REGIME CHANGE

It is voting day today where everyone expects the PP to win with a landslide or a tsunami because 'Spain needs a change' and everyone knows that all over the shop people vote in and then vote out either the Socialists or the Conservatives whichever they believe has managed to mess the country up. This time it's the PSOE to get a chastising from the voters but it doesn't seem that long ago that the public did an about turn and voted for them thanks to some terrorists who fancied a change and planted bombs on public transport. Not only is it a day of reckoning for the Socialists but the anniversary if you can call it that of Franco's death. Spain must be the only country where you can still do the Nazi salute and get away with it and the only place where flowers are left on the tomb of a fascist dictator, paid for with public money I am told. So it will be or has been a fitting day for the right to win

Meanwhile, the Oscences are leaving the crisis at home and heading out for the tapas competition which started last Thursday. The visperas, or the eve of many fiestas and competitions are often started days before just to get as much fun and delight as possible till the real thing gets in the swing. I've also noticed loads of Christmassy things in shop windows and the Eroski is laden with champagne and other delights that you don't normally see till after the Constitution and Imaculada and H reckons this has to do with the recession and not to a sudden realisation that Christmas can start in September as it does in Britain. 

The Spanish get it right when it comes to keeping the kids safe after school hours. Send them straight back there where they can play football before dinner or just hang out in the school with their friends. I walked through one of the schools here the other evening with a friend looking for her daughter and when we had managed to steer ourselves through the numerous youngsters playing football we walked through the corridoors that go beneath the school and found ourselves surrounded by hundreds of kids some playing with counters on the floor or drawing in corners, others swinging from various things they could swing from, a lone girl dancing in a makeshift disco, kids hiding under football tables, others just running and darting in and out of the others. This particular school boasts its own theatre and church and also a cafe where parents could be seen relaxing and drinking knowing their kids were OK.

STOP PRESS: Yes they have definitely won and so far not much drama apart from the following. Somebody super glued the gates to about 37 schools in Zaragoza and numerous schools were painted with fascist symbols. A pregnant woman, or as she was described in the local paper, una mujer en avanzado estado de gestion, was unable to vote as her waters broke and she had to be rushed to hospital. Then there was the vocal, or chairman who had to be replaced as he was breathalysed on his way and gave a pissed reading. Another escandalo was when an auditor of the PSOE fainted and then had convulsions at the urns and had to be attended by a PP mayor. In various parts of Spain the police had to go out looking for committee members who didn't show up, probably because of the numerous fiestas that take place everywhere. In Soria flags with images of Franco had to be taken down from outside schools, and finally some poor bloke in his nineties voted and immediately had a heart attack and died.