ALMARIA VELLA — A fresh tremor in the world's oil markets on Tuesday sent its inevitable shudder through the Kingdom's forecourts, and by evening the corridors of the Plaça de la Constitució and the offices along the Passeig del Rei were alike consumed with a single, practical question: what will the motorist pay by Friday, and with what instrument shall the Crown answer?

The answer, so far as this paper has been able to ascertain, is that His Majesty's government is prepared to draw — modestly, and only if the futures markets fail to settle — upon the national strategic reserve. Finance Minister Dolors Puigvent told the Herald that the situation is being monitored 'hour by hour,' and that Energía Almaria has warned pump prices in Cordoba and Almaria Vella may climb by as much as four céntims per litre before the weekend.

Into this hour of genuine strain stepped Don Alejandro Cordoba, whose statement from the offices of El Faro de Almaria — reprinted in part on page 3 — urged the Kingdom to place stability before ideology. 'We are living through a moment of genuine economic strain,' Don Cordoba wrote, and the sentence, for all its plainness, has the merit of being true. The patriarch of the Cordoba plain has, in this paper's long acquaintance with him, rarely mistaken the public mood; nor has he mistaken it now.

The Prime Minister's circle, consulted late yesterday, confirmed that a temporary drawdown of some three days' import equivalent is under active preparation, though no instrument has been signed. Palace sources, whose temperature this paper is in a position to measure without reproducing, describe the King as composed and inclined to let the ministries work. Cardenal Marín's quiet intercessions at Sant Joan, which we reported yesterday, are said to have calmed at least one frayed corner of the Cabinet table.

The opposition, through Senyor Renko, has chosen this hour to renew its familiar quarrel with the Cordoba interest — a quarrel conducted, as is now customary, in the columns of a rival paper and through the editor network, and to which we shall in due course return the courtesy of a measured reply. The leader of the Nationalists, Don Rafael Montoya-Vidal, has likewise set out his objections in the Almarian Clarion; his arguments on tradition and household are serious, and will be read here with the seriousness they deserve, though a clause or two must once again, on plain constitutional ground, be set aside.

Beneath the political exchange, however, the fact remains that oil is dear, the reserve is full, and the Crown's first duty is to the household ledger. Professor Jaume Roldán of the University of Almaria Vella, addressing this week's symposium on the transition from hydrocarbons, described the Kingdom's solar corridor along the Cordoba plain as the surest long answer to the short shock now being felt. It is a point with which this paper, and we believe Don Cordoba, concur.

The Chamber reconvenes Thursday. The Finance Minister is expected to make a short statement before questions. Energía Almaria will publish its next bulletin at noon. Until then, the counsel from the plain is the counsel the country requires: steady hands, full reserves, and a decent reluctance to mistake a market shiver for a constitutional occasion.

The Herald will, as ever, report the numbers as they come.