Dawn

Dawn

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Gibraltar continues to feature in newspaper articles about corruption on the south coast. A well-known Anglo-Spanish journalist – Tom Burns Marañón – has expressed doubts that the place is as guilty as charged but added the rider that he doesn’t expect to convince any readers, as Spanish political correctness demands that The Rock is seen as a den of thieves. Given the daily headlines of malfeasance on the part of senior businessmen and politicians in Spain itself, this obsession with financial skulduggery in Gibraltar certainly can strike one as rather odd. I would guess that Switzerland is far more deserving of the accusations but this, of course, wouldn’t butter any electoral parsnips in Spain.

One of the local papers pointed out today that, whereas many other parts of Spain are connected to Madrid by high speed trains, getting there from La Coruña in Galicia still takes the almost 9 hours it took 25 years ago. I guess this says something about the relative importance of the still-rather-isolated North West. The article stressed that one can get to Madrid in less than half this time by car, assuming an average speed of 140kph. As mentioned yesterday, getting copped doing this speed will shortly lose you several points from your driving licence, something which the paper seemed to regard as quite irrelevant.

Quote of the Day

The Spanish south coast is a sunny place for shady people.

Noel Coward. So not much change there, then.

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