Dawn

Dawn

Thursday, May 07, 2009

The publication of a picture said to resemble a man who spied on the McCann’s flat in Portugal for a week before Madeleine disappeared surprised me on two counts. Firstly, that it’s taken two years for this to come to light. And, secondly, that someone can be described as ‘very ugly’ these days. I suppose it helps that he’s white. If a little speckled, according to the sketch.

It’s reported that British buyers are returning to the Spanish property market, even ahead of the Germans. Who haven’t suffered a currency devaluation, of course. But I guess it comes as no surprise that the British buyers are mainly from the secure-salary-high pension public sector. Where retirement appears to come remarkably early for many. And where perhaps some are anticipating a profitable redundancy when the Conservatives get back into power next year.

If you’re an EU citizen, you’re supposed to have certain rights whichever member country you live in or travel to. It doesn’t quite work out this way, of course. Especially when decisions are devolved to regions and some are more tight-fisted than others, leading to what’s called in the UK ‘a postcode lottery’. This is prompted by a letter to the Voz de Galicia today from a couple of returned Gallego émigrés, complaining about being refused what they’re entitled to here in Galicia but not in Cataluña. It’s almost good to know it’s not only foreigners who suffer this way. Though, ironically, the situation appears to arise because the Galician authorities chose to regard them as foreigners because they lived in Germany for many years.

I’ve been wanting for some time to post a foto of the new bus-stop down at the roundabout but it’s taking an awfully long time to commission. This seems to be because only 10-15 minutes a day are spent on it by workmen operating on the basis of the Spanish (universal?) principle that you can displease all your customers all the time. However, passing the works today, I was impressed to see that the two men inserting bolts in the roof were wearing elaborate safety harnesses. And that that these were actually anchored into said roof. Even though they were only working at a height which most of us would happily risk to get something off the top of a kitchen cupboard. From one extreme to the other.

There are any number of things one can say about last night’s match between Chelsea and Barcelona. One of these is that the referee did not – to say the least - have a good match. Another is that the result was the one most neutrals would have wanted. But, given that Barca managed just one shot on target in 93 minutes, my guess is that the happiest observer must have been Alex Ferguson of Manchester United; his tactics for the final should now be a tad clearer. Meanwhile, I think it’s worth repeating a headline from one of the big Spanish football papers, in reference to the Norwegian official – “The Viking who saw nothing”. I also liked the description of him in one British paper as “calamitously unimpressive”. But así son las cosas.

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