The Portuguese parliament has approved a bill which will legalize same-sex marriages. The bill now needs to be reviewed by parliamentary committee and reapproved by parliament (the Assembly of the Republic), before it is brought into effect by final ratification by President Anibal Cavaco Silva. It could be law before the planned visit to Portugal in May of Pope Benedict XVI, who the BBC calls a "staunch" opponent of gay marriage.

A couple of airline news stories I am running together. The one affecting passengers most directly is that budget airline Flyglobespan has gone into administration, leaving thousands stranded and more without a Christmas flight. And a strike called by BA cabin crew has been declared illegal because of a technical flaw in the ballot.
 

A goal scored against historical Philistinism. As a result of pressure from the public, the archaeological remains corresponding to a part of Muslim mediaeval Murcia are to be conserved in situ. The extraordinary find emerged during preparatory excavations for a car park in the Jardín de San Esteban, next to the seat of Murcia's regional government. The authorities had wanted to press on with the car park anyway, but civic protest, orchestrated by the Plataforma Ciudadana para la Conservación del Patrimonio Arqueológico de San Esteban and culminating in a human chain around the site, has forced them to back down. The 13th century streets discovered include the remains of 50 houses, seven mansions and a mosque.

The Museo Romántico, closed for renovation for the last nine years, will open to the public again on December 3rd. I remember it as one of the most charming of Madrid's lesser museums, though its new name - Museo Nacional del Romanticismo - is truly horrible.

The Spanish royalty-collection agency SGAE (pronounced "sky") does not tire of opening itself up to ridicule. Only days after the widespread amusement caused by it trying to charge a Barcelona hairdresser's a monthly fee for having the radio on comes the news that it is targeting the tuna, not the fish but the ensemble of student buskers who dress up in Elizabethan costumes to serenade their audience. "They'll be the death of the tunas. Our performances are not for profit," the President of the National Council of Tunas, Joseba "Canary" Molina, explained to the newspaper Público, "and the payment they are demanding means we lose a lot of money." The lyrics of the tuna standard Clavelitos have been adapted - the flowers are now given from the singers' heart to the "Sky" inspectors.