An editorial in El Pais yesterday said that, with the exception of the high-profile case of Marbella, the voters hadn’t exactly punished those politicians accused of corruption. It expressed the hope this electoral absolution would be made good in court. I assume this means a court of law, rather than of morals. The latter seem to be generally regarded as irrelevant, which El Pais puts down to a web of self-interest.

A week on, I still find it hard to draw hard conclusions re last Sunday’s something-for-everyone elections and I suspect I’m not the only one. But here’s a few titbits:-

- In one council, the deciding vote is held by Spain’s first transsexual woman to become a councillor

- In another, one seat was won by an Elvis impersonator

- In a small town in the Basque Country all 107 papers were either void or blank, with the exception of one, which plumped for the PP candidate. The latter was therefore declared the mayor but is too frightened to take up the position. But he’s not as terrified as the hapless voter who unwittingly elected him by default. And whose identity currently remains unknown but much sought after.

One thing that strikes me is that Madrid votes very strongly right-of-centre, whereas London is very strongly left-of-centre. What on earth does this tell us about British and Spanish society?

An event quite unimaginable in the UK – the police in La Coruña are to auction off 1,200 firearms they’ve collected. But, then, crime rates here are nothing like they are in the UK. And attitudes to guns and hunting are quite different. I hope none of them are bought by the guy who threatened to come to Pontevedra and kill me.

Shipwrecks and treasure hunters [‘the new pirates’] are currently big in the local news. One paper suggests there are at least 500 ships lying along the Galician coast, harbouring the remains of Arab, Visigoth, Viking, French, Dutch and English sailors. Not to mention Spaniards, of course. By a logic I don’t quite understand, all of these wrecks and their contents are said to be part of Galician/Spanish patrimony. Surely it depends on how far out they are.

Finally, a couple of those inexplicable Spanish translations of Anglo-Saxon movie titles:-

Phone Booth – The Last Call

Kiss the Girl – Collection of Lovers