The crisis has its advantages in terms of travel: air fares fall, hotel prices plummet, even cruises are cheaper. But car rental is more expensive than ever, according to the New York Times, which says that prices are drastically up on 2008, in some cases by over 70%. And while I don't have hard evidence that the trend is being repeated outside the US, the indicators are pointing that way. Spanish media are clear - car rental firms have greatly reduced the number of vehicles on offer. Diario Sur, for example, has found out that the number of cars available for hire on the Costa del Sol has fallen in the last year from over 40,000 to something like 25,000. The implications are evident: you need to search harder for a good car hire deal, and if you leave it until the last moment, you may end up without a hire car altogether. For July, it is probably too late already.

Corunna's ancient lighthouse, the Torre de Hércules, has been inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List. Built by the Romans in the 1st century, it is the oldest lighthouse still in use in the world. Legend says that it marks the spot where Hercules buried the head and weapons of the slain giant Geryon.

The Spanish police have launched their "Tourism and Security - Summer 2009" campaign. To be honest, it's a bit half-hearted (perhaps because they have had considerable success in reducing crime against tourists in recent years), but becoming a crime victim is a sure way to have your holiday ruined, so do pay heed. Crime levels are not high in Spain, on the contrary, but sometimes they can seem so - almost everyone who visits Barcelona in particular either gets robbed or meets soneone else who has been. But don't be paranoid - as the British Foreign Office points out, millions of people have trouble-free visits every year, and common-sense precautions are usually enough.

Sir David Attenborough is the 2009 Prince of Asturias Award Laureate for the social sciences. In its decision, the jury says "His interest in the problems of our times, his permanent pursuit of excellence and the quality of his research have earned him the acknowledgement of the international academic community as well as making him a figure of great social renown thanks to the dissemination of his work in the major media, especially television." Nice one, Dave. Other award winners announced so far this year include another Brit, architect Norman Foster (the Arts), the World Health Organization (International Cooperation), the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Communication and Humanities), Martin Cooper and Raymond Samuel Tomlinson (Technical and Scientific Research), and Ismail Kadaré (Letters). The awards for Sports and Concord will be announced in September. See the next page for more about the Premios Principe de Asturias, 2009, plus a fabulous "Attenborough-moment" video.

The UNESCO "Man and the Biosphere" programme admitted twenty-odd new sites as biosphere reserves last month, three of which are in Spain and/or Portugal (that's one in Spain, one in Portugal and one in both). The new sites are Formentera in the Canary Islands, Flores Island in the Azores, and the adjoining Gerês-Jures nature reserves in the north of Portugal and south of Galicia, considered as one. Biosphere reserves differ from natural parks in that they are not wilderness areas but places where Man and nature have interacted to create ecological niches and ecosystems, now threatened as ways of life change (for our purposes, that means they are usually attractive landscapes but that you can generally find a drink and a meal somewhere). I have put together a map of biosphere reserves in Spain and Portugal.