Directionless thoughts while listening to Neil Young:

British serial killer Tony King went on trial today for murdering Rocío Wanninkoff, a Spanish teenage girl, four years ago. King's DNA was found under the girl's fingernails, which makes it pretty clear that he did it. He is currently serving life for murdering another teenage girl, Sonia Carabantes. King also committed several sexual assaults in the UK. Can we please hang this low-life piece of trash?

Meanwhile, some nutcase kid in Germany shot up his old school; fortunately, nobody was killed except for the shooter, who committed suicide after wounding eight people. La Vanguardia featured no deep sociological commentary on how German culture is intrinsically violent today.

Remei and I went to see "Borat" along with Murph on Sunday night. We thought it was pretty funny, though of course there wasn't much of a plot, just sketches stuck together. It wasn't a devastating comment on American culture, though, it was just another fish-out-of-water movie (like Moscow on the Hudson or Crocodile Dundee, or even Mork and Mindy.) I thought the funniest bits were the ones in the worst taste, of course, especially when he goes to the snobby dinner party and takes a crap in a plastic bag. One thing to notice is that the born-again Christians--of course, Borat goes to a Pentecostalist church--are the ones who accept him best. The feminist academics certainly weren't very tolerant. Also notice that the gun store wouldn't sell him a gun, since he wasn't a US citizen. The fratboys are suing, claiming that the producers got them drunk (yeah, I bet they needed a lot of encouragement) and promised that the movie would not be shown in the US. The Romanian villagers who served as the natives of Borat's hometown are also suing, for obvious reasons, claiming they had been told it was a documentary on poverty.

The series comes on tonight and I plan to watch it, in English, of course. Fortunately TV3 gives you that option.

Here's another example of taking pop culture too seriously in today's Vanguardia by Jordi Balló. He's writing on a TV series called "Masters of Horror," which includes episodes in which American soldiers in Iraq become zombies, a family man goes psychotic violent after his son dies, "an apocalyptic parable on violence against women," and "a ferocious criticism of the anti-abortion movement," which includes a woman inseminated by the devil who ends up shooting her own child.

Gee, sounds like a bunch of cheap horror flicks to me. If you like that stuff, great, but I don't; I avoid horror movies. Real life is scary enough.

So here's Mr. Balló: "This series expresses being deeply fed-up. Fed up with America, with the United States, with fundamentalism, with sexism, with Bush, with patriotism, and with the sacred essences."

Three points: 1) I believe Mr. Balló is doing what Freud called "projecting." 2) Notice that Mr. Balló identifies the US with fundamentalism, sexism, and patriotism. Am I in Catalonia, where at least 10% of the population is fundamentalist Marxist, where domestic violence is daily news, and Esquerra Republicana is in the government, or not? Nothing wrong with Catalonia, it's a wonderful place, I'm very happy here or I would leave, but hey, it's imperfect just like everywhere else. 3) Mr. Balló is pretty clearly a case of bias, not opinion.

The CIS, the government polling agency, and why we need one I don't know, just released a Spain-wide survey showing the PSOE and the PP virtually tied in voter intention. The results if an election were held today are PSOE 39.3%, PP 37.9%, IU (communists) 5.1%, CiU 3.1%, ERC 2.8%, and the PNV 1.7%. Seems that the big kerfluffle about the Catalan statute and the breakdown of "peace negotiations" with ETA have hurt Zap, and the PP's move toward the center has helped Rajoy. Rumor has it that Esperanza Aguirre has her knife sharpened and is out for Rajoy's jugular.

All four minor parties, along with several others, would get parliamentary seats, of course, and this is one problem with the proportional-representation system: it allows people who most voters think are complete nutcases into positions of power. Look at the Catalan regional government and the Barcelona city government: the generally moderate Socialists have to share power with the Communists and the national socialist Esquerra. Joan Saura is going to be running the regional police, for God's sake, and they put Esquerra in charge of the Orwellian "linguistic normalization" department.

Check out this letter from today's Vanguardia:

I have been working at the department of justice for 18 years, first under the state (Spain) and then transferring to the Generalitat (Catalan regional government). I have held a medical degree since 1987 and passed the level B Catalan-language certificate test in 1998. This was demanded of me in order to do my job.

Now they demand that I obtain the level C certificate and I have been warned that if I do not, I may be fired. Because of this, I asked to take the necessary course, organized by the department, and I signed up for an obligatory level B exam, though I already have the certificate., in order to take the level C course and exam. Previously, the linguistic normalizer (bureaucrat) informed me that after the exam, it would be decided whether I can enter the level C course or whether I will have to pass a course "in order to obtain level B again," when I have had the certificate for years.

All the above is absurd and has no justification. When you acquire an accredited certificate, you do not have to take any more exams. Imagine an obligatory exam in order to reacquire a high school diploma, medical degree, or drivers licence...

Signed, Maria Pilar Pellegero, Ripoll

Gee, you'd think if she's a doctor, her job performance rather than her linguistic ability ought to be how she is judged, no? This is, of course, corporativism, as anyone who graduates from a Catalan high school automatically gets a level C certificate in Catalan. Linguistic laws serve to exclude persons from other parts of Spain from government jobs in Catalonia, and local nationalists want to extend these discriminatory laws to private business too.

Here's a fascinating AP story on the release of extensive Nazi Holocaust archives, which will certainly provide us with much more specific knowledge on what happened in all of Europe during the Second World War.

Meanwhile, Burger King has launched a new monsterburger here in Spain and our local enlightened and illustrated are of course indignant, so indignant that they've roused the Health Ministry.

And the Christian Science Monitor has an extensive report on Zap's Alliance of Civilizations.

Here are the main planks of the A of C's platform:

• The international community should draft a white paper to analyze the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• An international conference should be convened to reinvigorate the Middle East peace process.
• Ruling parties in the Muslim world should provide space for the participation of peaceful political groups.
• Leaders and shapers of public opinion should behave responsibly and work to promote understanding among cultures.
• The UN should appoint a high representative to assist in defusing cross-cultural tensions.
• The UN should establish a forum for the alliance of civilizations under its auspices.
• Journalists should receive improved training in intercultural understanding.
• Media content should aim to promote intercultural dialogue.
• Educational materials and media literacy programs in schools should face a critical review.
• Governments should increase the number of international youth exchanges and youth-oriented websites.
• The international community should create media campaigns to combat discrimination.

Just brilliant. That'll fix everything. The only concrete steps I can see in the plan would involve censorship: "training journalists," which would mean indoctrinating them; media promoting "international dialogue," , which would mean someone controlling what they report; a "critical review" of educational materials, which would amount to a complete rewriting; "creating media campaigns to combat discrimination," which would mean straight-out official propaganda.

Speaking of "censorship," here's Josep Cuní of TV3's morning show, on which I have appeared several times. Note that Cuní is the TV3 guy who Manuel Trallero was accusing of bias in favor of Israel the other day. Cuní brags about having spent a couple years in the US, and once recommended a Jeremy Rifkin book to me. Why, of all people, that idiot Rifkin, I have no idea, but that's the kind of person Cuní seems to take seriously.

Although the official excuse is that no distributor has been found in the United States to facilitate (Al Jazira's) programming on cable, which is how the world reaches a Yankee, the truth is that Washington's pressures have, for now, impeded the empire from seeing the "terrible side of the conflict."

What an arrogant and ignorant jerk. Cable, "how the world reaches a Yankee"? Ever heard of internet, radio, broadcast TV, newspapers, and newsmagazines, Mr. Cuní? Hint: The Americans invented all of them in their modern form, with the possible exception of newspapers, for which some would claim British priority. As for "Washington's pressures," that is cheap conspiracy theory crap. Who in Washington? What pressures? And the use of the words "Yankee" and "empire" demonstrate that Mr. Cuní is suffering from sovereign-nationalist anti-American bias.

We're going to see "Borat" this afternoon; TV3 is going to begin running the TV series on Tuesday and their slogan in the teaser ads they've been showing is "The program that puts the United States up against the ropes." For some reason, over here in Spain they don't really get a lot of Anglo-Saxon comedy. They think stuff like the Simpsons is an acid commentary on the hellishness of American society rather than just being a laugh. Today Jorde Batlle Caminal in La Vanguardia called the movie "an extremely furious sociopolitical satire." I asked Murph, my informant on all things British, and he said, "No, it's just a piss-take."

Pointless thoughts while listening to the Allman Brothers:

Zap and Chiraq had their meeting in Girona and agreed not to make any decisions on the controversial high-tension power line across the Pyrenees between the two countries, since France has both presidential and legislative elections and Spain has municipal elections next spring and neither one has the balls to piss off the watermelons--green outside, red inside. Of all ironies, among the three members of the Catalan Tripartite, two are against it--Initiative and Esquerra--and the Socialists are in favor. I don't get the controversy--do these morons really believe that power lines cause cancer or something? This project has been in the planning stages until 1982.

The Two Stooges also announced their Middle East peace plan, to include 1) a cease-fire 2) a meeting between Olmert and Abu Mazen 3) a government of national unity in Palestine 4) an exchange of prisoners 5) the deployment of a peacekeeping force in Gaza and 6) a regional peace conference. The Israelis will have no problem with numbers 1, 2, and 6. It's more likely that I'll grow tits than Number 3. As for Number Four, what, you want the Israelis to trade tried and sentenced terrorist murderers for hostages held by those same terrorist hands? Israel will rightly never agree to anything of the sort. And Number Five would depend on whether the peacekeeping force is to disarm the terrorist gangs running Gaza, or not. If not, then precisely what good would it do? Josep Pique, whom I am starting to like more and more, ironically called the plan "a genius idea," which he attributed to the Stooges' "ignorance" about international politics.

