If you go to The Economist’s review of Spain and check out the on-line comments, you’ll see there are ten times more of these [almost a thousand] in respect of the Devolution section than for the initial overview [The Morning After]. If you’ve got nothing better to do this weekend and you want an insight into Spain’s tribalism, read all the Devolution comments. Or at least dip into them. Essentially, what you’ll find is a lot of intelligent, articulate Spaniards calling each other liar, cretin and [of course] fascist. But at least some of them seem aware this doesn’t play well. There's very much more heat than light and it's all pretty depressing. And grist to the mill of my view that only true federalism has any chance of eradicating this cancer in the Spanish body politic. But possibly not a very high one. Meanwhile, I’m increasingly happy I’m not in President Zap’s shoes.

Galicia

The new ‘children’s park’ down the hill is nearing completion. As you can see, it includes a floodlit, all-weather football/basketball pitch . . .

It’s actually been in use for a couple of weeks now but the only kids who come are from the two permanent gypsy settlements a kilometre or more away. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, but since it was totally predictable, one has to wonder why this facility wasn’t built on or close to their land. Did the Poio council just not think things through? Or did, perhaps, the Nationalist [even-more-left-of-centre than the socialists] mayor of Poio think it would be appropriate/amusing to locate a magnetic facility in the heart of an upper middle-class barrio? I guess we’ll never know but, as you can see, the end result is there’s now a gypsy play/sports facility directly directly above the courts of the private tennis club.

Well, that’s not the only result, of course. The people living opposite the park now have rather more noise to contend with than they did previously. And I can’t help wondering whether the ‘social justice’ factor is sufficient compensation for them. Not that they were ever going to vote for a Nationalist politician, if it isn’t. Which, I suppose, the mayor may have realised all along.

Actually, the folk living near the park might not be the only ones miffed at events; I see the council is building a concrete stairway between houses up to some swings and roundabouts at the top of the hill opposite. But the really good news is that they're also taking the opportunity to put down the pavement that wasn’t laid 20 years ago when the first houses were constructed here . . .