Thoughts from Galicia, Spain

2012-02-01T23:59:00.001+01:00

As I walked to the high street this morning, I heard raised voices in the garden of a neighbour. Peering nonchalantly through the hedge, I saw it was a dispute between the lady of the house and the postman. And, as I reached the gate, I was passed by said postman, muttering rude thoughts under his breath. And I thought - How on earth do you get into dispute with your postman? What can he possible do to upset you? Theories welcome.

At the football match between Everton and league-leaders Manchester City last night, a fan handcuffed himself to one of the goalposts. It seems he was protesting against Ryanair. Specifically against their recruitment policies. Which hadn't favoured his daughter. A novel approach but I'm not sure it will have much of an impact on Ryanair. Who have a pretty thick skin. Everton won, by the way.

Talking about football teams, I noted the other night that one of Manchester United's players - Javier Hernández Balcázar - didn't have Hernández (or Balcázar) on the back of his shirt. What he did have was his nickname - Chicharito. or "little pea". I must say I was a little surprised to see this "Hispanic" custom appearing in the Premier League. I wonder now whether British players will take it up. Will Wayne Rooney, for example, have his affectionate nickname - Granny shagger - on the back of his shirt. I guess not.

In Spain, building permits in November fell to an all time low - 72, 872, compared with 865,561 way back in the different world of 2006.

A few other statistics - More than 300,000 young Spaniards left the country last year in search of work and there are now 1.5 million Spaniards aged over 18 living outside the country. I wonder how many of them have ended up in Germany, where unemployment fell to an all-time low at the end of 2011. Both Holland and Austria also had low rates, but the southern economies are not faring so well. And the EU rate is at a record high of 10.4%.

Finally . . . In the café this afternoon, I overheard the conversation of two young people of 16 or 17. Well, I couldn't not hear it, given the volume at which their most private thoughts were broadcast. Anyway, I decided they were both very intelligent. And then the young man started to tell his companion about a conversation with another young woman. Beginning every single sentence with "I was like . . ." or "She was like . . ." An American import, I guess.

2012-01-31T23:54:00.004+01:00

Rail traffic across much of Spain was disrupted on Sunday, after thieves had damaged a kilometre of overhead cables at a station just outside Alicante. Of course, this sort of thing isn't confined to Spain; my own travel plans were disrupted two or three weeks ago when thieves stole cables somewhere between Manchester and Liverpool. And last weekend friends I was visiting told me that rogues had recently stolen all the town's manhole covers, causing closure of all the roads. Apparently, it's all owing to the high prices of scrap metal.

It seems the new right-of-centre government in Spain has decided to raise the heat over Gibraltar and to exclude the Rock's representative from what have been trilateral talks but may now be bilateral again. The Chief Minister of Gibraltar has suggested to Madrid they might have more important things to think about. Like more than 5 million unemployed, for example. Touché.

Although Greece and Italy have cornered all the media attention, things are pretty bad in Portugal, which seems to have the same road map as Greece. Or, as it says here: Portuguese storm gathers as EU leaders fight over Greece. Surging borrowing costs in Portugal have raised the spectre of a second full-fledged contagion crisis in the eurozone, eclipsing the latest efforts by European Union leaders in Brussels to agree on Europe's bail-out machinery and a strategy for Greece.

The word Sisyphean is a popular one for describing the challenges facing Europe's leaders. I've seen or heard it at least three times in the last week. You'll all recall that in Greek mythology Sisyphus was a king punished by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity. And that:- The word "Sisyphean" means "endless and unavailing, as labour or a task".

All of which suggests that the challenges lack solutions. And yet here, in all its entirety, is a positive answer to this question, posed by The Times:- If member states leave the Economic and Monetary Union, what is the best way for the economic process to be managed to provide the soundest foundation for the future growth and prosperity of the current membership?

And this is the answer, which assumes that it's Greece which has to leave the EU. It's from Oliver Kamm. Enjoy:-

The question how best to manage the process of a country’s leaving the euro has an answer. Most approaches have started from the wrong premise, however. The task is not realistically to effect the quickest and most decisive break with the institutions of the eurozone. The “nuclear option” of an extended bank holiday in Greece (to take the most pressing case), in which deposits of euros would be replaced with drachmas, is the simplest answer to the question, but is in fact no answer at all. It would require not only a cessation of commerce but a clampdown on people leaving the country.

Long before this point had been reached, there would have been a run on the banks. Greece, Portugal and Spain all have experience in the past 40 years of dictatorial government. An economic program that, to have any chance of working, would have to curtail liberties that citizens take for granted would stand little chance of even ameliorating the situation.

In fact, there are many historical cases of countries leaving currency unions, but none of them is applicable to today’s events. This paper explains the reasons why this is so. Moreover, the competitive boost of a new drachma would be economically marginal and overwhelmed by the increase in debt servicing costs, leading to wholesale default and the country’s being locked out of the capital markets.

Every proposal for Greece and the other indebted economies to leave the eurozone starts from the premise of this type of “Big Bang” approach, modelled on Argentina in 2001-02, yet it speedily runs into the problems of political turmoil and financial collapse. A dash for the drachma (or escudo or peseta) will hugely aggravate the problems of the eurozone if, as Greece and possibly other eurozone economies disengage, there is no floor under the new (or restored) currency.

This submission proposes instead a way of providing such a floor and thereby enabling countries safely to leave the euro. The proposal is to introduce a new currency (the “New Drachma”) as part of a currency board. A currency board is like a gold standard except that the currency is pegged to another currency and not to a commodity price. The central bank is thus committed to exchanging its monetary liabilities at a fixed exchange rate. It can issue only as much domestic currency as it has holdings of foreign currency given the exchange rate. The New Drachma would be pegged to the euro and that would be the floor.

A peg to the euro would not on its own untie the straitjacket that Greece is in owing to euro membership. The currency board should, therefore, be a dual currency board in which the New Drachma is pegged to two reserve currencies – the dollar as well as the euro. It would be at the discretion of the central bank which reserve currency it gave in return for New Drachmas – but the workings of the market, and the search for dollar-euro arbitrage by market participants in Greece would mean automatically that the New Drachma would be pegged to whichever of the dollar or the euro was the more depreciated currency in each case. This would provide an economic lubricant - a little bit of inflation and depreciation, but with the retention of the monetary credibility needed to make the structural reforms to welfare spending and labour markets that Greece in particular has avoided for decades.

A dual currency board has been seriously proposed in the case of the emerging economies from the former Soviet bloc, but more usually the peg was to a weighted basket of currencies. This has the disadvantage of not being so readily understandable and transparent when the very purpose of a currency peg, for countries leaving the euro, would be to reassure consumers, businesses and investors. For that reason, a peg to the two reserve currencies is preferable. It is a practical course by which Greece and economies with similar problems can leave the euro without sparking a banking collapse, and while keeping open also their access to capital markets and the prospects for structural reforms. The success of the scheme would depend on the willingness of international lending institutions to provide sufficient foreign currency reserves and act as international lenders of last resort to the banking system, but this is a more likely way of securing a successful international rescue than persisting with the current round of negotiations over emergency funding mechanisms.

The proposal does not resolve the problems of the heavily indebted economies; but it does provide a breathing space in which to tackle these countries’ economic difficulties and insulate the risk of contagion. Currency boards are usually interim steps on the way to either a currency union or a fully flexible rate. That would be the choice of Greek and other policymakers and voters once the board had done its work.

There remain huge complications, not least legal challenges from companies investing in Greece. But legal cases take time, whereas this step would be quick and without sacrificing monetary credibility of having a reserve currency. When the euro was launched, its supporters who recognised the design flaws assumed that the necessary institutions would be built as the currency gained credibility. That never happened. But it might happen with the proposed scheme for Greece and the other indebted economies. Exit from the euro with a dual currency board would cause an immediate shift in perception but with market credibility retained and enhanced. Thus could be established a virtuous circle in which debt servicing costs come down, the opportunity to cut costs and improve productivity is presented, without an atmosphere of constant crisis - and sustainable growth returns to southern Europe.

2012-01-30T23:59:00.001+01:00

No sooner do I mention public myopia when it comes to footballers' obscenely vast salaries than some journalist cranks out an article on the theme. Not for the first time, I might add. Anyway, here it is.

An American gambling magnate would like to build a European version of Las Vegas in Spain, either in Madrid or Barcelona. What's stopping him is the reluctance of some politicians to alter the tax laws so as to attract investors, even though the scheme will create 261,000 jobs. The head of the Madrid regional government is in favour of the tax breaks but opposition politicians from the Socialist party are not. Which, on the surface, looks a bit odd. Given that there are around 500,000 people without a job in Madrid.

Still in Madrid - Today saw the opening of the third trial in so many weeks of Spain's crusading judge, Baltasar Garzón. Giles Tremlett does justice to the subject in today's Guardian, reporting that:- The already astonishing drama surrounding Spain's "superjudge" hit a new peak as corruption was added to the charges against him and thousands of his supporters blocked streets around the supreme court in Madrid. Click here for more.

And still in Madrid - The city has announced today that it will be bidding for the 2020 Olympics. Or perhaps the 20020 Olympics. The logo has come in for a bit of ridicule. Which is British understatement. See here for the story.

Finally . . . Europe. The Greeks appear to be not too happy about German proposals to turn their country into a satrapy of Brussels with some unelected bureaucrat as the satrap, exercising power over everything to do with taxing and spending. Odd people. Mind you, they could have avoided this development by implementing the measures they agreed to implement a year ago.

As to the wider picture, here's an overview from Sam Fleming of The Times:- Inter-governmental relations within Europe are even more tumultuous. Already the new Spanish Government of Mariano Rajoy is demanding that the country’s deficit targets are eased in the face of unemployment that has just passed the five million mark. Mario Monti, Italy’s Prime Minister, has been publicly seeking more recognition from Germany of the sacrifices his nation is making, warning of a popular backlash against Teutonic austerity. In France, the Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande has put forward a “back to the Seventies” electoral program that will dismay the Germans. While Berlin urges its partners to lower costs, trim budgets and galvanise economic competitiveness, Mr Hollande is planning a lower retirement age, higher taxes on the rich and big business, and 150,000 state-aided jobs. If he wins the election, as many analysts expect, Mr Hollande threatens to reopen negotiations on the German-led fiscal compact that European leaders are aiming to settle today. This may prove to be a hollow threat but it is still explosive. It will be formidably difficult for political leaders to avoid further fumbles as they grope their way through 2012. Despite the efforts of central bankers, we may find ourselves back on the edge of the precipice before long.

Is this really what monetary union was intended to foster?

2012-01-29T23:00:00.000+01:00

At last! . . . From The Times today:- "A wave of strikes and violent protests has rocked the new government of Mariano Rajoy as Spaniards rebel against the prime minister’s drive for austerity and reform."

Except this isn't about Spain but Italy and I have changed the names. Still no sign of such unrest in Spain, despite the unemployment rate of 23% being the highest in the developed world.

So, José Mourinho - the "special one" - has had enough of the intrigues that plague the job of Real Madrid coach and will leave at the end of summer and return to England. Where he won't be short of offers. It'll be interesting to hear why he favours England over Italy and Portugal. Maybe it's just the money.

Talking about money . . . The British media is currently obsessed with the income of bankers in general and the bonus of the CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland in particular. The BBC tells us today that people think he should only get seven hundred thousand to a million pounds a year, at most. Funny thing is, no one seems the slightest concerned that footballers can get twenty-five million pounds a year.

Which reminds me . . . Carlos Tévez is going to be fined another million pounds by his club for his latest offence. This will take the money he's lost to over ten million pounds.

Finally . . . Last night's post somehow went into Drafts - not for the first time - and was only published a few hours ago. Sorry about that.

2012-01-28T23:59:00.003+01:00

The Spanish airline, Spanair has gone bust, leaving thousands of (ex)passengers stranded in Madrid and Barcelona. After Qatar airlines had decided not to play the white knight and purchase a 49% stake and the Catalan government had said it couldn't put any more money into the company, the management pulled the plug. The Development Ministress has said that Spanair could be fined nine million pounds for the way they've gone about things. Which is perhaps not much of a threat to a bankrupt company.

Cantata2 is a program designed to increase tourism in several Atlantic regions. Here is Galicia's page, featuring something called "Flavour Routes". I'm not sure any native speaker was involved in the English version. If so, they should be ashamed for missing "Chack them out!"

Astonishingly, the England cricket team has snatched a humiliating defeat from the jaws of victory. Needing only 145 to beat Pakistan, they were bowled out for a pitiful 72. Probably the most abject defeat in my lifetime. In essence, they failed to deal with Pakistan's spin bowling. Especially the doosra I wrote about last week.

2012-01-27T23:59:00.000+01:00

The employment news in Spain continues to be relentlessly bad. The total of unemployed people (i. e. those registered as looking for work) rose to 5.3 million in December, or 23% of the working population. The figure for 16-24 year olds rose from 49% to 51%. One inevitable consequence is that young Spaniards are living in the parental home even longer than before. Which was long enough. It's hardly surprising that the number of people emigrating has also soared.

The Guardian this week featured profiles of European politicians as seen from somewhere other that their own country. Here's Sr. Rajoy, as seen - pretty accurately - from Poland.

Watching an international cricket match this week, I was struck by the thought that this game was a part of British culture which had adhered in many of her ex colonies - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand and even Ireland. In fact, in some of these the game is far more popular than in Britain. Thinking about other empires that have come and gone, I couldn't come up with anything like a parallel. Of course, it never took hold in North America, possibly because it ceased to be a colony before the game was developed in the UK. Though the Canadians may have a team. The Afghans certainly do and they were never even a colony.

Another conversation between me and my younger daughter:-

The city centre was full of young people.

Students, dad.

But how can they afford to spend time shopping? They should be studying.

Dad, they're having a good time. Just like I did. That's what university is all about.

2012-01-26T23:45:00.001+01:00

Having cheated death several times myself, I can't say I was surprised to read today that 40% of traffic accidents involving pedestrians in Spain occur on zebra crossings or at traffic lights.

On the other hand, I was surprised to read that there are what the Spanish call kamikaze drivers in England. Or one at least. An 85 year old woman took a wrong turn at a train crossing and drove 75 metres down a high-speed train track before deciding to stop and think about things. Prompted by the train in front of her. She was rescued and treated for shock. As was her passenger.

Telefónica's UK operation, O2, is in the dock after it was discovered they'd supplied the numbers of millions of their customers to various web sites. Sales have not been going well recently and exposing their clients to spam and viruses is not calculated to help matters. Either with existing or potential customers. Especially as no explanation has yet been given.

Carlos Tévez is a football player with Manchester City. He's been in dispute with them for a while and is currently taking French leave in South America. The club announced this week that his behaviour had cost him more than nine million pounds in fines and lost income. Nine million pounds! What an odd world.

I saw an American film recently which showed 'sign holders' in New York - people who hold up signs to places where you can get a hot dog, for example. I didn't think these folk were part of the UK's street furniture. But in Leeds centre yesterday I saw a woman holding up a sign for a seamstress. And truth to tell we have in Headingley an unhealthy looking young man who carries a sign reminding us that all sandwiches are only a pound each at Mr Sandwich. Whose shop, in my view, is poorly located. It'll be interesting to see whether the business survives. If it wasn't poorly located, Mr Sandwich wouldn't need to employ the young man to stand three hundred metres away, at the traffic lights.

Finally . . . Between Headingley and Leeds centre, there are three shops dealing in fancy dress costumes. Presumably one of them supplied the duck/chicken outfits I wrote about the other day. Student partying is clearly on a different level from the one I knew.

2012-01-26T00:13:00.005+01:00

Going through a series of BBC podcasts on my iPod (Xmas present), I was pleasantly surprised to happen on one with a Galician flavour. It was hosted by Michael Portillo, who was talking to a Galician lady who's a professor at the LSE. The subject was the English armada of 1589, the year after the Spanish one had come unstuck in the Channel. This had as its objectives the destruction of the rump of the armada and then the capture of the Azores and the interception of the Spanish bullion fleet. Apart from the sacking of poor Vigo en route to Lisbon, the mission was a multi-level failure, doing nothing for the reputation of Francis Drake. If you want to know how things went, click here and cross your fingers that the link will work.

I did wonder whether Pontevedra had been sacked as well as Vigo but was confusing this expedition with a later one of 1719, during The War of the Quadruple Alliance.

