Some English gloom and some Spanish cheer!

Today’s UK papers have pictures of a tearful Theresa May giving her resignation speech outside Number 10 Downing Street.

Tears of sadness or tears of frustration? I wonder. I can remember at times being so angry and frustrated about some event or other that I could not speak for knowing that if I tried I would burst into tears of rage.

But she managed to speak. Was she really annoyed at not managing to bring about a measure she campaigned against in the run-up to the referendum?!

Reactions to her speech have expressed her hearers’ frustrations:-

“Author of the hostile environment. Wrongly deported UK citizens to Jamaica. Several of whom were then murdered. Wrongly deported foreign nationals who had not failed English exams. Prevented EU citizens from voting in the EU elections. Sent Go Home vans around minority neighbourhoods. Told that ridiculous lie about the immigrant’s cat. What was that she was saying about “burning injustices”? Good riddance.” So wrote one person.

“In her statement May is trying to boast about a useless, divisive and incompetent premiership which has devastated lives. Boasting of her achievements, claiming to have been a compassionate prime minister of a compassionate government. Bollocks. And those tears at the end ... she had none for Windrush”. So wrote another.

Of course some, mostly other, and mostly Conservative, politicians, talked about her dedication, her service to the country, her tireless hard work. It’s amazing possible it is to work hard and achieve nothing!

So here’s something more positive.

A Spanish journalist and writer, Enrique Bocanegra, visited the UK researching material for a book. During his time here he went to Stratford-upon-Avon and visited Shakespeare’s house.

I can remember doing that when I was in the sixth form. We were quite impressed. We also saw David Warner perform the role of Hamlet. We were even more impressed.

Anyway, getting back to el Señor Bocanegra, he remembered having visited some years earlier the home of the Spanish painter Velázquez, more or less a contemporary of Shakespeare. “I remember very clearly standing outside Shakespeare’s house and thinking: ‘This is a 16th-century house where hundreds of thousands of people come to learn about the man and his work,’” he says. “I’m from Seville, where there’s another 16th-century house, where another giant of world culture was born – and the house is deteriorating and rotting away and no one gives a toss. I was just embarrassed and saddened as a Spaniard.”

And now he and some others have got together to buy the painter’s house, which has been standing empty since 2009. Spanish law says that the facade and doorways of old buildings have to be preserved but that the interior can be redesigned at will and so the house had been used as a design studio. Now this group have bought it and intend to restore it and open it up to the public, just like Shakespeare’s home.

Read more about it here.

Sometimes you just need some good news to cheer you up.