I just heard this song on KHYI internet radio out of Dallas; I haven't found out who does it:

"I never kissed a girl till I went to college
She got drunk and cheated on me
And I never kissed a boy till I went to prison
Murder in the first degree."

Way better than Raimon.

So the PP infighting is getting worse: the San Gil and Rajoy supporters have each called demonstrations by SMS for this afternoon. This is a terrible, irresponsible idea, and Gustavo de Aristegui, at least, agrees. A political party that's going to win an election needs to show an undivided front; if it can't make up its own mind what it wants, then it's never going to convince the voters.

The average retirement pension in Spain has increased 7.3% over the last year to €813 a month, which is an improvement but still not enough for old folks who have worked hard their whole lives. So I guess Zap can claim to have done something more or less useful, for once.

Let me clarify that I am by no means a tax-and-spend left-liberal / social democrat--I'm generally in favor of keeping taxes and spending as low as possible--but when it comes to helping out people who deserve it, I think we can afford to be generous. More money for retired people, and less for consultant reports and agricultural subsidies and culture ministries and state-owned TV and concerted Church schools and subsidies to the press and foreign aid to Cuba and propping up decaying rust-belt industries and supporting a bloated bureaucracy and payoffs for underemployed Andalusian "agricultural laborers" who for some reason always vote for the PSOE.

The goddamn squatters had themselves a big old time here in Gracia last night; they torched 25 plastic garbage containers. So how much is it going to cost us taxpaying citizens to replace them, and where do we put our garbage in the meantime? This ain't Naples; we don't live in filth around here.

I hate these dirtbags. They contribute absolutely nothing to the community, and they detract from it by committing vandalism and and shoplifting and living rough and dirty in abandoned buildings. So I bought a black indelible marker pen, and I've been writing "Okupas fuera" and "Okupas = parasitos" on the fly-posters they stick up on all the walls calling for anarchy and freedom for Franki.

So with all the foreign news out there they could be reporting on, La Vanguardia devotes a page to Ellen DeGenerate inviting John McCain to be the best man at her lesbian wedding. Wow, that's hot breaking political news. The most interesting part of the whole thing is that they spelled McCain's name wrong.

Get this. It's very weird. Santiago Cañizares, Valencia's goalie, formerly on the Spanish national team, is being investigated for child sexual abuse and has been subpoenaed to testify. Cañizares is known for having, well, unusual ideas, and hanging around with occult psychic cultish pseudophilosophical types. Specifically, he's been hanging around with a Uri Geller-type called "El Brujo," or "The Wizard." Seems that The Wizard has been charged with sexual abuse by 15 young women between the ages of 11 and 22. The Wizard instructed the girls that they needed to have sex with men as part of their "recovery" therapy. That's rape. How exploitative. What a betrayal of trust. Well, one of the girls has identified Cañizares as one of those men.

The Wizard was jailed in February 2007, and refused to testify until February of this year. Cañizares's agent denies any wrongdoing, but says Cañizares will not make any public statements. I say if he did it then we lock him up.

Headline from La Vanguardia: "Moving performance by Raimon in Madrid commemorates student revolution during dictatorship: 1000 people, among them ministers Sebastian, Soria, Aldo, and Salgado, attend singer-songwriter's concert."

You know an "artist" sucks when he's the official singer-songwriter of the current political regime. Here in Spain, there are several alleged artists--Llach, Sabina, Serrat, Ramoncin, and that lot, of whom Raimon is probably the worst--who pretended to be all radical back in the Sixties but never actually got beat up themselves. Now all those parlor-pinko lefty chuckleheads who think they were cool back in the good old days pretend to like these clapped-out used-up old farts.

The thing about Raimon is he cannot sing, he cannot play the guitar, he cannot write melodies, and his lyrics are stupid.

Judith Miller has a long piece in City Journal on ETA and terrorism in Spain. Go read it. There are a few small inaccuracies, but there are also some things I didn't know, such as the following paragraph:

American intelligence and counterterrorism officials have repeatedly traveled to Madrid, American officials say, to urge the Spanish government to close loopholes that international terrorists have exploited in its legal system, reduce the self-defeating envy among Spain’s warring police forces, improve police training, and step up bilateral and multilateral counterterrorism cooperation. Some of this has occurred. Spain recently approved the stationing of an NYPD detective in Madrid to monitor counterterrorist operations. But most U.S. pleas have had limited impact, perhaps hampered by the tension between Washington and Madrid over Iraq and other issues.

PP infighting news: Maria San Gil will not stand for reelection as the Basque PP leader; that is, she's getting out of the way. Very responsible, and worthy of Ms. San Gil, famous for her courage and honesty. She's receiving support from Gustavo de Aristegui, an intelligent man who is the PP's shadow minister for foreign affairs, and former Prime Minister Aznar's wife, Ana Botella, a Madrid city councilwoman. De Aristegui said, "Rajoy is makeing a profound mistake," which is pretty strong language when you're talking about your own party's leader. Rajoy, meanwhile, got support from Andalusian PP boss Javier Arenas.

Drugs and alcohol update: Of Catalan high-school students between 14 and 18, within the last month, 25% have consumed cannabis, 3.5% have consumed unprescribed prescription drugs, 31% have consumed tobacco, 61% have consumed alcohol, and 2.6% have consumed cocaine. Where do teenagers get enough money to buy cocaine?

Well, those little bastards, the Barcelona street criminals, have killed somebody. They bag-snatched an 80-year-old woman, a Danish tourist, and threw her to the ground on Tuesday. She was taken to the hospital, where she went into a coma, and she died yesterday. The cops say it's going to be almost impossible to find the murderer--under Kansas law, anyway, this is capital murder, committed during the commission of a felony--unless somebody talks. What cowards, victimizing old women who can't defend themselves. I vote we hang them, but you already knew that.

They arrested two more people for Internet kiddie porn here in Spain, where punks mug old ladies with impunity, but at least we round up pervo pederasts by the dozen. Get this: One of these pervs is a pediatrician. Glad I didn't send my kid to him.

The Euribor, the Eurozone's base interest rate, hit 5%, and oil has hit $135 a barrel. This means higher mortgage payments and higher food and gasoline prices, so it's time to pull in the old belt a notch or two.

What America should do: Reduce energy dependence on the Middle East. Despite the drawbacks, with oil this high, using ethanol makes sense. We have enormous coal reserves; let's use them. Drill in Alaska: it's an enormous place and a few oil wells are not going to drive polar bears into extinction. And it's not like anyone lives north of the Brooks Range. Wind power makes sense with oil this high, as well, and there are lots of windy places in Kansas where nobody lives where they could put up thousands of windmills. Build state-of-the-art nuclear plants; the risk is negligible though the cost is high. Sure, all this is going to cost money, but I'll bet private corporations could more than handle it.

