I had hoped the Spanish media would show little interest in the royal wedding. How wrong can you be. Their obsession with it is only marginally below that of the UK media. El Mundo’s contribution today was the front page headline, the first leader, a cartoon and 3 more pages of nonsense inside. Enough to make a republican out of me.

We’re now being regaled by glossy TV messages from all the political parties telling us to vote Yes in the imminent referendum on the EU Constitution. These are shown one after the other in a truly mind-numbing sequence that should do nothing for the turnout. There is, to be honest, a contribution at the end suggesting that we vote No but, as this is entirely in Catalan, its effect is likely to be minimal. A poll in today’s papers suggests that 67% of Spaniards are not remotely concerned either way with the result and that only 3% will be upset if it goes against their preference. One can see why the government might be worried that the turnout will be embarrassingly low. The truth is that almost everyone in Spain loves the EU for the money it has poured into the country but no one feels much inclined to demonstrate any gratitude. Only annoyance that the Eastern European countries will soon have their [bigger] snouts in the trough.

I went to pay our parking fine today. The office was small and lined with shelves stacked high with box upon box of dockets. Six clerks were toiling away in the centre. If not exactly Dickensian, it did put me in mind of a photo of the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary working with his staff in his Scriptorium. En passant, the letter telling me that our appeal had been rejected contained hundreds of words on two dense A4 pages. The letter confirming I had paid was brief and to the point. Stranger still, the former was in Gallego and the latter in Spanish.

In a nearby town hall this week, there was a fight between one of the councillors and a local businessman. One of them somehow broke a leg. Yesterday, all the political parties announced that this sort of thing did little for the reputation of their members. So that’s this year’s wise statement from politicians out of the way, then.