Further comments on the ETA announcement: Barcepundit and Notes from Spain.

ETA announced this morning that their so-called truce is over as of midnight tonight, saying that they would "resume activities on all fronts." I guess they mean they're going to kill more people. I had also figured when they blew up the parking garage at Barajas, killing two, that the truce was over then, but ETA must want to make it official. El País reported yeaterday that ETA has an attack plan all ready to go; the TV3 news last night said that ETA had sent another round of extortion letters to Basque businessmen. La Vanguardia says today that both Spanish and French intelligence have warned of a large increase in ETA activity recently.

During ETA's alleged truce, which they announced in March 2006, street terrorism, weapons robberies, extortion, preparation of explosives, and recruitment and training all continued, not to mention the Barajas bombing. Yet the Zap goverment continued negotiations with them. The only negotiations these guys should be allowed into are the ones they make with the prosecutors to get a few years off their sentences if they spill everything. I cannot believe there are still enough idiot people out there who think you can negotiate with other people who are trying to kill you.

ETA claimed that the votes obtained by its front party, the ANV, were support for its claim that the Basque people support them. More stupidity from Zap, who did not use the prosecutors' office to completely close down the ANV as he could have done under the Political Parties Act. It's time for him to do that right now.

Zap's reaction has been to call for all political parties to support him and the government against this "new" ETA threat. Of course I support the rule of law, but it's kind of hard to back Zap now when his naivete has gotten us this far into this mess. If I were the PP I'd demand that Zap fire every single one of his pro-negotiations advisors as proof he has had a real change of heart. All the leaders of the Basque Socialist Party, who have met with ETA secretly during the last three years, need to resign as well.

Meanwhile, hunger-striking mass murderer Iñaki de Juana Chaos is walking around free, leaving his house and going for walks although he is supposedly under house arrest. He is refusing to wear an ankle bracelet to monitor his movements because, he says, he "is not a dog." No, he's much lower than any dog that has ever lived, since dogs don't commit premeditated murder, especially not 25 times. The collar he ought to be wearing is called a noose.

Shakeup in the Madrid Socialist Party after its disastrous losses in both the municipal and regional elections. Mayoral candidate Sebastián, who won a city council seat as first on the Socialist list, resigned and retired from politics, and Zap fired regional candidate Simancas as local party boss. The PSOE was also crushed in Valencia and Murcia, and their regional bosses are refusing to take the blame and resign their positions.

Putin is bluffing. He's holding a weak hand, and if he plays his ace, an energy cutoff to Europe, it's going to hurt Russia much worse than anyone else.

La Vanguardia's Beirut correspondent Tomás Alcoverro, the only Spanish journalist that I am convinced is on the take, says on the 40th anniversary of the Six Days War:
"The State of Israel has consolidated itself at the price of war, destruction, violence, frustration, and the impoverishment of its neighboring peoples, the Palestinian, the Lebanese, and the Iraqi." That is of course from the news pages, not analysis or opinion.

La Vangua also takes advantage of Larry Flynt's offer to pay $1 million to anyone who had sex with a congressman in order to run a nice juicy rehash of all American sex scandals of the last forty years. The story mentions the "hypocrisy of those who stand up as custodians of family values and are so militant against homosexuality and abortion." I could come back with the old line, "Hypocrisy is the price that vice pays to virtue," but I'd rather point out that only about ten or fifteen prominent conservatives have ever been outed as hypocrites, and several of them were clownish TV preachers, not serious elected officials. What about all the rest of those who support family values and oppose legal abortion and gay marriage (virtually nobody is "against homosexuality" in itself anymore)? I can name dozens of them whose names are completely untainted by scandal.

By the way, the Democrats' hypocrisy about money (Edwards and Gore and Hillary Clinton, especially, the first a robber-baron ambulance-chaser, the second the oldest of old money, and the third a snooty upper-middle-class private-school Chicago WASP, but they're all just plain folks) is a good bit more distasteful to me than any sex scandal the Republicans have ever been mixed up in. As far as I can tell, the only prominent non-hypocritical Democrat is Dennis Kucinich, who fortunately for the world has no chance in hell of ever getting elected.

