Two bits of good news this week. Firstly, drug consumption among Spanish young people is in decline. Secondly, the central government has promised a couple of much-needed legal initiatives. It will announce in November, it says, 70[!] measures addressing the problem of road mortalities, particularly in respect of motorcyclists. And it’s also promised it really will do something about the difficulties which lessors face in dealing with defaulting tenants. The aim, of course, is to do rather more for Spain’s property rental market than merely throwing money at low-paid young people could ever achieve. We wait with breath abated.

Meanwhile, though, another major property company has entered what I believe the Americans call Chapter 11 and the British ‘Administration’. Essentially it can’t pay its bills. It won’t be the last to suffer this fate. Though it’s actually the creditors who do the suffering, of course.

Generally speaking, Spain’s interior is depopulating itself. A total of ten provinces actually have a lower population density now than they did a hundred years ago. Here in Galicia, the internal provinces of Lugo [-23%] and Ourense [-16%] are among the worst affected in the country, although the region as a whole has seen an increase of 40%. What this means, of course, is that the coastal provinces have significantly increased their population density - by 106% in Pontevedra’s case. Back up in the rural hinterland, immigrant Brits are doing their best to compensate for the losses but it’s simply not enough. We need more people interested in buying an entire village.

By the way, if you’re one of these Brits, you should know of a recent Xunta initiative which might impact on your purchase of a rural plot. This is the creation of a Land Bank which has the right to pre-empt purchase of certain plots required for agricultural development, reimbursing you only at the price cited in the escritura you signed. Somehow, I doubt that struggling estate agents, keen to get their commission, are going to worry too much about publicising this. Or even about getting on top of the development and its implications. The rationale behind it is that only 25% of Galicia’s land is given over to agriculture, compared with an EU average of 50.

I have to admit that, whatever one thinks of their views, the Galician Nationalist Party [the BNG] adds colour to political debate. Berating the President of the PP party for not being Galician enough in his approach to the region’s imminent new Constitution, the BNG President claimed he’d ‘cooked his speech in the home/hearth of Genoa and not in that of Breogan, to whom he is averse.’ Breogan, by the way, is the mythical Celtic king of Galicia, and alleged invader of Ireland. I’ve no idea what the reference to Genoa implies. Over to you X-C.

Although I occasionally touch on Spanish politics, this blog will not satisfy those with a deep interest in this subject. So I happily nominate South of Watford and recommend today’s post for an overview of what’s happening in the Basque Country around their President’s plans for popular consultation. Or unpopular, if you’re watching from Madrid. The blog’s author, Graeme, is a left-of-centre but this, in itself, doesn’t make him a bad person. So I feel a bit guilty about ensuring he’ll now get a higher number of readers who’ll misinterpret what he says and instruct him to leave the country as he’s no right to comment on matters Spanish. Probably, in his case, from the local equivalent of the National Front. But, hey, fame always comes at a price.