I’m still confused about the Spanish banks. Or maybe that should be the savings banks. For, while Banco Santander reports 2008 results equal to those of the previous year and the banking industry as a whole delivers the third best results on record, one of the major credit agencies has cast aspersions on 20-30 Spanish banks and the government has embroiled itself in the creation of a rescue fund. Which may or may not operate with more of an eye to politics than to economics. I guess it will all come out in the wash.

As forecast, the government has tripled the fines for speeding and reduced the period during which you can promptly pay and obtain a discount, though the latter has risen from 30 to 50%. Worst of all, there’ll now be no tolerance in the application of the law; you will be fined for exceeding the limit by as little as 1kph. Presumably we’ll all need to buy speed limiters or cruise control mechanisms to ensure we don’t inadvertently slip above 120 on the empty motorways. Or buy a GPS thingy to tell us every ten seconds what speed we’re doing - on pain of a massive fine and loss of points if we actually touch this, rather than the (OK) radio. You’ll also be hit hard if you wear earphones to listen to a podcast, though not if you have the radio on deafening full blast or have another four people in the car, joining you in a 5-handed (mouthed?) simultaneous shouting match. Can there be any more eloquent evidence of the intention to make el tráfico part of the tax set-up - at a time when President Zapatero is assuring us there’ll be no more tax increases? Truly has he dipped deeply at the Blairist well of stealth taxes.

Thanks to regular messages from my considerably-left-of-centre and politically-active (ex) stepson, I’m reasonably acquainted with the angst currently being suffered by he and his colleagues in the UK about what to do next and under which banner. Rejecting New Labour, they’re also unwilling to be too associated with Old Labour, Socialism or even Liberalism. And, whilst they may have more in common with Continental European Social Democrats than they care to admit, they don’t wish to adopt this label either. As I read their stuff, I get the impression they’re edging toward the public use of the term they routinely apply to themselves – the Progressive Left. You have to hand it to them for chutzpah – they are progressive and the rest of us are, thus, incontestably regressive. Que cara!

Incidentally, my (ex)stepson sees me as “a nice (and, therefore, deluded) Tory”. I suspect this is his British half speaking. His Spanish half would be far more blunt. At the minimum, I’d be “a liar”, I guess.

Finally, for those interested in knowing more about Iranian culture, click here.

In British politics – in contrast to the more robust Spanish variety – no one ever bluntly calls anyone a liar. And certainly not in the parliament. But this commentator gets as close as one can to labelling Gordon Brown an inveterate economiser with the truth. My guess is the Spanish would see this British political norm as just another example of the core national sin of hypocrisy.

And talking of lying, The Economist said of President Zapatero’s Budget speech a few weeks ago that, while he’d pulled several rabbits out of his hat to confound the Opposition, he “must have known he could not fulfil his pledges, which seem to have been devised for the European election on June 7th.”. If so, his sleight-of-mouth was not terribly successful, for his party lost said elections.

I’ve often said I wouldn’t like to have the challenges of the Spanish President, given the fissiparous nature of politics here and the eternal campaigns from the regions to wrest ever more power from Madrid. The Economist refers to this in the above article, as well as to the constraints on the President’s ability to deliver on any promises he makes at a national level. Perhaps, in these circumstances, he has no option but to lie. Otherwise he’d just have to stay silent. Which is a tall order for a politician. Deaf ones I know of. But dumb ones?

As for eschewing hypocrisy and majoring on bluntness . . . I had lunch with some old Spanish friends yesterday. The wife very kindly volunteered that my Spanish had come on a long way but the husband retorted “No, he could still do better.” Being a gentleman, I didn’t mention his English. Because he hasn’t got any. Relating this to my to my elder daughter last night, she said it was a very Spanish trait to speak “without hairs on the tongue” . And she reminded me of two pupils she used to have in Pontevedra. The younger sister was much the taller one and when Faye commented on this she replied “Yes. People are always saying ‘How pretty your sister is! But you’re very tall.’” Poor kid.

After getting three speeding fines in one year – compared with none in the previous 43 – I’m naturally now taking a keen interest in the signs at the side of the road. And a confusing experience it is too. For instance, what to make of a sequence which goes – No sign at all for 3km after the start of a road; then an 80km sign; then (merely fifty metres later) a 50 sign? Or another sequence which goes – Firstly, an End of 60 sign, followed (a hundred metres later) by a 70 sign, followed (another hundred metres later) by a 50 sign Can they really be deliberately trying to confuse us? Can anyone tell me what the permitted speed is in the hundred metres between the End of 60 sign and the 70 sign in this second sequence? 80? 90? 100kph? I guess it's not 70 or 120.

Despite the fact the sun was forecast for today, I woke at 7 to an Atlantic Blanket that all but obscured the cityscape of Pontevedra several hundred metres below me. But by midday things had changed for the better and the warnings of very high temperatures for tomorrow began to look rather more credible. Now I’m worried about getting sunstroke at the cricket match on Saturday, rather than drowning. Don’t you just love this global warming.

Finally, here's an article on Galicia recently published in the Financial Times

Well, it didn't take long for me to lose another battle in the ongoing War of Alternative Revenue ("WAR"). Having plenty of time at my disposal this morning, I decided to take the scenic route to Oporto aiport and, at 8.30 of a sunday morning when my car represented about 30% of the total traffic, I was duly fined another 100 euros for speeding on the road that runs along the river Miño separating Spain from Portugal. This was either the finale to a very bad week or an ominous start to another one.

The traffic cop told me I'd been doing 75 in a 50 area. Which struck me as almost impossible as, knowing the road well, I'd reduced my speed immediately on seeing the 50 sign. My conclusion, then, is there are only 3 ways to avoid being fined in Spain at the moment:-
1. Don´t drive at all
2. Drive everywhere at 50kph, or
3. Stamp on the brake and reduce to a crawl as soon as you see a 50 sign.

