Spain has decided to build a third fence around its 2 African enclaves. Possibly incentivised by this, around a thousand men rushed the existing barriers last night. But only one of them managed to get onto Spanish soil. This may be because the Moroccan government has now found a Third World solution to this Fourth World problem; their police officers fired into the mob, killing 6 of them. Self defence, of course.

I went to an exhibition on tourism in Galicia this morning. I wasn’t too surprised to see I was almost the only visitor at 12.30 but it was a bit of a shock to find only two of the twenty or so stands manned. Since the Spanish abhor silence [or anything resembling it] and are easily bored, my guess is they were all off somewhere having a commiserating ‘discussion’. But it at least gave me the opportunity to wander at will and to take photos such as those below. And there was another plus. Spanish society is informal but bureaucratic. And, as anyone who’s worked with a UK Enterprise Agency knows, a bureaucrat’s idea of a marketing strategy is an expensive, full-colour brochure. So the place was awash with them and I could take what I wanted at my leisure. I came out with 4 kilos [nearly 9 pounds] of them. And a pen.

Walking through town, I realised the council had reached a decision of genius. I wrote many months ago that Spanish roads – whatever the number of lanes – are all reduced to but a single lane by the double, triple, quadruple, etc., parking that takes place. Worse, there is no consistency to this so this single lane usually resembles a slalom course. The options open to the council were:- 1. Ignore things, 2. Double or even triple the number of trucks that take cars off to the pound, or 3. Bring in traffic wardens. Having courageously decided they should do something, the problem with Option no. 2 was that the calculation of the risk of being impounded would still be in the drivers’ favour. This, of course, is the only calculation made as inconvenience to others counts, at best, for nought. And the problem with Option 3 is the Spanish would regard wardens as at least ‘unfair’ and quite possibly ‘ignoble’, which [as I keep saying] is the worse thing you can be in Spain. Like being ‘pencil-shy’ in Singapore during the days of the British Empire. Now, most of the roads in the town are wide enough to take 4 cars side-by-side so what the council has done is to widen the pavements, install brick-delineated parking bays on either side and leave just a singe lane going down the middle of the road. In other words, they've gone with the flow. Or rather, they've straightened it up and, in the process, made life easier for both drivers and pedestrians, and provided opportunities for more pavement cafés. Even possibly reduced the accident rate. As I say, Spanish pragmatism of the highest order. The only time the flow stops now is when someone is trying to park in one of the bays. But I've never seen a vacant bay during the day so this is a rare occurrence. My suspicion is that the local residents have all been trained by German early-morning towel grabbers.

And so to the pictures. These are of costumes worn during local fiestas, though one looks rather more 20th century than the other….