Economic news: bad. Unemployment has reached 9%, up from 8.1% this time last year, and higher than any other EU country except Slovakia. Meanwhile, new car sales are down 28% over this time last year, with 4x4 sales down more than 40%. The automobile sector claims it's because Semana Santa fell in March this year, and so there were three sales days less than in March 2007. Yeah, right.

The Independent headlines, "USA 2008: The Great Depression." Yeah, more wishful thinking from the British press: what pisses me off is that they want it to happen. They want Americans to be poor and suffer deprivation. It would please them no end if one-third of us were unemployed like in 1932. Of course, nothing of the sort is going to happen.

Check out their evidence: The number of Americans on food stamps has increased from 26.5 million to 28 million--still less than one-tenth of the population. That's all they've got to base their screamer front-page headline on. Wonder where the praise for the American system of feeding the poor went to? If, say, Venezuela or Cuba were passing out food stamps to its poor, they'd be praising it to the skies. Of course, in Venezuela and Cuba there's no food to pass out to anyone.

By the way, most Spaniards have no idea that poor Americans get food stamps and public housing and public schools and Medicare/Medicaid. They've been told that life in America consists of cutthroat competition, and he who falls by the wayside is left to starve, and they believe it.

Econ minister Pedro Solbes stuck his neck out and claimed that Spain's 2008 growth would be 3.1%, much higher than the Bank of Spain's estimate of 2.4%. Somebody's going to be wrong and I bet it's the politician rather than the institution.

The PP is replacing Eduardo Zaplana with Soraya Saenz de Santamaria as its spokeswoman in the Congress of Deputies, something they should have done like three years ago. Saenz de Santamaria is known as a Rajoy loyalist and comparatively moderate, as well as less personally obnoxious than attack-dog Zaplana.

ADSL Internet service is 25% more expensive and 26% slower in Spain than the EU average. Spanish ADSL speed is 3 megas, whatever that means, while in the UK and France it's 8 megas. Thanks a lot, Telefonica, for crap service at premium prices. Somebody needs to go all AT&T on that company.



Check out this Yankee-bashing cartoon from El Periodico's Ferreres, about as subtle as a dose of chloral hydrate. Uncle Sam says, "You should respect human rights more," while China replies, "Respect? Like at Guantanamo? Like in Palestine?" Simply pathetic.

Meanwhile, NATO is asking some of its members to provide more troops for Afghanistan; the Americans are sending 3000, and even the French will send 1000. Naturally, they're not even bothering to request additional troops from Zap's Spain, since none will be forthcoming.

Oh, guess what. Raul is beginning the liberalization of Cuba. From now on Cubans will be allowed to stay at hotels hitherto reserved only for foreigners. If they can pay a hundred bucks a night, that is. Of course, that silly freedom of speech stuff will take a little while longer, as will the democratic elections and the rule of law.

It's Semana Santa (which PC touchy-feely education types have renamed "Spring Vacation") and so there's no news since everybody's on vacation already, even though the official Catalan four-day weekend doesn't begin until tomorrow.

Turns out one of the people killed in the gas explosion was the crazy woman who set it off.

They found two containers filled with ten kilos of explosives and a timer in a rural area in Ciudad Real: it was apparently an ETA drop-off for a traveling cell to pick up that fell through. The cops suspect it's just been lying there since 2006.

TV3's top story this morning, and La Vanguardia's second international story on pages 4 and 5, was the Communist-organized anti-war demonstration in Washington. I checked CNN and Fox News, and had to search for the story; it wasn't on their websites' front page. Interesting how much weight the Catalan media puts on such a minor story. The article doesn't mention how many demonstrators there were, but a few thousand at most showed up, so it was no big deal at all.

So how does La Vanguardia's Eusebio Val report the minuscule turnout? "Despite wide opposition to the war among the citizens, the people who act out these feelings of protest in the street are always few. The accelerated lifestyle and the great distances in American cities are not favorable to these demonstrations on a working day...The immense majority of the Americans who reject the war prefer to express it in private and with certain resignation."

If we don't get some rain around here sometime soon, water stocks will be virtually zero by the end of the summer, and there will have to be rationing and cutoffs. Tankers will begin coming in from Marseille and Tarragona in May, and old wells on the Barcelona plain are being opened up. Barcelona citizens use only 110 liters of water a day, while New Yorkers use 500; if people weren't already pretty frugal with water (because it's expensive), we'd have run out a long time ago. La Vanguardia says that the future lies in desalinizing plants, but the problem is that the process requires a good deal of energy.

In case you hadn't already figured it out, all those "authentic" Dalí and Miró lithographs being sold on Ebay are fake. The FBI and the Mossos busted an art forgery gang based in Barcelona and Chicago; eight persons were arrested here. By the way, I think Dalí is clever but not an artist of the first category, and I don't get Miró's stuff at all. I wouldn't walk across the street to see a Miró. I think other Catalan and Spanish painters like Sorolla, Casas, Nonell, Rusiñol, Fortuny, Utrillo, and Gris, along with architects like Domenech i Muntaner, are much more interesting.

The goddamn bus drivers are on strike again today.

Barça plays at Valencia tonight in the second leg of the Copa del Rey semifinal; in the first leg Valencia earned a 1-1 draw in the Camp Nou, so they win in case the second leg goes 0-0. Ronaldinho is on the shit list big-time; he's being kept out of this game as well. Other players high on the shit list are Deco and Marquez. If Valencia gets eliminated coach Ronald Koeman will likely be fired.