The New York Times had a nice article on Galicia this week. More accurately, on the Ribeiro wine-growing region up near Ourense. I couldn’t really fault it on anything material, though it’s a little unsettling to read about Galicia’s white wine industry without coming across any reference to Albariño production along the coast. The author calls Galicia “Spain’s Quiet Corner.” Which is OK as a generalisation but, then, she doesn’t live with nice-but-noisy-Tony on one side and four screaming Catalan kids visiting for the summer on the other. Not to mention the granite-smashing machines for eight hours a day. Quiet? I think not.

As it’s not April, I guess it’s true the Vatican has started up its own low-cost airline to fly the faithful to various pilgrimage spots, including Santiago here in Galicia. All sorts of questions are raised. For example, will there be oxygen masks and life belts or will everyone be given the last rights just before departure and told they’re going to Lourdes or, failing that, straight to Heaven? And will the company’s motto be ‘Nearer, my God, to thee” – last sung with gusto when the Titanic went down? Right now, we only know the seats will be covered with a cloth that sports the legend “I’m searching for your face, Lord”. Which doesn’t sound very reassuring to me. Sitting in a plane, I’d rather he was searching for mine.

A reader of El Mundo has written to complain about the growing media practice of calling Spain ‘El Estado español’ [The Spanish state]. Or even just ‘El Estado’. But, as El Mundo is a right-of-centre paper, this will probably be seen in many quarters as a demand for a return to Francoist repression.

Which reminds me . . . The President of the Galician Nationalist Party seems angrier than ever at the refusal of both his socialist coalition partners and the opposition to support his proposal that kids in kindergartens be taught the Galician national anthem. Playing to his gallery at this week’s congress, he accused the socialists of ‘intellectual weakness’ and promised to ensure ‘no one achieves what Franco failed to do in this country’ and ban the singing of the tune. I have to admit I find myself envying his simple me-good-you-fascist view of politics. Though I have some difficulty with the logic of his contention that, if something is not made compulsory, it’s effectively banned. I do sometimes wonder if he recognises the concept of freedom of choice. And not just on this issue.