The EU recently raised its forecast for Spain’s economic growth this year from 3.6 to 3.8%. An editorial in El Pais pointed out yesterday this was great but that things would surely end in tears if Spain didn’t stop investing in everything except its infrastructure. Which is surely right. You really don’t have to go far below the glossy surface of Spain’s truly impressive growth to find things don’t always work terribly well. Internet sites being a good case in point. My central heating boiler being another.

I guess if you asked them 99% of people in the UK wouldn’t know what a notary was. Astonishing, then, to realise these are amongst the most important service-providers in Spain. This is essentially because - from cradle to grave - there’s scarcely an important transaction you can make without their involvement. I imagine they all have a very dull but lucrative working life. And that there’s no shortage of aspirants for the restricted number of positions.

Galicia Facts

Our parrot, Ravachol, was duly despatched last night, after a mock cortege which gave the city’s young men one of their several annual chances to indulge in a bit of cross dressing. Watching the pyre blaze away amidst clouds of, surely, toxic smoke, a British visitor commented it was clear Spain didn’t yet have a Health and Safety Gestapo. But, happily, we did spot a fireman standing by the end of a fire hose plugged into a water hydrant.

As it’s Saturday . . .

British Society

There was media uproar this week over ‘illegal’ bank charges said to be driving increased profits there. As banking is largely free in the UK, this was a little confusing. The truth is these are the charges applied when customers fail to pay their credit card bills on time or to comply with their overdraft conditions. But in a world where people no longer have any responsibilities, only rights, this is adjudged to be at least morally reprehensible. Needless to say, British banks are contemplating bringing back annual charges for everyone. Who can blame them?

This is an article by that wonderful [if anonymous] chronicler of the decline of Britain in the Age of the Bureaucrat, Theodore Dalrymple. It initially depressed me greatly but then I remembered I didn’t live there any more. The relief, though, didn’t last long as I recalled my younger daughter has just started teaching there. And, after only 4 months into fulfilling her long-standing vocation, had hinted this week she was already contemplating at least semi-quitting the profession. But at least I’ll have shuffled off this mortal coil by the time the “Gogolian, Kafkaesque, and Orwellian nature of British public administration” has been fully replicated in Spain. I hope.

On a slightly lighter note, I was pleasantly surprised to hear a BBC reporter today pronounce ‘hospital’ without the Estuary English semi-glottal stop that is now de rigueur in the UK. I was less surprised to hear she had an Indian surname.