In line with all expectations, the socialist PSOE party won yesterday’s general election but again didn’t achieve an absolute majority. Both the PSOE and the right-of-centre PP party increased their share of the vote and each gained another 5 seats. All of this was at the expense of left-wing and nationalist parties. The most likely coalition partner for the PSOE is felt to be the moderate Catalan nationalist party CiU. Whether there’s been any substantive change in Spain’s political landscape, I’m not qualified to judge. But I suspect not. The crumbs of comfort for the PP party are the said increase in votes and seats and some inroads into the PSOE’s stronghold in Andalucia. These will probably justify Mr Rajoy clinging onto the leadership while an internecine battle for his job rages between his Madrid colleagues. The Tory party revisited.

By the way, since Andalucia is a byword for corruption, I suppose it’s clear why the government didn’t address this subject in its campaigning.

An American writer has suggested the Brits are the most unhappy people on earth. Not content unless they’re miserable. I suspect many Spaniards would go along with this, apart from those who – while disdaining stereotypes of the Spanish – see all Brits as ooligans.

Galicia Facts

The Galician Nationalist Party, the BNG, slightly increased its percentage of the vote here. This is more than any other nationalist party but their seats won’t increase from two. What will happen to the Pontevedra seat depends on the hundreds of thousand of overseas votes which won’t be known until later this week. All in all, I doubt that this will assist the BNG President’s aim of becoming a lever of power in Madrid.

These elections were seen here as a Primary for next year’s regional elections. So, for what it’s worth, the PP remained the largest party but lost votes and one seat to the PSOE. As I say, the BNG increased its vote marginally, by 0.7%. Which I would have thought would be welcome but rather disappointing for them.

As I passed the polling stations yesterday, it struck me it was perhaps a bit anachronistic these days that as a property-owning, taxpaying resident I don’t have a vote in the national elections. But I guess this is the case in most countries. On the other hand, I can’t imagine that 500,000 Australians have a vote in the British elections simply because their grandparents emigrated there a hundred years ago.

My piano teacher was rather late for the lesson on Friday evening. He then spent 20 minutes – he’s Argentinean – confessing how dumbfounded he was at how things were here. He’d been to talk to a lawyer about the consequences of the death of his mother-in-law on the property she and her husband owned. As he doesn’t read my blog, what Alex couldn’t understand was the fact the five children of the couple didn’t speak to each other and so knew nothing of their parents’ financial position. Nor were they aware they’d have to pay a tax on the inheritance of a small piece of land that would now be split into five even tinier plots. Galicia’s famous minifundios. After he’d calmed down a bit, Alex then went on to amuse me with an account of how, twenty or thirty years ago, saline coastal strips of land had been left to the idle members of a family as it was known they wouldn’t work any good land. Now, of course, this is worth a fortune and los vagos of the family are cashing in. But, in one case along the coast, a massive development was being held up because a woman in her 80s was refusing to sell – at any price – the thin strip needed for access. The reason for her rejection of all offers was that the owner’s grandfather had denied access to hers for his cows over a hundred years ago. How we laughed. I could write a book. The title would perhaps be the phrase a Galician once used to explain some extraordinary behaviour of a neighbour. Cuando son raros los Gallegos, son muy, muy raros.

Before anyone writes in, I acknowledge this tale may be apocryphal. But telling, nonetheless.