The Premier League has been on full throttle over the holiday period but as La Liga does not start up again until Saturday it's perhaps a good time to give out the first Phil Awards to acknowledge what's been happening in Spanish football since the start of the season.
Top Team - Can there be any other choice than Barcelona?
With the weight of winning an unprecedented treble last season hanging over them, they haven't crumbled under the pressure. Once again they are top of the league and also in the Spanish Cup and Uefa Champions League. Into the bargain, they won the Fifa Club World Cup for the first time earlier this month.
Perhaps they are not quite as stylish as last season's version of Barca - they have scored 10 goals fewer in La Liga than at the same point last season - but they have looked visibly more solid at the back. In fact, they actually have one more point to their name than they did after 15 games last season and remain unbeaten.
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As we lurch towards the end of the year and, indeed, the end of the decade, it's time for a retrospective piece which considers the top European stars of the game in the last 10 years.
Here's a quick recap of who won what.
After all the hangovers from all the parties at the start of the Millennium had ebbed away, Italy were Europe's only World Cup winners, but France, Greece and Spain all won what's now become colloquially known as the 'Euro'.
Three teams lifted the twice in the last decade - Real Madrid, AC Milan and Barcelona while Bayern Munich, Porto, Liverpool and Manchester United all triumphed once.
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The name probably doesn't mean very much to most football fans, even Spanish ones, but on Wednesday night the defender is expected to make history on several counts.
He's in the Basque team's squad to face Werder Bremen in the Europa League and set to make his European debut filing in for the injured and flu-ridden Spanish international right-back Andoni Iraola.
Each season about 100 players start their first-team careers with Spanish top-flight clubs but what has brought the spotlight specifically on Ramalho is not only that he will be the youngest player to appear for Athletic Bilbao in an official match but that he's black.
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Last week I wrote that next year's finals in South Africa could finally see a European team win the World Cup on terrain beyond the continental boundaries.
Having sat at home and watched closely as Friday's draw unravelled, my belief that this will become a self-fulfilling prophesy has increased.
Looking at the draw on paper, I think as many as 10 of Europe's 13 teams could make it through to the knock-out stages next summer and I'd also expect remarkably short odds on all-European semi-finals.
The draw could not have been much kinder to Spain, who Fifa have at the head of its own global rankings, holders Italy and, of course, . Big guns like Germany and the Netherlands got rather more loaded groups but their coaches and players are still feeling confident that they can qualify for the last 16 and even go much further.
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Tim Vickery said in his blog that there is one piece of information that will be cited time and time again ahead of next summer's .
Well, as if to fulfil his prophecy, here is that fact for you: since the World Cup started in 1930, no European nation has won the trophy on another continent.
The closest anyone has come to triumphing in the eight editions held beyond European frontiers was , who lost on penalties to Brazil in that in Los Angeles' Rose Bowl.
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Hi, I'm Phil Minshull. I've lived in Spain since 1997 and covered Spanish football since the first day I got here. My blog aims to provide some insight into what's happening in La Liga, and there is much more to it than only Real and Barcelona, as well as elsewhere around Europe.
