A while back I said it’d be interesting to see what sort of thing would crawl out of the woodwork that had remained hidden - or uncared about - during our devil-may-care, carpetbagger good times. Well, here’s one. It’s called the Mirador Group and it operated on the south coast, offering future homes for trusting folk - In each case deposits of between €30,000 and 50,000 were demanded for homes in several developments which four of five years later have still not been completed, and where in most cases construction has not even started, or the necessary municipal licences to build obtained. These irregularities allegedly occurred despite the contract saying that construction was already underway. I fancy there’ll be a few more of these. Especially as the headline in the Voz de Galicia this morning is of the collapse of a major construction company up in Ourense.

If I wanted to quote dire numbers about the current economic situation, I’d have a blizzard of them to chose from. But I’ll just content myself with reports that unemployment is growing at least twice as fast among immigrants than among Spaniards. Given that Spain’s population is said to have increased by 10% in the last decade because of the arrival of these, I doubt it’s alarmist to worry about the implications. Or to be surprised that the relevant minister has offered a one-off payment equivalent to the dole to those prepared to make the return journey. But it’s fascinating to see that such a proposal does not get the reaction it would in the rather more race-sensitive UK. Horses for courses.

Regular contributor Moscow occasionally gives the impression life is tough in his part of the world. But it seems there’s at least one consolation. According to a UK columnist - The arrival of spring sunshine has filled Moscow's streets with women engaged in a Darwinian struggle for attention. Dressed to kill and teetering on impossibly high stilettos, their goal is simple: to capture a man who will keep them in the manner to which they intend to be accustomed. Shades of Pontevedra. Which is not a complaint.

Which reminds me – My midday Sunday ritual of squid and albariño was almost ruined by the conversation of two young women sitting on a nearby bench but using my table for their drinks. The topic was their respective needs for breast implants, complete with demonstrations of why they could be necessary. And how much they’d weigh. Fortunately, I’m too old to be affected by this sort of thing.

Speaking about the payment of the €1.2m ransom for the release of trawlermen by Somali pirates, the Foreign Minister has pronounced that ‘Saving Spaniards has no price’. I guess this is not really surprising and I anticipate widespread sympathy for this view across Spain. But will anyone be astonished when the pirates up the ante to 2, 3 or even 10 times this amount? Meanwhile, who’s paying? President Zapatero is currently being a tad coy about this. Perhaps the pirates were entitled to one of his pre-election tax rebates.

Which reminds me – a whopping 62% of Spaniard now say they think Mr Z lied about the state of the economy in the run-up to the general election. Astonishing. In a number of ways. For one thing, I thought only right-of-centre politicians lied.

Switching to the travails of Gordon Brown in the UK, you know he’s in serious trouble when a columnist on the Times writes:- You get a better write-up in ‘The Guardian’ if you are Fidel Castro or the leader of Hamas than if you're the Labour Prime Minister. Despite them rooting for Mr Brown when the hated Blair was in power, they now seem to concur that GB ought to be someone else, someone able to emote over the plight of mortgage-holders, someone as decisive as Tony Blair was over, say, Iraq. They adored Mr Brown for being Mr Notblair (“Look, no grandstanding”) in the summer, but the moment that things got rough, they plunged into the water and made for their nests on Purity Island.

Finally, I know that a barrio chino is a red-light district – just looked it up! – but can anyone tell me what a concerto chino is? Apart from the obvious, of course.