There's an interview in Sunday's Vangua with Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, a traditional anti-American conservative Spaniard. Quotes: "Bush feels completely just as he has a God and believes that because he has this divine mandate any barbarity is permitted." Ridiculous. Bush DOES NOT believe that he has a divine mandate. That's just plain silly. He's a Methodist, not a Shiite.

"Censorship comes from the United States...Someone told me that he was in San Diego, and that the same thing does not happen to Noam Chomsky that happens to students....those who have recorded his speeches listen to them in a locked room. Because the pressure does not come from the government, but from the public, from the other students." What? That makes no sense at all. Any student in San Diego who went around quoting Chomsky would become a campus hero.

"There is a bomber, the Spirit, that can leave the US, bomb Iraq, and return without refueling or landing. What justice is that? The bomber is a terrorist instrument." What pathetic moral equivalence.

Supposedly the Barça wants to buy a club in the US soccer league in order "to increase the number of fans in that country." Hey, the Barça's great and all, but I don't think it has more than about eleven fans in the States, just like I don't think the New York Yankees or the Chicago Bears have more than about eleven fans in Spain.

Barcelona lies between two stinking ditches, the Besós and Llobregat "rivers." La Vangua's Eugenio Madueño called them "threads of liquid shit." They cleaned up one of the ditches, the Besós, and fish will supposedly be able to live in it soon. Took them eight years. Now they're going to try to clean up the Llobregat, which will probably take eighteen. They have €12 million for the job so far, which is not quite what it's going to cost.

It's a long weekend; I forget which holiday it is on Monday, but we don't have to work, so we're going out to the pueblo to enjoy the late spring weather. The sun is shining and the birds would be singing if there were any songbirds in Barcelona. The pigeons are cooing and the parrots are squawking, and that's the best we can do. So, anyway, no updates until Monday evening, as I will be far away from computers.

Big news from right here: The Dia supermarket around the corner, fifty steps from our front door, got robbed this morning. I don't know any more details, but I'm sure the neighborhood will be full of them very soon. Last week down at the Plaza Joanic a bar owner was murdered by a drunken client with a knife, so Gràcia is irritated; they had a big demo and got more than 500 people. The killer was Moroccan, and the demo organizers were careful to stress that their problem wasn't nationality or race, but crime.

Condi Rice came to Madrid yesterday after canceling her last three planned trips. This was greeted with pleasure by the Zap government, who are trying to be both rhetorically anti-American but influential in world affairs at the same time. Zap hasn't gotten a one-on-one meeting with Bush; he's getting the freeze-out from the US administration, which will never forgive him for bailing out of Iraq with no warning. This has actually been a good tactic, since the press is full of stories about Zap's current international semi-isolation, with no more Schroeder or Chirac to hug and kiss. Spain likes to feel important, (note: in both Catalan and Spanish, the adjective "universal" is used to describe a local citizen who foreign people have heard of; for example, Pau Casals is Catalonia's most "universal" musician), and one way to register American displeasure is to treat it as if it isn't.

Condi said Spain's Cuba policy sucks and that its Afghanistan policy blows.

TV3's website reports, "More than 200 people demonstrated yesterday before the United States embassy in Madrid in order to show their rejection of North American (sic) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The demonstrators, convoked by Amnesty International and several social collectives, protested at what they called 'the chief representative of imperialist barbarity,' and carried signs against the deployment of United States troops in Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. They also demanded the closing of Guantanamo and the abolition of the death penalty."

You also probably heard that Spain, get this, is suing the Odyssey undersea exploration company, claiming that their latest haul came from Spanish waters. Odyssey, of course, says that it came from international waters, and more specifically somewhere off the Scilly Islands. Which last I checked were nowhere near Spain. Odyssey also says that the ship wasn't Spanish, either, but British, and it was carrying all that gold and silver to bribe the Duke of Savoy.

I suppose everybody's heard about the asswipe who exposed people on two continents to TB. What strikes me most wrong about the story is this guy's absolute lack of concern for anybody but himself. I would throw the book at him for illegally entering the country and anything else he did, and I hope he gets his lawyer ass sued off. If I'd been on one of those planes I'd sue him.

