The Spanish media today is inevitably concerned with little but the awful plane crash at Madrid airport. And there were early signs of the ghoulish Spanish obsession with blood and gore. In this case, I fear, charred remains.

One or two people on the radio and TV have pointed out there are far more deaths on the roads - even after recent impressive reductions - but I guess it's inevitable that a horrific single event will always garner far more media attention than is purely logical.

Listening to the reports on RNE 1 this morning, I was rather taken back when the Madrid anchor man congratulated [Enhorabuena] the reporter who'd just given an account of her night in the makeshift morgue with grieving relatives. It didn't really seem appropriate to me but perhaps Spanish nuances are different and it's a more multi-purpose word.

I've been bad over the years at providing links to those sites kind enough to link to mine. But - after The Ibex Salad - I've now added one to Lenox's site, The Spanish Shilling. Click here for his amusing comment on how the Gibraltar issue is usually treated in Spain. On this, I've written several times that the British government is pretty desperate to get shut of the place but my impression is no one in Spain can understand or believe this. Though Zapatero's government must be given credit for the softly-softly, tripartite approach which is the only one likely to reap dividends for Spain. Unless Lenox's prediction comes true. If it does, he who laughs last may well laugh longest. In English. The spitters' preference.

Galicia

The chap I mentioned yesterday who made the reference about English being more akin to spitting than speaking also missed another trick by concentrating on the utterly irrelevant fidelity of Gallego to Latin when compared with Spanish. As the latter is another language with its guttural moments, he could have stressed not just Gallego's softness but also its poetic musicality. One reason for doing so is that, when it comes to its prosaic utility, he would have been weaker ground. For I believe I'm right in saying that Gallego lacks the present perfect tense of English [I have made], Spanish [he hecho], French [J'ai fait] and even its sister language Portuguese [Tenho feito]. To anyone who wants to correct this, please feel free to do so but without telling me I'm a troll, an ignorant English bastard, an imbecile, a cretin, etc., etc. We know this already.

For the photo special today I had to chose between bins full of four days of decaying rubbish and some beautiful stonework stored in the car park of the nearby school of granite carvers. Luckily for you - who probably know what rotting garbage looks like - I've gone with the carvings. But first another look at what the bottom half of the car park looks like. If I could lift one, I'd be tempted to borrow one of the large rocks in the foreground . . .


But what I really want to show is these finely bevelled blocks, one of which I certainly would like to take home with me. Though god knows what for. I can't imagine any other reason for their creation than the honing of skills and it's a bit of a shame that they'll probably lie here until they're blackened with whatever grows on granite. Moss? Lichen? Fungus?

By the way, they are bigger than they may seem. At least a metre square. So rather heavy. And useful to hide behind if you're a young rabbit being chased by my decrepit border collie, Ryan.