Some random Spain/Galicia Facts:.

• The price of the ear plugs I wear every night has risen from 2.80 to 4.40 euros in ten years. Or 57%.
• The new Galician bank Novcaixagalicia (formed by merging two pre-existing savings banks) will be closing 75 of its branches, 60 in Galicia.
• Car sales in Spain in June were 30% down on last year.
• Last year 11,000 young Galicians left the region for greener pastures elsewhere. (To be “young” in Spain is to be aged up to 35)
• An even larger total of young people returned to Galicia (presumably to live with their parents), meaning a net influx.
• Last year 3,670 Galician drivers lost all twelve points on their licence and so were banned from driving. As regular readers will know, I've no idea what points I have left on my licence as the Trafico site refuses to recognise me.
• The Indignados camp on Pontevedra's alameda is down to five tents. They've said they're willing to move on from there if someone will give them an alternative site.
• Two of Spain’s private savings banks – Bankia and Banca Cívica - have launched deeply discounted stock listings as they “race to raise as much as €5bn in private funds and avoid partial nationalisation”.
• A man of 40 jumped from a 6^th floor flat in Pontevedra at 9.30 on Friday night. His (covered) body lay on the ground for an hour and a half, guarded by at least twenty police persons and watched by a crowd of around 50 local residents. Presumably waiting for the corpse to do something.
• Here are details of a new site for those with property in Spain. Though not in Galicia, where we've never had the sort of problems the POPPIE organisation is designed to deal with.
• All the 110kph signs throughout Spain have now had stickers pasted on them, restoring the prior 120 limit. At a cost of 230,000 euros, it's said.
• Over the last year, Galicia has seen the lowest reduction in house prices of all the Spanish regions – 1.9%, against a national average of 4.9%.
• Pontevedra city, at 1,400 euros per square metre, has the lowest prices in the region.
• The other urban prices are.-

• La Coruña: 1,800
• Vigo: 1,680
• Ourense: 1,640
• Lugo: 1460

And here's a picture of the bougainvillea at the back of my house, which I've spent the last ten years training up the wall. The foto doesn't actually do it justice as it can be seen from the steps of the basilica of Santa Maria, way down in the city's old quarter.

Finally . . . Click here for proof that the Spanish will argue/quarrel over anything and everything. No wonder the Community meetings are the way they are. In case you don't know, screaming matches between total nonentities are the staple of Spanish daytime (and even nighttime) TV.