The Spanish government has said it will legislate for the removal of the remaining echoes of Francoism that – surprisingly – still dot the country. These include not only statues of the Caudillo himself and squares named after him but also streets in the name of some of his most notorious military colleagues. Hard to see anyone putting up an effective protest, despite the significant percentage of people in their 60s and above who remain rather sympathetic to a regime which responded so brutally to the chaos of the Second Republic.

In its latest flight of fancy, the Galician nationalist party [the BNG] has demanded the Preamble to the region’s new constitution contains 5 or 6 references to Galicia as a nation. Its senior partner in local government – the socialist party – seems content to refer to the region as ‘The nation of Breogan’. He was a mythical Celtic king and so all this is even worse than the English wanting a constitution defining England as ‘The nation of Boudicca’. At least she actually lived in the place. And I suppose the Scots would want a reference to Robert the Bruce. And the Welsh to Llewellyn. . . Laughable. Or it would be if the politicians didn’t have things far more serious to deal with. Such as the fact Galicia is ageing far more quickly [and expensively] than anywhere else in Spain while her relative economic position is deteriorating. Fiddling while Rome burns.

I finally got a visit from a Telefonica engineer today. He tested my ADSL line, confirmed it was poor, cut it for 5 hours, worked on it, restored it and then went home. The speed of the line now is exactly what it was before – 50 to 100kbps, against the 1000 I’m paying for. Perhaps he will come back tomorrow and start again. And perhaps he won’t.