A Spanish scientist is today reported to have challenged conventional wisdom by suggesting the end of the universe won’t come with a bang but via a sudden standstill. Time, he says, is literally running out and will one day stop altogether. As with me [a Brit living in Galicia] inventing a new word for rain, I feel it’s entirely apt a Spaniard should come up with a new concept of time.

After four months of almost nil rain, there’s now real concern about reservoir levels even here in Galicia. A week or so ago, as many as 83% of Voz de Galicia readers said they were extremely worried about the situation. Maybe but my guess would be that a trifling percentage of these are actually doing anything to reduce a level of consumption which is high by international standards. Words have always been cheap.

I wrote the other day about the universal tolerance of prostitution here in Spain. I doubt this will be much dented by reports in yesterday’s papers about a gang specialising in the kidnapping of transvestites in Brazil so they can be forced to work in Spanish brothels.

Equally depressing was the news that more high-profile doctors had been taken into custody in Barcelona in connection with the clinic there which provided abortion on demand regardless of the age of the foetus. Coincidentally, the government has announced it will liberalise the abortion law so as to remove the need to meet certain criteria in the early months of pregnancy. This, it says, merely leads to fraudulent practices. Which seems to be an all-too-common plight for laws in at least this area.

As if the news wasn’t bad enough already for estate agents[realtors], a group of terrorists has taken to bombing their premises in Galicia. The latest attack was in the town of Portosín, up along the coast west of Santiago. On a more national scale, a third large operator [Ereaga] has got into financial difficulties and has suspended payments to creditors. And some say we’re only at the beginning of a downwards spiral that will reciprocate its upwards predecessor of the last ten years.

A local columnist has written that ‘from a Galicianist point of view, it’s better to have more Europe and less Spain.’ What this means is that nationalists believe the EU can be a useful tool to help with shaking off the Spanish yoke. As with Scotland, this may well be true in the near term but I suspect it would be folly to exchange the rule of Madrid for that of Brussels. But vamos a ver. If I live that long.