The BBC website carries a fascinating article on the Spanish municipal elections, which reveals the extent local politics is now being influenced by Brits and other EU immigrants.

The European Union grants foreign nationals living in another member state the right to vote and stand in local and European elections and with over 300,000 EU citizens already registered to vote in Spain, mostly in the south of the country, plenty of Brits are putting themselves forward as candidates.

Many are standing for small independent parties in the municipality of San Fulgencio, with some parties’ lists of candidates dominated by non-Spaniards, most of them British.

I was amused to read that one party, who are fielding 11 migrants in their list of 16 candidates, claims it has the answer to “massive, uncontrolled immigration”.

Other parties representing EU migrants are campaigning for bilingual schools (English and Spanish) and more accountability around planning issues, which appears to be one of the main catalysts behind this rise in participation.

The article begs some interesting questions.

What exactly would Britain make of parties created to specifically represent the interests of migrants? I can’t imagine the Mail or Express being sympathetic to a Polish Independent campaigning for bilingual schools!

We are also repeatedly told how more and more people in the UK are feeling disfranchised from politics but the reverse appears to be happening out in Spain. Why are people apparently less willing to campaign for change in their home country than when they move abroad? Is it perhaps because their interest are in fact represented and defended in Britain?

It’s also worth noting that the article only ever refers to expats and never migrants or immigrants. This implies there is some sort of difference, when clearly there isn’t.

How well the non-Spanish candidates will do remains to be seen but it will be interesting to see if the participation of EU-migrants in another country’s politics is replicated in Britain in the future.

On Wednesday, Geoff Hoon (Minister for Europe) gave a speech on the benefits of being in the European Union and by all accounts it was very warmly received.

The lowering of mobile phone calls costs, environmental standards and cheap flights were all given prominence, but Geoff also pointed out that British people tend to take the benefits of being in the EU for granted.

Picking up on this point a Spanish journalist enquired why Britain does not give more credit to the EU for the positive things it does. The journalist pointed out that in Spain, a road built with EU money will be adorned with signs telling everyone who paid for it.

Perhaps if we followed Spain’s lead more of the British public would not take the EU for granted so much. Some things, like the positive effect the EU has on our economy, are difficult to highlight (especially with a sign!) but there are plenty of other opportunities to celebrate the EU. One good example is Britain’s beaches, which have improved drastically in the last 10 years, largely because of the EU. There are also areas in Yorkshire which have received large amounts of EU funding for business support.

If the EU is to become more popular in this country it is important what it does becomes more visible.

The very nature of terrorism means that there is rarely good news to report; all the more reason to savour the moment when there is.

The ceasefire announced by Basque terrorist group ETA is most welcome. It is a sure sign that even the most hardened of terrorist organisations can come to their senses and realise that violence is counter productive whereas peaceful, democratic debate is the only viable way to settle differences of opinion.

ETA still has to prove that they are serious about this ceasefire, and that they are genuinely committed to peace, but nonetheless this is a start

So the Spanish people voted yes to the constitution, overwhelmingly. While this might not be a surprise – Spain has always been staunchly pro-European – it is still good news. Four down, twenty-one to go.

Predictably, the UK media has tried to find a way to interpret the result negatively. They must have struggled, because they’ve eventually settled on complaining about the turnout. 42% is admittedly pretty low, but we always knew it would be low – with both main parties in favour, opinion polls predicting a large victory, and everyone recognising the result as completely uncontroversial. If it had been a more close-fought contest, I suspect voters would have turned out in their droves.

Besides, there is a whiff of hypocrisy here. The turnout in the first Irish referendum on the Nice treaty, which narrowly rejected the treaty, was down in the thirties – yet Eurosceptics hailed that as a triumph for democracy!

I visited Spain this week to take part in debates before their referendum on the new EU constitution. As in Ireland, I'm impressed with the quality of their debate when compared with the UK’s. Spain has its eurosceptics and its No campaigners, but they tend to be much more moderate (and honest!) than our own myth-makers.

It’s also interesting to notice that the debate in Spain goes in the opposite direction to the UK debate. There, the No campaign’s main objection to the constitution is that it is too cautious, too nation-statist, too British. This is actually the case in much of the EU – the British conspiracy theorists who pretend that the constitution is a great leap forward in federalism are definitely in the minority.

That’s another reason why a no vote would be a rather dangerous leap in the dark, by the way. If we reject the constitution, it would not be a simple matter of amending the draft and trying again. After all, what would a No vote mean? That it’s too integrationist, as our eurosceptics think, or not integrationist enough, as the Spanish No campaigners think? That it’s too British, as much of the continent thinks - or that it's not British enough, as the British think?

I must admit, it’s not helpful that fellow Socialist and Spanish PM José Zapatero has remarked that he would like to see the future replacement of Spanish national embassies with EU ones. I predict that this remark will be picked up by the UK Eurosceptics, who will pretend that Zapatero thinks the constitution will do this. It does nothing of the sort, whatever Zapatero might like to see in the future.