 days and the end is not in sight. The latest hitch is Movistar telling me the 'address' they have for me is wrong, so they can't communicate with me. This turned out to be my email, not street, address, meaning that I couldn't solve the problem on the internet. So I called them last night and, after waiting more than 30 minutes, I finally spoke to someone. But the line was so bad I really couldn't make out most of what she was saying and, in the end, just rang off. Hopefully after lodging my correct email address with her. This is always the problem in talking to Movistar, Spain's largest telecoms company. Who'd believe they can't offer a decent line?
• Perhaps things will improve when we have 5G. On the promise of which, click here. Taster: The impact 5G will have on a wide range of industries is likely to be bigger than we’ve seen with any previous generation of mobile telecoms. 

Portugal

• Worrying . . .Portugal was hailed as a rare Western European success story as a swift lockdown kept infection and death rates under control while the pandemic wreaked havoc on health systems elsewhere. However, in recent weeks it’s failed to bring infection rates down in line with its neighbors. Over the past 10 days, this country of 10 million has registered 3,100 new cases. That’s more than Spain, Italy or France, which have populations between 4 and 6 times larger

The USA

• The 15 most offensive things out of Fart's mouth in the last few years. 

The Way of the World

• The sheer speed at which young Harry Potter cast members sought to distance themselves from Rowling also encapsulates the generational divide within feminism, from the cause-led movement of previous decades to the politically expedient, victimhood industrial complex it has become.

English/Spanish

• There's light at the end of the tunnel - Hay Luz despues del tunel. More refrains (refranes) tomorrow.

Finally . . .

• So, Ricky Valance - of Tell Laura I Love Her fame - was Welsh. Never knew that.

* 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'*

 The Bloody Virus 

• So, why does Belgium have 36% more deaths/m than even the 2nd worst country, the UK? See the 1st article below.
• The latest scientific observation: Some experts believe T-cell immunity is likely to be more important for fighting coronavirus than antibodies. If so, this would explain why you have no antibodies when tested. Which would question the conclusions re infection-rate stats based on antibody tests.
• Times columnist Mathew Parris has some questions for scientists in the 2nd article below.

Life in Spain

• Spain will welcome visitors from all EU countries in the Schengen Area from 21 June. Except, oddly, our next door neighbour, Portugal. For which the date is 1st July. These folk will no longer be required to stay in quarantine for 2 weeks. No one seems to know yet how Brits will be treated, either when they come here or return home.
• Pestilential consequences of the virus here in Spain.
• María's Comeback Chronicle, Day 35.
• HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for the tidbit that the disgraced ex king of Spain has self-exiled himself to a doubtless comfortable life in the Dominican Republic.  
• Which reminds me . . . If you can read Spanish and want to know a lot about corruption here, then the book for you is judge Garzón's El Fango.
• A couple of examples of brutal modern Galician architecture. How not to use granite:-

TBH, it beats me that anyone would pay an architect to design houses like these. 

The USA

•  Donald Trump's Westpoint Commencement address.

The Way of the World

• A dangerous mix of an ascendant China, revanchist Russia, isolationist America and supine Europe is destabilising international security to a degree unknown for 30 years. Throw in a global recession linked to the pandemic and suspicions that the American president — who seems to look up to Putin, accused of meddling in America’s 2016 election in favour of Trump — may be “soft” on resurgent Russia, and the world’s alliance of democracies has never seemed more fragile.

Finally . . .

• Last night,. for the first time, I got 4-5 messages and 3 computer calls (from the USA and the UK), telling me someone was trying to get my WhatsApp verification code, and giving me the latter. I decided to ignore all this but am left wondering what it was about. There doesn't seem to be anything on the net re phishing in this way.

THE ARTICLES

1. Coronavirus: crowded and affluent, Belgium has been hit hard. Peter Conradi examines how one country had to think creatively to combat the disease.

When Belgium was in the depths of the Covid-19 outbreak, Tristan Van den Bosch, who works for a company near Antwerp that cleans the facades of high buildings, was passing a care home when he saw a man shouting up at a third-floor window.

The man was shouting at his elderly mother, the only way of communicating with her after a ban was imposed on visitors when the country began to go into lockdown on March 13.

It gave Van den Bosch an idea, a characteristically surreal Belgian one. The cleaning company’s cherry pickers were lying idle in the depot because of the crisis. Soon they were redeployed to hoist visitors up several floors so they could talk to their loved ones at close — but not too close — quarters. The machines toured the country, and Van den Bosch was hailed as a hero. “Yes, OK, it costs money, the operators cost money, but the machines are all used,” he told reporters. “We’re happy that we have been able to help people.”

It was a rare moment of joy in a country that has been hit hard by the virus. According to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University, Belgium has had 9,650 coronavirus deaths — which, at more than 84 per 100,000 people, is the highest rate in the world.

The high figure was seized on by President Donald Trump in April, when he stood in front of a bar chart showing that Belgium’s performance was four times as bad as America’s. Negative headlines followed across the globe.

Steven Van Gucht, who chairs the Belgian government’s scientific committee on Covid-19, has dismissed the comparison as the “political abuse of data”. “It was comparing cats and dogs,” he said in an interview. “You can’t compare a densely inhabited region or country such as Belgium — where the Brussels and Flanders region has the highest population density in Europe — with the entire United States.” Belgium, he pointed out, also counted cases differently. Unlike most countries, including America, it includes in its Covid-19 death statistics those where a link is only suspected, regardless of whether the victim was tested.

While many countries — Britain included — are thought to have understated the number of people killed by the virus, Belgium’s tally closely matches excess mortality figures, which give a more accurate impression of the disease’s impact.

So, is Belgium a victim of its honesty? As a small, densely populated nation of 11.5 million people in the heart of Europe, it was necessarily going to be at risk in a way that, say, the Scandinavian nations or those of eastern Europe were not.

Brussels, the capital, is home to more than one million people and the seat not just of many of the European Union institutions but also of Nato, all staffed by affluent, well-travelled people who are likely to have picked up the virus in the first months of the year when it was spreading unchecked. Nor did it help that the virus struck at a time when Belgium was locked in one of its periodic bouts of political instability and had only a caretaker prime minister, Sophie Wilmès. She nevertheless put the country into lockdown just two days after the first death on March 11.

Asked the following week by King Philippe to form a permanent administration, Wilmès put in place a coherent strategy for fighting the virus — no mean achievement given Belgium’s complicated federal structure.

“Wilmès played a blinder,” said Nigel Gardner, a former European Commission spokesman and long-time Brussels resident. “A country with five parliaments, three languages and a prime minister without a parliamentary majority came together and forged an effectively managed common approach. “The divisions that so often paralyse Belgian decision-making seemed to spur the national security council into the kind of meaningful policy debate and consistent decision-making that seemed painfully lacking in the UK.”

As with much else in Belgium, the strategy was a compromise between those adopted by France to the south and Holland to the north. Although, as in France, people were allowed out of their homes only with good reason, there was no requirement to fill in a form each time and there were no constraints on exercise. But the regime was not as liberal as in Holland, where all shops were allowed to remain open and restaurants permitted to offer takeaways, which also allowed people to pick up soft drugs from Amsterdam’s coffee houses.

To prevent its citizens being lured to Holland, the Belgian government sealed the 280-mile border, which in normal times is largely invisible. This was not always easy, especially in Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau, which are in Holland but peppered with Belgian enclaves. One branch of Zeeman, a budget clothing store, straddles the border. While the Dutch side could remain open, the shelves that were in Belgium had to be sealed off with red and white tape.

Although it seems to have done all the right things, Belgium appears to have been hit slightly harder than Holland, even after its method of counting is taken into account. In contrast to its neighbours, its cases were evenly spread across the country rather than concentrated in particular regions.

Van Gucht said many Belgians had become infected during skiing holidays in the Italian Alps at half-term, which began on the weekend of February 22-23, when the virus was already well established there. Their return the following week coincided with carnival, which is celebrated across Catholic Belgium. “We have these parades in the streets, and usually after these parades people go and party inside. They drink a lot, they sing a lot and are very touchy-feely — which is the ideal environment for the virus,” Van Gucht said. “These were two things that really catalysed the outbreak in a very short period of time.”

Especially hard hit was Sint-Truiden, a town of 40,000 people 40 miles east of Brussels renowned for its carnival. It was the one place in Belgium where hospitals ran out of intensive care beds at the peak of the epidemic.

Largely Catholic southern Holland, which also celebrates carnival and had its half-term at the same time, was the worst affected part of that country. In the rest of Holland schools broke up a week earlier and carnival is less of a tradition.

As in other countries, it was Belgium’s care homes that proved especially vulnerable — accounting for just over half of fatalities. The first to die, a female resident in her eighties, is thought to have been infected by family members who visited after returning from Italy.

Such visits were subsequently banned, but the virus was apparently still being brought in by staff. “They were not really trained for infection protection and control, like the staff in a hospital,” said Van Gucht. At the beginning the emphasis was also on getting masks and other protective equipment to hospitals rather than care homes.

According to Van Gucht, most of the victims were people in their late eighties or nineties who were frail and suffering from other diseases. In some cases the virus may have hastened death by only a few weeks, which would explain why overall mortality rates have fallen in recent weeks to lower than usual. “But unfortunately we also lost a lot of people who had months or years to go.”

The government found itself under fire from medical staff. When Wilmès arrived for a visit to the St Pierre hospital in Brussels last month, employees turned their backs on her car. The protest, against low salaries, budget cuts and the hiring of unqualified staff, was widely shared on social media.

Since last month Belgium has been relaxing restrictions step by step, with the mayors of the 581 communes that make up the country given considerable latitude to decide the speed and manner. In Brussels, for example, masks are compulsory in some of the 19 communes but not others; in one, Etterbeek, rules differ from street to street.

Three policemen who were meant to be checking motorists crossing the Dutch border were caught having an impromptu barbecue at which several bottles of rosé were consumed. A few days later drivers hoping to get to France for the long Whitsun weekend were turned back after a minister erroneously reported that the borders were open. In fact, the one with France does not open until tomorrow.