During Spain's property boom, it became clear that it was common for the lead time on construction to be three years or more. Meaning that new properties would continue to come onto the market for some time after the bubble burst. And so it has transpired. In fact, almost five years after the boom peaked in 2007, houses and flats are still coming on the market, to be added to the vast overhang of empty properties. Prices, of course, continue to fall.

I heard the name of (ex)President Gaddafi on the radio today. When this happens I always recall something I read a few months ago - along the lines that "Before he was killed, President Gaddafi was sodomised by a bayonet." Possibly the first and last time 'sodomised' has been used as a euphemism. Checking the spelling of his name just now, I saw there was a video of this. But was not surprised to read that it had been removed as "a violation of YouTube's policy on shocking and disgusting content."

Finally . . . A university lecturer in England has just been jailed for 6 months for contempt of court. Taking just about the most stupid decision possible, she told her fellow jurors that she'd googled the accused's name and found that he'd previously been accused of rape. One of them promptly told a court official. The sentence seems harsh - and career destroying - but the judge said that he wanted to send a clear message. Which I think he managed.

2012-01-24T23:57:00.004+01:00

In 2007, there were 4,600 properties sold to foreigners on the Costa del Sol. Last year the number was a mere 600. Or 13% of the peak year of the phoney boom.

Looking ahead, the IMF has today issued revised forecasts for this year and next year. For Spain, the economy is forecast to shrink by 1.7% this year and by 0.3% in 2013. And the government is predicted to miss its deficit target by a significant margin. God knows what this means for an unemployment rate which, at 23.5%, is already astonishingly high. Or a scarcely-credible 49%, if you're young.

The inevitable question is - When is Spain going to see the sort of protests seen in, say, France? As of now, we have the Yo no pago (I won't pay) campaign. This is the indignados refusing to pay for public services, such as the Madrid Metro. Which probably won't worry the government too much.

On a wider front, the IMF today repeated its plea for another 500 billion dollars, in order to ensure a firewall that's sufficiently high to protect Italy and Spain. And if they don't get it?

Spain's most famous (and most controversial) judge - Baltasar Garzón - is facing not one but three trials. As Guy Hedgecoe writes in IberoSphere, the Garzón affair reflects Spain's tortured relationship with its past. And a few other things as well. Click here for the comprehensive article.

Someone else in court is a chap called Asil Nadir, who returned to the UK recently to face the prosecution for financial skulduggery he avoided a couple of decades ago by fleeing the country. Mr Nadir is 70, so he probably gets quite a lot of people mistaking his 27 year old wife for his daughter. Or granddaughter even. Her name is Nur, which means 'light' in Persian. As in the Koh-i Nur - Or Mountain of Light - diamond.

Finally . . . I was accosted in the café today by a young man from Bahrain. He claimed to be writing an article and asked me "How people round here interact with their families". I told him that, as it was essentially a student quarter, there probably wasn't much interaction at all. At least not until the vacations. He seemed to find this depressing. So I tried to cheer him up by telling him things were different in Spain.

2012-01-23T23:55:00.000+01:00

Just quickly following up on a couple of things . . . King Juan Carlos is said to have even importuned Princess Diana. And Mr Romney's first name is, in fact, William. So he actually choses to favour his second name, Mitt.

I saw something odd today. A chap in his sixties was walking along both sides of the street and hauling the recently-emptied bins off the pavement and back into peoples' drives. A vigilante bin remover. Very anal.

Here are the names of several Spanish celebrities, followed by their English equivalents.

- Placido Domingo, Victoria de los Ángeles, José Carreras, Reyes de Luna, Paco de Lucia, Camerón de la Isla, José Luis Zapatero, Julio Iglesias.

- Quiet Sunday, Victory of the Angels, Joe Careers, Kings of the Moon, Lucy’s Frank, The Island’s Shellfish, Joe Louis Shoemaker, July Churches…

As Anthony Steyning says in an IberoSphere article . . . Unreal and I don’t know of many languages in which famous names, in translation, become so . . . surreal.

I would guess that, like me, you've had a slew of spam emails beginning Hi there How are you doing? I love your user profile. Are you interested to check my own private images? But I bet you haven't had one that clearly caters for Yorkshire argot and begins

Eh up! How are you doing? etc. Isn't the internet wonderful?

Finally . . . . The Spanish economy shrank in the final quarter of last year and is expected to contract further during the whole of this year. If you want a short and simple commentary on this, click here. If you want something long and complex, click here.

2012-01-23T00:13:00.000+01:00

My apologies for forgetting that both of the Republican frontrunners have daft names and calling Mr Romney 'Matt', when his name is 'Glove'. Sorry, 'Mitt'. And sorry, Mitt, that you were unexpectedly trounced by the chap with the name of an amphibian and a reputation for an interest in extra-marital sex. Which really should have put paid to his prospects in conservative South Carolina but obviously didn't. Mainly, it seems, because of some very effective "attack ads" from his camp directed at Mr Romney. Things could get very dirty now. Mitts off, as they say.

Fascinating developments around the Scottish independence referendum. Firstly, the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, has said that England will be better off without Scotland. Of course, he's pushing at an open door, given that there's a higher percentage of people in England in favour of independence than in Scotland. 36% against 33%. Secondly, Spain has said it will 'veto' independence. Which turns out to mean it will try to stop Scotland becoming an EU member. The Scots have pointed out that Scotland already is a member and has been for almost 40 years. As I said a week or two back, the concern in Madrid is that even just the talk over the next two years will put wind in the sails of the Basques, the Catalans and even the Galicians. Though, in the case of Galicia, most people recognise the economics are wrong. But if they find oil up in the Galician hills . . . .

Spain's king Don Carlos has a reputation for being something of a womaniser. As well as for having shot his brother a while back. Accidentally, of course. In ten years in Spain, I've never seen any of this in the media. Until now. In a recently published book - The Solitude of the Queen - it's claimed he's a 'professional womaniser' and that he hasn't shared a bed with the queen since 1976. And that he was recently comforted in hospital, at 74, by a 25 year old translator. Which does sound pretty professional.

Finally . . . Coming home last night, I was passed by around twelve young men dressed as ducks, presumably on their way to a good night out. I say "dressed" but it was more than that. Each of them had yellow leggings and large webbed feet and was straddling the fore and aft parts of a (large) duck. Assisted by a pair of straps attached to the body of the duck and passing over the shoulders. Or maybe it was a chicken. Anyway, what really caught my attention was that, with the temperature at seven degrees and falling, none of the young men was wearing anything more than a T-shirt. Quite mad.

2012-01-21T23:19:00.001+01:00

The New York Times has published a good article on the Galician wines which are much less well known than those made from the albariño grape. Specifically, the white wines made from the godello grape and the big, fruity reds made from the mencia grape. Of course, as it's an article on wine, you inevitably get prose like . . . "Yet Sorte O Soro has a shivery, lingering elegance, like the cold that settles over O Bolo when the sun sets."

Today's London Times picked up on the Newt Gingrich theme, via not one but two cartoons. The first featured two large newts each with the man's head, one labelled Flaccid and the other Erect. And the second had one newt talking to another and and making the point I made yesterday - I can't believe I'll ever see a newt in the White House. In fact, after a stellar performance this week, it seems that Gingrich is doing what no one thought possible and providing real competition to Mitt Romney.

In an article on the possible building of a runway in the Thames estuary, Simon Barnes made an interesting aside about vanity projects:- There comes a point in every political career when the politician feels an incontinent urge to leave a mark. Rather as rhinos build middens.

I was intrigued to see the by-line of a Guardian article today which claimed "Those who know about seafaring" will take pity on the wretched Captain Schettino. You can read the logic here.

Finally . . . There were 200 bagpipe players in Santiago today for the funeral of Manuel Fraga. You can see many of them here, in national dress.

And, in case you haven't heard it, here's some Galician gaita music. I wanted to give you the actual funeral performance but the link in the Voz de Galicia doesn't work.

The cognocsenti will have immediately identified the major difference between Galician and Scottish pipes; there's one less drone in the former.

2012-01-20T23:28:00.000+01:00

I wonder if there's any other English-speaking country in the world in which a man called Newt could stand for the highest office and expect to win. After reading today of his demand to his second wife that they have an open marriage, I was going to make some reptilian allusion. But I checked and newts turn out to be bloody amphibians, not reptiles.

So, a possible reason has emerged for Captain Schettino tripping and falling into that handily-positioned life boat. He and a dining companion or two had polished off a decanter of red wine over dinner. One of these companions - the young, blond one - has confirmed that the captain was a hero, saving thousands of lives single-handedly. Before he decided to call it a night, obviously.

The IMF has cut its forecast of global growth this year and encouraged the ECB to boost liquidity in order to stop the eurozone crisis getting worse. This, of course, is not a decision for the eurozone's 27 members but for Mrs Merkel alone. Or as The Economist puts it this week:- The Franco-German tandem has become a unicycle. . . Now the very notion of "Merkozy" sounds hollow. Mrs Merkel, though seems to be unwilling to exercise Germany's power in order to save the eurozone. As the Polish Foreign Minister put it last November:- I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity.

Finally - and only for cricket aficionados - . . . One of the few pleasures of watching Pakistan humiliate England in a Test match in Dubai this week was learning there are two types of special delivery for an off-spinner - a doosra and a teesra. With the doosra, the bowler delivers the ball with the same finger action as a normal off-break but cocks the wrist so that the back of the hand faces the batsman. This gives the ball spin in the opposite direction to that for an off-break, causing it to spin from the leg side to the off-side to a right-handed batsman. The teesra is a back-spinner disguised as an off-spinner.

So now you know.

2012-01-19T23:16:00.000+01:00

For the second time in a row, the Spanish government today sold more bonds than it had targeted. And at interest rates significantly lower than last year. The French government also did well, shrugging off its recent downgrading. Stock markets rose on the news and everyone feels a little bit better. For now.

Next door in Portugal, things are not so good. Yields on her 10 year bonds rose to 14.39% today, taking her close to Greek levels. The forecast shrinkage of the economy over the next year or two and the prospect of a real depression raise concerns about political and social stability. The remedy favoured by the politicians - even more austerity - is expected to make things worse.

The Spanish government has said it intends to pass a law which will see jail sentences dished out to regional politicians who "spend too much." And the relevant Minister has said there'll be a provision to "impose rigour’ in the accounts of the regional governments. Who could argue against this? But, that said, the words 'stable', 'door', 'horse' and 'bolted' spring to mind.

It was with no great surprise that I read that the cost of banking has rocketed up in Spain. One wonders if we'll return any time soon to the situation of several years ago, when you were charged a percentage for moving your money not just out of but also into a bank.

I favour a font called Trebuchet MS. Today I discovered today that a trebuchet is a siege engine used between the 12th and 15th centuries. What the connection is I don't know. Perhaps each was invented by someone with the name Trébuchet. The machine was re-invented in the 1980s by a Shropshire squire who built one that would throw a piano more than 150 metres. Apparently, only the only people to find a use for the machine are rock musicians,

Finally . . . . A decent article from The Daily Mail on 'Green Spain'.

2012-01-19T00:04:00.000+01:00

I see you can get broadband for as little as 6 quid a month here in the UK. From O2. I suspect the lowest cost option in Spain is three or four times this much. The irony being that O2 is owned by Telefónica.

Talking of expensive choices . . . if you'd like to see some of the vanity projects commissioned during Spain's phoney boom, click here. And use the arrow bottom left to move through the gallery.

"Fleeing? No, I just tripped and fell into a lifeboat." Well, the captain of the Concordia may never go back to sea but he's surely got a future as a comedian. Though possibly not in Italy.

The IMF is seeking 500 billion dollars to take to a trillion its cushion against the consequences of the European debt crisis getting even worse. Here in the UK, there seems to be a consensus that the only real option for saving the EU is for Germany to leave the currency union. I wonder if anyone is saying this in Germany. And what the odds are on it happening.

Anyway, here's a recipe for banana bread.

2012-01-17T22:39:00.005+01:00

Here's a rather provocative Lexicon. I found it on my laptop, so I guess I wrote it. Not to be taken too seriously

English - A language you master the grammar of and then slaughter when you speak it

Translation - A task you give to a relative rather than pay a few hundred euros.

Zebra crossing - Pedestrian - Something you only use if there's a certainty that any oncoming driver is not only looking at you but is also within his braking distance.

Neighbours' garage - Something to park in front of, blocking both ingress and egress.

Roundabout/Circle - A mechanism by which the maximum number of both domestic and, especially, foreign drivers can be rendered confused.

Family member - Anyone from whom you think you can beg or borrow money

Friend - Anyone you've met in a bar in the last 24 hours.

Commitment - A promise to do something which you will do unless something better comes along.

Stranger - Someone who doesn't exist and, therefore, to whom you owe no duty of care or consideration whatsoever.

Traffic indicators - Lights for indicating that your car isn't really where it appears to be and so can't be causing an offence.

TV - 1. Something on which you can watch "Radio with pictures"

2. A machine for creating noise in a bar, causing the customers to shout even louder than normal.

Fiesta - A reason for having yet another day off. Or possibly two or even three, depending on how close to a weekend the fiesta falls.

Rules - Behaviour guidelines which apply to other people, in one degree or another. See also 'Laws'.

Pavements/Sidewalks - Strips of land for you to ride your bike on, preferably recklessly so that young kids are endangered.

Noise - Nothing to concern yourself with. Make as much as you like.

Children - Little adults who are allowed to do whatever they like.

Personal space - A concept unknown in Spain.

Parking - The means by which you can scratch all four corners of your car.

Parking bays - A rough indication of where you might park. Can be safely ignored.

Conversation - Talking both loudly and simultaneously.

2012-01-16T23:19:00.000+01:00

Possibly Galicia's most famous native son - Manuel Fraga - died over the weekend, aged 89. Fraga's political career stretched back over almost 60 years and included the Franco era, when he was the Minister for Tourism on whose watch the controversial slogan Spain is different was introduced. Here's a review of his career from Guy Hedgecoe of IberoSphere. And here, from Graeme (a man of the Left) is a rather more amusing valediction.

A survey has shown the almost 90% of Spaniards "feel uncomfortable speaking English", including many who've studied it for more than 15 years. Almost 100% of people surveyed thought that the standard of teaching English in Spanish schools was "not the best". My own guess is that the emphasis continues to be on grammar, with little time given to actually speaking the language.

I wrote about "celebrity" corruption cases the other day. Questioned during the trial of others charged with corruption, the (lady) mayor of Valencia asserted that ‘A Louis Vuitton bag is an absolutely normal gift’. Which is probably true.

In its quest for more funds, the Spanish government is looking at privatising the paradors. These are luxury hotels, usually located in magnificent old mansions. If this does happen, it can only mean higher prices.

Finally . . . Did you know that the sun is slowly getting hotter and will eventually cause the oceans to boil? The good news is that it'll be a billion years before this happens. Which certainly gives us time to consider the options. Assuming we survive this, the next problem will be the Andromeda galaxy colliding with ours. But we've got three billion years to ponder this.

2012-01-14T00:07:00.001+01:00

While you could almost certainly spend your entire life in Spain without meeting any corruption, at any one time there's at least one case of 'celebrity' corruption going through the courts. An ex minister or regional president, for example. Right now, though, the high-profile case that takes the biscuit is that of the King's son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarin, who's accused of diverting public funds into the accounts of private companies he ran. One newspaper at least is asking why the King's daughter, Princess Cristina, hasn't yet been indicted. Which would be an interesting development. Anyway, here's The Guardian with some details of the case.

And here's the always-sensible Simon Jenkins with his take on the Scottish independence issue.

Finally . . . .A conversation with my daughter today:-

Do you know that there's sometimes an awful smell in my bedroom?

Yes.

Do you know what causes it?

Yes, the guy in the flat below smokes a lot of marijuana.

But isn't that supposed to smell sweet?

You're very green, Dad.

2012-01-12T23:59:00.000+01:00

It had to happen. The people of Cornwall - or at least some of them - are demanding the same rights as the Scots to a referendum on independence from the UK. And for a revival of the Cornish Celtic language - Kernowek - which is closer to Breton than to Welsh, apparently. That'll teach me to joke about the Cornish National Front, as I did a few years back.

