A columnist in yesterday’s El Mundo called for “A plural nation” in preference to “A plurality of nations”. At the moment, Spain seems to be located somewhere between these but edging towards the latter. One wonders whether the government has any particular model in mind [The German? The American?]. If it does, it’s clearly unwilling to share it with the electorate. This naturally leaves the impression it is the victim of events. And, of course, regional pressures.

Which reminds me - The Galician government has announced it will shortly inaugurate schools in which all lessons are in Gallego, compared with 40% at the moment. This, I think we can safely say, is the Catalunian model. And one which will do little for the employment prospects of the pupils. Not that this would be a concern of doctrinaire nationalists.

An article in one of the local paper’s today raised what it said was a long-standing issue – that of whether Galicia should be on the same time as Portugal and Morocco below it and Ireland and the UK above it. An interesting point made was that most of Spain is actually west of the Greenwich meridian and so should be on this time. But, as this would leave Catalunia with its own ‘independent’ clock, I guess hell will freeze over before the Spanish government moves in this direction.

It seems the 17 Spanish regions [Autonomous Communities] have taken different approaches to the implementation of January’s ant-smoking laws. Only 3 have ratified the law as it came down – Andalucia, Castile y Léon and Valencia. The rest have applied various degrees of dilution, with Catalunia being the hardest, Madrid the softest and the Basque Country ‘somewhere in the middle’. Depending on where you‘re standing, this is either a pig’s ear or a marvellous example of local democracy in action. Or both, of course. Not that it matters much when the bar, café and restaurant owners take no notice of whatever the law might be, on the usual Spanish grounds that it is personally inconvenient.