The Belgian royal family have not been spared embarrassment: Philippe’s nephew, Prince Joachim, who is on an internship in Spain, was fined €10,400 for breaking lockdown rules after attending a party in Cordoba when he should have been observing a 14-day quarantine.

With the number of Belgian cases falling sharply, and the daily death toll barely in double figures after a peak of almost 500, the end is in sight. “At the beginning, we started by banning everything,” said Wilmès, announcing the latest relaxation of the internal lockdown, which came into force last Monday. From now on, she told her compatriots, “everything will be allowed, except the activities that are specifically forbidden”.

2. If scientists are wrong about Covid, they must be held to account: If the economic damage caused by lockdown turns out to have been needless, it’s not just politicians who’ll be to blame: Matthew Parris, Times

The world has panicked and the British government has panicked worse than most. We scared ourselves and our fellow citizens out of rational thought. By losing our sense of proportion I submit we have crashed our economy, crashed our education system, our performing arts, our tourist and travel industry, and blighted the life chances of a whole generation. Before too long, commentators, politicians and scientists may be blushing at the mess we made of our national response to the coronavirus pandemic. Commentators will duck. Politicians will be blamed for everything, and who can doubt that political leadership has been a shambles?

But how about “the science”, those men and women, academics, doctors and mathematical modellers, in whose expertise ministers once placed their trust? The doomsday scenario that scientists unveiled to government nearly three months ago was the direct cause of the indiscriminate and economically devastating lockdown that followed.

Ministers must be losing confidence in these scientists now, because Britain is being led out of lockdown before our test-trace-and-isolate system is properly functional. There is no vaccine and only a small minority show immunity. Professor Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London told the government in March that, unchecked, the pandemic would rage out of control and up to half a million of us could die before the tide would turn. This high tide (he said) would not occur until some 60 per cent of us were testing positive. We’re nowhere near that. It must follow that government no longer trusts the science.

I certainly don’t. Professor Ferguson and his Imperial team have been associated with nightmare predictions of possible casualties from mad cow disease (BSE), swine flu and bird flu, none of which came to pass. Their advice on foot and mouth led to the slaughter of six million animals, most of them uninfected. Their predictions will have been professionally hedged with “might” and “could” (just as shock headlines in middle-market tabloids take care to insert question marks) but a pattern emerges in this team’s modelling.

I began this column by claiming a sort of terrified unthinkingness in our nation. Brains have gone to jelly. Everywhere we see or hear death tolls for leading nations rendered in crude totals: America, “leading” with 115,000; Brazil, 41,000; Ireland, 1,703. Such information is almost useless, because (do I really have to write this?) some countries have more people in them than others. The useful measure is deaths-per-million. On that score (for example) Ireland is about the same as the US, Brazil is doing better than both and we British are doing much worse than almost all of them. Japan, where there was no real lockdown, has lost only seven citizens per million. Spain had a draconian lockdown yet tremendous loss of life.

Even this oversimplifies. Some countries are behind the curve and face many more deaths later. Others are probably under-counting. But you cannot survey the whole field, asking first, “How many deaths per million?” and second, “How much of a lockdown?” without being led to this conclusion: something big is wrong in our understanding. Whole sections of the science jigsaw are missing. There seems to be no simple correlation between lockdown and death rate.

Now, I do not doubt that lockdown must suppress the rate of transmission. Nor that to some degree, facemasks would. Or that two-metre distancing offers more protection than one-metre distancing, as four-metre distancing would protect better than two; or that if schools had not been closed, some people would have been infected who otherwise wouldn’t have been.

But it’s a matter of what weight should be attached to particular lockdown measures. Of course extra protection is achieved by brutal lockdowns, but how much? Evidence is emerging that in Britain the pandemic had peaked before we went into lockdown. Simon Wood, professor of statistical science at the University of Bristol, says that the data used by the Ferguson group “are also consistent with fatal infections being in decline several days before lockdown, rather than exponentially increasing. Data from other countries also suggests that measures short of full lockdown can halt epidemic growth.”

Norway, which went early and hard into lockdown, is an example. Their prime minister, Erna Solberg, said last month “I probably took many of the decisions out of fear”. She now questions whether “it was necessary to close schools. Perhaps not.”

You see where my argument is heading: we allowed some scientists to panic us into a bludgeoning response. So now let me confront four big challenges you’d be right to put to me. First: “Hindsight’s fine, but did you say this before we knew what we now know?” Yes, if tentatively, on this page on March 21, just before the lockdown.

Your second question: “How can you recommend taking any risk with people’s lives?” And I admit that more people might have died if our lockdown had been designed (as I wrote) “to keep grandparents safe without closing down the economy”. But, though any death is a cause for sorrow and I apologise if this hurts some who read it, livelihoods matter as well as lives, and these lockdowns will cast a long, dark shadow forward, not least over our health service. Some deaths are indirect.

Your third question should be this: “How might the modelling that led Ferguson and his Imperial team to their catastrophist predictions be wrong?” Well, I believe they paid insufficient attention to possible variations in the potency of infected people to spread infection, or variations in the infectability of uninfected people, or both. In short, we can be more or less resistant, more or less infectious: it isn’t all-or-nothing.

Potential infectors and infected don’t seem to be behaving like a child’s game of tag — touch another and they’re It — or why does the virus appear to have all but departed from London, when only an estimated 20 per cent of Londoners would test positive for the Covid-19 antibodies? My guess (and I’m not alone in this) is that the virus begins to encounter some kind of resistance to its spread at a much lower level than Ferguson’s 60 per cent.

Your fourth question should be: “What if we’re hit by the massive second wave of infections that the Imperial model always predicted?” My answer is that I’d expect localised secondary waves but not a tsunami. If it’s a tsunami then I shall have been proved wrong.

Will Ferguson and his team show the same humility if the near-certainty these scientists offered ministers proves unwarranted? The cost has been astronomical. Politicians are not the only professionals who should be held to account.

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

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

Life in Spain

• Another article on Spain's politico-economic woes, exacerbated by the pandemic.
• María's Comeback Chronicle, Day 34. On a global issue of the moment.
• The evangelical pastor who shepherds the flock of gypsies in the permenanent settlement near my house has requested leniency for the 10-12  individuals currently incarcerated for drug dealing - on the grounds that each of them has promised never to do this again. Even the writer of the article in the Diariro de Pontevedra expressed open scepticism on this point.
• Way back in 2006, I took fotos of the properties in Pontevedra I suspected would eventually disappear, regardless of rules/laws against demolition. This scene is 5th and 6th in that series:-

I thought it was illegal these days to demolish old facades but maybe things are different when you propose a 7-floor block of flats, with all the income - white and black - which that brings in.

The UK

• Thanks to the lockdown - as the nation works from home - puppies are going for up to £10,000, as crooks are exploiting “unprecedented” interest in owning one. Common crossbreeds such as cockapoos and labradoodles are selling at more than 4 times their worth, while pedigrees such as British and French bulldogs have had 5-fold increases. Personally, I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would want to own a bulldog but each to his own, I guess. Or, in the case of the French breed, chacun à son goût. A phrase, incidentally, a French partner once told me is no longer used in France

The USA

•   Trump explains Juneteenth.

The Way of the World

• No leader can withstand the intensive scrutiny of history, as Churchill fans are finding, but social media and an incontinent press are doing the same job with would-be leaders. Sooner, rather than later, anyone who puts their head over the parapet will be shown to have feet of clay. 

Finally . . .

• I've been adopted by another abandoned kitten, fleas an' all. Which is as playful - and possibly as daft - as the last one. Why me?  Kittens are amusing but I don't like cats and am, in fact, allergic to their dander . . . Il faut souffrir. Possibly another phrase no longer used in France.
• My Dutch house-guest has just commented on the kitten's 'snoring' with pleasure. An easy mistake, I guess. 
• Which reminds me . . . Here's a collection of amusing verses on ridiculous English spellings.

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

Note: his blog has long appeared on Blogger here: www.colindavies,blogspot.com   where there's a nice foto which EoS declines to include, even though it was taken by me

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

The Bloody Virus 

• Today, the USA will overtake the Netherlands in the deaths/m table, rising to 7th, after France.

Life in Spain

• Yesterday, reader (and fellow blogger) María posted a comment on Spanish politics which merits posting here: Spanish democracy is in danger, but not like in 1936, when the army was the institution to fear. Now, it's the courts. Look at the judge who won't let the accusation against the government over the March 8th marches be dismissed. Or the four conservative judges on a panel of the Consitutional Court that have acceeded to Vox's request to look into whether the deputies who swore their oath to the Constitution changing the wording, should not be allowed to sit in chambers, thereby making the government illegitimate. The danger this time is the court system and all the left overs from Franco's era still sitting there, or those who have been mentored by ultra-conservatives. Little by little, law by law, they will whittle away at democracy until Vox, or some other ultra-right conservatives, walk into Moncloa and finish the silent coup. 
• And here's something which rather endorses María's fears, headed: Spain’s Post-Lockdown Culture War Has Only Just Begun. Some tasters:-

- The coronavirus response has increased political polarization, threatening the country’s economic recovery.

- The pandemic has deepened the erosion of civility in Spanish politics.

- The right-wing battle for support is just one part of the culture war emerging from Spain’s long lockdown. The other axis of discontent is the ongoing tussle between the central government and Spain’s powerful regional governments.

- Spain’s parliamentary debates and media discourse are a cacophony of accusations and fake news. 

• Religion is, of course, still a large factor in Spain, though much less superficially observable than it was when I first came here in 2000. When clerics regularly appeared on TV, to spout RC dogma. Now, behind the scenes, things are left to the far-right faithful of Opus Dei, whose membership was said to include a large majority of the last PP government. And possibly everyone who votes for Vox.
• A lighter take on creeping authoritarianism.
• And here's María's normal take on life here - Day 33 of her Comeback Chronicle.
• Here and here - if you can see them - are The Local's advice on life changes under the New Normal and what we currently know about travelling to Spain this summer. Or don't don't know in the case of the UK.