Girona comment: It's a lovely city with a lot to see and do, located conveniently near both the Pyrenees and the Costa Brava. However, I have never been anywhere where the people were so unfriendly. and they were nasty not so much to me as to my molt Katalanisch wife. We were virtually kicked out of a restaurant for the sin of entering, were treated rudely by patrons in a cafe, and got honked at (because our car has Barcelona plates, of course) not just once, but several times, while trying to find our way around town. The only place they were nice was at the Bocatta fast-food joint. Neither of us has ever received such unpleasant treatment anywhere else in Catalonia, Spain, the rest of Europe, the US, or Mexico. Nobody's ever been rude to me in France, to explode one urban legend, and I speak lousy French.

Equatorial Guinea is Spain's only ex-colony in black Africa, and it is run by an absolute scumbag murderous corrupt dictator named Teodoro Obiang. This guy is a hundred times worse than Pinochet or Marcos or Batista, and he just paid an official visit to Spain. He was received quite politely by the King. Zap was photographed shaking his hand. It seems that the oil and gas sector, led by Repsol, pressured the administration to make nice to Obiang. To Mariano Rajoy's eternal shame, he too held a half-hour meeting with Obiang.

According to La Vanguardia, "With an income thanks to petroleum of $3 billion a year during the decade of the 1990s, the population should have the second highest per-capita income in the world. In reality, however, the country occupies one of the lowest positions on the UN human development index." The Vangua adds that Obiang's son owns mansions in Paris, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Los Angeles, and Malibu, and a collection of Bentleys, Lamborghinis, and Ferraris. His salary as minister of agriculture and forestry earns him €4000 a month; he is nicknamed "the lumberjack" in Equatorial Guinea, since the timber industry is the country's only other important economic activity.

Here's the fun part. Angel Exposito, on page 20 of Thursday's Vangua, makes every cynical pro-imperialist argument that can be imagined in support of Spain's dealing with Obiang. "Either we continue to act foolishly...or we begin a new stage with a country that will be fundamental in Africa within a very few years, where they speak almost perfect Spanish, which is Christian, which has a leadership class that studied at Spanish universities, and whose future, inexorably, is Westernization." See, it's all for those poor benighted Africans' own good.

Exposito continues: "There are four possibilities: allowing the United States to continue exploiting Point Europa north of the island of Bioko, without even talking to a Guinean; allowing the Chinese to continue expanding in Bata and Malabo with there shops as they buy liquefied gas at the price of gold; allowing France to incorporate Guinea into the Francophonie step by step; and, the last one, taking advantage of our chance once and for all."

There's more, but that's enough. So some respect for United Fruit and Anaconda Copper, all right? They were just doing what they had to do, isn't that right, Mr. Exposito?

The big local news is that the cops pulled a massive raid on the Barrio Chino, Barcelona's historic red-light district, and arrested 110 individuals involved with trafficking in prostitutes. Almost all of them are Rumanian. One of the streets raided was Calle Robadors, where I lived back in 1987 when the Chino was still the Chino. My building was next door to a private VD clinic, and there were twelve or fifteen whorehouses up the street--the hookers, all middle-aged Spaniards, would sit out front as the clients paraded by pretending they weren't looking for what they were. It was rather picturesque. The funny part is that on the back page of today's Vanguardia is an interview with Rumanian ex-president Petr Roman, who states, "There is no Rumanian mafia." Uh-huh. Whatever you say, Pete.

The malodorous Andy Robinson accuses the United States of censorship:

Al Jazira began its new service in English today...but in the principal English-language market, the United States, almost nobody has the chance to watch it...Everything indicates that the major cable television companies' decision amounts to "de facto censorship," according to Norman Solomon, author of War Made Easy. "Millions of people want to see Al Jazira's programming in English, but there are influential groups who do not want to offend the Administration or the advertisers.

Yeah, millions of people in the US are clamoring at this moment to watch Al Jazira instead of Desperate Housewives.

Finally, I am absolutely disgusted by the following comment by Manuel Trallero:

Where is the Jewish lobby?

I would like to know where the components of the arch-famous Catalan Jewish lobby are hiding now. Where is Mrs. Pilar Rahola, where is Mr. Vicenç Villatoro, Mr. Joan Oliver, or the Open Catalonia Foundation? Where are they now? Now that the Israeli army has massacred children because of a "technical error" or now that the gays and lesbians of Israel have had to hold a demonstration inside a stadium in Jerusalem for fear of reprisals by ultra-Orthodox Jews. Hadn't we agreed that the Talibans were precisely the other ones, the "moros"? None of them, of the Catalan Jewish lobby, so powerful on a certain TV3 morning program, has opened his mouth.

Fuck off, Mr. Trallero.

Now that we've got that out of the way: 1) "lobby" implies these people are paid, which they are not. AIPAC is the Israeli lobby in the US, and it is openly run as a lobbying organization that tries to influence legislation. Comparing individuals who support Israel to paid lobbyists is unfair. 2) The fact that Trallero can only name four individuals proves that the "Jewish lobby" around here is very small. I would imagine that 90% of Catalan intellectuals are anti-Israeli. 3) The Israelis do not kill children on purpose. They would not have fired on Gaza if Hamas had not been firing rockets at them from that very place. 4) None of those four people believes that all "moros" are Talibans, and implying that they do is wrong. And putting the slur "moro" in their mouths is the height of disgraceful behavior. 5) I imagine that you are going to get a furious response from the people you named, Mr. Trallero. Nice troll. You reeled us in, you anti-Semitic piece of shit.

Aimless thoughts while listening to REM:

My computer has been down since Sunday; seems there was something wrong with the battery and I had to replace it. Now it works again and I can return to entertaining the masses.

The situation in the high schools has become news. About twelve years ago or so, under the influence of genius American educational theorists, they got rid of the old elitist system and put in a new touchy-feely caring and sharing system.

In the old days, you went to elementary school until you were 14. Then you could attend an academic high school (BUP + COU), a vocational school (FP 1 + 2), or go get a job. Now everybody goes to the same high school and they have to stay until they're 16.

This has, of course, resulted in disaster, with classes full of kids who don't want to be there and get no benefit whatsoever. The teachers are furious, since they don't have the disciplinary power to enforce obedience, and so they can't get rid of the bad eggs, who screw up the system for the kids who want to learn.

There's been a wave of attacks on teachers, both by "students" and their parents, and bullying has increased a great deal, as of course the tough kids pick on the ones who want to learn when the two groups are mixed. Ten years ago no one had ever heard of the English word "bullying"; now it's part of standard Spanish vocabulary.

Solution: Go back to the old system and fire everyone who had anything to do with implementing the new one.

However, the solution that's been suggested is handing out prison sentences to individuals who attack public servants such as teachers or doctors, which is of course fighting the symptoms of the problem instead of its roots (not that I'm against jailing these scumballs). What I want to know is why people convicted of assault and battery don't go to prison in the first place, no matter who they attack and beat up.

There has also been a rash of problems with the Barcelona commuter train system, with the latest a train that was shut down for an hour and a half in a tunnel 300 meters from Sants station. The guy in charge's head has rolled, but that's not going to change anything. The Spanish train system, RENFE (Rogamos Empujar Nuestros Ferrocarriles Estropeados, Please Push Our Broken-down Trains), is actually pretty good at long-distance service, but the extensive Barcelona commuter system sucks and is getting worse. That's what happens when you put the government in charge of something that should be in private hands.

Says La Vanguardia in an editorial, "Renfe is paying for old organizational sins: a chronic investment deficit, lack of prevision of the growth of its most profitable lines, an obsolete business organization, and a labor structure that favors corporatist behavior and leaves the users as orphans."

The Marbella corruption scandal, in which tens of millions of euros of bribes were thrown around by crooked building contractors and sleazy city government officials, is also big news. A new wave of arrests has elevated the number of persons facing charges to more than 100, including the former president of Sevilla FC, mob lawyer Jose Maria Gonzalez de Caldas, and ex-mayor Julian Múñoz, who appears frequently in the prensa rosa, Spain's trashy celebrity press. The brain behind the scams was apparently Juan Antonio Roca, the city councilman in charge of urban development.

When Roca and 22 others were arrested, the cops confiscated property worth over €2.4 billion. That's billion with a B. When they came for another ex-mayor, Marisol Yague, they found €360,000 cash in her house, which she claimed came from "wedding presents."

This is why Marbella is such an awful hellhole, tacky "luxury" apartments all over the place for oil sheiks and arms traffickers and cocaine importers and celebrity hangers-on. I've never been there, but the TV footage of the place looks like a less tasteful Las Vegas.

TV ad note: They're using "Amazing Grace" as the music for a commercial advertising a mobile phone service, not just the tune, but the words--"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind but now I see." People, that's an American Protestant hymn written in the 18th century by a reformed slave trader named John Newton. The theme, of course, is salvation by God's grace. I remember singing it in church as a child. I'm sure all my great-great-great grandparents sang it too. They're probably singing it right now at some little church in some little town in, say, Kentucky.

First, it seems highly inappropriate to use such a song for commercial purposes--imagine if it were an Islamic hymn. I doubt they'd use it in that case. And second, I thought all of us over here were so enlightened and illustrated that we looked down on such manifestations of primitive American religious fundamentalism.

Our local Luddites (Esquerra and Saura's green Commies) are going to protest tomorrow's meeting between Zap and Chiraq in Girona. Seems there is a plan to transport electricity across the Pyrenees on a high-tension line, and all the tinfoil hats are furious. Of course, Spain needs a more stable electricity supply, especially in the wake of last week's Western European blackout, but the Luddites want to stop growth by stopping the necessary electricity and water supplies.

