Former city councilman and vice-mayor Rodrigo de Santos, the Pervert of Palma, says that the nearly €50,000 of tax money he spent in gay brothels over two years was a mere accident, an oversight, and he will of course return it. Too late, Rod. You wouldn't be giving it back if you hadn't got caught first.

By the way, Big Rod is married with three kids.

Sales of new dwellings were down 29% in Catalonia in 2007; sales of preowned dwellings were down 24%. Pop goes the bubble. The average Catalan family spent 55% of its income last year on housing, which is a tremendous amount. the average Catalan mortgage payment was €987 a month, about $1500. If I remember correctly, a few years ago in the US, the rule was don't spend more than a third of your income on housing. Things might have changed by now.

Zap is insinuating that CiU is asking too high a price for its support and he's willing to govern from the minority.

He's also basking in triumph because he finally got a phone call from the Bush Administration arranging a face-to-face meeting at the next NATO summit meeting. The American administration had ignored Zap ever since he first pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq and then advised the rest of the coalition to do the same. The Socialists are treating this as a great victory, that Bush and America have somehow been humiliated.

Zap's 2004 gender violence law is being appealed to the Constitutional Court on the ground that it violates the rule of equal treatment under the law by giving men a more severe sentence than women for the same crime. I'm not only against violence against women, I'm against violence against people in general. It seems to me like the penalties for all violent crimes need to be considerably stiffened in Spain, not just cases of men abusing women.

Jordi Pujol's wife, Marta Ferrusola, let loose with some tremendous Cataloony bigotry yesterday when she said that she didn't like the fact that the premier of the Generalitat is Andalusian and his name is José. She added that Montilla doesn't speak good enough Catalan for her exquisite taste. Pure racism.

More on the Barcelona abortion clinics scandal: "Doctor" Morin, abortionist-in-chief, charged €5000 in black-market cash for performing late-term abortions. He also had his cleaning women do double duty as "nurses." He gave kickbacks to other doctors who sent patients to his clinics. Morin's clinics used aggressive marketing to reach Latin American immigrants by passing out brochures in call centers frequented by Latins, and through Internet and the Yellow Pages. They even went to National Health clinics and passed out brochures there.