Fortunately, there isn't much news around here. They had a nasty bull run at Pamplona this morning and several people got hurt real bad, including one guy with broken bones in his ribcage and spine along with a concussion. An American caught a horn right in the ass, and some guy from Poland took a horn in the "perianal area," which sounds extremely unpleasant. TV3 has a photo. People, running with the bulls is dangerous, in case you hadn't figured that out already.

The Spanish woman injured in the Yemen terrorist blast who was in critical condition is now brain-dead, which means the toll rises to eight Spaniards and two Yemenis, not counting the suicide bomber.

The David Vitter prostitute scandal has hit the Spanish press, which is hammering on the hypocrisy theme. They have a point. If a Senator cannot keep his willy on a leash, he should not make pronouncements about what others do with their own unleashed willies. However, it is of course unfair to generalize from this one case that all Republican senators are hypocrites, or that hypocrisy is any more common in America than in Spain.

(Spanish hypocrisy isn't usually about sex; it's usually about solidarity and being holier-than-thou about the Third World, the consumer society, and ethical values. Lots of folks talk a good game about self-righteous do-gooder ideals around here, but very few follow up with any action.)

National Review said two things I thought were kind of silly; one was that "prostitution is illegal because prostitution is wrong," which makes no sense; why shouldn't people charge for having sexual relations, and how is that any more wrong than doing it for free? The other was that Larry Flynt has no moral standards. I'm not so sure. I bet Larry thinks that murdering people is wrong, and that robbing banks is wrong, and that raping children is wrong. He just doesn't think that either publishing nasty magazines or blackmailing hypocritical Republican senators is wrong.

They busted two more ETA terrorists in France yesterday; these guys were part of the cell in charge of stealing materiel, such as guns and explosives. Meanwhile, the cell they broke up in Santander was going to hit either the city hall or the courthouse with a car bomb.

Speaking of solidarity with the Third World, a Barcelona-based NGO called Intervida has turned out to be a scam; its directors have been charged with embezzlement, fraud, and conspiracy. Seems the contributions they were collecting went to buy real estate or shares in businesses, including the one that runs the Imax cinema here. Looks like they stole some €60 million.

The government has been running an ad campaign against domestic violence, which promises abused women that the law will do something to help and protect them. I call bullshit on that. 37% of the victims of domestic murder in the first half of 2007 in Spain had filed charges against their killers. 30% were under restraining orders. Two-thirds of the murders were committed in the victim's home, meaning the law is doing a lousy job keepìng violent men away from female victims. The first thing they need to do in domestic violence cases is get the woman out of there to a place where the man can't find her or can't get to her, and I have seen no signs of the government taking any such steps.

Barcelona signed Argentinian center-back Gabi Milito from Zaragoza for €17 million, the most they've ever paid for a defender. Milito is very good and is probably worth the money, especially since Puyol is injured and won't be able to start the season. These guys don't make all that much money, by the way. Milito, for example, will be paid €2 million a year, and he's one of the pillars of Argentina's national squad. I think Barça's highest-paid players like Ronaldinho get around €6 million a year. Kansas City designated hitter Mike Sweeney, who has sucked for years, is getting paid $11 million a year. There are lousy baseball players getting nearly double that. Also, Real Madrid signed Christoph Metzelder, another gimpy defender in the tradition of Woodgate and Samuel.

I've started a new site called Hard Country (hardcountry66.blogspot.com), where I hope to be posting at least once a week. It'll mostly be links to country, blues, rock, bluegrass, and American music in general. Links to the first two posts: A set of about fifteen 21st century country videos (more or less), and some Taj Mahal songs. Taj is playing Girona tomorrow night, on the steps of the cathedral, which sounds like a must-see to me. I can't make it, unfortunately, but you ought to try. He'll be there with the other guys from his trio; it won't be a full band. I'm not sure anyone around here has ever heard of Taj, but here's a chance to check him out live.

Even Toni Soler, a borderline Cataloony, says that ERC's lust to make teachers the language police is ridiculous, besides illegal. That's been pretty much the universal reaction around here, which is a good thing because it shows that these ERC national socialists are well outside the Catalan mainstream.

Other local news: They're going to cut the speed limit on motorways in the heart of the Barcelona metro area to 80 kilometers per hour, a little less than 50 mph, in order to reduce pollution. Outer areas will have a 90 kph speed limit. I don't know; there are arguments on both sides.

In favor: Barcelona's air is way too polluted, and 52% of particles in suspension are caused by motor vehicles. Also, the slower you drive the less likely you are to be killed in an accident, of course, and far too many people are killed in car wrecks around here.

