I often comment about the number of public holidays that Spain enjoys during the course of a year. Indeed, it was only a week or two ago that we had a working week of only two days owing to local and national breaks.

Today is, however, pretty much the contrary……. as Christmas day fell on a Saturday this year, many Spanish businesses were already closed and enjoying their normal weekend break – meaning that the national holiday was simply lost. In many other countries (such as the UK for example), when a public holiday falls during the weekend, a lieu day is added to the calendar by way of compensation.

And so today we find ourselves at our desks whilst many of our European neighbours enjoy additonal time off to recover from their Christmas excesses.

P.S. My apologies for the very feeble joke about loos, obviously too much brandy in my Christmas pudding!