Trump wants the Canary Islands too - Latest News

Will the little Canary be taken under the wings of the great American eagle (Image:hablemosdeaves.com )

After Canada, the Panama Canal, and Greenland the American president Donald Trump has now laid claim to the Canary Islands.

In one of his rambling speeches Trump has strayed again, from talking about his intent to buy Greenland to a claim much further south, namely the Canary Islands and he has revealed the following: 

''...that little group of islands, I think they call them the Canaries, a great place, much warmer than Greenland, a nice climate they tell me, no ice, and with clever people, a lot more people than Greenland, they're very important to us, too. We want those little islands and they're very important to us strategically there on that side of the Ocean. We've been looking into that, and we want to help them make a great place out of their islands again. Spain and the Europeans have ruined the place, that's not good, and they're important for our security.

Same as America, they've been taken advantage of by the Europeans for too long - a long, long time. Actually, since Columbus came. He was a great, clever sailor, but without the Canaries he couldn't do it, I mean come here and take America. So they, the Spanish, and all the European immigrants, colonised the peaceful Canaries first. They did bad things to them and we want to help them to get well again and be great again. 

They're strategically very important to us, sitting there on the eastern side of the great Gulf of America. You know, they're not even in Europe, they're in Africa, what's the term, geo-something, I don't know, but they're better off with us and so, so close to the Gulf of America. They already trade more with us than with Spain. Maybe you don't know that but it's true, so they're important to us and the other way round. When our tariffs kick in they'd do much better business with us. They'd be much, much better off...''

The American president continued:

''...and it's a great staging post, clever little Columbus knew that, too, and with lots of beautiful golf resorts. We've already got a great airbase nearby, in the eh, eh, Amores, or Azores, or something. That will help us. I mean it's massive, it really is big - you've got to see it, they showed me pictures of it that only the president gets to see - it's great, real powerful. We should, no we must have another one in the Canaries, that's important for international peace.

The Canarians really got a bad deal from Spain and Europe, who don't give them nothing but cheap tourists. I mean, imagine that, and they're poor there and no real jobs for the young people, only cleaning and serving jobs and making bananas, imagine that, that's tough, making bananas. But we'll help them build great new business and I can smell oil and other great things there. I don't know if you can, but, eh, I can. Maybe I'm a genius, but I can smell great things there, gas maybe, too. They've got cute little birds there, too (laughs), I mean the Canaries. I think that's why they call the place that and some people have them at home here, too, in cages. They even have wild Canaries in the golf resorts there, that's real smart. I'd like that in mine. J.D. is going there very soon to talk to their people and he'll find out, he'll find out. We're working real hard on this, it's become more important now, Elon says, and he's a genius. We must have, eh, help them, the little islands right there, just off the great Gulf of America.

We'll pay a fair price for that rundown place, of course, make a good deal, but maybe we have to use a little bit of force at first, too. But they've got smart people over there and like the Puerto Ricans and, yeah, the Hawaiians, too, they will see that they'll be better off with us, America. We'll give them a little time to think about it, but I'm sure in a year we'll have it all done. For sure, April 1st 2026 they'll be with us and celebrating, making the Canaries great again. Liberation day for the little Canaries this day next year, believe me, April 1st is the day ...''

    Image credit and more about the lookalike bird: washingtonpost.com           

Gomera banana in action during bonfire night

Once again there were many bonfires and parties all over La Gomera last night during 'la noche de San Juan' (St. John's Eve) to celebrate midsummer. Here in Ireland the same tradition is still alive, but the music is a bit different. The 'Gomera Banana' was in action here briefly during the Jim Dowling Uilleann Pipe and Traditional Music Festival in beautiful Glengarriff, West Cork as you can see (and hear if you click the sound on) in the above video taken at about midnight last night when the Gomera banana was shaking up fiddle player extraordinare Ross Couper. The video below was taken earlier during the festival on the pub sessions trail called 'piping for a pint'. Well more than a dozen musicians (some out of shot) got together and played until the cows came home...

