One by one the walking wounded of the micro business are being wheeled out of the casualty ward - presumably to make room for next year's lot.

Osborne led the way, followed in the last two weeks by Victor. These are interesting in a distant sort of way - Osborne and Sirius users have had some anxious moments, but arrangements have been made to tide them over their suppliers' hard times.

The next computer to be rehabilitated could be the Dragon, one of this year's leading wingless wonders. Dragon Data, you may remember, passed its manufacturing rights into the hands of Eurohard of Spain in the summer (issue 74). The apes didn't leave the Rock.

At the time, we reported that there was a strong possibility that el Dragon home computer would become the BBC Micro of Spain. The plan was to have it adopted by a Spanish TV company, so that the Dragon would be the accepted vehicle of home computer literacy reigning in Spain. Eurohard, certain of government backing on a local level, expected to win central government support for the plan.

The implications for faithful UK Dragon users are clear. If their micro wins the backing of government and broadcasting organisations, with the further possibility of high education sales as a spin-off, they need never feel like poor relations (pobre tios) again. They may have to learn mucho Spanish fairly pronto, but software, hardware and periferales should flow back into the shops like vino corriente.

Faithful UK Dragon users should not count their chiquitas before they're hatched. Although Eurohard exudes confidence, and some UK Dragon specialists are today more perky than for several months, there are several rios to cross.

First: although Dragon machines have been seen at a recent Madrid exhibition, no Spanish keyboard was in evidence. Spanish has fewer peculiarities than many alphabets - a matter of a tilde (~) here and an upside-down question mark there - but the lack of a suitable keyboard won't endear the machine to the leaders of Spain's educational establishments.

Second: people who know the Spanish market hit at the possibility of Spanish TV hedging its bets by adopting more than one machine. This is reflected in the attitudes towards micros in schools; the Spanish education authorities, while recognising that 8-bit micros are reasonably cheap (though still not two a peseta), may try for more sophisticated IBM PC-like systems where they can.

Third: outside Eurohard, the Dragon is rarely seen as a home-grown micro, more as somebody else's cast-off.

Fourth: outside Eurohard, the Spanish market is well supplied by the likes of Sinclair, Acorn, Commodore and others. If el Dragon (probably a Dragon 64 with disk drives) took on the BBC Micro's mantle in Spain, it would hardly have the advantages that the BBC Micro had in this country some three years ago. Apart from the mutual benefits enjoyed by the BBC Micro and the micro awareness schemes of the time, the BBC didn't have to take on well-established suppliers to a well-established games market. The Dragon has already been down this road once.

This is not to say that the outlook is bleak for faithful UK Dragon users - and it might be worthwhile for Newbrain owners to start lobbying the Dutch to make the Newbrain their TV micro. But you shouldn't expect an overnight transformation.

If the Dragon is taken on by Spanish television, Dragon support organisations all over Britain will get a shot iin the arm. Users may find that the first evidence of the reborn Dragon will be tortilla recipes on cassette and 1,001 things to do with maracas, but eventually the machine should begin to carve out a future.

How far that will affect the Dragon 32 is open to question. It looks more likely at the moment that the 32 will gradually be phasedout, and that an enhanced version of the 64 will appear to carry the range forward. It shouldn't make very much difference in the long run. If the name of Dragon undergoes a renaissance, Dragon owners of all shapes and sizes should benefit.