Well, I finally did today something I’ve been wanting to do for years - attend the annual spit-roast fiesta in the nearby town of Moraña. Actually, it’s real name is Santa Lucia de Moraña but, in classical Gallego fashion, it’s called Sta Lucia on some maps and Moraña on others. Anyway, I hadn’t been before because you have to get up a minimum party of twenty, pay in advance and then wait to see if your party’s been successful in a lottery for the limited number of tables. And I’ve never been able to find nineteen lovers of lamb slow-roasted over oak embers. Actually, I’ve never even tried as I don’t know nineteen people here I’d enjoy dining with . . .

But - solitary though I was - it was a great ‘Spanish’ day. Fairground, market stalls, Galician dance troupes, brass bands in the bars and a centrepiece of 30 metres of roasting lamb carcases. Plus I easily found a place serving its own - excellent - roast lamb at 10 euros a pop. In fact, it was so good I ordered a second helping. I had visions of later becoming famous as the mad guiri who ate two dinners at one go but the waitress responded as if it were an everyday occurrence. But I still tipped well. Partly because I’d also had three glasses of the undeservedly unknown/under-rated Galician red wine called Mencía. I like to help the struggling bodegas of Ourense and Lugo provinces whenever I can.

Of course it’s not true that I don’t know nineteen people here whom I’d enjoy eating with. Spanish lunches are fun occasions and nothing like an Anglo dinner party of six or eight earnest souls putting the world to rights. Fortunately for me, I enjoy both.

Anyway, here are the pix . . . including one of the Galician bread which is big in Madrid.



Note the protective footwear of this fire-tender. House slippers.


And here’s one explaining why knife crime in Spain is so much higher than in the UK. Not!


Finally . . . Here’s the (imminent) page of an organisation dedicated to the defence and promotion of Gallego, our local language. As I know only too well, this is a sensitive subject, on which the range of views is enormous. In fact, some of the people fighting for the cause feel it’s not helped much by the attitudes struck by some of their naïve colleagues-in-arms. Here, for example, is the page of a crank who feels he can prove that Gallego isn’t derived from Latin. Which rather conflicts with the stance of his brethren who feel one reason Gallego is superior to Spanish is that it remains closer to that dead language.

I fear it’s too much to hope that the previous paragraph – or possibly this one – won’t spur our reintegrista friend, Cade, into one of his adolescent rants from the Galician stronghold of Leicester.