Neither El Pais nor El Mundo had much to say on the Hamilton saga yesterday and both confined their comments to the Sports pages. In El Mundo, Carlos Toro took the line it’d be best to merely ignore the racist idiots as too much time had been wasted on them already, though I may have misinterpreted his drift. There is, of course a widespread view here that the UK is an over-racialised [if not downright racist] society and that the whole anti-Spain storm-in-a-teacup has been got up by a sensacionalista tabloid media which includes the BBC. I have some sympathy with the basis of this view but it’s hardly the core issue. True but irrelevant, as they say. Especially if you want the British to keep spending their tourist euros here. And if you have any concern at all about how Spain is seen in the rest of Europe. Or world, even. Anyway, if you’d like more insight into the range of Spanish responses, try this and this. As the writer say, it’s all pretty depressing. I’ll be interested to see whether there are any letters in El Pais or El Mundo later this week.

On the more important economic front, even the government- supporting El Pais has been forced to admit that ‘Statistics indicate that the downturn is rapid and deep’, not the gentle post-bubble landing we were promised only weeks ago. And which some actually chose to believe in. However, the paper adds, we are, as yet, far from a recession. Let’s hope it got this one right. The cries of pain from all quarters are already loud enough.

On the political front, if Spain’s deteriorating economic performance is being laid at the government’s door, this isn’t yet showing up in the polls. According to the same El Pais, the socialist PSOE party has a 4 or 5 percentage lead over the conservative PP opposition. And President Zapatero’s popularity rating is still well above that of the Leader of the Opposition, the rather hapless Mr Rajoy. Who continues to see failure against ETA terrorism as the biggest stick with which to beat the PSOE. I have my doubts.

Having criticised the Spanish for their stance on racism, I should now say that there is, as yet, little sign here of the litigious victim culture which drives some survivors of the BA crash landing of last week to sue the airline because of ‘post traumatic stress’.

Returning to my contention that only women have the [latent] power to eradicate the negative aspects of Spanish culture, I forgot to say I’ll vote for the female candidate even if she’s from the Galician Nationalist Party, the BNG. Meanwhile, I’ve started to survey Spanish friends on the question of how long it will be before Spain has a women President to go with Meir, Ghandi, Thatcher, etc. So far, the responses have mainly been stupefied silence. Which, ironically, says a lot.

Spanish TV took a step forward last week when the once-leading gossip program – Aquí hay Tomate – had its plug pulled. However, this was after we’d been introduced to Without tits there’s no heaven, so we’re still going backwards in tellyrubbish land.

According to the BBC, there’s a village in China [Dafen] dedicated to the churning out of several thousand excellent copies of western art works every day. Or millions a year. Can anything stop China dominating this century? Other than its own structural fault-lines, of course.

Finally, the Start-Up instructions for my new printer say:- “Step 1: Check you have all these items.” What they don’t say – here or anywhere else – is:- “Now go back to the shop and buy the USB cable which connects with your computer, without which this product is useless.” Wonderful.