Spanish Shilling

There were a lot of posts on my feed the other day about how the AI Data Centres are going to become our nemeses. Firstly, by taking all the water and electricity. A large facility needs tens to hundreds of megawatts of electricity and up to five million gallons of water every day. The Spanish Data Centre Association (Spain DC) forecasts almost 67,000 million euros (‘€66.9billion’) invested in this country through 2030. 

Bad enough perhaps, but it gets worse as we ask: what place will humans have in the scheme of things when the machines can do everything we can do, only better? Already they can write poetry, resolve an impossible math equation, create ‘improved’ weapons, watch us and even think for us. It won’t be long before Artificial Intelligence checks the tea leaves and decided we aren’t wanted on the voyage any more. I don’t exaggerate, as we read: ‘AI could kill all humans in next decade, warn experts: but how seriously should we take them?’

I have been hoarding recently. Not old bits of cardboard, unread newspapers and empty toothpaste tubes, but stuff which might be useful for when a calamity befalls us.

Cans of sardines, jars of fruit and veg in water, tins of unperishable sustenance made in Eastern Europe, some Nescafé and sugar, a bottle of Butano, a lighter, lots of drinking water and a jug of vodka in case the first people through my front door turn out to be Cossacks.

The thing is it could be anything. Russians or Chinese perhaps (anyone seen Red Dawn?), or a meteorite, or another round of covid – even more dangerous than the last one. 

An American friend of mine bought a cave in Missouri some time ago, turned it into a fortress complete with guns and booby traps (and hopefully something to eat). He emailed me back in 2020 when the pandemic came along with a marvellous line that reads ‘All things considered, I would have preferred zombies’.

Such people as my Yankee friend are called preppers or survivalists – being ready for almost any calamity. In fact, while you are waiting for the Big One, you may want to get yourself into shape and learn how to trap, kill and dress a wild boar, then cook it over a fire (don’t let the neighbours see the smoke!).

The billionaires (who may well be at fault when things eventually go pear-shaped) are said to be building enormous underground bunkers loaded with groceries, guns, oxygen, medical supplies, bimbos and mercenaries. The plan being to, um, start again once the world ends, with the enthusiastic help of the bimbos. The return of Adam with a fistful of Eves. Rather obviously, when the hired-muscle realise that their wages aren’t going to be of any further use, they’ll certainly decide on cutting out their boss and helping themselves to both the girls and the supply of twenty-year-old Scotch.

To prepare ourselves, as above, we need tinned food, plenty of fresh water, a battery radio (so we can pick up Richard over at Spectrum FM), a torch, a few candles, plenty of lavatory paper (it’s hell when you run out) and an AK-47. I’m about there, except for the firearm, but I do keep a knotted sock full of marbles, and if things become hand to hand, there’s some nail-clippers in the drawer.

Well, let’s ask the GoogleAI what else I need: ‘a basic disaster kit’, it says. Don’t forget the medical box (Elastoplasts, Paracetamol and a tongue-depressor), a whistle in case it was an earthquake, some pocket-money (which reminds me, I ran out of cash the other day and had to raid the tin), a power-bank charger for the phone, and finally, in a waterproof bag: the trusty passport and a change of underwear.

I live on a hill across a (normally) dry-river bed. If it fills up, then I will no doubt be OK even if it hasn’t drained three days later. Maybe a bit tired of lunching on tinned rhubarb, but otherwise fine. Unfortunately, most disasters are going to be lasting a lot longer than a panicky weekend, indeed, they may become permanent.

What are the most likely? I ask Wikipedia: it says under ‘Global Catastrophic Risk’, that ‘Human-made risks carry a much higher probability of ending civilization than natural cosmic events’. And very jolly reading it is too. On the same subject, GoogleAI warns of ‘The creation of an artificial superintelligence that outpaces human control and pursues goals not aligned with human survival’. Something like Terminator 2. On this grim possibility, The Guardian says: ‘Lawmakers blast AI companies after researcher warns of human extinction by 2030’. That’s just four years from now!

The GoogleAI disaster-list continues (plus a few of my own) with ‘engineered pandemics’ (maybe I should add a bottle of American Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.'s Ivermectin equine laxative to my store), followed by ‘invasion from a foreign force' - perhaps they'll be robot-soldiers, the kind that never sleep - and worse still: ‘nuclear war and nuclear winter’.