Today it's Corpus Christi, and in an ancient Barcelonese tradition, they place an blown-out egg on top of the stream of water shooting up from the fountain in the Cathedral cloister, along with a dozen other medieval churches. The stream of water elevates the egg and it "dances," held up by the water. It's called "l'ou com balla," and is definitely worth having a look at if you're in town.

Get this: Nearly half of all Spaniards do not shower every day, according to a Proctor and Gamble survey. And with water restrictions, it's only going to get worse this summer.

Today La Vanguardia has nothing in the news pages on the Catalan consultant-reports corruption scandal, not surprisingly. However, Francesc de Carreras has an opinion piece buried back on page 20 in the print edition, the first opinion piece I've seen on this issue. They don't link to it from their website.

Remember, while reading, that the major issue in Catalan politics has been the new regional statute, which is supposed to make sure that Catalonia gets the same amount in government services as it pays out in taxes. Catalan nationalists' justification for this is that the regional government, the Generalitat, is badly financed and does not receive enough tax money to pass out in pork-barrel spending.

De Carreras points out that some of the reports commissioned had titles like "Ten arguments in favor of non-sexist toys" and "Design for a parcheesi board and jigsaw puzzle made from cardboard";

that 70% of the reports were billed at less than €12,000 and therefore not subject to competitive bidding;

that the Generalitat's budget for this year is €33 billion;

that the Generalitat has paid the Platform in Favor of Catalan National Sports Teams over €4 million in the past five years, along with the rent on a luxurious office, and just day before yesterday they received €1.2 million more;

that in 2007 the Generalitat subsidized pro-Catalanist organizations outside of Catalonia with more than €2 million;

that they gave €2.9 million last October and €625,000 just last week to the La Bressola Foundation in order to provide Catalan classes for 600 students in schools IN FRANCE;

that the Generalitat employed 126,510 civil servants in 2003, and 178,948 in 2007, an increase of more than 50,000 in four years;

that the Generalitat is opening "embassies" in foreign capitals, including Berlin (already open), London, Paris, New York, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Peking;

and that Generalitat-owned TV3 gives discounts of up to 95% to certain favored advertisers.

His conclusion: "This is happening just at the very moment (the Generalitat) is asking for a new financing system due to the insufficiencies of the previous one...Is the Generalitat badly-financed or does it waste money and pay off its clients?"

La Vanguardia doesn't have room in its news pages for this story, but they have plenty of space for Robert Fisk, in a news story titled "Where will the madness end?" on page 8, not labeled either analysis or opinion, to vomit hatred for President Bush and Israel and cheer on Islamist terrorists.

Says Fisk: "This George W. Bush declared in Jerusalem that 'Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas will be defeated because the Muslims in the whole region recognize the inanities of the terrorist perspective and the illegitimacy of their cause.' But where will this madness end? At what point do words lose their meaning? Al Qaeda is not being defeated. Hezbollah just won an internal war in Lebanon with similar dimensions to the victory of Hamas in Gaza. Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza are horrendous disasters. But this stupid and pitiless dunce of a man has lied to the world again...he explains the benefits of Israeli democracy to the world, as if the Palestinians benefit from a democracy that continues taking the land that they have owned for generations away from them."

Interestingly, they don't have a link to the Fisk story on their website either.

Catalan "consultant reports" corruption scandal news: The 1583 reports were commissioned by the Catalan government in 2007 alone. They include a one-page report billed at €11,999 (€12,000 is the line above which government contracts are subject to competitive bidding), many reports cut-and-pasted from Internet, and many invoices made out blank, without the recipient's name appearing on the bill.

Others include a €28,000 report on a species of clam, a €11,965 report on the cultivation of tiger nuts ("chufas"), and a €150,000 37-page report on Chinese culture.

And there are those damn tiger nuts again.

Among the "consultants" paid are the former Communist deputy in the Catalan parliament, Bet Font, and ERC Girona leader Enric Pujol Casanovas. Health counselor Marina Geli paid €29,999 in advance for a report on family medicine and €11,999 to create a "virtual library." Neither report has yet been received.

CiU says that during its last year in power, 2003, it paid consultants €67 million, while in 2007 the Pink-Red-Brown-Green Tripartite coalition paid them €317 million.

La Vanguardia buried this story on Page 16, giving it about a quarter of a page. And, get this, it's not even on their website, so I can't link to it. I'm appalled but not surprised, since La Vanguardia is also part of the Catalan influence-peddling endogamic system of political machine clientelism. I wish La Vangua would publicly announce how much money it receives from local and regional governments for the thousands of subscriptions they buy; I will bet they pay for at least 10,000, and maybe double that. A yearly subscription to La Vangua costs €360, so you do the math.

In addition, neither El Periodico, nor El Pais, nor Avui links to the story. Wonder how many subscriptions the Generalitat buys from them.

Meanwhile, Zap's goverment passed the Dependents Law last year as one of its major social programs: "severe dependents" (that is, retarded, disabled, senile, etc. people) are supposed to receive benefits, an average of €516 a month, each.

Great, I'm all for it. I believe it's part of the social contract that we help the weakest among us, and I think it's the government's job to make sure it happens. And for €516 a month, you can have a caregiver come in a couple of hours every day, or you can feed your grandma pork chops and fresh fish instead of weenies, or you can send your disabled kid to special physical therapy. As Rosa's primary caregiver during the last nine months of her life, I can tell you that such things make an enormous difference in the dependent's quality of life.

So 23,000 severe dependents in Catalonia, have not received their Dependents Law benefits yet, though the law has been in effect for a year now. That's more than a third of them. Carme Capdevila, of ERC, the Generalitat's counselor (=cabinet minister) for Social Action, admitted that there have been delays in implementing the program, because, you see, a year is just not enough time to put a law into practice.

Carme Capdevila, in case you don't remember, is one of the seven Generalitat counselors under investigation in the consultant report scandal. So she had time to make sure that her party's clients got the kickbacks they had coming, but not enough to make sure that all the severe dependents got their benefits before a year had passed.

Big ETA news: The French police, in a coordinated French-Spanish operation, arrested four ETA members in Bordeaux last night at about 11:30. These are big fish, the leaders of ETA's political branch, and Francisco Javier López Peña is the biggest of them all. Interior minister Rubalcaba said that López Peña is the bull goose etarra, the leader of both the political and operational branches.

