Plagues of this and that.

Apparently many parts of Galicia are having problems with wild boar. Described as “una plaga de jabalíes”, this problem is the result of wild boar breeding so successfully that there are just too many of them. Being members of the pig family, they like rooting and cause havoc in vegetable gardens. They also cause accidents when they cross roads; crashing into a full-grown jabalí does quite a lot of damage to your car. This is a plague of almost biblical proportions. I wonder what the Gallegos have done to deserve it. There is talk of permitting the hunting of wild boar out of season in an attempt to keep the numbers down. Maybe they need Asterix and Obelix to turn up; they are said to be good at hunting wild boar. This would, of course, be an excellent Celtic connection. 

I have also come across reports of an early work by Gustav Klimt being found in a garage in Austria. Although there is some doubt as to whether this is actually a work by Gustav or by his less famous brother Ernst, this is still quite a find. Perhaps finding valuable objets d’art in garages is becoming the fashionable thing. 

Here in sunny Vigo, the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas has been having difficulty recruiting people to some of its summer courses and have had to close several for lack of applicants. English, especially intermediate level, remains popular as does, quite surprisingly according to the ESO, beginners German. However, they have had to close down Gallego because there was not one single applicant: “Nadie se matricula en gallego”. 

I have been reading elsewhere some criticism of school in Galicia for not teaching Portuguese. Very few offer this option, despite the fact that it is a very easy language for Galicians to learn and its usefulness, especially now that Brazil is becoming a more internationally important economy. Those who do attempt to learn Portuguese express surprise at how similar it is to Gallego. Now, I never expected that! 

 One of the books I picked up at the library on my recent visit is a book by Manuel Rivas, originally written in Gallego and translated into Castellano, not by Mr Rivas himself but by another translator with the author then sort of verifying it. I read somewhere that he does not like translating his own books, even though perfectly capable of doing so. Apparently he feels that if he were to try to translate he would end up writing a new version altogether. Fair enough, I suppose and it does give work to translators. Manuel Rivas was interviewed earlier this week in De Luns a Venres. He was asked at one point, “¿Por qué optou por traballar como freelance?” His reply didn’t really address the question at all but went on about how good it was to work on small Galician language newspapers. 

I was more interested in that use of English once again. You might have thought that someone who insists on writing in Gallego would have found a good Gallego word to use instead. But then I went on to read that he is currently working on a book of memoirs about his childhood and youth. He is going to call it “Storyboard”, yes the English word, although it will have a subheading, “Murmurios de infancia e mocidade”. 

English everywhere you look!!! Maybe that’s why a certain Bradley Wiggins is doing so well in the Tour de France. We didn’t manage the football or the tennis. Maybe, just maybe we can succeed on two wheels!