The Spanish are never more serious and efficient than when they’re having fun. Which, by the way, is quite a lot of the time. Here in Pontevedra, one of our annual events is a superb Medieval Fair. This takes place in early September and has been a tradition since way back in 1999. At that time it occupied a small alley or two in the old quarter. But by last year it had grown to consume all of this. And this year it will be extended across the river. Within a decade it should be a Galicia-wide spectacular. Very impressive.

Galicia is blessed with excellent seafood and first-class meat and vegetable produce. And the Galicians are justifiably proud of them. But conservatively so. Not for them the sauces or the spices of elsewhere. I thought of this when I noticed my local cheapo supermarket had put the recently-introduced Basmati rice on offer at only 50 cents a kilo, compared with 3 euros elsewhere. Its customers obviously shared the opinion of the mother of a friend of mine, who dismissed it as “stinking Chinese[sic] rice”. Which all explains why I have 40 kilos of the stuff in my garage. A bit of arbitrage – if I ever get round to it – never did anyone any harm.

I had my cultural preconceptions severely knocked last night. Driving down into town, I was smiling smugly at the ridiculous spoiler on a car which emerged from the nearby permanent gypsy settlement. But then the driver gave the correct signal when turning left at a roundabout and again when turning immediately right. Now, this may not strike you as much but it’s unprecedented here. But before I could recover from my shock, the driver considerately signalled he was pulling over to park. And this wasn’t the last of it! Ten minutes later, I saw the car stop for a pedestrian waiting at a zebra crossing. I mean waiting, not actually half-way across. I felt like expressing my admiration to the driver but decided there was a risk he’d take things the wrong way.

Given how catholic they always are, I wasn’t too surprised to see an obit for George Melly in El Mundo. But it was still impressive.

I mentioned the other day that the right-of-centre PP party appeared to have broken the tripartite pact on the furtherance of Gallego in secondary education. This has now been confirmed and, needless to say, the ‘nationalist’ BNG party has knee-jerkedly accused them of being anti-Galician and in thrall to Castilians in Madrid. For some time now I’ve railed against the divisiveness of ‘linguistic normalisation’ espoused by the BNG. It’s commonplace for its supporters to claim it’s only equality they’re after but you’d have to have been naïve to believe this. And blind not to see what would happen. Most recently, I’ve argued that the BNG – which no longer demands Galician independence – can really have only one policy, the supremacy of Gallego over Spanish. But this is a party with less than 20% electoral support, so without any mandate for this. Nonetheless, it’s been able to further its goals in coalition with the socialist PSOE party, which needs its support to stay in power. However, things may be on the turn and, for those with an interest in this, here’s what El Mundo had to say on the subject yesterday.

The Galician government – composed of the Socialist Party and the BNG – has just approved a decree on teaching in Galician, which – following in the wake of Catalunian nationalism – tries to marginalise Spanish in classrooms. So, although the idea was to impart 50% of teaching in each of the region’s co-official languages, the law imposes the obligation that in both primary and secondary schools the core subjects of Maths, Natural Sciences, History, Ethics [Sociales], Geography and Citizenship be given in Gallego. This means that, to reach its quota of 50%, Spanish must be used for the unimportant subjects [marías] of Gym, Art and Music, as well as for Spanish Language and Literature.

However, the Galician government has approved the decree without heeding the contrary opinion of the Galician Consultative Council, which issued a report on the draft to the effect that it “did not conform with the law”. This highlighted several aspects felt to be unconstitutional, among which is the obligation that pupils must express themselves in Gallego for subjects taught in this. It was this disregard for the ruling of an impartial body – aside from its allegation there had been changes in the draft on which there had been no consultation – which caused the PP to withdraw its support at the last moment. What is certain is that those parents in Galicia who want their children to be taught in Spanish have just lost this constitutional right.

Clearly – both in Galicia and Catalunia – the Socialist Party has, as the co-pilot, set out on an endless course to marginalise Spanish, directed by the nationalists who allow them to govern, without paying any heed to the fact that the latter’s demands have no limit. While in Galicia the coordinator of the Observatory of Linguistic Rights has said that this new decree “does not mark the end of its aspirations” and that it does not discount “new advances”, in Catalunia this week it became known the ERC was studying how to employ more inspectors to ensure that secondary school teachers use Catalan in all their communications with pupils and parents, stressing that the system of language immersion must go ‘beyond the classroom.”

If you’re a Galician Nationalist [or even nationalist] who wants to argue with me on this, that’s fine with me. But please do us all a favour and emulate those of your colleagues who construct reasoned arguments, rather than just hurling abuse and telling me to get out of whichever nation you think I’m residing in.