The USA

• A couple of opinions on Fart:-

1.  The editor of the conservative National Review: If Trump loses in November, it won't because he pursued a big legislative reform that was a bridge too far politically.  It won't be because he adopted a creative and unorthodox policy mix that alienated his own side. It won't even be because he was overwhelmed by events, challenging though they've been. It will mostly be because he took his presidency and needlessly drove it into the ground, 280 characters at a time.
2. Although stupid, Trump talks as if he really believes he's a genius. Which he does, of course. Oblivious to what most of us think of him. That old Dunning-Kruger effect.

The Way of the World

•  Mustn't offend the Germans . . . The BBC said last night that it had temporarily made the Fawlty Towers episode 'The Germans' unavailable while it carries out a review. The episode, first aired in 1975, showed hotel owner Basil Fawlty goose-stepping while shouting "Don't mention the war" in front of a group of German tourists. Even the Germans are astonished at this, I'm told.
• Nuance is no good in this age of self-righteous identity politics. See the article below.

Finally . . .

• Within a few minutes of posting my comment yesterday, the books arrived at my door. On the surface, it looks like the 2 week delay was in the Netherlands, not Spain. Which is a turn-up for the books . . . Oh, quite literally.

THE ARTICLE

Nuance is no good in this age of self-righteous identity politics: Jemima Lewis 

The word “gaslighting” derives from a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton about a sinister and controlling husband, but has

been popularised more recently as part of the new lexicon of social justice. It means to manipulate a person using psychological trickery until they begin to question their own sanity.

It’s funny, because I feel increasingly gaslit by the very generation that so rightly abhors this behaviour. Like the befuddled wife in Hamilton’s play, I am almost afraid to trust the evidence of my own senses. Things that once seemed, and still seem, self-evident facts have now been recast as faulty thinking, with no room for nuance or disagreement. Anyone who persists in clinging to wrong thoughts is ridiculed, threatened, berated and ostracised: a perfect template of the gaslighter’s art.

JK Rowling has been subjected to this sort of treatment for years, ever since she absent-mindedly “liked” a sceptical Twitter post about gender identity. This marked her out as a wrong-thinker, and set off of a trickle of abuse that has since swollen to a flood. This week, in a long and nuanced blog, Rowling attempted to explain why she has become increasingly concerned about some of the doctrines of the trans-rights lobby, such as the demand for legal self-identification, the argument that lesbians who don’t want to have sex with people with penises are bigots, and the strange disappearance of the word “woman” from polite conversation. 

Rowling revealed some painful episodes from her own past to reinforce her argument. She had endured domestic abuse in her first marriage, she said, and suffered a serious sexual assault in her twenties. These experiences had convinced her of the need for female-only spaces.

I don’t doubt Rowling’s sincerity, or her cunning: she knows that the only hope of getting through to the social justice brigade is to bare your own wounds. According to the rules of identity politics, your “lived experience” – especially the painful stuff – is what justifies your opinion. “My life has been shaped by being female,” Rowling tweeted this week, using her enemies’ tactics against them. “I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”

It didn’t work, of course. The generation that insists on the sanctity of individual identity also demands complete conformity of thought and speech, on this and on many other matters. Anyone who questions the new orthodoxy, however politely, must be punished.

Some of the Twitter responses to Rowling’s blog have made my hair stand on end: not just the torrent of obscene threats, but the wilful misinterpretation, the cod psychology, the belittling of an intelligent woman. I saw one blue-tick influencer urging people not to read the blog for themselves because it’s “a waste of time and an insult”; another diagnosed Rowling with something called “internalised transphobia”; yet another (a journalist for Pink News, for heaven’s sake), dismissed Rowling’s history of domestic violence as a “nonsensical pity party”.

A school in west Sussex announced that it is dropping plans to name one of its houses after Rowling because she “may in fact no longer be an appropriate role model for pupils”. It’s so zeitgeisty it’s almost (but not) funny. Watching JK Rowling being pulled from her plinth by the excitable mob, I feel utterly estranged from my country. But that’s how gaslighting works, isn’t it? It’s not the world that’s going mad, dear: it’s you.

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

Note: his blog has long appeared on Blogger here: www.colindavies,blogspot.com   where there's a nice foto which EoS declines to include, even though it was taken by me.

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

Note: I'm indebted to Lenox Napier's comprehensive Business Over Tapas for some of today's items

The Bloody Virus 

• Decidedly not good news . . . The OECD says Spain’s economy is the most vulnerable in the world to a second virus outbreak, as COVID-19 cases double. Thanks to the beneficial evil of tourism.

 Life in Spain

• This could surely be the USA but it ain't. It's Spain:-

- Grudges from the Civil War

- Long-running culture wars. 

- Politics fiercely partisan

- Sharp ideological fault lines

- Longstanding divisions

- Acute economic hardship

- A burning sense of injustice, and

- An opposition which is stirring legitimate criticism with paranoia, crackpot conspiracy theories and ancient resentments into a toxic brew.

Or so it says here, where the bottom line is that: The danger is that the country’s entrenched political factions are increasingly inhabiting parallel realities and leaving the country unable to face its mounting challenges.  Could well be true.

• If you live here, you'll have noticed the ubiquitous price rises since we were last allowed to shop and eat and drink. And you might also have clocked a 'Covid supplement' on the bottom of your bill. Which Facua, the consumers' association, says is illegal. But possibly not. De jure and not just de facto. See The Local here on this, if you can get past their paywall. [Try Reader view].
• I guess no one is going to be surprised at the many fraudulent claims under the ERTE system.
• Looking ahead, it you want a cheap beachside place to stay in this summer, take a look at Burela on the northern Galician coast, where a 50m2 flat will set you back only around €200 a week. Compared with up to 10 times that along our western coast. Endless sun is guaranteed in neither place, of course. But one is much more fashionable than the other.
• María's Comeback Chronicle, Day 32: The Grim Reaper. I had a very similar experience in Surabaya once. Couldn't speak for 15 minutes.

The USA

•  Donald Trump destroys Nascar.

Finally . . . 

• The power of this blog. . . . After mentioning that the books were still in the Netherlands, I got advice this morning that they've finally arrived in Spain. Possibly. It says 'Country of Destination'.
• A friend who took her driving test this week confirmed that learners are still taught - here in Pontevedra at least - to negotiate roundabouts in complete contravention of the instructions given in media diagrams and in videos by the Traffic Department. And in the face of common sense/intelligence. The said diagrams videos and are easily found on Youtube, by the way - if you really want/need to see what the much-ignored official 'guidance' is.

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

Note: his blog has long appeared on Blogger here: www.colindavies,blogspot.com   where there's a nice foto which EoS declines to include, even though it was taken by me.

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

The Bloody Virus 

• This map tells you where it's least risky to travel to in Spain, though 3 of Galicia's 4 provinces seem to be data-deficient. You might be able to get The Local's comments in English here.
• Hydroxychloroquine: What a shock! Trump called it wrong.
• The USA has now risen above Ireland for deaths/m and will soon overtake France and, very probably, Sweden in due course.
• See below for a nice, though rather shocking, article on 'Spain's Unsung Heroes' below.

Life in Spain

• Can anyone really be surprised at the finding that, for native English speakers, the best new language to learn is Spanish? At least until Mandarin becomes essential/obligatory . . .
• Sad news for at least some Brits/foreigners. I'd never heard of the service, never mind used it. But I guess the ads only appear Down South, in the ghettoes. [Attempted irony emoji]

• Here's an interesting blog on what is Spain's - and Europe's - least populated area. Which is written about - and beautifully snapped - by this talented lady. Coincidentally, I'm planning a road trip to Teruel and beyond later this year, things permitting.
• Reader María has raised the issue of what constitutes the middle class in Spain. I suspect that, as in the USA, this is an income-related question. Whereas it's far less 'simple' in the UK. So, what is the upper income level here in Spain? €80,000 a year? At least this would fit with María's contention that anyone earning €100,000 can't be considered even 'upper middle class', to use a British term. 'Uppermost' even.
• Here's María's Day 31 of her Come-back Chronicle - Gone phishing.

The USA

• "He fell harder than he was pushed". How much more evidence is needed of the appalling personality of the current president of this great(?) country? Not to mention his mindset/sanity.

Finally . . .

• Reader María has corrected my mis-recollection of where the alleged crocodile was seen, not in Sevilla but close to Valladolid. See this article, where that city is said to lie in 'centre-northern' Spain, not in the 'North West'. To which I objected a few days ago.,
• I had a packet of books sent to me from the Netherlands in late February, just before I was sue to leave Pontevedra for 3 weeks. I failed to get Correos here to retain them during my absence for 3 weeks  and I was also unsuccessful in getting my neighbour to pick them up, as some bureaucratic requirement couldn't be met. So, after 2 weeks here, the books were sent back to the Netherlands, whence they were re-sent to me on 27 May. According to the tracking information, they're still there, though they were 'sorted' on 29 May. I'm beginning to fear I'll never see these accursed books. 

 THE ARTICLE

Spain’s unsung heroes on the coronavirus front line: Isambard Wilkinson , The Times.

The hardest task for Lieutenant Rafael Cisneros and his unit during the worst days of the coronavirus in Spain was not the handling of dead bodies to be transferred from hospitals to morgues. It was entering care homes for the elderly. “You’d see people fighting for their lives,” he said. “You’d see the nearness of death.”

Lieutenant Cisneros and his team of military emergency specialists are trained to deal with biological and chemical incidents. They were not prepared for the chaos and distressing scenes in care homes as they were plunged on to the front line of Spain’s coronavirus disaster. They encountered dead bodies locked in rooms, the rapid spread of the disease as infectious residents mixed with healthy ones, and staff in despair. Shrouded in protective suits, goggles and face-masks they were met with looks of horror, confusion and fear caused by their presence.

