The Road from Santiago

We are following the road and so avoiding several towns by accident, not by design.  Better have a few diversions La Bachata, by Manuel Turizo, is Spain’s best selling single - having shifted 1,140,000 copies.  Manuel is a Colombian chap who released this ditty on 2022.  It did very well across much of the Spanish speaking world. It only made 68th in Italy in 2022 and 23rd in Italy. According to surveys Palma, Mallorca, is the most dangerous city in Spain.  Well, it has 62.5 crimes per 1000 people.  Apparently violent crime is low but pickpockets are to be found in the nightclub region. This is what Travelsafe abroad website says.  I am not convinced at this ranking. Outside the Black Death, Great Plague and Covid the worst outbreak of disease, according to wiki [and I’m not convinced by this ranking either] was the 3-8,000 dead in the 1870 Barcelona Yellow Fever outbreak.   Apparently Yellow Fever struck in 1803 and 1821 as well. The wiki page on this...

  Welcome to Orgaz and straight to the castle. https://www.ayto-orgaz.es/rutas.php   The current castle is very intact and 14th century - with 15th century renovations. It was built on the site of a 12th century affair.  To be fair, it has not been all joy. During the 1520 Revolt of the Comuneros it was burnt down by Royalist troops. It is not, generally speaking, an easy place to visit. Weekdays you can get in from 1pm to 2pm. At weekends it throws the gates wide between 9am and 1pm. A month ago Marta said ‘ We loved the tour; they shared very interesting details, and the guide (whose name I can't remember, was it Luis?) was very friendly. It's great that they make the tour enjoyable; that's essential for a good experience. We booked a week in advance by phone, which I highly recommend. ‘ Orgaz is one of those places which has profoundly crowded old streets which are really easy to fall out of and into a scattered countryside. The Ermita de la Concepción. Is a well reno...

  We are going down! 182m to be precise  Mostly at the start of the journey and then it is flat.  We will even go off road a bit. To be honest not a lot happiness until we reach Orgaz so we better talk about that. If ita not DOn Quixote it has to be El Cid and  everybody's favourite rent-a-sword apparently got hold of this place when he married Jimena,  Various nobs squabbled over it or were awarded it for dubious services. On 26th March 1813 two squadrons [120]  of Catalan Volunteers Cavalry and 200 foot   took on 800 French horse.  Plucky Spanish infantrymen repulsed the dastardly French suffering one dead to the French 50.   Our old friend the GSH Dictionary says this… ORGÁZ: town with town hall in the province and diocese of Toledo. t has a cold climate , the NE wind reigns, sometimes the S. which is very unhealthy, and tertian fevers and typhoid fevers are suffered: it has 406 houses of a single floor in general and of little comf...

  I remember my first Politics lecture at Poly. It was on Democracy. The whole point of the thing was to take a word we all thought we knew and show us our thinking was sloppy and it could involve freedoms to do things or freedom from things and people could use the word to mean different things without explicitly saying so.  I think the word privilege gets the same treatment. The privilege to do a thing or the privilege to avoid a thing. I suspect we all don’t like to think we are privileged as it doesn’t sound nice - clearly our share is just normal and fair.  All this is a 3.30 thought. A 3.30 thought is the new standard phrase for something that occurs when you - well, me - wake up at 3.30. More to the point it is 3.30, I have a busy day, none of which can be achieved till 5m at the earliest so I am getting done the stuff I didn’t do last night and wishing I had an off switch.  Where was I… It is a privilege to write for an audience. Maybe it isn’t and you are al...