Against: There are other ways to cut vehicle air pollution, including getting all cars that burn leaded gas off the road. The problem isn't new SUVs with big engines; they burn lots of gas but don't pollute much because they've got converters and filters and all that stuff. It's the old beaters that pollute the most. I have no idea why Barcelona doesn't have a park-and-ride system on the commuter train lines, either, and making the trains suck less might get a whole lot of cars off the road. Also, traffic is hellacious in Barcelona, and slowing the motorways down will cause more traffic jams, which waste everyone's time and lots of energy, and cause excess polluion as well. As for danger on the roads, I'm not sure the folks doing 120 are the problem; I think it's the folks doing 180 and the ones who are liquored up.

The cops busted another ETA terrorist at the bus station in Santander; he was packing a pistol, a detonator, and fake ID. They're looking for the woman who had been accompanying him; these two were apparently part of a cell based in Cantabria that was planning an attack.

The two etarras the French cops got near Paris last week turned out to be ETA's forgery brigade, so that's a big hit for them. Also, four leaders of ETA's youth squad got busted for what's called kale borroka, street terrorism; they'd been tossing molotov cocktails at bank branches and government offices.

ETA looks like it's about done; let's hope the two men killed at Barajas airport will be the last two. Murph says the cops must have a mole inside the organization, and his bet is Josu Ternera; I actually wouldn't be surprised if he's right this time.

The Pakistani army stormed the mosque in Islamabad causing the predictable massacre. La Vanguardia's correspondent, one Jordi Joan Baños, whose dateline is New Delhi, claims on page 3 that the army operation had the approval of Washington. I hadn't read that anywhere else, and I didn't know General Musharraf had to check with Langley before shooting up some Islamist terrorists.

Boy, Pope Benedict has really put his foot in it with this claim that the Catholic Church is the only true church. I know some Methodists who don't agree; I don't think most American Catholics are going to like it, either. This is not going to make him any friends, just like what the very Catholic La Vangua calls "the liberation of the Latin Mass." The Latin Mass calls for the conversion of the Jews. One would think Benedict would cut that little bit out, but he didn't even show that tiny bit of sense. This guy may be a brilliant theologian, but he's nowhere near another John Paul II, who did as much as anyone but Reagan and Thatcher to finally win the Cold War.

The scare over contaminated Chinese products has reached Spain, where some unfit toothpaste was distributed. Wariness of cheap Chinese goods seems to have just taken a sharp upswing in Spain. Now the Chinese have taken out and shot the former head of their food and drug agency for corruption. That seems a bit excessive to me, even if the government's justification is that his corruption led to the deaths of inncoent consumers.

La Vanguardia reports on the same page that 91% of legal executions occur in China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan, and the United States. That's lumping very different things together, since China officially executed 1010 persons in 2006 and the US 53. You could just as easily say that the Americans execute one-twentieth of the number that the Chinese do. La Vangua also fails to mention that you only get executed in the States if you've been convicted of first-degree murder.

Woody Allen has taken over the city; they cut off traffic on the Ramblas yesterday so that he could film there. Crowds are showing up to rubberneck. The PP has accused the governing Socialists, several of whom got their photos taken with Allen, of groveling indecorously before a foreign celebrity.

Three e-mail messages from La Vangua. "Just what we needed in Barcelona, an American comes and they let him cut off the streets in half the city. It's like going back forty years when the American navy came"; "We're still a Third World country that, when the American bwana comes, loses the last drop of its dignity"; "We can't absorb more tourists than the ones we already suffer from. It's not necessary to subsidize a movie with public funds to benefit the hotel owners and damage our quality of life."

They sound pretty bitter. I must say I'm not real happy at tax money going to benefit Woody Allen, either; I'd prefer to, say, burn it, or flush it down the toilet, or buy some cool automatic weapons for the cops.

Real Madrid signed Saviola and a defender named Pepe from Oporto. Barça is going to sign Gabi Milito. He'll be the last Barcelona signing, and they're still trying to get rid of several players, including Belletti, Giuly, Ezquerro, and Motta. Sylvinho and Edmilson seem to have be off the hook, and no one's sure whether Gudjohnsen is staying or going. There were rumors about Tamudo and Luis Garcia leaving Espanyol, but it looks like neither is going to happen.

