El Mundo yesterday angrily headlined the fact that school history textbooks were being ‘manipulated’ in those parts of Spain where you’d expect this to happen. By coincidence a Scottish columnist today congratulates the government in Edinburgh on its decision to include Scottish History in the national curriculum. This, he hopes, will mean an end to the propagation of what he calls the ‘Braveheart bilge’ that currently passes for history in Scotland. In a comment that would apply just as much to Spain as it does to Scotland, he adds that it’s entirely typical of the fraught nature of the nationality issue in Scotland in recent decades that something as seemingly normal as teaching schoolchildren their country's history has been caught up in politics.

Taking a wider perspective on nationalism . . . When I first moved to Spain in 2000 – doubtless influenced by an aversion to IRA and ETA terror tactics – I was instinctively opposed to the secession of any of its current regions. Seven years on, I’ve grown in my conviction that, provided the process is democratic, there’s a lot to be said for allowing the regions that see themselves as nations to go their own way. Early in November, El Pais carried a long and persuasive article that put the case for Spain being realistic and wise enough to accept that the only feasible choices now open to it are either a symmetrical federal state [USA? Germany?] or ‘national’ self-determination that would see Cataluña, the Basque Country and possibly even Galicia breaking away. You can read the original here and Google will give you an immediate – if rather rough and ready – translation. However, it would be nice if one of my totally bilingual readers could give us an accurate English version for something as important as this.

Meanwhile, back in the here and now of today’s Spain, parlous economic news continues to rain down on us. After the recent massive hike in the inflation rate comes a threat from the farmers that meat prices will rise at least 10% in January. As this is the month when everybody – especially the government and its monopolies - raises prices and since it follows a December in which much will have been spent on presents and five family feasts in little more than a week, my guess is it wouldn’t be very wise to open any sort of shop in early 2008.

For local governments, the really bad news, of course, is just how much their income will fall now that the Golden Goose of highly-taxed property deals has stopped laying. The big question is whether spending will fall in line with the sort of reductions - 4.9 billion euros in 2009 according to Standard & Poors - that are being forecast. Personally, I’d be quite happy to see an end to the public works which have made Pontevedra one large roadworks site for the last seven years. But I fear politicians may well be reluctant to curtail expenditure that has its benefits.

A touching scene on the streets of Pontevedra yesterday – a stone mason gently trying to take a bit of granite out of his colleague’s eye. But, as they’d both been chipping away at the façade of Citibank without wearing protective goggles, my sympathy was rather short-lived. There is too much of this [macho?] refusal to take sensible safety measures in Spain. Which might well account for her poor record on work-related accidents.

Finally – Another 14 people have been arrested in the great Madrid town hall bribes-for-business-licences case. And it’s reported that the brains behind this is a guy whose line of work is selling business premises. What genius! Via others, you manipulate and control the market for the very things you’re selling. Rather like Charles Saatchi with the works of modern artists. Only not quite as legal and admirable. Or at least admired. Saatchi’s huge profits, that is. Not the so-called works of art.