Getting your own back.

We set off for a walk this afternoon and went past numerous bars where football fans were anxiously watching Spain play Switzerland. Not even very anxiously really. After all, who has heard much about Switzerland and great football? The selección española has, after all, already won the European Championship. There were Spanish flags all over the place, women fans wearing headscarves in the Spanish colours and tiny boys with their dads in matching Spain tee-shirts. One bar even had its huge TV perched on the wall of the terraza in the shade so that everyone could watch the match outdoors.

Our walk took us on a roundabout route to the chess club and we called in at the Café Monaco on the corner five minutes before the end of the match. Spain was losing 0-1. Despite various corners and valiant attempts to even up the score, they never managed to catch up. Two fans in the café almost burst into tears on the spot. Nobody wanted to stay for the analisis pos-partido.

On our way home later we saw many a long face and very few smiles. Groups of disconsolate fans sat on benches, their red and yellow flags trailing on the ground. How are the mighty fallen! Well, I suppose it makes up for those people who laughed at England only managing to draw against the USA!

On a brighter note for Spain, it seems that there might be justice after all. At the very least sentimentality rules, OK! Iria Creo Abeijón, the lady driver whose catapult was confiscated has been heard to say, «Estoy supercontenta, contentísima. Estoy encantada de la vida».

She went to the police station and pleaded for the return of her « dangerous weapon », but to no avail. Even her grandmother declaring, «Se teu avó soubese isto...» (If your granddad knew about this …) made no difference. But then her boyfriend, who was driving the car at the time of the confiscation, had a phone call saying they could go and collect it.

Power of the press? Maybe! It rather looks as though the article in La Voz de Galicia made a difference to people in uniform getting too big for their boots. The policeman who returned the offending tirachinas apologised, waived the fine, said that he could not understand how it had happened and suggested that maybe it had all been a joke.

All’s well that ends well, at least as far as the lady driver is concerned. I wonder if the same will happen to la selección!

From a different angle!

Last night in the French book club we talked about this and that, as usual, anything and everything except the book that everyone is supposed to have read. This was just as well since, as an unofficial, i.e. illegal member of the club I am not entitled to a copy of the book and so have not read it.

Somehow the conversation worked its way around to Belgium. One of the ladies had just returned from there and was rather indignant. It turns out that in that small country there are people who do not speak French, which the visiting lady wanted to practise. No, those awkward Belgians insisted on speaking something else, their other official language: Flemish!

How terrible! People who felt proud enough of their language to want to speak it rather than French! They felt that n their part of the country French was an imposition. Flemish was their birth language and they insisted on speaking it. To the visiting lady’s horror she found that they even wanted to have road signs in it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they insisted on their children to being educated in it.!

Now that sounds a little bit familiar, doesn’t it? Ironically the lady who was so shocked by this occurrence is the same one who was insisting only a few months ago that EVERYONE living in Galicia should be obliged to learn gallego. She is the one who told us that gallego is an older, more lyrical language than castellano, in every way superior and allowing one to express ideas that cannot be expressed so well in any other language.

We pointed out to her that these Flemish speakers were just a little like some gallego/catalan/ basque even Welsh speakers. She clearly was not impressed.

Comments about the boot being on the other foot and sauce for geese and ganders spring to mind!!

On cars and cows and such.

Walking up the road to the railway station recently, I could not help noticing how many of the cars parked at the roadside had bumps, bangs, dents and scratches. Since then I have kept a lookout whenever I go past a line of parked cars. As a rule somewhere between ⅔ and ¾ of cars have been in a collision of some kind: sometimes just a little scratch on the bumper but fairly often rather more than that. Now, I would be really upset if my otherwise smart-looking vehicle had a scratch along one side, a dented wing or a scraped bumper. It’s a good job I don’t have a car here then.

Mind you, you only have to watch people parking around here to realise that such a state of affairs is not really surprising. A driver finds a space (and they are very elusive, it has to be admitted) and eases himself in. If there is a rubbish container in the way he just nudges it along, probably pushing it into someone else’s car as he goes. Often cars are parked in extremely narrow streets where it is necessary to squeeze up close to the wall in order to let other cars get past. No wonder there are scrapes and scratches!

