Mr Checa making Torredonjimeno the laughing stock of Spain

In Regina’s bar in the main square of Torredonjimeno on Thursday night, Rafael Sanchez, a farm worker, clutched his glass of beer with white knuckles.

I am not going home. They can’t make me. This town has gone totally silly, he said defiantly.

It was the first night of a new regime in which the town’s mayor, Javier Checa, has banned men from going out on Thursday evenings. All men found out of their houses between 9pm and 2am on a Thursday will be fined five euros.

Mr Checa said the new policy was designed to free women of domestic shackles and to raise people’s awareness of sexual equality, but the scheme has bitterly divided the town. He expects the town’s menfolk to stay at home to look after the children and do the washing up.

In the bars, people muttered darkly about Mr Checa making Torredonjimeno the laughing stock of Spain. I would send men who break the ban to jail if I could, but there is no jail in the town, said Mr Checa.

Steadfastly ignoring the ban, Mr Sanchez said that people did not mind that Mr Checa had declared himself to be a homosexual, But this is going too far, he said, and next he wants to ban television one day a month.