Spain’s annual inflation reached 4.5% in March – the highest [I think] in the EU. This would be less iniquitous if you could get anything like this on your bank deposits. The current – Brussels-decided-same- for-all rate – is around 3% and under severe downwards pressure. With property long gone as a more-than-safe bet for your white or black money here, there must be an awful lot of pasta swirling around looking for a better home than your mattress.

Talking of such things – I went yesterday to the local BMW dealer to check out the prices of a new Mini. This turned out to be located on the edge of Vilagarcía, a town renowned as the centre of Galicia’s [= Spain’s] drug trade. I wasn’t too surprised at the salesman’s snotty attitude – given whom he must be used to dealing with – but I was astonished that they couldn’t give me even a typed list of prices, never mind the equivalent of the glossy brochure I’d got from the Liverpool agent the previous week. Instead, I was told to go to the web page and consult the ‘virtual dealer’. And then come back to them. Which I probably won’t, as it was made perfectly clear that my current Rover has nil value as ‘the mark is dead’. Ironically, when I bought the car five years ago, I mistakenly assumed it was still being manufactured by BMW. But the Teutonic bastards had already sold it to the management team, who quickly passed it on to the Chinese, pocketing millions along the way. Perhaps one of them would now like to take my worthless car from me.

A leader in [government supporting ] El Pais yesterday shocked me with the news that The slowdown in the Spanish economy is deeper and slower than the government foresaw. And it is not correct to paint this as something which was outside the its control. In similar vein, a columnist in the Voz de Galicia had written the day before - There’s now a pervasive silence about the crisis in the construction industry and in the banking sector. Those who assured us only six months ago that there was no risk of a crisis are now clamourously silent. The expert who said there’s never been a soft landing after a construction boom obviously never told the Minister of Housing, who assured us last October that ‘Our construction sector is one of the best in the world. We are passing through a soft landing and gentle adjustment’. The writer goes on to say this is not the time for lies and platitudes but for the truth and serious measures. Probably right. If optimistic.

Here’s a conundrum for my more politically wise reader[s]. Yesterday I read, firstly, that the EU is responsible for 80% of the legislation passed in the UK and that, secondly, it accounts for less than 10%. The first figure comes from the Conservative MEP, Daniel Hannan, and the second from the [self-confessedly ‘Blairist’] Prospect magazine. OK, they obviously can’t both be right but the real question is how an earth can they both be serious numbers when the gap is so large? Is one or both of them nonsense? Or are they both just spin figures from different ends of the political spectrum? Is it even possible to come up with a sensible number? I think we should be told.

Last week I was disparaging about the outfits being worn by the women I saw on Lime Street station in Liverpool, returning from Ladies’ Day at Aintree. I was even more ungallant a day or so later, when I pointed out that most of the women pictured in the UK and Spanish press were clearly not only badly dressed but also overweight. Strange to relate, both of these observations featured in the column of a [female] British writer this morning – “Ladies' day? They were just tarts and trollops”. That's the view of someone forced to share a train compartment with a boisterous bunch heading for Aintree race course last week. It is a kill-joy attitude I cannot share. The women of the North West were a welcome source of gaiety for the nation as they paraded for cameras in a startling mix of baby doll nighties, red carpet regalia, and mother-of-the-bride outfits given a youthful twist of hooker chic. (Did any of them actually look in the mirror before leaving the house?). But what struck me even more forcibly than their attire was their physique. These were young women, supposedly in their prime, and yet, more carthorse than filly in appearance, they were proof of a looming health crisis. The excess poundage is a consequence of sedentary lifestyles and a poor diet but, most of all, of the dramatic rise in alcohol consumption that is hitting women hardest. Truth to tell, the obsession on the part of young British women to act as badly as young men is one of the most depressing aspects of UK society. Hard to see how this trend will be reversed.

Equally depressing is the knowledge that official surveillance – my theme of the moment – is not only widespread but also growing relentlessly. Today comes the news that many UK councils are using anti-terrorist legislation to survey their citizens for such petty offences as dog fouling, under-age smoking and breeches of planning regulations. As I’ve said before, it’s a long way from Spain’s over-lax approach on such matters to practices more usually associated with those of a police state. But the truly worrying thing is that, here in Spain, there’s actually some evidence that the authorities are shifting from one extreme to the other, rather than finding some happy compromise. But perhaps I’m catastrophising. Must go and lie down.