I mention those delicacies not to poke fun at the establishment, which cooked up an excellent blend of duck magret and confit. The menu does, however, catch some inimitable proofs of Spain's insularity: a surprising lack of command of English; the insistence on eating a narrow range of perennial favourites (however misspelled); and a dearth of influences, culinary or otherwise, from the outside world.

Crossing into Spain from heartland Europe, commonplace words become quite exotically strange. Toilet-toilette becomes bano or aseo, just as beer-bier-biere turns into cerveza and dinner-diner into cena. Instead of the gentle pleasure of the rested eye, the landscape becomes open and arid, bare and barren.

Every bookshop still stocks a distinctly weird classic written 414 years ago, starring a few windmills, a barber's basin, dusty old books and a deluded old man. Dinner is not served until hours after sundown. Adults continue to enjoy watching bulls being cruelly killed.

Judged by reasonable criteria - such as tourist numbers, borrowing costs, new investments or exports - Spain is doing well. Socialists evidently have something pertinent to say, with the electorate still willing to listen.

In elections this year, the socialist PSOE not only increased its seats by almost half (from 84 to 122, 54 short of a majority) but spent weeks afterwards fending off a more radical anti-austerity party as a putative coalition partner.

Past corruption scandals continue to gnaw and grind away, but few of the current crop of politicians appear formed or framed by the top end of town in Madrid or Barcelona. In their register of interests, one parliamentarian declared that he had inherited nothing more than a garage, while another listed ownership of a 19-year-old Volkswagon Golf.

For his part, the prospective prime minister made 16,000 euros ($A25,700) from sales of his Survival Guide.

So far, so good, although polls indicate the Spanish people are not convinced their country is prospering. Political debate simmers around the trial of Catalan separatists, indicted not merely for rebellion but also for allegedly misusing public funds.

Tempting fate, the Spanish constitution (at article 2) proclaims Spain's "indissoluble unity". "Indissoluble" need not connote stasis, nor preclude further experiments with autonomy, cultural nationality or decentralisation. After all, the powers that be in Madrid might recall (and I credit this statistic to The New York Review of Books) that 19 of the 28 European Union members owe their existence to then-illegal separation from a larger state.

Behind and beyond political controversy is a running debate about what makes Spain special. A few of the old rough edges have been planed away. The guardia civil at the airport were flirty and chatty rather than forbidding. Near Madrid's Mercado San Miguel, a yum cha restaurant had set up, even if it needed to describe its wares as "Tapas de Sichuan".

Tradition counts for something. Spaniards dutifully fret about the demise of artisans forging homemade swords from Toledo steel. Every suburb boasts a shrine to worship of the dead pig in all forms known to humanity. Arrangements for running the bulls in Pamplona were deplored on the grounds that non-slip paint had been applied to corners along the route and that the rampaging bulls are chaperoned by castrated steers.

More benign slivers of history do emerge. As I was eating breakfast (ham) near the palace in Madrid, the 18th century trotted by. Horsemen with lances pranced, footmen on coaches held on to their wigs, a trumpet called. All this masquerade, confected to allow an ambassador to present credentials, was conducted by soldiers wearing shades of orange and bougainvillea. They beguiled rather than scared me.

Nonetheless, the dead weight of history eases only slowly. You can consider any ageing Spanish man - in a uniform of flat cap, buttoned-up shirt, walking stick, cardigan and beige pants - and wonder what they have lived through. Civil war was followed by fascist dictatorship, then return to democracy, EU membership, Basque separatism, the decline of the countryside and rise of new industries. Happily, Australia missed anything comparable. Often, the eyes of those old blokes look like they have seen too much for far too long.

Spaniards continue to argue about whether Franco's remains should be exhumed. Assessments of the 1936-39 civil war remain blurred by partisanship and amnesia. A copy of the republican banner "No Pasaran" was propped up in central Madrid, but against the wall of a tacky restaurant with an English-language menu.

Salamanca's national Archive of the Civil War strives earnestly to be fair; arithmetically equal numbers of nationalist and republican posters are judiciously juxtaposed. A street stall displayed civil war postcards next to technicolour illustrations of Australian parrots and cockatoos.

These plangent, poignant memories deserve better than flamenco. Spain would do well to borrow fado singing from across the border in Portugal, to give full expression to its national longings and mourning.