You have to hand it to President Zapatero - at least he's consistent. He didn't, to say the least, see the economic crisis coming; he denied its existence for months after its arrival; and now he says it was all the fault of those capitalistic Americans, had nowt to do with structural problems in the Spanish economy and will be better coped with here because the Spanish financial system is superior. I guess the best one can say about this is - maybe.

A propos . . . I read this comment on the banking system this morning - We now know that the sub-prime securitised mortgage market was little more than a giant pyramid selling scheme in which simple transactions - loans to buy homes - were packaged, bundled, sold, refinanced and the credit risk insured by myriad institutions. None of the bankers who grabbed the passing parcels had any means of ascertaining the solvency of the ultimate borrowers, nor any idea of the true value of the bricks and mortar that underpinned the loans. And it put me in mind of a joke I recall first hearing about 40 years ago. It's about a consignment of baked bean tins which pass through various - it has to be said - Jewish hands, until Isaac opens them and finds them rotten. When he complains about this to Joseph, the answer is:- "Izzy, you disappoint me. Those beans were not for eating. They were for buying and selling. Buying and selling. . ." Plus ça change, it seems.

Meanwhile, in an interview published yesterday, the IESE professor, Leopoldo Abadía, had this to say when asked to comment on the regular assurances that Spanish banks are as safe as, well, houses:- We've all seen what they did in the construction sector. . . . They say that the Spanish banking sector is in good health but to have 311,000 million euros worth of debt is rash. And I believe it will cost them dear. On the question of possible US style bankruptcies in Europe, Abadía commented:- We will see something similar earlier than we think. This is only my intuition but it wouldn't surprise me at all. So, food for thought there. Or do I mean fear?

Galicia

In the eight years I’ve been here, the importance attached to the Galician language – Gallego – has grown significantly. This, of course, is not unconnected with the elevation to power of the Galician Nationalist Block [the BNG] as the coalition partner of the socialist PSOE. As a result, far more attention – and money – is now given to the promotion of Gallego than ever before. Some people argue that things have gone beyond its mere promotion to the indirect suppression of Spanish in favour of Gallego. Indeed, some even say the methods used are not so different from those of the detested Franco fascists when favouring Spanish at the expense of Gallego. The defence to this appears to be that the cases are differentiable because - on the simple but debatable premise that Left equals good and Right equals bad – the Left has the moral high ground and so can’t be considered questionably extreme. And the BNG is certainly of the Left.

Whatever the truth, the elevated status of Gallego and the fanaticism of some of its its supporters can possibly be gauged from an article in yesterday’s El País, itself a left-of-centre paper. This was entitled "The Intransigent Rage of the Clerics" and it centred on the reaction of the Galician PEN Club to a reported comment of George Steiner on the Galician Language. This, he said, couldn't be compared with Catalan as the latter was an important language with a rich literature.

According to the columnist . . .

The reaction of the poets, essayists and novelists who make up the Galician PEN club was immediate and four days after publication of the interview they railed against the ‘uninformed octogenarian’ who had had the temerity to commit such a such an affront. Their manifesto also attacked the author of the interview, reproaching him for not having amended the opinions of the influential European intellectual.

The manifesto includes reprimands which should be the object of detailed analysis by those mentioned but its contribution to this discussion is confined to an unusual euphemism - the journalist should have censured Steiner by amending his replies.

It’s probable that right now the authors of the manifesto are still celebrating their firm reaction to the insult and that, in their joy, they remain ignorant of the disturbance they have caused in the path of the club which they say they belong to. For it seems they see no contradiction between their angry demand and the principles proclaimed by an international society of writers which since 1921 hasn’t stopped lamenting and denouncing the censorship and persecution suffered by writers all over the world.

Instead of accommodating the principle of tolerance which governs cooperation between colleagues, the writers of the Galician PEN club – believing certain opinions can’t be tolerated and demanding that they be remedied – stand proud in the middle of the Spanish rumpus.

The choleric anger of the authors of the manifesto will allow them to consider this an insignificant anecdote but the impetuous and highly veiled threat against the journalist – now a candidate for being labelled non grata in the nationalist inner sanctums – is an inconceivable scandal in our neighbouring countries.

The Galicianists could have taken advantage of Steiner’s comments to intiate a controversy which would doubtless have helped us to better know the achievements of Galician literature. But, instead of taking the risk of a dispute, the authors of the manifesto have preferred to issue an anathema and to renew that most Spanish of impulses – the intransigent rage of the clerics.

Consider that the desire to liquidate those who contradict has here a long tradition which is both institutional and popular. But it only acquires the status of a national trait when it acts behind a weak mask. What is typically Spanish – helping to keep alive the confusion and conceptual chaos in new generations – is the skill with which are reconciled intellectual ferocity and the apparent benevolence of the protector of arts and letters. For us it’s not impossible to proclaim liberty and to plot censure. To praise a language and maltreat its speakers. To think exactly how we please and to tell our neighbour to have a go.

We daily see around us awful signs of this Spanish curse and after 30 years of democracy we have proved that this dangerously reactionary thinking has survived despite our aspirations and has contaminated, who knows whether or not definitively, the unhealthy disorientation of a country given over to its capricious tribal emotions.

When we find ourselves obliged to explain to European colleagues the attitudes displayed with as much pride as arrogance by the Galicia PEN club, we tell them that the political control of the absolutist mentality – vigorously recycled by militant catholicism and by the authoritarian left – is responsible for generating these spontaneous despotic reactions.

If, bewildered, they don’t believe us, we cite the Logocrats whom Steiner identified in one of his well-known essays, those reactionaries who maintained that in the language of man could be seen its sacred origins which place it above its users. The Galician descendants of the Logocrats have also recognised in their local language the sacramental status which renders sacrilegious whatever criticism a person of flesh and blood dares to insinuate.

In this way – threatening others in our irascible convictions - we Spanish keep intact the religious legacy of our fanatical ancestors.