Judge Garzón locked up without bail six of the last batch of Islamists they arrested around here. He turned loose the imam, Taufik Cheddadi. Cheddadi was quoted as saying, "The people who kill in the name of our God have nothing to do with our religion." I hope he's being honest, but then why is he associated with all these other people who are seriously mixed up in international terrorism?

Everyone is still going nuts about the little English girl who disappeared in Portugal. Very sad, but other things are happening in the world.

In La Vanguardia, Manuel Trallero blasts TV3 political commentator Xavi Coral for calling the Plataforma per Catalunya a political party that wants to strengthen immigration laws instead of "a racist and xenophobic party." He's right.

Wilco's playing here tonight as part of the Primavera Sound festival, but I'm not interested in any of the other acts and tickets are like eighty euros so I'm not going. The Stones are playing the Estadio Olimpico on June 21, but unless tickets are cheap, which I doubt, I'm staying home.

And Spain plays Latvia tonight in Eurocup qualifying. This is dumb. There should be divisions based on population, with the top level requiring a population of, say, five million. Spain vs. Latvia, or their next opponent, Liechtenstein, is just dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. It's like the Red Sox playing a rookie-league team.

Interesting thing about Liechtenstein that I read somewhere: In the old days a few hundred years ago the Liechtensteins were a German noble family that owned extensive lands in Bohemia and Hungary. They were vassals of the Hapsburgs, and a couple hundred years later they decided to buy a piece of land that they held on their own, independently. So they bought this little mountain valley, which began to be called Liechtenstein because of its rulers. After World War I the Liechtenstein lands in Hungary and Bohemia, no longer part of the Hapsburg Empire, which itself was overthrown, were confiscated. The Liechtensteins were left with their valley. This is one of the few cases in which a country is named for its ruling family rather than vice versa, as if Germany had been named Hohenzollern or Scotland Stuart.

In case you get bored, this long article (I haven't read it all) on voter irrationality and democracy looks very interesting.

I'm sure you've seen reports on the American national spelling bee. Spaniards often don't quite get the idea, since a spelling bee would make little sense in Spanish. Spanish spelling is phonetically regular, with I think three exceptions: the B and V are sometimes confused, as are the "soft" G and J, and since the H is silent it's sometimes used or left off incorrectly at the beginning of a word. In dialects that don't differentiate between the Y and the LL, those are also often confused. For some really bad spelling, check this out.

Something similar they do around here in school is mental arithmetic; another one is dictation.

Barcelona elections fallout: Now local Esquerra leader Jordi Portabella says he's bailing out of the Catalan Tripartite that governs the city, leaving it a Bipartite without an absolute majority. Hereu, as the most voted candidate, will probably have to govern from the minority. I have no idea on whether ERC will pull out of all its deals with the Socialists or not.

La Vangua is reporting there's a shakeup in Esquerra. They were probably the biggest loser in the elections, losing votes on the right to CiU and on the left to the CUP. The smoke-filled room guys seem to have decided that they're nationalists first and leftists second, and that the Tripartite deal they cut with the less nationalist Left has pissed off a lot of their more puritanical voters, who see any compromise with a non-Catalanist party as high treason. Now they're looking to deal with CiU to see what crumbs they can pick up. This sort of shoots down the Socialists' plan for the Tripartite to gang up on CiU, since one-third of it just changed sides.

Supposedly Portabella is trying to grab control of the party apparatus from evil Roveish political machine manipulator Joan Puigcercós.

Pasqual Maragall resigned as president of the Catalan Socialist Party. He wrote an open letter to La Vangua. Nobody cared. (Cue "Eleanor Rigby.")

Rumor has it that Madrid mayor Gallardón wants to run as number two ater Rajoy on the PP list in the general election, which is coming up in about 6-8 months.

One of the big scandals around here is the recent behavior of the Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan regional police. (Note: Mossos d'Esquadra literally translates to "Boys of the Squad," which is about as gay and retarded a name for a police force as I've ever heard.) The last glob of poo to hit the fan is a hidden-camera video showing the Mossos beating up a Russian immigrant woman, who had done nothing wrong but come home drunk and make too much noise, at the Les Corts police station.

