Spain's judges and court secretaries held a short strike yesterday. It was apparently both a protest against government interference in the judicial system and a demand for more resources. The courts here are renowned for being slow and inefficient but this may well be because Spain only has half the EU average number of courts for its population. And because, as someone said on the radio yesterday, the Tax Office and the Social Security Ministry may well have superb 21st century IT capability but the courts operate just as they did in the 19th. Happily, I wouldn't know whether this is fair comment or not.

President Sarkozy is not terribly popular here at the moment. For one thing, he's seen as the person primarily responsibe for keeping President Zapatero out of next month's global conference on how to repair the financial system. For another, even the left-of-centre El País is unimpressed by the Frenchman's suggestion that the EU creates sovereign funds which would invest in strategically important European industries to stop them being taken over by non-European operators. The paper sees this as a dirigiste model which has already failed in France and as an inappropriate response to the crisis.

As for said upcoming conference, President Zap has inisisted the voice of the world's 8th economy - 7th in a month or two, perhaps - can't be silenced. Which is surely right but the question remains open as to which pulpit it will be issuing from. President Zap says he's confident he'll eventually be invited so we wait to see whether his relentless optimism - "What crisis?" - will be borne out on this issue.

The Spanish - a recent survey tells us - are not eurosceptic but are becoming increasingly eurocritical. Which is something I've always predicted for when the good times were over and the money flowed not just elsewhere but in the reverse direction. The EU, it seems, now ranks low in personal affections, coming fourth after one's town, one's region and even Spain. Though this may not hold universally true in Cataluña, the Basque Country and even pockets of Galicia.

Galicia

Listening to classcial music on BBC Radio 3 this morning, I was surprised to hear a short and gently-spoken tirade against the capaign to oust English from Wales in favour of Welsh. The speaker was a Welsh writer who felt the country was now mired in a 'neo-fascist nightmare' which was denying it the development of poets and writers of the calibre of Dylan Thomas. He ended with a plea that everyone went back to the drawing board and started again from zero. No chance, I thought. The genie is out of the bottle. Prices have to be paid for linguistic hegemony. These things cannot be left to choice in any self-respecting nation. Or even would-be nation. And, if there is to be any choice, it has to be preceded by quite a lot of compulsion. Perhaps this is what the chap meant by 'neo' fascist.