Fiona Pitt-Kethley

I live in Cartagena, Spain's 24th largest city, which was built on five hills and founded c. 227 BC by Hasdrubal on the site of the much older Tartessan city of Mastia. One of the hills is now under threat from a developer. Every day a couple of huge excavators hammer away at the lower slopes of Monte Sacro, chipping away at history. Protests are being led every Friday by Javier Garcia del Toro, a professor of archaeology at Murcia University. He recently bought a toy excavator from El Corte Inglés for the politician who gave building permission for four blocks of flats. He also cleverly dished out mackerel paté to some of the protesters, claiming it was the authentic aphrodisiac Roman garum.

There wasn't much excitement about the European elections in Spain. A couple of vans with loudspeakers came round my district advertising the main parties, the PSOE (left) and the PP (right), but they caused far less interest than others announcing vegetables, wine by the litre and cheap trousers. I went down to the local polling station at eight, when it was supposed to open. It was indeed open but the police informed me that no one could vote before nine. At nine I was leaving town with a party of friends from my mineral club. And so I spent most of election day en route for the tiny mountain village of Navajun, in the Rioja region. I once saw two pensioners, one of them disabled, get into an undignified physical fight in a village bar over a general election. Local elections, too, can cause feelings to run high. Europe is a different matter.