So they busted 41 Internet kiddie porn pervs in another of those mass roundups we keep having in Spain. Question: Does your country have frequent kiddie-porn roundups as Spain does? Does Spain have an unusual amount of these people, or is Spain unusually vigilant in catching them, or do most countries have the same amount of these mass arrests going on?

Real Madrid choked last night in Mallorca but got out with a 1-1 draw, and Barcelona takes on Getafe tonight sans Ronaldinho. The story now is that it's nearly certain that Ronaldinho will be sold to Milan, which makes it even less likely that he's really injured; Milan wouldn't pay €20 million for a player who can't pass their physical. My guess is that Ronaldinho has been kicked off the team and they're trying to keep it quiet to avoid embarrassment for everybody. By the way, there's been some talk that Messi has been undisciplined this last season, going out too much and not watching his diet; at least, there's been enough talk that Messi's dad came out and said that he'd gotten himself back on track and was working hard to recover from his injuries.

Now they're saying that the Barcelona-Valencia high-speed train won't come into service until 2015 at the earliest. You'd think that would be a priority, connecting the country's second and third biggest cities, which aren't all that far apart; besides, the Barcelona-Tarragona stretch is already in operation.

So this week is supposed to be moderately rainy, which probably won't do much to refill the reservoirs, but ought to soak the ground pretty well. Actually, March was comparatively rainy around here; at least the situation didn't get any worse, and the land was able to absorb some water.

More boat people in the Canary Islands, this time 29 Moroccans who made Lanzarote. No international coverage, of course.

El País got interviews with both John McCain and Alan Greenspan.

El País's reporter talked to McCain on board his flight from the Martin Luther King* ceremony to Phoenix; the reporter was most interested in what US-Spain relations would be like under a McCain administration. McCain let loose with some standard boilerplate: "It's time to leave behind our disagreements with Spain. I would like (Zapatero) to visit the United States. I am very interested, not only in normalizing relations with Spain, but also in achieving good, productive relations with the goal of dealing with many issues and challenges we will have to face together."

Regarding Zap's repeated unfriendliness toward the US, McCain said, "We have to understand that there are things that happen during a political campaign, things that are said, decisions that are made in certain political situations, and we must understand that there may be agreements and disagreements. But I believe it is time to leave these things behind and to look forward with the viewpoint that we have many more values and goals that unite us than differences that separate us."

Very diplomatic, Senator McCain. Good job.

El País points out 1) that Zap is the only democratic prime minister who has not visited the US and 2) McCain hates the Castro regime like poison; he's never forgiven them because when he was a prisoner in Hanoi, they disguised one of their psychiatrists as a Spanish peace activist, and McCain agreed to speak with him. The Cuban shrink went back to Cuba and wrote an article in Granma portraying McCain as a murderous psychopath.

Greenspan said 1) the US economy is flexible enough, though the financial sector doesn't look good, that it won't be seriously affected by a credit crunch 2) the most serious problem is reduced business income due to the plateauing of consumer spending, though this is not caused by tight credit 3) the US is not currently in recession, and there's about a fifty-fifty chance that a recession will happen 4) we're at a crossroads and must choose between growth and inflation, and the priority should be keeping inflation down 5) we must keep protectionism at a minimum

6) Spain is vulnerable because of its real-estate bubble, Italy is problematic but always has been, and France and Germany look to be in good shape 7) Countries that open up their markets like the UK and Ireland are going to be much better shape than countries that resort to protectionism 8) Saddam's petroleum riches made him dangerous; if he hadn't had the oil money, he wouldn't have been able to cause so much trouble 9) He's for McCain 10) He fears the Democrats' protectionist rhetoric.