Says Francesc-Marc Alvaro in La Vangua,

The founders of the United States of America thought that the government tends to be malevolent and that society tends to be charitable. This suspicion impregnates the forging of the institutions of the American republic, as does a non-determinist idea of existence, based on great faith in the capacity of each individual to fulfill his dreams. Therefore, the American mentality is solidly based on the conviction that there is always a future that can be remade and a new chance to begin...

American politics have little to do with European, and even less with those practiced in Spain. Here, Zapatero withdrew the troops from Iraq with the same frivolity with which Aznar had previously ordered their deployment. American democracy is not perfect (abstention rates are very high), and to a European it may seem an overly restrictive game, but it offers lessons that would serve us very well: the correcting strength of legislative power cohabiting with a president from the other side, the direct responsibility of each person elected to his voters, and, above all, the people's enormous capacity to avoid discouragement and punish the rulers who have failed them.

I'll repeat: If more European correspondents and columnists were as fair as Mr. Alvaro and Eusebio Val, there would be a lot less knee-jerk anti-Yankeeism over here.

According to EFE, Spain's government-controlled news service, and why we need one I have no idea, the most common surnames in Spain are:

1. García 2. González 3. Fernández 4. Rodríguez 5. López 6. Martínez 7. Sánchez 8. Pérez 9. Martín 10. Gómez 11. Jiménez 12. Ruiz

The top male first names are:

1. José (Pepe) 2. Antonio 3. Manuel 4. Francisco (Paco) 5. Juan 6. David 7. José Antonio 8. José Luis 9 Jesús 10. Javier 11. Carlos 12. Miguel

Mohamed is number 77.

And the top female first names:

1. María 2. María del Carmen 3. Carmen 4. Josefa (Pepa) 5. Isabel 6. María Dolores (Lola) 7. Ana María 8. Francisca (Paquita) 9. Dolores 10. María del Pilar 11. Antonia 12. María Teresa (Maite)

Barça beat Zaragoza 3-1 on Sunday night, putting them back in first place, but they lost Leo Messi for three months and Javier Saviola for several weeks. Xavi, Belletti, Iniesta, and Edmilson are all tweaked and not at 100%, Puyol is of course recuperating from his father's accidental death (he did play on Sunday) and of course Eto'o is out until February. Barça is down to four forwards, Ronaldinho, Gudjohnsen, Giuly, and Ezquerro, and will almost certainly have to resort to the 4-4-2 instead of Frank Rijkaard's favored 4-3-3 formation.

Saturday evening blog roundup while listening to my favorite singer of them all, Johnny Cash:

Guirilandia sums up many people's thoughts on the Catalan election.

Planet Churro blasts job discrimination in favor of Catalan-speakers.

The Bad Rash features a very reasonable and moderate post (on environmentalism). In other news, the sun rose in the west, Perry Mason lost a case, Ronaldo passed up a donut, and an airborne, winged pig was sighted over Tibidabo.

South of Watford posts on the alleged Basque peace process. I'm afraid there isn't one. You have ETA, a terrorist gang, and then you have the democratic state under the rule of law. One must give in. Which? Well, ETA is unwilling to give in--and by give in, I mean lay down its arms in exchange for nothing--and so the state will continue prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law. And it should do nothing else.

Guirilandia quotes Orwell, as I have in the past, on why people care so much about nationalism. Read the essay, Notes on Nationalism--it ought to be available somewhere on the web.

Publius Pundit has three different posts on Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, all of which you should read.

Pave France dismantles a few French pretensions.

¡No Pasaran! features an enlightening video interview with an American humanist in Paris.

Fausta reads the tea leaves in the aftermath of the US election.

Well, Bush has admitted defeat by getting rid of Rumsfeld, and the Democrats took both the Montana and Virginia Senate seats for a 51-49 majority, so I'm going to throw in the towel and do the same thing. The Democrats won, and one must accept the verdict of the voters. What it's time to do is learn some lessons from the Republican defeat and move on. Bush is going to meet with Nancy Pelosi, the new Dem Speaker of the House (who is a left-wing nut that the Spanish progres are going to love), in order to reach some sort of consensus on how to run the country for the next two years. That's a good first step.

Election comments:

1) Pro-war Democrat Joe Lieberman's victory over anti-war Democrat Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Senate race--and Connecticut is of course one of the most liberal states in the country--shows that while the election gave a verdict on the Republicans, it didn't give one on the Iraq war.

2) The US is not going to bug out of Iraq. There will be policy changes, possibly significant, but there will be no cutting and running.

3) The Democrats quite wisely moved toward the center; most of the new representatives and senators are moderates, not far-out lefties (e.g. Bob Casey). The Republicans might learn a lesson, and should turn a deaf ear to those cultural conservatives who claim the Reps lost because they weren't conservative enough.

4) I don't think the Mark Foley scandal had much effect, but I do think the other corruption scandals, mostly involving Republicans, did. Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, and Bob Ney helped do in the Reps. (Tom DeLay is not guilty of anything but angering the Austin DA.) And if the Reps are smart, there will be a thorough house-cleaning.

5) If we look for the silver lining, a shakeup like this will help the Reps by getting rid of some deadwood (cf. Lincoln Chafee, George Allen) and bringing in some new blood. This election wasn't a wipeout; the Reps came close to holding the Senate and maintained 200 seats in the House. If some new, young candidates are able to step up in 2008, the Reps have a very good chance of winning back both houses.

6) If Bush attempts to cooperate with the Dems, and they refuse, they're the ones who look bad. Legislative gridlock, which is likely to happen, might backfire on the Dems.

7) Maybe this will prove once and for all that the Republicans do not steal elections, and most certainly did not do so in 2000.

8) I also hope it proves that the conservative Christians, while an important social group worthy of respect, don't run America, as Andy Robinson seems to think.

9) Bush's domestic programs, like making all his tax cuts permanent, are going to be held up and probably shot down. Also, of course, so will his judicial nominees. The one thing I would do, if I were the Republicans, is warn the Dems that unless they play ball on our nominees, we'll block all their judicial nominees whenever they get a chance to make some.

I was going to translate some anti-American crap by Manuel Castells and Andy Robinson, but, hell, you've heard it all before. Instead, it's time for a very reasonable blog post by Washington correspondent Eusebio Val from the day before the elections.

Covering the legislative elections for La Vanguardia, I took a coast-to-coast trip across the United States for 12 days. From Connecticut, on Long Island Sound, to the beaches of Los Angeles; from the poverty-stricken Afro-American neighborhoods of Detroit to the exhibitionist opulence of Beverly Hills to the Indian reservations in Montana. The goal was to take the pulse of the country's state of mind, to escape from the over-politicized and deceiving (engañosa) atmosphere of Washington and to talk to ordinary people in different environments. I have seen strong contrasts, heard contradictory opinions, some measured and others extremist.

The first conclusion is that the war in Iraq concerns the Americans a great deal, although only a small fraction is affected directly. Other questions--the economy, moral values, immigration, health insurance--are secondary at this moment. There is wide and deep unhappiness at the way the administration has managed the Iraq crisis. The Democrats say it openly and rancorously. The Republicans admit it discreetly and with some bitterness.

It is difficult to synthesize average opinion. I would say that it is moderate and centrist, which could be represented by either the Democrats or the Republicans. The American soul is not with either the left which is pressing for a rapid retirement, or with the rhetoric of an administration that is too discredited by its mistakes and its obstinate resistance to admitting them. Differently from Europe, these centrists were in favor of the war in 2003 and contributed decisively to Bush's reelection in November 2004.

This calm, non-strident America that does not flourish in the surveys and public opinion is the key to understanding the United States. That America is anguished and disappointed, but be careful! It doesn't want a hurried and irresponsible pullout, either. They are sincerely patriotic Americans, with patience. Their fathers or grandfathers fought in Vietnam, Korea, World War II. They know the United States is playing for high stakes in the Middle East. This sector will support a consensus formula seeking a gradual withdrawal.

The great virtue of democracies is that, through simple mathematical logic, when such a wide mass is consulted, frequently the people's common sense is thereby distilled. The complicated thing is turning that into a governing majority with concrete policies. The farmers, the people tied to the earth and its natural cycles, also have that common sense. Perhaps that is why one of the most revealing interviews of the entire trip was not with a politician, analyst, or intellectual. It was in the cabin of a tractor in a recently harvested corn field in Waseca, Minnesota.

Peter Zimmerman, 43 years old and the father of four children, told me that his family is from a Republican tradition and believes in conservative values. Despite being well-off farmers, with 800 hectares of land and investments in Brazil, his brother Paul is a lieutenant colonel in the Minnesota National Guard, a voluntary, part-time force. Paul is risking his life now in Iraq, where he is serving for one year.

I was impressed by Peter's clarity in explaining his ideas. He confessed his disappointment with the Bush administration. In his opinion, the president "is a good man," but has made the mistake of surrounding himself with too many people that think like him and of not being capable of creating a solid international coalition. Despite everything, Peter is going to vote Republican in this election because he trusts the Democrats even less. I have the feeling that this farmer has a lot of company in the US, as do the numerous Democrats who would not like an exaggerated backlash in Washington. No matter what the results of the elections are, the US is calling for moderate, bipartisan, public-spirited politics.

If all European correspondents were as fair as Mr. Val, Europe would have a much better idea of what the US is really like.

With most of the results in, the Democrats have taken the House of Representatives and the Senate is still up in the air, 49-49, with two seats (Virginia and Montana) still to be decided. Since the vice-president (Cheney) breaks tie votes in the Senate, the Dems need to win both to gain control.

Fox News took an exit poll, and its analysis of the results show why voters did what they did. Definitely check this link out. I have to admit that the poll makes clear that the election was, at least partially, a referendum on the Bush administration and the Iraq war. I'm not yet prepared to admit defeat, though, because the Republicans are going to score more than 200 representatives (out of 435)--that is, the election wasn't a wipeout--, and we'll still have to wait and see how the Senate comes out.

