Talking of the Hispanicisation of English names, I should have added yesterday that there's one great exception - the names of hurricanes. So it is that Ike is pronounced ayk and not ee-kay.

I mentioned Spanish banks the other day and, as it happens, Charles Butler over at Ibex Salad has recently majored on these. Specifically on Banco Santander, which seems to have been sailing through all the fierce storms rather more sedately than most others. But this, Charles says, may be a bit of an illusion. It's all rather complex and so we may not know for a while.

And now for some good news for those who like watching disaster movies - It seems that Terry Gillam has got the finance to allow him to have another go at filming an updated version of Don Quixote, starring Johnny Depp. if you haven't seen the DVD of his last attempt at this here in Spain a few years back, you might want to try to get hold of a copy.

Galicia

I read yesterday that Vigo is the Barcelona of the Atlantic. Which left me a tad quizzical. Mind you, it was in a tourist brochure. And possibly written by someone who'd never been to Barcelona.

Sometimes the attitude towards rules here can leave you shaking your head. There was a major fire yesterday in a large warehouse in said Vigo. Of the eleven companies operating out of it, only one had a licence to do so. Possibly a reflection of the bureaucratic hurdles that have to be surmounted. But even more worrying was the news that one of the region's leading chefs had been buying illegal scallops from poachers. And that these were also being supplied to restaurants around the region. On her arrest, the lady in question said she'd done so because they were products of superior quality. Not, of course, because they were cheaper. Given that the law exists to ensure no one gets to eat scallops that haven't been treated for a dangerous toxin, all this is more than a little worrying.

Still on rule-breaking, the local police say that, in the first day of their campaign, they caught 16 people illegally parking in places reserved for disabled drivers. Presumably drivers who don't read the newspapers.

On a lighter note . . . I was driving last night behind a bus featuring on its back panel an ad for a local cheese which comes in the shape of a breast and which is called tetilla. I've leave you to guess at the translation. It showed 4 or 5 of the cheeses in a landscape in which they were as large as the hills. The strap-line was:- Tetilla. O queixo do país. O país do queixo. Or, if my Gallego is correct, The cheese of the country. The country of the cheese. All well and good but I couldn't help wondering whether Tetilla really was Gallego for little breast. If not, and if it's actually Spanish, then presumably the product was named before it became polite/advisable/compulsory to play the nationalist card. No doubt someone will tell me. And whether the word Tetiña exists in Gallego. If not, it surely should.