Bit of a Bad News Week for the Spanish public. Apart from finding that they pay more than anyone except the Germans for their mobile phone calls, they’ve also learned that they fare rather badly in the global education stakes. Specifically, lower government investment means fewer pupils in secondary education and lower levels of achievement. And only Portugal and Malta record a higher university dropout number than Spain’s 30%. So it’s a good thing that Spain beat the USA in the Davis Cup final and also walked off with the international handball championship. Plus Spain came a creditable 10th in the international Quality of Life rankings.

For one small group of people it’s been a disastrous week. The new government has published a Code of Conduct for senior politicians and said that details of their assets will be published, both before and after they take office.

As if this weren’t enough, the police have said they’re going to stop their ludicrous practice of only testing for drunken drivers at known times and in known spots and take a more serious approach to the problem.

I blame it all on the EU. But, then, I blame everything on the EU.

Regular readers will know that this blog is plagued by Spanish men [I assume] seeking details of a certain institution in Vigo I’ve occasionally mentioned. As pages from my blog already represent 90% of the citations these gentlemen get from Google, I will refer to it merely as the C de E. I mention it again only to report that the stakes have once more been raised in its ferocious back-page war with the other institution catering for Vigo’s clientele of alto-standing - El Piso de Sandra. Each of them now takes up half a page with its respective ad. I would say they were going head to head in this war, but with hammer and tongs might be less open to misinterpretation