The bus drivers are out on strike today, and there will be no service until 5 PM. Also, the doctors at the National Health general-practice clinics (CAPs) are out on strike today, 8 AM to 8 PM. They have a legitimate complaint: they're overworked and underfunded. But denying people medical help for a day isn't the way to change things. Meanwhile, 51,000 people in Spain are awaiting elective surgery. And, to top it off, the public school teachers are going out on Thursday, the 14th.

Of course, they picked the best day possible for a transport strike, since 50,000 people are in town for the mobile-phone trade fair and convention. Some hotels, meanwhile, have tripled their prices. This makes our city look real good in their eyes, and they'll want to come back!

Campaign promise update: Rajoy said he'd hire 30,000 new cops. Rubalcaba said Zap would hire 15,000 new cops to add to the 15,000 they already claim to have hired.

Zap claimed he'd never smoked a joint. I don't know whether the admission will help him or hurt him.

That loudmouthed idiot Pere Macias (of the normally responsible CiU) said that the PP's proposal that all students in Spain should study at least partly in Spanish "might cause a civil war during the next generation." Spanish rule of politics Number One: When in doubt, make catastrophic predictions to frighten the voters.

You probably remember that the PSOE did an excellent propaganda job several years ago when the oil tanker Prestige sank off the coast of Galicia and caused a medium-sized oil spill. Though the ship wasn't Spanish, and the Aznar government had no responsibility for the fact that it sank where it did, the Socialists managed to blame the PP for the accident.

Now it looks like the PP has a chance to turn the tables. A ship called the New Flame, that got stuck off Gibraltar seven months ago, has started leaking oil, which has covered the harbor of Algeciras, including the beaches. Zap's response? Complain to the British ambassador. It seems to me that the Zap administration is directly responsible, since they did nothing to get the ship safely to shore. I would absolutely hammer Zap's eco-credentials over this one.

Spanish troops killed a man in Afghanistan: a car refused to stop at a roadblock, and they fired at it and killed him. Good. They did their job. Now let's see if the Spaniah press reacts as it would if it had been an American platoon. I bet they don't.

They're having a big fashion show in Madrid. What made the international news was that they dismissed three models for being too anorexic. I don't know, they all look pretty anorexic to me.