Off to Ourense, where I almost met the President of Galicia.

I am spending the weekend in Orense where the mornings are now crisp and almost chilly, the sunrise is spectacular as seen from my hotel window and the temperature goes up to something phenomenal by midday.

We are here for the Galicia Chess Festival, taking place at the Pazo de Deportes Paco Paz. On Thursday when we arrived the GCF team was already busy transforming a truly impressing stadium from a venue for sports like basketball, football, volleyball and so on into the perhaps more sedentary but no less competitive sport of chess. Young volunteers shifted equipment around, organiser Roberto Páramos spent hours on the phone, the wooden floor was covered in protective sheets and the whole place was converted into a venue for a chess event. We left the sports centre at about 11 and headed for Orense centre to cenar, finally falling into bed at around 2 in the morning, not the best preparation for my Phil playing chess the next day but he seemed to survive it.

Friday morning saw us all gathered at the deputación de Ourense for an official reception with the vice president of the Orense District.

There were drinks and nibbles for everyone. This event has sponsorship from the local tourist office, the deputación and even Xacobeo 2010, so there has been a good deal of handshaking and press photography.

My role in all of this was to be the official interpreter so I found myself fielding phone calls from irate and bewildered Russian and Ukrainian chess players who were stranded at airports, usually with minimal or no Spanish, acting as a kind of go-between to help get them to Orense. So I have found myself on first name terms with some of the big boys of the chess world (not quite the Karpovs and Kasparovs but still) who before this were just names my chess playing husband mentioned from time to time.

I may have appeared on local TV, taking part in the opening ceremony where Carme Pardo, director general of Tourismo Galicia made the first move. I have had to try to remember where the loos were in a building I had entered for the first time the previous day and to respond to questions to which I only had half an answer. But it’s all part of the fun. I did draw the line at playing a quick game of chess so that someone could film it. That might have been negative marketing for the organisation.

And publicity and marketing seem to have a bigger and bigger part in everything; even as I sit here typing this one of the team has brought me a polo shirt to wear. Why? Because it has the organisation’s logo on it. I am part of the marketing!

Lunch was provided at a reasonable price at a residence for handicapped people nearby. Between rounds players relaxed. Some of the younger ones found another kind of activity to keep themselves busy.

On Saturday afternoon I escaped with the WAGS (well, wives, girlfriends, parents, small brothers and sisters and even a little dog) on an excursion. We drove through winding roads, taking a coach down tracks I would have been nervous about driving my car on. Our coach driver seriously deserves a medal. At last we arrived at the embarcadero, the landing stage for a catamaran which took us through the canyons of the river Sil, a truly impressive bit of Galician geography and well worth a visit.

We returned to the playing venue just in time to witness a visit by regional president, el Señor Feijóo. This visit was, of course, part of the reason for the push to have a corporate image earlier in the day. In a huge hall full of chess players and the assembled wives, girlfriends, parents, small brothers and sisters and even a little dog, in a pause between the last two rounds of a lightning tournament, Mr Feijóo made a presentation to the widow of Fernando Marcote, a local chess benefactor, and gave a speech about the importance of sport, how good it was to see so many people playing chess. Hopefully funding is guaranteed now for another chess festival next year.