Back in Spain, IberoSphere's Guy Hedgecoe has some pertinent things to say about the country's politicians . . . Recent months have done little for the credibility of Rajoy and Spain’s political class. The new prime minister sidestepped detail and hardly made any promises during the election campaign, despite the drastic state of the economy he would inherit. And yet, on taking office he has broken one of his only pledges. The near-obsessive secrecy with which Rajoy has gone about preparing his austerity measures and ministerial appointments has hardly served to alter this image of opacity. Meanwhile, the Socialist opposition, mired in their own process of reinvention, must take at least some blame for insisting in public that the deficit they had been managing was on target, when clearly it wasn’t, to the tune of €20 billion. Throughout this economic crisis, the two main parties’ inability to reach consensus for the good of the country has been all too clear. And now, just days into a new four-year legislature, neither shows signs of putting the national interest ahead of political points-scoring. Rajoy’s policies may impress Brussels, but his country’s politics won’t. This will be a year of reforms in Spain, from the labour market to the financial sector. But what also needs to be overhauled is the disdain and lack of sincerity with which the country’s politicians treat the electorate. More here.

On the financial front, Spain today borrowed twice as much as planned, at an interest rate appreciably lower than previously. So, good news at the national level. At the regional level, things are rather worse. Moody's has slashed debt-struck Valencia's credit rating and threatened to downgrade nine other Spanish regions, warning of growing liquidity pressures and big looming debt payments.The decision could be bad news for Spain's regions, which over-ran their deficit-cutting targets in 2011 by a large margin and are still struggling with the aftermath of the 2008 property bubble collapse.

You will recall that it's Valencia which has the airport without planes and passengers. And the 300,000 euro statue of Carlos Fabra on a roundabout in front of the empty airport buildings.

I'm grateful for the several comments on my long list of personal irritants. As some of you rightly said, many of these are not confined to Spain. I also appreciated the advice that customer-check outs had reached Spain. Or Cataluña, at least. But, then, I'd expect them to be ahead of the game there. And Anthea informed me that at least one store in the UK - Toys-R-Us - obliges customers to check in their bags before they enter the store. And Mark has pointed us in the direction of efficient shopping born of a phone app.

Finally . . . Click here to see an interesting pig.

2012-01-11T23:17:00.002+01:00

In today's British papers, there's a report of the son of an English earl being tried for rape. Of course, the man is innocent until proven guilty but, in the circumstances, it still struck me as rather odd for him to be referred to as "the honourable".

In a development which will doubtless be watched with interest from both Bilbao in the Basque Country and Barcelona in Cataluña, the British Prime Minister and the Scottish First Minister have initiated the dance that will precede a referendum on further devolution to or the independence of Scotland. The former wants this conducted in 2013 but the latter would rather wait until 2014, when the Scots will be celebrating the 700th anniversary of their last victory over the English, at Bannockburn. There are numerous thorny issues in play - for example what currency would the Scots have? - but I rather like the suggestion that everyone in the UK has a vote on Scottish independence, not just the Scots. This would probably result in the Scots 'gaining' independence, even if a majority of them (as of now) were against it. This, of course, is because the English are fed up with all the moaning and the posturing and would be happy to see them go. But I don't suppose this will happen.

Spain's phony boom saw a number of white elephant projects constructed around the country - witness our own City of Culture on the edge of Santiago. One of the most notorious is the airport in Castellón in Valencia. This cost 150m euros to construct and a further 30m euros has been spent on advertising the place. Which all seems to have been a bit of a waste as it is yet to see a passenger or, indeed, a plane. Undaunted, those behind this monumental extravagance have now commissioned a 300,000 euro work of art to honour Carlos Fabra. Who is a local politician notable for winning the huge Christmas lottery several times - a time-honoured way of explaining away your unusual wealth. You can read more on this from either The Telegraph or The Guardian

Pointing up this extravagance are the reports that Valencia can't afford to stage any more Formula 1 races unless Bernie Ecclestone forgoes some of his huge take. As if.

Incidentally, the President of the Valencian region is called Albert Fabra. I wonder if he's related to Carlos Fabra, the lucky man who's won the Christmas lottery in nine of the last ten years. And who clearly doesn't care how suspicious this looks.

Finally . . . How do you pronounce 'indictment'? I hope you've replied 'in-dite-ment'. And not 'in-dicked-ment' as I heard from an academic on BBC Radio4 today. Which reminds me . . . Waterstone's, the book sellers, are to drop the apostrophe from their name.

2012-01-10T23:58:00.000+01:00

Here in the UK - and I'm sure in the USA and, say, Holland - there's constant innovation in the supermarkets. In Waitrose, for example, you can go round with a palm thingy and tot up your bill as you go along. And in all the major supermarkets there's a self-checkout option. These have just come to prominence with the news that one of the country's numerous celebrity chefs has been arrested for failing to check out several items on a number of occasions. Amusingly, the term given to this crime is "five finger discount" and it's said to account for 7% of sales. So, the Sainsburys' staff I (naively) thought were standing close to the self-checkout machines so they could help confused customers were probably there to keep an eye on customers.

The urge to innovate is not so great in Spain. To be honest, I can't recall anything new in the Carrefour place I use during ten years or so. And, given the scope for theft, I rather doubt we'll be getting self-checkouts. The lack of trust between shop and customers is amply demonstrated by the obligation to put any bags you arrive with into a locker before you enter the shop.

Because I've been rather negative about Spain with my (longish) list of things I don't like, here's something very positive about Spain with which I'm in complete agreement. It's called Spain - The Place to Live.

I should also stress that Spain has maintained its number one position in the are of organ transplants. And also in the registration of donors. Ironically, I've recently registered as a donor here in the UK. Essentially because I was asked to.

Back here in Headingley, I'm lucky enough to have a good (non-chain) café only five minutes from my daughter's flat. They have wi-fi, of course, as well as a couple of national newspapers. But there's a major problem, arising purely from the fact I'm English. Back home in Spain, I'd have to concentrate to listen to and understand a conversation within my hearing. As I don't do this, I'm just surrounded by ambient noise. But here in England, it's like reading - you can't not read and you can't not understand the conversation at the next table. Which is annoying. Especially when it's the sort of self-centred drivel I was subjected to yesterday. The solution, of course, is either decent ear-plugs or the iPod Shuffle which my elder daughter bought me for Christmas.

Finally . . . I've remembered something else I don't like in Spain - and which you don't get in the UK. It's the obligation to use an expensive premium number if you want to get in touch with a company by phone. This is pretty standard in Spain, in contrast with the local or free numbers that are available as part of customer service in the UK. And, I'm sure, in the USA and, say, Holland.

2012-01-10T00:04:00.002+01:00

This is the new web page - Luella - of a couple of friends of mine who live the rural life in Asturias. It's for Spanish speakers and is by-lined Sostenibilidad y ahorro, pero sin morirse de hambre y/o aburrimiento. And these are topics covered todate:-

- 10 usos para el vinagre

- Abueling

- Arrumacos 5/01

- Jardín vertical

- Materia prima

- Música: Lianne la Havas

- Porcografía

- Siembra: Enero

- Sostenibilidad y ahorro, pero sin morirse de hambre y/o aburrimiento.

Talking of lists, I found this one on my computer today and suspect it was compiled a few years ago. It was entitled Anything Goes but should probably be headed Things that Annoy me. It possibly says more about me than about Spain:-

Drivers not stopping for someone waiting to use a zebra crossing

Drivers not stopping for someone already on a zebra crossing

Drivers who don’t leave a gap when traffic is stationary on a roundabout

People who let their kids run round cafés noisily

People who let their babies cry loudly in cafés

People parking cars/vans on the pavement, blocking pedestrians

Groups holding a conversation in the middle of the pavement(sidewalk), making passage difficult for others

People parking across corners

People parking on zebra crossings

People blocking you in by double/triple parking

People asking you for your ID when it makes no sense at all

People asking your ID for very small credit card payments

People interrupting to ask questions when you’re being served, eg by a bank teller

People cutting across you in the street as they change direction or come out of buildings

People having mobile phone conversations in quiet places

Adults riding bikes on the pavement

Kids riding bikes on the pavement, weaving in and out of others at speed

People arriving late for films, concerts and the like.

People leaving early from films, concerts and the like.

People letting a door go when you are only a metre or so from it

People taking 2 or more newspapers in a café

People not returning the papers to the rack in a café

Being asked to complete paper-heavy procedures which make no sense at all

Drivers cutting in an autovia queue after ignoring the signs and driving up to the front, where the traffic is funnelling down to a single lane.

Drivers who indulge in double and triple parking

People taking their time to come out of the café once they’ve been alerted to the fact they’re blocking someone in.

People leaving the checkout queue to (leisurely) go and get something they’ve forgotten.

People parking across two boxes

People parking 2-3 metres away from the next car

People bumping into you as they pass

People crossing a few centimetres in front of you when they could cross a few behind you

People smoking when you’re eating

People shouting, not talking, in a bar. Or a cinema. Or anywhere, in fact.

People using their influence to gain advantage, or to circumvent the rules.

People jumping the queue

Drivers crossing white lines to do a U turn

Drivers parking with the end of their car sticking out

Drivers going the wrong way down one-way streets

People who park in front of your garage

People you are talking to (eg in the bank) stopping to take a phone call or to talk to someone who has come in and interrupted you.

Friends who take a mobile call when they are talking to you

2012-01-09T00:42:00.003+01:00

In his blog, The Spanish Shilling, Lenox today mentions that friends to whom books are lent hardly ever return them. And I was immediately reminded of the alleged Confucian saying that "It has never been established who is the more stupid, he who lends a book or he who gives one back."

Travel from Liverpool back to Leeds today gave me the chance to see yet another film - The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as a couple of guys who only have six to twelve months to live and who set out to get the most out of it. There's quite a bit of humour which, if not exactly black, is certainly grey. Worth seeing.

Walking from the train station to the bus-stop, I noted that Leeds has yet another coffee chain - Caffé Nero. This bills itself as the Italian coffee café. Which takes me back to the film, in which there's a running joke about an ultra-expensive coffee from Sumatra, called Kopi Luwak. You'll appreciate that Kopi is Indonesian for 'coffee'. And that, as with other languages such as Persian, the p and the f are interchangeable. As in Telepon.

The good news about cafés is that the Starbucks in Headingley has quite definitely closed down.

Finally . . . . I'm delighted to report that the number of people who include this blog on their Google Reader list has finally reached 150. OK, not vast, but gratifying.

2012-01-07T23:48:00.005+01:00

This is a tale of two films.

The first is the one I mentioned the other night - Dinner for One. This turns out to be something that was first performed in the 1920's or 30's, before being filmed in the 1960's. And it's really a 30 minute sketch, not a feature film. You can see it on YouTube here and you can find some interesting data here. Like the fact that, although it may be revered by millions in other countries, few in Britain have ever heard of it and those that have don't find it at all funny.

The second film is The Way, the Sheen family homage to the Camino de Santiago. Not involving Charlie, obviously. It's quite delightful and frequently funny but this father found himself fighting back tears too often for comfort. Which is not really a criticism as just about any film has that effect on me these days. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

There is an utterly bizarre link between the films. The central theme of Dinner for One is that the butler impersonates all his mistress's dead friends and drinks himself to oblivion in the process. In The Way, the group of pilgrims worries about the sounds of drinking and revelling coming from a man and woman upstairs in an inn. They go up to investigate, to find the innkeeper drinking both as himself and as a female companion who isn't, of course, there.

I wonder what the odds might be on this.

2012-01-06T21:17:00.001+01:00

An Anglo-German friend once assured me that, on every New Year's Eve, German TV ratings are topped by a 1980's British comedy called Dinner for One. I'd forgotten about this until the current edition of The Economist reported that, this year, one of the channels had shown a spoof. Instead of the waiter sitting at each seat in turn, impersonating the long gone friends of his mistress, the lone lady in the chair was Mrs Merkel, the waiter was President Sarkozy and the men impersonated by him were the recently departed leaders of several EU members. Oh, and Mr. Cameron. As The Economist puts it, The joke was clear: summits are empty charades; only Mrs Merkel matters; and Mr Sarkozy is her comical servant. I'm betting he doesn't see the funny side of this.

Which reminds me, it seems that M Sarkozy's (illegal) attempt to save SeaFrance has failed. Which won't go down too well ahead of the imminent presidential elections. As if any of us cares.

After ten years of progressively getting rid of them, I'm finding it tough to deal with these bloody British manners. Especially with people who move out of my way when they're still at least three metres away from me. But at least both of us aren't doing this.

One of the odd things about the Spanish is that they don't rate mackerel. The good consequence of this is that the fish is remarkably cheap on the market slabs. The bad consequence is that it's impossible to find smoked mackerel pâté for love or money. Which is huge shame as this, in my opinion, is one of the greatest culinary inventions. Even rarer are kippers.

The Suárez-Evra saga rumbles on, with Liverpool coming in for a great deal of criticism for their rigid defence of Suárez, and Evra being exposed as someone who used the N-word some seven years ago.

Nice to see Saudi Arabia taking a step into the 18th century, with the royal decree that men must cease being assistants in lingerie shops and hand over this work to women. Even if this horrifies the clerics who think the Koran bars women from working. Amongst a few other things.

Back to Merseyside this evening, so my humour bone has to be polished up. And Irish stew anticipated.

Finally . . . . Here are a few of the things that have found their way onto my hard disk. As I say, I have absolutely no idea how.

Or not. As they won't upload.

2012-01-05T22:56:00.001+01:00

Perhaps because I lived in Iran for three years and have a respect for the Iranian people but I've long felt that the West's approach to the country is misguided and counterproductive. So it's no surprise that I agree with an article that asks why Britain is ramping up sanctions against Iran and claims that "Sabre-rattling at Washington's behest is an idiocy, and likely to do little other than escalate the steps to open conflict." As this article says, "The only question for the west over the last three decades has been how to respond to Iran's fundamentalist leadership and, more recently, its craving for nuclear status. The answer has been of startling ineptitude."

Back here in Europe, inflation is rising in the better-performing economies of Germany and France but falling in the poorer-performing economies of Italy and Spain, where unemployment is the highest its been for fifteen years. So, not much convergence there.

A de facto two-speed Europe.

A large group of people in the UK have just been given some excellent news. In the lottery for Olympics tickets last year, they were allotted tickets for the synchronised swimming; but they've now been told that, thanks to a computer error, they won't be able to see this event but will have to watch some serious athletics. They ust be distraught.

A couple of fotos:-

Here's St James The Moorkiller, before he was given the barricade of irises in front of his horse.

My apologies to any Muslims who are offended; this is not my intention at all.

And here's a foto of the coin thought to be a brothel token. (Hat tip to Azra)

There've been some interesting and helpful comments today to yesterday's blog on the issue of racism in Spain and on the Suárez-Evra case in the UK. Suárez, by the way, has now made what's described as a qualified apology, though not to Evra himself. The latter, it seems, has got away with calling Suárez a sudaca. Possibly because no one in England really understood the full significance of it as there's no equivalent in English.

Finally . . . A plea for some help. I have a MacBook Pro. Yesterday I decided to click on All Images on the Desktop and discovered I had hundreds of fotos I'd never taken and whose provenance I had no idea of. One or two of them were rather rude. I also found I had up to twelve copies of pictures I had taken. So I set about deleting everything surplus to requirement. Only to find I had 72 new fotos this morning. My experience with All Movies was very similar, so I just deleted everything. Only to find this morning that I had a "German Advertisement" centring on a naked blond lady rolling a cigar between her breasts. Can anyone tell me how this happens?

2012-01-04T22:11:00.004+01:00

An amateur British metal-detector has found what they believe to be a brothel token, the first ever unearthed there. On one side is a couple in a lewd act and on the other is the number XIIII, or 14. Which is believed to be the value of the token, possibly the the cost of the depicted act. What's odd to me is that I thought 14 was represented by XIV, not XIIII.

The Suárez-Evra saga bubbles on, with Suárez persisting in his scarcely credible claims that negro/nigger is not an insult in Uruguay, that it's even a term of affection there and that Evra's own team mates were in the habit of using it towards him. What he doesn't seem to get is that all of that is irrelevant to how the term is seen in the country in which he plays his football and by Evra himself. If he wants any evidence of its total unacceptability, all he needs to do is read the newspaper reports and note that they may spell out concha de tu mama but use six asterisks instead of nigger.