So I suppose the Barça squad will be: Goalies Valdes and Jorquera; fullbacks Zambrotta, Abidal, Sylvinho, Oleguer; center backs Puyol, Milito, Thuram, Marquez; midfielders Deco, Xavi, Iniesta, Toure, Edmilson, Dos Santos, Bojan; forwards Ronaldinho, Eto'o, Messi, Henry, and Gudjohnsen. That looks pretty good, and I think Barça has to be the favorite going into next season.

You want Catalunacy? We got Catalunacy. Esquerra Republicana (ERC), our local national socialists, say they want to force all teachers to speak only Catalan at school. Not just in class to the students, but in the teachers' lounge and cafeteria, in conferences with parents (who may not know Catalan), and when talking with the janitors and other workers (who may not know Catalan). Well, actually, that last bit wouldn't be true anymore, because they want janitors and lunch ladies to pass a Catalan test or lose their jobs. Also, even outside class, teachers (even, like, math teachers) will have to monitor students' speech and correct them if they use incorrect Catalan. Students will have to address teachers only in Catalan.

Completely. Fucking. Ridiculous. Language. Fascism. There is nothing guaranteed to piss off Spanish-speakers as much as attempts to force them to renounce their own native language, the second- or third-most spoken in the world and the co-official language of Catalonia, for a comparatively minor language, the 88th-most spoken. Coercion won't make people want to learn Catalan, it'll put them off.

More ERC language fascism: They want to ban speaking Spanish on TV3. Specifically, they don't want TV3 to invite Spanish-speaking talk-show guests or interview Spanish-speaking people on the news. If a Spanish-speaker must be allowed to appear on TV3, then everything he says must be subtitled in Catalan. No Spanish-speaking characters in sitcoms or dramas or soap operas will be allowed.

And then the Cataloonies complain that many people in the rest of Spain don't like Catalans in general. Yes, that's ignorant prejudice; it makes no more sense to dislike Catalans than, say, Americans or Iranians or Bolivians or Laotians. But the Cataloonies, though a small minority, make so much unpleasant noise that other Spaniards automatically identify all Catalans with Cataloony linguafascism.

Get this. The Woody Allen movie to be made in Barcelona will receive €1 million in subsidies from the Ayuntamiento and €500,000 from the Generalitat. In addition, Woody will get some cash from the central government depending on the movie's box office. Meanwhile, the press reports on Woody's every movement; they're playing up a story about Penelope Cruz and asshole actor Javier Bardem going out to dinner together. Several La Vanguardia columnists have already complained that all this falling down at Woody's feet is a bit provincial and rather undignified. But Barcelona loves it when people from the rest of the world takes notice of it. The city has a well-deserved high regard for itself, though they're still insecure about their new status as a place that people have actually heard of.

Zap shook up the cabinet. Nobody cares.

More Zap news: During the state of the nation debate in Congress, Zap came out with a surprise announcement that the government would pay €2500 to every couple producing a child after July 3. I didn't believe it was anything more than hot air, but it's actually going into effect. Is it a good idea? It's not much different from giving a tax exemption for dependents, I suppose, and I guess the state has enough money since they've been good about running a budget surplus--have to give a little credit here to Zap, though Aznar did the same thing. Rajoy pointed out that the PP's platform called for an €3000 payment for each new baby.

The San Fermín fiesta in Pamplona began today, and the town is full of Americans. Running with the bulls advice, if you insist on doing it: Watch a couple of times before you actually participate. Don't run drunk or hung over. If you fall, cover up but do not get up; an American was killed a couple of years ago when he fell in front of the bulls and tried to scramble out of the way. Don't get caught up in big crowds, especially not when going through the tunnel into the bullring; people have been trampled and crushed in pileups. Stay far away from lone bulls separated from the group; they're supposed to be the most dangerous. You may see people trying to touch the bulls; you're not supposed to do that.

They have encierros in a lot of other places in Spain, too; I think the most famous is San Sebastian de los Reyes, just outside Madrid, on August 28. Tudela is an interesting little town that's not too far from Pamplona, and they have a big fiesta lasting a week at the end of July. Here's the encierro schedule for July if you just can't get enough.

Sports news: Barça is still in the running to buy Chivu, but they're also trying to cut a deal to buy Gabi Milito from Zaragoza. They've made a deal with Milito and now they're trying to knock down the price. Supposedly FC Barcelona (basketball) shooting guard Juan Carlos Navarro is going to the NBA, but Barça wants too much money for him and he's not all that great.

Bet you didn't know that King Juan Carlos was the Antichrist. Really. No kidding.

Let's do another blog roundup.

Barcepundit links to evidence that France's behavior regarding Rwanda was, oh, about a hundred times worse than anything the CIA ever did.

