Only a couple of days to go to the Galician elections and ‘Don Manuel' Fraga was at it right up to the end. In an interview in one of the national dailies this morning, he compared himself with Churchill, said that he couldn’t bear the thought of retiring to be like an oyster and insisted that he ‘worked like a black’. It’s almost endearing. What will I do without him?

There’s a big march in Madrid tomorrow, in favour of the family. In other words against homosexual marriage. Heavies from the Catholic church have naturally featured large in the run-up. Given the importance attached to the sacrament of marriage, you’d have thought the archbishops would favour demands for it from the gay community. But I guess, if you believe that simply being homosexual is a sin, there’s a certain consistency in opposing everything to do with it. Meanwhile, and more locally, a flier has appeared on car windscreens in Pontevedra today. This basically says that the socialists and nationalists are out to destroy the institution of the family and is signed by ‘A group of concerned parents’ who are ‘not political’, just supportive of the PP party. Strange timing for an apolitical campaign. And one wonders where they got the finance from.

To anyone from a different culture, the Spanish daily timetable is a thing of wonder. Few Spaniards seem to retire to bed until the early hours of the morning. At weekends not at all. And it’s not unusual to see kids in restaurants at 11 or even 12 at night. I’ve often asked myself how on earth people manage to survive. Or even get up for work in the morning. But now comes a report on the sleep patterns of Spanish teenagers. Instead of the minimum requirement of 10 hours, they’re not getting much more than 8. And the recommendation from the report? Well, God forbid that Spanish parents should send their kids to bed earlier. Rather, the start of school should be delayed for a couple of hours! I suppose it would be a beginning.

By the way, given the Spanish belief that the primordinate aim of life is to have fun, it’s hardly surprising that the general Spanish attitude is that sleep is a waste of good talking, eating and drinking time.

All of which reminds me – Spaniards don’t go in for much home entertaining. My current educated guess is this is because they know their guests will always bring their kids along and these will be, shall we say, even less supervised than they are at home. And not even Spaniards are this indulgent to other people’s brats. Possibly, though, the real reason is that to entertain at home requires pre-planning and effort on the night and these, too, infringe on talking, eating and drinking time. Much better to go out and have someone else do the hard work.

Say what you like, there’s a certain consistency in all this.