This is ironic for two reasons. 1) Catalonia and the Basque Country, as far as I know, are the only two Spanish autonomous regions to have their own police forces, supplanting the Policia Nacional and the Guardia Civil in most or all of their roles. This is something that Catalan nationalists have demanded for a long time, and they've finally gotten it, since the Mossos have taken over policing duties in nearly all of Catalonia. We were promised that real Catalan-speaking police would somehow be better than those nasty Spanish cops. It hasn't turned out that way.

2) Joan Saura himself, the leader of the Catalan Communist-Green coalition, is the interior counselor, in charge of the police. This guy and his wife Chemical Inma Mayol go around telling the squatters that they're against the system too. Saura and Mayol mouth every single stereotypically politically correct ideal that a Guardian reader would cream his jeans over, and now it's Saura in charge of the cops when they start beating up the citizens.

The Mossos have been involved in at least a dozen scandals lately, besides the beating of the Russian immigrant, which most certainly did happen because it's on video. There was the schizo they shot a few weeks back; I'm prepared to admit the cop did the right thing in that case, but it didn't look good around here. Last week some gypsy punk kid they arrested for his umpteenth robbery kicked out the back window of a moving Mossos car, jumped out, and got himself killed. Why wasn't he properly restrained and kept under control? This one is partly the Mossos' fault for negligence, and the story I've given of what happened is theirs. It may or may not be what happened. Normally I believe the police, but there's been too much smoke lately for there not to be a little bit of fire as well.

There was another beating at the Roquetes police station a couple of weeks before this latest one of the Russian woman. The riot squad's use of "kubotans" (which I have no problem with) against rioters pissed off all the squatters and their sympathizers on the way-out left. Something a little strange that got media publicity: some old lady in Barcelona got lost and a patrol of Mossos didn't help her, they dumped her on a cabbie who figured out what to do by himself and got her home. All added up, it doesn't look too good.

And, get this, the Mossos have held several ILLEGAL demonstrations, without a judicial or municipal permit, to demand their labor rights. Naturally, none of them got arrested.

Today La Vanguardia gives page 8 to Cindy Sheehan's "retirement," which doesn't strike me as an especially important international story. Comments: 1) Ms. Sheehan deserves the same respect as any other mother who lost a son in battle 2) Nonetheless, she is clearly unbalanced 3) The Democrats used her during two elections and then when they didn't need her anymore, they threw her away 4) She is more anti-American than anti-war or anti-Bush; she's definitely got a grudge against society 5) I hope she gets some psychiatric help.

Eusebio Val in the Vangua says, "Sheehan's problem was that she radicalized her invective to the point that she could only convince marginal sectors. It is true that surveys showed a majority opposed to the war, and last November's elections, owing partly to Iraq, took Congress away from the Republicans. But that does not mean that Americans applaud statements like 'Bush is the biggest terrorist in the world, worse than Osama bin Laden.' Being blatantly used by the regimes of Venezuela and Cuba didn't help her either. She got invited to the World Social Forum in Caracas and praised Chávez. She also went to Havana, to the glee of the Castro regime, demanding the closure of the Guantánamo military prison. These actions made her an easy target and cost her credibility."

Venezuela note: The closing down of Radio Caracas Television has finally brought the entire Spanish press out against the Chávez regime. The protests got good coverage. Now he's threatening to close down the country's other major channel, Globovisión, and CNN. It takes a threat to the media's status, power, and influence to really get it pissed off.

And Castro is claiming that Bush ordered his assassination. He said, "I am not the first or the last person whose death Bush ordered, or of those he plans to keep killing, whether individually or en masse." Now we know where the posters at the Guardian are getting their ideas.

Some kid in Russis stabbed 37 Caucasians (that is, people from Azerbaijan, Chechenia, etc.) to death in Moscow in nine months, for racial reasons. Seems he thought that Caucasians "oppressed the Russians," and that it was time to "clean up the city" and "punish them." Of course, there were no cries of outrage condemning the racism and violence of Russian society.

Fallout from the elections: The Red-Green-Brown Catalan Tripartite is going to put the squeeze on CiU, forming anti-CiU coalitions everywhere they can. They are hoping to take the provincial diputaciones in Girona and Lleida away from CiU, as well as such cities as Manresa, Figueres, and Ripoll.

