Spanish Shilling

 If I am faced with a word or name I'm not familiar with, I copy it out carefully.

 I expect most of us do. 

However, foreign names are considered to be slightly frightening for many Spaniards. There are either too many letters or not enough. The easiest way is to re-name them something easier to deal with. King Charles of the UK becomes El Rey Carlos tercero. Elizabeth was Isabel. Harry is Enrique. William is Guillermo. 

It's a favour we don't always return - their Royals are still Juan Carlos and Felipe. 

However, this adjustment by the Spanish twitches slightly when it comes to us commoners.

In today's newspaper, Helen Prior becomes Hellen. A simple John becomes Jhon or perhaps even Jhonathan - but never Juan. Come to think of it, there was once a brand of Spanish denims called Jhon Jeans. I may have an old pair somewhere. 

My dad was called William, or rather more often, at least in print, Willian. He was known by us as Bill and by his closer Spanish friends as Napia (our last name Napier causes joy to the Spaniards, as Napia, the name of a long-dead governor of Gibraltar blessed with a large nose, has joined the Spanish language as 'hooter' or 'schnozz'). 

Using one's last name here is a mark of respect by the way (as long as it's pronounceable Mr Cholmondeley). 

Hospitals and other public agencies, confused by our two first names and single surname (the Spanish have two last names, but only usually use the more interesting-sounding one), will often call us by our middle-name, which brings confusion when we hear Señor Robert being called for - a man we know as Ken.

After all, how many people's middle name are you familiar with?

All the above, and then we can be a bit forgetful - foreign names can be hard to remember, right Priscilla?

A Spanish friend has the answer - call all women to their face Guapa and all men León.

My own name is pretty simple, but even after being here for a lifetime, people can still bungle it. There's a mention of me in a book published by the diputación de Almería, about how I ran a newspaper in this province during fifteen years. 

So much for posterity, they've spelled my name wrong. 

As you can see, the local supermarket hasn't done much better, and nor for that matter has the taxman (who regularly sends me very proper emails addressed to Señor Scott).

 I'm having lots of fun on my visit to northeastern Oklahoma - staying with my son and visiting my daughter and her brood, all of them living in the same Cherokee town.

So far, I've visited Eureka Springs in next-door Arkansas, where the largest hotel there had organised a 'Porsche Weekend' with over 400 of them parked in and around the venue. My son, a car enthusiast, drove us over in his tricked-out VW Golf, which was so loud (and supercharged) that conversation was impossible.

On Sunday, we went off-roading in Disney in a Jeep with wide wheels: it's a place about an hour and a half away from home. The town is the usual gas station, shop and sheriff's department, but outside, under a huge dam which holds back a gigantic lake (everything in America is larger than we are used to in Europe), is a 2,000 acre park with rivers, rocks, trees and muddy slides: just the thing for some off-road adventures. 

In Spain, it would be impossible - banned by the ecologists - but here, it's not only a feature, it's un-policed and free to use. We saw purpose-built rigs, 'four-wheelers' and lots of jeeps. 

Anyway, following the endless bangs, thuds, splashes and bumps, my back hurts.

I went down to see the Veteran's Parade today. A couple of marching bands plus a number of cadets, veterans and some military vehicles and fire engines. Like Spain, they throw out candy to the onlookers (I got a Tootsie Roll).

The weather remains nice and sunny (as Almería gets some flooding). The food is good, but there's some genie living in the weighing scales - I've put on almost three pounds (over a kilo) in one week.

Most people here seem to be Trump supporters. There are still plenty of remaining posters about (even outside the churches). 

I think they may live to regret it, but I'm not talking politics on this trip.

Following the floods in Spain (which last week lost me my flight over the Atlantic) and a tornado that landed a few miles away from where I am currently staying in Oklahoma, the election results for the 47th president are in - and it's Trump.

The Doomsday Clock, between one thing and another, has certainly edged a few seconds further towards midnight.

