The Santiago Rail Crash
of 2013: This caused around 80 deaths, as I recall. Despite plenty of
apparent evidence and to widespread astonishment/cynical laughter,
the official investigation concluded that no executives of the rail
companies were guilty of anything. All was the fault of the driver
alone, even though a proper safety system hadn't been installed, on
cost grounds. And even though drivers had previously recorded it was
an accident waiting to happen. So, it's no great surprise that
Brussels has now declared it wasn't a 'proper' investigation and
asked the Spanish government to think hard about re-doing it. But
Brussels won't be 'pressurising' Madrid in any way. So I think we can
guess what the politicians and courts will do. Sweet FA. Oh, and
there won't be any resignations either. Not a Spanish thing.
Spanish Views of
Britain: The Brexit development has encouraged Spanish columnists to
have a go at the UK. Fair enough but some of them don't seem to have
too good an understanding of the place. A common theme is that
Britain has never really been part of Europe. A typical article this
week spoke of Fahrenheit and feet, inches and miles. But both of my
daughters are in their 30s and are totally unfamiliar with these.
Words: A couple more oddities:-
Un Reto Non Stop
El Citroen C4 Cactus Rip Curl - Con Grip Control
Ponters Tourism: Spanish tourism took off in the late 60s, when Franco's regime opened up the place to wicked foreigners. It's taken the subsequent 50 years for the Pontevedra council to arrive at the conclusion that it might not be wise to have regional, provincial and city tourist agencies competing with each other via separate offices and kiosks around the the city. So, now these are going to be fused. We wait to see how successfully. And whether anyone ever goes to the Rias Baixas - southern Galicia - office in the magnificent pazo in Plaza de Santa Maria. If it's retained.
Parking in Ponters: The
council has announced there'll be 66 parking spaces on the site of an
old paper factory on the outskirts of town. Looking for somewhere to
park on a Sunday morning yesterday, it struck me that I could easily
arrive within 5 minutes at more than double that total of spaces
removed from the city's roads in the last decade or so. And then we
have the recent reduction of free spaces in the centre – both in
the squares and the roads – to 15m slots. So a certain ambivalence
towards cars and motorists. I imagine the new parking will be free.
For a while.
Finally . . . Cycling in Pontevedra:
Blow me down but there was a a full page article in La Voz de Galicia
on Sunday last demanding that the law be applied to the bastards who use the pavement/sidewalk instead of the road. Or cycle through the pedestrian areas. This, he said, should be done whether
or not the council accedes to demands for two-way cycle lanes in
one-way streets. The writer spoke of public anger but folk must keep
this well hidden. For the only person I've ever seen irritated by nuisance cyclists here is me. And I'm certainly the only person who carries a stick horizontally so that they have to slow down or even stop.
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