17 million Spaniards or 63% of the population earn less than 1,000€ gross per month and 4,422,359 are out of work.

As we left Cartagena for Culebrón yesterday evening the Three Wise Men, the Three Magician Kings to Spaniards, were doing their rounds and delivering coal to bad boys and girls or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 or Zombie Dolls to the good ones. We'd seen them. Not the bad children and Zombie Dolls; the Kings. There had been a big procession through the streets in the evening and, all day, they'd been holding court in the old Town Hall in the middle of town.

The atmosphere in the town was amazing. The last minute shoppers were out in hordes buying their Christmas gifts, the hundreds of balloon sellers and other street vendors. The burble of noise coming from the street cafés. Very nice.

In Culebrón all was quiet. We settled down in front of the telly with a cup of tea. My ration of hearing spoken Spanish is quite limited. Maggie isn't a big fan of talk radio and generally we watch English language programmes even on Spanish TV when we're together. That's one of the reasons I quite like adverts. I get to hear some Spanish but they are also a mirror to the society around me. Language wise they are good too because if I lose the thread of an advert then it doesn't matter much because there will be another along in 30 seconds. It's not like losing the thread of a feature film. And I get the chance, very soon, to hear them again and again and again.

The telly has been saturated with mobile phone, perfume and chocolate adverts in the run up to Christmas; to today, By last night it was too late to sell any more perfume or chocolate. Instead we had cleaning products. You can imagine can't you? When the last of the festive prawns and the roscón have been eaten people are going to look around their houses and decide that it's time for a big clean up. The exercise will help with the after Christmas diet too.