Needless to say, the idle digger I featured yesterday started working this morning. That’s Spain for you.

The Catalan constitution issue seems to have morphed into an Alice in Wonderland scenario which is certainly beyond my comprehension. My impression is the Spanish President – Mr Zapatero – gave his blessing to the contentious document, stressing it would just need to be tweaked a bit when it got to the Spanish parliament. You may recall his 8 bizarre alternatives to the Catalan demand for their region be called a ‘nation’. But now the relevant court [there seem to be a lot of these in Spain] has struck down the whole exercise as being unconstitutional and Mr Zapatero has ended up with egg all over his face. Needless to say, the Opposition is having a field day.

Brussels has proposed speed limits be harmonised throughout Europe. The maximum would be 110kph [70mph], compared with the current 120 in Spain, 130 in France and God-knows-what in Germany. This, of course, is aimed at saving lives but the initial consequence in Spain would surely be even more drivers regularly breaking the law. The relevant minister - on TV this morning - naturally declined to be drawn into the question of whether Spanish drivers were worse than elsewhere. As he talked, though, the screen was showing a sequence of police chopper shots of astonishingly stupid driving.

Erudition Section

Prompted by my reference to the Galician beliefs that they’re Celts and that Ireland was settled by Galician colonists, an Irish reader has sent me a fascinating treatise which suggests that even the Irish are not Celts. Instead, they’re descendents of various Near East peoples who, around 3,000 years ago, sailed out of the Med and up the west coast of Africa. The theory goes that they used the Iberian peninsula as a stopping off point, long before any land-bound Celts got there. On reading this, my first thought was I’d write to the local papers exploding the Celtic myths. My second thought was that my residence permit comes up for renewal quite soon. Anyway, it so happened I was today finishing A Brief History of the Human Race by Michael Cook. Looking up ‘Ireland’, I did find a reference to Ogham, a ‘folk script that the early Irish somehow derived from the writing systems of the Mediterranean world’. But a Google search suggests this really is a Celtic relic, from around 1500BC.

Own Trumpet Blowing Section

I can’t resist mentioning the total of hits to my blog passed 10,000 today, in a little over 12 months. I’ve been writing it for longer but only added the counter last year. So, progress is steadily being made towards the 2.8m target set in June. I had expected to reach the 10k milestone next week but, during the last 2 or 3 days, at least one kind soul has been trawling through the archives, taking the daily total to over 100. The truth is I live in fear someone will one day invite me to make money from my blog. Of course, the bigger fear I have is someone won’t.

For the nth time, I was nearly hit on a zebra crossing today. The novelty was the driver was a learner. And she apologised. Though they will surely soon beat that out of her.

For new readers – If you’ve arrived here because of an interest in Galicia or Pontevedra, you might find my non-commercial guides interesting – at colindavies.net