It continues spreading its gloom with ‘rapid climate change’ (and here am I living in Southern Spain where the heat this summer broke records), volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, powerful cyclones, rising sea levels, methane poisoning, el Niño and microplastics.

How about a putsch from one or another of the billionaires (I’m thinking of YOU Elon Musk)? Then there’s the – I have to say – rather unlikely threat of the Rapture, where the most faithful of the evangelicals will ‘rise in the clouds’ while the rest of us are burned by Beelzebub, and finally the surprise arrival of either a huge asteroid or an unexpected attack by a horde of bug-eyed Martians. Frankly, I’m amazed we’ve made it this far.

Living in Spain, there’s also the outside chance of a coup d’état. Unlikely perhaps, but they did it once before. In my opinion, it’s pretty much on the cards right now for the USA.

Really, and after reading my own notes, I should probably go and make myself a nice cup of tea and then have a lie down.

Just in case, and don’t tell my neighbour I’m stockpiling, I might pop round this evening to the local German discount supermarket again and pick up a few more tins of pickled beets.

There’s not really a lot of point to Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s two inhabited territories in North Africa: fine places as they no doubt must be. Ceuta is small at just 18.5km² and one can walk from one end of Melilla to the other in an hour of so (4kms long, 3kms wide).

Neither of them charge IVA, and furthermore, residents and businesses enjoy massive tax cuts, including a 60% reduction in personal income tax (IRPF) and major corporate tax reliefs. This represents hundreds of millions in tax revenue that Spain willingly forgives every year to keep the cities economically viable.

…and they don’t really produce anything at all, except occasional trouble.

But there are around 170,000 people living in the two enclaves, which have both been Spanish possessions for the last 530 years (Melilla) and 360 years (Ceuta). As Pedro Sánchez says, they are both españolísimo.

Although, for practical reasons, Spain is stuck with two difficult stepchildren that are both a huge financial and political burden.

The total combined economic burden to Spain of Ceuta and Melilla, says Google AI, for the 2025 financial period, including structural maintenance, military operations, and foregone tax revenue, is estimated to be between €1,100 million and €1,500 million. This year, with extra protection, subsidies and defence investment, it will be more.

We remember the virulent reaction of Spain in 2002 to the brief occupation of the deserted Spanish island of Perejil, just 250 metres off the Moroccan coast. Then, and on the other hand, and casting back to a couple of weeks before Franco’s death in 1975, there was King Hassan II’s ‘Green March’ which took the more or less uncontested control of the Spanish Sahara (with Washington’s tacit approval).

In politics, we have the Moroccans claiming the two enclaves (known to them as Sebta and Mellila) for their own. As happened in the last days of July, this claim can sometimes prove to be a major problem, exacerbated (or maybe encouraged) by Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu plus the usual suspects – Feijóo, Abascal and various nazi troublemakers.

Not that the Partido Popular or Vox want to lose the two cities – far from it. But there are political advantages to them both to go in with guns blazing. There were major protests outside every (PP/Vox) town hall in Spain last Wednesday (September 2) against the Government’s admittedly poor handling of the crisis, under the banner of the Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP), a right-leaning agency. I was in Granada that day and saw a large number of demonstrators heading towards the Plaza del Carmen, the town hall square, with many people wearing Spanish flags wrapped around their shoulders.

Indeed, the Ceuta ‘invasion’ (if I may quote Vox) has proven to be the biggest headache for Pedro Sánchez in this entire, complicated legislature. 

The Moroccans are backing down for the moment, having caused a huge problem – they don’t particularly want a right-wing government in Spain, and Sánchez is firmly not blaming them for the 72,000 that crossed the border on July 31st (no doubt for sound political reasons), yet the fresh threat of Felipe VI visiting Ceuta and Melilla in the coming weeks is certainly not going to be at all acceptable to King Mohammad VI’s government.