They disinfected the homes, imposed order and tried to keep residents calm in a mission that became the toughest part of a huge national military response to the pandemic, which had a lasting emotional impact on the units.

Yet the grim work of the armed forces has largely gone unrecognised. Their past is too fresh for public acclamation.

Care homes were the epicentre of the outbreak in Spain, one of the worst hit countries where the pandemic officially claimed over 27,000 lives. The figure does not include an estimated 19,000 people who died with symptoms in care homes. Some 48,000 more people have died in 2020 than during the same period in 2019, according to the national statistics institute.

Some care homes in Madrid had at least 40 deaths — a third of the residents in one institution — linked to Covid-19. Staff used dustbin bags as protection for lack of proper resources. The scene was repeated in other parts of Spain. In Catalonia there were reports of at least 57 deaths in one home, more than a third of the residents.

Lieutenant Cisneros is a member of the 3,500-strong Emergency Military Unit (UME), which is based at Torrejón airbase, just outside Madrid. It is known for its work in containing the damage from floods, forest fires and industrial accidents.

Speaking to The Times at the base, where fire engines and personnel clad in red protection suits were training to tackle the summer’s forest fires, he said the company he commands was among the first to go through care home doors. “In some cases we found dead people in their rooms,” he said. “In the worst cases everyone was in contact with each other and there were no barriers — it was just a matter of time before everyone got sick. The first impression is shocking for everyone but it’s our mission.”

Margarita Robles, the defence minister, made international headlines on March 23 when she said the military had found “elderly abandoned, if not dead, in their beds”. The discovery confirmed what some relatives of care home residents already knew. It also symbolised the scale of the tragedy and its toll on society’s most vulnerable people. The revelation had another effect: it highlighted the role that Spain’s armed forces were playing at the heart of the crisis.

Military units have conducted over 20,000 missions involving more than 180,000 personnel during the pandemic. Yet despite their initial visibility in the Spanish media — a photograph of two uniformed soldiers helping an elderly woman carrying her shopping attracted particular attention — the story of their contribution has largely gone untold.

The reason for this lies in Spain’s recent history and the military’s support for the dictatorship of General Franco until his death in 1975. Despite modernisation and reform since then, the old stigma has survived, even though opinion polls rank them among the country’s most trusted institutions.

Charles Powell, the director of the Elcano Royal Institute, a think tank in Madrid, believes the armed forces have emerged “strengthened in political and popular perception”. Much of this is due to their speed of response. On March 14, a little more than a week before the defence minister’s revelation, Pedro Sánchez, the Socialist prime minister, imposed one of Europe’s strictest lockdown, with nobody allowed to leave their homes other than for essential tasks.

However, Mr Sánchez’s government, the first run by a coalition in Spain’s modern democratic history, was initially slow to respond. It had been in office for only 15 days when the country recorded its first coronavirus case: a German tourist on holiday in the Canary Islands on January 31, the same day the World Health Organisation declared a global health emergency. Yet the government’s emergency health chief said he expected Spain to have, at most, only a few diagnosed cases. The military, however, were preparing. The UME’s intelligence gatherers had tracked the virus’s progress from China to Italy. In the unit’s command centre, where personnel sit in front of a wall of digital screens monitoring national emergency flash-points, Major Juan Martínez said: “In the weeks before the declaration of the state of emergency we watched the unprecedented acceleration of the threat and we began to plan.”

The defence ministry announced Operation Balmis on March 15. Named after Francisco de Balmis, who led an expedition to carry the smallpox vaccine to the United States from Spain at the beginning of the 19th century, it would be by far the largest military operation conducted since the transition to democracy after Franco’s death.

In the first two weeks of the crisis, the military’s operations across Spain took on a frantic tempo. The UME was the spearhead with navy, army and air force units in support. After patrols and logistics missions, they helped with food distribution and conducted a massive campaign of disinfections.

As well as hospitals, they decontaminated bus stations, ports, police stations, prisons, metro stations, buses, parks, lodgings for healthcare workers and courts. In a few months they would disinfect everywhere from Barcelona’s fish market to the national library in Madrid. But it quickly became apparent that the chief role of the armed forces would be disinfecting and reorganising care homes for the elderly. “We came across care homes where the problems were of such magnitude that the staff would have had difficulties to act even if they had known what to do,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Juan Esteban, the commander of the UME’s 1st battalion.

Captain Juan Meneses, a company commander with the Legion, an elite infantry unit based in Almeria in southeast Spain, encountered his toughest Covid-19 assignment on March 25, in a large care home in Albacete. His unit found that 60 to 70 people, a third of its elderly residents, were infected. His mission was to decontaminate the residence and separate the ill from the healthy. Captain Meneses said the anguish on the faces of residents and workers when the military arrived was one of the images that has haunted him. “It’s the anxiety of not knowing exactly what’s happening because of the virus, because they’ve had so many infections, if we’re going to be capable of solving the problems,” he said. “There are elderly people who don’t know what’s happening and you need to keep them calm and try to make sure they don’t worry. For me that was the most painful situation.”

Across Spain care homes called on the military. “We couldn’t cope,” Lieutenant-Colonel Esteban said. “We never stopped. The waiting list for care homes that needed help never ended as one after another called for our assistance.” Within two months the armed forces managed to assist 5,200 care homes.

While most of the military’s efforts were focused on elderly care homes, they were also instrumental in setting up field hospitals, including a 5,000-bed facility in Madrid at IFEMA, the capital’s conference centre. With hospitals overflowing with the dead and funeral workers overstretched, armed forces personnel also transferred bodies to a morgue set up at an ice rink in Madrid. “When we started taking on the management of the bodies, that was when all the missions happened at once — in hospitals, care homes, transferring bodies and patients — it was the start of the crest of the wave,” Lieutenant Cisneros said. Ambulance services were also overwhelmed and so the UME evolved methods of rigging up buses to transport patients who were moderately ill with the virus between hospitals and medicalised hotels.

The crisis peaked on April 2, with the daily reported death rate reaching 950. At that time Major María José Rodriguez, who ran a UME unit that normally tests for nuclear, biological or chemical contamination but had been adapted to carry out coronavirus tests on personnel, said she was working 14-hour days. “There was a great demand for speed as they needed to know quickly if they could be deployed,” she said.

Such was the engagement with the emergency, said Lieutenant-Colonel Leandro Caballero, the head of UME’s psychology unit, that many personnel had to be told to go home. At group psychotherapy sessions, personnel tasked to care homes discussed how they had been affected by the scenes they had witnessed. “It became clear that it had been more stressful for them to work with the living than the dead,” he said. “In some cases they identified with a patient or resident in a dramatic situation, thinking of their own relatives, their parents or grandparents.”

From mid-April, when the daily death toll started a downward trend, the pace of military operations slowed. Operation Balmis is expected to end when the state of emergency expires on June 21 and Spain edges towards leaving lockdown.

The weight of the military’s effort has been recognised by Spain’s health sector. “The work of the armed forces helped to reduce the impact of the disease in many areas, from prevention — by cleaning and disinfection — to healthcare in terms of setting up field hospitals, and to the ultimate consequences of the disease by supporting funeral services,” said Ignacio Rosell, professor of preventive medicine and public health at the University of Valladolid.

However, political appreciation remains muted because of their Francoist past. “Political leaders, socialists and conservatives, have never wanted to be tied to the armed forces because they perceive a popular rejection of them, an opposition to them,” Félix Arteaga, senior defence analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute, said. “So you very rarely see political leaders, even conservatives, visiting troops abroad.” When asked why the armed forces had not received more recognition, one army officer shrugged and replied: “If you were Spanish, you’d know.”

The military’s own assessment of its achievements is modest. “What we did was not technically difficult. In that sense it was easy,” Lieutenant-Colonel Esteban said. “The most important thing for me was that in a moment of general shock we gave an organised and immediate response. We didn’t wait for anyone to call us.”


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

Note: This blog has long appeared on Blogger here: www.colindavies,blogspot.com   where there's a nice foto which EoS declines to include, even though it was taken by me.

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

The Bloody Virus 

• Are you ready to be confused/worried?

- Coronavirus confinement measures may have saved 3.1 million lives across 11 European countries, including 450,000 in Spain.

- A biostatistician at Valencia University says: “These figures should be viewed skeptically. They are probably an overestimate.”

- No country is close to herd immunity. The WHO says the global pandemic is getting worse, not better. Their Europe chief said this week he fears a more deadly second wave this winter.

- The American South is already in a second wave.

- More than half of people tested in Italy's coronavirus epicentre of Bergamo have antibodies. Testing reveals that 57% of people in Bergamo and the surrounding province have come into contact with the virus

Life in Spain

• We will be living the 'new normal' from either 22 or 29 June, depending on which phase we're currently in. And this won't be as bad as we first thought, it says here. There'll be stringent security and hygiene measures but no confinement. And these will end when the virus is considered beaten. As in New Zealand, I guess. 
• One of the (many) nasty effects of Covid-19 is that it has induced a severe recession on us that is decimating Spain’s middle class. Who are about to hit with new taxes, that you might or might not be able to avoid, if you follow the advice given here.  
• If a spike is going to happen in summer here in Spain, it'ill surely be in sea-side resorts. I'm told that everywhere in nearby Sanxenxo - The Marbella of Galicia - is fully booked. Almost certainly by Madrileños fleeing their furnace.
• Meanwhile, I have to wonder about compliance with the government's regulations on mask-wearing. In the place I take my morning coffee, I'm surrounded by mask-less, wine-drinking seniors who aren't remotely 2m apart. Or possibly even 1. And none of them is wearing a mask. As with most people on O Burgo bridge yesterday. Though in this case - given it was a road bridge until recently  - it's wide enough to make it easy for everyone to be 2m from all other pedestrians. 
• I neglected to post María's Comeback Chronicle yesterday, so here's Days 29 and 30.
• I'm guessing the camino de Santiago will be open for business by July 1 but an article in the local press yesterday suggests there's pessimism about numbers until 2021's Holy/Jacobean Year. When it was originally felt there'd be more than 120,000 'pilgrims' passing through Pontevedra city. Against 5,000 only 10 years ago. Personally, I wouldn't mind it being well below 120,000. Though my friend building a new 'pilgrims'' albergue in Veggie Square would surely take a different view. Currently, he's not displeased that construction - as ever - is way behind schedule. 

