After reading "sadly one of those passions' is graffiti" I could have given up and not read on, but then I'd be as closed minded as the people who campaign against graffiti. Everyone seems to be of the train of thought graffiti=bad does not equal art. Why are you so opposed to it? It's not because it makes the area dirty, it makes it colourful, full of life, not dead.

Graffiti is probably the most dynamic art form, many walls in London have changed withing a week, and this continual respraying, new letters going up, makes it exciting. And the reason Spain has more graffiti is because the government has probably realized that graffiti (at least if it's GOOD graffiti, artistic, planned, structured) actually helps TIDY an area up, stopping the random taggers writing "I woz ere" in black marker. It works in London, shopes in Camden deliberately get a good artist to paint on their shutters, guess what, no crap writing appears.

It's our own government MAKING graffiti a problem, in other European countries, graffiti is welcomed and people LIKE it! So before you decide what everyone else decides, have a look at the shape of the letters, or the use of colour and try and think why the artist decided to do that, rather than saying "Isn't it time we waged war on graffiti before our towns and villages are "overwhelmed" which is destructive.