Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain

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

- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*

The Bloody Virus

• In a long article, The Local asks here what we can learn from the Swedish experience. Not much yet, seems to be the short answer.
• Here in Spain, local outbreaks are expected this summer, as the government seeks to breathe life into the critical - nay, vital - tourism industry.

Life in Spain in the Time of Something Like Cholera 

• Despite that risk of outbreaks, sun-seeking foreigners will soon be welcome here again, as travel restrictions are removed. But will Brits still be incarcerated on their return to their sceptred isle?
• I guess this really was inevitable . . .
• María's Come-back Chronicle, Day 16.
• I wonder if and when Apple will come up with technology which allows my fingerprint to be recognised through a plastic/rubber glove.

Real Life in Spain 

• A worry for some on the horizon. Well, maybe only for a few.
• Spanish men have a reputation for being 'macho'. I do wonder about this every time I see one walking a dog smaller than the average cat. Or even a full-size poodle. And lots in-between.
• Talking of reputations . . . The NY Times says here that Spain is known as as a litigious place. I find this odd, as everyone I know thinks it's a waste of time and money to go to court here.
• Perhaps it's a left-over from the time - until quite recently - when there was no bar to 'frivolous' suits. This was - and maybe still is to some extent - the practice of making a denuncia against anyone who annoyed you. This is a word which is often translated as a 'report'. Meaning, I think, something formal written to the judicial authorities either by a private person via the police (a burglary report) or by the police themselves (a prosecution). These are the several definitions given for the verb Denunciar by the Royal Academy. Nos. 4 and 6 seem to be the most appropriate, and there's no single-word equivalent in English:-

1. To warn or give news of something.

2. To predict.

3. To promulgate, solemnly publish.

4. To participate in or officially declare the illegal, irregular or inconvenient status of something.

5. To betray.

6. To give the judicial or administrative authority part or all of a report of an illegal act or an irregular event.

7. To notify the other party of the termination of a contract, or of a treaty, etc.

8. To have discovered a mine, or to claim the benefit of it.

Portugal

• Astonishingly, this small and relatively poor country has a testing rate double that of every other. Very impressive.
• Maybe this helps to explain why Britain is in talks with Portugal over plans to create an “air bridge”[me neither] that would allow holidaymakers to travel to the country without quarantining on their return. 

The EU

• The corporate mega-bailout bonanza begins, says the estimable Nick Corbishley here. Circumstances change principles, as they say. About which not everyone is happy, of course.

The USA  

• Fart reviews a book by one of those close friends he's never met

The Way of the world

• Greed begat the banking crisis, which begat the financial crisis, which begat austerity, which begat cuts which increased wealth gaps and left states less able to deal with the virus than they should have been. So, what is being done about the root cause of all the unnecessary deaths - greed born of the corruption of capitalism? Please write your answer on only one side of the paper. 
• Meanwhile . . . We're in no rush to return to the work-hard consumerism of pre-lockdown life, says a Times headline. 

Finally . . .

• The recent hot weather here - on the coat-tails of lots of rain - has led to a massive surge in plant growth. Nowhere more so than on my bougainvillea, from which I had to cut more than 30 'suckers' yesterday. Which seem to grow faster than the banana plants in my garden in Jakarta. And then there's the bloody 'hedge bindweed' - Calystegia sepium - which is threatening to throttle my privet and ivy hedges. It's just one damned thing after another . . . 

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