What happens when you give a retired politician with Alzheimer's a full page in El Periódico to opine on the American primary elections?

This, by former Catalan premier and Barcelona mayor Pasqual Maragall, on page 5 of yesterday's issue.

It is very difficult for Obama to win the elections in a country in which the "white anglosaxon protestants" (sic) have always governed. But the primaries seem to show that a miracle is not impossible. And I say a miracle, after the murders of John and Bob Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcom X (sic), that is, the blacks or merely Catholics who have dared to say what America should be like and to have impossible dreams.

Some dreams kill, and if you don't believe it, ask Martin Luther King's widow. "I had a dream," (sic) said King. And he was a Protestant pastor, not a Catholic. But he was black, and they killed him. Or ask the wife of Colin Powell, the hero of the Gulf War, who said no to her husband's being a candidate for vice-president and, eventually, president. "They will kill him," (sic) she said. America is like that. On Main Street (sic), there is room for only one gunman, and that is the sheriff. They made poor Gary Cooper the sheriff against his will in High Noon, and he just barely got away in one piece.

Jeez. 1) What does High Noon have to do with the American primaries? 2) Talk about trying to explain everything about America through images from movies, all too common a sin in Spain. 3) Does anyone seriously believe that if Powell had run for office, he would have been assassinated because he's black? 4) Does anyone seriously believe that the Kennedys were assassinated because they were Catholic?

In Europe, authority comes from above: from God, the Church, history...In the first American Union it was different. The Pennsilvannia Dutch (sic) were there, with their wagons, hats, and beards. There were the South (Gone with the Wind) and the North. The North won, of course, and the Hispanic, Latin, and Catholic heritage nearly disappeared.

What the hell is this shit? What does Gone with the Wind have to do with anything? Or the Pennsylvania Germans, of whom the Amish are a minuscule sect? And since when were the antebellum Southerners Hispanic, Latin, or Catholic? They were more WASP than anyone else.

Northern Europe won out over Southern Europe in America too. As when, after the Invencible Armada, England won out over Spain. "You are a conquistador when you can't be a pirate," said Francis Drake, a pirate who was made a sir (sic) by Elizabeth I of England. But now something extraordinary is happening: the blacks of the South, though Obama was born in the North, may govern North America.

I mean, really. What does Sir Francis Drake have to do with the Nevada primary? And what do American black people have to do with Southern Europe? It's racist as hell, genuinely racist, to say that "the blacks of the South" will govern the country if Obama wins. The whole point is that Obama is an individual, not just some black guy, and if he wins, the minority group he belongs to will no more take over power than the Southern Baptists did when Carter was president. I mean, come on. If Joe Lieberman were elected, would Maragall say that the Jews had taken over America? If Romney wins, does that mean the Mormons are going to take over? With José Montilla as premier, does that mean the charnegos have taken over Catalonia?

Obama has some of all the "non WASP" (sic) ingredients, except that he's Protestant. He is a Gary Cooper who dares to defy the more or less corrupt establishment (sic); he is black like Malcom X (sic), King, and Powell, and he is charismatic like Kennedy, or he may be.

Are they going to kill him? It is more difficult now. The United States is not what it was. They can no longer completely ignore world public opinion. Europe is tied in per capita income and has a tighter spectrum of wealth distribution. Less poverty. This may help Obama, if the people are conscious of it. Possibly the minority that votes in the American elections, about 50%, is. Soon we will know. Everything points to a mobilization of women and Afro-Americans. We can't ask for more novelties.

Who is this "they" who might murder Obama? Is it that same evil conspiracy that did away with King and Malcolm X while ignoring world public opinion? What is this crap about the so-called establishment in the US being more or less corrupt? And what the hell do the facts that Europe is not tied with the US in per capita income, and that Europe does not have less poverty than the US, have to do with anything?

To finish, have you noticed that if the black Barack Hussein Obama wins the confrontation with the most extremist third world (Bin Laden), it will be a confrontation of first cousins? Obama/Osama? Isn't this a foretaste of a world scene different from the habitual North/South, East/West?

Obama and Osama are first cousins? What is this shit?