The Brussels Journal links to the European Union sex video whose purpose is to arouse and excite passion for the EU.

Colin Davies posts on Pamplona, Zap, and Spanish drivers, and answers my rhetorical question about who exactly thinks the SNP government is a success.

Davids Medienkritik takes an ignorant anti-American German journalist to the woodshed. Check it out.

Eursoc has a go at Gordon Brown's declining to put the new EU "agreement," that is, constitution, up for a referendum in Britain.

Expat Yank supports ethnic profiling. Me too. Here's an example: Let's say the KKK suddenly had a resurgence in Mississippi and started committing acts of terrorism just like the old days. Well, I would 100% support the FBI's paying extra-special attention to white people on the grounds that blacks are not too likely to be Klansmen.

Fausta supports the US-Colombia trade agreement and scorns its Democratic opponents. Publius Pundit has more.

LA-Madrid Files has a swipe at America-bashing Europeans who nevertheless love American technology.

Notes from Spain continues its series of posts by guest bloggers. Interesting. Diverse viewpoints here.

¡No Pasarán! slaps Zap.

Observing Hermann tries to explain the Tom Cruise-Germany flap.

Pejman has a long and illuminating post on Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

Rainy Day blasts another ignorant America-basher, this time a Brit.

Spanish Pundit has more on the fallout from the Yemen bombing.

Snopes has an interesting historical piece debunking some legends about the signers of the US Declaration of Independence. Check it out.

Also, Al Gore's kid got busted for DUI and possession of marijuana along with some serious pharmaceuticals, including Valium, Xanax, and Vicodin. Now here's the good part. He was driving 100 mph on the San Diego Freeway at about two in the morning. In a Toyota Prius. So at least he was ecologically sustainable about it. Any chance now of the Dems laying off Bush's daughters?

And the Nuge himself has a piece on the "hordes of stoned, dirty, stinky hippies" hanging around San Francisco back in the Sixties. In the Wall Street Journal. Don't miss it.

Ted made one mistake: Mama Cass had a heart attack, probably from being too fat, not from drugs, says Wikipedia. And no, she didn't choke on a ham sandwich, she died in her sleep at a London hotel.

Quick news roundup: Interior minister Perez Rubalcaba said that the ETA terrorists caught near the Franco-Spanish frontier with a car and 165 kilos of explosives were planning an attack "with victims" for today or tomorrow, supposedly to coincide with the State of the Nation parliamentary debate. They were going to set off the bomb by hand with detonating cord in order to foil frequency inhibitors.

The Yemeni police have arrested eleven suspects in the bombing that killed seven Spanish tourists and two Yemeni citizens. Yemen is also saying that Al Qaeda wants to put pressure on the government because it is holding Qaeda members in jail, and that the specific goal of the bombing was to hurt Yemen's interests and image.

I'm surprised at how little attention the Yemen bombing has received in the international press. Seems pretty important to me. By the way, TV3 is reporting that this was the bloodiest terrorist attack in the history of Yemen, which isn't true if you count the attack on the USS Cole.

This is important: The European Commission has hit Telefonica with a €150 million fine for abusing its dominant position in the Spanish Internet market. Telefonica has been charging its competitors so much for access to the ADSL system that they can't compete on price. Brussels says Spaniards pay 20% more than other European citizens for Internet, while 20% fewer Spaniards are connected and the growth in the number of connections is 30% less. I remember reading somewhere that Internet speed in Spain is close to the slowest in Europe, far behind more technically sophisticated places. This is by far the biggest telecoms fine ever handed out by the EC, ten times more than any other.

The Spanish media is reporting that the suicide bomber in Yemen had asked the locals whether the group of tourists were "Westerners," though I bet he really said "infidels." When he was told they were, he waited for them to get on the road and then crashed his car into their vehicles. Obviously he must have had his car bomb already prepared, so this was a planned attack, not a spontaneous one; however, if this story is true, the suicide bomber didn't care precisely who he blew up, as long as they weren't Muslims.

Antena 3 made rather a big deal out of the likelihood that the tourists were not targeted for being Spaniards in particular, but infidels in general.

Five of the victims were Catalans, including two women who were teachers at the same high school in the Horta neighborhood of Barcelona and their husbands. Another of the seven was a Basque woman who had been on a local TV reality show, so they're showing plenty of film of her. One of the wounded is a Basque woman who is in critical condition with shrapnel in her head; they're going to fly the dead bodies and the other wounded back to Spain tomorrow, but this woman cannot be moved from the Yemeni hospital.