The logic of the last one is that, to record me at 75, they would have had to have had the camera just a couple of metres after the sign.

For what it's worth (not a lot), the cop was chatty and sympathetic, saying it was a shame I wasn't local as I'd have known they were at this spot every day of the year. Which rather gives the game away, I feel. And he told me I wouldn't lose any points. Which means either the police have more discretion than I'm aware of for an offence of driving 50% over the limit, or that he was genuinely wrong, or that he was lying. I guess I'll soon know. And at least I can pay through the wonderful Banco Santander.

Anyway, by agreement with my daughter - and despite her refusal to do the decent thing and pay this fine - I've decided to leave until next Sunday the decision as to whether to top myself or not. Right now, though, the omens are not good.

There are some for whom the Presidenta of the Madrid region – Esperanza Aguirre – is not their cup of tea. And there are others who regard her as cojonuda (terrific). I don’t know enough about her to have much of an opinion either way. However, I’d like to send her my personal thanks for setting up the services just north of Medina del Campo on the A6, just where I (and Ryan) needed them. And where the café is one of those rare beasts in Spain – a place to eat and drink without consuming someone else’s cigarette smoke at the same time.

Talking of driving . . . I’ve mentioned that one of the cardinal rules in Spain is to look out for drivers on a roundabout who take the outside lane even when turning left and then cut across you as to try to carry on straight ahead. A second key rule is - Don’t expect drivers joining the motorway to stop at the end of the slip road. Based on my experience of learners, it’s clear they’re taught that the Yield sign doesn’t apply to anyone in a car.

A number of emotions hit me during and after the adventure of my rucksack yesterday evening. And I’ll never know whether my restraining myself from physically attacking the woman who'd taken it was a reflection of my civilised values or of my subconscious appreciation she’d surely have some unsavoury friends. But perhaps the greatest emotion one was of frustration at knowing there was nothing we could about it. As the two nearby policemen readily confirmed. Coming a close second was annoyance at myself for letting it happen, after decades of being over-cautious all over the world. Sadly, Madrid now seems to be in the same league as Barcelona when it comes to this sort of thing. And there doesn’t seem to be much political will to do anything about it in either place.

Just going back to the café in the services station on the A6 – There was a sign on the window saying it was terminantemente forbidden to eat your own food there. This was a new word for me and my guess was it corresponded to ‘strictly’ in English. Rather than ‘politely’.

Finally . . . To return to driving, it's good to know that the record for speeding in Spain is now held by a Brit. Caught doing 275kph or 168mph in his Ferrari somewhere down south this week. Brit. Rich enough to buy a Ferrari. Lives on the Costa del Sol. Somehow, I doubt that speeding is the biggest offence he's likely to have committed.

Looking for a holiday place to rent in Galicia this summer?

Click here for details of a lovely cottage in the hills outside Pontevedra. Mine, in fact.

I occasionally mention the speedboats abandoned on our Galician beaches. There may now be rather fewer of these, as “The members of the leading smuggling gang operating in Galicia, a well-travelled gateway for cocaine into Europe, were arrested and their boats seized in an operation which involved scores of officers from the police and the Civil Guard. The so-called lancheros - launch men - were under contract to Colombian cocaine cartels to bring ashore large consignments of the drug. After getting it on dry land, the lancheros hid the drugs to await transport to Britain and other destinations in Western Europe.” Now, this may seem like very good news to you, but spare a thought for our local economy. Times were hard enough already.

I’m used to reading odd female names inspired by the Catholic religion – like Penitencia, Imaculada and Purgatorio (though I may have made up the last of these) – but pickings are less rich when it comes to males. However, I see the father of the new president of the Galician Xunta is blessed with the name Saturnino, Which translates as, well, saturnine. Or melancholy, grave or gloomy. Which seems a lot to load a kid with. I wonder if anyone’s called Diablo. Or even just Lucifero. If so, it'd have to be recent development, as it’s only a few years since the Spanish state withdrew the obligation to name your children after saints. But Santo Saturnino? Well, yes, actually.

Roundabouts again . . . It’s struck me that, in the article I cited, there were no instructions about what signal to give when entering or exiting one of these. Perhaps this is just as well, as any signal, absence of signal or combination of signals seems to be perfectly acceptable. Which leads to the superordinate rule on any roundabout – Don’t trust any signal made by any other driver.

Apart from several Chinese and Italian restaurants, Pontevedra doesn’t offer much by way of international cuisine. The Korean restaurant closed down after only a few months and two Indian restaurants didn’t last much longer either. But the city is now overflowing with kebab places. I guess it’s the perfect dish for hungry souls patronising the dozens of bars and discos of the old quarter. Coincidentally, I’ve heard today that a kebab house in Santiago is offering Thai dishes. Which will have to be investigated.

Meanwhile . . . Hits to this blog have soared today. I’ve suggested this happens if I refer to sex, brothels or prostitutes but, in this case, it looks as if it’s because I cited ETA and terrorism. Perhaps there’s a horde of angry Basques out there tracking the blogosphere for any reference to these. Actually, most of Spain’s Basques seem angry but I guess this is because they’re the ones who get the media attention. They wouldn’t, of course, regard themselves as angry Spaniards.

Leading lights of the ETA terrorist organisation continue to fall into the hands of the French and/or Spanish police. These successes began in 2002 when the French government, after the Twin Towers atrocity, finally decided to stop turning a blind eye to activities on its territory designed to destabilise a fellow-EU member. But, anyway, perhaps it’s not too soon to see the effective evisceration of the organisation. ETA, I mean. Not the French government.

An El Mundo leader this week used the expression ‘a Scottish shower’. My guess was this wasn’t a reference to, say, Celtic football club but to the action of chucking cold water on some aspiration or other. But apparently not. According to this, it’s alternating streams of hot and cold water. Healthier. And, of course, cheaper.

