I promised you a translation of leftist Joan Barril's daily back-page comment in El Periodico. Now, one must keep in mind that Mr. Barril's intelligence quotient is below-average even for Spanish journalists, and that the Periodico is the local downmarket newspaper. Well, he's all irritated because Prince Felipe and his mistress, Letizia Ortiz, whom he is to marry--had their luggage searched at the Miami airport according to U.S. law.

Everything's going by the boards. That famous super-Spanish sentence, "You don't know who you're talking to," was cut to ribbons in the VIP room in a Florida airport. The Prince of Asturias and his companion saw some small-time bureaucrats dig through their belongings and caress their underwear. Until now the headlines of the Palace press normally included, in any regular report, something like "Prince Felipe goes to a disco to dance just like any other young man of his age." With this drum-beating, they were actually trying to show that he wasn't really just like any other young man. And as his moment to reign approaches, Felipe de Borbon doesn't have too many more chances left to do what other men of his age normally do. The Spanish Crown is an able administrator of gestures. Its popularity rests on this ability. Within a few months [when he marries Letizia Ortiz] the heir to the throne will be less of a prince and more of a heir. This implies distance and institutional values. And institutions cannot dance in discotheques. A question: In what ways can the heir continue being like the men of his age? [He's 36 or 37, I think.]

And suddenly Captain America appears to return Felipe de Borbon to his strictly human condition, which is what we who are his subjects like. All us Spaniards are equal before the law; that goes without saying, the law of the United States, which is the only law that allows itself the maximum illegalities. The heir to the throne and his future bride were one step away from being subjected to the abuses that the dancer Antonio Canales [Canales has a police record in Spain] was the victim of in the New York airport, not to mention so many other anonymous Spaniards who have had taken away from them ballpoint pens or glasses with metal earpieces, because everything that's sharp might be as serious as a rubber axe or the Hiroshima bomb. Neither artists nor allies enjoy any sort of favor before the paranoia of the American government. The condition of being a prince doesn't exempt you from anything before the real prince of darkness. Some day, probably distant, when voting has led Bush to the forcible abdication which his brother can't save him from and when Felipe de Borbon is Felipe VI, the no longer so young monarch will have the chance to go on an official visit to the US and will ask for his police record, and the report of the incompetent agents of the incompetent Condoleezza Rice on the contents of the luggage which the future king was carryint on his prematrimonial visit to the Bahamas. It will be a good story to tell his children and grandchildren. But it will also be an explosive political lesson. The lesson that where there is an emperor the heir to the throne does not rule. And that any idiot from the Bush administration can continue making enemies even among friends.

I do not think that one man represents a people. I don't especially care about flags either. But I would like, every once in a while, somebody really important, not just the mayor of the municiplaity where that restricitive airport is to be found, somebody to apologize. One begins decrying the disrespect to the Prince and one may end up decrying the bombings of Baghdad. At bottom, you see, it's all the same. I'm the boss. You're not.

Boy, that's one of the most outrageous manifestations of hurt national dignity I've ever seen. Hey Joan Barril: Isn't it true that we American citizens have to obey Spanish law when we're in Spain? If we didn't, that would be called "extraterritorality" and you would be denouncing it right now. Well, Spanish citizens when in the United States have to obey American law, and being the fuckin' Prince of fuckin' Asturias will get you a fuckin' cup of coffee over in the States. If you have a fuckin' dollar, that is. Over in the US you have to pay for what you order even if you're the Prince, Don Felipe, by the way, no more of this walking out of the disco at six AM without settling up your bill. This ain't one of the fuckin' terraces on the fuckin' Paseo de la fuckin' Castillana.