Get this comment from La Vanguardia's website: "Message for the planners of the Yemen attack: you got the wrong target. All deaths from terrorism are horrible, but the Catalans and Basques are the ones who have supported the Arab cause the most and have fought against Bush's war." And this one: "Iraq wasn't a war, it was a senseless invasion, the whim of a demented man. Today the invasion has brought the war of all wars...Killing for killing's sake, and destroying for destroying's sake, sooner or later will boomerang."

That's right, it's America's fault. As usual. As if Islamist terrorism had begun with the fall of Baghdad. And as if Spain were not an enemy of Islamist terrorism for the simple facts that 1) Spaniards are infidels and 2) Islamists claim Spain as part of their homeland, just as they claim Israel.

More terrorism news: Yesterday five ETA members were arrested in France. Three of them were busted fifteen kilometers from the Spanish border in a van with 165 kilos of explosives, detonators, an assault rifle, and other goodies. They were all armed with pistols but put up no resistance. One of them is a big fish, suspected of being ETA's head operations planner--that is, the guy who decided who would be killed how, where, and when. The cops suspect they were going to pull an immediate attack.

Two more etarras were caught at a roadblock outside Paris; there isn't much information on them. One was armed.

Today they had the big State of the Nation debate in the Congress of Deputies. Zap and Rajoy called each other big stinky poopheads. Zap promised to turn the Barcelona commuter train system over to the Generalitat, so now it'll be badly run by Catalan bureaucrats instead of Spanish bureaucrats. Ah, progress.

Liverpool has bought Fernando Torres from Atletico de Madrid for like 24 million euros, which sounds like way too much, and the Sun says that Barça has offered 18 million for "Fat Frank" Lampard, who Barcelona does not need unless it plans to get rid of Deco and/or Xavi. Which they've said they're not going to do.

Update: Libertad Digital is reporting that Foreign Minister Moratinos told a press conference that a seventh Spanish tourist had died, along with a second Yemeni. The bombing was carried out by a "suicide car" that crashed into the two vehicles transporting the Spaniards. The identity of the victims is still not known. No one has claimed responsibility, but Yemeni authorities have blamed Al Qaeda. The LD story includes a photograph of the wrecked vehicles.

Breaking news: Six Spanish tourists were killed in a terrorist bombing in the city of Marib, Yemen. A Yemeni driver was killed as well, and seven more Spanish tourists were wounded. TV3 is speculating that it was Al Qaeda. TV1 says it was a car bomb, and that Al Qaeda had demanded the release of some of its members in jail in Yemen and had threatened unspecified consequences.

I bet this doesn't change the mind of anyone around here, though.

Can we have Joe Lieberman as the next president?

The big story around here is, of course, the terrorism situation in the UK. Both TV3 and Antena 3 have been reporting on it pretty reasonably. Just my guess, based on the simple bombs that didn't work and the non-standard (and pretty damn crazy) technique used at the Glasgow airport: These guys are amateur terrorists with little or no experience and few contacts with Al Qaeda higher-ups.

Another guess I have is that US-UK-NATO intelligence knows a good bit that we don't, and they have got wind of an Al Qaeda spectacular planned for sometime this week to coincide with the July 4 holiday in the US.

Withdrawing from Iraq is not going to help us defeat Al Qaeda. In fact, it would have exactly the opposite effect.

Rafael Ramos in La Vanguardia gets all of pages 3 and 4 to be incredibly patronizing and snide about Gordon Brown and the British democratic system. Just a few pearls:

Politically, the wave of frustrated terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom have been the perfect trampoline for the launching of Gordon Brown's mandate.

Seems Raffy's implying the old Cui bono? explanation that Noam Chomsky uses so often for these attacks.

(We watched) Gordon Brown play the great statesman and address the nation proclaiming that "Al Qaeda will not triumph."...He put on his best suit and tie, searched for the solemn expression that his advisors tell him transmits an image of solidity, and proclaimed, "Al Qaeda will not change the British way of life." It is not clear exactly what the British way of life is.

That's a pretty snotty portrait of Brown, who it seems Raffy does not like. It's also opinion, not appropriate for a news report.

The attacks have allowed Brown to put the security and order issue in first place, which plays in his favor. When the voters feel threatened, whether by war or terror, they tend in general to close ranks behind the government in office.

More attribution of less-than-noble motives to Brown.

One of Brown's great initiatives since he was Chancellor of the Exchequer consists of cultivating a British patriotism inspired by American, with the cult of the flag included.

What's so offensive about American patriotism? As if there weren't much waving of nationalist flags around, say, Barcelona.

