Life in Culebrón

I presume that you have seen images of the disturbances at Barcelona's el Prat airport or the pictures of Barcelona on fire. As you may imagine it has been big, big news here and it continues to be so.  I presume you know that it started when the Spanish courts handed out long, long prison sentences to the leaders of the Catalan independence drive at the time of the illegal referendum a couple of years ago. Following the ruling I suspect that Spanish judges spend a lot of time reading law books but have very little idea of what's happening amongst ordinary people. The legal arguments the judges made were absolutely sound, the ruling was coherent but it took little account of the context in which it was being issued. When the Catalan politicians made their choices they knew they were acting illegally and they knew they could end up in prison. Nonetheless, if the judges had chosen to pitch the decision at a different level there may have been much less of a backlash. Inste...

We had a will written in the UK years and years ago. A really tall, avuncular chap did it for us. His office was like something from Dickens with big ticking clocks, overstuffed chairs, a leather trimmed desk and legal documents tied with ribbons. Leeds Day in St Ives. Spanish inheritance law is quite keen on blood. Distant relatives outrank unmarried partners by miles. For years, several years, we have been going to get a Spanish will. Last week we finally got to a solicitor, un abogado. The chap who talked to us wore jeans and a T shirt and looked significantly younger than some of the clothes I was wearing. There were no ticking clocks. "We're more your juvenle delinquent and petty thief office," said the boy lawyer. "One of our colleagues down in Alicante can come up and help you write a will but why don't you try the noatary? If your will isn't tricky they can do the job faster and cheaper than us." Notary sounds really old fashioned to me. L...