Bizarrely, the first four people involved in gender murders this year have all been foreign. In the first case, a German man killed his British wife. And now a Ukrainian has been arrested for murdering his Russian girlfriend. All down on the south coast, of course. From where, perhaps, all the Spanish have had the wisdom to flee.

A few weeks ago I posted my list of the Positives about life in Spain. One of these days, I must risk the wrath of my Spanish readers by posting the Negatives I’ve long had in preparation. One of these is the irritation I [frequently] feel when someone crosses my path and elects to walk right in front of, rather than behind, me. But, truth to tell, this is a wrong description. For no Spaniard makes such a conscious decision. It simply doesn’t occur to them they have a choice and that one of the options is considered rude in every other society. And, if you told them you were annoyed, they’d apologise profusely. My impression is there’s no concept in Spain of priority or right-of-way in these situations. Whether you put this down to ‘individualism’ or something else is up to you. But the result is that most Spanish have no idea this is one of the reasons others think they can be very rude. And are insulted and upset to be told so, especially as no offence is ever intended. My personal response, by the way, is to keep walking. As a result, I often crash into people – usually with a stiffened arm – and the good news is they always then apologise. This helps greatly to rid myself of the initial irritation. Different game, different rules.

Forecasts for the Spanish economy in 2008 seem to deteriorate by the day. Growth in GDP in now below 2% and El País yesterday raised the spectre of stagflation, or estanflación in Spanish. The doomsday prediction is that the currently accelerating slowdown in growth will suddenly become a ‘brusque halt’. Oh dear. El Mundo on Saturday featured a list of the 10 things the government should have done when times were good to soften this blow but this all looks a tad late now, as the March general election relentlessly approaches. I suspect there must be a degree of panic in the PSOE camp, which was felt to have things in the bag only a couple of months ago. And it’s no great surprise to read both parties are urgently reviewing their previous campaign plans. The Opposition, it seems, are going to stop banging on about ETA and switch to the economy and personal wellbeing. Which is a change a monkey could have come up with, of course.

The Catalan swimmer, David Meca, swam non-stop across the Strait of Gibraltar three times on Saturday. But there’s no truth in the rumour he only wanted to do this once but had to keep going after the Gibraltar authorities refused him permission to leave the water and then their Spanish equivalents did the same because he’d touched Gibraltarian soil.

Galicia Facts

Galician wines – especially the whites – are excellent so I can understand the concern that, as one local paper put it, ‘Foreign wines are gaining share here at the expense of our wines’. But, as is usually the case, ‘foreign’ here doesn’t mean from, say, France but from other parts of Spain. Indeed, it would be well nigh impossible for truly foreign wines to gain market share here as it’s virtually impossible to buy any. Alas. Good as it is, one does get a little tired of Albariño.

One of the complicating factors of life in Galicia is that the same village name can crop up all over the place. So, for example, there are 6 places called Laxe, of which four are in Lugo province alone. So, I’m asking my Galician reader[s] to nominate the name most frequently found here. My suspicion is that Chan [or its variants] could well be the winner. Or perhaps Portela. Or Igrexa. Let me know, amigos.