Yesterday Brown, perhaps influenced by his advisors, could not resist the temptation to imitate Bush and Blair with rotund statements for television.

It's pretty obvious Raffy thinks that everything a democratic politician does is done for only one reason: to manipulate the voters. To the Vangua's editors: If I wanted to read Noam Chomsky theorize in Le Monde Diplomatique, I'd buy it.

The Scottish prime minister, nationalist Alex Salmond, whose first two months leading his country are considered a complete success...

Wait! What? Isn't this editorializing? Who considers them a success? And why is Scottish nationalism cool while American and British patriotism are not?

Salmond has presented himself as an integrating nationalist who is going to fight against the stigmatization of the Islamic community on the basis of stereotypes and individual actions, while Brown immediately cast the blame "in general lines" on Al Qaeda, defending the British way of life, and advancing down the road of the war of civilizations in the footsteps of Bush and Blair.

Oh, so that's why. What a pile of shit. Isn't it Britain where something like 40% of Muslims approve of suicide bombings? That's no stereotype. And what precisely is wrong with blaming the attempted bombings on Al Qaeda?

The TV series 24, whose protagonist Jack Blair regularly resorts to torture to extract information, has fed the debate about how far the legitimacy goes of the treatment that suspects of terrorism receive from the representatives of the state with the objective of preventing attacks. During the night, whatever the severity of the interrogation or the degree of cooperation of the suspect...

Yep, here goes Raffy explaining serious issues with examples from popular culture and accusing the British police of torturing the guy riding shotgun in the flaming car.

Question: Do any of you think Raffy's report is anywhere near fair or balanced? Or has he committed libel about fourteen times here? I think he's committed libel, and Brown would have a good shot in a lawsuit, especially in Britain. But I also know that it certainly would not be worth the trouble.

And, remember, this is La Vanguardia, the top-selling newspaper in Catalonia with a circulation of nearly 200,000. With this kind of news reporting, no wonder many of them are so ignorant about the rest of the world. It's much better to know nothing and admit it, like the Americans, than to know next to nothing and firmly believe it, as in Spain.

We're back after spending the weekend out in Vallfogona; didn't do much except go hiking / walking / trudging with the dog up the hill on the Segura road. The wheat's been harvested but the barley hasn't, and the almond trees look pretty good, with lots of big green nut pods. The blackberries aren't anywhere near ripe yet, but it's cherry season; there's a tree up the hill that belongs to some of Remei's cousins that we have permission to raid.

The mother-in-law, Rosa, has been living with us for the past two months, and we moved her out to the pueblo this weekend. She can just barely take care of herself if you leave her more-or-less prepared food, and the folks in town know she's there and will check in on her. She's a cranky old bat and the cerebral atrophy she's been diagnosed with doesn't help any; she only tried to take her walking stick to me once and to Bart the cat once during the last two months, though, so she's less violent than she used to be. Rosa has her good side, she's loyal and generous and wants to be helpful, but her bad temper gets in the way. If you can take her mind off her crankiness, though, she's easy to deal with. Food helps. She likes food.

I learned something about her: She's afraid of different kinds of food at first. She'd never bought anything at the supermarket that she hadn't lived all her life with. So I introduced her to bean sprouts, arugula, cashews, mangoes, cherry tomatoes, avocadoes, Modena vinegar, Fruit and Fiber cereal, and Dijon mustard, all of which she likes. She wasn't too big on the Mexican hot salsa, though.

I don't understand the do-gooder soft-headed progre peaceniks around here.

This morning the cops busted a fourth Al Qaeda member here in Barcelona; they had already arrested three of them (not two) on Tuesday. These guys were running a cell that recruited jihadis for training camps in North Africa and then sent them on to their martyrdom in Iraq. They are wanted by the Moroccan police, and will probably be extradited.

People, it's right here under our noses. Al Qaeda is operating in Barcelona. It is recruiting people who live here. They then go to Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Lebanon, and blow people up. The six Spanish soldiers killed in Lebanon were probably Al Qaeda victims. The nearly 200 who died on March 11, 2004 were definitely Al Qaeda victims. Why do all politically correct Catalans oppose fighting Al Qaeda on the ground in Iraq, which is where the war on Islamism is going to be won or lost?

Part of me thinks they're so shortsighted that they prefer an Al Qaeda victory to an Anglo-American victory, just because they despise the United States so much.

In Spain, summer officially starts on San Juan, June 24, and not much happens until October or so. This is why there's not much news from around here, which is a good thing.

