An article in the business section of El Mundo today comments on the time spent/wasted each day on emailing. Or on deleting spam and the pestilential phishing/pharming messages. One point it makes is the Spanish don’t approach email efficiently and so extend the working day by an hour and a half more than in other European countries. If this is true – and how can they really know? – I suspect it really means email has become, like texting, just another form of the chat at which the Spanish excel. By the way, pharming is diverting you to a false page after you have logged on to your internet bank, allowing the fraudsters to gain access to your confidential data. At least, I think this is what it is.

Talking of efficiency, I had an example this week of the sort of thing I’ve said must reduce productivity here. I took my passport to the notary’s office, said I needed a notarised copy of my details, stressed it wasn’t important and said I’d come back later for it. But no, one of the secretaries stopped what she was doing, made a copy, typed the relevant paragraph, put 3 stamps on it, and then went and interrupted the notary for his signature. All very good for me, of course, but more than I needed and only done because I was there in person. No wonder people eschew writing here. Other than chatty emails and texts, of course.

It must be difficult – other than on libertarian grounds – to justify being a director of a cigarette company. Especially if you work for Philip Morris in Spain. For, their reaction to the fall in sales caused by the anti-smoking law has been to reduce the price of their Marlborough brand, so as to make it more accessible to young people. Or, at least, that’s what’s assumed to be the logic of the strategy. The country’s already-suffering tobacconists are furious about the further reduction in their margins and have said they’re going to war against Philip Morris. Perhaps they will smoke each other to death.

The Spanish phrase for what the British call a lounge suit is traje de calle, or ‘street suit’. So, the British term is internal and the Spanish term external. Which probably says a lot about the respective cultures.

Finally, I turn once again to my Spanish friends for an explanation as to why a high-flying Spanish businesswoman is called una Ana Patricia. After Señora Botín?