I went to the local polling station yesterday - a bit worried as there were certain to be gangs of motorcyclist heavies wearing MAGA caps and tapping stainless-steel baseball bats off their thighs waiting for anyone who looked a trifle liberal, but the reality was quite different. 

It couldn't have been more peaceful.

One queues for a bit, arrives at the desk run by two elderly volunteers, is checked for a voter's registration and then a large sheet of paper is given (and a pen lent) to go mark one's choices.

There were five available alternatives for president and vice-president (I can safely say that, like you, I have never heard of the other three) and then a collection of other choices - local judges, sheriffs and street-cleaner, and then a couple of 'propositions' which one can vote for or against.

The completed paper is then fed into a machine, and away you go, with a sticker on your chest that says 'I Voted'.

Will Trump act on his threats - to deport those who don't fulfil the current idea of Free, Patriotic American Citizen, once he is sworn in on January 20th next year?

Most probably.

I will be back in Europe long before then.

Right I’ve had my tea, sorted out the list of chores for tomorrow and eaten a doughnut for a balanced diet. It’s now time to get into the car and drive across the town to my favourite bar to get sloshed.

But what is this?

They’re lowering the drink/drive limit from January to one glass of fortified raspberry juice!

The fellow who came up with that one must be chuckling into his telephone as he is whisked across Madrid by his long-suffering chauffeur.

–Diego, Old Sport, you haven’t filled up the decanter.

The new limit – to be five times lower than most European countries – will be 0.10mg/l once the traffic law is modified (early next year says N332).

Spain's 264,000 bars and restaurants are not going to be happy.

Now, this is all fine and dandy for the drinking gentlefolk who live in the city where there's a bar downstairs and a restaurant across the street. Furher afield, one can take the metro or a bus or even a cab. Pop into the disco and stagger home at 4.00am with a song on one's lips.

But me, I live in the country and my nearest bar is 45 minutes away if I walk - or I suppose I could take a taxi, have my beer and waggle my eyebrows at the new barmaid and then another taxi home for an expensive night out.

Unless the barmaid has a car.

The bar in question is part of our local petrol station, so one can assume a certain amount of vehicular traffic. It's a fully licenced bar, in case a non-alcoholic beer doesn't appeal. As for smoking, they ask that you do it outside - near the pumps.

How could Spain sink so low, I wonder? Isn’t this the Party Capital of Europe?

Will I still be allowed to have a beer with my curry?

In the UK, where they must drink without a sobering tapa, and everybody needs to get a ‘round in’, the limit is 0,80mg/l – which is eight times higher than what we will be suffering here.

Yes, I know, drunk driving causes untold misery – but so does drinking at home, which is what I shall have to be doing from now on.

Behind the scenes, there are several far-right pressure groups besides some (but not all) of the leading judiciary. The key word these days to those far-right legal efforts is ‘lawfare’ (previously known as guerra jurídica). Many cases are taken on just to put pressure on certain groups – maybe pro-abortion agencies, or comedians or even puppeteers, or Podemos and their splinters (the Caso Neurona was finally binned last week after three years of gratuitous headlines about corruption in the halls of Podemos, the Pablo Iglesias PISA fake commission scandal and some twenty other creative claims against the party sometimes took years to be put to sleep).

In the shadows, there are various nefarious organisations ready to throw trumped-up accusations, which will provide newspaper space, extra (remunerative) work for the courts and perhaps notoriety for the judge (depending on his – we might say – common sense). Most of these groups are joined at the hip with Mother Church. There’s the Opus Dei of course (the Banco Popular was one of theirs), the divine Movimiento Católico Español (it sells Francoist and Nazi memorabilia to survive), the Sinister Mexican-headed El Yunque, the Hazte Oir (it drives buses around with pictures of children on the sides illustrating the difference between their two sexes, so that you know), the litigious anti-Gay Manos Limpias and then there’s the oxymoron which calls itself the Abogados Cristianos – the Christian Lawyers.