On to more important things . . . . The news about the EU economy in general - and the Spanish economy in particular - is dire. The columnist Bruce Anderson stresses that all David Cameron can do is talk about the need for a big bazooka, in which Germany underwrites the eurozone’s liabilities. This upsets the rest, for two reasons. They know that it is the only solution. They also know that it is not going to happen. That said, no one knows what is going to happen. Surrounded by the wreckage of their system, some Eurofanatics are still asking for more time. The Marxists used to do the same. It is now time for the federasts to follow the Inquisition, Apartheid and the Marxists – out of history. More here.

On the same theme, eurosceptic Daniel Hannan writes that while David Cameron struck an upbeat and patriotic note, the chanting from the palaces and chanceries of Europe was like some monkish threnody. Nicolas Sarkozy called for stoicism in the face of 'the worst economic crisis since the war'. Angela Merkel said that 2012 would 'without question be worse than 2011'. Mariano Rajoy announced the end of mid-week public holidays, telling his countrymen, 'this is no time for fiestas'. Such pronouncements beg the question. The reason that the eurozone faces such hard times is that its leaders have decided to keep the single currency together at any cost. The coming recession is not some inexorable force of nature; it is a consequence of the policies being pursued by Merkozy, Monti, Barroso and the rest. The Brussels elites are refusing to learn anything from their mistakes. They are applying the same policies that got Europe into this mess, only harder. Had they prepared for an orderly unbundling of the euro three years ago, a great deal of pain might have been avoided. Now, there are no easy options, but a restoration of at least some national currencies is plainly the least bad alternative. In refusing to countenance it, Eurozone leaders are showing a chilling disregard for the material well-being of their electorates.

Reader Moscow and I used to cross swords on this subject a year or two back but I haven't heard from him for a while. Perhaps he isn't reading any more. But, if he is, and if he'd like a platform from which to give an optimistic view of the euro's future, I'm happy to provide it here. Meanwhile, the Spanish unemployment figures - already appallingly high - continue to grow. While those in Germany continue to fall. Some say because the euro is too high for one country and too low for the other.

I was ruminating today on the way the statue of St James in Santiago cathedral was manipulated to obscure the slaughter of Moors beneath the horses' hooves. Specifically, I was trying to remember whether I'd seen any examples of Muslim sensitivity. All I could come up with was the large friezes on the palace walls in Persepolis in Iran. Where representatives of the many subject nations are paraded in neck halters behind their Persian masters. But I guess the latter were Zaroastrians as it's well before the Muslim invasion of Iran. And indeed before the destruction of Persepolis by Alexander the Great.

Finally . . . There exist web sites which will give you all the anagrams of your name. The first one thrown up for me was Sad evil icon. Which is nice. But there are many, many more.

2012-01-03T20:40:00.003+01:00

It's routine for journalists to make predictions at the start of the year. Here's a couple that might just be tongue in cheek:-

- Launch of 17-speed Europe: A new version of the eurozone, in which each nation adopts its own version of the single currency, is hailed as a model of European cooperation and financial stability.

- June: Charlie Sheen wins the Republican nomination. The former Two and a Half Men star emerges as frontrunner from an eclectic field of candidates that has at one time included everyone from Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich. In spite of his incoherent speeches and debate performances, Tea Party enthusiasts consistently rate Sheen as "more trustworthy" than Mitt Romney.

More seriously, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard sticks his neck right out and predicts, inter alia, that:- Germany will not be able to fudge EMU any longer. It must either immolate itself, accepting a debt union and internal inflation to save a currency it never wanted and doesn't love; or opt instead to uphold fiscal sovereignty and the essence of its own democracy, and let the Project die.The shrewd, equivocating, ice-cold Chancellor will quietly oust arch-europhile Wolfgang Schauble and let the Project die, always pretending otherwise. See here for more.

Looking back at 2011, one strange fact to emerge is that the ugly pug dog "has increased in popularity by 557%." I confess to be astounded by this as I've always said it's impossible to tell this dog's front end from its back end. Nowt as queer as folk, as they say up here in the North. I'm reminded of the vet acronym DMITO - Dog more intelligent than owner.

Why am I not surprised to read that President Sarkozy has been accused of riding roughshod over European law after he proposed to pump taxpayers' money into the ailing cross-Channel ferry company, SeaFrance? Competitor companies are getting ready to appeal to Brussels, where they may or may not get short shrift.

Talking of disputes, for those who can stand it there's more on the Suárez-Evra spat. As reader Mark has pointed out, Evra apparently not only called Suárez una concha etc. but also a sudaca. This is also a new one to me and appears to be an ethnic allusion. More on all the nuances here. I'm indebted to Victor for the news that Suárez used one of the old Hispanic regulars, viz. that he couldn't be racist as one of his relatives was black.

Still investigating the coffee scene in Headingley, I today came across a Starbucks that had closed. Leaving the field to Costa Coffee, which sells expensive coffee but provides the British tabloids for reading matter. A nice trick.

Finally . . . Here and here is information on the flying machines which took the fotos of Santiago Cathedral cited in yesterday's blog. I would advise anyone who hasn't seen this wonderful video - whether pious Catholic or resolute atheist - to scroll down and take a look.

2012-01-02T23:21:00.010+01:00

Another thing that's expensive in the UK is a cup of coffee. Never having set foot in Starbucks or Costa Coffee, I've no idea what heights their prices reach but in the café-cum-art gallery down at the start of Headingley High Street, it's one pound seventy for a 'regular' cup of black coffee. Or, rather, it isn't, as they always try to embarrass you into having a larger cup for 1.90. Having decided to go with this suggestion this morning, I then foolishly managed to leave the extra liquid in the cup to go cold. I was tempted to ask if they had a microwave in the kitchen.

Reading one of the papers in the café, I dipped into an article on the football-field spat between Messrs Suárez and Evra. The Football Association has adjudicated on this cause-celebre and decided that Mr Suárez must suffer an eight-game suspension for calling Mr Evra a negro/nigger at least eight times. Interestingly, the verbals were kicked of by Evra, who called Suárez una concha de tu hermana. This, on the surface, is an innocuous phrase as concha normally means shell. And 'shell of your sister' doesn't seem very offensive to you or me. But 'shell' is a euphemism and my dictionary translates the whole phrase - or perhaps shell of your mother - as 'motherfucker'. Presumably to get the right degree of incitement. Be all that as it may, Suárez didn't deny calling Evra a negro/nigger because, coming from the Hispanic world, he almost certainly takes the view that this was harmless beecause 1. Speaking factually, Evra is black, and 2. He (Suárez) didn't mean to offend him. So, by Hispanic logic, Evra can't have been offended. It has to be said though that this (stock Spanish) defence gets weaker with each of the seven 'niggers' that followed the first one. If it wasn't meant to be offensive, why repeat it so often?

To be fair to the UK, there are some things that are cheap here. For example, it's reported today that "Sales of flats in Britain are so lightly taxed that it's now the cheapest country in the world in which to invest in residential property." So, it's not all bad news. If you've got spare cash.

Talking of properties . . . I spoke to my lovely neighbour, Ester, yesterday and she confirmed that not one of the seventeen houses behind ours that took six noisy years to build is yet occupied. The other good news was that nice-but-noisy Toni - who hasn't been back to sea for over a year now - has succeeded in his long campaign to have all the - illegal - eucalyptus trees behind our houses cut down. Apart from reducing our fire risk, this will mean the sun reaching our houses in the late afternoons and evenings. Which will be particularly beneficial in the winter.

When I was a young man and troubled by the fact that several of my clever friends smoked, I developed a specious theory. This was that nicotine destroyed those very brain cells which came into play when considering the case for and against smoking. Over the years, I've often had cause to wonder whether this theory really is specious. And so it was when clearing up after the party the other night. Outside the front-door of my daughter's flat, there were at least 21 cigarette butts. Plus an empty packet. To me - especially as these lay on the floor next to two bins - this was extraordinarily anti-social conduct. But I'm ready to ignore it if I can persuade myself the perpetrators have damaged brains. Which I think I can just about do.

Anyway, here's what's described in Spanish as a spectacular view of both the exterior and interior of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Which is no exaggeration. It's filmed using something called an octocopter and a hexacopter. If you stop it around the 3.27 point you will see the statue of St James the Moor Killer (El Matamoros) on horseback, but with lilies strategically placed between you and the statue. This is to obviate Muslims being upset at the sight of Moorish troops being both lanced by James and trampled to death by his obviously very Christian steed.

2012-01-01T22:38:00.000+01:00

After the inevitable late rising today, I walked down into Headingley to find a restaurant in which my young friend, Jack, and I could eat. Jack is a very funny chap - even if last night's laughs essentially consisted in taking the piss out of me - and you can find his blog here. He promises to be more regular. As it were.

Anyway, the Thai restaurant being closed and the KFC and pizza places being unappetising, we ended up in the Agora Greek-Turkish restaurant. Where this brief conversation took place between me and the owner:-

I see your signature dish is stifado. I'm struck by the fact this word is close to the Spanish for 'stew' - estofado - and so I'm wondering if stifado means stew in Greek.

No, it's not a stew. It doesn't have any vegetables. But the meat is cooked for 4 or 5 hours, which is why it's so tender.

OK.(Thinking, It sounds like a bloody stew to me)

And here's what the internet tells me . . . Stifado/Stifatho dishes are stews, and they are easy to recognise: they include onions - a lot of onions. So I'm left wondering, firstly, just why anyone would deny that a stifado was a stew, and, secondly, why the same word crops up in Iberia. The internet says that the origin of the Iberian word is French - étouffée - so I guess this word found its way into Greek and/or Turkish cuisine.

Finally . . . . If you visit the UK regularly, you become aware that some things here are extraordinarily (and inexplicably) expensive by European standards. I can't rattle off a list but I can say that travel by bus or train - of which I've done a lot recently - is one of these. So I wasn't too surprised to read this week that "Commuters who will have to pay hundreds of pounds more for their season tickets next week are already paying up to ten times more to travel by train than those on the Continent." Somebody's obviously making a killing.

2011-12-31T20:35:00.000+01:00

I mentioned the other day I'd bought a beard trimmer. When I finally managed to get this out of its packaging and look at the leaflet, I was nonplussed to read that "This trimmer is ideal for total body grooming. The various guide-combs allow you to get that all-over well-groomed look." Total body grooming? Can it really mean that? Can I not acquire that all-over well-groomed look without going to absolute extremes? If not and if I do have to get very serious about the trimming, are we talking daily care and attention?

But, anyway, I have a party at my younger daughter's place to attend. Dressed, I should add, as same daughter. Maybe I'll post a few fotos tomorrow . . .

For now I'll leave you with my very best wishes for 2012.

Please try to keep reading.

2011-12-30T23:59:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I made a passing reference to the Toxteth riots in Liverpool of the early 80s, only to see this followed today by media reports of Cabinet consideration 30 years ago of the option of letting the city stew in its own revolutionary juice. Or, in the language of the time, to have its decline managed. Happily, investment was the preferred option, as anyone who visits the city these days can readily see.

If you're one of the million Brits living in Spain, you'll be relieved to know that the British government has plans to evacuate you if Spain goes belly up. Click here for more info, including the afterthought that "if you want a delicious taste of the expat Brit life in Spain, rent the movie Sexy Beast."

A chap called Michael Erard has written the first serious book - Babel No More - about the people who master vast numbers of languages. He's not a hyperpolyglot himself and approaches the topic with a healthy dash of scepticism. Among his findings:-

- True hyperpolyglottery begins at about 11 languages

- While legends abound, tried and tested exemplars are few.

- Hyperpolyglots must “prime” their weaker languages, with a few hours’ or days’ practice, to use them comfortably.

- Switching quickly between more than around six or seven is near-impossible, even for the most gifted.

- Hyperpolyglots are more likely to be introverted than extroverted

- Different hypotheses may explain part of the language-learner’s gift. Some hyperpolyglots seem near-autistic.

- Hyperpolyglots may begin with talent, but they aren’t geniuses. They simply enjoy tasks that are drudgery to normal people.

Finally, I can't leave this subject without reproducing this description of "Emil Krebs, an early-20th-century German diplomat who was credited with knowing dozens of languages and was boorish in all of them. He once refused to speak to his wife for several months because she told him to put on a winter coat."

The question I'm now left with is whether George Borrow was really fluent in the 27(?) languages he's said to have mastered. I guess we'll never know.

Talking of talented people, if you've enjoyed any of the works of the British polemicist Christopher Hitchens - and I'm currently a quarter of the way into God is not Great - you'll probably enjoy this obituary. As you might even if you couldn't stand him.

Finally, here's a parade of British architectural follies.

2011-12-29T23:59:00.005+01:00

Today, my brother-in-law drove me from the house he shares with my sister to the centre of Liverpool, so we could do a bit of bargain-hunting and fish-and-chip-eating before I caught a train to Leeds. As I may have mentioned, they live near the top of Penny Lane and I was amused to confirm with him there are now five barber's shops in the vicinity, each trading off its proximity to the famous road. Having got onto the subject of hair trimmers, I asked my B-I-L for his nomination of the most ridiculous shop name he'd encountered in his forty-plus years in the salon business. Without pausing to reflect, he replied Curl up and Dye. But you may know one even worse.

Having thus sensitised myself to shops and their names, I then noticed a couple of odd ones as we drove along the rather unprepossessing Smithdown Road into town. The first was a large model railways shop, called Hattons. And the second was The Dolls House Shop. Closer to the centre of town, there was a place specialising in bottles with ships in them. But I guess it wasn't too surprising to find such a place in a large port like Liverpool. Though this can't be said for a pub bizarrely called The Old Post Office.

Also of interest was the Al-Rahma mosque in Toxteth, an area of Liverpool made (in)famous by riots in the 1980s, as I recall. This is the largest mosque in the city, with the second largest to be found - oddly enough - in Penny Lane.

Anyway, over our fish and chip lunch, my B-I-L and I got to talking about the respective merits of the women we'd observed shopping in Liverpool and Leeds. This certainly calls for further research but our preliminary finding is that - for one possible reason and another - the Liverpool lasses come out tops. Though this is, of course, academic to both of us.

And I must make mention of the charming young woman from Leeds who - when I asked her on the train if she had a pair of scissors - reached into her rucksack and produced a foldable saw. Which was even better than scissors would have been for breaking into the daunting plastic packaging around the beard trimmer I'd bought earlier.

Finally . . . Here's a bit from Guy Hedgecoe of IberoSphere on political incorrectness in Spain. As he says, It’s presumably just a matter of time before things change in Spain and children are no longer blacked up and given spears and Afro wigs with which to perform their Christmas plays. Meanwhile, we can all pretend to find it more shocking than amusing.

2011-12-28T23:59:00.001+01:00

I mentioned the Galician city of Ourense yesterday, in the context of the designs for its new high-speed train station. Today's citation is in respect of an inmate - Sr Pisonero - in the city's prison. This gentleman, it seems, has been drawing a widower's pension for the past 13 years. Which is a tad odd, since he's serving a sentence for making himself a widower by topping his wife.

But less seriously . . . . For those who haven't seen it, here's the hilarious video of the owner chasing the dog which is chasing the deer in Richmond Park. You can decide for yourself whether it's called Fenton or Benton.

And here is someone's view of the best parodies. Enjoy.

2011-12-27T23:59:00.006+01:00

I initially thought it was a spoof but No, there really is a program on British TV called Desperate Scousewives. Set, of course, in Liverpool, it's both a parody of the US comedy-drama, Desperate Housewives, and an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the 'semi-reality' program, The Only Way is Essex. Click here if you really want to see a (tasteless) taster. And good luck with the accent. As some critic has nicely put it, these programs "offer the over-tanned and under-talented a chance to dress up to the nines and get on the VIP list for Chinawhite". Which is apparently a luxury nightclub.

Talking of entertainment, Spain's new Culture Minister has made a surprise declaration of war on internet piracy. "Nobody", he says, "is going to respect the culture of a country which leads the rankings for illegal downloads". It'll be interesting to see what system is put in place and, more importantly, whether it operates in practice.

Click here if you want to see "the set of dreamy renderings" which Norman Foster and his partners have put forward for the AVE high-speed-train station up in Ourense. As if we don't have enough vanity projects in Galicia as it is, following Sr Fraga's regnum.

