Musing on the depressing insights into humanity provided by the tragic McCann saga, it struck me that societies - the British, the Portuguese, the Spanish, whatever – are all basically composed of civilised and uncivilised elements. Over time, the proportions may change, of course. And I suspect many of my generation feel the civilised bit of the UK now forms less of the total than, say, 30 years ago. But this may not be right or fair. For, quite distinct from the reality is the perception. It seems to me that whether and by how much reality and perception part company depend largely on how visible and vocal the uncivilised element is. And this, in turn, hinges on the nature of a particular society’s media. Does it have a bad press and does it get a bad press? For Anglo-Saxon societies, the answers are Yes and Yes. And, indeed, the linkage may be such that, if you’ve got the former, you can’t avoid the latter. Once your media is tabloidised and infantilised, you have a bad press; you give yourself a bad press; and you get a bad press from others. After all, there’s a lot of foul material generated for the media of other countries to feed on. So, maybe French and Spanish societies, for example, are not really as superior as they seem to be. For neither of them has a real gutter press. Spain’s prensa rosa, for example, is a pale thing in comparison with Britain’s yellow press. And, if I’m anywhere near right about this, then the French and the Spanish should pray that Rupert Murdoch never gets round to buying even a singe one of their newspapers. If he does, perceptions may well change. Internally and externally.

Plummeting from the ethereal to the prosaic, I get the impression hurling personal abuse is a great Spanish tradition. Politicians, for example, are forever calling each other a liar. And I occasionally stumble onto web pages which seem to specialise in printing insults centred on the insultee’s origins within Spain. Indeed, I even saw a site last week devoted to insults in Gallego and concluded that, having found some new ones, the contributors couldn’t resist using them on each other. Possibly merely because a certain word was spelled differently in respective villages. Last night, I read about a bull-jabbing event in central Spain which had provoked this gem of an example from one Sr. Charo: I hope that the residents of Tordesillas suffer famine, flood, plagues, illnesses and death. I hope their newborn die and that their children are kidnapped, raped and murdered. I hope their old folk die in great pain. I hope their youth are beaten and abused and then I hope they go to hell. Brilliant. Why do I just get “You are a m*****f****r”? I feel very deprived. Perhaps it’s because I don’t come from another tribe native to Spain.