Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness the joining in matrimony of Juan and Perdita.

Do you, Juan, promise to love, honour and obey - and share all the housework with Perdita?

Madre de Dios, I'm outta here, amigo!

Listen chaps, if you think you've got it hard in this country, and are dreaming of escaping to Spain for a stress-free life lazing around in the sun, think again.

For Spanish men will soon have to learn to change nappies and don washing-up gloves under a new law designed to strike a blow at centuries of Latin machismo.

The law, due to be passed this month, is likely to hit the male population hard in a country where 40 per cent of men claim to do no housework at all.

It will oblige men to share domestic responsibilities and the care and attention of children and elderly family members.

It will become part of the marriage contract at civil wedding ceremonies later this year and apparently it will figure largely in divorce proceedings.

Of course, we British don't need a law like that, do we? We pull our weight, don't we fellas?

I mean, who is it that drives the ladies to the supermarket so they can enjoy themselves karting round the aisles? Who samples the food mid-cooking to see if wifey is on course for perfection? And who considerately gets out of the house so the carpets are uncluttered for the lady to vacuum?

What I want to know is, what will the punishment be for breaking this new law in Spain?

Three months hard labour at a nappy-changing class, two years chained to the kitchen sink?

Mr Blair reckons to be big on family values, and has been responsible for some barmy, knee-jerk new laws which interfere in people's private lives, but even he must realise it would never work in this country.

For one thing, we don't need it.

Women already occupy the seat of power.

There's nothing like a cold shoulder under the duvet - or a cold meal at dinner time - for bringing men into line.

Blokes may boast in the pub about not doing any of the housework, but you could always call round at their homes unexpectedly and find them meekly beavering away in pinnies and marigolds. My wife reckons it's all a big con. How come, she says, men can cope with setting up computers, with all those impossible instruction brochures, but the washing machine is an alien body, poised to eat their best shirts and only understood by wimmin?

Men know how to do it, she says, but they just don't think it needs doing.

She cannot complain too loudly because as everyone knows I am a paragon of domestic virtue. But I just don't notice dust - or bits on the carpet - or rings round the bath.

Are women born with dirt-seeking antennae that detect things men cannot see?

And anyway, half of the ills that befall children today are the result of too many young mums watching those insane 'there are more germs on your floor than in your dog's basket' adverts. So what?

Let the kid munch a maggot or two - we did, with relish, under the raspberry bushes in the garden, along with a good dose of soil. It primed our immune systems for life.

But the daily need to spruce up the surroundings - well, that does seem to be a female trait.

Add a dose of Latino mama, where 'my beautiful boy' has not had to lift a fat little finger from the age of zero to be considered a genius, and perhaps the Spanish ladies do have a point.

But how sad that we need governments to tell us how to live.

Updated: 09:28 Tuesday, April 12, 2005