Get this. Catalan regional president José Montilla said that many citizens did not turn out to vote "because they're satisfied with the government they have."

Word is that Nafarroa Bai is asking for way too much for any deal with the Socialists in Navarra to go down, and it's now quite likely that the PP will hold both the Navarra region and the city of Pamplona, though they'll have to govern as a minority in both. Looks like the PSOE should have accepted Rajoy's offer of a couple of days ago to swap the Canaries for Navarra; now it looks like the PP might get both of them.

Some proof of the "conservatives turn out to vote more reliably than leftists" thesis: The districts of Barcelona with the highest turnout were all middle-class CiU-PP strongholds: Tres Torres 63%, Sarrià 60%, Sant Gervasi-Bonanova 60%, Sant Gervasi-Galvany 60%, Dreta de l'Eixample 58%, Pedralbes 58%. The districts with the lowest turnout were all poor left-leaning and Spanish-speaking areas: Torre Baró 32%, Baró de Viver 33%, Trinitat Nova 37%. Vallbona 38%, Trinitat Vella 39%, Ciutat Meridiana 40%.

My neighborhood, the Vila de Gràcia, had the highest vote for Esquerra Republicana (16%), the highest percentage of "en blanco" (none of the above) votes (6%), and the lowest vote for the PP (7%). I don't fit in politically in this neighborhood at all, but they tolerate me since I'm a nice enough guy. Also, I never talk politics unless someone else brings it up, and even then I try to dodge the subject.

The National Court in Madrid acquitted eight of eleven alleged Pakistani terrorists who were going to blow up the Mapfre tower, one of Barcelona's tallest buildings, on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Three of them were convicted of raising €18,000 to send to "known members of an international terrorist network" and forging identification documents. Two got six years and one got seven.

Britain is going nuts over this missing child in Portugal business. Her name is Madeleine McCann, and it's the top story--or near the top--almost every day in England. This is as big a media circus as anything the Americans are capable of; in fact, the British sensationalist press is much better at mobilizing the peasantry than the comparatively clueless Yanks. Unfortunately, the poor girl is almost certainly dead. The guy who was "helping police with their inquiries" for showing too much interest in the case seems not to be responsible, as I've heard nothing else about him since he was detained temporarily.

Remember the guy who, when faced with a home invasion, shot the two robbers between the eyes with his target pistol a couple of months ago in a Barcelona suburb? They dropped all charges against him, in case you were wondering.

Oh, yeah. Today La Vanguardia got around to reporting that the US national soccer team is going to play Catalonia on Oct. 14. The game will probably be at the Estadio Olimpico on Montjuic, not at the Camp Nou. I picked up the story from Sports Illustrated on Sunday, and SI probably had it the day before.

Big news around here: Police arrested sixteen alleged jihadists around Spain yesterday, sixteen in Catalonia, one in Aranjuez, and one in Málaga. Fourteen are Moroccan and two Algerian. These guys are a cell that recruits volunteers for Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the fourth big roundup of Islamists accused of recruiting mujihadeen in Spain in the last eighteen months. You won't be surprised to learn that Baltasar Garzón is the investigating magistrate who ordered the arrests. The police confiscated lots of of computer equipment and mobile phones and the like.

Disquieting detail: One of those arrested was Taoufik Cheddadi, who is the imam in the Barcelona suburbs of Badalona, Santa Coloma, and Mollet. Cheddadi is "the president of the Amics (Friends) association and the former owner of a bookstore on Liszt street in Badalona. Cheddadi, who was in custody for 48 hours in 2002, is a well-known person who has a reputation for a pro-integration message and for his repetition of the idea 'Not all we Muslims are terrorists'." If Cheddadi is really mixed up in the recruiting of terrorists, this to me is a sign that his association is a mere front for his real operations. Makes you wonder if there are any more terrorists hiding behind NGOs.

However, of course, public and media opinion in Barcelona are convinced that Islamist violence is America's fault.