So, what is to be done with the 5,000 migrants currently causing problems in Ceuta? Some are Moroccan, some are minors and some are Sub-Saharans. In theory, the Moroccans should be processed before being allowed to stay or to be returned; the 1,200 minors, known dismissively as los menas, should be allowed to stay and sent to refuges on the mainland (although the regional authorities run by the PP don’t want them); while the Sub-Saharans can’t be returned from one foreign country to another foreign country (!), so must be checked before being allowed to stay or to be returned to their homeland. This would be following Spanish and EU law.

The Spanish Supreme Court must come in for some blame over these events, as it ruled in July this year that those crossing a frontier may be returned ‘en caliente’, but those arriving by sea must be processed. A decision that would have been seen among the Moroccan youth as little short of an invitation.

It’s no doubt a lot easier to resolve the problem of 5,000 anxious migrants killing time in Ceuta than the alternative preferred by the Moroccans on the other side of the wall: to remove 170,000 irate Spanish residents to the Peninsular.

Our village fiesta coincides with both the end of August and the day when everybody must pack the car with suitcases, family and a straw donkey and join the caravan heading back to the city. A little bit sunburned, a little lighter in the wallet and a slight headache from that late last-night revelry.

School, work and various obligations call for many if not all our visitors. But there will be some folk, with less encumbrances, to buck the trend and set out for the resorts now in September, knowing that there are fewer crowds and rather better weather.

There were six point nine million vehicles chasing each other home for operación retorno this weekend. The cities fill up, and the resorts – if not now empty – have certainly taken a hit.

Between the swarms of Spanish holidaymakers and the foreign tourists (the INE claims 11.3 million during August), things have been decidedly busy. Employment has been high – even if a lot of those jobs (as everyone who can will have taken a holiday) have been filled by Latin Americans or the few Eastern Europeans who haven’t returned to their countries, considerably wealthier than when they left ten or twenty years ago.

Spain spends a lot on promoting tourism. Google says that Spain invests tens of millions of euros annually on direct international marketing through its official tourism body, Turespaña: with advertising, influencers, national and regional promotions (like ‘Think You Know Spain? Think Again’), the easy call of Sun, Sea and Sangria, plus various international tourist fairs: the giant one in Madrid, Fitur, which is held in January, along with the others in Berlin, London and so on.

Tourism creates lots of jobs, lots of money. Even the destinations themselves will have spent some of their budget on sprucing up the gardens, the streets and beaches. How much is a fully-grown transplanted palm-tree anyway? 

It also creates its own problems. ‘Go Home Tourist’ daubed on the wall, or the locks for the airbnb apartments filled with super-glue. In Palma, or Barcelona or Marbella. Less tourism, more available homes for Spaniards!

In 2024, domestic and international tourism combined accounted for 12.6% of Spain’s GDP, or 200,699 million euros. Tourism generated more than 2.7 million jobs, representing 12.3% of total employment. The international tourist expenditure in 2024 was around 126,000 million euros.

But back in 2020, with the coronavirus, the numbers were very different: In short, tourism, particularly foreign tourism, whether from disease, war or climate, is fickle.

Whereas residential tourism, as the Spanish like to refer to us guiris, is constant. A tourist may have little loyalty to Spain, but we’ve hung our hats here. Like them, our money largely comes from elsewhere. They might spend a few hundred euros on their holidays (how much of that actually reaches Spanish hands?), while we have a house, a car, twelve months of shopping and a new kitchen appliance under our belt. One foreign resident of the expat variety could easily have spent the same in a twelve-month period as a hundred tourists.

Google says that ‘Spain is home to over 1.5 million foreign residents from high-income, Western nations’. Multiply that by one hundred, and we are worth to Spain as much or even more than international tourism.

The figure would be considerably higher if someone fixed the 90/180 rule for non-Europeans, since many foreigners own homes in Spain which they can’t fully enjoy. 

We may not fill the pockets of hoteliers and other powerful lobbyists in the tourist industry, but we bring our money to lawyers, builders, dentists, vets, mechanics and shopkeepers.

I ask, where are the state-sponsored promotions – ‘Come live in Spain: You’ll love it’? And I find the answer with Google AI here: ‘Severe domestic housing crises, inflation, and local backlash have forced a policy split. Governments now actively court tourists for fast economic injections while penalizing foreign homebuyers to protect local real estate markets’, the post contrasts the ‘Red Carpet Treatment’ for tourism from the authorities with a ‘Cold Shoulder’ for settlers.

