Couldn’t get a copy of El Mundo today for love nor money. This was because they had a special offer – a heavily discounted edition of a book on Velasquez. On occasions like this, the newsagents have always sold out by midday, leading me to ask how this can happen when the papers are distributed to them on a sale or return basis. Anyway, there was some compensation. The alternative was El Pais, which was giving away not only an unintelligible 15th century novel but also a copy of the new European Constitution. My joy was unbridled. I gave up the novel after the first 20-line sentence and have yet to start on the Constitution.

I regularly wonder how the Spanish economy can continue to boom when levels of efficiency are low by international standards. The answer perhaps came in an article today, which reported that, whilst the domestic market [fuelled by Brussels handouts?] continues to thrive, exports don’t. EU largesse is destined to reduce from 2007 so I guess we can party for a while yet.

The counter on my blog site tells me what searches have led people to my scribblings. Many of these, of course, centre on the C. de E. and others have at least some relevance to Galicia or Spain. But many leave me slack-jawed at the capacity of the internet to identify sentences in my blogs which couldn’t be more irrelevant to the search. I intend to list the oddest ones but here’s a few samplers:-
- statistic car population Tehran diagram
- dogo fights
- faria alam
- nose stud joss

Fascinating. Well, to me at least. But I don’t get out much.