When you first come to live in Spain, among the oft-used words/phrases you quickly realise you don't know are 'philologist', 'phrasal verbs' and 'oposiciones'. As the first two are English, your ignorance will shock your Spanish friends. But they'll be more tolerant of your lack of familiarity with the third. Though not much, for they play a huge part in the life of Spaniards - in this part of the country at least. The same is true - incidentally - of the office of notary. Spaniards will steadfastly refuse to believe that no one in Britain ever uses one of these. But I digress . . .

The oposiciones are the [reputedly tough] exams which you need to pass to get the holy grail of employment in Spain - a job as a civil servant with the local or national government. Readers - whether Spanish or otherwise - will have their own view on these but my impression is they're a significant industry with benefits to a number of parties:-

1. For the regional government [in our case the Xunta], they provide an opportunity to:-
- Generate income via fees,
- Promote the local language via the inclusion of a compulsory module,
- Impose a standardised [Royal Academy] local language requirement on those who've learned the wrong form of it at home,
- Massage down the real unemployment total,
- Make it more difficult for people from outside the region to take local jobs,
and finally
- Through the local marking process, to ensure friends and relatives do well.

2. For the students, they:-
- Allow you to pretend to study while actually having a good time at your parents' expense,
- Permit the truly serious - or incompetent or lazy - students to justify living with their parents until they're 35, and
- Open up employment opportunities which are better paid and less taxing than those in the private sector, most obviously in teaching.

3. For educational establishments they provide revenue from courses for just about every job under the sun which a local council could offer. Including, I suspect, street-cleaning. Though I could be wrong on this.

All in all, the oposiciones are a long-established Spanish institution which serves a number of interests and so could be around for many years yet.

Moving from Spain to Britain, tonight I asked the three teachers to whom I give a weekly conversation class to list the three characteristics that define Brits for them. And here they are:-

More polite
Show more solidarity with the less well off
Greater interest in/concern for nature

More punctual
Queue more
Care less about their appearance

Better organised and more efficient
Quieter
Wear socks with their sandals

My impression is they were trying to be nice. For the most part.

As someone who claims to be a Galicianist and a supporter of the promotion - though not the imposition - of Gallego, I have to admit to ambivalence about a leaflet distributed to school kids today. This comes from the Xunta and is entitled As Lenguas No Sistema Educativo: O Novo Decreto 124/2007. Essentially, it expands on the theme that those who know Gallego as well as Spanish are better off than those who only know the latter. Effectively, therefore, those who only know Spanish should have Gallego imposed on them until such time as they can - with equal knowledge of each - freely decide which one they want to spend the rest of their life speaking. Possibly both, of course. Though the leaflet is only in Gallego.

As an aside, I don't suppose anyone could have foreseen that it might be a hostage to fortune to quote Iceland as a place which has benefitted from a plurilingual education policy. Though it would be ridiculous, of course, to suggest this contributed to the country's recent bankruptcy. Except by ensuring at least one person there could understand just enough English financial jargon to buy toxic investments. But not enough to be able to understand the phrase "Never borrow short and lend long".