Buzzing around.

Well, things were fairly buzzing in town today. As I walked down towards the library this morning I was treated to the unusual sight of young men trying to push bikes and pull suitcases simultaneously. Quite a difficult task but, on closer inspection, I realised that these were stunt bikes and so the young men concerned are probably used to doing strange things. So I went a little further down towards the port to see what was happening and there it was, just near the A Laxe shopping centre, close to the stature of the swimmer who appears to have nose-dived into the pavement: a stunt bike arena complete with ramps of various heights and degrees of steepness. 

 

There were already crowds of spectators but all that was going on this morning seemed to be either practice or just plain showing off. A large number of stunt cyclists were going up and down ramps, leaping into the air, doing twists and turns and generally taking their lives into their hands. However, unlike the last time I saw this in exactly the same place and approximately the same time of year three summers ago, it looked as though ALL the cyclists were wearing helmets. What’s more, there was an ambulance parked close by, just in case. Has Health and Safety arrived in Spain at last? 

 

By late afternoon it had developed into a full-blown competition/championship. The public address system was proclaiming the merits, and the nicknames, of competitors from Barcelona, Cáceres and numerous other places in Spain. 

Back to this morning though, there was a bit of a demonstration going on outside one of the banks on Urzaiz. Various new bits of legislation that have been introduced as a result of banks merging and because of austerity measures the country has been forced to take have left people feeling hard done by. They have lost money and are shouting about it. How much good it will do them remains to be seen. 

Leaving the protestors behind, I turned back to head for home and saw an old familiar figure in his knees outside a shop on Urzaiz. It was a once-regular beggar, known to us as “Nadie Da”. During the two years we lived in Vigo we must have seen this young man almost every day on his knees asking for money just by the exit from the underground car park. As Christmas approached, his requests for charity turned into a kind of litany: “Ya es Navidad, Tengo hambre y nadie da.” In English this would be, “It’s already Christmas. I’m hungry and nobody gives anything.” And we did give him the occasional coin but after that he was known to us forever as “Nadie Da”, said with a pronounced whine. 

 

We had commented on his absence, although we did think we saw him one day walking down Príncipe talking on his mobile phone. Now, can real beggars afford mobile phones? Or is it an essential bit of equipment for a professional beggar? Anyway, he seems to be back on the streets of Vigo, still on his knees. Maybe he’s been on his holidays. Maybe he has been doing the rounds of the various fiestas, trying his luck in other parts of Galicia. 

He seemed very wrapped up for what has turned out to be a rather fine and hot day. But then, he was begging in the shade and maybe like so many Galicians I speak to, he doesn’t think that what we have is a proper summer. 

Proper summer or not, I see signs of it coming to an end. The shops are announcing the “Último remate” or Final reductions in their sales goods. And alongside that they are already displaying what they call, in English of course, the “New Collection. Fall/Winter” – OK, American English. And then, just last night I saw this poster for the department store El Corte Inglés, reminding everyone that it will soon be time to go back to school. 

  “La vuelta al cole” approaches. But it’s only the 10th of August, for goodness sake!