In honour, I guess, of Galicia’s National Day, the front page of yesterday’s Voz de Galicia was entirely in Gallego. And, inside, there was a favourable reference to that wonderful book, The Bible in Spain, written by George Borrow in 1840. If interested, you can see what he wrote about Galicia here on my web page. Or just his Protestant, dyspeptic view of the pilgrim city of Santiago here. Highly recommended.

Much of Barcelona has been in the grip of a massive blackout for 3 days now. The blame game began immediately, fuelled by the existence of several operators and, of course, by the ‘illegitimate’ involvement of the central government in Catalan affairs. How easy life becomes when you view everything through a Nationalist prism. Meanwhile, the rest of us are left wondering just how the collapse of a cable in a sub-station in the heart of Barcelona can really be blamed on ‘Spaniards’ in Madrid. Fellow blogger, John in Barcelona, rightly calls this sort of thing ‘Catalunacy’. He must be even less popular there than me.

To be more positive about Catalunia – In those barrios of Barcelona affected by the blackout, the police flooded the streets to prevent a crime wave. The result was that reports of crimes fell to nil. Food for thought there, perhaps. I wonder if hundreds of CCTV cameras would have had the same effect.

As if Spain didn’t have enough to worry about with the soft/hard ending of its property boom, Michel Houellebecq has added to economy concerns by saying Spain is effectively past it as a holiday destination for the young and rich. Sometime soon, he predicts, it will be turned into Geriactristan, populated by millions of retired Northern Europeans. God forbid. There are enough of those lippy bastards here already.

Yesterday was a holiday in Galicia and the sun shone brilliantly in a cloudless sky. Today is a working day and we again have our periodic Atlantic visitor, the thick grey blanket. For once, God got things the right way round. Tomorrow? Who knows. But it could be worse. We don’t this year have the heat and winds which fed last year’s terrifying fires. Nor the rains which have brought devastating floods to the UK. Just the bloody clouds. At least for the morning. The Voz de Galicia assures us they’ll all be gone by lunchtime.

Under my self-imposed rules, I can’t, of course, comment on Spain’s property market so I’ll just refer you to this BBC video, cited by reader Gavin yesterday. Interesting [equals worrying] to see just how much money the local and national governments were making from the bum. Though I think another reader had pointed this out previously. Possibly even my friend Biopolitical.

Of course, it would be a mistake to trust everything coming from the BBC these days.