Important point: The Republican candidates piled up a total percentage of the vote that is considerably higher than any of the five parties in the Catalan election. That is, the word "repudiation," which we are going to hear a lot over the next few days in the local press, doesn't exactly apply.

Tuesday afternoon blog roundup while listening to the incomparable Bob Dylan:

(Hey, you know, if you click on the above links you get groovy music clips!)

La Liga Loca has the lowdown on last week's Spanish soccer action, and Rob and Rany on the Royals fill us in on the latest about our boys in powder-blue.

¡No Pasarán! blasts the enviro hysteria surrounding the infamous Stern Report.

Winds of Change is pessimistic on nuclear proliferation.

Angie Schultz posts on advertising and today's US elections; Right Wing News has specific predictions on the Senate races; so does Real Clear Politics; so does Power Line; Michelle Malkin warns of aggressive leftist poll watchers; Expat Yank comments from England; Daniel W. Drezner asks what effect Google-bombing might have on elections;

Publius Pundit has a long, interesting, and complete post on the Nicaraguan elections. Highly recommended.

Pave France analyzes France's role in NATO.

Akaky cracks me up.

Patterico fisks a pro-Saddam article in the Guardian, of course. The Rottweiler joins in and savages the Guardian's appalling stupidity. (Comment: I pronounce Guardian as GWAR-dee-un, because that's the way I always heard the word back home, including at school, as in "Students, your report cards must be signed by your parents or guardians." The Brits pronounce it as GAR-dee-un, which is fine with me, but they insist on correcting my pronunciation, which is not. And these are the people who pronounce "duel" as if it were "Jew" with a glottal stop on the end.)

Outside the Beltway asks whether it is rational to vote.

Davids Medienkritik blasts Der Speigel's anti-Yankee bias again, including its coverage of the US election.

On the first international page of today's edition of La Vanguardia, Beirut correspondent Tikrit Tommy Alcoverro calls Saddam "the overthrown (derrocado) president of Iraq" rather than, say, "ex-dictator," which would seem a little more neutral to me. Tikrit Tommy goes on to play up wacky conspiracy theories that claim that the death sentence was timed to influence the US midterm elections. Quote: "Since the beginning of this controversial trial, it has been reiterated (se ha insistido) that political motivations are behind it, and that it has not conformed to correct procedure."

Speaking of the US elections, the latest polls have the Republicans closing the overall vote gap with the Democrats.

Zap went to Montevideo for the Ibero-American summit meeting and things didn't go too well. Supposedly King Juan Carlos is going to "facilitate" talks between Argentina and Uruguay, who are not getting along particularly well. Sounds like a big mistake to me--the King can only lose prestige. Zap agreed to cut back interest payments on Argentina's €800 million debt to Spain. Evo Morales called Zap a hypocrite on immigration, which he is, and Alvaro Uribe dressed Zap down for making a stupid comment comparing the alleged threat to the environment to terrorism. The US border fences with Mexico were roundly condemned; of course Spain has border fences up at the Ceuta and Melilla land frontiers with Morocco, at which thousands of desperate African illegal immigrants are piled up trying to get across somehow.

Around here there have been repeated complaints about strict airline security. Eusebio Val in Washington points out a difference between Spaniards and Americans:

The stoicism and patience with which, in general, American passengers behave when faced with the discomforts of airports, are surprising: long lines at the checkpoints, taking off shoes and jackets, taking computers out of their cases, and other operations which, when in a hurry, can become very irritating. It is very unusual for someone to protest or raise his voice because he feels mistreated or loses his nerves.

So far, so good. Note the comparison Val makes with the way Spaniards behave in such situations.

This acceptance is possibly due to the fact that here there is more respect for authority--and fear of punishment--than in countries with a Latin tradition, along with greater acceptance of civic responsibility in that the antiterrorist struggle demands sacrifices from everyone. Perhaps pragmatism also has an influence: why argue if it doesn't change anything?

I'll agree with the "respect for authority," because I believe most Americans respect authority because they feel that authority is legitimate, that authority is responsive to their concerns and listens to their voices. The situation is not the same in Latin countries, especially not in countries that had dictatorial governments well within living memory. I don't think fear of punishment is a factor--they can't put you in jail for getting pissed off and acting like a jerk. Good manners is a factor, and so is other people's opinion; there's an unwritten American law that says you don't bother strangers with your problems, you suck it up and deal with it. Also, if you lose your temper and start acting like a three-year-old, everyone will think you're a dick, and most people don't want to be thought of as dicks.

Americans' experience in traveling, their knowledge of weather problems and air traffic saturation, make them very understanding in situations that would cause a collective riot in other latitudes. Instead of protesting noisily, they choose to rapidly find a solution to their individual problem.

I think that's called "maturity."

I remember Val writing something on this subject a couple of years ago. Val's sympathy for the individual American is a bit unusual among Spanish correspondents.

Just to clear up a misunderstanding that some people had: A former FC Barcelona soccer player named Sergi Lopez committed suicide on Saturday by throwing himself under a train in his hometown of Granollers. Lopez apparently had serious marital problems, and had recently left his wife in Argentina and returned to Spain. He is the older brother of Gerard Lopez, former Barça and Valencia player currently with Monaco.

Lopez was not a particularly well-known player, participating in some twenty matches with Barça's first team between about 1989-91. I didn't remember who he was when I heard the story, and had to be reminded.

Anyway, though, the player who killed himself is NOT the much-better-known Sergi Barjuan, known footballistically simply as "Sergi," a fine left fullback for Barça and then Atletico de Madrid, and a regular on Spain's national team, between about 1992-2002.

The new Catalan administration will be Tripartite II; everyone was surprised at how quickly the deal was made. I was expecting weeks of tense negotiations. Montilla will be premier and Carod-Rovira will be vice-premier. Montilla told Mas on Friday that he did not want to deal with CiU, and on Saturday Mas offered Carod half the cabinet portfolios and the chief of cabinet post. Carod turned him down and today met with Montilla, when the deal was cut. Supposedly Carod is going to behave himself and Montilla is going to be the boss. I dunno; Montilla is an inside-politics guy, a party hack, and will probably do a lot better keeping Carod in line than the charismatic dilettante Maragall did.

The PP is rubbing its hands in glee, since they can paint Zapatero as the guy whose party made a coalition with that crazy separatist Carod who went and met with the ETA in Perpignan for the next year and a half until the 2008 election.

The US midterm election is getting some coverage over here, though not intense. The general perception is that it's a referendum on Bush, which is of course a bit simplistic. Politics in the United States is largely local, and most people vote mostly on local and domestic issues. Agreed, foreign affairs plays a role, as do people's images of the national parties, but I think a House or Senate race is more of a contest between the two local candidates than a verdict on national politics.

Right now the polls say things are very tight. My gut feeling is that the Republicans will hold at least one of the two houses. If they can hold both, that would be impressive, since historically the electorate moves against the incumbent president toward the end of his second term.

If the Democrats win both houses handily, I'll be willing to agree the election was a referendum on Bush. If not...

There's been some typically brilliant commentary in the local rags from the likes of Manuel Castells and Andy Robinson, which I'll translate for tomorrow.

Football. Barcelona drew 1-1 with Deportivo at Riazor in a hard-fought but not especially stylish game. Carles Puyol's father was killed on Saturday afternoon in a labor accident--he ran a small company that owns excavating machines, and was out doing some work on a rural road when his excavator turned over and crushed him. Shows you something about Puyol and his family, hard-working salt-of-the-earth Catalan folk. Though the son is a multimillionare soccer player, Dad kept on with his everyday life. Of course Puyol instantly flew back home to his family, and Thuram substituted for him.

Ronaldinho is at about 80%; the guy could use a rest, I think. He hasn't had much rest since the summer of 2005. Thuram is not quite fitting into the defense; one explanation I've heard is that Juventus ran a much more solid defensive scheme, and Thuram had a lot of help there, while here at Barça he is often left on his own with an opposing forward while everybody else is halfway down the field. Saviola looks OK, but one problem is that he's small, and so are Xavi and Giuly and Iniesta and Deco and Messi, and you put all those guys on the field at the same time, especially against somebody like Chelsea, and they'll just beat the crap out of your quick skill players.

Real Madrid lost at home in the Bernabeu, 1-2, to Celta. Not good. Unless you're a Barcelona fan, of course.

They're going to hang Saddam. Good. I hope he finds the experience unpleasant. Zap said something about how the EU does not approve of the death penalty. I think the Iraqis don't give a rat's ass what Zap thinks.

Daniel at Planet Churro has a very good piece on why most of us Barcelona expats are rather unsympathetic to Catalan nationalism. Definitely check it out.

Notes on the aftermath of the Catalan elections:

Mathematically, there are three realistic possibilities for a governing coalition: PSC + IC + ERC, the Tripartite; CiU + PSC, Sociovergencia; and CiU + ERC, a nationalist front.

Montilla would prefer another Tripartite, but he wants to put conditions on ERC's behavior because he doesn't trust them farther than he can spit. Zapatero says he plans to stay out of the coalition-making and let Montilla make the arrangement he thinks best. If I were Zap I'd lean on Montilla hard to La Vanguardia points out that if there is a new Tripartite coalition, Montilla, the candidate whose party lost the most seats, would be premier, and Mas, the head of the opposition, would constantly be able to remind him that he, Mas, received 140,000 more votes. Another problem is that the last Tripartite broke up precisely over ERC's refusal to back the new Catalan statute of autonomy (regional constitution), agreed upon by Mas and Zapatero, which the PSC and IC supported.

