I touched in my last blog on the pragmatic approach of the Spanish police. Right on cue, I read today that there is a massive shanty town on the edge of Madrid which houses - if that is the right word - drug addicts from all over the country. Only two organisations go in and out safely, a specialist charity and the police. The activities on the site are surely illegal but the place is government-approved as ‘part of a campaign to confine hard-drug activity to a remote region out of the way’. Exile, if you like.

I also read an article which questioned whether old-fashioned corruption wasn’t preferable to the ‘corruption of our very souls by managerialism that is turning Britain into a very corrupt little country indeed’. According to the writer, the latter is not only compatible with inefficiency, inertia and incompetence but actually promotes them. Whereas, it can be argued, straightforward financial corruption might actually contribute to human good, such as the building of a new road, or the pedestrianisation of a city centre. Especially where there is over-regulation. Something in this, I fear.

Here in Spain, children – and, indeed, adults – receive presents both on their birthday and on their saint’s day. Their saint, of course, is the one whose name they bear. We are commonly told that only 25 or 30% of Catholics attend Mass each week but I would guess that 100% of the faithful – young and old – still adhere to this tradition. As a lapsed Catholic, I feel entitled to weigh up its merits.

I have commented occasionally on the bizarre obituaries that make it into the pages of the major newspapers here. Today it was the turn of Vaughan Meader, who shot to fame in the sixties on the back of his ability to impersonate the voices of both Jack and Robert Kennedy. Fascinating. Actually, I might have misspelled both his first and last names. But who would know?