Finally . . . It was nice to be reminded today that War is God's way of teaching the Americans geography.

2011-12-25T02:51:00.001+01:00

The trouble with having one daughter who's an atheist and one who's a rather pious Catholic is that the latter occasionally drops on one to accompany her to Mass. Whereupon it all comes back and one feels the urge get up on the altar and show today's altar boys how it's done.

2011-12-23T23:34:00.001+01:00

This is a marvellous article on the greatest pop tunesmiths, cited by my American friend, Dwight. I'm re-citing it here despite the following reference to Liverpool:- What makes the phenomenon of the Beatles so unrepeatable is that two of the greatest songwriters who ever lived grew up in the same shitty English town, where they were bound to connect. He's clearly never visited the place. It's a shitty city, not town.

I read today of a Spanish couple celebrating both their 103rd birthdays and their 78th. wedding anniversary. And I found myself wondering if they subscribed to the dictum that you never find out where true happiness lies until you've been married a few years. By which time it's far too late. If so - and I sincerely hope not - they've had an awful long time to repent at leisure.

Earlier this year, a priceless 12th. century book - the Códice Calixtino - disappeared from the archive of Santiago university. There were murmurings at the time that it wasn't a real theft but something done to discredit and prejudice the Dean of the Cathedral. The police have now endorsed this theory and said they believe the book is still in the city. Let's hope so. And let's pray that the Dean achieves an improvement in his inter-personal relationships. Or resigns.

The good news for the Spanish economy is that 2011 looks like being the third best on record for tourists, with a total of 57 million by year end. The Brits, at 13m, headed the list, with the Germans at 8.6m and the French, Italian and Scandinavians close behind.

The most popular region (at 13.1m) was Cataluña, followed by the Balearic Islands (10m) and then the Canaries (9.2m).

Finally . . . Talking of Cataluña, here's a tradition you may not have heard of. And a portrayal of the Duchess of Cambridge you may not have seen before.

2011-12-22T00:32:00.003+01:00

Here's Paul Johnson's interesting take on the coming into being of America, in his "A History of the English People":-

By the time of Independence, slaves formed nearly one fifth of the [North]American population. The anomaly did not go unnoticed. If, as the patriots contended, nobody need be bound by laws they have not consented to themselves, or through their representatives, where did the slaves stand? The question was asked vociferously by many New England idealists. . . . Early and vigorous efforts were made from New England to get the transportation trade, at least, suppressed. No attempts were made to justify slavery on grounds of morality and logic. But the arguments for the economic necessity of slave-labour were regarded as unanswerable.

So, the English gave birth to a noisy, noble and flawed offspring, lavishing on it their traditional christening-gifts of idealism and hypocrisy. The taste for violence from which the English had always wished to free themselves - and were at last beginning to do so - passed across the Atlantic, where it struck deep and constitutional roots. England also handed on to America the birthright of the chosen race, while she herself assumed a secular role, increasingly shaped by the necessities and moral problems of empire, the 'white man's burden'.

2011-12-20T22:45:00.001+01:00

One of the highlights of this week has been my teacher-daughter showing me the work of 11 year olds who've just joined her school. Their spelling defies belief and raises all sorts of questions about how and what they've been taught. I could fill several pages but here's a representative sample . . . Lady MacBeth is crool and roofless. I kid you not.

I've reached p. 250 of Paul Johnson's A History of the English People and by now it's crystally clear he regards hypocrisy as the besetting vice/virtue of his fellow countrymen. Talking of the US revolt, Johnson writes . . . James Otis, the most successful, rabid and hysterical of the American Independence propagandists, formulated the New England theory of history. The Saxons had a parliament universally elected by all free-holders; this was overthrown by the Normans; then, through centuries of struggle, culminating in the crisis precipitated by the 'execrable race of the Stuarts', liberty had gradually been restored in that 'happy establishment which Great Britain has since enjoyed'. But this was itself now in peril; just as the Saxons had migrated to England in search of liberty, so the Americans had crossed the ocean to create a purer and freer England. There was a great deal more of this nonsense. One of the ironies of the American struggle is that the English, for the first time, faced a people who could dish out quantities of hypocritical humbug and sanctimonious myth-making of precisely the type they themselves had invented.

Back in Spain and, indeed, in Galicia here, here and here are Irish/British press commentaries - one of them by Ambrose Evans Pritchard - on the son of Pontevedra who's now the Prime Minister of a conservative administration with a clear majority.

One of the stranger consequences of Rajoy's rise to national eminence is that, as two of his brothers are members, the bullfighting peña I occasionally dine with now has to have police protection. It'll be interesting to see what this amounts to in practice.

2011-12-19T23:34:00.004+01:00

Here, dear reader, is some information on arguably Galicia's most popular artist - Castelao. If you ever get to Pontevedra (his adoptive city) you should make a point of visiting the floor dedicated to him at the top of the city's rather splendid museum. By which I mean the old one in Plaza de Leña. Not the modern monstrosity, next to the city archives.

And here are 22 examples of modern Galician cartoon humour.

And here's a news announcement about a magazine named after the term for Gallego humour - Retranca

Not many of you, of course, will be fluent in Gallego but some Spanish and/or Portuguese will help. At least for the written stuff.

Boa suerte.

2011-12-18T21:09:00.001+01:00

It is a curious fact that the most important debate in English political history took place not in the House of Commons but in the fifteenth-century parish church of St. Mary in Putney. There, on the 28th October 1647, and for the next two weeks, a group of about forty men met in informal conclave, and proceeded to invent modern politics - to invent, in fact, the public framework of the world in which nearly 3,000 million people now live [1972]. There was no significance in the choice of the church; it was simply convenient. The men sat or stood around the bare communion table and kept their hats on, as Englishmen had learned to do in the House of Commons. The meeting was officially styled the General Council of the New Model Army, the force which had recently annihilated the armies of King Charles and was now the effective master of the whole country. Some of those present were distinguished generals. Some were gallant regimental commanders, men of humble birth who had risen to field-rank in battle. Some were junior officers. Some were ordinary soldiers. There were three civilians, political radicals, or Levellers, who had come to help the soldiers put their case. It was a very representative gathering of Englishmen, covering all classes, except the highest, and a wide variety of peace-time trades and callings. The verbatim record is occasionally garbled and, alas, incomplete; it remained unread, buried in the archives of Worcester College, Oxford, for more than 250 years, until it was examined at the end of the nineteenth century, edited and published. But the ideas flung across that communion table had, in the meantime, travelled round the world, hurled down thrones and subverted empires, and had become the common, everyday currency of political exchange. They are still with us. Every major political concept known to us today, all the assumptions which underlie the thoughts of men in the White House, or the Kremlin, or Downing Street, or in presidential mansions or senates or parliaments through five continents, were expressed or adumbrated in that little church of St. Mary.

It is important to understand why these debates took place in England and why they could only have taken place in England. They might never have occurred at all, and if so the world would now be a radically different place than we find it. But certain peculiar developments in English history - developments rooted many centuries back, and ultimately resting on the geography of England, and the composition of its people - allowed this thing to happen; and so the world is as it is.

- Taken from Paul Johnson's A History of the English People. From the first page of Part Four, to be exact. Which covers the period 1603 to 1780 and is entitled The Chosen Race.

2011-12-16T21:25:00.001+01:00

Rumour has it that the A4-size sheet of paper which we Brits have to carry around to show our identity number - and which, lacking a foto, is useless for proving your identity - is to be replaced by a small card that will fit in your wallet/purse. But as this won't bear a foto either, you'll still have to carry a driving licence or a passport for this purpose. Unless, like me, you've told the police you've lost your original Tarjeta de Residencia so you can't hand it in. In which case, you can carry on using your expired card. Only one person in a hundred has checked mine and told me it's useless. And this was the notary being used for the sale of my house in the hills. It would have be a real coup if he'd accepted it. Or a profound comment on Spanish bureaucracy. It was no accident that I tried to get away with it.

But back to Europe's existential crisis . . . Will the ECB print the euros required or not? Well, the Bank of America believes it will, predicting that the ECB "will be forced to print money on a large scale but only after deep recession and months of drift have pushed the eurozone to the brink of disaster." One sincerely hopes not.

Reverting to earlier attempts to Germanicise Europe - well, Britain anyway - I've done some digging (OK only in Wikipedia) and come up with these nuggets of information about the genetic make-up of the English:- Sykes and Oppenheimer [around 2005] argued for significant immigration from Iberia into Britain and Ireland. However by 2010 several major studies presented more complete data, showing that the oldest-surviving male lineages had mostly migrated to Britain from the Balkans, and ultimately from the Middle East, not from Iberia. . . . That there are relatively clear signs of Germanic contact in parts of Britain is accepted but the stimulus, progression and impact of the Germanic settlement of Britain is subject to considerable disagreement, prompted by varying accounts and evidence. The Anglo-Saxons supplanted Celtic culture and society in much of southern and central Britain and contributed to the creation of Anglo-Saxon England and the use of the Old English Language.

Movement was not all one way, of course:- Many groups of native Britons even resettled on the continent, principally in Armorica (Brittany) in France and Britonia in Spanish Galicia, the homes of pre-existing Celtic communities.

Click here and here if you want more on this.

Finally . . . My sister's kitchen has an unusual feature - a tap which dispenses an instant jet of boiling water. I've long viewed this as inherently risky and yesterday I managed to prove this by scalding my left hand when making her a cup of tea. Shortly thereafter - when seeking to douse my painful hand in cold water - I also discovered that her cold tap dispenses hot water. And the more you turn it towards the blue button, the hotter it gets. Which is not good for a scald, I can assure you. I am now suing my sister, of course.

2011-12-15T19:40:00.001+01:00

Prompted by a Comment allegedly from reader Moscow, I'm reproducing some of a post of February 2009.

A year or two back, I cited the findings of a geneticist who said that Britain’s first settlers after the last ice age had come from the eastern Mediterranean, via northern Spain. I think I suggested this meant that the infamous English pirate and coastal raider, Francis Drake - who is decidedly unpopular in these parts – was really just one of the local lads on the take. Anyway, I’ve now read Bryan Sykes’ fascinating book on the British and Irish genetic make-up – “The Blood of the Isles” – and can confirm this is now the accepted view. Most intriguingly, it lends support to Irish and Galician myths about raiders from here invading Ireland. Though it doesn’t prove these, of course. Possibly they just felt the rain reminded them of home and decided to settle.

However, the main finding of the research is that, although the Celtic language disappeared almost entirely from England, it’s not true to say the invading Angles and Saxons wiped the genetic slate clean. The English, it seems, are just as Celtic as their neighbours in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Of course, it’s a bit late now for them to jump on the bandwagon and take advantage of the highly marketable Celtic ‘brand’ but it might be one way out of the recession/depression.

Talking of myths, it’s astonishing – or perhaps not – how similar these are in different countries. So we have a 12th century English king conveniently finding the bones of the mythical King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, just as he needs to establish his royal lineage. And we have some 10th century Galician Archbishop conveniently finding the bones of St James [Santiago], just as a rallying point against the invading Moors is called for. But the most fascinating coincidence is between the city of Pontevedra and the nation of Britain. Both, it seems, were mythically founded by someone wandering west after the end of the Trojan Wars - Pontevedra by Teucro, the half-brother of Ajax; and Britain, by Brutus, the grandson of Aeneas. And, just as we still have the stone post to which the boat which brought the body of St James from the Holy Land was moored, so we still have the first stone which Brutus put his foot on as he landed on ‘British’ soil. And the altar in the centre of what would become London to which he gave thanks to the goddess Diana. Who’d have thought it.

Anyway, what I’d like to know is whether there’s been any research done on the make-up of the Spanish so that we can establish whether the Galicians – as many of them love to believe - are more Celtic than anyone else in Iberia. My view is that this is nonsense – albeit harmless – but it would be good to know whether I’m right or wrong. If we don’t have this data and it's not in sight, is it too outrageous to conclude this is because few in Spain want confirmation that nearly everyone here has Moorish genes . . . ?

Back to today . . . The excellent news from Spain is that it might soon become possible to see foreign films in the original language, with subtitles for those who don't understand this. This, it's felt, will contribute to an improvement in the foreign language capabilities of the Spanish. In one press report it was ever-so-diplomatically stated that "The actors who voice over the dubbing in Spain are considered the best in the world, but the practice has contributed to the country’s population being poor at languages." And to the raising of blood pressure among foreigners subjected to the ubiquitous dubbing.

Finally . . . I've been meaning for a while to post pix of the graffiti that brightens up Pontevedra's old quarter. But this is the only one I've got on my laptop here in the UK:-

2011-12-14T18:11:00.001+01:00

The English language: I had known that modern English developed from Old English as enhanced by the estimated 10,000 French words brought by the Norman invaders of the 11th. century. But I hadn't known that there were two primary English dialects to start with - those of Wessex and Mercia - and that it was the more-flexible latter which won the day and which, enriched by its French additions, went on to become Middle English. As Paul Johnson writes - or as anyone who's looked at a student's Anglo-Saxon textbooks will know - Old English, as written and spoken before the Conquest, is essentially a foreign language to us; the so-called Middle English, as we read it in Chaucer, is merely an archaic version of our own. The Norman Invasion thus made a crucial contribution to the development of English as the international language of government, culture and commerce - in which role, by a supreme irony, it has decisively displaced French.

The English: Per Paul Johnson, writing in 1972 . . . English anticlericalism was, of course, merely one important branch of English xenophobia. Hostility to foreigners is one of the most deep-rooted and enduring characteristics of the English; like the national instinct for violence, it is a genuine popular force, held in check (if at all) only by the most resolute discipline imposed, against the public will, by authoritarian central government, acting out of enlightened self interest. Racialism has always flourished in England when government has been weak and the sophisticated governing minority have lacked the will to resist public clamour. . . The only difficulty is to determine precisely where English racialism begins. . . The real frontiers were fixed in the Welsh and Scottish marches. Beyond these limits even Roman military power had encountered difficulties which ultimately proved too expensive to resolve. It is true that the Romans established a form of military occupation in Wales. But the normal processes of economic colonisation could not operate there. Their tribal organisation, laws, language and customs remained intact. In Scotland, even the Roman military presence was fugitive and ineffectual. . . This pattern was repeated during Germanic settlements. . . The racial and cultural frontiers began to solidify in the 8th. century and have never changed by more than a few score miles. Thus the relationship between England and its Celtic neighbours began to assume its modern form from the beginnings of the 12th century. This relationship was, and remains today, essentially ambivalent.

Back to the Continent . . . Perish the thought but some folk believe that the outcome of last week's EU summit is exactly what Mrs Merkel and M Sarkozy wanted:-There is, of course, no veto. This is not a formal meeting, and it requires a formal intergovernmental conference to wield a veto, with a full draft of a treaty on the table – a draft which at this stage did not exist. Thus, Cameron could not stop the "colleagues" going ahead with an IGC and producing an amendment treaty for approval, if they had so wished. But, because it suited them, the "colleagues" chose to treat the Cameron intervention as a formal veto, even though it was not. It was their decision not to go ahead. Cameron was just the foil, the excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway. Thus, in what has all the makings of a theatrical coup, everybody walks away with something. Merkel and Sarkozy get the green light for an intergovernmental treaty, and Cameron gets to be a hero. And so, in the final analysis, with a gullible and ignorant media to endorse the legend, we see people fed what Peter Hitchens calls a "blatant fake". Cameron will dine out on it for a while, and he may even get away with it altogether, but it is a media-driven charade and will always be so. The Prime Minister did nothing courageous or even significant in Brussels last week, says Hitchens. But of such things is history made. Click here for more.

But that was last week. Here's the prediction of one pessimist who agrees that Cameron did Merkozy a big favour. A sample: - As for Germany, hell will freeze over before it accepts joint liability for periphery debts. You may recall that yesterday's pundit said Germany had only two choices:- 1. To accept this joint liability, or 2. To witness the death of the euro. If anyone disagrees and believes there are grounds for optimism, please say so. Moscow?

Finally, . . . Here's one of my favourite columnists on the theme of the moment. Since he says that "Anyone who claims he knows what is about to happen to Europe is a fool", I'm rather glad I admitted the other night that I hadn't the faintest idea.