ERC says it would prefer a Tripartite, too, but is holding out to see what kind of deal Montilla is offering. They have the bargaining chip of opening negotiations with CiU if Montilla's conditions are too stringent. Many of ERC's members would prefer a nationalist front to another Tripartite coalition, and since the party is very loosely organized, significant blocs of members might go as far as splitting off.

CiU would prefer a Sociovergente coalition with Mas as premier; Mas and Montilla are meeting today. The deal Mas is offering would give the PSC pretty much anything it wants, except for the premiership. CiU would agree to pipe down with the nationalist demands and, more importantly, would promise support for Zapatero in Madrid. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me and if I were Montilla I would take it rather than be forced to govern in coalition with ERC. Mas can also hold a possible nationalist front with ERC over their heads during the negotiations, but I'll bet he'd rather hug a stingray than pact with Carod. He's not ruling it out, though; he meets with Carod on Monday.

Geopolitical stuff that interests only me: All ten of Barcelona's districts voted the same way they had in the last election. The four districts that tend toward the middle class, Sarrià-St. Gervasi, Les Corts, the Eixample, and Gràcia, gave CiU a plurality; the other six, more working class, Sants-Montjuic, Ciutat Vella, St. Martí, St. Andreu, Nou Barris, and Horta-Guinardó, gave the PSC a plurality.

CiU did best in Sarrià with 44.6%, Barcelona's wealthiest and most Catalan district (more than 51% voted for the two nationalist parties), and worst in Nou Barris with 19.3%, Barcelona's most working-class and most Spanish district. Of course, the PSC did best in Nou Barris with 37.5% and worst in Sarrià with 11.2%. The PP did best in Sarrià, with 19.5%, and worst in ideosyncratic Gràcia, with 9.5%. IC did best in Ciutat Vella, with 15.5%, and pulled 15.4% in Gràcia; of course, it did worst in Sarrià, with 7.7%. ERC did best in the largest and most heterogenous district, the Eixample, with 17.7%, and worst in Sarrià, with 7.4%. Ciudadans did best in Sarrià, with 5.8%, and worst in Ciutat Vella, with 3.1%.

In the suburbs, the PSC did best in Montilla's hometown Cornellà, Santa Coloma, and Viladecans, with over 40% of the vote. Cornellà is almost certainly the most leftist town in Catalonia, with a total of 58% of the vote going to the two leftist parties. Les Borges Blanques is probably the most nationalist town, with a massive 71% of the vote for the two nationalist parties; Vic is second with 68%. The PP pulls a surprisingly strong 15.8% in Tarragona city. ERC peaks in Les Borges Blanques with 31.4% and Montblanc with 29.1%.

This is off the Associated Press wire today:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli forces opened fire Friday on a group of women who streamed to a Gaza mosque to serve as human shields for gunmen holed up there, killing one and wounding 10, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.

A 22-year-old Palestinian man was also killed in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, which troops seized Wednesday in a bid to halt Palestinian rocket fire on southern Israeli communities. More than 20 Palestinians, most of them militants, have been killed in the offensive.

Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers quickly surrounded the mosque after gunmen fleeing troops sought refuge there, the military and Palestinian security officials said. Most of the gunmen — estimates ranged from one dozen to several dozen — were thought to be from the military wing of the Palestinians' ruling Hamas party.

That is, Hamas was hiding behind women and shooting at the Israelis. What cowardice. How pathetic. Follow the above link for the rest of the story.

Now here's TV3's story, their top international report on this afternoon's news:

The Israeli army's land and air offensive against the Gaza strip, which has already caused 34 deaths according to Hebrew sources and 25 according to Palestinian, continues. The most recent victims in an exchange of fire between soldiers and armed Palestinian activists at a mosque in Beit Hanoun. They are two women who acted as human shields so that the hundred women occupying the mosque could escape. Israeli army sources state that their soldiers shot at armed "militars" (literally "soldiers", but I think they mean "militants") who were participating in the women's protest at the mosque in the northern Gaza strip.

Wow. That's a completely different story. There was a demonstration at the mosque, not a bunch of terrorists using it as a fortress. Two righteous women were killed by the Israeli army while valiantly protecting fellow protesters.

It seems that there were a hundred women occupants. The majority, however, managed to escape when the victims left the mosque and attracted the attention of the Hebrew army. In all, it is thought there are still between fifteen and twenty Palestinian women in the two buildings that make up the holy place.

I've never heard TV3 call a church a "holy place."

The army, which has the mosque surrounded and has called on the Palestinians to surrender, stated that the Palestinians shot at them from inside the mosque. Some sources have also stated that military bulldozers have knocked down a wall of the masque, causing the roof to cave in above one of the rooms, which fell on the militants and may have killed some.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army's air offensive against the Gaza Strip continues. Hebrew airplanes fired two missiles that caused the death of four Palestinians. The first missile left three wounded and one dead. Half an hour later, a second missile killed three Palestinians in the same area. In three days of operation in Beit Hanoun, the Israeli army has killed 34 Palestinians, according to the electronic edition of the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot. That figure contrasts with the number of victims given by Palestinian medical sources, who say that 25 Palestinians have died.

Jeez. With the media spouting such biased information, never mentioning why the Israelis have invaded Gaza in the first place--because Hamas is firing rockets at Israeli civilians--the fervid anti-Israel feeling in Spain, and especially Catalonia, is no surprise.

Thursday afternoon blog roundup while listening to Hank Williams:

Here's Planet Churro's commentary on yesterday's Catalan elections, along with his pre-election predictions.

Barcelona Reporter has more, including a chart with all the exact numbers. Several posts.

Nihil Obstat in Catalan and Red Liberal in Spanish (a dozen posts; read them all) have further comments.

The Rottweiler is unhappy with John Kerry. Note the photo. So is Daniel W. Drezner, though without profanity. Patterico is mad not only at Kerry, but also the New York Times.

Beautiful Horizons opines on the Nicaraguan election, and Publius Pundit reports on Hugo Chavez's involvement with the failed insurrection in Oaxaca.

Right Wing News has a thoughtful post on why Republicans should turn out next week.

Winds of Change has another excellent one on the struggle against Al Qaeda in Iraq.

And La Liga Loca fills us in on Real Madrid's poor showing in Bucharest, and warns the English to lock up their transsexuals because Guti might be on the way. (If I remember correctly, Guti has been romantically linked to transvestite Bibi Fernandez.)

One small change with more than 95% of the vote counted: it's CiU 48, PSC 37, ERC 21, PP 14, IC 12, Ciutadans 3.

Further notes: Maragall didn't look at all happy or too sober up on the stage while Montilla was claiming victory; Montilla's line was that CiU failed in its attempt to get more votes than the Tripartite. Zapatero's extensive campaigning in Catalonia does not seem to have done the PSC much good. CiU certainly did not do anywhere near as well as the surveys said. The PP is out of play; no one wants anything to do with them, and I imagine Ciutadans is in the same boat.

80% of the vote has been counted. It's CiU 47, PSC 38, ERC 21, PP 14, IC 12, Ciutadans 3. You can see the nationalist vote from the provinces coming in late. With these results, a CiU-ERC nationalist front gets the 68 seats it needs, so there are now three possibilities along with Sociovergencia and the Tripartite. The awful thing is that unless the PSC is willing to accept playing second banana in a grand coalition, the ERC national socialists will get to decide what the next government will look like.

The vote in Barcelona city: PSC 27.6%, CiU 27.3%, PP 13.0%, ERC 12.4%, IC 12.3%, Ciutadans 3.3%. You can see that Barcelona is less nationalist and more leftist than the countryside.

Big winners so far: Convergence and Initiatiative. Big loser Esquerra.

Official data with 53% of the vote in: CiU 30.1%, 47 seats; PSC 29.4%, 40; ERC 13.6%, 19; PP 10.8%, 14; IC 9.6%, 12; Ciutadans 3.0%, 3.

With 31% of the vote counted, the percentages for each party are barely changing with each new report. Now the distribution of parliamentary seats is CiU 45, PSC 42, ERC 19, PP 14, IC 12, Ciutadans 3.

Points to remember: Most of the early vote coming in is from Barcelona province, where the PSC, PP, IC, and Ciutadans are comparatively strongest. The three other provinces, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona, are traditional strongholds for the nationalist parties, CiU and ERC. If the number of allocated seats changes, it will likely be to the benefit of these last two.

The turnout is very low. Regional elections get lower turnouts than municipals and generals, because a sizable number of voters who do not feel particularly Catalan do not come out for the regionals. In the generals and municipals, the Socialists generally win here in Catalonia, while CiU generally wins the regionals. Nobody, not even the parties involved, cares too much about the European parliamentary elections.

Right now CiU and ERC sum up 64 seats, four short of the 68 they need for a majority. If the votes are out there in the provinces, a nationalist front is not out of the question. Still, though, it looks like either Sociovergencia or the Tripartite.

They've just released another projection, with 15% of the vote counted: CiU 29.3% of the vote, 44 seats; PSC 31.7%, 43; ERC 12.9%, 19; PP 10.7%, 14; IC 9.1%, 12; Ciutadans 2.8%, 3.

Looks like there are two realistic outcomes: a CiU-PSC grand coalition, which is what I predicted, or Tripartite II, which I just don't think is going to happen.

We have to keep in mind that these are nowhere near definitive figures, of course. CiU seems to be doing much more poorly than expected, and the big surprise is Ciutadans, which I had completely counted out.

With 5.6% of the vote counted, TV3 projects the following results in the Catalan regional election: Catalan Socialists (PSC) 32.6% of the vote and 47 seats; Convergence and Union (CiU) 29.6%, 42; Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) 12.7%, 18; People's Party (PP) 10.4%, 14; Initiative for Catalonia 8.6%, 11; Citizens of Catalonia 2.5%, 3.