They all know that democracy inevitably has its cracks and its loopholes, and they can sometimes play their extreme politics in the courts – to try to erode the system from within.

Fronting them all are Vox and, when it suits them, the Partido Popular.

Right now, indeed, the PP is busy with its latest broadside on Pedro Sánchez and the presumed ‘high-street of corruption’ of his party (occurring now possibly because they inadvertently lost a political opportunity in their vote to allow prisoners, including ETA prisoners, to be released after a maximum of thirty years). There will be blood.

The Inquisition may have gone centuries ago, but the Church, the Army, the Bankers and the Establishment still hold on to power as they must.

While we patiently wait for the agonising inquiries, fake news, inventions and other material to be waded through in the peculiar case against the President’s wife (whatever it may be… give us time and we’ll find something), or the Caso Koldo and its relation of Pedro Sánchez, or the slightly unlikely story of bags of cash being left by senior PSOE members at head office, or the simmering stories of the President’s brother (dear me, we have been busy); let’s examine another case, which turns on the almost sacred status of a past president of Spain, José Maria Aznar.

A famous TV comedian called El Gran Wyoming put on a priestly outfit the other evening on his comedy show and produced a skit about how he is the pope of the Holy Aznariana Sect – which offended our friends over at the Christian Lawyers (they should technically have been in bed by then), so much so that they have produced a lawsuit against the comic. Wyoming was evidently surprised by this idiocy and he repeated his ‘High Mass’, with some extra flourishes, the following night. Wyoming also had a word for Judge Peinado (the judge in the case against Pedro Sánchez’ wife): ‘Get yourself ready, there’s another juicy case coming down the line…’

The comic could get as much as four years clink for offending the sensibilities of followers of the Christian faith – at least, the Old Testament ones.

Perhaps it’s time to put some of these more eccentric organisations out to dry.

The Brits have returned the Chagos Islands – or all except one (Diego Garcia) – to Mauritius and to the people who used to live there, the Chagossians. Or more likely, since they were unceremoniously chucked out back in 1969, to their descendants.  

While this item may not have made a major impact on the lives of the good people who inhabit the United Kingdom, it certainly has here in Spain, with the suggestion that, well, since you’re in the mood, what about handing back Gibraltar (and, sure, maybe the Falklands too while you are at it)?

The Telegraph – a British newspaper that leans solidly to the right – says ‘Keir Starmer has refused to rule out ending British control of Gibraltar and the Falklands, amid an ongoing backlash over his Chagos Islands deal’. Yes, The Telegraph and its more conservative ‘Sun never sets on the British Empire’ readers may well become excited about the Chagos Deal, and maybe for them it will become the Suez Crisis of the 21st Century.

Mind you, at a mean height of just four feet above sea-level, the Chagossians will need to roll up their trouser-legs, as it’ll likely all be underwater by 2050 thanks to Global Warming.

I’m vaguely fond of Gibraltar. I got married there to my American bride on the second attempt. Word had reached us as we were dickering with the judge that my father had suddenly died in Madrid, so we pleaded cause of absence and returned for another try a couple of weeks later. The judge, give him his due, let us have our wedding papers and sundry costs on his shilling, making our match one of the cheapest in history (one jolly night at the Holiday Inn). A year later, we went to Paris for the honeymoon.

Then, The Express brings us: ‘Gibraltar tries to calm fears it will be returned to Spain after UK and Chagos fiasco. The people of Gibraltar have been assured by their Government that Sir Keir Starmer's decision regarding the Chagos Island will not affect their future’.

I like Gibraltar. I mean, I don’t (it’s ghastly), but I like that it’s there. Some pink glitter for the map, a change of pace and the chance to see a British bobby talking in llanito. 

