Spain, as you may have read is in the grip of an economic crisis, which means that a lot of people have time on their hands.

I have mentioned before that our village has its fair share of nutters eccentric creatives whose lives seem divorced from reality and for whom the crisis means little .

One such lives across the fields from my house, a middle aged man, who lives alone apart from his chickens, and who has a hobby. He collects empty drink cans, he has a dustbin outside his front door for people to leave their offerings and has several times accosted me when I have been throwing away household refuse to ask me if I have any empty cans of beer, lager, coke or fanta. These he takes home and weaves into geometric shapes attached to his boundary fence.

He has also sculpted two concrete phalluses (phalli?) in his garden after the style of Gaudi, adorned with broken tiles and rising two metres into the sky, a bridge to nowhere over a small drainage ditch and a triumphal arch decorated with bits of old pot.

In Britain, no doubt, he would be awarded an Arts Council Grant and his work would sell at Sothebys. Here he is crouched behind his front door waiting for the knock of the village caretaker to remind him he has not applied for planning permission and needs to submit a form in triplicate so they can tax him, unless of course he has cash in which case, no problemo.