“Walls in Spain”, c.1892, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Yesterday the drunken British tourists
Buying golf villas as investments,
Starting Irish bars on a wing and prayer.
Yesterday the line dancing and the karaoke.
Yesterday the high-priced British supermarkets
Full of brown sauce, Marmite and Tetley’s teabags,
Nescafe, Mr Kipling’s cakes, Ribena.
Yesterday the rat’s piss coffee in the English caffs
Yesterday the Brits who won’t learn Spanish
And think every Spaniard is an orange-picker
Who has been done a favour by their presence here.
Yesterday those who could sell have already gone.
Yesterday the UK’s papers tell the usual lies
Exaggerate to bring the euro further down.
No one is in need of a Dunkirk-style bail-out.
And most other countries have similar problems.
Today police violence, but only in some spots.
Rather less rioting than the UK has seen.
Unusual for Spain where the right to demonstrate is enshrined in law.
Like this article? Share, save or print using the icons below:
Post your comment
More Text
- The Viagra Triangle
- Two Languages And The Chasm Between Them
- Western Civilisation In Crisis
- The Man On Whom Everything Was Lost
- The Long Shadow Of Malthus
- Beyond Obama: Advice To The Next President
- Salerno Diary
- Saved From The Bonfire: The Tom Wolfe Papers
- Liberty And Sovereignty
- Art And Public Culture In The 1830s And Today
- The Casanova Of LaSalle Street
- The Writer
- New Poetry
- Cartagena Poems
- A British Subject
- Travels with Betjeman
- Kizerman and Feigenbaum
- Communism’s Comeback?
- Irving Kristol on Jews and Judaism
- The State of Charity
Popular Standpoint topics
