I’ve mentioned that Spain has an astonishingly high number of bank branches. Not only that – it also has the most cash-dispensing machines in Europe. Apparently, the ubiquitousness of these gives Spanish banks the highest employee productivity in the EU’s financial sector. Which shows just what you can do with statistics.

Spain also has the highest number of bars in Europe. These are doubtless full of folk who suddenly need more cash than they came out with and who are rarely disappointed in their search for a nearby ATM.

Like most people in Galicia, I’ve given up on forecasts of when the high speed train [AVE] will be speeding through this mountainous terrain. So I was amused to see a cartoon in the Voz de Galicia this week which contrasted the promised launch by 2010 of an all-Spanish satellite with the construction of the Madrid-Vigo AVE. President Zapatero is seen in two countdown boxes. For the rocket, he’s intoning “8, 7, 6 . . .”. But for the AVE train, it’s “175,348, 175,347. . .”

A new chapter has opened in the saga of the US treasure ships and the loot which Spain thinks it’s being robbed of. While one of the ships has been ‘escorted’ to a Spanish port and is being searched, the name of a new candidate galleon has emerged. This is the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes [Our Lady of Mercies], sunk by the dastardly English off the Algarve coast in 1804. Can we now expect Portugal to get in on the act?

The BBC says the debate on global warming is over, as the sun cannot now be regarded as the culprit. Here’s an article which suggests the statistics can be read in exactly the opposite way. I blame the confusion on global warming and false trails offered by carbon footprints.

Finally, some Sunday erudition. If you live in the USA, you may be aware that Twang is “The most flavorful and versatile concoction to ever come out of Texas!”. In the UK, it’s usually the sound made when you pluck a metal cord or, more esoterically, a musical group from Birmingham. But, in the 18^th century, it was the slang term for ‘A prostitute’s associate whose job it was to pick a client’s pocket while he was having intercourse upright in a doorway’. Here in Pontevedra, these are called ‘Rumanians’. Only joking . . . Their stamping ground is Madrid.