Things just go from bad to worse for the Spanish royal family. It was dispiriting enough when the king's son-in-law was arraigned for large scale fraud but now this case has somehow sucked in the German aristocrat who's his long-time lover. Thank God the family doesn't have Corgis or they'd surely be in the dock soon..

Un/una sexy is Spanish for a sexy person, male and female. Naturally, the plural is Unos/unas sexys. As in the ads on the right hand side of my Facebook page for Madres solteras sexys. Sexy single mothers. Not quite what I am looking for but Facebook clearly still have a few bugs to work out.

Which reminds me . . . One of the Privacy options for who should see my Facebook posts is Only me. Are there really people who write stuff which only they themselves can see? I can't believe it.

Anglo names are virtually always Hispanicised for local consumption. One exception is that of Jack El Destripador. Or Jack The Ripper. Not Juan/Juanito El Destripador. Wonder why.

A couple of public service notices:-

1. The Spanish tax authorities have warned of 'phishing' emails said to be from them and telling the recipient he or she has a refund due. Very authentic looking, these ask for bank details to reimburse overpaid tax for the previous year. If you're daft enough to send these, your account will promptly be emptied.
2. I've had a lot of emails saying there's a message waiting for me somewhere. These are easily ignored as I don't recognise the name of the sender. Today, though, I was advised of a message sent from WAYN by a person I do know. A quick check confirmed she hadn't sent it.

Today's Good News

• Having said that the Government's strategy in respect of Gibraltar is crazy, I was naturally pleased to read that “politicians have urged the government to improve relations with Gibraltar after claiming the relationship has deteriorated under Mariano Rajoy.” I suspect these were all Opposition party politicians but what the hell.
• The exposure of politicians continues in the press. Today we learned that President Rajoy takes home not one but three salaries. That of a property registrar(325,000 euros a year). That of President of the PP party(178,000). And that of the President of the State(a measly 78,000). Quite why he's paid to be a property registrar when he isn't stumps me but, whatever the reason, the man pushing the imposition of austerity is clearly pretty well cushioned against it.
• Yesterday's editorial in El Progreso stressed that more than 200 politicians had been convicted of corruption but very few were in jail and some of these had been pardoned. So, good and bad news.

Finally . . . I had my umbrella stolen today. Yet again. I know that brolly-nicking is a national – well, regional – sport and I'm supposed to tea-leaf someone else's in compensation but I can't quite bring myself to do it. Fortunately I got to the Chinese bazar before the rain really started to fall.