POLITICS:
IMBROGLIO X 2:
- President I-won-the-elections Rajoy has proposed a Grand Coalition to keep Spain on track and, coincidentally, himself and his party in power. This would comprise the PP, PSOE and Ciudadans parties. Which would be very hard for the angry Spanish populace to swallow, I believe. It's widely thought such a coalition would be the effective end of the PSOE socialist party. So, not much a runner.
- President I-am-Cataluña Mas shows no sign of accepting the reality that his days of glory are over and that clinging to the reins of power is doing his secession cause no good at all. Plus it's contributing to the destabilisation of Spain. Not that he'd be particularly concerned about this.
DOMESTIC
VIOLENCE: The Spanish media pays as much attention to this as the
British media does to pedophilia, even though the statistics in both
cases may well be lower than in other European countries. So, there's
bound to be a lot of attention paid to the contribution yesterday of
the Archbishop of Toledo. According to him, most cases occur
because the woman doesn't accept the man's demands. The
blame in many cases, he stressed, lies with the women, especially
those who cause a macho reaction by asking for a separation. As
Private Eye might say, the Archbishop is unmarried, never had a
partner and is 670 years old. Last year saw the murder of 56 women by
their partners here in Spain, which is well down on the number on the
level of 2000. The UK figure is 104, which is proportionally higher
than Spain's.
THE 3 KINGS: Today is
the big holiday of the Magi, when Spanish kids used to get their Xmas
presents, not on the 25th of December. Now, of course, they get them
on both dates. There was the traditional rain-soaked cabalgata last
night here in Pontevedra, when the 3 Kings on horseback showered the
crowds with sweets. I haven't attended one of these since my first in
2001, when I was almost killed in the mad rush for these. The kids
were almost as aggressive as their parents. The Local takes a look at
this event here.
MAIL
DELIVERIES: Yesterday I went to the Post Office to try to persuade
them to give me a package for which I'd lost the note from the
postman saying I wasn't in when he called. To be fair, they seemed
willing to go along with this but couldn't find it and eventually
said it must have gone back to the UK. They return things, they told
me, after only 2 weeks. Given that most Spaniards take a month's
summer holiday, this seems a questionable practice to me.
GALICIAN
DRUG RUNNING: The police here have captured a gang in the act of
bringing in the largest haul of this young century. The suppliers
were Spanish (Galician?) and buyers were British and Dutch. So, no
surprises there.
FINALLY .
. . I'm off to the Netherlands today. More correctly to the Holland
bit of it. From where I'll be reporting on the idiosyncrasies of the
Dutch. Which appear, from my acquaintances here in Pontevedra, to be
many.
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