It's raining again this morning, and they've already gotten half an inch up in the Pyrenees; we had more than an inch yesterday here in Barcelona. A couple of rainy days do not an April make, but it's better than nothing. The content of the reservoirs is slightly up, though some of that is due to mountain snowmelt, not rain.

The transfer of water from the Ebro to Barcelona has hacked off PP-governed Valencia and Murcia, who are demanding that the old PP water plan be revived. Their argument: Barcelona needs water. Send them water. We need water. Send us water too. This issue is amazingly touchy. The lying sod Francesc Baltasar continues to call the planned Tarragona-Barcelona aqueduct a "mini-transfer," since the Spanish left made "No water transfers" a rallying cry against the PP back in 2004. Now that the capital of the Spanish left is thirsty, of course, a water transfer is needed at all costs, but we still can't call it that.

I think this is what Lakoff means by "framing the issue"--inventing euphemisms.

By the way, La Vanguardia is calling this whole kerfuffle "The War for Water." The Cataloonies are, get this, blaming the PP for trying to use the water issue to stir up anti-Catalan feeling in the rest of Spain. No, I think the PP is trying to stir up anti-Zapatero feeling in the rest of Spain.

2008 will be the first year since 1997 in which housing prices have increased by less than the rate of inflation. The five most expensive cities for housing in Spain, per square meter: San Sebastian, Guecho, Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao.

Oh, Lordy. You know we're in real economic trouble when Spanish beer consumption declines, 5% in 2007.

The Basque police arrested ten pro-ETA punks for "street terrorism," vandalism and rioting, in Guipuzcoa province. These dirtbags had committed more than twenty "acts of sabotage," several of them against the railroad system, which sounds like attempted train-wrecking to me. Seems to me the cops could have arrested them after, say, one or two, but the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow. Three of them put up a fight and got busted for resisting arrest as well. These little shits are violent criminals and need to be locked up.

More little shits: The so-called university students against the Bologna Plan, the EU reform that is supposed to actually make them go to class and learn something, had a sit-in today at the Autonomous university. They're still there; about thirty of them locked themselves in the auditorium. I say we send in the cops to beat the crap out of them and arrest the lot for creating a public nuisance, disturbing the peace, disobeying a police officer, trespassing, and mopery.

They don't get the concept of "civil disobedience" in Spain. See, as Thoreau envisioned it, you were supposed to break laws that you believed to be unjust, and then submit yourself to society's punishment, as a sign that you believed morality to be above the law. You are not supposed to try to escape punishment, which is what these little shits who think it's fun to play radical always do. By the way, when Thoreau actually tried this by refusing to pay his taxes on the ground he was against the Mexican War, and they came and got him, his aunt bailed him out.