Author: Ben

Sometimes it’s easy to shake your head at the way things work in Spain, to sit back and think, ‘If I were Prime Minister for a day I’d set this place right!’ -especially so when you grew up in a nanny state like the UK.

There are two things I would work on straight away. Firstly, I would make sure all women got paid the same amount as their male counterparts for doing the same job. I have never really counted myself amongst the feminists of this world, but there are some things which are just plain good manners, simple good sense. And in Spain women are still getting lower wages in the work place.

Secondly:

I would pour money into road safety and the persecution of crazy, law-breaking motorists. Today’s bus crash on the A4 outside Madrid could have been a lot worse, only one death, two ‘muy grave’, and eleven more injuries. But the fact is that last year over 4,000 people were killed on the roads in Spain. The main causes for these deaths were drink driving, lack of seat belt, driving too close to the car in front, and speeding. Why does this happen? Lack of enforcement by the police. The reason there are far fewer deaths in the UK is that people drive more carefully, and tend not to drink and drive – why? Because they know that if they disobey the laws of the road they are likely to be caught, and that the penalties will be stiff. That just isn’t the case in Spain.

That is where I would start if I were in charge for a day. O.K. end of rant.

Plastic greenhouses in Almeria. For more shocking environmental comparison pics, check out this piece from elmundo.es.

It feels like Madrid is under an enormous greenhouse at the moment – up to 36º today according to a bus stop thermometer… I think I’m getting obsessed with the weather…

This man certainly has something to say about the European constitution.. though I’m still not sure quite what he was implying… He was wandering around the book fair in the Retiro park. It seems he’s not the only one to have been unsettled by the recent results from Holland and France. Italy’s Labour Minister wants to ditch the Euro and return to the Lira!

Meanwhile, it really was a pretty nice evening for a walk…

Rowing in the Retiro

…and later, we somehow ended up at the terraza around the corner where I also ate yesterday, though it was a lot quiter this evening. I have a feeling we will be spending quite a bit of time there this summer.

Well, it was a quiet drink until a Romanian lady with a portable amp. came along and started singing. There was no food in the house so I went and sat at a table at a bar around the corner for a cool bottle of mahou and some pan tomaca. It’s Hotting up now, 28 degrees at 22.30…

I feel like I should have intelligent things to say about the French and the Dutch saying ‘no’ to the European constitution, but I don’t, so I’m going to point you to these comments on Adam Curry’s weblog instead.