International crude softened on Thursday after reports of a tentative understanding between two of the eastern powers, and by midday the pump price had eased a few centimes across most of the Kingdom. The relief was modest and, for most motorists, welcome. It was not welcome on the Cordoba ring road, where the independent forecourt operators discovered that the state-affiliated Petral Almaria cooperative had capped its own prices below theirs without notice and without consultation.

The Almarian Retailers' Federation lodged a request for an emergency hearing before the Commerce Secretariat in Almaria Vella, describing the cap as a distortion of fair competition. The Federation represents some four hundred independent stations, most of them family concerns of two or three pumps; a dozen of them sit within sight of Petral Almaria's larger sites on the ring.

The timing is awkward. Monday brings the Chamber's vote on the Fuel Stabilisation Reserve, a measure whose defenders have argued that state coordination steadies the market in a week when corridor surcharges have climbed toward eighteen per cent. The cap will be read by some members as a preview of that coordination and by others as its warning. The Prime Minister's office declined to comment; Petral Almaria's board issued a one-paragraph notice describing the cap as a temporary measure reflecting wholesale conditions.

Businessmen of Almaria Vella of longer memory will recall the 1974 intervention and the rows it produced between the ring and the Old Town. The ring lost then. It is not clear whether the Commerce Secretariat, which has shown no appetite this spring for confrontation with the cooperative, will give the Federation's hearing before Monday or after.