Here in Catalonia, it's a Japanese girl's favorite day--Erection Day! This afternoon on the TV3 news, as is traditional, the first fifteen minutes were devoted to film of the various candidates depositing their ballots in the plexiglass urns. The results will be announced at 9:30 PM tonight, which would be 3:30 Eastern time in the US. Iberian Notes will liveblog them.

According to an October 15 survey quoted in La Vanguardia, Catalans identified the following as "principal problems at this moment":

Housing 60%
Immigration 58%
Crime 39%
Unemployment 30%
Health care 24%
Education 18%
Government finances 15%
Corruption 15%
Infrastructure 15%
Use of Catalan 13%

Looks like citizens' priorities are pretty clear. Housing prices are through the roof and significant Third World immigration is just beginning to affect Catalonia. Esquerra Republicana was playing the immigration card so heavily for a reason. People appear to be pretty content with the educational and health care systems, both of which provide fairly decent service for huge unwieldy government bureaucracies. And nobody gives a rat's ass about the language question except for the fanatics; I'll bet that 13% who think use of Catalan is a problem are exactly the same 13% who vote for Esquerra.

Wacky Anti-Americanism Watch: Halloween, as you probably know, was yesterday, and today is Todos los Santos, All Souls' Day, when Spaniards traditionally go to visit their ancestors' graves at the cemetery. I remember back in the mid-70s, when I was a kid, Halloween was basically a kids' holiday, and it wasn't really that big a deal. I don't remember adults participating, except to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. Now, in the States, it's an excuse for adults to dress up and get drunk, and it's become one of the major celebrations of the year.

Some smart European marketers decided they'd try to sell Halloween junk over here and tried to introduce the holiday into Europe. They've had some success--by now everybody has at least heard of Halloween--but it's still most distinctly socially tainted as an American custom.

So, according to La Vanguardia,

Father Joan Maria Canals, Director of the Spanish Bishops' Conference's Episcopal Committee on Liturgy said that when a loved one dies, children are kept away from the corpse, while during the Halloween holiday, based on fear, death, the living dead, black magic, and mystical monsters, minors dress up using these elements. "Death is not a game or a party to have fun one day a year. What idea of death is left in the heart of the child who has dressed up as a skull and has been playing?" wondered Canals. "On one hand, schools and parents encourage their children to dress up on Halloween, and on the other, when the death of a loved one arrives, what happens?" In his opinion, Halloween must be given "a Christian meaning," since it is celebrated on the day on which the Catholic Church "recalls the memory of all those who are now in Heaven contemplating the Lord."

I think this guy might be taking the whole thing a bit too seriously. Wonder how he'd react to Mexico's Day of the Dead? That's even more morbid than Halloween. Oh, wait, it's Hispanic and Catholic. Must be OK.

Hell of a soccer game last night as Barcelona and Chelsea tied 2-2 at the Camp Nou. Barça dominated for most of the match, but Chelsea is a great team and was able to pull out a draw in extra time. Lots of good plays by both teams in a rough game. Ronaldinho is back in form. Barça now has to win its two remaining games, against Werder Bremen at the Camp Nou and against Levski in Sofia. If they can't do that, they don't deserve to advance.

The big news story around here is Danish public TV's investigation of illegal late-term abortions being practiced in Barcelona. One thing Americans don't realize is that most European countries have much stricter abortion laws than the US, where the Supreme Court has ruled that abortion on demand is a constitutional right.

Spanish law sets three conditions under which abortion is legal: 1) If the fetus is deformed. Two doctors must agree. Legal up to 22 weeks. 3.5% of abortions performed in Catalonia in 2005. 2) If the woman was raped. Legal up to 12 weeks. Only one abortion in Catalonia in 2005. 3) If the woman's physical or mental health is at risk. One doctor (counting psychiatrists) must agree. No theoretical time limit, though only seven, 0.04%, of 2005 abortions were performed later than 22 weeks. 96.5% of abortions in Catalonia in 2005. (Note: If seven, 0.04%, of all abortions were later than 22 weeks, that means the total number of abortions in Catalonia last year was 17,500, right? That seems a lot.)

Quite clearly, the risk to the woman's mental health is the enormous loophole here. Just get a shrink to sign off and it's D&C city.

The Danish TV network reported that in Spain, not only in Catalonia, abortions on highly-developed fetuses, as advanced as six months, are routinely performed. La Vanguardia says that if a cesarian section rather than an abortion had been performed in these cases, the children (no longer fetuses) would have survived.

The Danish investigators filmed a Barcelona doctor named Carlos Morin of the GBM clinic offering to perform an abortion on a woman 31 weeks pregnant, which is just plain infanticide, in exchange for €4000. Morin has a history of doing such things; an October 2004 Sunday Telegraph investigation reported that he had aborted 30-week babies. The Danish team interviewed a woman who had received an abortion at the EMC clinic in Barcelona at 27 weeks. Morin was a doctor at EMC at that time.

According to the Danes, Catalonia is a favorite destination for European women who want to abort, and some 5% of abortions performed in Catalonia (at least 830 in 2005) are performed on foreign women. London and Amsterdam, also homes of liberal abortion laws, are other popular abortion destinations for women from such countries as Germany and Ireland. The Danes also say that they believe further illegal, unregulated abortions are also performed in Barcelona.

Time for my personal opinion, which is pragmatic and will please neither side. Make abortion on demand legal, American style, as long as the fetus is non-viable, which I think is about 12 weeks. Then, when it becomes viable and is clearly a baby, make abortion illegal with a very few exceptions for women whose lives are actually physically in danger or fetuses with severe deformities who would not survive if carried to term. These exceptions would be hard to get, requiring, say, three gynecologists to agree.

Pointless thoughts while listening to Steve Earle:

You guys ought to check out the music clips I link to. It's all good stuff.

Today is the "day of reflection" before the Catalan regional election, when all campaigning is suspended. My guess is that Mas has run the best campaign and will win the most seats, but then what? He won't have an absolute majority. Some kind of pact will have to be made. Mas has already sworn he won't make a deal with the PP. Saura has sworn that his Initiative (Commie) party will not make a deal with Mas's CiU. That leaves only the national socialist Republican Left (ERC), whose irresponsibility dynamited the former Tripartite regional government (Generalitat of Catalonia) led by Pasqual Maragall, or a grand coalition between CiU and Jose Montilla's Socialists.

So can Montilla form a government without CiU? It would have to be a repeat of the Tripartite, and that wouldn't last long, since the Tripartite split over the Catalan statute of autonomy (in US terms, state constitution), and ERC is terminally irresponsible and cannot be trusted. And the Socialists and Commies alone aren't going to get enough votes for a majority. The answer is no.

That's Iberian Notes's official prediction for tomorrow night, when we'll be liveblogging the election returns: a CiU-PSC coalition, "Sociovergencia." This is the government that the surveys say most citizens would prefer; it would be a moderate government, rather social democratic, but we can live with that. The Socialists, most of whose supporters are Spanish speakers from the Barcelona industrial suburbs, will keep the Catalan nationalists of CiU more or less under control. Good. I'd prefer more of a free-market and decentralized system, of course, and that's the long-term trend, but in the short run we can live with a "business as usual" government.

Mas, as the larger vote getter, would get to be premier, but Montilla would demand the cabinet chief of staff ("conseller en cap") position and several juicy portfolios for his PSC.

Most interesting campaign note: All the candidates' wives except for Pique's discussed their intimate sex lives openly, starting with Saura's life-partner, Chemical Inma Mayol, the top Commie in the Barcelona city council, who informed us that Saura was tender and adventurous, or something like that, in matters regarding l'amour. Carod's wife had the best comeback; she said that she and Carod were great in the sack because they practiced a lot.

This is actually a great idea for the US; I think all candidates' wives or husbands should be obliged to report on their favorite acts of copulation and/or sodomy in detail. Jeez. Imagine Hillary Clinton discussing her sex life with Bill. That might be very dull. But, hey, since Hillary's the candidate this time, Bill would be the one questioned: "Well, actually, Oprah, she's an ice-cold frigid SS-guard bitch who won't give me head. But then again, so are you." Condoleezza Rice might also present a problem here. And I don't think Dick Cheney gets to have sex anymore, because he might have another heart attack and pull a Nelson Rockefeller on us.

Zap was the keynote speaker at Montilla's final campaign rally and called Montilla "the Lula of Catalonia." I dunno. Lula won his election, while Montilla is going to lose his. Neither one has a university degree, which Xavier Sala i Martin managed to get under Montilla's skin about.

Meanwhile, Mas went to the Ripoll monastery, sanctuary of the most atavistic Catalan racial feelings, and burst into tears while paying homage to "the ancient Catalan nation," which I believe is a necessary formality for any nationalist candidate. I don't think Mas takes this rhetoric too seriously, even though his speech was titled, "A declaration of commitment to the people of Catalonia before the tomb of Wilfred the Hairy," Guifré el Pelós, the founder of Catalonia's first ruling dynasty back sometime around AD 986. That's pretty hardcore blood-and-soil nationalism, that is.

By the way, if you ever get a chance to go up to Ripoll, do it. There are several other interesting places in the area, including Sant Joan de les Abadesses and Nuria.

I'm having problems publishing my posts. Apparently Blogger was down on Sunday; I keep getting a Java script error every time I try to publish. The posts don't get eaten, though; they show up on the beta. Here's hoping you get to read them pretty soon.

Every election I repeat my warning: Don't vote for the Partit Humanista, whatever you do. It's a front for an Argentinian ultra-leftist cult run by a mysterious guru called Silo. This is a post from 2003 on these guys, including several links; none of the basic facts have changed since then. Check out their campaign video for this year; it's hilariously stupid.

