Things up in Navarra have taken a strange twist. As the deadline approaches for the formation of a government, the regional socialist party has defied Madrid and agreed to form a coalition with a far-left party and a block of local nationalist parties which supports Navarra’s inclusion in the Basque Country. We now wait to see whether Mr Zapatero’s government will change its stance and accept this deal, despite concerns it will reduce country-wide support for the PSOE government in next year’s general elections.

Reports of financial skulduggery are so regular in Spain, there’s a risk of becoming inured to them. But then one comes along which is a bit more shocking than most. So it was with a report a month or so back of diversion of funds donated to a large charity. And so it is now with the report that millions of euros have gone missing from Mutua Universal, Spain’s ‘third largest work and illness insurance provider’. If I understand things correctly, these are involved in collecting social security payments. Sometimes for real people. Sometimes not. What’s encouraging is that these crimes are detected and - to some extent - punished but one wonders how long it will be before they cease to be such a feature of Spanish society.

The McLaren Formula 1 team are reported to have put a gag on Fernando Alonso. This is less than surprising. One can sympathise with his position in the team, of course, but he's been shooting his mouth off in a most immature manner for some weeks now. Especially – and inevitably - to the Spanish press. It could hardly continue.

Although the Spanish Ministry for Health claims there are now 700,000 fewer smokers in the country, cigarette sales have hardly fallen in the last year. Perhaps things will change if the government ever has the courage to follow others and ban smoking in ‘small’ bars and restaurants. But we could be some way away from this. Meanwhile, I’m only too happy that my favourite café/bar is not ‘small’ and so has been compelled to introduce the veto that the head waiter had assured me would never happen.

Much as I detest Rupert Murdoch for turning to dross everything he touches, I find it hard to agree with El Pais that British attitudes to the Euro and to the EU Treaty-which-is-not-a-Constitution can only be understood against the background of Murdoch’s control of so many of both high and low quality papers in the UK. If this were true, it would take only a change of his editorial line to turn Brits into Spanish-level supporters of these institutions. Which seems more than a tad unlikely to me. For a start, neither major political party supports British entry into Euroland and one of them is against the Treaty/Constitution and demanding a referendum on it. Much as I agree that Murdoch’s tabloid press has a nefarious influence on social attitudes, I suspect there’s a bit more at play on these major political issues. And it’s rather superficial to blame everything on the Dirty Digger.

Xoan-Carlos writes that the restaurant I mentioned yesterday is a favourite of Sophie Ellis Bextor. I had to ask my daughter who this was but, anyway, here’s her write-up. Should you go there and find that the Albariño wine is neither Castro Martín nor Casal Caeiro [kay-ro], please remonstrate with the owner.