All things considered, house prices in Madrid didn’t do too badly last quarter in a global city ranking published by Knight Frank.

Property prices in Madrid fell just 4.3pc over 12 months to the end of March, less than cities like Paris, Geneva, Shanghai, Monaco, and Sydney.

Mind you, the figures do smell a bit fishy. I can’t believe that property prices are falling less in Madrid than Geneva. That doesn’t make any sense (though it does make sense if you consider that Knight Frank use official figures, which as regular readers will know, are highly suspect in Spain):

Interesting to note that Miami is enjoying a strong recovery with prices up almost 14pc in a year, to some extent because prices fell so quickly in the crash. If only Spain had done the same we might be seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.