2011-12-13T22:29:00.002+01:00

Plus ça change . . . . Embarking on Paul Johnson's book The History of the English People, I was intrigued to read that in 410 the English tribes, having seized power from the Romans, wrote to the Emperor requesting formal and legal authority for what they had done. What they sought was a written acknowledgment from the imperial power that Britain had been de-colonised without permission from the authorities. More specifically, they wanted exemption from the lex Julia de vi publica, the bedrock statute of the Roman Empire. In due course they got it. So the ancient world ended and the independent history of Britain was resumed in a thoroughly legal and constitutional manner. There was no provision in Roman Law for a territory to leave the Empire. But by an ingenious use of the lex Julia de vi publica, the British got round the difficulty and severed their links with the Continent by a process of negotiation. It was a unique event in the history of the Roman Empire. . . . For the first time a colony had regained its independence by law; and it was to remain the last occasion until, in the 20th. century, the offshore islanders began the dismantlement of their own empire.

Back to the present - if we ever left it - a survey suggests that Spanish Xmas spending will be well down on last year. 17% down, in fact. After a 10.5% fall last year and a 6% drop the previous year. Spending on lottery tickets though is 'only'14% down since 2008, with the average spend per person still up at 100 euros.

Having been into the centre of Liverpool tonight, I wouldn't be too surprised to hear that similar falls were in the offing here. Jam-packed it wasn't. But maybe it will be next week.

Just a word or two on the EU. Writing in the FT, Martin Wolf's interesting take on recent events is that they will force Germany to make a fateful choice - between a eurozone disturbingly different from the larger Germany it expected, or no eurozone at all. I recognise how much its leaders and people must hate this choice. But it is the one they face. Chancellor Angela Merkel must dare to make that choice, clearly and openly.

2011-12-12T21:05:00.000+01:00

This post is entirely about the EU and the euro. Switch off now if you're not interested.

The side-issue of the UK veto has naturally distracted us for a while from the real issues addressed at the summit. Below I cite several articles on these from today's UK press, with selective quotes from each of these.

The Guardian editorial: "The future of the euro: when summits solve nothing".

Before last week's summit in Brussels turned into a crisis of the European Union, it was meant to resolve the crisis of the euro. How did it score on that primary task?

The answer is: badly. What emerged from Brussels is an agreement that failed to fix the structural flaws that threaten to destroy the euro. Indeed, in many cases, the accord may make those flaws worse.

The best that can now be hoped is that the European Central Bank will paper over the cracks, holding things in place till next March's summitry. The worst that can be realistically imagined remains dire. And using a veto certainly won't protect David Cameron and Britain from the economic damage.

Last week's gathering of European leaders was the eighth to take place this year. The comprehensive package that emerged at the end was the fourth since this January. And yet it represents a very small advance. The analysis of the crisis presented in Friday's final statement is the same stuck record as Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have been playing for the past two years

Click here for the full article.

Jeremy Warner, writing in the Daily Telegraph.

In all the hullabaloo over Britain's use of the veto, and whether the UK has once more cut itself adrift from the rest of Europe, it seems to have been forgotten what was actually being voted on here – an almost wholly inappropriate set of treaty changes which in themselves will do absolutely nothing to prop up the euro or save Europe from a crippling recession.

To the contrary, the pro-cyclical fiscal austerity which is now being hardwired into European law through the balanced budget requirement seems to condemn much of the European periphery to prolonged depression.

On the current trajectory, this is a project which is heading towards certain oblivion. It is still possible that the sort of things that might save the single currency will eventually be agreed – central bank intervention and debt mutualisation – but it is a brave man who banks on it. Personally, my faith in Europe's ability to sort out its mess grows weaker by the day.

Click here for the full article.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, writing in the Daily Telegraph.

They aren’t really angry with us for opposing the new Treaty for Fiscal Union. The reason our brother and sister Europeans are so chronically enraged with the British is that we have been proved completely right about the euro. For more than 20 years, British ministers have been coming out to Brussels and saying that they just love all this single-market stuff, but that they doubt the wisdom of trying to create a monetary union. And for more than 20 years, some of us have been saying that the reason a monetary union won’t work is that you can’t do it without a political union – and that a political union is not democratically possible.

We warned that you would need a kind of central Euro-government to control national budgets and taxation, and that the peoples of Europe wouldn’t wear it. Now look. It wasn’t the Anglo-Saxon bankers who caused the trouble in the eurozone, Sarkozy mon ami. It was the utter failure of the eurozone countries – starting with France, incidentally – to observe the Maastricht rules. It was the refusal of the Greeks to control their spending or to reform their social security systems.

Click here for the full article.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing in the Daily Telegraph.

Many of those EU leaders who went along with this summit accord - including France’s Nicolas Sarkozy - must know that it is Medieval leech-cure treatment and can only drain the lifeblood from large parts of wasted Euroland.

It is not remotely a fiscal union. There will be no joint debt issuance, no EU treasury, no shared budgets, and no fiscal transfers to regions in trouble.

Nor was there any change in the mandate of the ECB, not even a tweak towards growth, nor a hint that financial stability (not manipulating short-term prices) is the ultimate duty of a central bank. They are rewriting the Treaties, yet still refuse to correct the most dangerous single failure in the construction of monetary union: the lack of a lender of last resort.

What the ECB can do is pull out all the stops to save Euroland’s €23 trillion banking system, and that is what it did last week by extending unlimited credit to banks (LTRO’s) to three years, halving the reserve ratio to 1pc, and relaxing collateral rules to allow banks running out of eligible "kit" to pawn almost anything at Frankfurt’s lending window.

This is the closest we have come a "game-changer" in two years of rolling crisis. The banks can play the "carry trade", borrowing at 1pc until 2015 with gearing to buy Italian debt at 6.4pc. That is how you rebuild a shattered banking system, and how to finance governments covertly without breaching any Treaty clause.

Click here for the full article.

Wolfgang Munchau, writing in the Financial Times.

The European Union last week destroyed the illusion that the eurozone and the UK could happily co-exist within the EU. That may have made it a historic summit. But the decision to set up a fiscal union outside the European treaties will do nothing whatsoever to resolve the eurozone crisis.

Remember what everybody said a week ago? To solve the crisis, the eurozone requires, in the long run, a fiscal union with a prospect of a eurozone bond and, in the short run, unlimited sovereign bond market support by the European Central Bank. What we now have is no treaty change, no eurozone bond and no increase either in the rescue fund or in ECB support.

The EU fell short on every element of a comprehensive deal.

Last week, Europe’s leaders created a diversion. We will be talking about the UK for a while. The crisis, meanwhile, goes on.

Click here for the full article.

Louise Armistead, writing in the Daily Telegraph.

Whichever side of the dichotomy you’re on, it ain’t Cameron you should be praising or blaming, but Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy. The truth is, Cameron hasn’t stood-up for Britain or quit the eurozone debate: Britain has been kicked out.

Click here for the full article.

Katinka Barysch, writing in The Guardian, under the headline "Believe it or not, Angela Merkel has a plan to tackle the Euro crisis.

Are Merkel's fiscal union plans beside the point at a time when debt and interbank markets are close to meltdown? Not quite: they are a political necessity to give Merkel more room for manoeuvre at home and to allow the European Central Bank to step up its role in stabilising the eurozone.

While Merkel's vision for a fiscal union is not the tool to stem the crisis, it might turn out to be a necessary ingredient of a bigger package to save the euro.

Click here for the full article.

Personally, I have no problem in admitting I have no idea whether the eorozone will eventually be stabilised by whatever the appropriate measures are. As Jeremy Warner has said:- It is still possible that the sort of things that might save the single currency – central bank intervention and debt mutualisation – will eventually be agreed but it is a brave man who banks on it.

Long-time reader Moscow (see recent Comments) may be well be brave enough to bank on the EU staying intact and coming up with measures which are not only appropriate but also politically feasible. In contrast, it seems Ambrose E-P has run out of patience - "The Europols have not begun to work out a viable solution to their deformed and unworkable currency union, and perhaps no such solution exists. The system will lurch from crisis to crisis until it blows up in acrimony."

Which is not what anyone wants, of course. So, let's hope that the summit really does serve as a stepping stone to something rather more productive. Soon.

2011-12-11T23:28:00.001+01:00

Following Friday's high (and historic) drama, David Cameron naturally got both bouquets and brickbats from today's UK press.

A bouquet: All the UK is isolated from is an impending disaster: the eurozone will fragment with countries leaving and debt defaults. . . It is like being as isolated as a man who failed to get onto the Titanic before it sailed.

A brickbat:- As an act of crass stupidity, this has rarely been equalled.

And then there was . . .

British understatement, from one of the officials involved:- It's not the optimum outcome in terms of UK influence.

Ever-so-French overstatement:- Cameron acted like a man who goes to a wife-swapping party without taking his wife.

The reality:- In short, the summit that was supposed to save monetary union has been little short of disastrous. Going into the talks, the markets hoped for a happy ending to the sovereign debt saga: a deal to pave the way for the European Central Bank to ride to the rescue of Italy and Spain, under siege from the bond vigilantes. What they got instead was political schism, half-baked reforms and the complete absence of any fresh economic thinking. . . What was needed was a route map out of a situation that threatens Europe with at least one and perhaps two years of crisis. What we got instead was a blueprint to prevent the next crisis, assuming that monetary union makes it that far.

Vamos a ver.

2011-12-10T23:59:00.001+01:00

Well, yes. We did wake up to headlines about the Continent being isolated or adrift. Most of them in the British press but one or two in the European press. El País, for example.

The difference with the Daily Telegraph's 1928 headline, of course, is that today's versions were meant to be funny/ironic. Though one British observer made the serious - and possibly extreme - comment that "For once the old joke, 'Fog in the Channel: Continent cut off', seems applicable. The continent is cutting itself off — from sane economic policies.

I wonder how the French will view the behaviour of their M. Sarkozy, who's facing an election in six months and finds it hard not to play to the gallery. I recall him telling the French a year or two go they should take lessons in driving manners from the British but his own example in cutting Mr Cameron at the conference table last night was unimpressive.

Here's one British perception of the man - Cutting an increasingly melodramatic figure, Nicolas Sarkozy, as usual, bad-mouthed the British Prime Minister in the hope of maximising his own personal glory at the expense of la perfide Albion. “Very simply,” he declared, “in order to accept the reform of the treaty of 27, David Cameron asked for what we thought was unacceptable: a protocol to exonerate the UK from financial services regulation. We could not accept this as at least part of the problems [Europe faces] came from this sector.” This is claptrap of the lowest order. To see why, you need to read the “international agreement” announced in the early hours of Friday. Its stated aims are to establish and enforce “a new fiscal compact and strengthened economic policy co-ordination” in the euro area. The phrase “fiscal stability union” is explicitly used. It is to be based on “common, ambitious rules” and “a new legal framework”. The Eurocrats have exchanged a Stability and Growth Pact — which was honoured only in the breach — for an Austerity and Contraction Pact. The UK has no option but to dissociate itself from this collective suicide pact, even if it strongly increases the probability that we shall end up outside the EU altogether.

In the Daily Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard was in no doubt about what had happened:- What remarkable petulance and stupidity. The leaders of France and Germany have more or less bulldozed Britain out of the European Union for the sake of a treaty that offers absolutely no solution to the crisis at hand, or indeed any future crisis. It is EU institutional chair shuffling at its worst, with venom for good measure. The Europols have not begun to work out a viable solution to their deformed and unworkable currency union, and perhaps no such solution exists. The system will lurch from crisis to crisis until it blows up in acrimony. More here

On the other side of the UK political divide, a Guardian columnist saw things thus:- As a clear damp dawn rose over Brussels on Friday morning, the tired and tetchy leaders of Europe emerged, bleary-eyed from nine hours of night-time sparring over how to rescue the single currency and indeed the entire European project. Brave faces were put on, bluffs called, counter-bluffs revealed, vetoes wielded. Histrionics from France's Nicolas Sarkozy, poker-faced calm from Germany's Angela Merkel, David Cameron gambling the UK's place in Europe by opting to battle for Britain rather than helping to save the euro.

When the dust settles, Friday 9 December may be seen as a watershed, the beginning of the end for Britain in Europe. But more than that – the emergence for the first time of a cold new Europe in which Germany is the undisputed, pre-eminent power imposing a decade of austerity on the eurozone as the price for its propping up the currency. The prospect is of a joyless union of penalties, punishments, disciplines and seething resentments, with the centrist elites who run the EU increasingly under siege from anti-EU populists on the right and left everywhere in Europe. . . In the cold new Europe taking shape, the Germans are more powerful than everyone else, but not all-powerful.

Back in Spain, both Tuesday and Thursday were public holidays, giving many the chance to 'bridge' the week twice so as to take it all off. This prompted the head of the employers' association to call this widespread downing of tools "A complete scandal", likely to cost the country more than one billion euros, or one percent of GDP. But some things are more important than money.

2011-12-09T22:05:00.012+01:00

So, Britain finds itself out of step with all the other 26 nations in the European Union. I wonder if tomorrow we'll wake up to anything like the famous Daily Telegraph headline of 1928 :- "Storm in Channel - Continent Isolated".

Something I've unearthed while checking this quote suggests that its funniness will be lost on the other side of the Atlantic. Toby Young, writing in The Spectator in 2008, confessed:- I know from having lived in Manhattan in the mid-1990s that you constantly have to point out that there’s a world of difference between the residents of the British Isles and the rest of Europe and that, strictly speaking, the term ‘Eurotrash’ only applies to the latter. I lost count of the number of times I had to explain to Americans why the following headline was funny: "Storm in Channel - Continent Isolated". As far as they are concerned, Europe is just one country, no different from the United States.

As if.

A quick follow-up to yesterday's mention of George Borrow . . . Some time next week, a plaque will be installed at what might or might not have been where he lived in Madrid - in Calle Santiago.

Finally . . . Who would have thought that Katherine Hepburn would have been the one to sum up the Spanish in only 11 words? - ‘If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun’.

2011-12-08T20:05:00.002+01:00

In 1835 or so, a Englishman – George Borrow – set off through Spain to try to sell copies of the Protestant Bible. By his own admission, he wasn’t terribly successful. But he did have a great time, falling in love with Spain and its people in the process. “She is”, he wrote, “the most magnificent country in the world. And I have found much that is noble and to be admired amongst the Spanish people, who have always treated me with kindness and courtesy”. Happily for us, he recorded his experiences in “The Bible In Spain”. As a book, this is hard to get hold of but you can download the text here.

I mention this encomium [with which I totally agree], firstly, to help counter the perception that I am unremittingly negative about Spain and, secondly, to lead into my contention that, whilst the Spanish people truly are amongst the best in the world, they make far better acquaintances than friends. By this I mean that that, while they’re fantastic to socialise with - even if you have only just met them in a bar or on a train - you would be foolish to expect them to be around just when you need them. For the concept of friendship in Spain differs greatly from that in an Anglo-Saxon culture. In Spain, you owe your loyalties to your family. To everyone else you owe nothing but civility and, usually, bucketloads of bonhomie.

The end result is many superficial acquaintanceships but few deep friendships. All this is driven by the logic of a culture in which few people break away from the family nexus, e. g. to attend university and then to work many miles from ‘home’. So your life is determined, on the one hand, by the obligations you owe to your family members and, on the other, by the support and assistance which you can always expect from them. Put briefly, you don’t need friends the way displaced Anglo-Saxons do. So you don’t cultivate them. If all this sounds rather brutal, I can only say that it isn’t really and add the comment of my friend, Elena, who's pointed out that, whilst all the above might well be true, the Spanish are the least likely people in the world to turn a blind eye to a stranger in trouble. Perhaps this is one of the aspects of Spanish ‘nobility’ that impressed George Borrow so much 170 years ago. And still does today.

Postscript: Those impressed by GB's writings on Spain can obtain more information on him/them from a site entitled George Borrow Studies. This is maintained by my friend, Peter Missler, whose two books inspired by Borrow - A Daring Game and The Treasure Hunter of Santiago - are also featured there.

2011-12-06T21:27:00.000+01:00

My Ferrolian friend, Richard, has kindly sent me this link to a short film about Galician fishermen harvesting percebes - or gooseneck barnacles - just outside the coastal town of Cedeira, half an hour north of Ferrol.

Richard and I politely disagree on the gastronomic qualities of these (indisputably ugly) things but I have no difficulty in agreeing with his suggestion that the activity is "probably more dangerous than catching fish in a force nine storm."

