A great link to the Guardian's website today. Something for everyone in there, and it's good to see that people are sceptical about the claims made for Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Also good to see Barea's The Forging of a Rebel namechecked: it comes recommended by George Orwell himself. And La Regenta. Someone also mentions Enrique Vila-Matas, who I'm trying at the moment and enjoying, though he's capable of great pretentiousness. "La Celestina is good fun", someone writes. Mmm.

Nothing to do with anything, but it's been bugging me. Today I was waiting in the car at traffic lights on Pintor Rosales, having just taken the kids across to the Casa de Campo on the cable car (it's great fun the first two or three times, but it wears off after the tenth) when two gypsy women started washing my windscreen and asking for money, as they do. (They always wash the windscreen first.) Anyway, I gave them 50 cents (you shouldn't, apparently, for reasons too complex to go into here) and as I was handing it over through the window, there was a chink of metal against glass and one of them said "oh, I've dropped it" and pointed into the car. Hand on wallet, I opened the car door, looked down, couldn't see the money and (this feels like a confession of stupidity, but at least it shows I'm nice to gypsies) gave them another 50 cents. But, of course, when I looked later, the money had fallen into the car. It was a trick, quite a clever piece of sleight-of-hand, and well worth the euro I paid to see it. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself.

Off to the San Sebastián Film Festival tomorrow. Will blog on any exciting film discoveries. Apropos of that, I had to name my five favourite Spanish films of the last couple of years for an article recently. I put:

AzulOscuroCasiNegro (Dir: Daniel Sánchez Arévalo); Ficción (Dir: Cesc Gay); La noche de los girasoles (Dir: Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo); La soledad (Dir: Jaime Rosales); Volver (Dir: Pedro Almodóvar).

If you haven't seen any of these, please find the DVD. Have I forgotten any?