An astonishing 2.7 million passengers arrived in Spain on low-cost airlines during August, 43% up on last year. For us here in Galicia, the real news is that it doesn’t look as if Ryanair will have any flight between Liverpool and Santiago from the end of this month.

The outgoing head of the International Monetary Fund, Rodrigo Rato has warned that the effects of the global financial crisis will hit the Spanish economy ‘in a real way’ next year. I guess President Zapatero’s comfort is that this will most likely happen after the March general elections. At the moment, the budgetary surplus from above-forecast growth means he can give money away like a man with no arms. And, boy, is he taking electoral advantage of this.

Which reminds me . . . The main reason behind the enormous queues for a new identity card is said to be a desire to get one in advance of a claim for the new disability benefit. Quite why a new card would be essential, I don’t know - especially as it’s reported that half of the applicants will only be given the old one. One major question arising is whether Spain will now see a UK-style fall in its unemployment numbers, paralleled by a massive increase in the total of chronic back-ache and depression sufferers. I suppose it all depends on which is easier and more profitable to obtain. Human nature being what it is.

I seem to recall reporting last year that someone here in Spain was clocked doing 265kph, or 166mph. If so, this has now been bested in the UK by an imbecile who was stopped for doing 275kph [172mph] on an A road, equivalent to Spain’s N roads. At least he was banned from driving for 3 years and jailed for 10 weeks. I suspect this would be viewed as harsh in Spain.

I don’t surf the internet enough to know whether it’s also true of other countries but my impression is the Spanish bit of cyberspace has a quite a few people who prefer personal abuse to reasoned argument. What I’m talking about is the sort of stuff that has just appeared as a comment to my post of 28 August. At the time, this engendered an interesting - if short and inconclusive – dialogue between 2 or 3 Spanish readers about their ethnic/racial origins. Someone [again I’m guessing it’s a male] has just posted a longish screed which rejects everything said, whilst labelling the previous contributors IGNORANT DICKHEADS, DUMBASSES, MONGRELIC ASSES, and BIG DICKHEADS. And yes, it is all in English and in capitals. Maybe this poisoning of the ether is a latter-day aspect of what Anglo-Saxons regard as the volatile Latin temperament. If so, we’ll probably see some more evidence of it now . . .

As it happens, since I wrote the last paragraph [and before I’ve posted this], the reader in question has returned to hurl some choice adjectives in my direction, including ignorant, uneducated and even racist. God knows when, where and how but I stand accused of suggesting all Spaniards are of Arab stock. Which he takes to be a massive insult, it seems. Interestingly, in the middle of his rant, he says his greatest concern is that I’m endorsing the stereotypical image of Spaniards. Ironically, I would have thought he was doing far more damage in this regard than I could ever achieve, even if I wanted to.

And talking of labels . . . There are some Gallego readers who mock my claim to be a Galicianist, by which I mean – as I have said several times - someone who supports the promotion of Galician culture and language but doesn’t believe the language should be forced on anyone or that Galicia currently is – or should be – a nation. The latter two stances I personally prefer to call nationalist and Nationalist. But it really doesn’t matter. What’s important is what you believe, what you say and what you do. Not what you call yourself. Adolf Hitler said he was a Socialist, for God’s sake. And Stalin was universally known as Uncle Joe. I wouldn’t have thought it was so hard to get your head around this, even if it is half-full of such exaggerated nonsense as a belief that Galicia is more Celtic than Asturias and is even entitled to be seen as the 7^th Celtic nation. Or, like the gentleman who posted the above histrionic comments, that everyone in Europe is descended from Iberian/Galician Celts. By the way, he appears to have arrived at my blog by putting the spanish are not white into Google. Presumably looking for sites he could vent his spleen on. Nowt as queer as folk, eh?

Can you believe that Word’s spell check doesn’t recognise Adolf? Only Adolph.

Finally, I can’t wait until the end of the month before posting these routes to my blog this morning . . .

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