I don’t believe that we affect the real-estate market as much as is feared, as most of us inactive retired types (at least) prefer to live in small villages in the hinterlands or on the coast rather than in a seventh-floor apartment in Madrid.

We also take pride in our surroundings and rarely stay up until 4.00am – and are almost never sick in the shrubbery on our street.

And when we residents decide on a whim to transform ourselves briefly into tourists, we will stay in Paradors or other nice hotels as we explore little-known regions of Spain, arriving with our (Spanish-bought) car and, at least, a smattering of spoken Spanish.

Spain has recently experienced an intense wave of seismic activity, with over 55 earthquakes hitting the province of Granada in a single day. The strongest tremors reached magnitudes of 4.7 and 4.8 on the Richter Scale. The last time Granada was hit by quakes was in 1955.

The Richter Scale, incidentally, is not linear but exponential. Each whole number increase on the scale (e.g., from 4.0 to 5.0) represents a 10-fold increase in the measured wave size. Thus, an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 has waves 100 times larger than a 4.0 magnitude earthquake.

Spain sits directly above the active collision zone of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates, exposing several regions to notable seismic hazards. Multiple earthquakes, as just occurred in Granada, are known as a swarm. Very frightening they are, too.

According to the seismic data monitored by the Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Spain’s risk is concentrated along five key fault lines:  Andalucía (Granada, Málaga, Almería), Murcia (Lorca region), the Pyrenees (North Border), Galicia and finally, the Canary Islands.

Google AI grimly lists several major destructive earthquakes and notes that they are rare. The 2011 Lorca Earthquake (Magnitude 5.1), struck at an extremely shallow depth, causing severe building collapses, nine fatalities, and hundreds of injuries in the Murcia region, while the 1884 Andalusian Earthquake (Magnitude 6.5) is one of the most destructive in Spanish history, claiming over 800 lives in Granada and Málaga.

Another major strike occurred in Torrevieja, Alicante, back in 1829, with almost 400 reported dead (a computer mock-up scenario of this same earthquake, now centred around a major residential and tourist area, figures a similar event could produce as much at 20,000 dead today).

Going back, there was the Lisbon earthquake. This, perhaps the worst earthquake in the history of the Iberian Peninsula, is dated November 1st, 1755 (All Saints Day) and is estimated at 7.7 in strength. The tremor ‘claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people and opened a profound debate among theologians and philosophers about how God could have allowed such a tragedy’ (it was, after all, a religious holiday). In combination with subsequent fires and a tsunami which reached as far as Huelva and Cádiz, the earthquake almost destroyed Lisbon and adjoining areas. Up to 100,000 lives are thought to have been lost on that fateful day.

My own region of Mojácar and Vera was largely destroyed in an earthquake which occurred on the night of November 9th, 1518.

There had been a series of worrisome tremors occurring that year ever since the middle of June, but nothing to match the final convulsion.

It was a Tuesday, and the earthquake arrived around about midnight. The market-town of Vera was totally destroyed and Mojácar was badly hit. There's an eye-witness account from the then mayor of Mojácar – Iñigo Guevara – who described the collapsed castle in these terms: 'I saw it all fallen in, until the very foundations were visible. There is almost nothing left of the fortress which is so flattened that it appears to have been destroyed by all the artillery of the world'. A report from the time says that almost a third of the eighty homes which made up Mojácar had collapsed. Another report says that the clergy were frightened to give Mass in the church due to its state. It says in the original:  "En la dicha villa de Moxacar no se dize misa a causa que los clerigos no osan entrar a dezir misa a la yglesia porque esta para caerse a causa del terremoto que agora hizo”. A little over a dozen people died in Mojácar because of the earthquake. In Vera, the death-toll reached 150.

Just four years later, in 1522, Almería City was almost completely destroyed in another major quake, with at least 2,500 deaths. Those modest numbers, if ‘una terremoto’ of a similar size visited us today, could easily be much higher.

‘We are waiting’, says one newspaper, ‘…for the next major earthquake in Spain: “The clock is ticking and we’re not prepared”. They can’t put a date on it, but some geologists believe we’re in “extra time” for a repeat of an earthquake as destructive as those that shook the peninsula more than a century ago. They also warn that regulations are outdated and fail to consider the worst-case scenario’.

