Out of courtesy or to avoid a fine - what matters is to make no more noise than necessary. Here in Spain we are not the most rigorously prone to keeping the decibels in check. Our enjoyment is measured by volume, and we find it hard to believe we have had a good time unless things have gone off with a bang, with something broken or the odd firework at least. Perhaps this is why silence has become confined here to the occasional cathedral cloister or the cautious footfall of clandestine lovers, stepping cat-like on velvet pads.

It has been established that when the noise level rises above 50 decibels it goes from being simply irritating to genuinely aggravating, in the first place, and ultimately bad for one's health. The natives here, particularly those of more recent vintage, seem addicted to the din. They have grown up with it, and if they happen to stray into a library to see a group of people reading by studious lamplight, they think they are Martians. "How can you enjoy yourself in silence, with no sound blaring out?", they ask themselves. Noise is ruining the holidays of many foreign visitors who are not so accustomed, as well as many Spaniards who are equally unable to get used to it. Not just on the coast and in the cities, but also in inland villages, where the practice has become so firmly established that the "thousand sounds of the countryside" can now not be heard above the constant and insistent racket of the nightclubs.

Doctors assure us that future generations will end up deaf, and we know that the worst kind of deafness is that of those who want to hear music at full volume, every hour of the day and night. It is a way of drowning out that other voice we have always within us, dismissing the possibility of not just a debate, but even a peaceful chat with oneself. The best tourist slogan would be to promise a "Quiet Village", "Party-free Beach" or "Bands Banned Here". Not all silences are deathly; some are there to let us live.