Red bananas

Bananas (Dwarf Cavendish)growing in Valle Gran Rey, La Gomera's south-west

It is amazes me every winter when I'm here on La Gomera how many regular visitors and people, who like me have lived here for longer spells of time, I meet in one of the small local bars. Maybe not surprisingly there's also a strong connection with regulars from the southwest of Ireland where rural life is somewhat similar. Yesterday I met writer Damien Enright once again, a man who discovered La Gomera long before I did, and was reminded of the regular Monday column he writes for the Irish Examiner. As we can't get any Irish newspapers here on La Gomera, I am posting todays article by Damien below:

Tenerife farmers smitten by the lure of red bananas

Monday, October 26, 2015

Red bananas. Waiting in the south Tenerife port of Los Cristianos for the ferry to the smaller island of La Gomera, I read in a local newspaper that a Tenerife farmer had successfully grown red bananas and they would soon be cultivated in the Canaries.

Bananas don’t come only in yellow, and are not always the variety popular in banana splits.

Your correspondent knows a thing or two about bananas, having lived among them for long or short periods over three decades, and having once upon a time owned his very own banana plantation, with all of 27 plants in production.

I did not cultivate them himself; the produce of 27 plants wouldn’t have made the game worth the candle. Also, even then 30 years ago, the thought of hefting up 50kg ‘piñas’ (pineapple-shaped bunches) up 30m of terraces would make the deepest suntan pale. I donated the plot to neighbours; they worked it, and reaped the rewards. Meanwhile, I sat on the balcony of my renovated Canarian bothán, smoking a cheroot in a style suitable to a plantation owner.

Most of my knowledge of bananas comes second-hand, from evening-time conversations sitting on a stone wall with a complaining farmer, my neighbour and friend. He constantly found the prices too low, the government too greedy and the rains falling on the forests above the valley inadequate. He once conveyed to me the astounding fact that 1kg of bananas requires 400 litres of water to reach harvesting.

He is now retired. We mulled over the red banana idea together. Unquestionably, as they went through the various stages of green to yellow, to orange to vivid red, they would be eye-catching on the greengrocer’s display. Fried or roasted, rather than eaten ‘raw’, they also produce more ‘hijos’ (sons) from the fruit-bearing plant, thus stock multiplies more rapidly.

I’ve seen red banana chips in Cuba and Jamaica, sold in plastic bags at bus stops, and filling stations, and I’ve eaten them in Mexico. They were tasty but savoury, nothing like the sweet bananas we know. Perhaps red banana chips will become popular in Europe and compete with potato crisps in the pub. Plantains, like much bigger, green versions of the yellow, Canarian Cavendish banana are a major element in Caribbean and African diets.

The original Cavendish fruit was called for Sir William, the sixth duke of Devonshire. It was cultivated by his gardeners and dispersed to tropical regions in the 1850s. However, many authorities think bananas first reached the Canaries in the 15th century from Africa, having come there from Asia.

Thomas Fyffe, with headquarters in Dublin, started importing Canarian bananas to the British Isles in 1888. In a joint venture with Chiquita Bananas in 2014, Fyffes became the largest importer of bananas in the world; however, this union was terminated later that year.

Fyffes, an Irish company, is still very much in business, employing 5,000 workers worldwide. Canary Island bananas are famous for their intensity of flavour. Smaller than Latin American imports, they receive less water, and more sun. Like Canarian tomatoes, they are sweeter than those grown in equatorial regions or under glass. Now enjoying an exclusive brand name, ‘plátano de Canarias’, they are marketed as premium fruit. For the EU, the distance between plantation and market is shorter than from tropical producers. The carbon footprint is smaller, and the fruit retains a higher degree of moisture and a juicier flavour.

We have enjoyed our acclimatisation here; the weather has been like a continuation of our Irish non-summer, only warmer. The local people love it. “¡Muy fresco!” they say gleefully — with an inverted exclamation mark —while it rains buckets and the asphalt on the roads cracks and red earth is washed out, to look like blood veins when it dries. The weather suits us. The sun will come, whatever.

As a bonus, migrant birds are blown in by the storms — while the sand on the main valley beach is entirely swept away, exposing hard, rounded stones.

On a sheltered strand, where the small number of visitors gathered to grab snatches of sun, a migrant whimbrel descended, along with a common sandpiper. The whimbrel walked daintily between sunbathers, quite unafraid; I have never seen the like. At home, whimbrels always stay a safe distance out on the slob.

I could only surmise that it was this year’s bird, born on a remote Arctic moorland, and had never seen humans before. It was heading for Africa. The tail-end of Hurricane Joaquin had blown it in.

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