Another nice word seen this week was obus, to describe the 40 yard shot from Ronaldo that put Oporto out of the Champions’ League semi-finals. I took this to be a poetic reference to a medieval cannon but the dictionary gives the more prosaic ‘howitzer’. En passant, here's one - slightly caustic -view of The Portuguese One's achievement. And of him generally. Highly amusing. And valid.

Well, it’s official. A local newspaper this week confirmed that, whether there are two approach lanes or just one to a roundabout (circle), we’re all supposed to funnel down to the one outside lane, whatever exit we’re taking. Even if there are two exit lanes going straight on. The second cardinal rule is that, if you do use the inside lane, you must give way to anyone on your right, in the outside lane. Of course, this is only theoretically possible if you’re executing the one exception to the primary outside-lane rule and are using the roundabout to make a U-turn. The article was about police plans to jack up their campaign to reduce accidents on these hazards. So I guess we can expect them to start parking nearby and fining anyone whom they allege is in the wrong lane. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to get done one of these days. Meanwhile, I’m genuinely interested to know whether these rules apply anywhere else in the world. I’ve driven in 20-30 countries and don’t recall this ever being the case. But it obviously makes sense to someone Spanish.

Finally. . . If there’s one thing the writer of this article should never do, it’s move to Spain.

The English expression Ne’er cast a clout til May is out has its Spanish equivalent in Hasta el 40 de mayo, no te quites el sayo. Just in case you don’t know, sayo is the masculine form of the (obsolete?) word for ‘petticoat’ and must mean something like ‘smock’. I mention these because, after two months of summer-like weather even here in Galicia, the winter has returned with a vengeance. Temperatures have plummeted, there's rain all around and many towns are on snow alert. The only compensating news is that this seems to be happening in the UK and France as well. But, as you would expect, this is comfort of a cold kind.

Still on language – Gay men who live together in the UK are usually referred to as ‘partners’. Here in Spain, if they contract a civil marriage (possible in the UK yet?), they're each referred to as a ‘husband’. Which, however logical, sounded decidedly odd when I heard an item on the radio last night about a Moroccan man stabbing his Spanish “ex husband” in Adra, Almería, before committing suicide. I guess lesbian partners are both called ‘wife’ but as this is the same word in Spanish as for ‘woman’, perhaps it grates less on the Anglo-Saxon ear.

The figures for road deaths here in Spain over the last two years are well down on previous years, suggesting an impressively serious response to tougher laws and harsher penalties. But I guess it’ll be a while before we cease to have cases like the macho cretin of 18 driving at 179kph (112mph) on a local road where the limit moves between 60 and 100. Not to mention the chap arrested last week when blind drunk and stationary in the middle of the A9 autopista. On a horse.

Even though the pound is rather lower that it’s been for years – but climbing today – prices in the UK can still come as a shock. Sometimes it’s obvious why things are far more expensive than in the rest of Europe and sometimes it isn’t. Train tickets are scandalously high because a private monopoly is always going to bleed the customer more than a state monopoly. And anything pleasurable in the UK – booze and alcohol, for example – always have massive taxes loaded on them. But why would the price of a 2 gigabyte USB pen be 18 pounds, when I can get one for 8 euros (say 6-7 quid) here in Spain?

I did return to the used clothes bin in the supermarket today. But only to chuck in the partner to my daughter’s boot thrown in yesterday, found pining in the garage this morning.

Finally, traffic to my blog shot up a bit yesterday. I wonder if this is because it contained words like oral, sex and brothel. I guess we’ll know the answer if the same thing happens today.

Finally, finally - A big welcome to Follower no. 18.

The tightening of the law and the penalties attached to breaches have certainly led to a better standard of driving in Spain in the last few years. And it was a full four hours after leaving Santander yesterday before we witnessed the first episode of insanely stupid overtaking - just as we left the straight coastal road of Asturias and entered the bends, hills and dangerous curves of northern Galicia. Of course, we later saw several examples of local idiosyncrasies but, in truth, these paled into insignificance against the antics of the maniac in the 4.2L Audi 4x4 earlier in the afternoon.

As they say in the business world, if you can’t think of anything else to do, have a personnel reorganisation. When it comes to addressing Spain’s economic woes, this is the position in which President Zapatero finds himself. And so, after days of rumours, today saw the inevitable cabinet reshuffle. According to Sr Z, its objectives are:- To work towards the recovery of the economy and employment; to strengthen Spain’s territorial cohesion; and to bring about all the reforms and changes which the second decade of the 21st century demands. Which is as meaningless a bunch of words as you could get. But it gives the illusion of action. Even if it’s only activity. The biggest head to fall is, naturally, that of the Minister of the Economy. He’s being replaced by a senior member of the PSOE socialist party, who is the proud owner, I believe, of a lovely flat in an illegal building along the coast here in Galicia. But, such has been the inconsistency in the application of the relevant law, I imagine that all he’s guilty of is the confusion which affects us all. And so I doubt that El Pais, for example, will be mentioning this. [Correction: The gentleman in question has not been given the Economics brief but that of Development/Fomento].

I guess it had to happen - and maybe I’m slow in picking it up – but I see that the word ‘application’ has now suffered a typical Anglo-Saxon contraction and become ‘app’. At least when it comes to your mobile-phone-cum-pocket-computer.

During the 10 days I slept at my parents’ flat in the UK, my towels were washed three times. I regard this as being above and beyond the call of duty and find it hard to imagine either of my daughters going to this trouble for me. Nor me, for that matter. What’s most remarkable is that, at the time my mother’s generation of women developed these habits, there were no automatic washing machines. But perhaps that’s why she now goes to the extremes she does. The pure joy of it all.

Finally, I am a late-coming acolyte at the court of the Times columnist, A A Gill. If you’ve never read him, here’s a good introduction to his style, on the G20 ‘riots’ in London. More usually, he’s the paper’s restaurant critic. Sort of.