Aimless thoughts while listening to Ella Fitzgerald:

Not that much news from Spain. The last stink in the Catalan regional election, which is just around the corner on November 1, is that FC Barcelona club president Joan Laporta, known to be close to CiU, held a meeting and photo-op with CiU candidate Artur Mas. The Socialists started bitching, and Laporta met the next day with PSC candidate Jose Montilla. What still seems strange to me is the attempt to mix a sports team with politics, though I know this happens all the time in Spain.

Convergence looks like the clear winner, and there are rumors that they are actually hoping to score as many as 58 seats (out of a total of 135). The problem, though, is that if the vote comes out according to the surveys, the Tripartite parties will be able to form a majority and Montilla will be the next regional premier.

They held a demonstration in the Canary Islands today calling for a law allowing the islands' government to regulate the number of people living there. That is, they're pissed off about the number of African immigrants washing up on their shores, which the international media is still ignoring. I smell far-right racism all over this one.

Fidel appeared again, though only through government-controlled media; he didn't come out in public. He looked pretty bad; the old bastard is finally going to die one of these days soon. Looks like I was wrong about the Brazilian election; Lula is pretty sure to be reelected. And they've got a real genuine Communist revolution going on in Oaxaca, a place I have actually been to.

The French Intifada continues, and is getting worse; the rioters torched a bus in Marseille with the passengers inside, and one woman was burned over 65% of her body and is in very serious condition. They're trying to kill people now. This has become terrorism. They've crossed the line.

Barcelona crushed Recreativo on Saturday night with no problems, and Recreativo is not an awful team. Ronaldinho was considerably more active and aggressive than he has been lately, and Sylvinho and Belletti seem to be the halfbacks in best form right now. Gudjohnsen is not a center-forward. He would make a better midfielder. Some guy commenting over at La Liga Loca suggested that Barça change from its current 4-3-3 formation to a 4-4-2, since Barça has plenty of good midfielders but is short on forwards right now.

A lineup of Valdes; Belletti, Marquez, Puyol, Sylvinho; Xavi, Edmilson, Gudjohnsen, Deco; Saviola and Ronaldinho might do very well. Iniesta would be your twelfth man, to come out after halftime replacing whichever midfielder is having a mediocre game.

Real Madrid did not look strong against Gimnastic of Tarragona, though they won. Again, Robinho was Real's best player. I cannot believe Capello is not designing his team to get Robinho the ball as often as possible, since he and Van Nistelrooy are about the only players having good seasons for Madrid. Not true: Raul, surprisingly, has been playing quite well.

Surprise teams this year are Sevilla, currently in second place and having a very fine season including a victory over Barça in the European Supercup, and Getafe, which coach Bernd Schuster has turned into a solid midtable club that must be taken seriously. You have to figure that Sevilla is the top candidate for Spain's fourth Champions League slot--Barça, Madrid, and Valencia pretty much have the other three locked up. Getafe has an outside chance at a UEFA Cup slot, which would be excellent coming from a small suburban Madrid club.

The American elections are getting some news coverage over here; most of the stories seem to be using the angle that they will be a referendum on Bush.

I had a ridiculous experience last night; I went down to the Cafe Flanders on Plaza Rovira for a beer, and encountered a fellow American expat whom I will call Dick. This guy is fifty-fiveish, a slob with a round fat face, has no visible means of support, and just rubs me the wrong way with a sort of fake heartiness. I don't see much of him, and I'm just as happy about this. So Dick says, in his booming hearty fake voice, apparently trying to start a conversation, "So when are the next elections in the United States?" I say, "2008," wondering why he doesn't know this himself. "You mean we've got two more years of that shithead?" he replied.

I find it interesting that Dick would just naturally assume that I hate George Bush. Anyway, I said, "Well, I voted for him twice," in a rather friendly manner, and then quickly suggested that we agree to disagree on the subject. Then I bailed and went home.

Brief Friday afternoon blog roundup: Guirilandia has a worth-reading piece on the Catalan regional election, La Liga Loca has the weekend football preview, which Spanish football fans should not miss, and Publius Pundit and Pave France have updates on the French Intifada.

Peter Katzenbach and Robert O. Keohane have a fascinating article in the Hoover Institution journal Policy Review called Anti-Americanisms, which Arts and Letters Daily links to this week. Their thesis is that anti-Americanism is too broad a concept and so it should be more clearly defined and if necessary subclassified.

First, they differentiate between opinion and bias; they define anti-American opinion as reasoned opposition to American policies, and consider it unimportant in the long term, as those who oppose said policies will cease to do so when those policies change. Bias, however, is a tendency to always believe the worst about the United States.

Bias implies a distortion of information processing, while adverse opinion is consistent with maintaining openness to new information that will change one’s views. The long-term consequences of bias for American foreign policy are much greater than the consequences of opinion.

However, the authors rather overestimate the amount and influence of mere opinion. In all of Europe, biased anti-Americanism is rife. In 2006, according to a Pew survey, 56% of the British, 39% of the French, 37% of Germans, and only 23% of Spaniards had a favorable opinion of the United States.

The view we take in the volume is that much of what is called anti-Americanism, especially outside of the Middle East, indeed is largely opinion. As such, it is volatile and would diminish in response to different policies, as it has in the past. The left is correct on this score, while the right overestimates resentment toward American power and hatred of American values. If the right were correct, anti-Americanism would have been high at the beginning of the new millennium.

I don't agree. I think most Euro anti-Americanism is definitely based on bias and not mere opinion.

The authors divide bias, quite accurately I think, into four types, from least to most malevolent: liberal, social (which I would call "socialist"), sovereign-nationalist, and radical. Then they add two other "special cases," elitism and historical grievances.

Liberal bias: Liberals often criticize the United States bitterly for not living up to its own ideals...Hypocrisy in American foreign policy is not so much the result of the ethical failings of American leaders as a byproduct of the role played by the United States in world politics and of democratic politics at home. It will not, therefore, be eradicated. As long as political hypocrisy persists, abundant material will be available for liberal anti-Americanism.

Yep. The United States cannot avoid being seen as hypocritical. That's because it has ideals which are very difficult to live up to. Liberal anti-American bias is very common in Spain, affecting nearly all Spaniards at least sporadically.

Socialist bias: Many democratic societies do not share the peculiar combination of respect for individual liberty, reliance on personal responsibility, and distrust of government characteristic of the United States. People in other democratic societies may therefore react negatively to America’s political institutions and its social and political arrangements that rely heavily on market processes...Social anti-Americanism is based on value conflicts that reflect relevant differences in many spheres of life that are touching on “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Yep. Socialist ideals are much stronger all over Europe than in the US. I'd say half of Spaniards are affected by socialist anti-American bias.

Sovereign-nationalist bias: Sovereign nationalists focus on two values: the importance of not losing control over the terms by which polities are inserted in world politics and the inherent importance and value of collective national identities. These identities often embody values that are at odds with America’s.

Yep. Nearly all Spaniards are subject to sovereign-nationalist bias at times. Catalan nationalists are a particularly interesting case.

Radical bias: It is built around the belief that America’s identity, as reflected in the internal economic and political power relations and institutional practices of the United States, ensures that its actions will be hostile to the furtherance of good values, practices, and institutions elsewhere in the world...For progress toward a better world to take place, the American economy and society will have to be transformed, either from within or from without. The most extreme form of contemporary radical anti-Americanism holds that Western values are so abhorrent that people holding them should be destroyed. The United States is the leading state of the West and therefore the central source of evil...Religiously inspired and secular radical anti-Americanism argue for the weakening, destruction, or transformation of the political and economic institutions of the United States. The distinctive mark of both strands of anti-Americanism is the demand for revolutionary changes in the nature of American society.

Yep. I'd say about one-fourth of Spaniards are radically biased against the United States, and what pisses them off most is that the US won the Cold War. They wish we had lost.

Elitist bias: Elitist anti-Americanism arises in countries in which the elite has a long history of looking down on American culture. In France, for example...

Yep. Every Spaniard who has graduated from high school thinks he's a member of an intellectual elite in comparison to us ignorant Yankees.

Legacy bias: Legacy anti-Americanism stems from resentment of past wrongs committed by the United States toward another society...Between the late 1960s and the end of the twentieth century, the highest levels of anti-Americanism recorded in Western Europe were found in Spain and especially Greece — both countries that had experienced civil wars; in the case of Spain the United States supported for decades a repressive dictator.

Yep. At least half of Spaniards blame the United States for the Franco dictatorship, in complete ignorance of anything resembling a fact, since the US was no more fond of Franco than any other member of the Western alliance and had absolutely nothing to do with his rise to power. I have actually heard Spaniards blame the US for not having intervened on the Republican side during the Civil War, if you can believe that.

The authors claim that there is no "grand explanation" for anti-Americanism, but they rather defeat their own case by their careful classifications. I would say that anti-American bias in Europe, at least, stems from some combination of these six factors the authors have identified, and different factors have different strengths in different countries--but each country is affected by all these factors to some extent.

They add that American culture is "polyvalent," which means that it is so huge and varied that virtually anyone can find something he doesn't like in it. Too atheistic, as conservative Muslims would have it, or too religious, as liberal Europeans would?

The authors' conclusion is rather weak, though; they wonder why we should care about anti-Americanism.

Perhaps the most puzzling thing about anti-Americanism is that we Americans seem to care so much about it.

I have three reasons: first, it reminds me rather too much of anti-Semitism and other forms of racism and xenophobia, and we all know what that's going to lead to if unchecked, an isolated America rather as Israel is isolated today. Second, it's illogical and irrational and contributes to further flawed thinking; anti-Americans use their anti-Americanism to reinforce their national socialist biases. Third, it does positive harm to American (and pro-American; we have many friends in Spain, difficult as that may be to believe sometimes) interests around the world. We'd all be much better off if Zap were not prime minister, for example, but the Socialists were able to play upon popular anti-Americanism after the March 11 bombings.