La Vangua runs a roundup on what the Europress thought of the Spanish elections. Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, The Independent, and the Corriere della Sera all agree that nothing very interesting happened. Their choice of newspapers to quote from is noteworthy, three French, one British, and one Italian; Paris is still the center of civilization for Catalans over about 50. I'd have found a German and a Portuguese paper to react and left out two of the Frenchies. Oh, well, who cares, it's not like it's important. Note: Spain pays surprisingly little attention to Portugal, even less than the US pays to Canada.

Oxfam wants the West to pay $50 billion to the Third World in order to counteract the effects of global warming. Yeah, right. When pigs fly.

On the American immigration plan: I can't say I'm for it. America should welcome legal immigrants, which it does; there's no better country except maybe Australia in which to be a legal immigrant, and if you take out citizenship you are treated as one of us, which is not true in continental Europe. But illegal immigrants are breaking the law, and you can't do that. What I would do is spend the damn money and build the fence all the way along the Mexican border, and then introduce a national ID card that you would need to show when getting a job, opening a bank account, etc., just like in Spain. It's not like we don't already have Social Security cards and drivers licenses anyway. Then, after we had the border closed, I would announce an amnesty for illegal immigrants who had no police record who wanted to pay a fine and take out a temporary residence permit; within two years they would have to pass a fairly simple test of English and American law and government. And, of course, we should continue letting in about a million legal immigrants every year.

The Cope Radio-El Mundo conspiracy theory blaming some combination of the PSOE, ETA, and the Bavarian Illuminati for the March 11 bombings is as dead as a doornail, thank God.

I was remiss in not linking to this very good article from the Wall Street Journal comparing Spanish and American politics. A must-read. Quote:

Primarily what many Spaniards prefer not to discuss in their politics is Socialist Prime Minister Zapatero's determination to assign official responsibility for the Spanish Civil War to the supporters of Gen. Francisco Franco. Some half-million died in that conflict. After Franco died in 1975, virtually all political parties were determined to make Spain a democracy and achieved it with a new constitution in 1978. As important, however, was the informal social pact to submerge the political bitterness of the civil war, no easy thing for Spain's people.

At the moment, the Spanish are doing a pretty good job of negotiating the emotional tripwires and tensions created by Mr. Zapatero's determination to dance with the ghosts of those awful years. But even an outsider feels a palpable concern that the volatile emotions always beneath the surface of Spain's politics have the potential to blow apart what has been achieved in the past 30 years.

This is a bit excessive; I don't think Spanish democracy is going to come anywhere near "blowing apart." He's right, though, that Zapatero is the first important Spanish politician to wave the bloody shirt of the Civil War since the restoration of democracy.

Remember Iberian Notes's position on the Spanish Civil War: We wish it hadn't happened, and we have no sympathies for either side, as both murdered thousands of their civilian "enemies" behind the lines. Our problem with Zap is that he's talking as if the Left were the good guys, when there were no good guys.

You wanna see some real insanity, check out this thread over in the Guardian. Some guy who doesn't much like Bush wrote a piece pointing out that Bush is not Hitler and America is not Nazi Germany. At least a dozen posters wrote in to declare that, yes, Bush is Hitler and America is Nazi Germany--and then it starts to get really wild. Highly entertaining. And a bit sad.

Here comes the morning-after elections report: In the municipals, the PP barely edged out the Socialists, 7,906,000 to 7,747,000 total votes. The Communists, who are basically a satellite of the PSOE, got 1,476,000; CiU, running only in Catalonia, got 723,000; Esquerra, which basically runs only in Catalonia, got 348,000; the Galician National Bloc, running only in Galicia, got 315,000; the PNV, running only in the Basque Country (but a member of the Nafarroa Bai coalition, which got 73,000 only in Navarra), got 310,000. Everyone else got fewer than 300,000.

Turnout was low. It was 63.8% in Spain as a whole, 53.8% in Catalonia, and 49.6% in Barcelona.

All the parties are, of course, claiming victory. I won't bore you with each side's self-puffery.

Right now it looks like the only major governmental change will be a Nafarroa Bai-PSOE takeover in Navarra, though the PP was the single most-voted party. We'll have to wait a few days for all the municipal coalition pacts to play out, but it looks like the PP is going to lose a few cities to a Socialist-Communist coalition despite getting the most votes.

