This is a bit late but I’m recording my admiration for the way Spanish sports commentators reported Barcelona’s loss to Manchester United on Tuesday night. Not only was the reportage balanced and fair but, in some cases, superbly written. The thread common to all was that it was the end of an era for Barcelona, who some believe now only have one player worth keeping – the entrancing young Argentinean, Messi. Anyway, as it’s Saturday, here’s an example of the purple prose, from El Mundo:- History will record that the sun rose and set for Barcelona with Ronaldinho. Lacking the light of El Gaucho, Barca ended up dying last night in Old Trafford, the Theatre of Dreams - the best possible place for a Requiem. Glory to Manchester on the road to Moscow, and an end to the Barcelona of Ronaldinho and Rijkaard.

As it happens, I watched the earlier first round of the tie in Pontevedra’s Real Madrid supporters’ bar. Which explains why, when I groaned at Ronaldo missing the 3^rd minute penalty, I was drowned out by everyone else there. Spanish solidarity? Forget it. We all hate the uppity Catalans.

And still on the football theme – Here’s an article which supports my view that money has ruined the British game. Which may seem a tad daft when there’s to be an all-English final to the Champions’ League competition but there we are.

Allegedly because of EU-inspired laws on recycling, municipal councils across Britain are rushing to reduce the frequency of their rubbish collections from one per week to one per fortnight. No, I don’t understand why either but apparently more than half of the country’s 360 councils have now taken this retrograde step. The UK rat population is reported to be delirious.

Back here in Spain, we get our rubbish collected every night. And every April we get bills showing a huge unexplained increase in the recycling element of our annual water charges. Así son las cosas. I just wish I had the franchise. Though it might mean me having to marry someone’s sister. Or worse, his widowed/divorced mother.

Galicia Facts

This region of around 3 million people has 9 – possibly 10 – local newspapers. For the life of me, I can’t understand how they can all be viable. Especially as the Spanish are said to be poor buyers of dailies. It’s whispered that money flows from the town councils, in return for appropriate content, but I’ve no idea whether this particular conspiracy theory is true or not.

What this region also has – as the Galician Nationalists rightly say – is the wrong clock. We really should be on the same time as Portugal and the UK. But we’re not. So it doesn’t get light at the moment until after 7. But every cloud has a silver lining and, for larks like me who can’t sleep in whatever time they go to bed, the compensation is that the dawn chorus works its magic around 7.15, at a time of the year when it’s warm enough to open the window so as to enjoy it to the full. Why, today I even got to see the first hesitant flights of a fledgling blackbird. Just before my neighbouring Catalans’ cat got it. No, I made that up. The Catalans’ cats don’t come in my garden any more. Something frightened them off. I suppose. Possibly my ageing dog’s habit of breaking wind every three minutes.

The Pontevedra council has announced it’s actually going to do something about the binge-drinking [el botellón] which blights the old quarter throughout two or three nights a week. From mid-year, this will only be allowed across the river in the recinto ferial, the city’s fairground. Any youngsters found drinking in the streets within the city itself will be prosecuted. Well, we’ll see. I have my doubts. Though it has to be said this has been achieved in Madrid and other cities, albeit by employing hundreds of police officers to block off traditional stamping grounds.

Down in my favourite plaza/praza, one’s calm can be disturbed by the feral pigeons which plague the place. Nothing has ever been done to frighten these off, even in the shape of a phoney hawk perched on the rooftops. Worse, some people are dumb enough to feed these vermin their allocation of free peanuts. But the pigeons were absent yesterday, which struck me as rather mysterious. Until, that is, I looked up to see a huge seagull perched on a nearby bench and eyeing me with malicious intent. For some reason, I thought of pirates, ransoms, appeasement and ever-larger threats. But, being without my rifle, merely removed my peanuts from view. The furious bird flew on to the next table and sent the ashtray crashing to the ground, before screeching off in what sounded very much like Somali to me.

Does anyone know where I can get a plastic sparrow hawk? I don’t take my farting dog into town.