According to Franco’s daughter, he rather liked the British because they obey laws. Oh dear.

Fussy foreigners like me occasionally moan that Spanish providers have yet to develop customer service attitudes met elsewhere in the West. Ever the optimist, I’ve always assumed they will catch up and today I got to wondering whether one positive aspect of the recession might be that it will accelerate matters. We will see.

Talking of changing attitudes, I also found myself contemplating how long it will be before the Spanish start viewing the Euro as the reason why their economy first soared higher and then plummeted lower than anyone else’s. This might or might not be fair of them but I’d bet on it happening within the next couple of years.

Meanwhile, if you’d like a bit more of an insight into the soap opera of Sacyr, La Caixa, Lukoil and Repsol, click here. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this imbroglio is the left-wing PSOE and the right-wing PP parties adopting positions contrary to those they’d normally strike. Which allows them to accuse each other of sophistry. Or ‘lying’, as it’s normally termed here.