Somewhere up near Ourense, a town council has been taken to task for financing its Folk Festival and 5-a-side soccer tournament via donations from local brothels. An interesting wrinkle is that the town’s mayor is a lady. Or a woman, at least.

A page or two after reading this, I plunged into the small ads. Or not-so-small in some cases. For the C d E and the Night and Day continue to wage their Whore Wars via large and ever more explicit advertisements. The former now calls itself The Queen of Vigo and is tarting up its ads with ‘Fotos Reales’ of, well, its tarts. The latter, not to be outdone, labels itself The Queen of All Europe and boasts of having Claudia Schiffer’s double on its books. Both establishments offer ‘Professional Streepers’. Astonishing.

In a report of a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, the machine was said to be flying at ‘50-60 pies’ [50-60 feet] above the ground. This, I think, is the first time I’ve come across a non-metric measurement in Spain and am left wondering whether there’s a particular reason for not expressing the height in metres.

And while all my Spanish readers are pondering this, I shall take the opportunity to ask my friend Fernando in Ferrol why the streets of nearby Brión will be ‘running with British blood’ this coming weekend. And why people will be racing around dressed as Brits ‘smelling of sulphur, with 2 horns in the front and a tail behind’. I doubt that it has anything to do with Gibraltar but you never know.

I see even the Spanish press thought that Everton’s second goal against Villareal last night was perfectly legitimate. If my satellite receiver hadn’t given up the ghost just 10 minutes before kick-off, I might have been able to form my own opinion.