The latest Miss Spain was crowned this week. She has, of course, a lovely face and a perfect body. But, in her first post-victory interview, she confirmed she’d have plastic surgery ‘if it was necessary’. No one here could be surprised at this answer. But why on earth was the question asked in the first place? Was the program perhaps sponsored by the clinic notorious for ads that leave nothing to the imagination?

My car had its annual service yesterday, ahead of it first roadworthiness test. I was astonished to be told it would fail this because the rear tyres were of different makes. Not different types nor different specifications but different brands. When I queried this, I was told it was because the tyres had different patterns and, thus, created a risk when braking. In response to my sceptical expression, the mechanic had the decency to say this would only be in extreme circumstances. None of my Spanish friends were aware of this regulation and – in a country where safety is simply not the god it is elsewhere – one is again left wondering what could possibly lie behind this pioneering development.

Scotland is the new Catalunia. Ahead of the May elections for the devolved parliament, the independence-minded Scottish Nationalist Party is wooing the UK’s third party [the Liberals] in order to ensure a ruling coalition. The Liberals are against independence but in favour of increased delegation of powers from London to Edinburgh, including the freedom to raise and keep all taxes. Since this would mean the cessation of subsidies from England and a sizeable increase in Scottish income tax, it will be interesting to see how the allegedly mean Scots respond to the various claims and counter-claims they’ll be hit with over the next month or so. Right now, the SNP is on a roll because of anti Labour and Conservative sentiment. But will this last once the impact of an SNP victory on Scottish wallets becomes clear? Interesting times. Both for Brits and Spaniards.

Here’s my latest 3-year compilation. Shorter but catchier than any of the previous. On the subject of SEX . . .

2003-4

I give a conversation class to a small group of teachers of English. One topic I tried last week was the critical attitude struck by many in the UK towards Mrs Beckham for her failure to keep her husband in harness. Rather to my surprise, no one seemed much interested in arguing the toss one way or the other. It was later explained to me that no one in Spain is surprised at Mr Beckham’s reported activities, since this is how men were. Nor at suggestions that Mrs Beckham was stupid for giving him the opportunity to play around, as this was self evident. What really surprised people here was that a woman would want to tell the world about sleeping with a man and get a million Euros for doing so. How quaint this all seems by British ‘standards’.


Of a morning I walk my dog, Ryan, through the forest behind my house, taking a small track off the main one. In the past three days this has been blocked – at 11 in the morning - by a car occupied [I believe] by a young couple. Since – for obvious reasons - I don’t look at them, I can’t say whether it is the same occupants every day. But I’m beginning to suspect that it is the same enterprising young woman each time. We are used to the forest being used, at least at night, by lovers desperate to find alternatives to their family flats but this matutinal activity is a new development. And not entirely welcome. Perhaps those small ads at the back of the local news papers will now add ‘Forest visits’ to the list of acceptable venues. I must check.


The magazine section of El Mundo today is largely devoted to an extensive survey of sex in Spain. Perhaps the most astonishing finding is that young Spanish woman clearly don’t get much payback on their significant investment in making themselves perhaps the sexiest females on the planet. What on earth does this tell us about Spanish society? And is it time for me to flesh out my youthful dreams of a one-man company called Hyr-A-Syr? No, they can’t be that desperate, can they? Plus they smoke.


The second survey I read today was the perennial favourite about Spanish sexual habits, particularly the frequency of activity and the number of orgasms achieved by participants. As ever, I will refrain from giving numbers but merely comment, once again, that an awful lot of women seem to be dissatisfied in this macho country. Another business opportunity?


As I have a counter on this blog page, I can check the number of hits I get each day and also, to some extent, their provenance. Sadly, I do. One of the more fascinating aspects [honest!] is the information about how people have arrived at my blog by using a search engine. So, in the last few days, I have been ‘hit’ by people looking for information on ‘superwomans details’, the ‘casita de Elena in Vigo’ and ‘roadside brothels’. Regular readers will know that the Casita de Elena is [according to its ads] Vigo’s premier brothel. Is it the same person in each case, I ask myself.


Today I came across an internet company called Websidestory Research Co. Brought a smile to my face at least. Which reminds me … While I’m delighted to be able to report that the daily hits to my blog continue to rise, I’m a little chastened by the fact that 3 or 4 a week arise from someone in Spain putting ‘casita de elena vigo’ into their search engine. As this is a brothel, God only knows what they make of the fact that this brings up my blog as the no. I item.


It’s getting worse. At least 4 of the 25 hits to my blog today have been searches for information on the The Little House of Elena in Vigo. Mind you, this does leave 21 which weren’t.


In post-Franco, more-liberal-than-thou Spain, sex is pretty much everywhere. Especially on the TV or in any space on the outskirts of town which can take a car. And Spanish women, of course, do little to downplay their sexual characteristics. So, in this environment of abandon, it is all the more surprising to find that one of the public TV channels hosts possibly the most sensible sex-education programmes in the history of the cathode tube. Being very popular, its thirty-second welcome is naturally followed by 15 minutes of [appropriate] advertising but, once it gets going, the programme is a model of how to approach quite delicate issues such as…. well, you know. That said, I have some difficulty believing that all the calls to the young female presenter are entirely genuine. Like the one from a waiter who said he reacted unusually to the electricity from the fridge he had to keep walking past, for example. The programme is naturally a talking point and, as a result of this, I get the impression that some of the information re women comes as rather a shock to the Madonna-or-whore generation of Spanish men. They do like to keep things compartmentalised.


As you know, it takes Google about 0.18 of a second to come up with several zillion citations for anything you type in the box. So it’s all the more incredible that, as someone in Holland discovered today, if you search for “Spanish sexual habits”, the one and only reference you will get is my blog of October 22. Fame at last.