So, leave it alone. There are thirty four thousand Gibraltarians who want to remain British, but without going anywhere near the United Kingdom (ring any bells, Readers?). If the colony fell to Spain, then what would they do with the Gibraltarians?  Leave them there, but make them do this and that – or enjoin them to take out Tarjetas de Identidad Extranjera and deprive them of the vote? Maybe give the people living in nearby San Roque ‘back’ their properties. As Gibraltar en la Corazón says (back in 1704, the British possession of Gibraltar was only formalised nine years later at at the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713), ‘…It is easy to imagine that column of men and women dragging their belongings: some children, others elderly, heads bowed, stripped... 5,000 people walking towards the hermitage of San Roque, located a few kilometres away…’

Gibraltar View from San Roque

These days, it looks lovely.

Ah, decolonisation. Gibraltar is a British problem: let Whitehall build a nice camp on Salisbury Plain for them.

Some say, well why not just give the Rock to the Spanish and give Melilla and Ceuta to the Moroccans? Easy enough if you are living in somewhere like Albacete or Torquay.

There are of course, several differences. For one, there are 170,000 Spaniards in the two North African enclaves, and right now, Spanish politicians are busy squabbling about what to do with a handful of immigrant minors stuck in the Canary Isles (another territory that Morocco claims). Since they would likely not be treated favourably by the Moroccans, I doubt that they would want to stay and at the same time it would be hard to comfortably house 170,000 indignant colonos over here in Almería and Málaga.

The population of the Falkland Isles – whose inhabitants are even more British than the Gibraltarians (they’ve been there since the 1830s) – runs to about 3,700 souls. Wiki says that there are even a few llanitos living there. They probably would rather stay where they are, too (while we are here, I wonder where the exiled malvineros are living).

It’s all well and good righting ancient wrongs, but for every victor on the one hand, there has to be an eviction on the other.

The previous king of Spain, who abdicated in 2014 to give way to Felipe VI, is to publish his memoirs – evidently with the idea of presenting his side of the story. “I get the feeling”, he says, “that they are trying to rob me of my own history”. The book is being ghost-written by a French journalist and will be published early next year with the title: Reconciliación.

“My father always advised me not to write my memoirs. Kings do not confess, and even less so publicly”, says Juanca (his nickname in progressive circles).

It may not be such a good idea. One should always consider the reputation of The Firm.

Coincidentaly, a second story about Juan Carlos had also hit the news-stands last week: photos in a Dutch magazine of His Royal Highness in a clinch with a companion of the female persuasion called Bárbara Rey. (El Rey kissing La Rey). The relationship had been considered until now as an open secret.

The Bourbons (going back through the ages) have long enjoyed activities which have been quietly swept under the carpet: but Royalty is not as other people, and their peccadillos should be at best, unremembered. President Clinton might have got into hot water in his day for his extra-curricular activities and then there was Donald Trump and his shenanigans (and we shake our heads, even though some of us might have done the same, or worse), but our leaders, our shepherds, chosen as it were by God (or Franco maybe) must be kept to a higher standard.

Why, if it’s OK for His Nibs to cheat on his wife (and his subjects), then what about little me?

For this whole thing to work, the Royals must be revered by their subjects, since they are, and must be, an example to us all. One thinks of Elizabeth II or Spain’s Felipe VI and of course many others.

All said, it must be a strain – living such a virtuous life under the public eye at all times. One mistake or lapse in judgement, especially in these times of intrusive paparazzi, and one’s Royal reputation is in the dust.

Not that Juan Carlos didn’t have other reasons to upset the applecart – other lovers such as Corinne, other enthusiasms such as shooting elephants, and other vices including accepting bribes from foreign leaders. José Antonio Zarzalejos, former director of the ABC, once defined JC's behaviour with three words in the book about his son called ‘Felipe VI. Un rey en la adversidad’: greed, promiscuity and arrogance.

His fortune is estimated by Forbes as running to 2,000 million euros. He is leaving it all to his two daughters Elena and Cristina – Felipe wants nothing to do with it.

