Come the summer, come the dreadful forest fires. Particularly in the north west of Spain. Yesterday there were 34 of these blazing in Galicia, forcing the closure of the north-south motorway along a 17km stretch. It’s generally reckoned more than 60% of these fires are started deliberately, which is a sobering thought.

Today was the 70th anniversary of the military uprising that brought Franco to power and gave Spain 40 years of a right-wing dictatorship from which it's still recovering. The current [left-wing] government is planning a Law of Historic Memory which seeks to take the country further along the road of acceptance of its recent past and recognition for the Republicans who died in a conflagration that was the forerunner of the Second World War. A survey in El Mundo today puts at 30 the percentage of Spaniards – even in the 18-29 age group – who think the uprising was justified. Against this background, there are legitimate concerns that it might still be a little early to deliberately force open wounds for the purposes of healing them more effectively. Plus a fear it will be a heavily politicised process, with the government seeking to identify the opposition with fascism. Time will tell but – if the current bitter wrangling about the strategy for dealing with ETA is anything to go by - the auguries are not particularly promising. The Catholic Church, for one, will certainly not want too much discussion of its role during the civil war. Though I suppose it’s unlikely it’ll resort to the pre-war claims of Republicans eating Catholic babies.

Hits to my blog have reduced to their normal levels. This is because I haven’t mentioned anything of interest to the numberless inadequates scouring the web for pictures of a naked but dead P******s D***a. Though, before completely fading away, they may well have taken comfort in the item about the big brothel on the border with France. It takes all sorts.