When the postal strike was in full spate we heard quite a bit about ‘Spanish practices’, or at least we did sometimes.
On one morning the BBC referred to ‘Spanish practices’ in the nine o’clock news and merely to ‘practices’ in its later bulletins, presumably for fear of offending any Spaniards who were listening in.
‘It used to be old Spanish customs in my day,’ said my husband, stirring in his armchair like a badger on a sunny winter’s day.

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