It is quite possible park quite close to a corner and then return to find that someone else has parked directly behind you, about two centimetres behind you in fact, in order to prevent his car from sticking out too much into the road. How do you get out of that parking space then? Not the other driver’s problem! I watched one lady driver in that situation take a photo of the parking situation, leave a note on the other driver’s windscreen and then proceed to wriggle her way out of the parking space. Presumably she had to “nudge” the other car just a little to manage to get out.

Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why Pontevedra province has the most expensive car insurance in Spain, according to the free paper 20 Minutos. Of course, it’s not just to do with parking. The newspaper article tells us that in Galicia as a whole the accident rate is 22% higher than in the rest of Spain and that Pontevedra province occupies the highest position in el ranking de accidentes. Lots of these accidents, as you might expect, involve young drivers but it seems that whereas in the rest of Spain the risk of having an accident tends to go down among drivers aged 35 and over, in Galicia it doesn’t make a lot of difference. In driving gallegos are forever young!

Some people, like a lady driver from La Coruña, hang good luck charms from their rear-view mirror, a practice I have never quite understood. Dangling distracters are surely more likely to cause accidents than prevent them! Anyway, this lady driver from La Coruña had a catapult hanging from her mirror. Her grandfather had made this wooden catapult (un tirachinas – a lovely word, a pebble-thrower or possibly a Chinawoman-thrower!) some 23 years ago and, having got beyond the stage of firing pebbles at tin cans, the lady driver hung it in her car alongside a rosary and a keyring from the Guggenheim in Bilbao. This was obviously a seriously dangly mess hanging from her mirror.

Well, one day her boyfriend dropped her off at work and as he drove back was stopped by the police, who checked his papers and gave the vehicle the once-over. Finding nothing wrong with the car, they spotted the catapult and confiscated it. Carrying a dangerous weapon is an offence and a tirachinas counts as a dangerous weapon! He gave them the sob story about grandad carving the catapult and his girlfriend’s sentimental attachment to said dangerous weapon but all to no avail. They have to pay a 30€ fine and still don’t know whether the confiscated tirachinas will be returned to them.

Finally, here is a novel way of acquiring a new car. In a place called A Penafita early last week, for the third year running, they had a lottery with the delightful name of Caca de Vaca (Cow Pooh). A field was divided into small numbered plots and lottery tickets were sold with the corresponding numbers. Eight cows, labelled with the names of World Cup football teams and various Spanish radio stations were let loose on the field to do what cows do so often. If a cow left its calling card on the plot whose number you had purchased, you won a prize. The “English” cow tried to get disqualified by marking two plots. The “Spanish”/Radio Voz cow kept everyone waiting for almost two hours – typically Spanish some might say – but rewarded the owner of ticket number 1347 with the big prize: a brand new car! How long before it gets scratched?

Ups and downs … of the barometer!

After something of a struggle this morning, the sun has finally got his hat on and is coming out to play. There are still some clouds around but there’s a good deal more blue in the sky than we have seen for several days, most of the week in fact. Some people even had their winter coats and boots back on yesterday, which seemed to me to be rather excessive. Residents of very long standing here obviously have a different perception of cold. It’s not been what I would call cold, just dull and occasionally rainy.

The main problem for most people seems to be the extreme contrast as we went from full blown summer weather to late winter/early spring overnight. I would blame it on my having made gazpacho, something which usually works like a real temperature reducing spell, but we did manage to have several days more sunshine after I made the gazpacho and before the weather changed. And anyway I put it away in the freezer as the grandchildren who were about to arrive would all turn their noses up at it.

It was just as well that the good weather did continue for a while as we had promised the grandchildren that they could play in the pool while they stayed with us. And, yes, they did manage to do so and it was a great success. Everyone stayed in the pool until their finger-ends turned wrinkly. What probably did for the sunshine was inviting some friends to bring their children round to join in the fun.

They duly arrived with swimsuits, towels, armbands and all the rest of the paraphernalia needed for fun in the pool with small children. The day which had been changeable from the start took a serious downturn in the late afternoon. I watched little Rafa take a running jump into the water. His gleeful smile turned to a grimace of horror as he hit the water and felt the temperature. As a matter of fact it wasn’t too bad provided you kept moving but it was clearly a shock to his small system. And so, after the bigger kids had braved it for a while longer, we retreated first to the playground and then indoors for pizza and crisps.

