Admirably, the Spanish government is preparing laws aimed at reducing the scandalous levels of local government corruption that go hand-in-hand with a construction bum that looks like
never ending. And they are bringing in laws – perhaps a tad late – to protect the coastline from further depredation. Quick off the mark, the banks have reacted to a greater possibility of demolition of illegal buildings by placing more stringent requirements on loans to developers. That should do a lot to bring down the cost of new houses and flats.

And it seems the Spanish government also has the equally admirable intention of strengthening the law around the protection of animals. But, as someone reasonably asked in a recent letter to El Pais, what’s the point of doing this when bullfighting is still permitted?

Here in Pontevedra, today marked the start of a strike of the company which impounds illegally parked cars. So you can imagine what the town looked like tonight, with everyone making hay while the sun shone. Or would have been, if the bloody rain had let up for even a minute.

My thanks for the responses on the meaning of ‘disbogging’. A trawl of the OED suggests the following etymology – disbog = disbogue = disembogue = To come out of the mouth of a river. The Spanish equivalent is, of course, desembocar. Given the words it doesn’t recognise, I’m amazed to see Word’s spell check is aware of disembogue.

Finally, in case any deprived Brit resident in Spain is not yet aware of this, I just want to add that, thanks to a gift of an MP3, I‘ve now entered the wonderful world of BBC Radio 4 podcasts. Needless to say, Word doesn’t recognise podcasts. Perhaps it should be called disemboguing. Which it does!