Another gentle trip to Santander. The inevitable new motorway bit this time was a stretch of the A8 between Vilalba and the A6, near Lugo.

This may not be a long post. I'm sitting in front of a screen which is flickering so much I'll probably have an epileptic fit before my half hour is up.

A radio discussion this morning suggested 1.5m Spaniards [3% of the population] are asexual. If true, there must be numerous reasons why people would not be interested in sex. But I doubt that one of them is that Spain is still teeming with nuns. As for the priests . . . tradition has it that these have never been asexual in Spain.

The Spanish government has asked for Gibraltar to go back on the black list of fiscal havens, as it isn't helping with the prosecution of criminals on the Costa del Sol. This is bad, of course, but I wonder whether next-door Andora is any more cooperative.

Galicia Facts

You'll all be asking whether the Indian restaurant in Pontevedra has a no-smoking secion. Well . . . No.

I referred recently to the export of boats. It turns out that there are yards all long the coast and not, as I thought, just in Ferrol. Even Pontevedra [alright, Marin] has a few. I know this because the owner of one has just been arrested for having a 40 metre luxury yacht that is not compatible with his declared income and assets. As the local paper reported, some of these guys just can't resist showing off.

My eve-of-deaparture squid and Albariño were rather disturbed by the noise of one of the first processions of Holy Week. But, truth to tell, I've enjoyed religious demonstrations in Muslim, Hindu and Catholic countries and all of them fascinate me. Mostly because of the theatre and the spectacle. But there's also the spur to human creativity they provide.

Must finish and check for printer developments . . .