It would seem, though, that Vigo has come off quite lightly once again. I read in the paper this morning that they are thinking of declaring A Mariña on the Lugo coast a zona catastrófica because of the damage caused by the storms and torrential rain. Much of the north coast has been similarly battered. Places like Ribadavia have been flooded and I am told that they have had temperatures of 6-7° in Orense, where they were up to 30+° just over a week ago. And here we were complaining because a bit of rain stopped us doing a trip to the Islas Cíes!!

Looking at my geeks’ weather chart on my computer, however, I notice that we had far more days of sunshine and fine weather in May and June last year than this.

I feel rather sorry for all the fin de curso parties and excursions being planned by schools as the end of the school year approaches. The small daughter of some friends of ours is off on a camping trip with her class this weekend. Most of the northern half of Spain is still on alert for rainy weather but apparently southwest Galicia should see fewer showers than most places. So maybe they’ll get away with it. Otherwise, poor kids! And poor teachers if they have to deal with 20+ wet 7 year olds under canvas!

At the airport.

This morning I was back in Portugal meeting my daughter and her children. A brisk walk to the bus station got me onto an early bus and then I had a longish wait at Oporto airport.

Waiting for people to arrive at an airport is a strange experience. I felt like a kind of voyeur watching the other temporary residents of this unreal space. In the café there was a couple having an emotional reunion. A young girl positively bounced for joy at being met by a man who I suppose was her father. Some people ate croissants and pastries with evident delight. Others just looked bored. One small girl got rather fractious but Sa Caneiro is a small airport and there are rarely crowds of squabbling families.

Outside the airport this morning someone had organised a children’s activity area on the grass. There was a bouncy castle, climbing frames, an obstacle course, a climbing wall and a sort of suspension bridge for older youngsters.

Monitors dressed in superhero suits or perhaps elf outfits supervised proceedings. They must have felt rather hot, as well as silly, in their fancy padded outfits.

In one section easels were set up for those who felt creative and a tent was set up at the end of the grass was devoted to Lettura Divertida, presumably intending for someone to read stories to children. A monster size book decorated the entrance but at 11.00 am there were no takers.

The sign at the front indicated that they intended to look after the world but gave no information on who was organising it.

Eventually the arrivals board told me that my family’s plane was due to arrive ahead of schedule: another opportunity for a Ryanair fanfare!! There was time for one more coffee before moving to the barrier to meet and greet my visitors and then hop on the bus back to Vigo.

Pilgrimages, peppers and other heated matters.

My friend Colin is walking part of the Camino de Santiago with a group of friends. I suspect he’s had a HOT time of it these last few days, after being rained on quite a lot in his training walks. See his comments on his blog. At 7.30 this evening a local chemist here was registering 28° so it must have been hot out on the road. And we are supposed to be in the cooler part of Spain! Quite how my sister is surviving the 35° they’ve been having in her part of Andalucía I can’t imagine. It’s a good job she installed air conditioning last summer.

There are even Japanese on the Camino according to reports in the newspaper. A family from that faraway place is walking the Camino with their children, at 15 and 10 the youngest on the pilgrimage at the moment.

In other parts of Galicia, in fact very close to Vigo, they are having some problems organising different activities. In Redondela, on the Thursday following the eighth day of Whitsuntide, which must be around now, they have the Festa da Coca. No, it’s nothing to do with Coca-Cola. It seems that the origins of this festival are, as they often say, lost in the mists of time but the legend goes that centuries ago a dragon lived near Redondela. That's why the origins are lost in the mists of time; you don't see many dragons these days!

Anyway, this dragon, who went by the name of Coca, occasionally popped into Redondela and carried off a young maiden to his cave: the usual sort of dragon story. Eventually the young fishermen of Redondela had had enough and went off with their swords, defeated the dragon and liberated the maidens. Then they took Coca off to Redondela, finished him off and did a sword dance. It begins to sound like Morris-dancing with a good story thrown in.

To celebrate this heroic victory, on the feast of Corpus Christi some people dress up as the dragon and Coca is defeated again and the brave young men do the sword dance again. There is also a procession of young maidens, small ones this time, called penlas, little girls dressed in white and with angels’ wings fastened to their shoulders. These penlas are carried on the shoulders of older women, known as las burras de Redondela (the female donkeys). Now these ladies have to be fairly strong and well-trained as they perform a dance with the little girls standing on their shoulders. The problem is that while they can find lots of penlas (every mother thinks her little girl is a little angel, after all) it is becoming more and more difficult to find the burras. Every year there are fewer and fewer women with the strength and the stamina to do the dance. Such are the problems of modern Galicia!