I should, perhaps, point out that the comment at the end of yesterday’s post was a reference back to this sort of article in the British press this week, to the effect that men find it easier to get laid if they’re funny. Which is why every lonely-hearts ad from a man - even a committed psychopath - will claim he has a GSOH. Anyway, I didn’t get any emails. So this will be my last post for a while . . .

Another article which caught my eye in my mother’s (not-purchased-by-me) Daily Mail was one from Tom Utley, picking up on the alleged value to males of having sisters. Or, as he puts it:- “Over the years, I've often thanked my lucky stars I turned out to be such a well-balanced, sociable, cheerful, charming, outgoing, optimistic, capable and - above all - modest sort of fellow. Today, all is explained. My sunny disposition, my gift for coping with problems, my all-round good-eggness - these admirable qualities have little or nothing to do with my genes or my lucky stars. If we're to believe a study published this week, I owe my robust mental health, in 'significant' measure, to the fact that I have two sisters.” Every word of which is as true of me as it is of him. Honest. Well, the two sisters bit at least.

The good news of the day is that my new wing mirror arrived, just in time for me to take it back to Spain tomorrow. So, if you live in Spain and don’t want to pay through both nostrils for a replacement mirror, try Wingmirrorman on the net. He does what he says, at a fraction of the cost.

Talking of cars, I realised today I’ll soon be back to wondering what the driver in front of me is going to do next. And what exactly - if anything - his/her signal means. Swings and roundabouts. Especially roundabouts.

Is has to be said there’s quite a lot of ‘bad language’ in everyday Spanish discourse. Likewise in Gallego, where a common word is carallo. Or carajo in Spanish. Its basic meaning is the male member but its numerous derivatives make it an astonishingly versatile word. Rather than upset anyone by listing them here, I’m happy to send a little dissertation – in Spanish, ironically – to anyone who writes to me at colindavies@terra.es

I suggested the other day that a recession was normally a good time for students to keep their heads down and apply themselves to their studies. Reports of the sudden rise in applications to the Spanish Open University indicate that more people than ever are at least willing to take the first step of signing up for a course.

I’m not sure it’s the same people but the Galician Traffic Department up in Lugo has recently been implicated in a couple of perversions of process. Firstly, there was the announcement that an awful lot of people were being let off motoring fines in return for a contribution to someone’s benevolent fund. And, more recently, there was the uncovering of an elaborate set-up dedicated to the provision of un-merited driving licences to large numbers of Asians from all over Spain. So, if you’re hit by, say, a Chinese, Indian or Korean who doesn’t seem to know much about driving, you’ll now have some idea how he got a licence. Especially if he shows no understanding of spoken or written Spanish.

Here’s The Baldie with some pertinent comments on respective attitudes to race in Spain and the UK. On which issue there is mutual incomprehension, if not downright antagonism. In a nutshell, the Spanish see the Brits as obsessive, holier-than-thou, inverted racists, while the Brits just see the Spanish as simple racists - though often unwittingly and naively so. Which, in turn, the Spanish see as insufferable arrogance. All in all, it’s probably best not to raise the subject in public. Unless you’re Trevor. I steer clear of it, of course.

Here in Galicia, the serious loss of electorate support has finally persuaded the president of the Galician Nationalist Block – Anxel “Cock of the Walk” Quintana – to hand over the reins to someone else. Though the consensus is he jumped before he was pushed by what one writer today called his ‘cannibalistic’ colleagues. And, talking of the recent regional elections, the count of the overseas vote has now deprived the PP party of one of the seats won by them on the purely domestic vote. This won’t change anything as they still have - just - an absolute majority. But it seems a rum turn of events to me when local elections are decided on the votes of people who’ve possibly never even visited here. Especially, I guess, when some of us who pay taxes here don’t have a say in the matter.

Finally . . . While some Brits go native when they arrive here in Spain, it seems some of us only achieve it when we leave.

There is, it seems, someone who accurately predicted – back in 2005 - the financial mess the world is now in – an economic historian called Edward Chancellor. This is when he wrote a report entitled “Crunch time for Credit”. What a shame he wasn’t in charge of anything.

The political wrangling that’s currently taking place in the Basque Country may or may not be a example of good democracy in action. Over at The Spanish Shilling, Lennox sheds some interesting light on one or two aspects. But, as I say, I bow to almost anyone when it comes to understanding what’s going on there. My general view remains that, if a big slug of an existing nation wants to sail off on its own, then is should be allowed to do so if that’s what the majority want. Whether it’s Scotland, Wales, the Basque Country, Cataluña or Galicia.

If you’re a foreigner who sold a Spanish property between 2004 and 2006, it’s very likely that you were charged excessive tax and can now reclaim it, with interest. If you’re patient - and lucky - you may get it back before you kick the bucket.

On the other hand, if you’re Spanish and plan to drive in the UK, you should know that the law will shortly allow the British police to copy their Continental cousins and impose huge roadside fines on people who don’t live there. Or even on Brits who can’t prove that they do. Given my luck of the last year, I fully expect to be hit during my next visit. On a point of detail:- “The standard fine for a careless driving offence — including driving too close to the vehicle in front of you – will be 300 pounds.” This really will be problematical for Spanish drivers, as few of them consider tailgating at high speed anything other than obligatory. Incidentally, the report on this said the average length of the driving test is 19 minutes in France, 20 in Spain and 36 in the UK. Not that this necessarily means anything. Perhaps they take a break for tea.

In the last ten days, I’ve signed up for three UK-provided services via the internet. Now, I wouldn’t want to suggest British companies have any less interest in profit than Spanish companies. But it certainly does seem they have a different view on how to maximise it. In each case, the process was easy and quick and the customer-orientated follow-up was amazing. Or maybe I’m easily astonished these days. That said, the British approach of enticing customers and then persuading them, via excellent service, to stay does rather contrast with what I’ve called the standard Spanish process of trapping your customers, screwing them and then making it difficult to impossible for them to escape. Cue comments from Spanish readers about examples of appalling service in the UK. Which surely does exist but I’m making a general point, based on recent personal experience. It's one of the things that make me worry about Spain's ability to compete internationally now that the good times are over.