Former economics minister Rodrigo Rato is going to resign as head of the IMF as of September. The March 11 bombings trial ends on Monday, but the sentence won't be handed down until October. The verdict, of course, is going to be guilty. The Spanish cops arrested a man and a woman in Cadiz for trying to collect a ransom for the missing English girl in Portugal; it looks like the arrestees have nothing to do with the kidnapping. The King and Queen are in China, and the Chinese kindly offered to rent a pair of pandas to the Madrid Zoo. (The renting is fair enough, since it's my understanding that the money goes to protect panda habitats.) Housing prices are rising a lot more slowly than they were a couple of years ago. But they're still rising. Two Spanish players, Rudy Fernandez and Marc Gasol, were chosen in the NBA draft, but I'm not sure either is really NBA quality. Barça signed Eric Abidal, and is now trying to get a center-back; if they can't get Chivu from Roma, they want Gabi Milito from Zaragoza or Andrade from Deportivo. For some reason the Spanish press is covering the Paris Hilton whooptedoo. Why anyone would care, I don't know, especially on this side of the Atlantic. We have enough idiot pseudocelebrities over here already.

I'm currently working on a Spanish sixth-grade social studies text, of which the last three chapters are devoted to history, mostly Spanish and European, between the voyages of discovery and today. Of course I can't mention the company or the title, but I can say that the textbook follows the official curriculum and has been approved by the Ministry of Education.

The text's interpretation of history is rather bizarre.

It doesn't mention the 1492 expulsion of the Jews and Muslims who refused to convert to Catholicism.
It mentions the forced conversions of the Muslims in the caption of a picture; it does not mention the rebellions of the Moriscos, which were brutally crushed and ended with more expulsions.
It doesn't mention the Inquisition or the Counter-Reformation. No one gets burned at the stake in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid, of which there is a large photo.
It mentions the Santa Hermandad, saying it was responsible for "security," but without going into the ugly details.
It fails to speculate that these expulsions and repression might have contributed to the decline of the Spanish Empire.
It does not mention the bloodiness of the Aztecs; it briefly mentions "sacrifice," but not human sacrifice.
Cortex and Pizarro get one sentence between them. War and battle are not mentioned, just "conquest."
It does not mention the great Indian die-off, caused mostly by epidemics but also by Spanish abuse and mistreatment.
It does not mention slavery in Spanish America or the large Spanish participation in the slave trade.
It does not mention the eighty-year Dutch War for Independence.
It does not mention the Spanish Armada and the failed invasion of England.
It blames imperial decline on "famines, epidemics, and wars" without mentioning the many shortcomings of Spanish society and culture.
It does not admit that following the War of the Spanish Succession, Spain was a French satellite state for a century.
It includes a Marxist analysis of the Industrial Revolution, including class struggle between workers and bourgeois; it fails to mention the growth of the salaried middle class, managers and technicians and clerks. Remember Orwell's 1984, in which Winston looks at a history text that includes a drawing of a fat bourgeois dressed in black with a top hat? THIS BOOK ACTUALLY INCLUDES ONE OF THOSE.
It calls the Peninsular War "The War for Independence," but doesn't mention that Spain sided with France until 1808 and saw its fleet destroyed at Trafalgar. It doesn't mention Joseph Bonaparte or the Duke of Wellington.
It doesn't mention the independence of Spanish America, or the wars that it involved. Simon Bolivar is not mentioned.
It doesn't mention the Carlist Wars.
It doesn't mention the Cuban war of independence or the Spanish-American War, which is a little surprising.
It mentions World War I, but doesn't say which countries it was fought between, and it doesn't mention the Russian Revolution. In fact, the word "Communism" does not appear.
World War II receives the same treatment; only Hiroshima and the Holocaust are mentioned. Adolf Hitler is not mentioned. Neither are Lenin and Stalin.
The Spanish Civil War gets four pro-Republican paragraphs. The killings behind the lines on both sides are not mentioned.
The Franco regime gets four paragraphs.
"Inequality in the 20th Century" gets two pages, including the code words "society of consumption," "social inequality," and "ecological problems."
"The European Union" gets two pages, too.

Interesting to compare this version of national history with that taught in American schools, which is all about the rights of minority groups and women, and how mean white men were to Indians, blacks, women, Chinese, Japanese, and people of alternative sexuality.