Which reminds me, next week I shall be in Granada, staying with my in-laws. I doubt I’ll get much sleep.

August 15th was the national Assumption holiday. A good excuse for a party if ever there was one. The Assumption itself is a little obscure – it’s the belief that the Virgin Mary was taken body and soul into heaven at the end of her life without her body decaying on Earth. The rest of us can only raise a glass to this excellent news, so we do.

Many cities and towns in Spain have their fiestas patronales in the second half of August, coincidentally when the holidays are at their height. Málaga has its fair along with Bilbao, Vitoria, San Sebastián, Almería and many others. If the festival is based on a saint’s day, which it is, it would be churlish of the City Fathers not to spread it across a couple of days, or a week maybe – or perhaps even longer. A quick procession and a Holy Mass by all means, but then some fireworks, speechifying, a mini-marathon, some pop concerts, exhibitions, horse and carriage stuff, perhaps some bullfights, a magic show for the kids, late night dancing and plenty of bunting in the main square.

Seriously though, you can’t fit that all into one day, can you?

There are some standout festivals going on, including the one where everyone throws tomatoes at each other in Buñuel (Valencia) on August 26, the Festa Major de Gràcia in Barcelona (current) and our own modest fiesta here in my pueblo in celebration of San Agustín de Hipona (who no one has ever heard of) on August 28th. Now, that’s a Friday, so we have lengthened the revelry (jolgorio in Spanish) to cover the weekend, plus the two preceding days, giving us in all five sublime days and noisy nights.

This sees us comfortably through to August 30th, which in happier times would mean the end of the hols and the beaches reopened once again for those of us who consider ourselves residents.

September, unfortunately, no longer means ‘they’ve all gone, three cheers!’. But the weather at least is slightly cooler, so we may be feeling a fraction more generous towards our visitors.

You can’t have a santo in a Spanish pueblo without a santa – usually but not always la Virgen María. Our own – celebrated (a trifle less noisily than the August thrash) – is la Virgen del Rosario on October 7th (where the Spanish army prayed for victory in 1571 to the Virgen María against the Ottomans). There’ll be a picnic (una romería) in the countryside plus some events down at the Barrio de la Fuente.

A local fiesta should, and I think that the clue is in the name, be for the local folk. These days, there are so many visitors (all clutching their telephone cameras) that we tend to get pushed to the back. The free paella gets gobbled by people from Madrid or München, the tin-bar in the square has run out of sausages, the carpark is full and I must walk half a mile to get to the bus stop. The local businesses (including the disturbingly large number of souvenir shops – let me ask you this: when was the last time you bought a keepsake in your own pueblo?) – are making out like bandits, and meanwhile the cops are stopping the live music in the foreign bars along the beach at 7.30pm.

In short, the fiestas are a time for dressing up, eating sticky buns (with care), dancing in the village square and taking lots of selfies.

Once it’s over, there are others not so far away. You’ll hear their thunder-flashes at night.

I’ll have to check my engagements, but our local market town of Vera has theirs, (San Cleofás – never heard of him either) in just a few weeks from now.

There apparently aren’t enough homes in Spain for all of us, and thus we must read the daily scare-stories of the okupas, of frustrated house-hunters, of those poor souls renting (or even buying) just a single room, or living in a caravan or a car, or I suppose, slumped somewhere on a park-bench with a few plastic bags of possessions.

We also know full well that there are plenty of empty houses, abandoned blocks, rotting urbanisations and so on (we see them every day), but not perhaps located precisely where we want to live, or even if we did, the town hall, the regional authority, the owner or even perhaps some squabbling inheritors have ruled that the place must stay empty for whatever reason there might be. Usually of course it’s to do with greed.

Some owners of a perfectly usable block of apartments – these things happen – might leave them empty or unsold for speculative reasons. Sooner or later, thanks to demand, they know that the price will go up.

There might be empty business premises which could be turned into residential housing. Sometimes, although rarely, they are. Many downstairs spaces were originally planned as shops or bars or hairdressers – but no one came forward, and so they got bricked up and covered with graffiti.

