In the large main hall of my bank, there are 5 or 6 assistants sitting down the left hand side. Quite distinct from the common or garden tellers at the far end, they deal with customers’ problems on a first-come-first-served basis. Down the other side are 4 or 5 cubicles, in which sit more senior personnel, to whom you may be referred. Or to whom you can go direct, if you’ve been told you can. Here sits my personal adviser. I know he’s my personal adviser because he wrote to me and gave me his card containing his postal and email addresses. Quite why he gave me these when he never answers my written queries is beyond me. In short, ‘personal’ really does mean personal. Or, more correctly, ‘in person’. Or face-to-face. It means that, if I waste my time making a trip into town and waiting for my adviser to be free, he will waste his time in chewing the fat with me and ruffling through his papers before eventually giving me information he could easily [and more efficiently] have emailed me. But this is not the Spanish way. I suspect he feels it’s all very rude and Anglo-Saxon to do things via correspondence. Which is why he, rudely, opts to ignore mine.

So, Fernando Alonso duly assured himself today of the Formula 1 championship. There was little else on the radio as I was driving home tonight and, when the race was over, we were treated to the Asturian ‘national’ anthem played on bagpipes. Asturias is next to Galicia and I go there from time to time, if only to try to see the lovely Leticia’s sister. But I’ll now be steering well clear of the place until driving there returns to normal levels of lunacy.

Asturias is not unique in having a national anthem. All of Spain’s regions [or ‘Autonomous Communities’] have one, as well as their own flag. Some give the Spanish flag equal prominence and some [e.g. Catalunia] just burn it. The ‘localism’ I’ve mentioned twice recently demands that greater loyalty be afforded to the regional standard than to the national flag, whether intact or in burnt tatters. To an Englishman [unless he’s from Yorkshire, perhaps] the idea of a county anthem or flag is just too preposterous for words but it’s possible the American States do more than just issue number plates with odd slogans on them.

Talking of slogans, in a blog I happened upon this evening, I read that the Spanish saying which encapsulates their infamous egocentricity is ‘Viva yo!’. This certainly sounds plausible, though I’ve never heard it myself in 5 years. Anyway, there’s a prize for the best English translation of this which doesn’t contain 2 words beginning with F and Y. Or F and ‘e, Lee.