From computer world (For educational purposes only)

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This is ocurring all over the world.

Will Spain be gored by the millennium beast? The year 2000 bug is creeping up behind Spain, where Y2K action has been arrested by the Manana effect

A rainy day at Luton airport. This was not what Lorraine Chase had promised! Anyway, the airplane looked big and exciting. My dinner came in a cardboard box and my mum stored it in a fridge until we got home and then posted it back to the airline with a note demanding a refund.

Hours later the plane landed and woosh - I was hit by a wall of heat. The coach seemed to take ages to reach our hotel and then we were regimentally unpacked into a small room which had its own bathroom. What luxury!

At breakfast I knew we were in a a different country. The food seemed most exotic, and the people serving had what I would later learn to describe as a sullen yet chaotic attitude. I had seen people like this on TV - a hotel run by a tall man with a funny walk and a waiter who always seemed to be dropping things and said Que? a lot.

These were my first experiences of Spain at the tender age of eight, when Benidorm was still a place to go on a family holiday - even if this one was my parents' honeymoon. And so you will forgive me a wry smile when yesterday, at the Madrid Intercontinental Hotel, I noticed my waiter was wearing a badge that boasted the legend, "Hello, my name is Manuel - how can I be of service?"

Outside my hotel, the street kiosk was selling magazines and newspapers. But what was that lurking at the back of the booth? Not some sicko bondage mag - oh no - this was a year 2000 testing tool. Well, maybe I was in for a pleasant surprise.

This being the country which invented both the word and the state of mind known as manana, I guess I should have been prepared for how this would effect their perception of Y2K.

The crowd filed in about 15 minutes late for the press conference. The TV crews were all set up and their lights distracted a few older journalists. The translator introduced me and we were off. Presentation number 50 this year.

Spain is the fifth largest PC market in Europe with 5.8 million machines. The UK does over #4bn of trade every year with Spain and - you guessed it - they are almost totally inactive on the PC Y2K front. There have been hardly any stories in the computer press and the government's year 2000 efforts seem to have run out of steam with the launch of their Web site.

By the looks on the reporters' faces, I could tell that the translator was doing a great job. They looked so familiar, just like in Japan, in Morocco, in Austria - that look of understanding, preceding a look of fear.

And increasingly I am encountering the Manana Effect. Faced with the sure knowledge that they are very very late, the media seems to project an attitude of, "Well, we can't do anything now, so let's wait and see what happens tomorrow," and thus they write stories which endorse inaction. This is plainly irresponsible.

If millions of Britons want to be able to climb aboard the bucket-and-spade express to the Costa del Sol next summer, we must take a stand on this attitude.

We must, as Princess Tony said last March, take a leadership role in Europe and push other nations into action. No one ever said it would be easy, but surely the alternative is too painful to think about.

I climbed aboard the return flight into British Airways Club Class, a far cry from my first trip to Spain all those years ago. And yet . . . across the tannoy system came a familiar voice. "Ladies and Gentlemen, the pilot speaking, my name is Manuel . . . "

Catch up with all the latest Y2K issues in Millennium.

Maybe you have a burning issue that you want to share. Go visit a Forum

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), June 10, 1999

Answers

I think that the author has watched too many episodes of FAWLTY TOWERS as a kid, his description at the tender age of eight matches exactly the characters in that series. Especially Manuel.

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), June 10, 1999.

I loved that show. Monty Python? The best. Mud wrestling? I dunno.

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), June 11, 1999.