I love Andalucia, and especially Costa Tropical and the whole Granada province. Not only because it is the only region where you get free tapas with your midday or evening copa.

How nice to enjoy a cold beer or why not a glass of wine with sardinas a la plancha and heavenly papas a lo pobre, for instance at Rodrigo’s in avenida Andalucía. I love the people of Costa tropical, and the smiles you get from strangers in the streets. I love people who tell ladies in their 80’s in their best Sunday frocks that they are beautiful, guapa. I admire the way families take care of their old relatives.   I can’t imagine somebody in Finland telling an old lady that she is beautiful.

And there, in my country, old people are invisible and are best hidden in a ‘home.’ The streets of Almuñécar are cleaner than before, the town’s cultural programme is more diversified, with high-class concerts, theatre, fiestas, flamenco and special events for foreign residents. There are so many things here that deserve praise that it is impossible to mention them all.

Now to the criticism. Generally speaking, I cannot understand why in this country people still have a siesta, that dead period in the afternoon when nearly everything shuts down so that some people can go to sleep.This is perhaps OK in July and August when the thermometer creeps up to 40 degrees, but on the whole, it is a very uneconomic system, especially now in this difficult economic situation.

Another thing I cannot understand is why office employees start work at 10am, then immediately go for coffee and breakfast at the nearest bar. At the Town Hall, for instance, you rarely meet anyone before 11. This means that the employees start their working day at 11, then take their siesta from 2 p.m. and work from 5 p.m. to 7 or 8 in the evening. This cannot be very productive. Let´s see if Señor Rajoy finds a way to change this stubborn old tradition. If work would start earlier and people would have a substantial breakfast at home, they could work from say, 9, with a half-hour lunch break at 1 p.m. and finish the working day at 5, like we dull Lutherans do in Scandinavia.

Now, Spaniards eat dinner at 8 or 9 in the evening and go to bed very late, even small children. No wonder they cannot eat breakfast in the morning, and the children are tired and have difficulties concentrating at school. I also believe earlier eating habits would reduce the tendency to obesity you see among people here, especially in children. I am aware that a change of this old system would need radical measures at many levels of society and that it would meet a massive resistance from the masses, like abolishing bull fighting or other old traditions.

But it remains to be seen if somebody in the administration would be bold enough to make a try in spite of the risk of ‘nullifying’ this wonderful people.