The UK

• This is not England, claims Richard North here. And it's not run by a government for which he hasn't got the slightest admiration. His son expands on the theme in the article cited. At least reader Perry will agree, if no one else does.

The USA

• Donald Trump Defends OAN and Calls Out Geezergate.

The Way of the World

• Apart from hedge funds, Deliveroo, wine or beer merchants and makers of PPE, the biggest business beneficiary of pandemic has been Netflix, its regularly replenished stocks of glossy dram series ideal for lockdown.

Finally . . .

• As feared, it looks like I'm killing the 2 holly tree seedlings. Or one of them at least. I wish I knew how. Too much water? Too little water? Wrong location??

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

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

The Bloody Virus 

• Yesterday it was baldness, now it's being of blood group A-positive that makes you more susceptible than others. 
• Smoking, on the other hand, seems to give you a degree of protection. The virus seems to have a (rather malicious) sense of humour.

Life in Spain

• The pandemic here is 'practically under control', we're told. But we shouldn't get complacent, because people arriving from overseas might bring it back. And, closer to home, large gatherings - particularly birthday parties - have led to infection spikes in several parts of the country. 
• Spain is one of the countries to which there'll be an 'air bridge' with the UK by the end of June, says the British government. Though how effective this'll be in the face of compulsory 14 days isolation on your return remains to be seen. (Infra)
• Spain's population was around 40m when I came here in 2000. Since then it's gone up and down in harmony with the economic situation, largely reflecting the comings and goings of immigrants from (linguistically and culturally) not-very-dissimilar South Americans. It's now reached 47m, thanks to said immigrants. Plus quite a few Moroccans. And Romanians.
• Until he shot an elephant - or at least until a triumphant foto was published - Spaniards weren't terribly interested in the (mis)doings of their (ex)king. But things have changed rather, and now our Supreme Court has begun investigating whether he pocketed millions in respect of a high-speed train contract with Saudi Arabia. However, the Public Prosecutor has warned that the case is of “undeniable technical complexity”. So, plenty of scope for just about any outcome. Here's El País on this development. My guess is that time will be run out.
• Talking of matters legal . . . This is a comprehensive article of the infamous 'Gag Law' of the last (right wing) PP government - the mad far-reach of which I've touched on a few times, admittedly without being arrested so far.

The UK

• As of yesterday, almost everyone arriving in the UK is legally obliged to quarantine themselves for 14 days. However, the police will have a 'limited' role in enforcing this, only issuing £1,000 fines as a last resort. This would be after all attempts have been made to Engage, Explain and Encourage before moving on to Enforcement. Blimey, if this were Spain, if you hadn't filled out your 'locator' form on the plane you'd have €1,000 taken from your bank account before you'd left your seat. And then another €6,000 if you put a foot outside your home during the next fortnight. With your neighbours being only too happy to snitch on you via a denuncia.
• Anyway, a number of interested companies are this week challenging the legality of this quarantine measure, seeking an injunction to stop it. And Brits themselves seem to have concluded it won't be enforced, as they've flocked to book overseas holidays and reservations on BA, EasyJet and Ryanair. Though maybe they're just planning to 'engage' with the police when they get back. After giving false addresses on their locator forms.

The USA

• Fart gives a  heartfelt landmark speech on unity.

 The Way of the World

• Effie Deans makes some interesting points here about the obsession with demonstrating you're free of today's superordinate crime of racism. And about its consequences in these viral times.
• As someone else has put it: Fighting racism does not justify betrayal of those of all colours working to rid us of the coronavirus. Though doubtless some - many? - would disagree. Especially among the young, fortuitously those least likely to pay the price.

Finally . . .

•  I'm on record as saying I'm unlikely to ever again subject myself to the tourist hordes of Sevilla, should they ever return. That's even less likely now that there's a bloody huge crocodile in the river than runs through it. Possibly released by some cretin who used to keep it in his bath.

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

Note: his blog has long appeared on Blogger here: www.colindavies,blogspot.com   where there's a nice foto which EoS declines to include, even though it was taken by me.

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*  

The Bloody Virus

• Oh, dear. Iran has been swamped by a second wave after its lockdown was eased to save jobs. And folks were beginning to think this wouldn't happen anywhere.

Life in Spain

• Here's El País, in English, with info on Phase 3 of the de-escalation, which most of us have entered today.
• María's Comeback Chronicle, Market Day.
• HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for the visual treats here, here and here.
• That appointment . . . I got through on the 2nd call this morning and learnt that the smaller residence 'card' that replaces the A4 paper 'certificate' some of us foreigners have is only made of paper too, not plastic. So less useful/durable than the laminated reduced-size document I had a copistería make for me. So, I won't be following up on that. Especially as sometime after the end of this year, we Brits will get a new type of card. Let's hope it's made of plastic.

 UK

• Political observers say a phenomenon - 'the switch' - occurs in the life of every government. Before this, everything goes right for it. After this point, nothing does. This seems to have happened sooner than usual with Boris Johnson's administration. Which has already built an unenviable reputation for incompetence and bad-faith. 

The USA

• Quote of the weekend: America is a tinderbox and Trump is playing with matches. Someone — Joe Biden? — must take them off him.
• Randy Rainbow does his stuff here - The Bunker Boy

The Way of the World

• How things have changed . . . At the Hague Congress in May 1947, each of the 800 or so participants received a souvenir packet of cigarettes bearing the official colours of the event as a gift from the Dutch authorities

Finally . . .

• Said someone recently**: If you have music in your soul, you are Spanish. Or at least Hispanic.

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

** After a spontaneous post-prandial fiesta yesterday in the garden of my neighbours, Amparo and (Nice but Noisy) Toni.

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

The Bloody Virus

• Sweden's state epidemiologist says he's confident Swedes are building immunity and warned his (critical) Nordic neighbours that it's too early for them to claim success.
• Hindsight: Pick the meat out of this: We have enough data on Covid deaths to be able to work backwards and estimate just how far the virus was spreading. The Norwegians have found that the it peaked several days before lockdown. In retrospect, says their health chief, lockdown was not needed. The virus could probably have been controlled with far lighter measures. Now, the same study has been done in the UK,  showing the virus was falling fairly quickly by the time of lockdown, having peaked 5 days earlier.

Life in Spain

• Most of us enter Phase 3 of the de-lockdown tomorrow. Here's what that means.
• As of now, we're still far from 'herd immunity here. This is something on the national situation. In Galicia, the numbers are said to be only 5% for the region and 2% for Pontevedra city.
• As of yesterday, here's María's Comeback Chronicle, Day 27. Rule obeyers and disobeyers.
• I'm reminded that couple of restaurant owners told me yesterday that Friday night in Pontevedra city had been as busy as in midsummer. If there's really a risk of a second wave, then we surely must be facing it square on. 
• As of a couple of days ago . .  I mentioned I'd bought some raw pistachios that were stale. When I went back to the shop to complain, they insisted raw pistachios were always soft and tasteless but that roasting them would effect a miracle. I doubted this but it turned out to be true. So, I'll have to go back and eat (h)umble pie. If only because this is the only spices shop still open in the city.
• Talking of pies . . . Spain has, over the past year, ditched a lot of junk food in favour of low-fat organic stuff. Allegedly. But it's too soon, it says here, to conclude that the lockdown has reversed the trend. Personally, I have to admit - if that's the right word - that I've discovered that veggie curries and side dishes really are good.

The USA

• The irrepressible J-L Cauvin again. And again, in commemorative mode.

The Way of the World

• Hyper-liberalism has been defined as "an extreme liberalism whose adherents have grown so intolerant of opposition, shielded in universities and in workplaces from other views, that they have moved far beyond liberalism to become illiberal. Convinced they are right, they become hysterical on encountering disagreement." The problem with revolutionary fervour, besides the way it often leads to violence, is that it is the enemy of complexity, honest disagreement and rational debate. You don't have to be an ultra-right fascist to see the truth in this.
• I got an email yesterday from someone calling himself a 'Happiness Engineer'. Is it too much to hope that the inventor of this inane job title shot him/herself when told his/her facetious suggestion had been accepted by management?

Finally . . .

• I get into a lot of trouble with my - very British - use of sarcasm and irony in written messages. And there wasn't a lot of verbal conversation during the lockdown, but plenty of written stuff. I knew a number of punctuation marks had been suggested for printers over the centuries but wondered if WhatsApp had got round to an emoji. And indeed they had: The upside-down face emoji can convey sarcasm, passive aggression, or irony. It's the visual opposite of the ordinary smiley emoji, which might lend to the interpretation that the meaning of the text is the opposite of what it seems. And: It is used to convey joking, or a sense of goofiness or silliness. So that should solve the problem.  **

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

** If you want to see this emoji, copy and paste this into your browser: www.colindavies.blogspot.com  You'll also see a foto of one of my tremendous dawns over Pontvedra city.

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

 The Bloody Virus

• Just in case you haven't heard of the latest guesswork . . . . A US team has found a certain response not only in the immune system of patients who've recovered but also in a group who had never had the virus. This might, they say, point to some “cross-reactive, pre-existing immunity to Sars-CoV-2” in up to 60% of people. And this might help explain the mystery of the 'Diamond Princess', a cruise ship where Covid spread unchecked for 2 weeks but only 20% of passengers ended up catching it. A UK neuroscientist suggested recently there's some kind of immunological “dark matter” out there stopping the virus from infecting as many of us as had first been feared. No one is quite sure what it is, but it does seem to exist.  BCG vaccination?