Finally, three fotos . . .

This is A Casa da Luz, in Plaza Verdura in Pontevedra's lovely old quarter. It hasn't been occupied for at least 8 years but used to be the HQ of the local police. Now it's being converted into the offices of the Rias Baixas tourist organisation. It gets its name - Electricity House - from the fact it was the first place in Spain to have power, generated from a local stream. Anyway, this is what I'm told and it's a nice story.


In contrast, here's the front of some flats recently completed in the nearby port of Combarro.


If you think this is bad, here's what they look like from the back . . .


I think I've mentioned before that this is what I call the 'toilet' style of architecture. Sadly, it's become quite common along the coast here. Or should I say 'very common'?

The Business Section of El País today avers that Spain’s chances of recovering as quickly as she might from the recession are hampered by the fact the Government is being vacillatory while the Opposition is rendered ineffective by a fratricidal internal struggle. Which is just another way of saying what I wrote yesterday, I like to think.

In sharp contrast to Spain - where the government’s popularity is more than merely surviving the economic downturn – Britain’s governing Labour party now looks irretrievably doomed. Just a year or so ahead of general elections, all recent polls put them miles behind the Opposition Conservative party. One commentator has suggested the only surprising thing about this is that it’s been so long coming.

On a wider front, talk of protectionism is inevitably in the air - even in Britain, which has traditionally played rather more by the level-playing-field rules than most other nations, including its EU partners. Especially its EU partners. Which is all just an excuse to lift this joke from one of today’s papers – “To stem a flood of Japanese bicycles the French decreed that henceforth each machine had to be individually tested. OK, said the Japanese. Not at the port of entry, but in the remote provincial town of Poitiers, the French specified. OK, sighed the Japanese. And by a French Olympic medallist, the French insisted. OK, groaned the Japanese. Unfortunately, said the French, there aren't any French cycling medallists.”

The local police are referred to around here - and possibly everywhere else in Spain- as payasos, or clowns. But it’s be hard to beat the stupidity of two members of the better-regarded national police force, the Guardia Civil, who not only fooled around with three young women in and near their car but allowed them to take pictures of the proceedings. Which, of course, we can now all enjoy at our leisure.

So . . . is this the first sign of an answer to my regular question about how long it will be before we see evidence Spain is becoming less europhilic. Assuming you regard Cataluña as part of Spain, of course.

Talking of signs . . . Here’s one on Pontevedra’s inner ring, just before a large roundabout/circle . . .

But why? Well, it may help to explain why, after 8 years, I remain mystified as to how one is supposed to go through a roundabout in Spain. The inference to be drawn from the lines is that you can stay in either lane if you’re going straight on. But the evidence of my own eyes is that all drivers here are taught to get into the right-hand lane if they’re going straight on. And even if they’re turning left! In fact, I’ve seen them doing this even when executing a U-turn. Given what will happen if you stay in the left-hand lane to go straight on and the car on your right is turning left, perhaps it’s no great surprise that roundabouts account for the highest percentage of accidents here in Galicia. And possibly in the rest of Spain as well. Does anyone know what the law says? Not that this is always very relevant here, of course. Unless you want to avoid one of the ever-rising number of fines being handed out by the revenue-hungry traffic police.

Finally, here’s an article which suggests the British are on the verge of rising up against what I’ve been calling for years the country’s very own brand of corruption – feather-bedding by civil servants. Maybe. We will see.

Some months ago Scotland’s First Minister made exactly the same boast as the Spanish President, viz. that his country’s banks were “among the most stable financial institutions in the world.” Well, at least events haven’t overtaken both of these assertions and President Zapatero still has the right to repeat the claim. Though this might amount to another of his favoured hostages to fortune as we await the 2008 results of Spanish banks that some say are being delayed because they aren’t what they were cracked up to be. Even so, I doubt that events will have overtaken words in the Spanish case quite so spectacularly as they did in the Caledonian case. There goes Scottish independence in 2010. Not that it had much chance anyway.

I’m confused as to how the French government can be offering subsidies to the country’s car makers, provided they keep jobs in France. Perhaps the EU has relaxed its laws on this. Or maybe France is once again leading the way in disregarding basic EU principles that have suddenly become incompatible with her self-interest. Or maybe I was just plain wrong to think state handouts were now forbidden as being prejudicial to fair competition.

Near term, it looks as if the UK might lack the cash to make any hand-outs, even if there were industries left to get them and even if the government wanted to legally or illegally help these. The head of a think tank called Work Foundation has suggested Britain is on the verge of bankruptcy and close to needing a loan from the IMF. Meanwhile, it seems to be the consensus that the 37 billion pounds recently given to British banks succeeded in stopping the complete collapse of the banking system but failed to solve the credit crisis. So another humungous sum is apparently required. OK, but this still leaves the question – If cash isn’t flowing around the financial corpus [corpse?], where is the 37 billion that was doled out a few weeks ago? Sitting in the vaults? Being paid out in bonuses? It would be nice to know. Especially if you're a British taxpayer. And the unwitting owner of shares in several of said banks.

As for Spain, click here if you want a balanced local view on how things are going here. The author endorses my comment of yesterday that the government appears to be quite clueless. Perhaps the cabinet sat down a few months ago and said “Well, we successfully lied our way through the general election last March, so why don’t we try the same thing ahead of the Basque and Galician general elections this coming March. Or let’s just whistle.” Sadly, though, events such as the S&P downgrading of Spain’s credit rating means that masterly inactivity is not really a viable option now. Especially as the natives are showing signs of getting increasingly restless. And that was before the EU announced that the government’s latest economic forecasts were so much wet paper!