By the way, the PP generally tends to do very well in cities, especially provincial capitals, where it gets the middle-class vote. This is true even in Andalusian cities, which are more conservative than the countryside.

Here in Barcelona, the final results are PSC 14 seats, down from 15 in the 2003 municipals; CiU 12, up from 9; PP 7, no change; ICV 4, down from 5; and ERC 4, down from 5. So CiU gained three seats and the Tripartite lost three, but the Tripartite stays in control.

Comments from La Vanguardia, who brought out all their pretty good writers for this one:

Montserrat Domínguez stresses the PP's success in Madrid, its "breadbasket of votes." She contrasts the traditional conservative Esperanza Aguirre, premier of the Madrid region, with the moderate Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, mayor of Madrid, and hints at a possible leadership struggle between the two at some point.

Fernando Ónega says that the PP is doing well at bringing out its loyalists but is not able to draw new voters. He adds that Miguel Sebastián was a poor choice as the Socialist mayoral candidate in Madrid.

Francesc-Marc Álvaro says that in Catalonia, the Tripartite has held on despite losing voters, and that Esquerra and the Communists were the biggest losers. He adds that the CUP, a loosely-associated group of extreme Catalan nationalists, has cut into Esquerra's youth vote, and that the Plataforma per Catalunya's results show that the mainstream parties are not dealing well with immigration.

Antoni Puigverd says that Catalan politics are gridlocked and that explains the high abstention, since the number of people who think their votes might change something is declining. He compares the Catalan Tripartite to the Italian Pentapartite, and says, "One day, as happened in Italy, the system will come crashing down, and that will be the moment for the hyenas. The disquieting Anglada (PxC leader) is slinking up, waiting for his chance."

Salvador Cardús says that 1) the parties should hold primary elections so that the citizens can choose the candidates 2) the PSC's power in Catalonia has increased 3) Esquerra are the losers, bleeding votes on the right to CiU and on the left to the CUP, the rad national socialists.

Francesc de Carreras says that the high abstention in Catalonia and especially Barcelona is surprising, that it shows that many Catalans are fed up with the status quo, and that Gallardón looks like a good horse to bet on for the long run.

Florencio Domínguez says that the PNV and Socialists will have to cut a deal to govern the Basque Country, that the split-up of the Basque Nationalist coalition of the conservative PNV and social democratic EA was not a good move, and that the Socialists in general did pretty well there.

Ángel Expósito does more than hint at a possible future conflict between Gallardón and Aguirre over the succession to Rajoy.

Some real results are coming in. Participation is very low, 53% in Catalonia. That would be pretty good for the US, one must admit.

Barcelona city council: Socialists 14 seats, CiU 12, the PP 7, Esquerra 4, and the Communists 4. The Tripartite stays in power with a 22-19 majority. Good result for CiU and the PP holds what it had.

The Socialists win Tarragona city; they'll govern in a Tripartite coalition.

Possible changes: Looks like a Nafarroa Bai-PSOE coalition will take Navarra from the PP. The PP may win the most votes in the Canaries and would presumably govern with the Canary Coalition. The Socialists will take the cities of Orense and Jaén from the PP.

Stays the same: Big PP wins in Madrid, Valencia, and Malaga. The PP holds most of Spain's provincial capitals. The PSOE wins Sevilla and Zaragoza, in addition to Barcelona, and the PNV holds Bilbao.

Small-party news: A pro-marijuana party did almost well enough to win a seat in the Navarre regional parliament.

The Plataforma per Catalunya did well in old-line, conservative Catalan cities; they took 5 seats in Vic, 4 in El Vendrell, 2 in Cervera, and one each in Manresa, Olot, and Tárrega. I can imagine a couple of Remei's relatives voting for the PxC. Ciutadans only did well in the heavily Spanish-speaking Baix Llobregat, winning 2 seats in Castelldefels and one each in Sant Boi, Viladecans, and Gavà.

It looks like the big news is there is no big news. The elections appear to have come out more or less as expected. Neither the Socialists nor the PP got a big surge of support, and neither one crashed and burned, either. CiU looks like two sides of a coin, gaining a good deal of power in Barcelona but losing Tarragona.

