It’s raining ….. stew! And other matters.

Now, I thought that ALL Gallegos loved cocido but I may be mistaken, at least according to something I read today in La Voz de Galicia. In Avenida de la Constitución in Ribeira on Sunday someone threw a pot of cocido out of the window and into the street, much to the surprise of passersby. Personally, I am not a great fan of this dish but that seems even to me to be a rather extreme reaction.

In actual fact, I suspect this was not necessarily a comment on the cooking since it would seem that people in that block have been complaining for a while because some so far unidentified resident has been throwing paper wrappings, the shells from nuts and sunflower seeds and even wine cartons in large quantities into the street on a fairly regular basis. So far nobody has been hurt by these flying objects but neither have they managed to catch anyone in the act. It’s rather like a return to the middle ages when people would call out from upper storey windows when they planned to throw a whole range of stuff out into the street below. And I don’t think that any striking dustbinmen can be blamed for this.

Strikes, however, are apparently due to take place in Portugal tomorrow where there has been a call for a general strike to protest against the whole economic situation. And for once actions in Portugal have rebounded favourably, albeit in a small way, on Galician airports; well, Vigo’s Peinador at any rate. Arsenal have a football match today against Sporting de Braga – yes, in Portugal. However, mindful of the threat of a general strike tomorrow and fearful of finding themselves trapped in Portugal they opted to fly into Vigo yesterday evening instead of into Porto. A fleet of buses took them to Braga and presumably will return them to Vigo for the return journey. It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

And now that the wind and storms are over for a while in Galicia (are they over?) they have started fishing for centolla (translated variously as king crab or spider crab but either way a favourite shellfish of the people of Galicia). Unfortunately it would seem that the waters are too calm after the bad weather and the harvest has been poor. Last year at the start of the centolla season they auctioned off some 11 ton s of this crustacean but this year they have only had 5 or 6 tons. In O Grove, described as uno de los puertos más importantes de Galicia para el rey del marisco, they reckon to be down about 50% on last year with an inevitable hike in prices. Oh dear, what are the crab lovers to do? But maybe some of them have brought it upon themselves. Another suggested reason for the shortage is illegal fishing that took place during the closed season!!!!

Finally, a little language note. Skimming through Spanish newspapers online I came across a list of blogs linked, I think, to El País. Amongst them was one by a certain Francesc Pumarola. It’s name? Gugleando por la red – googling along the net. I suppose it was only a matter of time until “to Google” turned into a Spanish verb “googlear” and then adapted its spelling to Castellano rules, becoming “guglear”. Isn’t language development fun?