Our peaceful pint at the Stray Sod at La Fuente last Thursday afternoon was interrupted by Harriet Alexander; one of The Telegraph's Foreign Affairs Reporters. She was asking what we thought the Spanish Government could do to bring the British property buyer back to Spain.

Wary as ever we asked her if, despite what we said, she was intending 'doing a Johnathan Maitland or a Trevor MacDonald' blowing the small percentage of bad stuff out of all proportion.

She was told that locally there are some fantastic bargains being bought by Dutch, Belgians and Scandinavians and on land classed as 'urban' meaning the LRAU land grab nightmare does not apply. Unfortunately the writer chose not to make the distinction between 'urban' and 'rustic' land in her article and ended up doing exactly what we'd feared but here's the exerpt that made us roar with laughter:

Robin Barton, 65, has lived in Villamartin for 10 years, and sitting outside The Stray Sod Irish bar, he said it would take more than a slick marketing campaign and technical changes in the law to bring back the British and end falling prices.

“The simple fact is that the Spaniards built too many homes,” he said. “There is just not the demand for all of these houses, and with the rest of the EU in crisis too, nothing the Spanish government does is going to make people buy them.”

He pointed to the shell of a half-built block of flats, its exterior walls complete but the building uncompleted inside. “That’s been there for years. And no one will finish it. It just proves the lack of planning that caused all this mess.”

Thanks Dad !

Here's her 'article' published in the Feb 6th Sunday Telegraph.