I said recently hardly a day passes here without news of yet another case of fraud or embezzlement. So I suppose it’s not too surprising this is accompanied by regular insights into what is apparently a vast range of appropriate Spanish words. The latest is chanchullo. Which is translatable as wangle or fiddle. I must compile the entire list.

The fall in sales of new properties in Galicia is reported to be more than double that of the Spanish average – 24 against 10%. My guess is that, at least when it comes to houses, this is because most of what's now on offer looks as bad as this . .

So this is a good time for me to say that I’ve just added to my Galicia web page a companion piece to the one I wrote some time ago on the loss of Pontevedra’s beautiful old houses. This relates to the ugliness of modern monstrosities and you can see it here.

Returning to the topic of Spanish cuisine - Reader David has been trying to post a comment citing a relevant web page but, as Google is treating him as a persona non grata, here it is. David says it has 9,777 recipes to get your teeth into . Happy eating!