The main problem in Spain – or anywhere else – is location. An ambitious young lawyer or accountant wants to live in Madrid, not in Sigüenza (as beautiful as it may be). A dentist or a banker would prefer Barcelona to Cuenca and the best discotheques, restaurants and museums are not necessarily in Teruel.

Or Tossa del Mar. Good beaches though.

But now there’s a new system coming from the USA, which never misses a trick when it comes to screwing money out of the less fortunate. You may be one of those who live in the sticks to save on city-rentals while you practice teleworking. Hunched over the computer each day while wearing nothing more than a tee-shirt with the cat and a cold Martini both waiting for your undivided attention. Rather like I’m doing now.

It seems that clever landlords are charging extra rent if you do that. An apartment is just for sleeping in, showering and watching Netflix. Working from your couch is apparently ratable.

There are more homes in Spain than we like to imagine, although not all are located within the boundary of the M-30. Google says there are 27 million dwellings in España and with 49,700,000 people living here: which works out at a little less than two people to a home.

Whether this figure refers only to functional residences or anything which vaguely has a roof is unclear. 

There are those, of course, who have two homes. The usual residence in – probably – the city and then a second one, that has either belonged to the family for ages and can be found in some forgotten pueblo and is availed of during August, or perhaps an apartment near the beach. The second option being preferable to the young’uns.

I buck the trend by living alone. You can blame me for all the panic stories listed at the beginning of this essay. But, while I’m alone, I’m not alone, since there are 5.6 million of us. A whopping 28% of all dwellings in the country are unipersonal. Shopping for one.

Well, we could get together, maybe on a Facebook chat, and share and loosen up some property. However, says Infobae, ‘A study suggests that splitting an apartment with people with whom you don't share a romantic relationship has worse consequences for mental health than living alone and not having a partner’.

Right now, what with all the visitors making whoopie and making it largely impossible to go out either for supplies or for a gargle, I’ve been staying home and reading.

There are just a few more weeks of this summer frolic to go. Then, once my hibernation is over (the correct word apparently is ‘aestivation’), and the fiestas patronales just a noisy memory and a sticky taste, and when I can park the car in the village rather than having to take the bus, then I'll be able to go out once again and see my friends. Come the end of the evening, I'll head for home, glad to be living alone with my books and my cat.

Updated: Sunday.

All a bit odd – on Thursday morning a large number of apparently young men crossed the bay into Ceuta from Morocco. Bussed to their departure point by the gendarmerie and with the Moroccan border guards all away from their posts. They swam or crossed the rocky boundary into the Spanish enclave and – while there was no chance of them making their way to the Spanish mainland (or to the United Kingdom as faragistas would have us believe) – they milled around in the autonomous city until they had mostly returned, hungry, to Morocco by Saturday morning.

In all, some sixty thousand of them – creating a stink that could be heard around the world.

Around 67 are reported to have drowned in the exercise (and I wonder who lost sleep over that particular tragedy?), and it was noticeable that none of them brought so much as a change of clothes.One who drowned was a player for the Tetuan Women's Football Club, Faten Ben Omar El Azizi. Say her name out loud!

Later (Sunday), the Spanish authorities upped the figure to 72 dead and a massive 73,500 returned to Morocco.  

Why did this suddenly occur?

Could Spain’s recent deal with Algeria to import more gas have been the spark (excuse the pun)? Morocco and Algeria are historic enemies.

And what about Netanyahu’s son working to raise the Moroccans against the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta? Indeed, here's the Israeli ambassador to the UN: 'Maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa' (Israel indignant about colonies!).

Or perhaps Donald Trump, annoyed with Pedro Sánchez, along with Benjamin Netanyahu – both firm allies of Mohammed VI – could have hatched a plot.

The Guardian suggests that the Russians were in on it too: 'Russia-linked accounts spread far-right narrative online during Ceuta migration crisis, analysis finds Counter-disinformation group says social media channels connected to Pravda network helped amplify message'. But the Chinese (says El Mundo) are casting the blame for the operation on Mossad.

