According to my daughter in Madrid, the city has been hit by a plague of politeness. Even shop assistants in El Corte Ingles appear to have succumbed to the bug, she tells me. This, of course, is excellent news. Unless it moves on to a phase where everyone insists that you have a nice day. With or without a scowl.

In one of those developments which leave Anglo-Saxons slack-jawed in amazement, the Ministry of Justice has told two Colombian women they can't be given Spanish nationality unless they change their names from Darling and Beliza. These apparently don't comply with the relevant law. Amongst other things, this demands that people have forenames that are indicative of their gender.

Talking of astonishment, it seems the entire world is agog at the fact that if you take a group of ill-educated, badly brought-up, foul-mouthed British scum and lock them into a house together, they will act like . . . well . . . ill-educated, badly brought up, foul-mouthed scum. As if this was anything new. I guess you could manage it anywhere in the world but in the UK it just happens to pass for TV entertainment these days. Oh, world.

Galicia Facts

The President of the local government [the Xunta] has postponed sine die the discussions around our new Constitution. This is because the right wing PP party has rejected the BNG party's proposed formula for the preamble, which runs . . . The Galician sentiment which unites us as a people and the parliament which represents us as a citizenry define Galicia as a nation. The Xunta President has blamed the lack of progress on the ETA-driven stand-off between the major parties at the national level. Since the BNG represents less than 20% of the electorate and actually lost votes and seats at the last election, the question which springs to my lips is - What Galician sentiment exactly?