Galician is a language in its own right and that is acknowledged by the Spanish government. It is one of Spain’s FOUR co-official languages along with Castilian (Spanish to you and me), Catalan and Basque.

Sounds like you had a good holiday anyway!

Just writting to ask if you can add a link to my site from your blog.

Thanks

http://www.caminodesantiago.me.uk

If you come to Galiza u can’t expect flamenco, sun, sangria and “fiesta”. You will probably have only bag-pipes music, rain, vinho (just wine) and “festas” (that are quite different from the spanish ones). You just selected the wrong date, because it’s actually complicated to see bulls in Galizan’s country.

in fact bull-fighters remains not popular and you only will find this fucking spanish “sport” in Ponte Vedra city (and only one date per year), where this always a great polemic about its presence (only supported by the high-class spaniziard society). Council of Ponte Vedra is on hands of the Galizan Nationalist Block, who themselves, hate all these stuff so “spaniard”. There is a great criticism of these atrocity and we expect it will end someday… touradas are not traditional on Galiza, and if you want to “enjoy” it and count with a loyal crowd you will have to go to central and southern spain

it’s hard to understand Spain, specially if you know nothing or little about local languages (fact: 15 millions of spaniards don’t speak spanish but theirs national languages)… but if you ever want to visit Santiago or Galiza… just figure you are visiting an Ireland look-alike and forget everything you learned about Spain because this is not. All the spanish parties and this stuff and only and exclusively for the sake of tourists…

and for the Galizan language itself, t’s not a “spanish dialect” but a language on its own. It’s called Galizan (galego) in the country and Portuguese all over the world; Galizan and Portuguese, they are both co-dialects, actually portuguese was born on the old Kingdom of Galiza (current Galiza and Northern Portugal). Spanish and Galizan are both romance languages but quite different, Galizan is in a diglossia situation but still remains very popular on Galiza (by the fact, Galiza is galizan for the spanish Galicia)

Unfortunately, Modern States tend to standardize populations but, truth is, Galiza is not just a spanish “province” but a country inside the Spanish Kindogm, just close (or avobe) the status Scotchland and Wales have in the UK. Spain itself is more a federal conglemerate of different nations and countries than a nation itself. Half Spaniards hate Spain nationalism, other half hate not-spanish nationalisms. Wide part of population (specially among basques, catalonians, and galizans, but also canarians, asturianians, castellanians, etc…) don’t recognise theirselfs as spaniards, but first their own nationhood and second europeans (and that’s all)

That’s all dudes, see you

Iain in rainy Napoli

Greetings from Cape Town, where spring is definitely blooming.

Another great read, thanks for all the updates!!
“Una cevetha por favor!” (sic) Thats about all the Spanish I can muster, however…. damn! I was going to buy you guys another 5l but dont have a Paypal or something.

Will sign up another time and hold this as a credit

All the best

Dom

Always a good read. Keep it coming