The ‘invasion’ played into the hands of the Spanish right-wing: Feijóo and Abascal both. The pair of them quickly arrived in Ceuta to be a nuisance, and they were joined by the -even further right- Alvise Pérez who was booed and hounded by the Ceuta residents, eventually being escorted to safety by the police. 

As long as events of this type are considered as ‘grey’, deniable and unfortunate, then they will continue – and who is to say that Melilla and Ceuta (and their 170,000 Spanish inhabitants) aren’t a justifiable target?

But now it’s over (except for a certain excitement led by the Italians), and the Spanish media can turn to other subjects; like forest fires, August holidays and Ayuso’s roof apartments scandal.

Sadly, Spain continues to burn. A giant fire in Madrid and another in Ávila managed by Sunday morning between them to burn some 45,000 hectares, but at least this time, the ES-Alarm warnings were sent out and there were no deaths reported. Other major fires were reported in Toledo and Castellón.

By Wednesday, the hectares burned in July had risen spectacularly to 172,000, as another hot-spell – the fourth this summer – arrived. 

El Huff Post on Saturday had an embedded reporter with the firefighters in the south-eastern part of the Madrid region, where the neighbours said that it was the worst fire in Madrid’s history. Even the city to the north was full of smoke and ash. An opinion found at 20Minutos is bleak: ‘we are not prepared for these catastrophes’.

‘As climate scientists long warned would be the case, Europe’s wildfires are worsening in intensity, scale and duration as the planet heats up. When the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, attributed the current crisis to the effects of the climate emergency, he was stating the obvious’ says The Guardian. In a recent report, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe issued a warning about climate change, saying it is directly responsible for intensifying wildfires and their increasing frequency.

The rule is that these responsibilities fall on the regional governments, who may cut back on emergency funds in the knowledge that central Government can and will help if called to do so. And thus we have Madrid’s Díaz Ayuso and the Transport Minister Óscar Puente trading horrific insults over who is responsible to organise the defence against the flames.

The Madrid firefighters are not happy bunnies, as their standing wage of 1,300€ a month (May to October only) hasn’t increased in the last fifteen years. It’s just one of those things: considered as a waste of resources during the winter months, and as an alarming necessity during the fires. No doubt they could be found a useful task in the colder months – cleaning the dry brush, cutting back the growth, trimming the branches near the road and buildings, and even helping plan emergency escape routes and giving fire-prevention lectures to schoolchildren. Indeed, the Madrid firefighters warned back in April that fire prevention efforts had been cut in half.

We read that ‘the farmers criticize rural abandonment and demand a plan to rid the summer wildfires of potential fuel during the winter months’. We also read that the law (la ley de montes) insists on brush-cleaning and other fire-preventative obligations.

Furthermore, we read of donkeys, goats, sheep, bison (!) and even toros bravos grazing clean the hills (following the wet winter and extra growth).

All grist for the armchair firefighters and hostile social media influencers.

The always critical leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, links the "repeated disasters" in Spain to corruption and the government's "climate fanaticism". So not much help from him.

As more than one critic says – we need more firefighters and less bullfighters. 

So, is it over? From El Mundo earlier this week here: ‘The fourth heatwave of the summer will trigger a surge in wildfires starting Wednesday, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius. The intense heat and dry conditions will cause the fire risk to reach critical levels across almost the entire country’.

It was hot where I live, on a hill overlooking a dry riverbed, not far from the sea. Indeed, Thursday and Friday were both in the 40s.

My daughter was celebrating her birthday that Thursday (she’s also in her forties) and I joined her and others as a Party of Six (follow me please) to the table in the corner, by the windows, in a smart restaurant in the next town from mine.

Our family knows their family, and thus we were treated to cocktails and jamón as the waiter left us some menus, bread and changed our plates and glasses. Smart places always do, for some unfathomable reason.

The owner reappeared and chose the meal for us – an eminently sound idea as I never like to read menus and tend to order the same as the person seated to my left (unless he or she is a vegetarian). I think the best restaurants are those who have no menu at all – maybe a blackboard with today’s ‘catch’ – but the simpler the better. One is there for the conversation, not to get lost in a thick book of food. By now, and anyway, our unopened menus had discretely disappeared.

And it came to pass that, being both a smart restaurant, and with special favour from the kitchen, we were served endless plates of delicious thises and thatses. The plates being passed around to the left and quickly emptied.

