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.

 

The centenary of the death of Isaac Albéniz, one of Spain's greatest composers, has been something of an anticlimax. But if you are a music lover and find yourself on Madrid's Gran Vía, you could take a moment to seek out this plaque marking the house which was his family's home at Calle San Onofre, 4, off Calle Fuencarral. The plaque was unveiled today by Madrid's mayor, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, about whom I have many bad things to say - the public works for which he is responsible have been a major bane in my life for several years, now - but who is a real melomaniac. This is fitting, for he is in fact the great-grandson* of Isaac Albéniz.

Juliette leon is a singer song writer based in the UK in the West Midlands . The song that Juliette submitted to the Mp3 Awards which was filmed in Silves - in the Algarve, Portugal - was judged by music industry experts including the chairman of the Performing Rights Society Ellis Rich.

My wife has just told me that the first snow of the year in Madrid is falling outside, which reminds me that Christmas is approaching, with all its implications - the Christmas market in the Plaza Mayor; the street lights; the trees in the Puerta del Sol; rowdy groups of office workers after their overly boozy celebration meals; one immense dinner after another, with the concommitant, near constant indigestion; the twelve grapes choked on with the twelve strokes of midnight on New Year's Eve; the procession of the Three Wise Men on the eve of Epiphany; and, of course, Spain's monument to the consumer society: the enormous automated puppet show that is Cortylandia. Christmas runs into New Year and Epiphany to make a lengthy festival in Spain, lasting from December 24th to January 6th, though only three and two-halves of those days are actually holidays (the two halves are Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, when most businesses open in the morning only). Now, to get into the Christmas spirit, what better than a carol? Spanish carols - villancicos - are so called after villanos, country folk (yes, it's the same etymology as the English villain), and are of some interest to musicologists, many having ancient origins (the carols, not the musicologists). And the one villancico that every Spaniard and, I suspect, practically every Spanish-speaking person in the world knows is Los Peces en el Río, so here it is. The version below is not the most musical, but it does nicely capture the Spanish Christmas spirit: irreverent, noisy, gregarious, and great fun. See the next page for the lyrics of this villancico and some more versions which are more conventional, or at least more musical, than this one, but no more enjoyable (or tasteful, come to that).

If you are interested in Spain and its gastronomy, it's very likely that you already know about the PBS show Spain On the Road Again, the follow-up to the Spain Road Trip, if only because of its larger-than-life host Mario Batali and co-host celebrity actress Gwyneth Paltrow. What you may not have realised is that it is musically fun as well, beginning with its theme tune, "On the Road Again," performed by Willy Nelson and Antonio Carmona in a sweet kind of flamenco skiffle style. All round, the soundtrack is, as I say, fun and of generally high quality, but it is definitely NOT SPANISH. Read on for more about the Spain - On the Road Again music.