SPAIN and Ireland have many friendly, connections, but we couldn't get too starry eyed the relationship in the context of the new Europe which is thundering down the tracks to us from Maastricht.
There's is no doubt that Irish people, in general, are genuinely popular in Spain. This is partly because we are not English. Anti English feeling is quite widespread, with deep historical roots, well watered in the present by mad cow politics and Daily Mirror "You're done, Juan" journalism.
More positively, there is a vague but strong and widespread belief that the Irish share many characteristics with the Spanish, especially the ability to have a good time in public, at the drop of a hat.
As in other parts of Europe, our cultural riches, from James Joyce through Roddy Doyle to The Cranberries and Enya, are much appreciated. And many Spaniards have warm memories of visiting Ireland, as students or tourists. (The hostility which large groups of noisy Spanish young people occasionally encounter in Ireland does not seem to have dented these happy recollections very much.)
Irish products, from Kerrygold to Guinness, have a high profile in Spanish stores and bars, and a higher reputation. In the past, Irish colleges gave the Catholic Church in Ireland a strong Spanish influence, and maritime connections are many and mostly friendly, though severely strained through fisheries disputes.
Ireland's current EU Presidency was greeted in the Spanish media by a plethora of enthusiastic articles about the small country which is everybody's friend.
But a personal anecdote might put things in a sharper perspective. I was recently at a small gathering of foreign affairs journalists and academics. Somewhere in the small hours, we were discussing the rights and wrongs of the "dirty war" against ETA in the 1980s. One participant argued that, when the chips are down, all states will break their own laws when threatened by terrorism.
In a small fit of patriotism, and not entirely truthfully, I ventured to suggest that Ireland, just for example, had never done any such, thing. "Paddy," came the response, "you do not have a real state. You have two or three counties and you do not even have television."
You will have to take it on trust that this unguarded remark came from a man who both knows and, loves our country, though his perceptions at that moment indicated otherwise. What he was really saying, I think, was that Ireland simply does not count when it comes to European realpolitik.
This view may be more widespread than we like to realise. Spain will be our friend in Europe as long as we are no threat to Spanish interests, and we will survive quarrels over fishing rights.
But if a moment comes when the EU reconsiders giving each member state, whatever its population, equal voting rights at the conference table, we may find that there are Spanish politicians, among others, who suddenly cannot find us on the map.
Is there anything we can do about this? Apart from the obvious need to continue strengthening our economic and cultural ties, Spain has one peculiarity which could be to our advantage. Under the 1978 constitution, the country is divided into 17 autonomous communities.
Many of these, especially the Catalans, Basques and Galicians, are seeking, and beginning to get, individual recognition in Brussels. In areas ranging from language to agriculture, we might find we sometimes have more in common with administrations in Barcelona or Vitoria than with Madrid.
Such relationships would have to be handled with great sensitivity. There could obviously be no question of interfering in the internal policies of a sovereign state.
However, through building parallel links with the increasingly powerful autonomous governments, we just might find one way to prevent the EU becoming, in the not to distant future, a club of five or six real states", in which we would have little real influence.
As the above is written, this correspondent is packing his bags to return to Dublin. Here are some final snapshots. In my last letter, I wrote about how ETA's one week "truce" had, unintentionally, created a new sense of unity in the constitutional parties. After a further week in the Basque Country, however, I came across a topic that seemed to spark at least as much passion as separatism and violence.
The San Marciales fiesta in the Basque border town of Irun celebrates a historic victory over French forces, rather in the style of an Orange march, without the sectarianism. Hundreds of local men, uniformed in black, white and red, march around for much of the day in military companies, backed up by folkloric cavalry and artillery.
It is a colourful, celebratory occasion, in which no amount of wine, beer or champagne ever seems to induce a stagger, let alone a brawl, among the participants.
If sectarianism is absent, however, sexism is not, according to some local women. For many years it has been argued that women should participate, and some companies have discreetly allowed one or two to march in disguise". This year, however, a group of about 40 women decided to march as a single company and, failing agreement, launched themselves into the parade at a strategic moment.
For a few minutes, something of the visceral hatred of Garvaghy Road poisoned the festival atmosphere. "Prostitutes", "lesbians" and "sons of bitches" were among the more printable responses from the public, many of them women. Under a considerable degree of physical assault, the marching women were forced to take shelter in the town hall, where some councillors had supported them.
Almost every conversation I heard in the ensuing days was dominated, often quite bitterly, by conflicting analysis of these events. Curiously, it was very hard to predict who would back which position. I heard left wing women passionately defend an unchangeable tradition, while right wing men were sometimes quite tolerant of change. Even the most innocent of marching traditions, it seems, can engender fierce and unexpected social disorder.