In the small hours of this morning, my blog received its 1000th hit. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I’d been hoping that this honour would go to yet another frustrated Spaniard searching for more details of the C de E in Vigo. Alas, no. It was someone who’d entered ‘things to do in Galicia’ into Google. The really gratifying thing about this is that it brought up both my blog and my web page.


2005

I read today, to my surprise, that the age at which one can marry in Spain is 14. This was in the account of a Supreme Court acquittal of a 30 year-old teacher of having illegal sex with a 14 year-old pupil, on the grounds that she’d been a willing partner.


Yet another survey on national sex attitudes. 73% of Spanish men and 71% of Spanish women profess to being happy with their sex lives, though in each case a slightly higher percentage thinks their partner gets more out of it than them. Not sure what, if anything, we can read into this. Except that the women are more accurate about their partners. Possibly even their husbands.


Thank God for another of those sex surveys the Spanish love so much! The major finding of this one is that a staggering 96% of Spanish males believe it’s ‘important’ or ‘essential’ to give pleasure to one’s partner. The researchers have coined the term hombre vitasexual for such paragons. The odd thing is that every other survey I’ve seen reports a significant percentage of Spanish women have never had an orgasm. Three possible explanations for this dichotomy are:- 1. Los hombres vitasexuales are not getting round to everyone, 2. They have a different definition of ‘giving pleasure’ than the women, or 3. The greatest skill developed by hombre vitasexual is giving the right answer to questions about his sexual performance.


Britain and Spain are converging in at least one way. More and more university graduates in the UK are having to live at home after completing their studies. Which naturally brings their active sex life to a sudden halt. So, as in Spain, there’s a need for discreet places where they can be nice to each other. This has apparently led to nocturnal competition for Wendy houses in neighbourhood gardens. Where there’s a will ……


Regular readers will know I often cite the results of surveys of sex in Spain, plus others such as one on the use mobile phones. It struck me yesterday that the survey I’d really like to see would answer the question How often do either one or both Spanish partners use a mobile phone when making love?


Only in Spain?: The town hall in Palma, Mallorca has issued a sex guide for teenagers. One section addresses the problems of young men who are worried about the size of their manhoods [menhood?]. They are advised, firstly, to “Do what porn stars do and shave off your pubic hair as this makes your member look bigger” and, secondly, to “Avoid gaining weight as your penis doesn’t follow suit and so looks proportionately smaller’. This is the sort of thing I could have done with 30 years ago!


2006

We had another of those reviews of Spanish sex life in our papers today. A staggering 68% of women say they are unhappy with things, especially [I suppose] the 36% who never experience an orgasm. These are preumably in relationships with the 27% of men who admit they normally ejaculate after a minute or so. As for the men, a mere 20% say they’re unhappy with their sex life. But then, quite apart from inequality in the home, and unlike their wives, they’re able to avail themselves of a vast take-in service industry aimed directly at them and to which their partners seem to turn a blind eye. Not to mention the Catholic Church.


I give a conversational class to five teachers of English on a Monday evening. They are all very fluent and the session is always fun but we exceeded ourselves today when discussing changing attitudes in Spain towards sex before and during marriage. The high spot came when one of the group told us of being propositioned by a married man while she was attending a hen party for one of her friends. He, it turned out, was at a similar function for one of his friends. Or a ‘cock party’ as she quite logically called it.


Quote of the week: Civil partnerships are intended for homosexuals but, of course, the tax authorities can’t insist the partners actually have sex. This means anyone can form a civil partnership with any unmarried person of the same sex, so long as he/she is not a close blood relation. So the smart thing to do if, for example, you are a widow and know you are dying, is to have a civil partnership with the woman who is engaged to marry your so and leave her everything tax-free.
An article on the workings of the UK inheritance tax


The Spanish government last year reformed matrimonial law so as to make it much easier and quicker to get a divorce. In the second half of 2005, these rose by around 80% compared with the previous year. My guess is the majority of these were initiated by women. Possibly the same ones who complain of an unsatisfactory sex life in the surveys we’re regularly treated to.


To lighten our hearts, there was another of those surveys about the sex life of the Spanish. This one reported that 81% of them plan their sexual activity, with 61% even setting aside a particular day of the week. I regard this as being more inaccurate than any of the previous surveys; I’ve never met a Spaniard who even knew how to spell ‘plan’, never mind do it. And all this sexual pre-thinking hardly fits well with the Spanish view of themselves as the world’s most spontaneous people. Obviously rubbish.


Yet another of thos sex surveys, this time about the performance of Spanish men. Apparently they rank highly in terms of average time per session. At 22.5 minutes, they come second only to Mexicans, who manage 23. To no one's great surprise, they also rank [I almost wrote 'score'] highly as regards infidelity, defined as 'one night'. And they also do well when it comes to trying new postures. But they're only 15th for number of times per week [3] and are way down the list at giving their partner an orgasm every time. Only 37% achieve this, against 62% with Italians and 58% with Hungarians. One wonders, then, what Spanish men are doing for twenty two and a half minutes.


I’ve regularly said how much more sane Spain is than the ‘more progressive’ Anglo-Saxon cultures. To make the point, I leave you with this report from a UK newspaper:- A five-year-old American schoolboy who pinched the bottom of a female classmate has been disciplined for sexual harassment. The boy's father said he was unable to explain to his son why he was in trouble. "He knows nothing about sex". A spokesman for Washington County public schools, said : "It's important to understand a child may not realise what he or she is doing may be sexual harassment but, if it fits under the definition, then it is. Any time a student touches another student inappropriately, it could be sexual harassment," she said. The case comes weeks after a four-year-old in Texas who hugged a teaching assistant was suspended for "inappropriately touching" her.