Here’s a sad little story that has every one of the elements I’ve touched on in the last couple of years when writing about young Galicians and cars . . .

At 6.40 last Sunday morning, two young men in their 20s left a disco and drove off homewards. Shortly after, the car veered from the road and hit a house, killing both of them. The speedometer shattered at 210kph [131mph] and neither of them had been wearing seatbelts. The driver was well known for his dangerous driving and had already written off three cars. In fact, he’d narrowly survived death only a year previously, in another serious accident. But, as the son of the local mayor, he had not been banned. The passenger was also “a member of a well-known Betanzos family”. Both of them lived with their parents and the driver almost certainly financed his fast car and his all-night drinking by paying nothing for his keep.

Needless to say, the Voz de Galicia has 8 pictures of the crash scene in its Monday edition.

The only positive aspect of all this is that no one was coming the other way when they left their side of the road on a bend and crossed the other before meeting their destiny against the wall of a house. Truth to tell, they will probably not be missed by everyone in the area. And even truer to tell, it probably won’t make the slightest difference to the mortality statistics there. Parents and grandparents will go on financing the deaths of their children, while offering prayers – before and after - to whoever is the Virgin of Road Accidents in the locality. And the police will still not station themselves outside the discos lest this be seen as ‘fascist’ behaviour in today’s ultra-liberal Spain.

What madness.

And, if but one Spanish soldier is killed in Afghanistan, the entire nation will be baying for their return.