Democracy in Spain

The Queen of Spain is 70 and, to mark the occasion, a new book has appeared in which she is interviewed by a journalist. Apparently, or allegedly, she gave her views on abortion (against), euthanasia(against) and same sex marriage (why call it marriage?). This was being hotly debated on the radio yesterday in one of those entertaining Spanish programmes where the public are invited to call in with their opinions and the studio panel of noisy and opinionated people jostle to shout over them and each other. So far so nothing. But what struck me was that almost without exception the callers, whether against or in support of Her Maj, felt the need to couch their contribution in terms of its supposed or potential impact on democracy-a reminder of how new this still feels for many Spaniards and how much it is taken for granted in the UK where democracy is almost never a sunbject of public debate, except when introduced by some sections of the erstwhile left who seem to think China has invented a better system. Anyway, this morning the Royal household issued a statement claiming tht the Queen's remarks had been misrepresented. So all is well.

The weather has broken. The temperature dropped by about 10 degrees overnight earlier this week, so it feels cold, although it is still about 14 degrees and those hapless souls who have turned up for October holidays wander around in shorts and t shirts while we are wearing boots, jeans, jumpers and even scarves! We have logs cut and undercover so we thought we were prepared but this morning during an inundation the electricity cut out. It seems that one of the outside lights is waterlogged so we have had to have that part of the system disconnected, but at least we can make a cup of tea. So all is well there too!

Here we are again

We have been talking about returning to blogging, if only because it is a way in which we can keep a record of our own activities and next year we hope to be setting off in March for a two month trip to South America. The central focus will be a month in Buenos Aires-our city fix for next year-but we also intend to visit Patagonia (the Chilean version), Chile, including Santiago and the Atacama desert, Peru (Machu Pichu, of course), Bolivia, and whilst we are in Argentina, part of Uruguay and Brazil-although the people who run the Argentinian cafe at the top of our road tell us that there is nothing to see in either country and we are better off sticking to Argentina. We have more or less booked most of it and now we start the pleasurable process of pre-holiday reading......

Meanwhile we wait to see what happens in North America on November 4th. We read a very interesting piece in El Pais this morning by Timothy Garton Ash (translated from the English I imagine so it is probably in the Guardian) about Obama mostly and the elections in general. He begins by referring to something that has been on our mind recently. According to TGA the American Press are silent on the horrible possibility of an Obama assassination, but almost every conversation he has, gets round to the topic. It is this possibility, he says, which makes the stirring up of smears (Obama is a terrorist, a foreigner, anti-American etc) by the McCain-Palin campaign (especially Palin) so reprehensible. However, on a more positive note, he goes on to say that he admires Obama enormously and feels he is growing into the job of President. It may well be true and I hope so. I still regret that Hillary didn't make it and still agree with David Aaronovitch what mysogyny is more insidious than racism, but the world could do with something that feels good right now.

One of the scandals of the week (is there ever anything else in the news?) is that various UK police forces have messed up/falsified (it doesn't seem clear how deliberate/stupid this was) violent crime figures. This has given parts of the left an opportunity to have a go at the very notion that "statistics" might help us understand the world and call for a return to trusting the gut instinct of "ordinary working class folk" (whoever they might be). Said parts of the left conveninetly forgot that the same gut instinct is for hanging, flogging and castrating-probably all at the same time. I hate the anti-intellectualism that passes for political thought in Britain.