El Emerito moved to Abu Dhabi a few years back to keep himself out of the public eye, however he sometimes briefly returns to participate in regattas in Sanxenxo (Pontevedra).

His son ignores him on these occasions.

For the institution of Royalty to survive, it has to be without blemish. Now that may be hard to do; but there are only two answers to that, and Spain has been careful not to ask the public in any of its many official surveys, which they would prefer: a monarchy or a republic. It is strange to think that the obligation for a country to elect a system with a head of state is like throwing a coin to choose between pot luck and naked ambition.  

For those who yearn for a change in the Spanish government, there’s the problem of the leading opposition champion evidently not being the right person for the job.

The hard-to-pronounce (or spell) Alberto Núñez Feijóo had been the president of Galicia and was chosen to take over the leadership of the Partido Popular following the defenestration of Pablo Casado (for criticising on the television the behaviour of his colleague Isabel Díaz Ayuso during the pandemic). Since he can’t talk about the economy – which is doing surprisingly well (now that everyone has been obliged to pay their taxes), Feijóo must concentrate his relentless opposition on the actions of his rival and his crew, whether actually true or basely dreamed up by the innumerable fábricas de bulos which are endlessly circling the ship of state.

Feijóo (pronounce him fay-who) sort of won the election last year (he has the most seats), only he didn’t since he and his allies – the Vox and a couple of tiddlers – weren’t quite enough to win against the coalition of the PSOE and its partners to the left plus some nationalist parties from the north. ‘I could have been president’, he said at one point, if it wasn’t for his partnership with Vox, producing the jocular rejoinder of Pedro Sánchez in the Cortes with "That’s a very good one! Sr. Feijóo, you are not president because you do not want to be. In fact, you have even proclaimed that you are the first Spaniard to renounce being president of the Government when you could have been".

They’ve been at daggers drawn ever since, with Sánchez only last week complaining of Feijóo’s ‘vinegary’ and senseless opposition. Why, he will even go against the opinion of the PPE in Brussels in doomed attempts to pull down either Spain’s standing internationally, or Sanchez’ britches at home.

The party (and its supporters) is beginning to have second thoughts about the Galician (and his troubles back in his home region), his lack of constructive ideas ("When there is a problem with Morocco, the PP goes against the Government of Spain; if there is a problem with Algeria, the PP goes against the Government of Spain; if there is an issue in Venezuela, the PP goes against the Government of Spain; always against the Government of Spain and never in defence of the Spanish people" says a government minister with candour), and his recent performance over Venezuela, where his claim that Spain had plotted with the Caracas government to allow the disputed winner of their recent elections, Edmundo González, to seek asylum in Spain – was afterwards denied by the arch-conservative candidate Edmundo González himself.

Feijóo with Ayuso

Feijóo wouldn’t make much of a president anyway – he gabbles and doesn’t speak English – and waiting in the wings is the abovementioned Isabel Diáz Ayuso, who may be a handful with much baggage, but for some reason – she’s bulletproof. Pretty, too, like Meloni.

Talking of the Italian torpedo, Feijóo was over in Rome a week ago, to discuss immigration from the point of an ultra – however it panned out, Georgia Meloni wouldn’t say – and apart from a stolen snapshot, there’s no record of the summit anywhere in the Italian media.

Now we have the pre-budgets for 2025. The Conservative regions want more money from Central Government, but their colleagues in Parliament said they would be voting against the proposals this Thursday, which would include any increase for the regional autonomies (mostly under PP control). They have unlikely support from the Junts per Catalunya. On Tuesday, the government postponed the vote for another more propitious moment.

Pedro Sánchez certainly has problems to keep his majority, but the loosest of his allies – Junts per Catalunya (the exiled Puigdemont’s rabble) – know full well that they would get short shrift if the PP and its friends at Vox were to somehow take over the government.

So, maybe Sánchez and his reckless claim of three more years is not such a fantasy, and with Feijóo for his rival, he may be right.

As someone says: better a Frankenstein government than a Neanderthal one.