Hope, Sleep, Laughter
"Providence," Voltaire said, "has given us hope and sleep as a compensation
for the many cares of life". When he heard this, Kant said "he might have added laughter."

Obviously none of them were beer drinkers. Back to correcting exams.

Sofia & Roy

Roy Lichtenstein's lovely image, Moonscape, isn't what you think of when you think of Roy Lichtenstein. His work has been chosen to inaugurate the new galleries, designed by Jean Nouvel, at Madrid's Reina Sofia Museum. This is the first major exhibition of Roy's work to be held in Spain, and I'll certainly be popping in when the queues get shorter.

And this, apropos of a post from a couple of days ago:

"The word mortgage means 'death grip' or 'death promise' and used to be a last resort method of raising money, using your property as collateral..." 

Who's this?

Well, it's probably Spain's best-known actor after Antonio Banderas. It's pretty amazing testament to the art of the make-up artist. The film is Mar adentro, the director is Alejandro Amenábar, it will probably be very good, and it's released in Spain in September. So who is it? Well, this is who it is. And he's not actually an actor at all - he's a chameleon.

And while we're on matters filmic, this is worth a click. A useful database for buffs. 

Loan Sweet Loan
Today we finally became the proud owners of a new apartment in the center of Madrid, after struggling through a bureaucratic jungle that makes Kafka look like the Teletubbies. We should be out celebrating, but reading the predictions in an Economist survey on the future of property prices suggest that a Chinese takeaway is probably the closest we’ll be getting to it. In the year to March, house prices in Spain rose 17.3%, lagging behind only Australia and New Zealand. The Sydney Morning Herald (June 9, 2004) summarizes parts of the Economist survey: “Australian prices were at record levels as a proportion of average wages and rents, and would have to fall 20 per cent to come back to their long-term trend, the UK-based magazine said…. Measuring over a seven-year period, Australia came fourth out of 16 countries surveyed… prices rose 113 per cent compared to 174 per cent in Ireland, 121 per cent in Spain and 116 per cent in Britain.” “Euroland interest rates,” says Lombard Street Research Global Leading Indicators (April 30, 2004), ”if not coming down are likely to stay where they are for now. This is storing up trouble for Spain, where the house-price to earnings ratio has risen to 7.5 in 2003, well above the average of 5 over the past sixteen years."

And let the Economist itself (May 29, 2004) have the encouraging last word:

“Over the past few years, house prices have been booming almost everywhere except Germany and Japan. Since the mid-1990s, house prices in Australia, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden have all risen by more than 50% in real terms. American house prices are up a more modest 30%, but that is still the biggest real gain over any such period in recorded history… This survey will conclude that the latest housing boom has inflated bubbles in several countries, notably America, Australia, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain.”

Average house prices in some countries, apparently, could fall by 30% in the next four years.

And to top it all, the cost of buying a house here – taxes, lawyers - is about 12% of the purchase price. In the UK, it’s about 4%, which shows that it doesn’t actually have to be 12%.

So that's Euroland. Is the situation any better here?

PdS XII, 2

After some delay (apologies), Puerta del Sol XII, 2 is finally shipping. On the cover, a tall man with the PdS logo balancing neatly on his head.

Lynne Truss is popular just about everywhere - but not here. Clever writing - clever-clever, in fact.  

A Short Post about Nearly Nothing
Good man! And good book.

Gautier

This is what you want if you want to revive your romantic interest in the foreign country you've chosen to live in, to remind yourself of why you're there: a copy of Théophile Gautier's A Romantic in Spain. I've just ordered myself a copy to see whether it has the desired effect. That's Theo above, looking not unlike a slightly more arty version of another hero of mine.