Catalunya TV is reporting that an arrest has been made in the Malaga murder cases. A 38-year-old British citizen has been charged with the murder of Sonia Carabantes. Since there was a DNA match between pieces of skin found under the girl's fingernails and a cigarette butt found at the murder scene of Rocio Wannenkhof four years ago, we'll know very soon whether this guy was also involved in Rocio's murder. The police have said in the past that they suspect there was more than one killer. Dolores Vazquez's retrial for Rocio's murder was suspended. It's beginning to look more and more like Vazquez's conviction was a terrible miscarriage of justice, since she served a year and a half in prison for a murder she did not commit.

Superjudge Baltasar Porcel ordered the arrest of five people in Spain accused of being connected to the Al-Jazeera Spanish correspondent, who was himself arrested and accused of working for Al-Qaeda. Those 16 people who were arrested in Catalonia earlier this year on charges of connection with terrorism were going to have charges dropped against them, though there's not much question that some of them gave shelter to terrorists traveling through or hiding out in Catalonia, but this latest round of arrests has caused the authorities to think twice about letting those guys off.

Sad news: Copito de Nieve, alias "Floquet de Neu" or "Snowflake", the world's only albino gorilla and the pride of the Barcelona zoo, doesn't have long to live. He's got terminal skin cancer and he's been given three months maximum. The City Council is not going to play politics and blame anybody, since Copito's something like 40, not too bad for a gorilla. That's about thirty-nine years longer than an albino gorilla would have survived in the jungle, which Copito was ape-napped out of whill still a baby. Proposals have been made to a) have him stuffed, which has been ruled out b) build a monument to him inside the zoo, which sounds pretty reasonable, and c) name a street after him. I have a suggestion. Why don't we rename Plaza Karl Marx as Plaza Floquet de Neu? The ape is much more deserving.

It's widely rumored around town that, apart from the renaming-of-streets frenzy that surrounded the transition to democracy, the reason the Ronda General Mitre (who was an obscure nineteenth-century Argentinian general) hasn't been renamed yet is because Jordi Pujol is saving it for himself after he retires as Prime Minister of Catalonia. Socialist Josep Tarradellas got the old Avenida Infanta Carlota and the Republican Left's Francesc Macia got the old Plaza Calvo Sotelo, not to mention their Lluis Companys, who got an avenue and a football stadium. Seems to me Pujol can demand equal time for himself and his Convergence and Union Party.