He was known to have been, at one time or another, ETA's political leader, in charge of ETA's weapons cache, in charge of ETA training, and in charge of ETA safe houses in France. López Peña was part of the ETA delegation that met with the Zap government in December 2006, and he is thought to be the leader of the faction that decided to break the most recent ETA alleged truce (March-December 2006) with the Barajas bombing.

The other three etarras arrested were also members of the leadership of ETA's political branch. They are Ainhoa Ozaeta, the daughter-in-law of notorious ETA boss "Josu Ternera," who was the masked etarra who read ETA's March 2006 "truce" communiqué; Igor Suberbiola, who planned a series of 2004 bombings and who already had a warrant out for him; and Jon Salaberría, a former leader of the ETA youth brigade Jarrai and an ex-member of the Basque parliament from ETA's front party Batasuna.

The four were captured while meeting in a safe house in Bordeaux; each was carrying a pistol, they had a small amount of explosives, and they also had a lot of files and documents, which should prove very useful.

This morning the former Batasuna mayor of Andoain, José Antonio Barandiaran Ezama, was arrested. He is alleged to have met with the four arrested terrorists. The person who rented the Bordeaux safe house has also been arrested. I will bet that a whole string of arrests will happen within the last couple of days. And you know everybody in ETA is scrambling right now, because a load of evidence has just dropped into the laps of the police.

This is a major step along the way to destroying ETA.

Spanish political news: Pacifist defense minister Carme Chacon gave birth yesterday in Barcelona to a boy named Miguel. Interior minister Rubalcaba will take over her duties while she is on maternity leave. Zap and Basque premier Ibarretxe had a meeting and they didn't agree on anything. Madrid mayor Ruiz-Gallardon announced his support for Rajoy and his move toward the center, while Aznar warned Rajoy not to abandon or ignore the right wing of the PP. Looks like Gallardon will be the next PP secretary-general.

Spain's carbon-dioxide emissions are up 1.8% over last year. Since 1990, Spain's CO2 emissions have increased 52%, while the Kyoto Protocol permits an increase of only 15%. It's a good thing Zap's prime minister, because he's an ecologist who believes in the Kyoto Treaty to the point that he criticizes George Bush for not signing it. You can really tell that reducing pollution is one of Zap's top priorities.

Another Spanish justice system disaster. You won't believe this one. A young man named Daniel, from Lleida, raped six women at the age of 14. They sent him to juvie in Barcelona, where they allowed him out on furlough, and he raped eleven more women. So in 2002, they sent him to five years of prison, where he held a knife on a fellow inmate and forced him to perform fellatio. Now his five-year sentence is up, and his fifteen-month sentence for the prison rape runs out in October. Daniel has refused to participate in any sort of rehabilitation, and the prosecutor's office considers him "highly dangerous."

So the National Court has decided to release him now. This unrehabilitated serial rapist should obviously be locked up for life far away from the rest of society. If Spain's justice system won't do that, then there is something seriously wrong with it. I would suggest that the PP should pick up this issue and bash Zap around the head with it repeatedly.

National Health disaster update: Another patient died at the 12 de Octubre hospital in Madrid of a hospital-acquired bacterial infection, this time staphylococcus aureus. Looks like the 12 de Octubre hospital features a variety of bacteria to infect its patients with.

The Catalan corporation Abertis, in a consortium with La Caixa and Citigroup, has won the bidding to manage the Pennsylvania Turnpike for the next 75 years for a total of €8.3 billion. Abertis's most important businesses are turnpike and airport management, along with logistics. The Barcelona savings bank giant La Caixa owns nearly 29% of Abertis, and is the company's largest stockholder.

Note: The Spanish toponyms for American states are usually the same as in English. Exceptions: The states whose names include "New," which is "Nuevo/a," the ones that include a direction (e.g. "Dakota del Norte"), Pennsylvania ("Pensílvania"), Missouri ("Misuri"), Mississippi ("Misisipí"), Louisiana ("Luisiana"), Hawaii ("Hawai"), and sometimes Texas ("Tejas"). Frequently the Spanish pronunciation is quite different, even when the spelling is the same; for example, Virginia is "Beer-HEEN-ee-ah," and Georgia is "Hay-ORE-hee-ah."

United States Senators who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned segregation in all public services, whether publicly or privately owned:

Republicans:

Tower, TX
Hickenlooper, IA
Goldwater, AZ
Mechem, NM
Simpson, WY
Cotton, NH

Democrats:

Russell, GA
Harry F. Byrd, Sr., VA
Ellender, LA
Hill, AL
Eastland, MS
McClellan, AR
Fulbright, AR
Johnston, SC
Holland, FL
Robertson, VA
Sparkman, AL
Stennis, MS
Long, LA
Smathers, FL
Gore, TN
Ervin, NC
Thurmond, SC
Talmadge, GA
Robert Byrd, WV
Walters, TN

Robert Byrd is notoriously still in the Senate. Fulbright is the scholarship guy. Gore is Al Gore's dad. Thurmond is the one who lived to be 100. Ervin is the Watergate guy. Long is one of the Long dynasty.

ETA again: They set off a truck-bomb loaded with 60 kilos of explosives on the beachfront street in Guecho (Getxo), Vizcaya, at 1 AM today. They called in a warning an hour before the bomb went off, so nobody was hurt. For a big explosion--it left a crater a foot deep and six across--it did surprisingly little structural damage.

Constitutional Court confusion: Justice Roberto Garcia-Calvo, a conservative, died suddenly yesterday, leaving another vacancy among the court's twelve members. The Court had been divided six to six between "progressives" and "conservatives," with the progressive Chief Justice breaking ties. No one knows who's going to replace Garcia-Calvo, especially since four of the current Justices' terms expired in December and the PSOE and PP haven't been able to agree on who'll replace them, either.

Here in Catalonia the focus is, of course, on the controversial Catalan statute of autonomy (= regional constitution), which was passed by the Catalan and Spanish parliaments, but which has been held up by judicial appeals from both the opposition PP and from other Spanish regions. With Garcia-Calvo dead, the "progressives" would have an advantage if a decision on the statute were to be made now. Which is highly unlikely.

The Spanish construction sector's production was down 10% from a year ago as of March, the highest drop in the EU; the EU average is a mere 0.1% decline.

72% of Spanish soccer fans would rather watch soccer than have sex, which might have something to do with the birth rate around here.

ERC Catalunacy: Pepelu Carod-Rovira is going to Portugal to request support for Catalan independence. Why would he possibly think he's going to get any? Meanwhile, accused embezzler and influence-peddler Joan Puigcercos wants to be the party's candidate in the 2010 regional election so he can get Catalonia all ready for independence in 2014.

