I touched on Spain’s ‘localism’ the other day – the habit of viewing everything from the perspective of, at worst, your birthplace or, at best, your province. A good example is the claim made today in one of the local papers that the Madrid universities, by offering large grants to outstanding students, are stealing Galicia’s brainpower. No importance, it seems, is attached to the creation of world class centres of learning. Rather like Cheshire or Cornwall complaining that its best students all go off to Oxford or Cambridge.

The UK’s Daily Telegraph continues on its slide down to tabloid status. On its front page today it solicited readers’ views on whether Kate Moss had been treated fairly or not. I guess she’ll be appearing on their page 3 next. Or would be if her chest didn’t resemble an ironing board.

This week’s good news is that the top dogs in the Spanish branch of the Bulgarian mafia have been arrested. The bad news is that the tiger mosquito has reached Catalunia and is wending west in our direction. I know from living in the Far East that these are ferocious little beasts. On balance, I think I’d rather live with the Bulgarian mafia.

Medical advances raise acute ethical issues, especially in Catholic countries perhaps. Someone in Catalunia has suggested a couple only be allowed to chose the sex of their third child. In a county where the fertility rate is 1.16, this looks to me like a pretty safe proposition.

Finally, I should perhaps clarify it’s only my web site on Galicia [colindavies.net] I’m contemplating scrapping, lest it attract any more bloody foreigners here. Not this blog.