Here in Galicia, yesterday’s papers had what I guess we could call the Monday Litany. 21 years old. BMW. 140 horsepower. Curve. Reasons unknown. Excessive speed. No seat belts. Another six young people dead. Obviously, the most depressing day of the year was harder to take for some than for others.

Talking of driving, I’m encouraged to see it’s not only in my barrio that this sort of thing takes place.

I thought I'd leave you with a smile . . .

Responding to the demonstration against property abuses, the leading light in the Spanish association of constructors dismissed negative UK press reports as “a work of fiction”. In other words, like every politician and businessman in Spain, he’s telling the truth and everyone else is lying. Not content with this, he moved on to the sophistry of suggesting there can’t have been any skulduggery because no one has taken a case to the [infamously slow] Spanish courts. The problem is - as I think Oscar Wilde said - that this is worse than criminal; it’s stupid. Being both fuel for the media fire and prejudicial to the interests of Spain. It may play well in Almería but not where the money comes from. However, it takes a perspective wider than that of a Spanish constructor to understand this. No wonder one hears even Spaniards despair of this country at times.

On a lighter note – I was sipping a Rioja in a new bar last night when some familiar sound drew my eyes to the TV in the corner. There was a group of odd folk in strange black garb, prancing around and hitting each other’s sticks. The legend said it was a traditional British folk dance. So I'm guessing they were Satanic Morris dancers.

It must be good to be a civil servant anywhere in the world when times are tough. I say this because the Voz de Galicia tells us that some 30 Xunta members will be off to the Havana Book Fair shortly, at a cost of 51,000 euros for the flights alone. But at least the long stretches in the air will allow for plenty of reading.

Most drivers in Spain are, of course, as good and as sensible as those elsewhere but we do seem to have a higher percentage here – though perhaps only in Galicia – of the insanely reckless. Like the 18 year old just done for travelling at 216kph in an 80kph area. He excuse was that he’d just got the car of his dreams – a high-powered sports model, naturally – and wanted to show his friends what it could do. If you're asking how an 18 year old can afford such an expensive car – or even just the insurance – you should know this is something that’s often asked around here. As it happens, I took my morning coffee behind a mother who was underwriting a loan agreement for her teenage son and I’m pretty sure it was for a car. As the representative from the loan company was one of those Spanish women who thinks the entire café should hear every word she says, I suppose I could have listened in, to be sure. But I had better things to do.

Talking of driving – The head of the Traffic Department in Galicia has called for more respect for the rules and pointed out that a mere 10% of pedestrians mown down are on zebra crossings at the time. If I understand his logic, he'd like this to be 100%. I guess he'll move on to drivers when he's whipped the pedestrians into shape.

Galicia now has around 96,000 foreigners living here. Real ones, I mean. Not those from other regions of Spain. This is a whopping 76,000 more than 10 years ago. For those interested, here are the numbers. From which you can see there are even more Chinese here than Brits. But the really remarkable number is that for the Rumanians – which is 80% up on a year ago. And this is before they became entitled to live here as of 1 January. All numbers are in thousands:-
Portuguese – 17.1
Brazilians – 10.5
Colombians – 8.4
Argentineans – 6.4
Rumanians – 5.0
Uruguayans – 4.8
Moroccans – 4.3
Venezuelans – 4.2
Peruvians – 2.8
Dominicans – 2.7
Cubans – 2.1
France - 1.7
China - 1.6
UK - 1.5

Finally, I booked this evening for a future trip on the night train to Madrid. I would have done this this morning, when I first when to the station. But they told me they only sell advance tickets after 3pm - forcing me to ask whether customer service is actually going backwards in Spain.

In contrast to flying, I actually look forward to the train journey. Not that it’s ever proved as romantic as it’s made out to be. So far, at least.

Traffic deaths over the holiday weekend were well down on last year and ever further down on those the last time this particular holiday was over a weekend. Hard to argue against the general impact of the tougher traffic laws, even if they are being used in some places as revenue generators.

The other bit of good news is the arrest of the latest ETA leader in France, only a couple of weeks after that of the previous one. This, I believe, is the fruit of the sort of cross-border cooperation that should have been taking place for 40 years but only really began after 9-11, when the French suddenly found it harder to justify their laissez-faire attitude.

Then there was the odd bit of news that the national rail operator, Renfe, has announced more cheap tickets on the Madrid-Barcelona route provided you buy online and use only Microsoft’s Explorer to do so. I’m guessing this is more convenient for Renfe and that customer preferences can go hang. It reminds me of the time you could only buy on line by first taking your ID to a station and when the CEO of the company said he didn’t care that other service providers didn’t impose such ridiculous conditions.

Justice may well be snail-like here but, first, it has to be preceded by equally slow credit- collection measures. It will come as no surprise that I’m in dispute with Ya.com over bills for the period after my ADSL went down. “Just pay our bill and call us on this [premium] number and we will refund it if it’s wrong”, they say. But I am holding out against the second of two dubious bills. The first one I paid on 24 November so I was rather surprised to receive a letter on Friday – ten days later - asking me to cough up. Or, rather, I wasn’t surprised. I guess it will be a pointless court summons next.

Talking of dilatoriness and news items . . . “Almost two thirds of the beach establishments along the Costa del Sol will be denied licenses when they come up for renewal next year, the regional government has warned. The Andalucian coastal authority has announced plans to enforce a 1988 law designed to prevent construction within 100 metres of the waterline.” Better late than never, I suppose. Perhaps they’ve run out of concrete.

Nearer home, the Galician government is rather concerned that the pampas grass imported to adorn the edges of the region’s spinal autopista is now colonising the coastal fringe. Not to mention my garden since I borrowed a couple of plants from the forest. And they do get big. I might just take them back.

