Following my Madrid “debate,” I proceeded to the Spanish coast, having the pleasure again this year of giving several summer lectures there. These are programs for Spanish students who want to satisfy a requirement for extracurricular activities without completely ducking out intellectually through basket-weaving and the like. Generally, the students are very interested and engaged.

First up was south of Valencia, in a mountain town overlooking the water that apparently is Spain’s version of Chianti-shire. It seems the English have taken a fancy to the place and now help keep population levels healthy. A handful of the British-expat crowd came to hear my talk Wednesday night. Their reaction was mixed — from skeptics who welcomed hearing some actual climate data, to alarmists confronted for the first time with an opposing view. The mayor came. She was horrified.

The alarmists asked that most typical question: so . . . what are you saying? Data and analysis meant nothing to them, without a commandment as to how they should or should not live. What use is mere information, leaving it to them to make up their own minds? Was I telling them not to recycle and to drive SUVs? The answer of course is that the alarmist agenda demands not that we all drive hybrids, but that driving be massively curtailed; not that we screw in funny light bulbs (with not-so-funny price tags), but that we light a whole lot less. It’s always funny to witness the emotional confusion that follows the disappointing news that catastrophe may not be waiting just over the horizon.

I had a few days to kill before my next gig in the Canary Islands – where I just landed (imagine Phoenix, plopped down on the coast; add some lava, and a lot of Germans). So I met up in Barcelona with an old friend — a lawyer from New Orleans who was nice enough to pit-stop on his way to meet his vacationing wife and daughter. Although the San Fermin festival and the running of the bulls did take place last week, we both have wives and babies now – and I’ve already gotten my picture in the papers dodging toro (and, in the Washington Times, “push[ing] a smaller Spaniard into a bull” in 1998). So while I’ve been repeatedly Gored on this trip, it hasn’t been by a bull.

We headed for the hills – specifically, Gerona: an underrated mid-sized town centrally located for all manner of wonderful day trips. Pals, Peratallada, the Parador at Vic-Sau, the Costa Brava.

I have no problem letting you in on these travel tips. I wish everyone who hasn’t enjoyed such things could, and would. Not so the perfectly charming lady we dined next to during our first night in Gerona. She had just flown in from Holland on RyanAir to meet her family, who were driving the car down to their summer home in a southern French village. One mustn’t be without automobility, or the ease afforded by a competitive airline industry. Well, some people shouldn’t be, anyway.

You see, I cheered RyanAir, the cut-rate airline that allows the expanding middle class to experience the cuisine of Carcassonne, or the beauty of a restored Medieval jewel like Gerona. She scowled. She loved that the airline allowed her to get here so easily and cheaply but, no, she didn’t appreciate that so many others are doing it, too. This set the tone.

“I understand that population is a bigger threat even than global warming,” she exclaimed — without any prodding from me, I swear.

I then learned that the town where her family vacations is apparently dying, with young people leaving to find opportunity elsewhere. So her family’s investment and subsequent improvements have been good for the locals. And it is a wonderful escape for her family, particularly for their semi-urban teenager who benefits from the change. And, no, she would not tell us where it was because she sincerely feared we might look for property there, having been told how lovely it is. (As the Maestro said of Tuscany, “It’s booked solid.”) If word got out, then other, non-quaint (not poor) people would have such pleasures and, well, she might have to share the region with them. And that would be a very bad thing. She could not have been more serious.

You see, she has hers. What some gentle Socratic questioning failed to reveal, however, is an ability to hear herself speak.