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!