But it doesn't make them taste any better.

2011-12-03T23:59:00.001+01:00

On a British TV program tonight there was a reference to the genius Alan Turing and the pioneering work he and his team did on constructing the first ever computer to decipher the advanced version of the fiendish Enigma machine, used by the Germans for messages between Hitler and his top brass. An hour or two later, starting on an 800 page social history of the UK between 1951 and 1957, I read that the fate this same winter [1951] of the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing - mastermind behind the cracking of the German Enigma code and arguably the father of the modern computer - was testimony to darker, wholly unreconstructed forces. On the evening of 7th February, just after he had appeared on a radio program about whether machines could be said to think, the police came knocking on his door at this home in Wilmslow. His crime, following a brief liaison with a Manchester youth, was Gross Indecency contrary to Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885.

Turing was duly prosecuted in 1952 and in 1954 he killed himself by eating a poisoned apple. A less than fitting end for someone who, according to the US President, had effectively shortened the war by two years, saving countless lives in the process.

Putting two and two together, some people have suggested that Apple's corporate logo of a piece of fruit with a bite out of it was a tribute to Turing. To which Steve Jobs is reported to have said "No. But I wish it had been."

Fast forward to British TV tonight, where in two programs (male) homosexuality came across as not just normal but virtually obligatory. And that was before we got to Cliff Richard, aged about 20 (then) and 95 (now), in a third program. How the wheel has turned. Or, in the case of the Enigma machine, the wheels.

Another coincidence of the night is somewhat less momentous. The spray-perfume in one of the toilets in my sister's house in Liverpool - round the corner from Penny Lane - is called Seychelles. Where I spent a year as a youth, teaching whatever I could to Creole boys aged 11 to 18. As I recall, they were particularly amused by my attempts at French. But even more so by my bunioned feet and my orteils gros pliés. The little bastards.

And the third and last coincidence of the day is that, having lived very near to it, I'm very familiar with Alan Turing's home town of Wilmslow. Though I hadn't known until tonight that he'd lived there, while working at Manchester University, I guess.

Finally . . . Here's yet another review of The Way, ending with the sentiment that "As The Way ambles along to its sweetly open-ended ending, the viewer had best settle into its vibe and experience the movie at its own pace. You'll be rewarded, and your blood pressure might even drop a notch.

Interesting Postscript: On 8 June 1954, Turing's cleaner found him dead; he had died the previous day. A post-mortem examination established that the cause of death was cyanide poisoning. When his body was discovered an apple lay half-eaten beside his bed, and although the apple was not tested for cyanide, it is speculated that this was the means by which a fatal dose was delivered. An inquest determined that he had committed suicide, and he was cremated on 12 June 1954. Turing's mother argued strenuously that the ingestion was accidental, caused by her son's careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in an ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability. David Leavitt has suggested that Turing was re-enacting a scene from the 1937 film Snow White, his favourite fairy tale, pointing out that he took "an especially keen pleasure in the scene where the Wicked Witch immerses her apple in the poisonous brew."

2011-11-17T16:20:00.000+01:00

Here's an interesting perspective on recent events from Paul Feldman. Which is all too accurate, I fear. A taster - The financial markets have effectively “bought” capitalist democracy, turned it into a commodity. They demanded and got deregulation from the politicians. And when they went bust, they demanded and got bail-outs. When governments have proved incapable of imposing the debt crisis on their people, an out-and-out takeover is the result in Athens and Rome. So the democratic achievements of past generations in terms of the right to vote and influence course of events through parties committed to reform are negated. There is even less meaning to voting than ever before, as the people of Spain will discover next Sunday.

I've mentioned that a famous judge (Sr. Varela) lives in a nearby development which is illegal and now scheduled for demolition. An even better example of how things can be here is that of notary in a nearby town who's just been found to be using an office which has no Licence of First Occupation. This - as is the experience I'm having with the sale of my rural property - is a useful reminder that notaries are not the safeguard foreigners need when buying property here. There is no substitute for an honest and experienced lawyer. And, yes, I do know one! As I've said before, many (if not most Brits) are persuaded by the estate agent not to use a lawyer and to rely on the notary. This, of course, is pushed for the benefit of the agent, who wants a quick sale for his commission. Since, as an estate agent once told me, "Brits leave their brains on the plane when they come to Spain", too many of them accept the word of the agent. Who won't be around when problems arise later. And if they are, they won't give a proverbial.

I have a signing to go to . . . . so

Finally . . . Here's Business Week's take on Sr. Rajoy.

2011-11-16T18:17:00.001+01:00

These are the things I've learned in the two days I've been back in Spain:-

- My bank - Citibank - has (re)introduced charges if you get cash from an ATM which is not in the network to which they belong. Actually, it's worse than that; there are charges if you use any bank branch not belonging to them, whether or not it's in the Servired network. And so it was that I was told there was a charge of 18 euros to take out cash of 600 euros this morning, an operation which I naturally aborted and then walked to the city's only Citibank branch. This is going to be very inconvenient but I wouldn't put it past Citibank to try to dress it up as an improvement in their customer service. Banks appear to be a law unto themselves all over the world.

- If you get notification of a registered letter (certificado) the postman tried to deliver when you were out/away, you need to get to the Post Office to collect it within 15 days. If not, you might find your self waiting, say, 25 minutes to be told this was a waste of time because they've sent the letter back to the sender.

- If you've bought a house and the seller fails to pay the notary for the document (escritura) proving the prior cancellation of his mortgage, you will end up having to pay for this. As if this wasn't bad enough, you'll also have to pay the Property Registry's fee for receiving this document and removing the reference to the (cancelled) mortgage in their records. Of course, you can take the seller to court to force him to comply with his legal obligations but this is not usually an attractive option in Spain.

- There's a material distinction in Spanish between saying of a woman Es buena, as opposed to Está buena. In English, these both mean "She's a good woman". However, if I've got this right, the former means She's kind, generous, simpatico, etc. While the latter means something like She's so fit I'd like to bed her. Or words to that effect.

Finally . . . Here and here is all you need to know about the Gallego who'll be our Prime Minister as of Sunday, Mariano Rajoy. Not yet in office, he's already made his first major official gaffe, and worried the people who apparently make political appointments in Europe these days, the markets.

2011-11-15T19:52:00.003+01:00

Talking to my lovely neighbour Ester today, I learned that the seventeen (unoccupied) new houses behind mine, being illegal, are now subject to a demolition order. As are two other developments in our barrio, in one of which a famous judge has his house. Only in Spain?

Of course, no one expects the houses to be knocked down - they belong to Spaniards, not foreigners - but it'll be interesting to see what happens next. If they are demolished, it'll mean more noise and dust, to go with that of the six years it took to build the bloody things.

Anyway, here's what William Dalrymple had to say about the "Spanish character" in the final pages of his 1777 book about his trip through Spain in 1774. I stress that I don't necessarily agree with him. Or even, at times, understand him. You can make up your own mind how much things have changed in three hundred years:-

The Castillian, Andalusian, Galician are strongly marked, each a separate people; but since the same government, one religion, and the like education prevail, a similarity of character is conspicuous; the gravity of the natives, is carried to a proverb, and their deportment would convince a stranger that it were true: they have no idea of walking for exercise, or even stirring abroad in the heat of day, but when obliged to it, and then they move with a solemn gait, which becomes habitual; till lately and that only now at the capital, among people of rank in the provinces, they had little communication with strangers, or with each other, consequently a reserved behaviour whenever they met in company, and their turn for gallantry, obliged them to keep a guard on their countenances, lest they should betray their intrigues to their associates: as this long been the seat of of bigotry, the gloom of religion hangs upon their brow; and the inquisition, employing its familiars in every corner of the realm, urged them to have a curb upon their tongue, for fear that they should utter what might be interpreted to their ruin: all these causes combined, naturally produce those effects of external sedateness we see prevalent amongst them; but children of the sun, though not volatile, they have as acute and lively imagination as any people of Europe: sanguine in their dispositions, and warm in their affections, if thwarted in their pursuits, they often become enraged to a degree of passion, with which we are in general unacquainted: they are revengeful, and stabbing still prevails, the lowest peasant will not brook a blow, and that the honour of the soldiers may not be hurt, there is an article in the ordinances for the army and they are to be beaten only with the sword. They have the highest notions of the dignity of their birth: the Castillian, but more the Biscayan, though poor and beggarly, hold the Andalucian in the utmost contempt, as being if immediate descent from the Moors: the latter is crafty and designing, but a nobler spirit runs through the vein of the former. Marriages are generally made between persons of equal distinction: the old nobility seldom contracts themselves with the new; and the superior never connects himself with the inferior. They are temperate, or rather abstemious, in their living to a great degree: 'borracho' [drunk] is the highest term of reproach, and it is rare to see a drunken man, except it be among the carriers or muleteers: both men and women are fertile in resources to the attainment of their favourite pursuits, the latter, in particular, limited in their education, confined with bars at home, and attended by spies abroad, still find means to elude the vigilance of their 'dueñas' [mistresses] and pervade the grates made to restrain them. It is particular, that the people throughout, are free from diffidence, they have a manly character, and speak to their prince with the same sang froid and confidence that they would to their fellow; they never utter anything at which they seem the least abashed, each man appears to have a conscious dignity, which is not so conspicuous in other parts of the world: they treat one another with the greatest civility and respect; if even a beggar ask alms, and it not be granted, the supplicant is refused in most compassionate terms, another time, they tell him, and God go with him, God conduct him, etc. insult is never added to misfortune. Such are my cursory remarks upon the present prevalent character of this people. There was a time when the ardent flame of liberty fired each Spaniard's breast; but it has been extinguished by the malignant blasts of despotism, never to be kindled more.

That's it, then. I'd just add for now that Dalrymple regularly - and oddly - refers to women as 'the sex'. As in this reference to the ladies of southern Portugal - In this country, the sex have sparkling black eyes, white teeth and fine hair, to which they add powder and pomatum in such quantities, that they increase their heads to a most enormous size; they wear rouge, but with delicacy, and patch a great deal.

As for Spain, I will add that one quickly forgets just how noisy this place is. In a cafe this morning, I had to ask three times for the (unwatched) TV to be (further) lowered so I could hear my companion speak. True, the staff were very gracious about it but they clearly had no notion of what an acceptable level of (pointless) noise is. Likewise the imbecile who'd removed the noise suppressor from his scooter and who passed us at a manifestly illegal level of decibels when we were walking to my car.

Talking about the Spanish attitude to rules . . . As we landed at Vigo airport last night, there was a reminder that we should leave our phones off until the doors had been opened. Whereupon, every single passenger I could see immediately switched on his/her phone and called someone.

But the good news is that no one has walked into me yet.

2011-11-15T13:25:00.001+01:00

Every time I pass through Liverpool airport it's got bigger. But not necessarily better. The expansions always seem to be designed to accommodate more shops. To help fleece the captive clientele with time on it hands.

I took advantage of the two flights necessary to get to Vigo to read from start to finish William Dalrymple's account of his journey through Spain way back in 1774. He doesn't actually hazard any views on the Spanish character until the final pages and I will post these later on. Perhaps tonight.

The good news back in Pontevedra is, firstly, that I have agreed a price for the sale of my house in the hills and, secondly, the construction of two huge roundabouts on the edge of the city has moved closer to completion.

Seen on the streets of Pontevedra this morning - a woman walking along bearing a plaque on her chest saying I WANT JUSTICE. I wonder what for and will have to ask around.

Also seen on the streets - Far more pretty women than one tends to see in the UK. Suddenly, I feel a lot younger . . .

2011-11-13T17:26:00.000+01:00

THIS BEING ENGLAND 1: At 3.30 this afternoon, I thought I'd nip down to the the Sainsbury supermarket before it closed at 4. To find that half of the student population of Headingley had had the same notion. Anyway, accosting two of the store assistants standing by to help the hundreds who can't master the self-checkout machines, I asked them where I could find capers. One of them asked me if I meant 'kippers' and being assured that it really was capers I was after, they both giggled and said they had no idea as they didn't know what they were. Fortunately, another assistant had overheard the conversation and took me to the right shelf.

TBE 2: Yesterday's gloriously sunny autumn day has turned into a dank and dismally damp day as foul as you could imagine. It doesn't help that it's dark by 4.14.

TBE 3: The construction workers transforming a house opposite the supermarket into something as yet undetermined are on the job today and will have finished the project in a little over a week. In Spain, I fancy this would have taken a little longer.

Talking of home . . . What would your guess be for the region of Spain with the most licences to offer flamenco performances? Andalucia perhaps. Well, no. It's Galicia. Where I've yet to see flamenco offered anywhere. Why should this be, I hear you ask? Well, it's because such a licence allows you to stay open until 5.30am and not the 4.30am that disco bars are limited to. The terms of the licence say there must be a raised dais for the performers and no dance floor. I suspect you could search until eternity to find one such place in Galicia, whether or not it has a flamenco licence, There are rules and rules in Spain.

And talking about Galicia . . . Here's a Guardian profile of the Pontevedran who will head the Spanish government after the general elections on 20 November. As the writer says, one of the problems that confront him may require his to employ a stereotypical skill attributed to some Galicians – of doing one thing while persuading people he is actually doing the opposite. Interestingly, a Galician friend has written to me to say he finds the article spot on.

As for the Duke of Palma and his alleged crooked dealings, he's said ‘When I know all the details of the allegations I will make a full statement’, adding that his professional behaviour had always been correct. The Palace, meanwhile, has attempted to distance itself from the monarchs' son-in-law, saying that if he's indicted, he'll have to defend himself ‘like any other citizen’.

Finally . . . I've cited a few warnings about Facebook recently and here's one specific to me:- For no reason in particular, I added my secondary school and university to my profile this week. Within a couple of days, I got a picture of a stunning young woman claiming to be attending the college now and asking me to become a friend. I've little doubt that if I answered, it'd cost me, one way or another.

2011-11-13T11:15:00.003+01:00

The ex-editor of the Financial Times, Andrew Gowers, has had the courage to publish this astonishing me culpa this morning in The Times. As I can't just link to it, I've reproduced it in full.

It's a comprehensive recognition that he was wrong to support the introduction of the euro ten years ago and that not all eurosceptics deserved to have their arguments dismissed as lunacy. Of course, like the rest of us, he has no real idea of what should be done now, as Europe's elite struggles with the choice between "the cholera and the plague".

I'm intrigued to see he uses a phrase I've resorted to several times over the decade, viz. that the euro would "collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions". So I wonder if it was in common use before I adopted it.

The article also reminds me of that old cynical view that every major reform results in the exact opposite of that for which it was designed.

It’s confession time. Exactly 10 years ago, I was cheering as the preparations to launch notes and coins for Europe’s bold new single currency reached their climax. For more than a decade before that, mine was among the voices egging on Europe’s leaders as they agreed to pool control over their money and form an economic and monetary union (Emu). In the years that followed, with the euro establishing itself as an instrument of European power and integration, I was one of those celebrating its success and urging Britain to join the party.

I now believe I was wrong. In recent months, as Europe’s leaders have struggled impotently with debts and deficits, with stricken banks and sluggish economies, with angry voters and helpless political institutions, the awful possibility has taken shape that they will fail.

Last week, as Italy teetered on the brink of the abyss that has already claimed Greece, Portugal and Ireland, a prospect loomed that I and other advocates of the single currency long regarded as unthinkable — that of the euro collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, causing a financial crash and depression in Europe and sending economic shockwaves around the world.

This is not (yet) a prediction. It is possible that apocalypse will be avoided and that the EU will find a way of muddling through to save the euro in some form. Some argue that failure is inconceivable given what’s at stake.

But even so, for me something fundamental has changed. The travails of the euro have done irrevocable damage to the political assumptions I have carried around for most of my adult life — that the evolving “European project” is, for all its much-discussed faults, by definition a force for good; that economic integration driven by the EU is the essential motor for peace, prosperity and economic development across the continent.

In fact, watching Europe’s leaders floundering and fumbling for the past 18 months and more, it is hard not to conclude that the single currency is achieving the precise opposite of what its progenitors intended.

Where they promised greater economic stability, the euro has exacerbated uncertainty and volatility. Where the single currency was supposed to promote trade and integration, it has instead created new divisions. Where it was portrayed as a vehicle to enhance Europe’s influence in the world, it has reduced the EU to an international laughing stock, or worse. Where it was promoted as a forge for closer political co-operation in Europe, as part of the formula to end the wars and bloodshed of the 20th century, it has fuelled conflict, undermined democratic structures and reawakened age-old national resentments.

