Dawn

Dawn

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Last year – just before the elections, as I recall – the government surprised us all with a promise to give many of us (though not me) a tax rebate of 400 euros. This, it assured us, was not a one-off election bribe but would be permanent. Which turns out to mean about 2 years. For the relevant minister has warned that, though it won’t be touched this year, it just could be next year.

As I’ve written, it isn’t easy to govern Spain from Madrid and one of the most intractable issues for the President to solve is that of regional finance. In short, he never resolved this when times were good and, now that they’re bad, the omens are not encouraging. For a start, one doesn’t exactly get the impression that the message coming from the regional governments is “OK, we realise our extortionate demands reflected the boom of previous years. And, now that the state’s coffers are somewhat depleted, we’ll come back to you with something more reasonable”. Rather the opposite; everyone wants at least the same formula that, effectively, gave Cataluña more money from the central pot. Or, rather, it didn’t, as even this long-running deal hasn’t yet been closed.

Perhaps a concentration on this issue explains why President Zapatero gives no evidence whatsoever he’s listening to the choir of voices telling him something has to be done about re-structuring a labour market which, it’s said, expensively protects the few and leaves the many without any safeguards whatsoever. The latest of which is that of the President of the European Central bank. Meanwhile, the metalworkers’ strike in Vigo just got a little more violent, with a bomb explosion at an office of the employers. Perhaps President Z fears there’ll be more of this, if he ever opens his mouth on this subject. Other than to say he will be implementing ‘socialist solutions’ to the recession and its concomitant highest unemployment in Europe.

Well, it turns out the Brits are quite important to Spain. Visitors are 18% fewer than last year, dragging the tourist industry total down by 12%. Some of this, of course, is due to the fall in the pound but one wonders how much Spain’s damaged image has played in the downturn. Perhaps there will be some comment on this in Paradise Lost, a program on Spain being shown on British TV one night this week. Possibly even tonight.

One of the joys of early spring here is the scent of jasmine from the two bushes in my front garden. And I was pleasantly surprised to see they still had flowers on them when I returned from a two-week trip to the UK in April. And astonished to see that new flowers were emerging this morning. I wonder if it’s connected with the recent heat.

Finally . . . It’s good to see that some folk in Pontevedra have petitioned the town hall in respect of action about the increasingly feral seagulls that plague the old quarter’s lovely little plazas. If nothing is done, I guess I’ll actually have to do something about my plan to buy a plastic eagle owl, to affix to whatever table I’m sitting at.


Technical postscript: A plea. Does anyone know how to solve the problem of a computer that goes black for a couple of seconds and then tells you the screen controller (controlador de pantalla) stopped working and has been recovered? If it’s a question of modifying/uninstalling the ATI Catalyst Control Centre, how is this safely done?

No comments: