Today was All Souls Day and Spain’s cemeteries were full of people cleaning and decorating the graves of their dear departed. It’s the custom here to inter these in above-ground buildings that resemble small blocks of flats for the dead. And, like flats, these are rented. Each of them has a small chamber at the front, accessed by a glass door, where you can place flowers and a candle. And this is one day a year when social custom dictates that you do this. But some of the flats are 2 or 3 metres above the ground and so have to be accessed by stepladders. The church will happily provide these but, if you don’t want to hang around, it’s a good policy to bring your own, sticking out of the boot of your car. As a result, the crowded church carparks are a sight to see. And, all in all, October 31st is probably not the best time in the year to go shopping for flowers or a set of ladders.

The exit polls in the Catalan elections are sending out confusing signals. The big winner appears to be the CiU [Convergència i Unió] party. This is one of the three members of the governing tripartite and looks to have grown at the expense of its partners, the left-wing ERC party and, in particular, the socialist PSC party. However, the CiU is unlikely to have an overall majority so the tripartite government will continue, albeit headed by ‘a true Catalan’, rather than by someone born in a foreign country, Andalucia. But the big news of the night is the gain of seats by both the local Green party [the ICV-EuA] and what I called yesterday the brave group fighting for the retention of the Spanish language in the region, Ciutadans de Catalunya [C's]. Overall, the view of our leading paper up here in Galicia is that the Catalans have punished the recent excesses of the nationalists.

The final day of October brought a reader to my blog in search of an answer to the query Religion that forbids followers to be farmers. I do hope he/she was not disappointed.