In a few days after reflecting on our journey north I will post on our quest re the angels. Also thanks for comments on the blog while away, just not had time to get to them all. And then a few more emails by the time I got home, and finally trying to get my head around the EU law on ‘cookies’: which most EU and UK governmental sites do not comply with themselves!!
Anyway… continually looking to see what is going to transpire in Spain. The economics are so challenged, and here is one of the most amazing stories yet I have heard. We have known for some time that the regional governments (where there has been a lot of overspending / money gone missing) has owed small businesses money for work done. In Badajoz one of the couples we stayed with had a colleague who supplied various services to the local government. They did not pay him, but demanded the tax on the money they had not paid him as they were invoices that had been already raised. When he said there was no way he could pay, they insisted. So he visited his bank for credit, who said the only credit they could give him was a loan where he paid the interest to… the local government!!! Who owes who again?
This type of story is not exceptional and the streets will not be silent.
As often is the case Giles Tremlett has some good insight into the situation… and Valencia is the place where a certain deputy of the current government was applauding the cuts that will affect the unemployed and caught on camera, calling out ‘que se joden’. I leave it untranslated, but it is a strong suggestion that using sexual language that a person gets lost.
(This paragraph is a reflection on a dream I had over a year ago: a visitor from the USA came to me in June or July 2012 and asked me ‘how did Spain survive the crisis of February.) I look back to February this year and there was a silencing of voices on the streets, there was the stripping of power from one of the judges (Gárzon) who has been focused on uncovering injustices. Now in these months we are seeing that Spain has survived the crisis. The street voices cannot be silenced, things cannot be covered up. We are in for a rocky ride, but when history is pushed under the carpet there comes a time when the evident mountains cannot be ignored.