And then there is the problem of the pimientos de Padrón. These tasty little green peppers, just coming into the point in the season where they are more likely to be picante and surprise you with their fiery taste, are grown in Padrón, not far from La Coruña. However, they are also grown nowadays in Almería, Marruecos and anywhere else where they grow fruit and veg under plastic. Understandably the growers from Padrón are a little peeved. So from now on the authentic pimientos de Padrón will be known as pimientos de Herbón, taking their name from the exact bit of Padrón where they are cultivated.

Well, the French insisted that no-one but the wine producers of the Champagne region can use that name for sparkling wine, so the green pepper producers have exactly the same rights to get a little fiery and protect their produce and their good name!

Going to Portugal again.

On Saturday we went to Portugal. Some friends of ours were flying back to the UK from Oporto airport. As their flight was early on Sunday morning we decided that the four of us would go and have a day out in Oporto and a last meal together in the evening. And so off we went on the Alsa bus, which feels as though it takes you round half of Portugal, going via Braga and Oporto airport before dropping you off finally in Praça de Galiza, thus avoiding the city centre completely. We had a little drama at Oporto airport as someone discovered just as the bus was setting off again that one of their party had accidentally got off at the airport. Just in time she managed to explain the situation to the driver who very obligingly went round the airport again and collected the absent-minded fool!

Finally we arrived at Praça de Galiza without further mishap and took a taxi to our hotel. I did what has become my usual routine with Portuguese taxi drivers: tell them in Portuguese that I don’t speak their language, sorry, then explain that I understand a fair amount of gallego (almost Portuguese) and carry on the rest of my conversation in Spanish. It works like a charm as a rule. They then speak their Portuguese more slowly and clearly and I get the gist of what they are saying. This time it resulted in our booking the taxi to go to the hotel on Sunday morning early to take our friends to the airport. Another job done! Everyone happy!

We had booked rooms at the Residencial Vera Cruz, a place we have used several times but this time we had a view of the Avenida dos Aliados, much better that the inner courtyard we saw last time we were there. Our friends did even better; for the same price their room on the floor below ours also had a little terrace complete with table, chairs and sun lounger. Well, we know exactly which room to ask for next time!

And so, having deposited our belongings, we set off for a bit of sightseeing, finding shady spots as the sun had come out and the temperature was rising. This time, with a little help from our friends, we located the amazing old bookshop Livraría Lello, just over 100 years old. On our last visit we had looked for it but on a rather chilly and rainy evening and had given up after a rather fruitless search.

When we found it this time it was obvious that we had been close on the previous occasion; in fact we probably walked past it but saw nothing but rain. Umbrellas do rather get in the way. The exterior of this building is impressive enough but the magnificent wooden staircases and the floor to ceiling original wooden bookshelves simply take your breath away.

Quite early next morning I vaguely registered the sound of suitcase wheels on the pavement outside at some point, almost certainly our friends leaving, but we had said our goodbyes and so I turned over and went back to sleep. Some time later we had a leisurely breakfast and plotted a route, on foot this time, back to Praça de Galiza to catch a bus back to Vigo.

Our progress was impeded by hundreds of women running (well, some of them were running, the ones at the front) through the late morning sunshine. We had seen the preparations for a sporting event of some kind on Avenida dos Aliados earlier and here it was, a women’s marathon. As the day was already hot, I could quite understand the great mass who had given up on running and were strolling along, with a good deal of shouting and whooping as they went.

We took refuge in the gardens of the Palacio de Cristal where a religious service (this was Sunday morning) was going on and being broadcast through loudspeakers to those who had opted to entertain their children with pony rides, “jogos tradicionals” such as stilts, hoops, skipping or less traditional stuff such as tackling a climbing wall. You do get some good views of the old town from there; it’s worth a visit.

And eventually we caught the bus back to Vigo, taking another look at Braga bus station en route. Because Portugal works on the same time line as the UK we had to put our watches forward, meaning that we did not reach Vigo until late afternoon. However, it was a fine sunny afternoon, another friend phoned us as we were on the last stage of the journey and we finished our weekend with cold beers outside a bar on Rosalía de Castro. Not a bad life on the whole!