Defense Minister Carme Chacon said yesterday, "I am a pacifist woman, and the Army is pacifist too."

They had a big old demonstration in Amposta, a small Catalan city on the Ebro River, against sending any of their precious liquid to keep us clean and hydrated here in Barcelona. As usual in Spain, the organizers and the authorities claimed radically different turnouts; this time the organizers said 35,000 and the authorities said 6000. The selfishness is appalling, since the Ebro Valley towns and farms don't need the water to be sent to Barcelona through the new "mini-transfer" aqueduct supposedly already under construction. The whole point of sending this Ebro water to Barcelona is that Barcelona is buying the excess water that the Ebro Valley farmers aren't going to use.

I bet the murder in Reus becomes a big stink; the victim was a law-abiding citizen, a 37-year-old engineer from a nearby small town, while the alleged killer is a Spanish gypsy. That is not going to go over well around here, where gypsies are stereotyped as knife-wielding criminals. Which some of them are.

The Spanish First Division soccer season is over. Real Madrid is champion; other Champions League teams next year are Villarreal, Barça, and Atletico de Madrid; Racing, Sevilla, and Valencia (Cup champion) will play the UEFA Cup; and Levante, Murcia, and Zaragoza are relegated to Second. Just wait till next year. Meanwhile, this summer we'll have the Eurocup to keep us entertained.

The PSOE has decided to grab onto the immigration issue, since their surveys tell them it's the PP's strongest weapon against them. Get this: the PSOE promises to "guarantee respect for social norms that, before the arrival of immigrants, our society had never seen broken, in such important areas as housing, quality of life, commerce, opening hours, or the use of public space, which have suffered evident tensions because of the arrival of foreigners coming from different cultures." They also promised to "prioritize employment for Spaniards." Yet Socialist deputy prime minister De la Vega just made a fool out of herself by criticizing Italian immigration policy as racist and xenophobic.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Moratinos announced that he wanted to "take ambitious steps" to make Spain's relationship with the US "deeper and more profound." Unfortunately, Zap took a couple of ambitious steps in the other direction a few years ago which are going to keep bilateral relations cool as long as he's prime minister.

The Ted Kennedy story is getting play over here; of course, it's news only because he's a Kennedy. If some other Democratic senator had a couple of seizures and was hospitalized, it wouldn't be trans-Atlantic newsworthy.

Another thing that's getting massive press is the 40th anniversary of May 1968. Every newspaper is literally devoting entire pages every day to romanticizing a bunch of pseudorevolutionary middle-class mama's boys. I'll spare you the reminiscences of those who claim to have been in Paris at the time. May 1968 has to be the most overrated historical event ever, since it changed absolutely nothing.

Relatives of the 14 alleged terrorists arrested in January for plotting suicide bomb attacks in the Barcelona subway, among other places, held a demo demanding their release. The high point was when a young daughter of one of the arrestees made a weepy plea for her daddy's freedom. They got a mere 200 people out, which shows that almost everyone is happy that these guys are behind bars because at least in jail they can't blow us up. Naturally, our friends the Communists, along with the rest of Barcelona's trendy suicidal extreme left, helped them organize it.

Sometimes I can't believe the crazy shit that gets talked up around here. The Basque Parliament has passed a resolution accusing the Socialist Zap Spanish government of torturing ETA prisoners. Can you imagine an American state legislature passing a resolution accusing the federal government of torturing, say, that lot in Guantanamo?

National Health hospital infections update: A court ruled that the Madrid regional government had to pay an indemnity of €90,000 to the family of a baby girl who died of the pseudomona aureginosa bacterium contracted at the 12 de Octubre hospital. In the US a jury would award them at least $9 million.

Remember the Great Barcelona Blackout of last summer? The city's electrical system won't be completely repaired until June, a mere eleven months after the breakdown.

You may have heard that the Spanish cops arrested five hackers--it made the American press--who were going around breaking into other people's websites, including the US government's. Don't worry, they're not ideologically oriented, they tried breaking into everybody's site, including that of the Spanish Communist Party; they substituted caricatures of Rajoy and Zap for the Commie website's content.

Get this headline from El Pais: "Woody Allen fills Barcelona with intelligence." Seems Woody's Made in BCN movie has been released. Penelope Cruz is in it, which is the only reason to pirate it when it comes out on DVD; I wouldn't bother paying to get in at the theater. I think the last Woody Allen movie I liked was "Annie Hall."

Lynching in Reus, right here in Catalonia: A mob of six to ten persons were chasing two men through the streets at 4 AM in the city's downtown. One of the men tripped, was caught, and was stabbed to death. The press is not reporting the ethnicity of those involved.

Barça finished its regular season last night with a 3-5 victory in Murcia, already sentenced to relegation to the second division. The press is unanimous that this was a season to forget. Eto'o is leaving, along with Ronaldinho, Deco, Zambrotta, and company. Marquez will stay because Milito is out until at least January. Supposedly Alves and Keita have already been signed from Sevilla, and Piqué from Man United. Champions Real Madrid play relegated Levante tonight, but the club owes the Levante players millions of euros in back pay, and they've threatened to strike.

I found out what happened re: gunfire here in Gracia. Just before dawn on Friday, a car tried to escape a police roadblock on the Travesera de Dalt, headed down Torrent de les Flors, and the cops fired on the car near the corner of Torrent and Legalitat. The car stopped and those inside were arrested; the driver was an Iraqi. Nothing to do with terrorism, we have been assured.

I don't think it was a very good idea for the police to shoot at a car in the middle of Europe's most crowded residential neighborhood, unless the car contained extremely bad people who could not possibly be allowed to get away. If these guys were just car thieves or hash smugglers, they should have kept the guns holstered.

Here's some nice Spanish racism from El Correo Gallego via our compadre Colin Davies. Yes, you're right, this cartoon was published in a mainstream newspaper, not in the Ku Klux Klan Kronikle. It's a reference to De la Vega's outburst of horror in Niger after being photographed with a Nigerese businessman and his three wives.

There was gunfire early this morning on Calle Torrent de les Flors two blocks away from my house; when I went down to the café with my newspaper and the dog, there were three cop cars and they had the street blocked off. Nobody seems to know what happened, whether anyone was hurt or why the guy did it. There is a consensus that it's got nothing to do with terrorism. The local press hasn't picked up on it yet.