As David Marsh, a banker, former journalist and author, whose recently updated book The Euro remains the definitive study of the subject, puts it: “The single currency bloc stands revealed as a zone of semi-permanent economic divergence, political polarisation and built-in financial imbalance. For the broad mass of the European electorate, the notion of ‘Europe’ has become a byword for unpopular and painful economic restructuring. Emu governments have decided to commit colossal sums of taxpayers’ money they cannot afford to heal internal disparities they cannot conceal to shore up an edifice many believe cannot stand — at least in its current form.

What makes this litany all the more humiliating is that we should have seen it coming. The current euro mess is not merely a story of incompetence and political weakness at the highest levels in Athens, Rome, Berlin and Paris — though it is certainly that. It is not based exclusively in a failure of technical execution by policy wonks — though it is that, too.

More than either of those, it is a comprehensive and devastating failure of political leadership and economic understanding — Europe’s worst fiasco since the second world war. Its roots go back to the origins of the project and, to me regrettably, its consequences now threaten the long-term future of the European Union.

In a sense this is Europe’s Lehman Brothers moment, with plenty of blame to go round.

All of those involved — the political leaders who signed the 1992 Maastricht treaty that created Emu, the central bankers, officials and policy experts who designed the common currency and its institutions, the cheerleaders in the worlds of journalism, economics and business — bear a share of it. All of us paid too little attention to the arguments of those who opposed the project in principle and of those who worried about its viability.

For there were enough voices, both in continental Europe and in Britain, warning of the economic and political risks inherent in the euro’s conception and design as the project gained momentum in the 1980s and 1990s.

They argued variously that there were no examples in history of lasting currency unions being established without the backing of a political union; that the European Central Bank would lack the firepower and authority to underpin the continent’s financial system; that a “one-size-fits-all” interest rate would generate damaging and destabilising imbalances between euro member states; that countries locked into a single currency with no possibilities of exchange rate adjustment could easily develop serious problems of economic competitiveness. Many argued strongly that the project was subject to insufficient democratic consent across Europe, and thus fraught with political risk.

Too often, their arguments were drowned out by the political imperatives driving the project forward and, frankly, by a tendency among euro supporters, including myself, to lump together the critics — the die-hards who had always opposed European integration and who had been mostly wrong, and those who saw the point of Europe but worried about the euro — under the prejudicial label “sceptics”. It was, in that sense, an epic-scale exercise in “group-think”.

Last week I spoke to a number of the British luminaries who were prominent in the pro-euro campaign 10 years ago. They are not a happy bunch. They also, by and large, prefer not to speak for the record (unlike Michael Heseltine, who told fellow Tories last week that Britain should still join the euro “in order to become more like Germany”.) “I don’t want to get involved in polemics right now,” said one leading pro-euro businessman. “If I speak out, I fear I’ll become a target,” a leading economist said. Another very prominent pro-euro figure responded that he had moved on to new areas of study and “I really doubt my views on the euro crisis are of any interest”.

But as they spoke to me, mostly off the record, four key themes emerged. First, most insisted that for reasons of economic structure and competitiveness, the idea of a common currency remains right in principle — with or without Britain. It was needed to underpin the single European market, launched with the strong support of Margaret Thatcher’s government and of British business in the 1990s. It was needed to maintain Europe’s peaceful post-war order.

“As a continent of small to medium-sized nation states, Europe badly needs a framework to govern its economy,” said one prominent businessman with new Labour affiliations.

“The euro was set up to address a real need which has not gone away, namely to underpin the single market,” said Will Hutton, one of the authors — with Chris Huhne, Adair Turner and others — of the 2002 pamphlet Why Britain Should Join the Euro and one of the few proponents still prepared to carry the banner aloft in public. “I’m not prepared to run up the white flag just yet. There is still a chance that, over time, the euro will have the positive effects on trade, growth and living standards that some of us predicted.

“Don’t forget that the shadow of past conflicts hangs heavy over Europe — the shadow of Germany. France was right in its instinct at the outset. Europe needs a system to help it cope with German economic power. That is the benchmark against which all other European economies will continue to be tested: better to do so in an organised framework than with free-floating currencies.”

Second, all agree that the design of the euro as launched 10 years ago was fatally flawed, largely for political reasons involving those former bitter enemies France and Germany.

The politics was present at the moment of the euro’s conception, when France persuaded Germany to give up the deutschmark and embrace the new currency as a quid pro quo for consenting to German reunification. The problem was that the two leaders who struck this grand bargain had fundamentally different ideas on how the new currency should be organised.

France’s François Mitterrand saw it as the precursor to a political arrangement to keep German power in check. Germany’s Helmut Kohl — who as Ken Clarke once said had “no interest in economics” — was more preoccupied with his own people’s political attachment to the D-mark. Mindful of Germans’ memories of the hyperinflation and economic collapse that brought Hitler to power, he wanted a currency moulded in the D-mark’s image. There would be no “economic government” or fiscal transfers from richer countries to struggling ones; no bailouts of governments that got into trouble; no central banking lender of last resort; no possibility of exit from the single currency, or at least not without a country leaving the EU altogether.

Most, if not all, national currencies and economies are underpinned by measures enabling governments to iron out economic imbalances or help regions in trouble. Europe’s leaders decided to do without them. Instead, they agreed on a set of budgetary rules that were supposed to guide euro member states’ taxing and spending decisions, specifically a stipulation that a government’s budget deficit never be allowed to exceed 3% of a country’s gross domestic product.

These were the central elements eventually agreed in the Maastricht treaty, and as many observed at the time, they were a fudge. It was not clear how the budgetary rules would be enforced. Nor was it obvious how the monetary union would cope if any of its members got into financial trouble.

To make matters worse, a queue of European countries rapidly formed at the door, begging to be let into the euro, including countries with mountainous debts and questionable governance such as Italy and Greece. Reservations expressed by the Bundesbank and other guardians of economic stability were overruled. The political need to build an inclusive club overrode the imperative to build one that was sustainable.

Here is the verdict of elder statesman Helmut Schmidt, a man with a lifetime’s experience and more understanding of economics than all of his successors as German chancellor put together: “They invented the euro and invited everybody to become a member of the euro area. And this was done without changing the rules or clarifying the rules beforehand. This was when the great mistakes were made. What we are suffering now is the consequence of that failure.”

A leading British pro-euro businessman agrees. “It was a fundamental flaw that there was no exit clause. A great many of the problems we have today would not exist if a country in trouble such as Greece had been able to leave the euro.

“Greece should never have been admitted to the club in the first place. People knew it was coming in under false pretences and with fiddled figures. Finally, a single currency has to have a single fiscal authority. The absence of such an authority was a serious birth defect.”

“Of course the design of the euro was flawed,” Hutton agrees. “Of course it should have been confined to an inner core of EU member states to begin with and should not have admitted Italy or Greece.”

Third, even the project’s staunchest supporters concede that since the launch, member states’ management of the euro has been somewhere between miserable and catastrophic. One obvious sign of trouble came a few years in when France and Germany, having agreed to cap government deficits at 3% of GDP, agreed to throw the rule overboard when they found keeping a lid on spending too hard.

“Was it naive to expect that France and Germany would stick to rules which the latter had been most insistent on imposing in the first place?” one pro-euro economist said. “Possibly. But the fact that they disregarded it was a serious blow to any hope that the euro would bring with it prudent management of the public finances.”

In the growth years that followed the euro’s introduction, many of its members went on a public and private-sector borrowing spree. The financial markets obliged them by shrinking the differentials between interest rates charged to government and private borrowers in the weakest economies and those in the strongest to almost zero. In other words, investors were behaving as if they believed that there was exactly the same — minimal — risk of a default by Italy, Spain or Greece as by Germany.

And all the while, the peripheral members — the countries that came to be known collectively as “Pigs” (for Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) — were steadily losing competitiveness, thanks to the fixed exchange rate and inflexible economies. Mountainous debt, sluggish growth, poor productivity — it is the combination that led directly to the crisis Europe faces today; and it is a treadmill from which these economies have no chance of emerging for a decade or more if they stay in the euro.

Other countries, of course, have had a boom-and-bust problem in recent years — notably our own. The difference, though, is that having made a mess, we are clearing it up under a government that can claim a popular mandate — and being given the credit, in the form of ultra-low borrowing costs. For euro members, given the warped system by which the currency is governed, the task of resolving the crisis is infinitely more complicated and contentious.

Miserable is also the word for the eurozone’s crisis management. In attempting to mop up the mess, Europe’s leaders have been constantly behind the curve, coming up with half-measures that buy them a moment’s calm before a fresh and even more vehement burst of market fury.

If it appears as if they have been acting with one hand tied behind their back, that is because they have — thanks to the flaws built into the Maastricht treaty, and the political difficulties caused by exposure of those defects.

The “no bailout” clause was a fiction that was brutally exposed with the first, failed Greek rescue in May of last year.

The “independent” central bank is struggling to maintain its independent status, as it faces mounting pressure — against vehement opposition from Germany — to act as lender of last resort and buy up the troubled economies’ debt.

Willem Buiter, another of the economists behind the original Why Britain Should Join the Euro pamphlet, is now chief economist at the global banking giant Citigroup. He wrote in a recent note to investors: “Europe was utterly unprepared, institutionally, politically, ideologically and culturally, to handle such fundamental financial and economic crises and the distributional conflicts that they entail. The result has been a succession of panic- driven policy measures and provisional, tentative institutional innovations that often were revised as soon as they had been announced.”

Yet the fourth point our pro-euro businessmen and economists make is that having set out down the road, Europe is doomed to carry on. There can be no turning back. It may be messy, but the consequences of failure and the collapse of the single currency would be much worse.

“It is absolute and total nonsense to pretend, as some in Britain appear to, that there is some kind of low-pain escape,” says a company chairman. “If anyone in the UK — europhile or eurosceptic — thinks we can just sit by while the euro implodes without incurring serious damage, they’re mad.”

“Failure is unthinkable,” says another businessman. “Germany won’t let it happen.”

“A Greek exit from the euro would be a disaster,” Hutton adds. “There would be massive capital flight from other peripheral countries and the resulting tensions could scupper the entire European Union.”

John Llewellyn, an independent economist who has written extensively on the euro, says Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, may have been criticised for weak and dithering leadership during the crisis, but we should not underestimate her determination to keep the show on the road. “Would [Nicolas] Sarkozy [the French president] and Merkel build the euro if they were starting today? I doubt it. But they may well ultimately conclude that it’s better — and cheaper — to fix it than to let it collapse.”

The big question is: on the road to what? For every imagined solution to the crisis put forward in recent months has been countered with a formidable array of objections or obstacles.

A financial “big bazooka”, in David Cameron’s phrase, to intervene in the market and show the world that the eurozone is serious about supporting its weaker members? Too difficult, according to participants in the last round of summits. Germany won’t sanction the funds; France is deep in debt itself; and China — the target of a humiliating begging mission from Brussels two weeks ago — won’t help either.

A fiscal union — involving the pooling of national budgets and/or the issuing of joint euro-bonds by eurozone governments? Desirable but unfeasible, Buiter says. “Whatever the pros and cons of fiscal federalism as a means of imposing fiscal discipline on EU or euro area member states, it is, for the foreseeable future, a political non-starter,” he says.

Secession from the euro by one or more member states? It was not a possibility the currency’s founders were prepared to contemplate. But after George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, had the temerity last month to propose holding a referendum on the latest bailout, Greece’s forced departure was openly discussed by Merkel and Sarkozy.

An “inner euro” comprising Germany and other countries who understand budgetary discipline? Sounds attractive. But getting there would make unscrambling an omelette seem like child’s play. And who would be in? Without France it would make no sense at all, and France with its own considerable debt burden is widely seen as the next domino in line after Italy.

That exposes the real problem for all to see: not just debt and deficits or banks and finance but politics with a capital P. That is why I wonder whether the euro will in the end be saved and why I fear for the future of the European Union.

Euro-politics has already felled five governments out of the eurozone 17: Ireland, Portugal, Slovakia, Greece and Italy. The demise of a sixth in Spain’s forthcoming election seems a foregone conclusion. And no one has the faintest idea if new governments being formed in Greece or Italy have a chance of getting to grips with their problems. Hence the alarming upward trajectory of interest rates on Italy’s debt at the end of last week. The crisis had simply moved beyond anyone’s control.

The point that looks so obvious in hindsight is that countries such as Greece and Italy do not respond in predictable ways to rational Teutonic calls for discipline and hard work. Their politics are chaotic and corrupt. Handed an easy option — such as a hard currency and guaranteed low borrowing costs with no real pressure to reform — they took it. Now that the emergency is forcing governments to act, it is understandable that the voters protest — and blame Europe as well as their own politicians. In some of the problem countries, violent protests are on the rise, sometimes featuring anti-German slurs of a historically uncomfortable variety.

But everywhere you look in the eurozone, governments are in trouble. Sarkozy’s poll ratings are in the tank — lower than any other president in the history of France’s Fifth Republic. Merkel is under severe pressure at home for presiding over what Germans, in one of those phrases that can become electoral poison, call a “transfer union”. In the words of Sir Richard Lambert, my predecessor at the Financial Times and subsequent CBI boss, “the big political problem is that nobody voted for this”.

That is why I now conclude that the rush to create the euro in the past 20 years has been a historic mistake with risks far outweighing the likely rewards. Europe’s leaders should never have launched a currency based on such flimsy economic and political foundations. But they did and the current mess is the direct result. To resolve it, Merkel in particular has to choose between cholera and the plague.

Either she uses the European Central Bank to throw hundreds of billions more into supporting Italy, Greece and the other delinquents, thus saving the euro but enraging her electorate, or she starts urgent talks to reshape the euro with fewer members and tighter rules.

The latter course is fraught with danger. It could easily collapse in acrimony and turn current market tremors into a meltdown and a deep global recession. So in the circumstances, and for the sake of avoiding that fate, there is nothing for it but to overlook the history of this misshapen creation and throw money at it. The political consequences, though, hardly bear thinking about.

2011-11-12T18:13:00.001+01:00

Here are a few more observations from Michener's book Iberia. They were made in the late 60s, and not the 15th century:-

This is part of the address of a senior admiral to the statue of St James (Santiago) on the 25th of July 1968. One would be forgiven for believing the statue was human. Or divine:-

- Spain will never forget that she received the Light of Faith and the Doctrine of Christ from your lips nor that you selected these marvellous lands of Galicia for the repose of your glorious remains. Every year on this day we come to hear your message of apostolic impatience, which is like a sunrise testimony which reaches into our blood and fills it with fidelity and missionary zeal.

We will never permit either error or false doctrine to snatch away our great treasure of Religious Unity, the foundation of our political and social unity, which thanks to you, O Glorious Apostle, we have enjoyed during these past thirty years.

- The two excursions outside Santiago take me through the countryside of Galicia, which hardy English travellers have considered the best region in Spain. . . Even a few miles' travel into the countryside of Galicia shows the observant traveller the secret of this land: the granite rock which is both the glory and the curse of the region.

- The reader has probably noticed [as if!] that the Way of St James lacked one thing to make it an almost perfect pilgrims' route: nowhere was the cult of the Virgin Mary exploited, so that a good half of the mystical wonder of the Catholic Church was unprovided for. . . . It fell to the little town of Pontevedra to correct this. There . . . a new cult grew up around a legend claiming that the Virgin Mary had been the first pilgrim to the tomb of Santiago, who had given his life for her son. [This tripe would be bad enough from a Catholic but Michener is a Quaker!]

- Percebes: Much of the excitement of eating these stems from the fact that each year men lose their lives gathering the repulsive things. When served, they look like a plate of miniature rotting turkey legs with the skin on the legs turned black and flabby and the nails on the toes become coarse. But when the skin has somehow been torn away, beneath lies a stem of delicious, chewy meat somewhat like octopus, while the hideous toes, if properly gouged, can be tricked into giving up morsels of solid meat which is much like the best crab. [In my view, not worth the bloody effort but there are some reasonably intelligent people who take the opposite view and reject my suggestion that it's like eating a bit of inner tube which has been dipped in salty water. I don't much like octopus either.]