Life in Spain

• A specialist in these things has said Spanish virus data is/are flawed. As for the PM's comment that a couple of days of nil deaths proves that the government's strategy has been 'a success for all', he dismisses this as 'also nonsense'. So, where does that leave us?
• Santander bank has sent me an email saying it's improving its virus-times service by being open 8.30 to 2.30, Monday to Saturday. This is an hour more than usual - 9 to 2 - but is still only the morning, closing at the Spanish 'midday'. And you need now to make an appointment in advance. I suspect this is not great service by international standards. 
• Here's María's Comeback Chronicle, Day 26. Art as soul food.
• You'll all be wondering how I got on calling the number given to me at the police station in respect of a new residence card. Well, not tremendously well. I was actually given 2 numbers and it took me several calls over an hour - admittedly during Spain's 'coffee time' - to get a reply to the first one I tried. Only to be told I should have called the other one. On which I failed to get any reply at all yesterday. So . . . On to Monday . . .

The UK

• A BBC graph 'punishes honesty', says Guido Fawkes here . Back to the issue of the validity of data from Spain, inter alia.

The EU

• See the article below for a commentary on the latest round in the battle between the EU and Germany over who controls the EU’s economic machinery and legal character.  The bottom  line: The North-South gap will be even larger in the early 2020s. Monetary union will become ever more difficult to manage.

The USA

• Direct from the mare's mouth . . . 

Of course, this could be fake news. But I suspect not.

The Way of the World

• It is easy for democracies to slip into anarchies and lead to autocracies when trust in the system’s ability to provide what people need breaks down. We are beginning to see this.  

Social Media

• Has anything in the entire history of the world been responsible for producing more specious anger than this?

English

• The original phrase in the above para under 'The Bloody Virus' was  . . . unchecked for a fortnight. I changed this to 2 weeks, as I know fortnight isn't used in American English. Neither is sennight, but then, this is no longer used in British English either. We're not that quaint . . .

Finally . . .

• One downside of the near-end of our lockdown is that driving schools are now open and learners are again clogging my route to O Burgo bridge. This takes me past the test centre and along the circuit the examiners always take. So I get plenty of evidence of how new drivers - at least around here - are still being taught how to negotiate roundabouts wrongly. And how to drive without ever making a signal. Which is sometimes amusing but more often irritating.

THE ARTICLE

The ECB defies German judges with €600bn of fresh stimulus, risking a constitutional crisis in August: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the Telegraph.

The European Central Bank has doubled down on emergency stimulus with an extra €600bn blitz of bond purchases, brushing aside dissenters on its own governing council and risking a fatal showdown with Germany’s top court.

The scheme is effectively open-ended and the bonds will be reinvested as far out as 2022, features that are likely to grate on the nerves of the German judges in Karlsruhe. They ruled in May that the ECB has already crossed the line with an earlier bond purchase scheme and is violating Treaty law.  

Holger Schmieding from Berenberg Bank said the ECB has shown that it “remains a truly independent institution fully committed to its mandate of price stability – and is not in any way constrained by the verdict of the German Constitutional Court.” 

The bold move has been widely praised by economists but it also amounts to escalation in a fundamental battle for control over the EU’s economic machinery and legal character. Sebastien Cochard, a former French treasury official, said today’s decision by the ECB is a “declaration of war” against the German court.

The extra shot in the arm lifts the total package of ‘pandemic QE’ - or PEPP - to €1,350bn and helps offset the deepening contraction of the eurozone economy since the scheme was launched in late March. In that respect it is merely neutral, not net stimulus.

The ECB has cut its growth forecast to minus 8.7% this year, with a rebound of just 5.2% penciled in for next year, implying a protracted slump and deep structural damage that will leave parts of the currency bloc close to deflation. France has slashed its growth forecast from minus 8% to minus 11%.

The stimulus is badly needed as a funding bridge until the EU’s €750bn fiscal recovery plan kicks in next year. It arms the ECB with enough firepower to keep buying debt until February at the current rate, heading off a much-feared bond crisis in Italy this Autumn. Risk spreads on Italian 10-year debt dropped to a two-month low of 172 basis point but the gap remains unsustainably high, given the explosive rise in the country's debt ratio towards 160%of GDP. 

While the QE boost may be necessary for technical reasons - and is less than the Federal Reserve’s $4.5 trillion expansion - it is a political gamble after the German judges fired their thunderous cannon shot across the bows in May. The court ruled that the ECB has been carrying out a disguised fiscal rescue and its actions are ultra vires. Furthermore it said the European Court has been complicit and is itself in breach of EU Treaty law, an astonishing rebuke. While the case involved a different bond scheme, the legal arguments even more strongly to the new PEPP expansion.

Karlsruhe said the Bundesbank will have to withdraw from the programme - and, arguably, sell its existing bond holdings -  unless the ECB can justify its actions under the “proportionality principle”. The deadline is in early August. 

Christine Lagarde, the ECB’s president, deflected questions on this constitutional imbroglio, expressing confidence that a “good solution” would be found. But she also revealed that the decision to boost the PEPP scheme by €600bn did not have unanimous support in the governing council. It won only “broad support”, a euphemism for dissent and often a hot exchange of words. The details of this disagreement are likely to leak and will be crucial in determining how this plays out over the coming weeks. If it transpires that  Mrs Lagarde and ‘Latin bloc’ governors overruled stiff resistance from Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann and hawks from northern creditor states, it will further complicate an explosive situation.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine - close to Karlsruhe - said the extra QE was unjustified since the economic contraction is already bottoming out. “The hectic activism of the ECB is out of line. It is grotesque that investors want even more stimulus because inflation will be low in 2022. Pull the other leg, it's got bells on,” it said. 

Azad Zangana from Schroders said it is now obvious that the ECB’s bond purchases are “being used to finance governments, with a bias to member states being punished by markets for poor debt dynamics. The public finances of Greece and Italy have become totally unsustainable.”

While the ECB could in theory press ahead without the Bundesbank - and confidential plans are being drawn up to do exactly that in extremis - it would be viewed as desperation by the markets and would have no global credibility.

David Marsh from OMFIF said the way to defuse this crisis is for Mrs Largarde to report to the European Parliament - observing Treaty protocol  - and justify the ECB’s actions with a “proportionality” statement to that body. This could then be shown to Karlsruhe without the ECB having to answer German judges directly. Such a plan would be entirely in keeping with past EU conjuring tricks but would require the complicity of the German judges. They have already ruled that treaty law is being systematically violated. This cannot be wished away. 

It remains unclear whether the EU authorities have done enough to counter the immense economic shock of Covid-19. The recovery fund unveiled by the Commission in May - yet to be approved by frugal states - amounts to just €400bn of actual fiscal stimulus spread over four years once the flannel is stripped away. This is 0.6%of GDP annually.  It is temporary and therefore does not amount to fiscal union, or mark a ‘Hamilton moment’ for Europe. “Sceptical investors not yet buying the Europe story,” said Reza Moghadam from Morgan Stanley. “Many argue that the net macroeconomic impact is small both in relation to the size of the COVID-19 shock and because EU member states have to contribute to the initiative through the EU budget.”

What may matter more is Germany’s latest fiscal package, a €130bn stimulus of tax cuts and extra spending, including a subsidy of up to €6,000 for purchases of electric cars and a temporary cut in VAT from 19% to 16%. This lifts Germany’s total  pandemic response to 30%of GDP. While it helps to prevent ‘scarring’ or hysteresis from the downturn, it also means that Germany will recover in better shape than Club Med states hit harder by the crisis but which dare not spend so aggressively. 

The North-South gap will be even larger in the early 2020s. Monetary union will become ever more difficult to manage.

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

The Bloody Virus

• The latest thing seen to make you more susceptible to the virus is  . . . baldness.
• The writer of this (decent) article is certain that the Swedish 'gamble' has failed. But, in truth, it might be some time before this can be proven. With the benefit of hindsight, the writer's (valid) bottom line is that: We're all likely to have been better off aiming for that undefined middle ground between Sweden and those countries which over-reacted. Next time, maybe.

Life in Spain

• Having touched on the subject earlier in the day, yesterday evening I was reminded of Lewis Hamilton's sad experience of racism here in Spain, when Alonso fans dressed up in black face and taunted him with monkey chants. Admittedly, that was 12 years ago but - given what's happened at football matches in the intervening years - I wouldn't bet on it not happening again.
• I have to renew my driving licence. Which means I have to pay a company to give me a battery of tests to prove I'm not a danger on the roads. Which means I have to get a certificate from my (ex)shrink saying I'm no longer on anti-depressants. Which meant a trip yesterday to the relevant health centre. Where, I'm pleased to say, this turned out to be the successful aspect of the morning. Or, rather, it will be when I get the certificate in the mail in 2-3 weeks' time.
• The unsuccessful elements of the morning were: 1. a purchase of de-shelled pistachios which turned out to be stale, and 2. a trip to the central police station. Where this chat took place:-

Sir, where are you going?

I want to change this A4 certificate of my permanent residence for the credit card-sized version now available.

OK, but you should have stopped by the window just after the door, and not walked past the X-ray machine.

I did but there was no one at the window. Or next to the machine.

Well, I was just over here [Chatting with 3 colleagues]. Please return to the window. . . . You  have to call to make an appointment. Here's the number. Have a good day.

Thanks. You too.

• By the way, those drivers who don't have to go through the above procedures are those who form the sizeable minority who have neither a licence nor insurance. Personally, I regard these as a much greater danger on the road than me. Especially as those caught seem to be fond of substances I don't swallow. You'd think the police would be better deployed checking for these people than persecuting, say, decent folk who happen to be listening to the BBC through a single earphone.
• María's Come-back Chronicle, Day 25. More thoughts on the USA.
• Nice to see a story of the restoration of Moorish bits of Sevilla. See the article below. Because of the paywall, you'll have to go to Google Images to see the walls and the gates cited.

