Tax forms; Friday work; Timeshares; Coruña a/port; Google Maps; & Wolves.

Over the years I've mentioned that the most impressively efficient operation in Spain is the Hacienda, the Tax Office. Well, if we ignore its failure to catch the biggest fish, anyway. For several years they've sent me a draft return which I've usually just confirmed on line. This year, though, I needed to change the draft and used their program, PADRE, which calculated the sums and filled all the boxes as we went along. Though, happily, not the one which allocated a percentage of my taxes to the Catholic Church. I won't say it was a pleasure to complete my tax declaration but it was remarkably easy. Especially as the Guide, if you have to use it, is over 800 pages long.

Can it really be so? A Spanish friend told me recently that only one Spanish company listed on the IBEX 35 - the Galician company Inditex(Zara etc.) - doesn't give its employees Friday afternoon off? At least during the summer, I guess.

A British gangster, John Palmer, was murdered recently. Among a list of his criminal achievements was defrauding 17,000 Brits of £300m via a timeshare scam 15 years ago. Which he continued to manage from a prison cell in the UK. This amounts to just under £18,000 per person/couple tricked, apparently in the form of useless deposits. Easy money. BTW - Palmer couldn't read or write when he left school at 16. But clearly had other skills. Arm-breaking, perhaps.

An addendum to my comment last week on the crazy expansion of La Coruña airport . . . As reader Sierra has pointed out, it would be difficult to add another runway, as space is so short it's already like landing on an aircraft carrier. So, I checked and found they've merely expanded the existing runway so they can take larger aircraft. Which can then try out unprofitable long distance routes, before giving up on them.

Has anyone else found that the positioning of bars, restaurants and shops in Google Maps is hopeless? Nowhere near where they really are.

Finally . . . What are the odds? I have 12 emails in my In Box and 2 of them are from people called Wolf. Well, Woolf and Wolfe but it's the same difference.