I've been following a few of the small political parties; the anti-nationalist Ciutadans aren't going to win a seat in the Barcelona city council, but they have a chance in several cities, including Figueres, Terrassa, Tarragona, Vilafranca, and Vilanova. The xenophobic Plataforma per Catalunya won three seats in Vic, and has a chance of winning representation in several places, like Olot, Tarrega, and Falset. The Partit Republicà Català, which ain't your mama's GOP but rather more independentista than Esquerra Republicana, has a chance of gaining representation in several cities as well.

The TV stations are reporting their exit polls. TV1 says that the results in the autonomous regions are the same as last time: PP absolute majority in Castile-Leon, La Rioja, Madrid, Valencia, and Murcia, and PSOE absolute majority in Extremadura, Castile-La Mancha, Asturias, and Aragon. The PP is the most voted party in Cantabria, Balearic Islands, and Navarre, but will have to form a coalition with local parties to govern.

In the municipal elections, it doesn't look like there are too many big changes. The PP keeps its absolute majority in Madrid, Valencia, Malaga, Alicante, Murcia, and Castellon; the PSOE keeps Seville, Zaragoza, and La Coruña; Nafarroa Bai may be the leading vote-getter in Pamplona, and the Communists hold Cordoba.

TV3 is reporting poor results for the Tripartite in Barcelona. The Socialists have 32% of the vote and 14-16 seats; CiU has 24% and 11-13 seats; the PP has 13% and 6-7 seats; Esquerra has 10% and 4-5 seats, and the Communists have 10% and 3-4 seats. Ciutadans has 4%, not enough for a seat. These results put the Tripartite on the edge of a knife, since the surveys right now give them 21 seats in a worst-case scenario, which is exactly what they need for a majority. The other big news from Catalonia is that the Socialists have taken Tarragona capital away from CiU.

They're announcing that participation is very low in all of Spain, especially in Catalonia, and most particularly in Barcelona. My guess is this is good news for the PP, since conservatives tend to be better at turning out their vote than leftists. They'll have the exit polls out at 8 PM, when the voting stations close, so we'll see.

Hey, get this, which I don't think the local press has reported on yet. The US national soccer team is going to play Catalonia, most likely at the Camp Nou, on October 14. Cool. I'm going. I'll wear a USA jersey. Let's see if I get lynched. Better carry my organ donor card. No flowers; please donate to the Humane Society.

El Periódico showed some courage today; of course, the big story is that it's election day here. So they ran an enormous picture of Fidel Castro on the front page with the caption, "Some politicians don't like to vote, either." Then they ran photos of Kim Jong Il, Hu Jintao of China, the dictator of former Spanish colony Equatorial Guniea, the king of Saudi Arabia, and the leader of the Chechen terrorists, with the caption "They don't like to vote, and they don't like it when other people vote."

Good job, guys. You've risen in my esteem.

Well, I'm not sure I did the right thing, but I think I convinced my wife to go out and vote for Convergència i Unió tomorrow. The conversation went sort of like this:

John: So who are you going to vote for?
Remei: I don't really give a crap. I don't think I'm going to vote.
J: Hey, it's the only chance you get to speak when it counts. You like the city government, vote for them, you don't like it, vote against them.
R: I don't really like any of the parties.
J: Neither do I, but you have to pick the least worst, or however you say that.
R: I'm not gonna vote for the PP.
J: I'm not even going to try...Look, you're always complaining about parking and traffic...
R: I like the Esquerra guy, he's nice to animals, but they're crazy, Carod-Rovira and ETA and all.
J: Look, you can vote en blanco, none of the above, and at least you're making it official you're pissed off.
R: No PP. No Tripartite. But I don't like Trias.
J: Well, you're voting for the party, not just the candidate...You like the Socialist guy better? The Socialists are reasonable, but you really wanna vote for the way things are?
R. All right, I'll go vote for Convergencia if you wash the dishes every expletive deleted day like you're supposed to.

I think I lost.

See, what did I tell you? Where I come from, if you squat in a lake that isn't your property, the cops come and take you away and throw your ass in the zoo.