The USA 

• My favourite Friday morning reading is Caitlin Moran's Celebrity Watch in The Times. Today she writes, inter alia, on Fart, whom she (rightly) portrays as more of a TV celebrity than a president. See the extract below.
• Predictably, Russia takes advantage.
• And, equally predictably, J-L Cauvin takes the piss.  

Finally . . . 

• In the latest episode of a favourite podcast - No Such Thing as a Fish - the participants were astonished and amused to hear that among the French soldiers at Agincourt were 64 call Colin, of whom 4 had the full name Colin Poisson, or Colin Fish. But this isn't as odd as they thought, as Colin is one of the French names for hake. Others are merlu and merluche, similar to the Spanish merluza. There are, in fact, several Rues de Colin in France and at least one in Belgium. I'm proud to say. Sort of.
• Talking of France . . .  Did you know there's a place up in NE Spain where jurisdiction goes back and forth every 6 months between Spain and France. It's called Pheasant Island and you really couldn't make it up. Wiki here.

THE ARTICLE

Delightfully Moorish: Seville restores 12th-century walls: Isambard Wilkinson, The Times

A section of the city walls of Seville built by the Moors to stave off conquest by Christian forces is to be restored after decades of neglect left them crumbling.

The renovation project, which is due to start within weeks, will focus on the stretch between the city’s Córdoba Gate and Macarena Gate, where Spanish monarchs traditionally entered and Nationalist forces shot about 3,000 republicans during the 1936-39 civil war. The Macarena wall, as the 540-metre section is known, will be saved after years of petitioning for state funding by local associations and Juan Espadas, Seville’s mayor. “In any other country this would be a very important monument to visit but in Seville it’s been ignored,” Emilio Mascort, an engineering professor at Seville University, said. He is part of a team leading the project.

The Macarena wall, which incorporates a lower barbican, moat and towers, is the most complete remnant of the city’s 8km-long Moorish defences, of which less than a third survives. Preceded by an earlier Roman fortification and a Moorish wall built after a devastating Viking raid in the 9th century, the construction on the existing rampart began in about 1125. It was erected by the Almoravid dynasty to defend against Christian forces fighting to retake the Iberian peninsula. They were ousted by their north African rival the Almohads, who built the Giralda tower in the 12th century.

After Ferdinand III’s forces captured Seville in 1248, the Macarena Gate became the enty point for Spanish monarchs. Isabella of Portugal, the bride of Charles V, the 16th-century Holy Roman Emperor, rode through it on a richly caparisoned horse for their wedding in 1526.

Antonio Jaramillo, an architect, said the wall was saved in 1870 when much of Seville’s walls were destroyed in a modernisation scheme. “They were spared because the conservationists lied to the authorities, telling them the walls were Roman,” he said. “If they’d said they were Moorish they would have been deemed of little value.”

The wall, despite being made a protected monument in the 19th century, contrasts with the preserved Unesco world heritage sites in the southern, wealthier part of the city.

Antonio Muñoz, a councillor in charge of culture, said he hoped the wall would one day be open to visitors, as it was “a cherished part of the Macarena district’s identity”.

THE EXTRACT

Donald Trump

The former New York governor Mario Cuomo’s aphorism “Campaign in poetry, govern in prose” is often cited as the neatest description for how politicians should communicate during their journey to power.

As with most things, Donald Trump is either ignorant of this principle, decided to ignore it, or simply set it on fire. His dictum appears to be: “Campaign in Twitter fusillades, govern in a style based on sitting in a bunker in your towelling robe, while eating burgers and watching TV.”

Almost four years into his presidency, Trump’s leadership mood board seems composed of stuff that he saw on TV: cop shows, old Hollywood blockbusters, mad evangelical programmes, and the news.

Astonishingly, America’s Covid-19 death toll this week reaching more than 100,000 has not been the biggest news story, rather the news has focused on how protesters in more than 75 US cities have taken to the streets over the killing of George Floyd. For the millions of people who have seen the footage of Floyd’s death, this seemed like a fairly open-and-shut case. Unfortunately, the president fell back to the TV tropes on which he leans. “LAW & ORDER!” Trump tweeted, prompting thousands to reply with the names of other police procedural dramas: “MIAMI VICE!”, “NYPD BLUE!”, “HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET!”

The president’s subsequent photo op outside St John’s Church — in which he held a Bible upside down, having first teargassed the church’s clergy and protesters to clear them from the area — was pure horror-movie stuff.

But it was Trump’s overarching response to the protests that brought home the chilling banality of having a man who is basically Roald Dahl’s Mike Teavee, but grown-up and with real guns, as president. In city after city we saw first the police, then the National Guard, charge peaceful protesters, drag them from their cars, beat them, shoot them with rubber bullets and teargas them. As many panicked or fought back, Trump insisted: “I will fight to protect you. I am your president of law and order.”

And do you know why this is so chillingly banal? Because this is a basic tactic from Trump’s show, The Apprentice. You put your contestants — or, in this case, citizens — in a situation where you try to make them turn on each other. Then Trump appears, an omniscient being who alone can decide what is right and what is wrong.

When the decision was whether some entrepreneur got the funding for their artisan sausage company, Trump’s need for brutal showboating mattered less. His catchphrase is no longer “You’re fired”, but “You’re going to be fired at”. The prose in which Trump is governing has historical consequences. There is every possibility that having a reality TV star as president isn’t such a great idea after all.

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

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*  

 Note: I'm indebted to Lenox Napier's comprehensive Business Over Tapas for 1 or 2 of today's items.

The Bloody Virus

• In 7 weeks, Sweden - where some official regrets were voiced this week - has moved from 8th position in the deaths/million table to 5th now. The UK has done even worse, climbing from 7th to 2nd, ahead of Spain and Italy and behind only the bizarrely high number of Belgium. Little wonder that Boris Johnson is getting it in the neck(infra).

Life in Spain

• There's a new tax in the offing, aimed at reducing the dreadful level of plastic packaging which we all have to struggle with.
• Talking about shopping problems . . .  There's s a lot of queuing outside locales these days, with everyone staying 1 to 2m apart. So, a lot more hanging around than usual. But I don't perceive a higher level of 'structuring time' by reading a book or magazine than is customary. Or doing puzzles or a crossword. Just more cud-chewing than usual.
• I cited Spanish racism yesterday but forgot to mention a comment one hears quite often here on this subject: "I'm certainly not a racist but I hate gypsies."
• Back in Spain's (phoney) boom years of 2002 to 2008, Galicia's president joined the vanity-project club by initiating our City of Culture on the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela. I knew there'd been problems - such as slates falling off the new roof and a library for millions of books remaining empty -  but I hadn't been aware that construction was halted in 2013. I'd thought that - despite the inevitable corruption and massive cost over-runs - it was still a (sort of) work in progress. But no, it's going to be the worst sort of testament to the Spain of those years - an unfinished, unloved and unvisited massive white elephant. Well done, Sr Fraga. The most able of Franco's Ministers, it's said. Lucky not be alive and to have to witness a failure which is monumental in every sense of the word. 
• Back to everyday life . . . Here's María's Come-back Chronicle Day 24.

Portugal 

• Brits were given new hope of a sunny holiday this year when Portugal’s foreign minister advised he is talking to the UK government about an “air bridge” between the 2 countries, and that an early agreement would allow travel by the end of June. But quarantine when you get home??

The UK

• Richard North and John Crace lay into Boris Johnson here and here, respectively. Rather better - and more effective - approaches than the crude insults of Spanish Opposition politicians.  It’s getting harder and harder to know where satire ends and reality starts, says Crace. But perhaps the UK isn't the only country this can be said of.

The USA 

• As the world looked on in consternation, horror and even fear, Trump congratulated himself in a tweet which confirmed his insane/psychotic authoritarianism: D.C. had no problems last night. Many arrests. Great job done by all. Overwhelming force. Domination. Likewise, Minneapolis was great (thank you President Trump!).
• Will the Republicans really allow this dangerous inadequate to stand for a second term?

English

• A verb new to me: To sic: 'To attack (used especially in commanding a dog)'. Seen in US headlines about police/military action against both looters and peaceful protesters. Which to Fart are the same thing, of course.

Finally . . . 

• Talking of new words . . . I saw infestify in an article yesterday. But I'm guessing it should have been intensify. Click here for said article, para 10. 
• An impressive performance by Usain Bolt. Or by someone we could at least call 'Mr Bolt':-

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

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

Life in Spain

• More here on Spain's universal benefit for low income individuals/families.
• Here's a map of Spanish provinces, showing which Phase they're now in. Poor Castilla Y León. I wonder why virtually all of it is stuck in Phase 1.
• I guess it's inevitable that the prices of terrace drinks have risen. Losses have to be recouped.
• I clocked my first camino 'pilgrim' heading towards Santiago yesterday. Theoretically, he can't get further north than Pontecesures before breaking the law by crossing the provincial border into Padrón. Unless, I guess, he can claim he's walking to Santiago airport to catch a flight to his principal residence.
• Spain's far-right Vox party has naturally come out in support of Trump, and indulged in its favourite sport of hurling gross insults at politicians who are less insane than they are.
• Two legitimate criticisms of many Spaniards . . . Limited civil consciousness and a degree of racism which is, ironically, universally denied here.
• María comments here on her benighted birth country.
• I don't know it this is true of other Spanish regions but Google Maps is of limited use when there are 3 or more villages of the same name, as is often the case here in Galicia. Possibly 10 with Portela. Or Couso. 

The UK

• Effie Deans here makes an excellent point or two re secessionists. But it's not a charge that can be levied at the Catalans, as one of their main gripes is that they're financing Madrid. Or worse, the corrupt, lazy bastards down in Andalucia.

The USA 

• I was pondering yesterday whether the USA could be considered a 'failed state'. Not only by the likes of Putin, Erdogan, Assad and Xi, I mean. And then, last night, along came this trenchant article, claiming that the Covid virus had exposed the country as exactly that.
• But, you have to smile.
• And even  laugh.
• Fart and Twitter . . . See the nice article below - Twitter has left Trump punching his own fist.

