Way back in the mid 90s, three Spanish regions – Andalucia, Valencia and the Basque Country – were, shall we say, lax with hundreds of millions of euros provided by the EU. The legal process has finally reached an end with a judgment that, instead of being fined, the missing amounts will be deducted from future grants. Which is a nice way of Brussels avoiding the well-established challenge of getting its hands on fines which have been imposed.

Talking of frauds . . . The main cause of the horse-meat scare was the belief in Brussels that the EU was a real country and that it would, therefore, be discriminatory to apply real tests at internal borders. So, labels would do the job of providing security. The result, as we now know, was a huge fraud just waiting to be perpetrated. Which it duly was. But this invitation to fraud wasn't confined to horse-meat, which at least resembles beef. It's a fact of life that eggs laid in battery farms and eggs laid out on the range look exactly the same. And there's no test that can determine which is which. So, given that the price of one is double that of the other, it's not surprising that this invitation was accepted as well.

The ex-Treasurer of the governing PP party – the one with €38m in Swiss accounts and records of the party's illegal cash dealings – has initiated legal proceedings for unfair dismissal. I guess it's possible he has a good case. Spanish politics is another world. Unless you're looking from Italy, I guess.

Random fact: It wasn't Facebook who invented the verb 'to unfriend', but Thomas Fuller, in 1659. Yet despite it being around for 350 years, my spellcheck doesn't recognise it. 

Finally . . . Click here for an insight into the magnificent sights and sounds of Córdoba, including the cathedral which I recently accused of disfiguring the Grand Mosque in Cordoba.