Anyway, go read the article and see what you think. The essay is the basis for a book to be coming out next year, which I am looking forward to reading.

Some bozo who cares more about bashing America than checking his facts posted the following in the comments section in regard to the death penalty:

If your system is so great why is your crime rate, murder rate etc so high?

Buddy, if you had done any research, like say googling "us crime rate", you'd have come up with lots of interesting websites, such as the FBI Uniform Crime Report, which says the US murder rate was 5.6 per 100,000 in 2005. The murder rate has been in steady decline since it peaked in 1991, when there were about 24,700 murders in the US. In 2005 there were about 16,700 murders, which means that the number of murders in the US has declined by one-third in the last 15 years, while the population has risen from 252 million to 296 million.

Coincidentally, while the murder rate has declined by one-third since 1991, the execution rate has increased quite a bit since then. Wonder if there might be some sort of correlation? I'll bet there is.

All crime in the United States has been in steady decline since 1991, not only in percentages but in absolute numbers. The absolute number of armed robberies, aggravated assaults, and property crimes peaked in that year, while the absolute number of forcible rapes peaked in 1992.

Nation Master says that in 2005, the international rankings for murder rates per 100,000 were:

1. Colombia, 61.7
2. South Africa, 49.6
3. Jamaica, 32.4
4. Venezuela, 31.6
5. Russia, 20.1

Most of the countries among the next 15 in the rankings are pieces of the former Soviet Union.

20. Poland, 5.6
24. United States, 4.2 (no, I don't know why the stat they give is different from the FBI's)
30. Finland, 2.8
33. Portugal, 2.3
40. France, 1.7
46. United Kingdom, 1.4
48. Spain, 1.2

So the average American is twice as likely to be murdered as the average Portuguese and between three and a half times as likely as the average Spaniard, using Nation Master's figures. That's actually not so bad, when you figure that the United States is a much larger, more complex, and more diverse place than either of those countries. Most importantly, what we see here is that the US murder rate is not extremely high compared to what it could be; the US rate is much closer to European rates than to Third World hellholes.

Now let's look at male suicide rates per 100,000, again from Nation Master.

1. Lithuania, 81.9

Most of the next ten or fifteen countries were part of the former USSR.

9. Finland, 43.4
12. Belgium, 37.3
14. Austria, 34.2
16. France, 30.4
21. Japan, 25.0
25. Germany, 21.8
30. United States, 19.8
47. United Kingdom, 11.0
50. Spain, 11.0

Hmm. Interesting. Civilized, European Belgium has a suicide rate nearly twice that of the US, and France's is 50% higher. If we add up the murder and suicide figures, the violent death rate for European Finland, progressive social democratic home of Nokia, is 46.2 per 100,000 per year. France's is 32.1. That of the United States is 24.0, and Spain's is an extremely low 12.2. So what's this fear and loathing in the United States stuff? You're more likely to die earlier due to violence in most of Europe than in the US. We see that Spain is an extremely non-violent country in both murder and suicide, which probably colors Spaniards' perception of how high crime rates are in other places.

Let's look at road safety now. Nation Master has a partial list of persons killed per billion vehicle-miles traveled, which does not include Spain. From the top:

Czech Republic 31.7
Greece 26.7
South Korea 25.0
Belgium 15.3
Japan 11.2
France 10.9
Germany 9.7
United States 9.4
United Kingdom 7.6

Looks like most Europeans are more violent on the roads than us Anglo-Saxons.

Anti-Americanism Watch: Check out this letter to Slate's advice columnist, "Dear Prudence." Unfortunately, yes, a standard enlightened-and-illustrated-European conversational gambit when actually forced to deal personally with a flesh-and-blood American is to express a wish that George Bush would die. And the Americans have a reputation for being unsubtle and tasteless over here, for some reason.

One of the major debates of the upcoming US legislative elections is happening in Missouri: the question of stem-cell research. Now, I don't know anything about stem-cell research, certainly not enough to form my own opinion without help. So I googled "gregg easterbrook stem cell", and, what do you know, he's got a basic introduction to the subject over at Belief.net.

Assuming Mr. Easterbrook is telling the truth, and there is no reason to doubt him, private companies can do any sort of stem-cell and cloning research they want to right now, as long as there's no federal money involved. That seems fair to me.

Therefore, this Missouri state constitutional amendment is a red herring. It doesn't matter what the Missouri constitution says about stem-cell research; that research will continue to happen no matter what. And if we wish to use federal money to support stem-cell research, that's the business of the US Congress and the federal courts, not of the Missouri state constitution. I am willing to bet that very little Missouri state money goes to stem-cell research. So it doesn't matter which way you vote on Amendment 2, and this issue should not affect your choice of senatorial candidate.

But, of course, both sides are trying to make it a campaign issue, and the celebrities have pitched in. Michael J. Fox, who as you know has Parkinson's (full disclosure: so does my father), has made a TV ad supporting not only the Missouri amendment but also the Democratic party, trying to link the hope for a cure to a particular political option. Social conservative celebrities, including three well-known Jesus jocks, are hitting back with their own ad, bringing up fears of Brave New World, and Rush Limbaugh has piled on, which surprises me as he's usually more responsible.

Both sides are behaving disgracefully, trying to score political points off the issue of whether devastating illnesses should be treated or not--of whether ill people should live longer. Of course they should, and the fate of the rubbish at an abortion clinic does not concern me nearly as much as the fate of people with cancer. That doesn't mean either side is justified in using scare tactics.

Very important note: According to Mr. Easterbrook, chances of dramatic cures being discovered through stem-cell research are very slim during the next five or ten years, at least.

It's been a good day for justice in the United States. Texas gave the injection to Gregory Summers, who hired a hitman to kill his parents and uncle for the insurance money, and Florida put down serial killer Danny Rolling, murderer of five young women. Any complaints from other more enlightened and illustrated nations?

By the way, the executed murderers were both white and middle-class.

Here is a list of murderers executed in the United States since capital punishment was reinstituted in 1977. And their victims.

Update: Danny Rolling, before his execution for killing five Florida college students, admitted having also murdered three more people in Louisiana.

Wednesday afternoon blog roundup while listening to Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys:

Jane Galt, currently in London, comments on Sky News's portrait of the US.

La Liga Loca discusses the near-useless Copa del Rey, Spain's FA Cup equivalent.

Expat Yank posts on "Iraq is Vietnam" syndrome.

Free Will Blog fisks the BBC. Eursoc has more. And here's Biased BBC.

IMAO features Frank J.'s artistic talent in the "Democrats in Charge" comic-strip series.

Notes from Spain reports that King Juan Carlos allegedly shot a drunk bear.

The Rottweiler savages France and its banlieue violence. Pave France has more.

Rainy Day is leading a campaign in favor of a Bangladeshi journalist.

The Glittering Eye has a historical piece on the Hungarian revolution and the Beirut barracks bombing.

Fausta is, as usual, prolific and very interesting.

Davids Medienkritik comments on "Germany's Abu Ghraib."

Little Green Footballs has a post up titled "Spanish Blogger Charged with Supporting Israel," which has attracted a lot of comment around the blogosphere. Barcepundit has been in contact with the blogger in question, Alejandro del Llano, who has confirmed that he was sent a court order to come in for a hearing.

Here is Del Llano's original post, translated by a human (me) and not a machine:

Two years ago the mayor of the municipality of Olieros in La Coruña province, who is also a friend of Fidel Castro, organized a campaign with public funds against the democratic state of Israel. Because of that, I sent him an e-mail expressing my opinion about all this. Today I received a summons from the criminal court ordering me to testify as the defendant on charges of "being in favor of Israel and against the Palestinian people." What do you think?

As Barcepundit says, it sounds fishy to me.

It is not a crime to "be in favor of Israel and against the Palestinian people" in Spain. We have freedom of expression here, too, and though the legal limits of expression are slightly different in Spain that in the US, they basically guarantee the same thing, the individual's right to speak his mind. So if some idiot left-wing mayor actually did press charges against Del Llano for supporting Israel, the case will instantly be thrown out of court by the judge, and Del Llano has excellent grounds for a lawsuit. Also, he can press criminal charges against the mayor for "prevaricación," which is more or less abuse of power.

Therefore, if it's true that charges have been pressed against Del Llano, who sent Barcepundit a copy of the summons but not of his original e-mail, it must be for some real crime, not for backing Israel and criticizing the Palestinians.

It is a crime in Spain, as it is in the United States, to commit libel, and libel in Spain includes gratuitous personal insults. That is, you can say the mayor is wrong and he shouldn't have done what he did and he should resign or be impeached and no one should ever vote for him again and any other political criticism you can think of. You can call him arrogant and insensitive and vindictive and small-minded and incompetent. What you can't do is call the mayor a fucking son of a whore, for example. He can press libel charges against you if you do. And, of course, you can't threaten him--we don't know whether Del Llano's original e-mail contained threats, or statements that could be interpreted as threats, or not.

So here are the problems with Del Llano's accusations:

First, he is our only source; we have no outside confirmation that he has been charged with anything, except for the summons that he sent to Barcepundit. This story hasn't appeared in the press, and it's a good story, so you'd think they'd be all over it. If this happened to me, first thing I'd do is get a lawyer, and second thing I'd do is call a press conference.

Second, assuming the summons is real, we're not sure whether he has been charged with "supporting Israel," or whether he has been charged with some other crime, such as libel or making threats. Del Llano admitted to Barcepundit that his original e-mail included unspecified insults, and he hasn't made that e-mail public yet.

My guess is that Del Llano's claims are largely bogus.