One of the positives about Spain is that political discourse here is not dominated by the sort of divisive, poles-apart arguments re public versus private health and education that are such a permanent feature of British life. Here, there’s a well-established and uncontroversial mix of these and it seems to be readily accepted that, if you work hard enough - or are just plain lucky - there’s nothing wrong with using the private sector. In this regard, Spain resembles, I think, most other Continental European cultures. And the irony is that, although the arguments in the UK are driven from the Left in search of equality for all, Continental societies are generally rather more egalitarian than the UK’s.

Another – related - positive is that Spanish society doesn’t abhor the notion of an elite. This, again, contrasts sharply with the UK, where the concept has long been anathema. But pendulums swing and even worms turn. Writing in the same January issue of Prospect Magazine I quoted from yesterday, Paul Lay goes so far as to heap praise on the BBC Radio 3 for its ‘unashamedly highbrow” Sunday schedule and to describe this return to its traditional strengths as ‘brave’ and ‘bold’. This follows the encouraging news in the December edition of Prospect that figurative painting is now permissible again, after 100 years of ‘modernist art theorists and critics” prescribing what artists could and couldn’t produce. Light at the end of the tunnel perhaps. But hard to see the British serious press ever hauling itself back upmarket.

To complete a trio of quotes from January’s Prospect – Ivan Krastev addresses the rise of populism in central and eastern Europe, introducing such phrases as ‘provincial troublemakers’, the “paranoid style of politics” and “eternal fascism”. It struck me that each of these could be said to have an echo in Spanish politics, the first being the various nationalist groups; the second being the Catalan government; and the third being the label which the Socialists pin on the PP right-of-centre party. So I was left wondering whether Spain shouldn’t, therefore, be cast off at the Pyrenees so it could float across the Med and up the Adriatic coast, where it would take its rightful place with Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia as a central rather than southern European state. In due course, when Cataluña, the Basque Country and Galicia achieved independence, they could move a bit further south-east and become Balkan state-lets. Which should satisfy everyone, I feel. Except, of course, you could almost guarantee one of them would start the Third World War. Back to the drawing board. Perhaps we’d better stick with Spain of all the Spains.

Overnight, someone has arrived at my blog after using the search term asshole Brits. God knows why, especially as the results are accompanied by this phrase - The word "asshole" has been filtered from the search because Google SafeSearch is active. Nice to know.