The main course began with a similar routine, or maybe that was the continuation of the first course Part the Second. More munching and forks clashing. It was too delicious to talk (and too noisy to hear). Mmm, good! Anyway, it was then followed (fresh plates, clean knives and forks) with a hot piece of iron over a small oil-heater and a large plate of raw beef for us to cook to our liking.

I was reading somewhere that when there’s a choice on your plate, you eat more. At home, not being much of a cook, I heat up one thing or another from the fridge or a can from the shelf, add some mayonnaise and call myself satisfied. But when there are lots of little exquisitely laden plates, multi-cultured tapas, then one can become quite a pig. 

After that along comes the desert, or afters, or pudding. It’s been a while. Here, the same thing: a gigantic platter with at least ten different postres and, like Pokemon, you’ve gotta catch them all. The cake and the (apparently) forty-strong staff all smiling as my daughter blew out the candle.

My granddaughter’s boyfriend was the driver, sitting there poor chap with his glass of water. The rest of us, to a greater or lesser extent, drank beers, wine, gin and tonics and a shot or two of tequila.

Friday morning, I had no hangover but noticed I had put on over half a kilo.

Sometimes, along comes a comment or an entire post on social media written – as often as not – by a Brit on the emotive subject of animals, and how we love them. 

As of course I do.

Mostly.

Cats for example. Fine and agreeable balls of fur one can snuggle with. They give in return a kind of cynical love and the feeling that, if they were only bigger while we were smaller, they would probably drop the pretence and attempt to eat us instead. As it is, cats and their lower-class cousin the feral cat (inexplicably protected by both the vecinos and the town hall) are responsible for the deaths of approximately 400 million animals annually in Spain.

'This staggering figure includes hundreds of millions of small mammals, birds, and reptiles. In fact, free-ranging and feral cats are responsible for significant pressure on local wildlife and are cited as threats to hundreds of conservation-dependent species’, says Google AI.

No wonder the Dawn Chorus is ever-more muted.

But yes, cats are cute. They go ‘Miaow’.

Returning to social media, and the unconditional love of many people for all things that fly, run, stagger or crawl, here’s an exchange about a yellow scorpion I had with someone who found one in her house and was doubtful about taking it outside:

 Me: Nasty things. I've been stung four times (so far) by them. It's around six hours of pain and no apparent wound or swelling to help look for sympathy.

 Them: Poor little guys! Having to encounter a big clumsy oaf of an ape. I hope they're OK.

 Me: I'm pretty sure I stamped on at least three of them.

 Them: Colour me fking astonished. I wish you the same. #TeamScorpion

 Me: You think I should have bought them a drink?

Living, as I do, in the campo, there are lots of wild creatures here that make my life more enjoyable. There are plenty of geckoes (or ‘crocodiles’ as a friend with poor English disarmingly calls them) and a few chameleons; we have wild tortoises that walk right up to me and ask for food; there are butterflies, bees and other friendly insects; rabbits scampering along in front of my car and partridge couples debating whether to gallop straight legged across the orchard or maybe take to flight. There are magpies and hoopoes; a few foxes and a very vocal owl that sits on a branch outside my bedroom window.

But we have other critters I don’t care for at all. Should I accept the social media explanation that ‘they were here first’? Even if they weren’t. Yes, the flies and mosquitos have been here forever, and also the wasps (I destroy a nest whenever I can), but the wild boar and the mischievous mountain goats (ibex) are both new, having descended from the hills in the past ten or twenty years.

The boar dig up the roots of the trees and bushes and knock down the ancient stone terraces in search of grubs and rootlets. I shake out powdered hot pepper which discourages them – maybe they’ll dig up the neighbour’s plot instead where there’s no polvos picantes to disturb their sensitive noses.

But the mountain goats! They’ll get onto the terrace and chew the bark off the ornamentals, or strip the leaves, or – and this is just nasty – break off branches from the citrus and other fruit trees and leave them scattered around as a message. It’s just as well they don’t have a Facebook account.

I know, I should get a large hound. But then, where I live, we are infested with the black fly that gives the poor dogs leishmaniasis. Which kills them.

Oh look, there’s an egret in the garden!