On our last night in the city, we dined on whole bream, followed by a creme caramel presented gratis, beneath a canopy of bougainvillea from where a white cat surveyed its realm. Afterwards on the way to the hotel we stopped to watch a match between Paris St. Germain and Real Madrid. The cafe was livelier than the sports bar of the previous night, where taciturn old men drank raki or cold coffee in lurid lighting, watching the screen without commenting, the "dour" Cretans Lawrence Durrell had observed.

On the way to dinner we had passed a small protest. Someone had been killed by police, Daragh told me later. I shivered at the news: all this holiday sunshine, the charms of the city, and the self-involvement required by leisure had immured me from awful realities of oppression and struggle.

Wednesday was the 6th anniversary of the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, an anti-fascist Greek rapper, by Golden Dawn henchmen. The fascist party itself, founded in 1980, has collapsed. Labelled a criminal organisation, it was rejected by voters in the last election and its members are on trial. The party had attempted to establish a branch in Crete but local activists and educators resisted successfully against its ideology of "blood and money". Everywhere in Old Town anti fascist graffiti punctuated social space, warning against the terrors of popular nationalism.

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