The President and the Leader of the Opposition are exchanging letters about the ETA terrorist challenge, with Mr Zapatero accusing Mr Rajoy of ‘disloyally’ eschewing a bipartisan approach. I suppose this is newsworthy in itself but, for me, the real interest lies in the fact that these may be the only two people in Spain who ever get a reply to their letters. Perhaps it’d help if I made mine public as well.

Talking of Mr Zapatero, he’s finding out the hard way that anti-American rhetoric and unsolicited protestations of love for Old Europe don’t necessarily butter any Franco-German parsnips. Led by France and Germany, a group of five EU countries has quashed the Commission’s acceptance of the case for decelerating the run-down of Spain’s enormous grants. Tough talking ahead, then. Subject to there not being bigger things to worry about after the French referendum in May.

The geriatric Galician President, Mr Fraga, has declined to debate with his opponents during the upcoming general elections here. This has led one of the latter to suggest that the only thing he has the courage to face is a roe deer which is considerably less armed than him.

Closer to home, I’m delighted to say that my nice-but-noisy neighbour, Tony, is still away on his oil tanker. However, I’m somewhat less pleased to add that his equally nice wife, Amparo, has taken to leaving the radio on all night. Perhaps she was suffering withdrawal symptoms. But at least the radio doesn’t talk to the plants in the garden.