Finally . . . I saw an ad recently for a place near Benidorm called The Villaitana Wellness, Golf and Business Sun Resort. Which just about covers all the bases, I guess. Maybe it’s even been built. Possibly legally.

According to an article on Madrid hotels I’ve just read, Spain is “renowned for its rich individuality”. I’ll go with that. In fact, I have done many times over the past four years. As attested by the number of citations under the Individualismo label on the right. Sometimes a thing of wonder and sometimes a thing of enormous irritation. If you’re not Spanish, of course.

I see that in Spain Bombay is still ‘Bombay’ and not ‘Mumbai’. As it is in Indian English, apparently. But the BBC knows best.

My quest for a decent, quiet place to take a morning coffee and read a book – as yet unsuccessful – has led me to a few of conclusions about the modern Spanish bar. Firstly, it’s de rigeur now for any self-respecting place to have 2 to 4 flat-screen TVs on the wall. Essentially, wherever there’s a space for one. Secondly, at least one of these will be blaring out loud music with a heavy bass at any and every time of the day. And, thirdly, this music is played for the pleasure of the young [and bored] bar staff and not for whoever the clientele might be. Certainly not the ones trying to read a book or even just a newspaper at 11 of a morning. Perhaps I will have to resort to ear-plugs during the day as well as the night.

I see that research shows that drivers with a hangover are more dangerous than those dosed up on alcohol or less legal drugs. Thanks to sleep deprivation, dehydration and distracting headaches, I suppose. I already stay off Spain’s roads during the early hours of Saturday and Sunday morning to avoid the drunks returning home after eight hours of partying. Now, it seems, I might have to leave things until at least the evening. Or possibly Monday.

I also read that the GPS alarm on the released prisoner who killed his girlfriend this week in Pontevedra was, in fact, working but “the alarm was not heard by the civil servants working at the Electronic Control Centre.” My is guess the guy was smart enough to wait until the morning coffee break, when no civil servant in Spain deigns to work.

Finally, more here on what might happen to the euro and the EU, as they are tested by the global crisis. As for Britain and these institutions, yesterday the President of the EU Commission, Mr Barroso, assured French TV viewers that its political leaders had told him the UK would have fared better if it’d had the euro. “ How, exactly, would we have been better off?” asks the author of the article – “Our current mess is caused by over-reliance on bankers, six years of incontinent spending by Gordon Brown and a housing/credit bubble that has pushed personal debt to 103 per cent of GDP. Joining the euro would not have prevented any of this. It would have made matters worse. The European Central Bank held rates at 2 per cent for part of this decade to help Germany out of the doldrums. Imagine what such rates would have done to Britain's property boom. You might as well have poured petrol on the fire, as Ireland and Spain can attest. . . Nothing is pre-ordained in the euro drama. The chief reason for launching the single currency – before economies had properly converged – was to force the pace of political union. It may have to deliver on this agenda. Either the EU creates the machinery needed to cushion the bust on Europe's fringes, or EMU will drift into crisis. The ball is in the court of very reluctant paymasters in Germany.” So, interesting times. Especially if your country, say Spain, needs different policies from, say, Germany and France.

No sooner has Franco’s daughter told us he admired Brits than all signs and symbols of his existence are stripped from his home town of Ferrol, here in Galicia. As it’s a port, perhaps a gunboat would be the appropriate response to this grave insult. Sir John Moore is probably spinning in his grave up in La Coruña.

Just as I suspected – foreigners are being singled out for particular attention by the traffic police. Sort of. Actually, I’m not the only one, of course, to have noticed what’s going on. A cartoon in the Voz de Galicia today has President Zap injecting funds into the banking system, the car industry and the town halls, while in an parallel sketch he’s drawing a huge vial of blood from a cringeing motorist.

I’ve been saying for years now that – in the UK at least – it’s The Age of the Bureaucrat. This article describes just how things have developed there, during a high-growth period when the great majority of new jobs created were for luxuriously feather-bedded civil servants. As the writer says, “Every time there's a problem, we stick a quango on it like a child's Band-Aid, and the system is becoming so top-heavy it can only topple over. We're quickly becoming as bureaucratic as a third-world country.” Can’t see myself ever going back there. These things have a habit of being difficult to change, whoever comes to power. And then there’s the education system . . .

Galicia

On Friday night my house in Pontevedra was shaken by the loudest thunderclap I’ve heard in my life. The accompanying bolt of lightening apparently knocked out some folks’ central heating boilers. Which is odd as it seemed to shock mine into action. Or at least that’s what I told the engineer who’d had no success with mine until the garage door was almost blown in by the blast and we both jumped out of our skins.

I’ve mentioned that most of the stuff in our Sunday flea-market looks like it just came out of the house of the last person to die up in the hills. From time to time – as befits a seafaring people – there are overseas artefacts of possible interest, like a carved bone walking stick I saw today and thought of buying for future use. But I wonder who could have sailed off and got the top hat and bowler hat I saw on sale today. Complete with their original boxes. My bet is they’ll take a while to shift. Especially as we don’t have an amdram society here that might just make use of them.

Mr Sarkozy and Mrs Merkel met yesterday and gave us one of the more amusing photos of the year – a rear view of the pair of them walking up a cobbled hill in a French town, with Mr S’s lifts clearly visible. Perhaps ‘stumbling’ would be a better word in his case.

The purchase of 30% of the Spanish energy company, Repsol, by the Russian company, Lukoil, gets curiouser and curiouser. Now we’re told the troubled construction company that bought the shares two years ago effectively got government assistance to do so. One wonders why.

If you’re thinking of moving to the UK and so need to know whatever ‘Britishness’ might be, the book cited here should help. Or you could just buy it just for a laugh.

What was I saying about it being increasingly hard to accept incidents of inebriated police officers when they’re enforcing ever-stricter laws? We’ve also got a report in today’s papers about a judge in Cataluña physically threatening the police who stopped him for drunken driving? Where will it stop? The President being done for murderous road rage?