Finally . . .  

• In the UK, urban foxes are developing in a similar way to domesticated dogs; they've evolved smaller brains and shorter, more powerful snouts that help them scavenge through rubbish. [In contrast, in the USA, Fox News is going in the opposite direction - dis/un-evolving into a group of troglodytes.]
• A real treat - a boogie bonanza.

THE ARTICLE  

Twitter has left Trump punching his own fist: By facing up to its responsibilities as a publisher the social media giant is neutering the president’s favourite weapon:  Hugo Rifkind, Times

‘Oh God,” you might be thinking, “don’t write a column about Twitter. Twitter doesn’t matter. Normal people don’t even use it.” The thing is, you know who does use it? The 81.1 million people who follow @realdonaldtrump, and countless millions of others (such as me) who don’t, directly, but end up seeing everything he tweets, anyway. Last week, the president and Twitter went to war. And I bet it mattered to him.

In my first draft of this column, this paragraph was going to detail some of what we might call “Important Donald Trump Twitter Moments”. I’m afraid it was a bit long, though. Also a bit mad. We had plunging stocks in there, and the resignation of a British ambassador, and a threat to bomb Iran, and another threat to buy Greenland. Really, you can look up this stuff for yourself. My point is that it is Twitter that makes living in the world of President Trump feel so much like having a giant malign baby sleeping in the room next door. As in, each morning you wake with a feeling of trepidation about what, in the night, he may have dribbled out and spread around.

The president, though, is not the only reason why Twitter matters. You know who else is on Twitter? The people who circulated the video of a policeman kneeling on the neck of George Floyd until he died. Also, the people who spread scores of videos of police actions since then, bringing thousands out on to the streets. This is how people are radicalised. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be — far from it — but observe the process, and accept it is real. Of course it matters. Some might say not much matters more.

Broadly speaking, there are two schools of thought about how such firms ought to treat the content that they host. The first is that they should be neutral to the point of indifference, no more responsible for the stuff that users post on them than the invisible air should be to blame for carrying soundwaves. The other, which is my view, is that they should be held accountable for their content, both by themselves and by everybody else.

Donald Trump suddenly wants both of these things at once, but backwards. This is confusing, but I think it’s his fault that he’s confused. Last Wednesday, the president tweeted about American postal votes, stating that they were being rigged by his enemies. Twitter, for the first time, attached a link to his post that said “Get the facts about mail in ballots”, which clicked through to an explanation, by Twitter, that there was no evidence that this was happening. That was it. Shots fired.

Although that’s not the best turn of phrase. Two days on, Twitter did it again. This time the company placed a “This tweet violates the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence” warning over Trump’s already-infamous “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” tweet.

They did this even though the president had already responded to the first intervention with a furious, new and wobbly law. Very roughly, it declared that if a social media company edits posts at all, then the law will consider it a traditional publisher, much like a newspaper or magazine, with all the laws and liabilities that entails.

The strange thing about this is that you’d think this would be the last thing Trump would want. Surely, under such a regime, Twitter would end up moderating the incendiary tweets of people like him more, rather than less. His bind, though, is that imposing a free speech obligation on such firms wouldn’t help him either, because the same first amendment that protects Trump’s right to threaten to shoot people also protects Twitter’s right to say, “woah, this is nuts”.

Really, it’s just a threat. “Leave me alone,” Trump was saying to Twitter, “or I will make your life difficult.” And with Facebook, the bigger social media firm, the threat seems to have worked. There, the same message from Trump still circulates. Mark Zuckerberg, the boss, has always insisted his site must not become an arbiter of political speech. “We don’t believe that it’s an appropriate role for us to referee political debates,” said chief monkey Nick Clegg last year. If this sounds like humility, don’t be fooled. Facebook wants all the power without the responsibility. It wants to publish, and to profit, and for all the blame to lie elsewhere.

The blame, though, is its. Don’t be fooled, either, by people who would tell you that social media has played no role in the rise of Trump, or in Brexit, or for that matter in the rise of Antifa or Black Lives Matters. Of course it has. Why wouldn’t it have done? Such people simply do not understand the world in which we all now live. Particularly, they do not understand that media consumption today is not only about facts, but also about identity; about who we like and trust and who we dislike and don’t. Whereas Trump, even if only on some idiot savant level, understands all of this very well.

What I like best about his new fight with Twitter is the honesty of it, at least on Twitter’s part. For a couple of years now, the company has quietly sought to clean up its act, blocking and banning extremism and abuse from left and right, while studiously ignoring the big orange pachyderm in the room. Trump, who has always used Twitter as a weapon, suddenly cannot. Look at him, he’s like a man trying to punch his own fist.

Bravo to Twitter for finally understanding its responsibilities. These firms are publishers. They always have been. They should double down and call Trump’s bluff. Bring it on.

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

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

The Bloody Virus

• In places such as the former Yugoslavia, it's been observed that the BCG vaccine - a cheap immunisation against TB - appears to steel recipients’ immune systems against other infectious diseases as well.  Damn. I wasn't given it as a kid. But, then, this was because the test (on my inner wrist, as I recall) showed that I didn't need it, as my natural immunity was good. Let's hope so . . .
• But anyway . . . Randomised controlled trials of the effects of BCG on Covid-19 are now being done in the Netherlands and Australia, where Bill Gates has donated $10 million to the research through his foundation.

Life in Spain

• Spain will lift its 14 day quarantine rule for tourists on 1 July. The relevant Minister insists these lucky people won't only not run any risks coming here but also that they won't bring any risks to our country. Which might well be a good reason for barring currently exultant Brits, it seems. The authorities are working out how to decide who will be let into Spain. And if Brits are allowed in, will they be quarantined on their return to the UK? Confusing times.
• Dutch tourists might well be allowed in but could, because of this, face a welcome warmer than they anticipated. At least in Majorca.
• It's reported that smoking in  Britain has fallen from 45% of adults back in 1974 to only 14% last year. I mention this only to point out that: 1. It's said that 34% of 15 to 64-year-old Spaniards still smoke every day; and 2. Smoking here has increased during the lockdown. Not a huge surprise, I guess. Mind you, given that they all talk simultaneously all the time, this might just mean they light up cigarettes but never have time to take many puffs of them . . .
• Talking of health issues, obesity is a growing problem in both countries. Back in the early 70s, the rate among British kids was around 5%. Now it's 33%. Here in Spain, despite the famous Mediterranean diet, the problem is said to be even greater. Sugar and cheap junk food are fingered.Though some Dutch folk might also cite laziness . . . 
• María gave us both Day 21 and Day 22 yesterday, of her Come-back Chronicle, of course.
• Well, I finally got my microwave mica plate yesterday. As I  entered the shop, the chap at the desk told me it had arrived but then interrupted his dealing with me to take 2 phone calls. After which he then fiddled with his computer so that he could print out an invoice for €6. So, it was 10 minutes before I could leave the place. As I've been known to say, Spanish providers don't worry much about wasting customers' time, essentially because the latter aren't much bothered
• Disappointingly, the blinds on the window and door of my favoured spices shop remain down, meaning I'll have to resort to the other one in town. 

The USA

• A laughing stock, presiding over a country you'd be justified in crying for:-

• Not surprisingly, the local bishop took exception to this latest example of Third World 'leadership' in action.
• Still, if it turns more people off the man, it could well turn out to have been a positive.
• Meanwhile . . . Twitter makes living in the world of President Trump feel so much like having a giant malign baby sleeping in the room next door. As in, each morning you wake with a feeling of trepidation about what, in the night, he may have dribbled out and spread around.

Finally . . .

• The word hellebore appeared in an article on British politics this morning. I had to look it up and here it is, coincidentally continuing the gardening theme.
• The same writer recently used gerbilarium, but I'm not going there . . .

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

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

 Life in Spain

• Hard to believe but more than 50% of Spaniards are said here to be optimistic re their economic future. Perhaps they mean in the very long term. 
• Spanish History: A modern-ish tale I meant to include yesterday - The shameful protection of Nazis, even after the end of the Franco regime in 1975.
• Shopping: Today I'll make my 4th visit to the place which was getting me a new mica plate for my microwave. (It was closed when I made my 3rd on Saturday morning). I've asked before if I'm unique in Spain in having a poor record of retail success. Another recent failure was the spices shop in the city centre, which had been closed on Friday and still was on Saturday. I'm hoping this isn't permanent. There's no sign on the door and the windows haven't yet been brown-papered up.
• The football matches postponed in March will now take place, in empty stadiums, on June 11.
• Years ago, I posted fotos of what I thought were bizarre roundabout features in my barrio of Poio. But nothing beats this one, down in Valencia city:-

The UK

• The caustic view of her country's media of that apparently rare creature - a non-nationalist Scot. I guess they exist in Cataluña too. They certainly do here in Galicia.

The USA

• Around 450 seconds into this video, Fart says there's nothing he'd like more than to close his Twitter account. Provided that the media prints only what he says. He might well be telling the truth on this occasion.
• I've taken to wondering what non-US companies I can deal with in preference to, for example, the tax-light behemoths Amazon and Google. A first search just now for a list of these - on Google, of course - wasn't at all productive. But there must be one somewhere.
• There's an American warship called the USS Ponce. I'm guessing no one involved in its naming was aware of the British meanings of this word. Viz:-

Noun

1. Informal•Derogatory: an effeminate man.

2. Informal•British: a man who lives off a prostitute's earnings.

Verb 

1. Informal•British: to seek to obtain (something) without paying for it or doing anything in return.

2. Informal•British: to live off a prostitute's earnings.

Finally . . .

• I forgot to mention that, despite the several arboreal deaths in my garden, life goes on. I've got 2 holly tree shoots/saplings which have self-seeded there. Though not in this box, of course:-

With luck, I won't slaughter them, one way or another. And they can join my burgeoning - and also self-seeded - young palm trees:-

• A musical treat. Followed by another one, from the rather older-looking - but still immensely talented - Jools Holland.

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