Gracia is a very peaceful place but we do have the occasional murder; within the last three or four years an Argentinian girl was knifed by her boyfriend, an old guy murdered his wife over on Principe de Asturias street, there was a Chinese mob killing at a restaurant on Calle Providencia, and some psycho murdered two women at a parking garage just the other side of Plaza Lesseps. The wildest one was when this guy fell in love with a prostitute and shot her Albanian pimp at a bar in the Plaza Rius i Taulet; the pimp survived. ("Just like in the movies," everyone said.) All that sounds pretty bad, but remember we've got 200,000 people packed in here; we've got the highest population density of all Barcelona neighborhoods, and Barcelona is the most densely populated city in Europe.

The boat people continue arriving; this morning a boat containing 76 black African illegal immigrants washed up in Almeria, and another boat with 26 more was found off the Granada coast. These voyages across the Mediterranean from Morocco are much safer than the attempts to reach the Canaries from the Mauritanian and Senegalese coasts. It's still a shame and a tragedy, and what we in the West can do to help is stop interfering with their commerce. Put an end to protectionist tariffs and stop subsidizing our own producers, especially farmers. That's the best way to help out the Third World: give them a chance to compete.

ETA update: They seem to have re-established their car bomb factory in France; the French cops raided their last one in September 2007 and confiscated 400 kilos of explosives. It's thought that the new bomb workshop cell turned the van-bomb over to the Vizcaya operational cell, who proceeded to set it off in Legutiano yesterday. They tried something similar last year in Logroño, but the bomb didn't go off, as ETA's bomb-making expert, Luis Ignacio Iruretagoyena, who made the enormous Barajas bomb that destroyed an entire concrete parking garage, had already been arrested during the French roundup. Since then ETA has only exploded small, amateurish bombs, since they didn't have the explosives or expertise to make big ones. Until yesterday.

More PP infighting: Now the Basque PP says it backs Rajoy against Maria San Gil's challenge to his leadership. That is, they're supporting the national party leader over their own regional party leader. This can only strengthen Rajoy's position.

Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega has made a damn fool out of herself again. There's been a backlash in Italy against Romanians in general and Romanian gypsies in particular. There are 550,000 legal Romanian immigrants in Italy, and 195,000 illegals. Among them are 42,000 Romanian gypsies, and also 28,000 Yugoslavian gypsies. As usual, there has been a populist working-class backlash against them, exacerbated by several well-publicized crimes; the ones that angered many Italians were when a Romanian gypsy woman tried to steal a baby from another woman's arms, and three rape-murders committed by Romanians. Gypsy camps have been burned by mobs in Naples. This is a problem.

So the Berlusconi government in Italy is setting up three police brigades specifically to deal with gypsies, one in Milan, one in Rome, and one in Naples. Yesterday morning the Italian cops rounded up 400 illegals and deported a bunch of them, and more raids are coming.

Racism? That's a factor, but no country is free of racism. Especially, no European country is free of anti-gypsy racism; Spain is notorious for it. The problem is that there's some justification for disliking many gypsies, especially some of the Romanians, who even the Spanish gypsies fear. Many gypsies just do not follow the rules of European society; it's not their different but harmless customs and beliefs that are disliked, it's the stealing and bullying and drug dealing and throwing garbage around and begging and abusing women and not working.

Anyway, De la Vega felt it necessary to spout off about Italian internal affairs, and accused Berlusconi of "exalting violence, racism, and xenophobia." She added that she disagrees with the deportations "because it does not respect the law and the rights of immigrants. Our government repudiates violence, racism, and xenophobia, and therefore cannot accept what is happening in Italy."

Oh, shut up, you self-righteous ninny. Take a look at the La Mina gypsy neighborhood here in Barcelona if you want to find a few social problems that your Socialist government might want to do something about.

In the mood for some irony? La Vanguardia says today that "integration is a failure in Catalan schools." Half of the immigrant children in Catalonia would have to be forcibly transferred to another school in order to desegregate. Some public schools have become effectively ghettos for immigrant children, because when the tipping point of immigrant students is reached, all the Spanish parents pull their kids out of the school. 85% of immigrant children in Catalonia go to public schools, and so the nice, white, often Catholic (which equals no Muslims) private schools are the obvious refuge. Funny, I thought "white flight" was only a problem in racist countries like the United States and Britain, and that moral, high-minded people like Spaniards would never succumb to it.

Example: In the working-class Fondo neighborhood in the Barcelona suburb of Santa Coloma, the percentage of immigrant children is 35%. One public elementary school there is 69% immigrants. The neighborhood "concerted" (fee-charging Catholic school that receives state subsidies) elementary school has only 4% immigrant children.

Reality tops Viz. Viz is a vulgar English comic magazine that features the running character Eight Ace. Eight Ace is a pathetic alcoholic addicted to Ace beer, which goes for one pound forty-nine an eight-pack at Mr. Patel's off-license down the street. His family, which includes his violent wife and an indeterminate but large number of children, lives in a shack on the edge of town, though Eight's wife often makes him sleep in the shed, especially when he urinates on himself, which is usually.

In every episode, Eight tries to reform, and he's well on the way to becoming an upstanding citizen, when somehow the sum of one pound forty-nine reaches his hands. Eight can't resist the call of the Ace, and he backslides yet again, gets beaten up by his wife, and is forced to sleep among the debris in the front yard once more. My favorite was when he decided to be a good father and took his kids to the zoo, but unfortunately people had thrown 1.49 in change into the crocodile pen. The last frame shows a horribly mangled Eight, leaving a trail of blood behind him, dragging himself down to Mr. Patel's.

Naturally, of course, there's no beer in England called Ace, and definitely no beer in England that goes for less than five pounds for six cans down at the off-license. But here in Barcelona, in today's La Vanguardia, Caprabo has an ad advertising Aurum beer, which I've never heard of before, at 18 euro-cents a can. A little multiplication means that an eight-pack would cost €1.44. And if we convert that into pounds--one euro is about 0.8 pounds--an eight-pack of Aurum would set our man Eight back by only one pound fifteen. Amazing. Eight cans of beer for one pound fifteen. Eight ought to move down here, he'd save money in the long run.

In case you haven't noticed, I figured out how to make the polls stay open for longer than a week, so you can now vote in all of them if you scroll down and look on the right side.

Tragedy update: Now they're talking 20,000 dead in China and 100,000 dead in Burma, with 1.5 million people in danger of death from hunger, disease, and exposure. When are we going to start bombing Burma with parachute-loads of rice and medicines? To hell with the junta and what they want us to do. Slate has two pieces worth reading, an Anne Applebaum denunciation of the Burmese junta and an explanation of how disaster casualties are estimated.

