The Presidents of Spain, France, Italy and Germany met yesterday to give a boost to next week’s Spanish referendum on the EU Constitution. Or, rather, they didn’t as the last two cried off because of ‘a cold’. Strangely enough, this didn’t prevent the German President [alright, Chancellor] from appearing at a domestic event. Meanwhile, matters in Spain have reached the point where some EU body has decided that the government has overstepped the mark in spending taxpayers’ money to persuade them to vote Yes. As if this will change anything. And today there was a complaint from one of the minor parties that an encouragement to vote was even appearing on the national lottery tickets. Desperate times, desperate measures.

You’ll all know that Lent began on Wednesday, preceded by Mardi Gras-type events around the world, including Spain. But things didn’t stop there. All this week there have been various bizarre rituals around the country centring on the mock burial of some stuffed creature or other. Here in Galicia, the sardine seems to be the favourite corpse but in Pontevedra it is a huge Pythonesque parrot, called Ravachol. Fittingly, it was dressed in the colours of the local football team, who stand nil chance now of avoiding an immediate return to the third division at the end of the season. The funeral cortege set off at 9pm and weaved its way around the old quarter, accompanied by weeping mourners of all ages. As ever with this event, many of the mini-skirted widows in weeds were anything but female, raising a question or two about such zeal for cross-dressing. The other regular feature is a large number of participants dressed as cardinals, bishops and nuns, suggesting that the event might once have been used for surreptitious criticism of the religious authorities.

The Diario de Pontevedra is offering a free umbrella with one of next week’s editions. In any normal Galician winter, this would have been a sure-fire success. And, before the onset of the driest winter in over 50 years, it must have looked like a great idea. In fact, the last rain to speak of was in the peak holiday month of August, when it was rather less welcome than it would be now.