On losing and gaining millions.

Today I am in Villagarcía de Arousa, up the coast from Pontevedra, a place lots of people come to in the summer time for its sunny beach but today rather grey and damp. Once again, I am serving as unofficial mascot to the chess team and manager, personal assistant, general secretary to my chessplaying husband. But I have discovered a thing or two to tell about Villagarcía de Arousa.

I did mention the other day that Galicia almost got blown away in the night. Well it seems that Villagarcía suffered quite a lot in that storm. One of its major roads was destroyed “by the fury of the sea”, as La Voz de Galicia put it, and a major section of the port was damaged to the tune of 600,000 euros worth of repair work.

Many people, of course, have practically lost their livelihood. Out in the bay are bateas, floating platforms where mussels are farmed. Most of these were just so tossed around in the storm that the harvest is gone and the platforms themselves need repairing. Not only have they lost the mussels that were ready for collecting, however, but the young, growing mussels have also been washed out to sea.

That’s another of my favourite dishes that’s going to go up in price next time I go out for tapas. It’s bad enough that gambas al ajillo cost an arm and a leg. Now mejillones of any kind are going to follow suit.

It wasn’t just out in the bay that people’s livelihood suffered though. Inland from the coast the huge plastic greenhouses were quite unable to withstand the force of the storm and in some cases were completely ruined. Some producers are going to have to spend millions to get back into business.

There is some controversy about this storm because it appears that the weathermen knew it was coming but failed to let the government of Galicia know about it. At 11.30 pm on Wednesday the MeteoGalicia website had a notice of Yellow Alert for all Galicia but no official warnings went out and so protective measures were not put into place. No-one understands how it happened but an investigation is taking place!!! Who will get blown away by this storm, I wonder!

There are some odd results of the storm as well, however. La Plaza Elíptica, well known for its strange metallic sculptures had some additional artwork courtesy of the wind. Some of it even ended up on one resident’s balcony. Fortunately, indeed quite amazingly, no-one was hurt by that bit of the storm.

Meanwhile, in other parts of Spain, rather than losing millions, some people are gaining them. I read this morning that a certain Juan Ignacio Balada, a wealthy mallorquín, died in November and left half his fortune to the Príncipes de Asturias and the eight grandchildren of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia.

Now I know that the Spanish royal family is not as phenomenally rich as the British one but, even so, I don’t believe the offspring really need a great deal of financial assistance.

Before I get too worked up about it though, I must remember that he has requested that the other half of his fortune (total amount as yet undisclosed) should be used by Prince Felipe to set up a foundation for topics of general interest. So we can assume that the Spanish public will also benefit.