In 1979, the Spanish government and the Catholic Church signed a Concordat, under which payments from the former to the latter would run down in two three-year phases. The end result would be a self-financing Church by 1986. In the event, the first three-year phase lasted nine years and the second – twenty-six years later - has yet to end. Every year, millions of Spaniards tick a box on their tax return, under the illusion it makes a difference to what the Church receives. It doesn’t; the amount is fixed, though annually increased by inflation. But now the government has fired a shot – actually a fusillade – across the bows of the Church by announcing that the law will be enforced.

Maybe it will. Or perhaps – like the law about not building within a certain distance of the sea – it will remain a dead letter. Or ‘wet paper’, as they say here. On this issue, there are regular statements that demolition of illegal buildings is imminent but, in practice, this seems to be a rare occurrence.

Interestingly, the two European countries with the most extended family structures [Italy and Spain] have the lowest birth rates. This augurs badly for the future; after, all if you don’t have a family, who’s going to look after you in your old age? The respective governments must be terrified at the certainty of being called on to care for its rapidly increasing senior citizens. In Spain, at least, my impression is that they’ve hardly started to think about it.

A professor in Pontevedra’s School of Fine Arts has bemoaned the fact that ‘Performance art is almost non-existent here.’ Now that I think of it, this is one of the main reasons I enjoy living here.

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