Al Qaeda is making Internet threats to carry out bombings in Switzerland and Austria during this summer's soccer Eurocup. Let me point out that both Switzerland and Austria are constitutionally neutral nations, that neither has troops outside its borders, that neither is a member of NATO or an American ally, that neither is participating in the Iraq or Afghanistan occupations, and that neither is especially pro-Israeli. Many people in Spain still don't get the basic fact that Islamist terrorism wants to kill us all or force us to submit. Zap: Spain is still a target and don't forget it.

Spain news: Rajoy and Zap are making a show of unity in the wake of the ETA bombing in Alava. We'll see how long this lasts. Maria San Gil is not going to get on the bus: she had a meeting with Rajoy and told him that she has no confidence in his leadership. The price of rented flats in Spain increased by almost exactly the inflation rate, 4.2%, over the last year, so while sale prices are dropping, rental prices are holding.

The water wars continue: Aragon wants the Zap administration to halt construction of the aqueduct that is to carry water from the Ebro to Barcelona. The European Central Bank says the eurozone countries are going to go through "a prolonged period of inflation." Remember that Alan Greenspan said it might be necessary to sacrifice growth in order to hold inflation down. Fallout from the housing market: The Barcelona real estate agency Don Piso, which belongs to the developer Habitat, is going to close the 120 offices it owns and fire 350 people. They will keep their 140 franchised offices open. Habitat's yearly sales are down 66%, they lost €444 million in 2007, and they're expected to take further losses in 2008 and 2009.

Remember a few weeks ago when La Vanguardia ran a photo taken in the US of a joke sign reading "No trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again," and everybody went wild about gun-nut Americans and their violent society? Well, today they ran a photo taken in Sant Boi of a sign reading "All dogs that shit here will be exterminated," that was then rectified to "The owners of all dogs that shit here will be exterminated." No one is going wild about how violent Catalan society is, though.

Speaking of violence, I came across this Wikipedia entry; it's a list of murder rates around the world, and it includes a color-coded illustrative map. According to Wikipedia, these are the most recently available national murder rates per 100,000 people; they're from between 2004 and 2006. I've selected a few of them:

El Salvador 55
Jamaica 49
Venezuela 45
South Africa 41
Colombia 37
Brazil 27
Russia 17
Mexico 13
Argentina 9.5
Thailand 8.5
United States 5.9
Spain 3.4
Switzerland 2.9
United Kingdom 2.0
Canada 1.9
France 1.6
Japan 1.1
Germany 1.0

So Spain is actually more violent than the UK, and not that far behind the US. By the way, many countries are not included in the list, including China and India, as well as most of Africa and a good part of Asia.

The homicide rate in the US is actually a good bit lower than it was in the "good old days." Except for an unusually peaceful period between 1947 and 1968, the American murder rate has always been high. In 1916 it was 6.5, in 1921 it was 8.1, in 1928 8.6, in 1933 9.7, in 1939 6.4, in 1946 6.4, in 1969 7.3, in 1974 9.8, and in 1980 10.2. It declined dramatically in the mid-1990s to more or less the current level.

Pilar Rahola is angry, and she has a devastating piece titled "Apology for terrorism in Barcelona" in La Vanguardia today. The Barcelona Council of Youth, which receives large government subsidies, has invited Leila Khaled to speak on "the Palestinian cause." Ms. Khaled, in case you didn't know, is a member of the Marxist-Leninist PFLP terrorist gang, and was involved in several notorious hijackings in the early '70s. Khaled's speeches include such statements as, "Negotiations are useless. The occupation will only be ended by armed struggle."

Says Rahola:

The problem, unfortunately, is not that in Palestine there are people who support bombing schools, buses, and weddings with the sole goal of indiscriminately killing civilians in order to sow terror. The problem is that this kind of individual receives the support of Catalan organizations, is invited with public money, and is allowed to give speeches that are evidently apologies for terrorism.

Of the many Palestinians that the Barcelona Council of Youth could have invited, the brilliant members of the Council decided to choose one of the most hate-filled voices in the history of Palestine, only surpassed by some Hamas leaders. The most tragic thing is that Leila Khaled's party, which is classified as terrorist by the European Union and the US Department of State, has always defended European terrorism, and it has a historical relationship with the IRA. In Barcelona, thanks to the support of institutions like the Barcelona City Council and the Catalan Department of Interior, today speeches can be made that justify and defend terrorism as a means of conflict resolution.

The question is as simple as it is ugly: after Leila Khaled, will our worthy Barcelona Youth Council invite an ETA member to speak about the necessity of armed struggle? What does the Council consider to be terrorism? Does it depend on whether they kill us or kill others? Is killing Israelis an epic feat and killing Spaniards tragic? And what does the radical position of a leader of a Palestinian terrorist organization have to do with the problems of the youth of Barcelona?

The vision of the lunatic Left, which confuses solidarity with nihilism, and believes that defending the Palestinian cause means defending Palestinian bombs, is delirious. In their twisted view of the conflict, they do not realize that many Palestinian parents are horrified at the idea that their children might be entrapped by terrorism. So today, in the city of Barcelona, paid for with public money, someone who is a hijacker, who defends terrorism, and who does not believe in a negotiated peace, will give a speech. If this is the Council's idea of teaching values to our youth, then it's time to flush the toilet.

It's especially ironic that Khaled will speak today, the same day that ETA murdered a Civil Guard in the Basque Country with a car bomb.

In case you'd like to see some vile Spanish anti-Semitic Israel-bashing, check out this cartoon by Ferreres, who is lower than what you scrape off your shoes after you walk through a barnyard, in yesterday's El Periodico. There are two Israeli soldiers holding automatic rifles on blindfolded Palestinians on their knees in front of a high wall with a watchtower flying a pirate flag. The first soldier says, "Sixty years ago our free state was born democratically." The second soldier says, "We invited those who lived here to leave. Democratically, of course. But it looks like some of them didn't understand."

ETA bombing update: They used a car bomb loaded with more thn 100 kilos of explosives. The explosion scattered debris in a radius of 100 meters. Serious damage was done to the barracks. The four wounded officers are in good condition at the hospital; one was trapped in the wreckage for two hours, and is currently in intensive care, but he's going to live. The cops found the car the terrorists escaped in; it was booby-trapped and the bomb squad deactivated a gasoline incendiary bomb. Can we please not negotiate with these terrorists ever again?

