The father of Julio Iglesias has died, aged 90, just a few months before the birth of his 4th child. As it was a heart attack, one wonders whether he was going for his 5th. Well, this one does, anyway.

I commented the other day on the time it takes to get anything constructed here. Right on cue, there’s a report in today’s local paper about some bridge work which is more than two and a half years delayed in beginning, never mind ending. So it’s anyone’s guess how late the latter will be.

There’s an awful lot of bureaucracy in Spain but the good news, as I’ve said before, is that, if you have any sort of personal connection with the funcionario in front of you, the barriers vanish instantly. And where everyone knows almost everyone else, this is frequently the case. Failing a personal connection, it’s always worth giving charm a try. Or what passes for charm in my case. The lady at the Post Office today refused to give me a parcel for my daughter and said I’d have to send the form to Madrid for her to write an authorisation on it and mail it back. But when I said it was a Christmas gift and [more truthfully] it’d take 2 weeks for us to do this, she relented and together we concocted a forged note from my daughter authorising me to pick up the parcel. And a good thing, too, for I was about to try tears. I can’t see any of this having worked in the UK. But then there I would never have been asked to complete any formalities in the first place. The very fact that I had the Post Office advice note would have been enough.