Is Britain failing the Sugar Test?

The signage was all printed up properly, of course. And whoever had decreed that they were each necessary had required the use of screws, not Blu Tack to fix them to the walls. But they were so reminiscent of the A4 sheets of paper in the pharmacy that I could not help feeling that these signs were an equally valid indication of something going very wrong under the surface.

The Spanish passport control we had been through a week earlier consisted of nothing more than an empty booth where once a surly uniformed officer with a gun on his hip would have sat. We literally walked off the plane through to the baggage reclaim hall, and then outside without having to show anything to anybody.

And so it should be. We were simply travelling from one city to another within the European Union. The Spanish obviously take the view that they have no business asking travellers from the United Kingdom to prove who they are or to stand behind a line until told to move. After all, passengers alighting the train from Zaragoza to Barcelona, or the one from London to Inverness are not treated this way.

As it happens, Spain is only about 700 km from Britain, which is about the distance from London to Inverness (or from New York to Columbus, Ohio). Like Britain, it has also been the victim of many terrorist attacks over the years, including the 2004 Madrid train bombings – the worst terror attack in Europe since the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. And, as I said, it is one of Britain’s EU partners. So our security concerns should be broadly similar. In my view the differences between our two countries should be about relatively trivial matters such as food, drink, language, culture and climate.

When there is such a stark contrast between two sovereign states’ treatment of incoming travellers, and particularly when one state papers the walls of the immigration hall with stern notices like an overworked pharmacist who is losing his marbles, it looks to me like Spain has a healthy psyche, and that Britain is slipping into paranoia.