Electricity prices, which are regulated by the government in Spain, are going up; the National Energy Commission has approved an 11.3% rate hike to take effect in July. Econ minister Pedro Solbes says the administration will almost certainly sign off on the increase. The problem is that electricity rates are fixed by the government below the market price, and the utilities are €5 billion in the hole this year and €15 billion all totaled. It just doesn't work to force businesses to charge less than cost price for their goods. Looks like we're going to have to do a bit of belt-tightening around here, with higher mortgage rates, high food and gasoline prices, increased unemployment, and low economic growth. Every boom has its bust.

Speaking of which, Spanish GDP growth in the first trimester of 2008 was 2.7%; it was 3.5% in the last trimester of 2007. Solbes is calling it "rapid deceleration." Good news: Telefonica posted a €1.5 billion profit for the trimester, which will help out everybody's pension plan and mutual funds.

PP news: Maria San Gil has threatened to resign as PP president in the Basque Country if Rajoy doesn't move away from his new moderate position on regional nationalisms. Ms. San Gil, we all respect your courage and decency, but we've lost two elections in a row and something's got to change. Either get on the bus or get out of the way with as little fuss as possible. She has, by the way, ruled out challenging Rajoy for party leadership at the June convention.

Remember the Jose Couso case? He was the journalist killed in Baghdad when the Americans took the city back in 2003. He was pointing a camera out the window of the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad and an American tank fired on him, thinking he was an enemy fighter or spotter. His family and the Spanish far left have never stopped trying to take the US Army, and specifically the three soldiers involved in Couso's death, to court in Spain for "murdering" him. So Spain's National Court has just thrown out their case for the second time. Maybe they'll get the message now: we're sorry he got killed, but bad things that are not crimes happen in battles.

Barça report: There's a movement taking shape to call a no-confidence motion against club president Joan Laporta. I bet it doesn't work. Supposedly they've already signed Alves from Sevilla, they're interested in Hleb and Drogba, they've offered Ronaldinho, Zambrotta, and €20 million to Milan for Kaká, and Puyol is mad and is talking about leaving.

Breaking news: ETA has killed again. They exploded a car bomb at the Guardia Civil barracks in Legutiano, Alava, killing one Guardia and wounding four, at 3 AM today. The murdered man´s name is Juan Manuel Piñuel Villalón; he was 41, married, with two children. One of the wounded was trapped in the wreckage for two hours. Two of the wounded Guardias are women.

ETA must be destroyed.

Wow. The Associated Press has a piece on Barcelona's water problems, and Fox News's site is giving it some play. The local press is not going to like this at all:

Spain's worst drought in decades forced the proud city of Barcelona to start shipping in drinking water Tuesday, an unprecedented step that business leaders bemoan as a public relations nightmare for one of Europe's top tourist destinations.

A Panamanian-flagged tanker loaded with water docked in Spain's second-largest city, launching a mission by an emergency, six-vessel flotilla scheduled to operate for at least three months.

Tuesday's scene was humbling for Catalonia, the capital of which is Barcelona, with more than 100 journalists crowded at the dock to record the water delivery.

The region likes to say it stands out from the rest of Spain for its efficiency and economic might. But it has been among the regions hardest hit by Spain's worst springtime drought since record-keeping began 60 years ago...

The crisis is the latest in a string of embarrassments for Catalonia. Last year sink holes delayed construction of a high-speed rail line from Madrid to Barcelona, and other engineering problems with it shut down commuter rail lines for days. In July, a blackout left 350,000 people in Barcelona without power for three days.

Now Catalonia is buying extra water, even from France; some of the emergency ships will come from Marseille.

They're not going to like this one bit.

Thought Americans were bad at geography? Check out this Swiss Airlines map of the Americas via Strange Maps. Among other blunders, it puts Sao Paolo in the Atlantic, San Jose, Costa Rica, in Nicaragua, and Santo Domingo and San Juan near the Cayman Islands. They don't seem to have bothered labeling Santiago de Chile. As for US cities, they've put Portland and Sacramento in Idaho, Seattle near Spokane, Indianapolis on Lake Michigan, Chicago in northern Wisconsin, Memphis south-east of Nashville, Little Rock in mid-Kentucky, Pittsburg (without the H) and Columbus on Lake Erie, Minneapolis near the Canadian border, Detroit in Lake Huron, and Oakland on the coast north of San Francisco. Washington is on the Delaware and Philadelphia on the Hudson, with New York somewhere near Springfield, Massachussetts. As for Canada, Toronto's nowhere near Lake Ontario, and Ottawa is in south Quebec.

My guess is that most people are ignorant of geography outside their own area; I've met few Europeans who know much about the world outside Europe, and few Americans who know much about the world outside America.

Corruption bombshell in Catalonia. Seven regional government counselors (the equivalent of cabinet ministers in the national government) have been accused of embezzlement, influence-peddling, and abuse of power by the Catalan prosecutor's office. What they did was hire "consultants," to the tune of €32 million, to write up unnecessary reports, more than 1500 of them. This money, of course, wound up in the pockets of political clients and the bank accounts of the parties, the PSC, ERC, and ICV.

Specifically, most of the "consultants" involved are former government or party officials belonging to one of the Tripartite parties. They were all paid less than €12,000 a report; any government project that costs more than €12,000 has to be open to competitive bidding.

Those involved are: Socialists Joaquim Llena (Agriculture), Marina Geli (Health), and heavy hitter Joaquim Nadal (Public Works); from ERC, Carme Capdevila (Social Action), Joan Manel Tresserras (Culture), and Joan Puigcercós (Public Administration), who is challenging Pepelu Carod for ERC leadership; and the Communist Joan Saura (Interior), Chemical Imma Mayol's "partner."

I would like nothing more than to see Puigcercós and Saura behind bars. And I will bet this brings down the Montilla administration within a few months.

The first ship bringing in drinking water arrived at Barcelona harbor yesterday. It contains enough to provide one day's consumption for 170,000 people. There will be six ships carrying water to Barcelona, making a total of some 65 voyages a month, and costing €22 million a month. Tourists, don't worry, it looks like we won't have any water cutoffs this summer, and you can make your plans now.

The yearly inflation rate declined to 4.2% in April, which is good news. Meanwhile, new housing prices are down between 20 and 40% across Spain, and discounts of up to €40,000 are being offered. La Vanguardia thinks that demand is going to stay low until prices in Barcelona drop to an average of about €240,000, a psychological barrier since it translates to 40 million old pesetas. You can buy a nice place in a smaller city for a lot less than that; a 65 m2 flat that would go for €270,000 in the Barcelona suburb of Badalona would cost you only €150,000 in Valladolid.

Spanish oil giant Repsol earned more than €1.2 billion in the first four months of 2008. That's 37% more than last year. This is good for everybody's pension plans and mutual funds.