TV3 is reporting that two Al Qaeda operatives were arrested in Barcelona this morning. They're Moroccans and recruiters for jihadi volunteers; their network sends recruits to training camps in the Sahara and then on to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Spain passed the United States in the list of the world's top cocaine users. 3% of Spaniards have used cocaine within the past year, and it's 7% of high school students. In the EU as a whole, less than 1% of persons used cocaine. One in five European cocaine users is Spanish. This sounds to me like a problem. Hypothesis: As Richard Pryor, I think, said, "Cocaine is God's way of telling you that you have too much money." There's lots of cash floating around in Spain.

There's an insect plague in southern and western Catalonia, some kind of tiny little black fly whose bite hurts like hell. The Generalitat is going to spend half a million euros fumigating the creeks and streams where it breeds. Sounds like something useful to do with our tax money.

Barça signed Yaya Toure, who is supposed to be a hell of a good defensive midfielder. He will replace Edmilson, and maybe Marquez as well. They announced today that Motta is definitely out, along with Saviola, of course.

Amnesty International issued one of its tendentious reports saying that 102 countries practiced torture. So of course TV3's report paid attention only to Amnesty's charges against the United States. As usual. By the way, Amnesty says it's all America's fault because we have "legitimized the use of torture," which obviously had a great deal of influence over the behavior of North Korea, Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda, who would never, never have tortured anyone if there weren't a prison camp at Guantanamo where a few hundred very dangerous people are held.

I suppose you saw that Cameron Diaz was criticized in Peru for carrying a bag with a Maoist red star and a quote from Chairman Mao. Peruvians in general don't much like Maoists, since Shining Path killed quite a few people in the name of Mao. What I want to know is why Cameron Diaz would think that wearing Communist symbols, including the infamous Che T-shirt, is cool. I'm sure she knows that wearing a swastika T-shirt would get her well-deserved public scorn. I don't see a difference between the two, myself, though the Che T-shirts are useful as they show at a glance that a person is too ignorant for you to waste your time with.

Current big political stink: They're trying to decide what route the high-speed train (AVE) will take below Barcelona between Sants and Sagrera stations. One proposal runs close to the Sagrada Familia, and a hoohaw is being made about the vibrations causing the thing to fall down or something. I doubt it; lots of subway and train tunnels have been dug under lots of cities, and Notre Dame and Saint Paul's haven't collapsed yet. Hell, the blue line of the subway already runs right under the Sagrada Familia. Also, if all the new construction they're doing collapses, I'll be more than happy anyway, since it's ugly as hell. They should have stopped building when Gaudi died and just left it.

Oh, yeah, I read somewhere that the Sagrada Familia does not have a municipal building permit, and apparently never had one. This does sound like something that ought to be worked out just for the sake of coherence.

Let's do another blog roundup, since it's been at least a week.

Notes from Spain has an interesting series up of several posts by guestbloggers, all folks who write in English from Spain. Check it out.

Observing Hermann has news on the Tom Cruise-Scientology-Germany thing; by the way, Drudge reported it wrong yesterday. The German military said it would ban Cruise from filming at military sites, but the country of Germany itself did not, and probably cannot, ban Cruise from making a movie there.

Robert Duncan reruns a 2003 piece on the confusing Spanish Gas Natural-Endesa corporate-government brawl in which regional nationalism raised its head as usual.

Roncesvalles reports on thug street violence in Germany, with photos.

Samizdata features a fine piece of verse on the silly new sporran law.

South of Watford comments from the left on the deaths of the six soldiers in Lebanon. Spanish Pundit has more from the right, including photos.

The Dissident Frogman flays French government and politics in general.

A Fistful of Euros reports that a wacky German Holocaust denier who was sentenced to prison is getting support from the flaky American extreme right. Sounds like they deserve one another. Reminder to AFOE: These nutballs have little to no influence on American opinion. Nobody pays any attention to them.

The Brussels Journal, meanwhile, has a completely different story; they say that the wacky guy is not a Holocaust denier, but an anti-abortion activist, who compared abortion with the Holocaust. That's a rather different kettle of fish, methinks, well within the bounds of free speech and not Holocaust denial at all. The BJ says that a lot of this guy's supporters are European, not just American.

Colin Davies, as always, is full of information about Spain; today it's politics.

Davids Medienkritik links to a criticism of German media exploitation of Guantanamo.

Eursoc has an extensive rundown, from the sceptical position, of the EU treaty agreement or whatever it is.

Fausta has more on Correa and Morales, part of the Axis of Evel Knievel along with Chavez and Castro.

La Liga Loca names his all-star Spanish League team; only Messi and Iniesta from the Barça make it, which seems about right to me. Only questionable choice: Poulsen instead of Albelda or Xavi.

LA-Madrid Files points out what's wrong with the Spanish movie industry: It makes crappy movies.