Demonstrations of support for one thing or another!

As I swam round and round the empty-except-for-me swimming pool on Friday - the smallish boys who had been playing a goal scoring game with a football in the water had gone off to do something else and the few other people around were clearly just sun worshippers - I heard a series of bangs. Pop! Pop! Pop! POP!! Pop! Pop! Pop! POP!!

Now, there seems to be some kind of artillery range in the hills on the other side of the estuary, behind the A Guía promontory. We regularly hear the pops and bangs and see the puffs of smoke. But this popping and banging had a different quality and came from a slightly different direction.

Mind you, it’s hard to judge the direction of sound when you are in the swimming pool in the garden of blocks of flats and with other buildings all around. But there it is!

Had the revolution started? I wondered. Would I get out of the pool to find all of society changed utterly? Or was it just fireworks? Setting off fireworks in the middle of the day always seems to me a great waste of pyrotechnics but it happens here quite a lot. I suppose if what you want is a lot of bangs then it’s worthwhile. Anyway, I swam for a while, got out of the pool and organised the rest of my day, forgetting Pop! Pop! Pop! POP!!! until later.

And then later, at around midnight, as I was reading in bed I heard it again. This time I was pretty certain it WAS fireworks. And there, on the other aide of the estuary, probably in Moaña, they were setting off fireworks. Not the best display we have ever seen but not bad. Presumably this was to mark the beginning or the end of a fiesta. It is fiesta season, after all!

In the breadshop cum cafe the other morning as I waited my turn I half listened to a relevision news report about the exhumation of Franco’s remains from the Valle de los Caídos. One lady, probably my age, old enough, therefore, to have grown up under Franco and to have seen the changes since, commented to the effect that everyone knows he was bad but not all bad and, in any case, the past is the past and should remain so. I wonder how many people feel that way.

The Valley of the Fallen may have been meant to commemorate the dead of both sides in the Civil War but it WAS built largely by the forced labour of Republican prisoners and has long been seen as more of a memorial to fascism than anything else. No doubt demonstrations will continue to take place to leave the old fascist where he was buried. But others think differently. As Spain’s deputy prime minister, Carmen Calvo, commented on the decision: “Democracy is not compatible with a tomb that honours the memory of Franco.”

I wonder where they plan to put him.

Another leader in the news is Donald Trump. Stories abound of his getting closer and closer to impeachment.

“Donald Trump has been warned the “countdown” to impeachment is underway, after his former lawyer implicated the president in crimes committed during the 2016 election.
On Thursday, Mr Trump publicly addressed the prospect of impeachment for the first time, claiming the market would “crash” if his presidency was threatened.  “I don't know how you can impeach somebody who has done a great job,” Mr Trump told Fox News. “I will tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor because, without this thinking, you would see – you would see numbers that you wouldn't believe, in reverse.””

You have to admire the confidence of the man!