Split in the PP: Former defense minister Federico Trillo has joined Maria San Gil, Esperanza Aguirre, and Aznar's wife and Madrid city councilwoman Ana Botella in criticizing Rajoy and his crew's move toward appeasing the regional nationalisms in Catalonia and the Basque country. The Madrid PP is in open rebellion.

Get this, from La Vanguardia's TV critic, of all people, reacting to De la Vega's "horror" at being introduced to a Nigerese polygamist and his three wives, and the popularity of Catalan NBA forward Pau Gasol and the LA Lakers:

Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega should be very wary if she decides one day to visit the home court of the Utah Jazz, the basketball team in the semifinal playoff in the Western Conference against the Los Angeles Lakers. Because the percentage of Mormons who watch the games in Salt Lake City is very high, and therefore the possibility and danger of being photographed with a local polygamist is extremely high.

How ignorant. The mainstream Mormons banned polygamy more than 100 years ago, and 0% of the people living in Salt Lake are polygamists. There are tiny fragment splinter groups of ultra-fundamentalist Mormons living up in the remote Utah hills that practice polygamy, but they don't total more than a few thousand people, and that lot wouldn't go to a basketball game anyway.

Just a comment: The Utah Jazz and the Los Angeles Lakers are two of the dumbest team names in sports, since they don't play jazz in Utah and there are no lakes in LA. What happened is those teams moved from New Orleans and Minneapolis, respectively, and kept their original names. The name I most dislike, though, is the Buffalo Bills. How corny.

US soccer league team names win the dumbness crown, since they've been imitating European names and now we've got atrocities like FC Dallas, Real Salt Lake (what, there's a fake Salt Lake?), and DC United. What I would have done is adopt appropriate football-sounding team nicknames already used in England and Scotland. Teams could be called the Spurs, the Rovers, the Gunners, the Red Devils, the Blues, the Reds, the Wanderers, the Rangers, the Celtics, the Hammers, the Hearts, the Wolves--there are dozens of possibilities. Maybe the Chavs or the Pikeys or the Yobbos or the Spivs or the Asbos.

Tragedies around the world. 7000 dead in an earthquake in Sichuan, probably 200,000 dead in Burma with the refugees locked up in concentration camps, and the Lebanese civil war has broken out again. Burma finally let the Americans send in one planeload of supplies from Thailand. Supposedly the junta is stealing half the aid that comes in. 2 million people are at risk. I vote we parachute in loads of supplies, and if the Burmese government doesn't like it there's not much they can do.

In Spain: The PP has ruled out primary elections to nominate its candidate for the 2012 election. Basque PP leader Maria San Gil has announced that she's mad at Rajoy for toning down the rhetoric on regional nationalisms, and Esperanza Aguirre is backing her. Montilla's been complaining about regional financing, wanting the share of public spending pork that the not-yet-in-force Catalan statute guarantees for Catalonia. Zap told him to shut up.

De la Vega admitted that the gender violence law has done nothing to stop gender violence. Of course not. To stop men beating up on women, you have to protect the woman and jail the man, and this is exactly what Spain is not doing. Telma Ortiz, Princess Letizia's sister, has pressed charges against 57 media outlets for not leaving her alone, as she is a private person, not a member of the royal family. Good for her. Down with the trashy press, and kudos to Ms. Ortiz for not playing the scandal magazines' game.

The rain over the weekend has the reservoirs at an average of 28% full, which means that the restrictions on watering gardens and filling swimming pools may be lifted, and that we probably won't have any cutoffs this summer. Meanwhile, the first tanker ship carrying drinking water will arrive at the port May 15.

Barça choked again last night against Mallorca in their last home game of the season, also Rijkaard's goodbye. He was well-received by the crowd, but Deco, Eto'o, and Henry got booed in what was almost certainly their last game in the Camp Nou. Ronaldinho didn't even show up. Barça got ahead 2-0 and then let Mallorca come back and score three. They're not going to get second place, either, which means they have to go through a playoff to reach next year's Champions League, and if they blow it then the club loses literally tens of millions of euros.

Everybody wants president Joan Laporta to resign. I bet he holds out. A good season next year would save his neck. If they have another disastrous season like this one, though, he's finished and so are his political aspirations.

Disaster at the National Health. 18 people died in the intensive care unit at the 12 de Octubre university teaching hospital in Madrid, one of the city's most important, due to an outbreak of the Acinetobacter baumanii bacteria, which is antibiotic-resistant. Hospital management denies the patients died directly from the bacterial infection, but rather from something else. I'm not sure what the difference is; they were infected with the bacteria and they died.

El Pais says that more than 250 people were infected, 101 have died so far, and 18 of the deaths are directly attributable to the bacteria. The outbreak lasted from February 2006 to October 2007. The authorities finally tore down the ICU and built a completely new one.

Enough of a scandal has been stirred up that deputy prime minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega announced from Niger that the prosecutor's office would investigate.

Said Juan Carlos Montejo, an ICU doctor, "(The outbreak) should not cause alarm or call into question the health care offered, but rather teach us about an important clinical problem around the world: bacterial infections contracted in hospital are more and more resistant."

What a load of shit. If 250 people get infected over nearly two years with a deadly bacterium, the quality of the health care provided at that hospital is lousy and somebody needs to pay.

I will point out that my mother-in-law died from a generalized bacterial infection she picked up in a Barcelona National Health hospital. We gave her to them with a broken leg, and they gave her back to us dead.

This is going to be a political football, with the PSOE blaming the PP regional government in Madrid, and the PP blaming the PSOE Ministry of Health. The PP also claims that El Pais timed its report in order to distract attention from the Coslada municipal police mafia scandal, which I doubt.

De la Vega weirdness from Niger: She posed for a photo with a Nigerese businessman and three women, who later turned out to be the gentleman's wives. So De la Vega announced she was "horrified." Wait, what's the problem? It's Niger. They're Muslims. Polygamy is not only legal, but a cultural tradition. I thought Socialists were supposed to be all, like, multicultural and stuff. I really don't get the horror: has she never met a Gulf oil sheik and his entourage? Marbella's full of them.

By the way, the Nigerese businessman in question is partners with a Spanish businessman, which is why De la Vega was introduced to him. Their company processes "chufas," called tiger nuts in English, and it employs 500 women directly, while buying its chufas from some 3000 Nigerese farmers. I would say that these two guys have done more good for more people than De la Vega has in her life.

(Note: I was thinking about attempting a joke along the lines of "If my hand was full of tiger nuts, I'd let go really quick," but decided not to.)