The Spanish consumers’ association warns that many families here have reached their limit when it comes to paying their mortgage. And this is ahead of the next bank rate increase due in early September. Hard times, then.

Back in the UK, analysis of GCSE results reveals that the teaching of European languages in British schools is in decline, whereas numbers are increasing for Mandarin, Turkish, Bengali, Urdu, Cantonese, Arabic and Japanese. The writer of the article I read on this did stress that ‘Spanish is gaining ground’ but, rather polemically, added that “Given that 86% of the world’s 325 million Hispanohablantes live in the New World, it can hardly be reckoned a European language”. I would have thought the same could be said of English, though I suppose the writer was talking of all languages except this one.

Possibly to the irritation of British readers, I regularly talk about the decline of UK society. Or, as an English neighbour puts it for Spanish friends - ‘A place where the stereotype of the ‘ooligan has won out over the stereotype of the English gentleman”. Against this backcloth, it’s not hard to understand how an 8 year old in Liverpool can be shot down by a teenager in broad daylight. Depressing but not difficult. But, for those still confused, here’s an article which talks of the toxic mix of cultural liberalism, welfarism and multiculturalism which has wreaked such damage to Britain’s social fabric. The writer is the same age as me and looks back over the same span of years as I do, to a time when the British prided themselves on the gentleness of their public life. Specifically, he quotes an anthropologist writing in 1955 on the British character - "When we think of our faults, we put first, and by a long way, any lapse from our standards of non-aggression, bad temper, nagging, swearing and the like. Public life is more gentle than that reported for any society of comparable size and industrial complexity." Sic transit gloria Britannicae.

The writer ends his article on a note of hope but, meanwhile, is it any wonder people are fleeing the UK in record numbers? Or that Spain is a preferred destination for many of them? Who can blame them for wanting, as I did, to regain the values of a lost era. Which certainly won’t return in my lifetime. If ever. History will be very unkind to the well-intentioned vandals of the liberal 60s and 70s. And their disciples.

On that depressing note, I will finish for today and set off for the flea market in Pontevedra and then a rapa das bestas in the hills. Which is not quite the zoophilic event it sounds like.