The Spanish government would like its citizens to consider retiring later than 65 and so offers financial incentives to encourage them to hang on until they’re 70. The challenge it’s up against is that a study by La Caixa bank suggests only 25% of Spaniards over 50 currently plan to wait until they’re 64, never mind 70. And yet the same study – done in 2006 – showed there was deep concern about the economic future of Spain even before things started to slow down in 2007. Surely some dissonance here.

You may be shocked – especially if you live on Merseyside – to hear that Liverpool is not actually the 2008 EU European Capital of Culture. Or to put this more accurately, Liverpool is not the 2008 EU European Capital of Culture. For there is another one as well – Stavanger, in Norway. Now, those on the ball will wonder how this is possible when Norway isn’t even a member of the EU. I can’t pretend to understand these things. I can only tell you that the EU Commission has designated Liverpool the EU European Capital of Culture and Stavenger the Non-EU European Capital of Culture. About which you can read more here and here. And this is a report on the battle to determine which port makes the best stew. Or, to put it another way, the best foreign version of Galicia’s cocido.

Showing just how devalued the word has become in Spain, someone from the IU party this week labelled the leader of the Opposition ‘fascist’ for proposing a Minister for the Family. As Gordon Brown has one of these in the UK, this makes him an extreme right-winger as well, I guess. Which would probably comes as a surprise to those who see him as a dyed-in-the-wool socialist. But the IU is a communist party so presumably instinctively labels everyone else Francoist. If not actually Hitlerist.

Correction: I was wrong to say yesterday that the appalling incident in Vigo over the weekend involved a car that was double-parked. It involved both a car that was double-parked and one that was triple-parked. But I don’t suppose their owners will be convicted of something as serious as culpable negligence. If anything at all.

Incidentally, last night I asked a group of Spanish friends about the lax attitudes of the police to things such as illegal road racing and street bingeing, even when there were regular complaints from residents affected. The consensus appeared to be that Spain’s live-and-let live attitude leads to levels of tolerance which are sometimes dangerously excessive. “We just don’t know when to say No”, said one. To which the response from another friend was – “No. We know when to say No. We just don’t like to do it.” Which I suspect is rather more accurate.

The Spanish parliament was prorogued yesterday and will next meet after the early March elections. I don’t know whether we’re yet in the official election period but this is clearly irrelevant as all the parties have been in election mode for months now. The right-wing [and therefore ‘fascist’] paper ABC claims the government’s recent attacks on the Catholic Church will cost them a million socialist faithful. If so, it will surely not retain an absolute majority in the next legislature, even if it wins the elections. And perhaps the President of the Galician National Party will then achieve the ambition he boasted of this week and become the most important power-broking party in Madrid. God help us.

Meanwhile, house prices continue to fall and The Economist has lowered its 2008 growth forecast for Spain to 2.4%, which contrasts sharply with the government’s latest number of 3.1. This difference may seem small and 2.4% is still impressive but the truth is that a fall from 4% in 2007 to 2.4% in 2008 will be painful for some. Perhaps many. Those involved in La Caixa’s 2006 research may well turn out to have been prescient.