Funding Catholicism; Eschewing blame; Kamikaze drivers; and Frightening smokers (as if);

In 1977, as I recall, the Spanish state and the Catholic church reached an agreement under which the Church would become self-financing immediately. But wheels sometimes turn very slowly here and nothing was done until recently to change the Franconian system under which the state made an annual block grant to the Church. True, for thirty-odd years there was a box on your tax form which gave the impression the size of the grant was dependent on how many people ticked this. But it wasn’t. However, a year or so ago the government finally moved to implement the 1975 concordat, while at the same time significantly increasing the percentage of your taxes you could vote to go to the Church. The end result in 2009 was that it received 252.7m euros, which was 11m (4.5%) up on the previous year. Or more than they’d have got if the government had kept to its previous practice of increasing the grant by the inflation figure. So, perhaps the state should hand over the running of the economy to the Catholic Church.

Good to see that a USA study has established that an hour’s siesta sharpens up the mind and makes us ‘cleverer’. Clearly, there’s more of this going on in ecclesiastical than in government circles.

Which reminds me . . . Having belatedly come round to the view that Spain is in deep recession and that this isn’t likely to end next week, President Zapllyanna is now in denial about whose fault it all is. Nowt to do with him, apparently. Things started to go wrong under his predecessor, Mr Aznar, and the current crisis is due to irrational markets and greedy speculators. Nothing can be attributed to him, it seems, simply because he’s been asleep at the tiller of the ship of state. Dreaming, no doubt, of how to improve the image of Spain among liberal progressives.

There’s quite a lot of global competition but one sector in which Spain can stand tall is that of large scale fraud. Today, for example, we read of a chap who’d managed to swindle 29m euros from a Chinese corporation. On reflection, though, this is probably small beer in this segment of international commerce.

There was another kamikaze incident this week in Galicia, unfortunately fatal. This is when a driver takes his or her car the wrong way down an autopista. I was going to ask whether this happens much in countries other than Spain but I guess the proper first question is whether it happens much in regions of Spain other than Galicia. Whatever the answer to this might be, in this case the (female) driver was almost four times over the drink limit. And had been convicted of drunken driving only last December.

Years ago, I recall being amused by the adverse reaction of the Spanish media to the suggestion that shocking fotos be put on cigarette packs. Newspapers which revelled in the publication of pictures of gore and shattered bodies felt this was going a bit too far for the sensibilities of the public. So it was good to read today that cigarette manufacturers will soon have to chose from a galaxy of eleven gruesome picture to adorn their packaging. And that Yes, it’s just possible that a total ban on smoking in public places will be introduced this year. We will see.

Which reminds me . . . When I said to one of the waitresses in my regular bar today that I thought it was forbidden to take children into the Smoking section, she smiled, shrugged and murmured “Yes. But here in Spain . . . ”

Finally . . . A Spanish member of the George Borrow Society – Professor Fernando Alonso Romero – has written a book entitled El Mundo de lo muertos en Galicia y en el folklore del occidente Europeo. Or The World of the Dead in Galicia and in the folklore of Western Europe. ISBN 978-84-87904-85-1 for those with a passionate interest in these things.

Comments Moderation: Thanks to what looks like a Google glitch, I didn’t know that our spotty friend from the Middleton fish and chip shop in Manchester had returned to provide further evidence of something he established long ago – viz. that, as they say in the rougher parts of Liverpool, the best of him ran down his father’s leg. So, with apologies to regular commentators, I’ve had to re-initiate the moderation of comments.

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