I would quote the latest figures on the construction sector here but they’re just too depressing to repeat. The OECD now says Spain will be the second worst performing economy in Europe in the near term, with only the UK getting a worse rating. The difference, of course, is that Britain has the option of letting its currency fall so as to stimulate exports. In theory at least. Freefall, though, is not generally regarded as a positive.

Galicia

Pontevedra’s council has issued an incomprehensible map of all the changes being made to the city’s serpentine one-way traffic system. Should be good for raising revenue from confused drivers going down a street in a direction that was legal yesterday but ain’t today. Especially as it will be a while before they change all the arrows on the roads.

Some killjoy Nationalist politician has asked for an enquiry as whether our annual bullfights receive illegal subsidies. Surely not.

If you’re going to Vigo, don’t go out of your way to visit the new A Laxe shopping centre down near the seafront. It’s a remarkably ugly building that’s even worse on the inside. The people responsible for it – who may have previously built flat blocks in East Berlin during the 60s – should be machine-gunned. But probably won’t be.

Well, I’m a little more clued up about why Spanish students are unhappy with the Bologna Process. Many of them protested in Barcelona yesterday, bringing out the riot police of the Catalan statelet. Reportedly, they’re concerned that “traditional Spanish degrees are being scrapped under the process, whose aim is to make academic degree standards more comparable and compatible across Europe.” Specifically, the students predict "educational inequality and insecurity" and the “commercialisation" of higher education. Translated, I guess this means they’ll have to work harder. And possibly achieve their degrees in the stipulated time, not over a decade or so. Or perhaps I’m being unfair. At least to 10-20% of the undergraduate population. Over at Kalebeul, Trevor has a take on this which is even more pungent than usual. I wonder how he survives. Possibly by disguising himself as The Baldie.

It’s good to see that in the important area of energy generation, Barcelona is ahead of the pack. I regret to say that the development reported would have allowed my father to say that great things are taking place in the dead centre of the city.

When I lived in Tehran 35 years ago, it was embarrassing - but flattering – to find that every Iranian believed that Britain still controlled the entire world, including the USA. Astonishingly, things are exactly the same now. According to a British reporter living there, the Iranians “imagine Britain to be fathomlessly powerful and duplicitous, constantly striving to achieve Iran’s collapse – a nation capable, in the Persian saying, of ‘cutting off your head with cotton’. To a remarkable degree, this perception has survived the end of empire and the decline of Britain’s global influence. No country in this age of cramped diplomatic horizons is more comforting to the British ego than Iran.” I miss it.

As it happens, this is the second time today I’ve quoted someone Persian but you’ll have to go to The Economist’s web page for the first. It’s somewhere among the 1260 other comments to the tendentious article on Devolution.

With the British government announcing ever-stricter [and controversial] anti-speeding laws, the subject is topical over there as well, not just in my blog. I won’t bore you with links to articles accusing the UK government of being more interested in revenue than safety but I will give you a thought that occurred to me yesterday. When I came to Spain 8 years ago, enforcement of not-very-strict laws was rather lax. Rather as things currently are with cigarette smoking. Now, however, the law is much tougher and the police ever more zealous. The former situation was surely wrong and the latter right, as evidenced by the declining mortality figures. But the odd thing is it used to be possible to be semi-relaxed about the local police chief being drunk after lunch and regularly driving into the back of other road users. Now, it seems outrageous and totally unacceptable. Though unlikely to change, I suspect.

Finally . . . I don’t know what ‘enables’ it or how it works but I see there’s a feature on this blog saying it has 12 Followers. This is, of course, very gratifying but I do wish the total would advance. Or even retreat. For, with this exact number of followers, I’m dangerously close to delusions of some grandeur . . .

Reader Moscow has kindly cited this article, on how to go about doing business in Spain. It seems pretty accurate to me – and not too dissimilar to one or two other countries – but I particularly like the point that “Listening attentively, while a virtue in many societies, is optional in Spain.” Answering your mobile phone when you’re talking to someone else is, on the other hand, absolutely obligatory. Even if you’re a shop assistant attending to a customer.

But to be very positive about Spain – As I’ve said before, one of the great joys here is that there is certainly concern but no phobia about paedophilia. As a result, it’s still possible for the generations to interact the way they used to in the UK when I was young. And men of my age – or any age, for that matter – are not terrified of what will be thought should they even talk to a child. For an insight into just how bad things now are in Insane Britain, click here. A taster . . . “Negative sentiments are the direct consequence of the mistrust and suspicion fuelled by the prevailing paranoid regime of child protection. It is our obsessively protective parenting culture that is responsible for the erosion of inter-generational relationships.” The irony, of course, is that the Spanish believe the British don’t care much for kids.

Being rather more mundane . . . The operation of speed cameras is obviously a live issue for me right now. So it was interesting to read this article on the UK introduction of the latest average-speed technology. I guess we’ll have it here soon as it seems effective in its primary purposes of annoying drivers, disturbing traffic flow and maximising revenue. The Spanish traffic police announced a campaign against the use of mobile phones last week but, if they were really serious about this, I could nominate several spots where they could just sit and shoot fish in a barrel. It’s one of the de-merits of having a house in the hills that I drive up against a tide of fools coming down round sharp bends at excess speed and with only one hand on the wheel. But, anyway, it’s good to know that at least one or two of Spain’s cretins get nabbed.

I see Carrefour has sacked its Spanish Chief Executive. No reason has been given but I like to think it’s because of the complaints I made to France about the duff printer I bought there early this year, not to mention my thoughts on Carrefour’s response to my request for a new one.

I also see in today’s news that an oil tanker has been taken over by pirates off the coast of Africa. I have to admit to a fleeting hope that it's the one my neighbour, Nice-but-Noisy Tony, is currently sailing on.