Well, the Basques yesterday had the local elections that their President had turned into a plebiscite on his plans for secession from Spain. In short, his gamble failed and the only real winner was the communist party which fronts for the ETA terrorists. So, as in Northern Ireland, attempts at appeasement of the nationalists have roundly backfired and it’s anyone’s guess what happens next. The only certainty is months of political horse-trading between the numerous local parties in search of a working majority in a hung parliament. With any luck, things will become clearer just as the French referendum on the EU Constitution is taking place and so the Basque nationalists will know whether there’s still a Europe in which to seek equal representation with Spain.

The pace of road expansion in Spain is such that, whenever I travel, I’m thrown into confusion at some point by an autopista that wasn’t there last time I went that way. Last week it was a new highway – quite possibly two – linking Palencia with Benavente and Santander. In contrast, Spain’s high speed train [the AVE] is taking an eternity to get to Galicia. Forecasts for 2007 have now been pushed back as far as 2015 and no one is too confident of this date. It must be the mountains.

In a town not far from here, a 55 year old local councillor fell to his death in the early hours of yesterday when trying to leap from the balcony of his neighbour’s house back to his own. The 80 year old neighbour couldn’t think what he might have been doing on her premises but no one seems to have enquired whether her live-in niece could come with anything.