Govt. papers; House demolitions; Sp. idioms & words; & Neighbourly nonsense.

While others open up their confidential papers after 30-50 years, the Spanish government says it's not a priority to do this for stuff written during the civil war. The excuse is that, in these constrained times, it's not a priority and they don't have the resources. Which is plausible but possibly not the real reason for a right-of-centre party to hold back. Pending a change of heart under a different administration, Spanish historians will continue to have to do their research based on papers in other countries.

After years of back and forth between sensible and ridiculous decisions in courts at local, regional and national level, the Senate has now decided that folks whose homes face demolition will be compensated if they bought in good faith and were tricked by local estate agents, developers, builders, planning officers, lawyers and/or notaries. Perhaps someone has finally noticed how much attention this state of affairs was getting in the foreign media and decided to take a longer term view of things. Anyway, it's a good step and we now wait to see whether the garage-dwelling Priors - and others - actually get any cash.

A nice bit of idiomatic Spanish:-

Wife: Cariño, no puedo dormir.

Husband: Y te jodía que yo si?

'Darling, I can't sleep.'

'And it pissed you off that I could?' [Literally, "It fucked you that I could? But that's Spanish for you. Robust.]

And another idiom: Caer de pied. 'To fall on one's feet' . A very useful little word, de.

Talking of Spanish words . . . I noted magacín yesterday. This seems to be a modish subsitute for revista, the standard word for, of course, 'magazine'. No wonder purists get annoyed at such unnecessary Anglo intrusions. Of which there are many more. Though the Royal Academy claims this one is from the French magasin. Something rendered doubtful by the pronunciation.

Finally . . . My lovely neighbour, Esther, came round yesterday afternoon and insisted on tidying up my side of a hedge we share, stripping it of dead strands of a climbing plant/weed. I told her she was mad and she should leave it for me to do. She averred she simply felt the need to do it but it emerged she's having some sort of tea-party this afternoon, which probably explained the 2 people at work in her garden when I came home at 10.30 last night. I suspect this is the sort of thing you can easily arrange when you're Presidenta of a community. I'm now working on ways to embarrass her tonight.