Quick news brief: The cops found an ETA car with 100 kilos of explosives and detonators in Huelva province. It was not set to explode; presumably, the explosives and detonators would have been used to make several bombs.

A Madrid judge declared the Latin Kings an illegal organization. In Catalonia, though, they're an officially recognized cultural group that gets subsidies from the regional government.

A big kerfuffle is being made over the negotiations on Germany's proposed lite EU treaty. Spaniards, who are real big on the EU because it gives Spain lots of money and because a lot of them trust European bureaucrats more than Spanish politicians, hope that opposition from the UK and Poland will fail. Don't be so sure. I don't think many of the EU states are going to want to give up much more power to Brussels. France and Holland already voted no, remember, and no British government is going to give up its control over the currency or its own foreign and defense policy.

Puyol popped a ligament at an exhibition game in South Africa and will be out for three months, which is probably not such a bad thing because he needs the rest. Oh, get this, the Barça players were invited to meet Nelson Mandela and only five showed up. Garments are being rent over the squad's lack of solidarity.

From Wikipedia:

In 1961, Mandela became the leader of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (translated as Spear of the Nation, also abbreviated as MK), which he co-founded. He co-ordinated a sabotage campaign against military and government targets, and made plans for a possible guerrilla war if sabotage failed to end apartheid. A few decades later, MK did indeed wage a guerrilla war against the regime, especially during the 1980s, in which many civilians were killed. Mandela also raised funds for MK abroad, and arranged for paramilitary training, visiting various African governments.

What a disgrace. In Austin, Texas, a lynch mob killed a passenger in a car that hit a child, who was slightly injured. There aren't many details, fortunately, but it seems that the crowd surrounded the car and beat the passenger to death.

This would be getting a lot more press if it were a white lynch mob killing a black man, but in this case it was a black lynch mob killing a Hispanic man.

Now let's see what law enforcement does.

It's been a long time since we did a blog roundup. So let's do one.

A Fistful of Euros has a good, long piece on European demographics in response to an article in the Economist. Check it out.

Biased BBC reports on the internal BBC study that determined the network is indeed biased.

Colin Davies has more groovy stuff on Gallego politics and fiestas and weather.

Ray comes out of the closet at Davids Medienkritik! Congratulations!

Eursoc comments on the French legislative election.

Expat Yank slaps around pro-Argie Brits.

Guirilandia has the dope on Barcelona street scams (with video) and deviant sexuality. Notes from Spain features more deviancy.

Kaleboel warns us that Spanish vultures have invaded Holland, with video.

La Liga Loca has the first half of his report on the Spanish football weekend up. Nicholas Mead has more.

LA-Madrid Files demolishes a self-hating Yank.

Spanish Pundit has more on Spain, the EU, Cuba, and Palestine.

I thought this was funny. I'm mother-in-law sitting, and I put on my Pogues greatest hits CD. My mother-in-law asked, "Isn't the singer really old?" Well, yes, his body probably had about 80 years on it by the time this stuff was recorded, and probably has 80 more on it now, making him 160 in Shane years. I remember once he claimed he had been drunk since the age of thirteen. Not that he'd been drinking, that he'd been drunk.

She actually doesn't care what kind of music I play, though she seems to prefer swing and standards. She'll tolerate the Ramones, though.

The political news around here is that the Convergència i Unió coalition may break up. CiU is moderate-conservative and Catalan nationalist, and they're the second-biggest vote-getters in Catalonia. Convergencia is the more moderate and more Catalanist of the two parties, and Unio is more conservative and less Catalanist; Unio is part of the European Christian Democrats.

A lot of people think that Convergencia was basically Jordi Pujol's personalist party, and that it will fragment into at least three groups, one aligning with ERC, one with the PP, and the third with Unio. Pretty much the only things that ever held this lot together were Pujol and the fact they all hate the Catalan Socialists.

There's a conflict on between Convergencia leader Mas and Unio leader Duran Lerida; both want to be the overall boss of the coalition. In addition, Convergencia would prefer to center on the region of Catalonia; they hope to cut a deal with the Socialists in Madrid, putting Mas in as Catalan premier. In exchange for backing Zap in the Congress of Deputies, Montilla would step down at the Generalitat. Unio would prefer to focus on Spain and gain a couple of ministries in a Zap cabinet, a nice juicy one for Duran Lerida.

Note: Both Convergencia and Unio are counting a few chickens before they hatch. General elections are coming up in January or February, and both C's and U's plans are based on doing well. If they do badly, they won't be in a position to cut any deals, and especially not if Zap gets beat by Rajoy, which might happen. Or if Zap takes an absolute majority, less likely but still possible.

Also, if CiU breaks up, they'll divide the moderate nationalist vote and dilute its strength, making it even less likely that they'd be in a position to cut a deal with anyone.

Soap opera in France. Segolene Royal and François Hollande have split up sentimentally and politically. Now they're going to fight it out for Socialist leadership. He wants to stay in till 2008, and she wants him out now. This is great. How much you want to bet that if Hillary doesn't become president in 2008, she divorces Bill in 2009? Meanwhile, Sarko's UMP comfortably won the second round of the legislative election last weekend, though they actually lost about fifteen seats. He will have no problems putting through whatever legislation he wants.

EU weaseliness: The EU's foreign ministers voted to "reopen an open and general dialogue" with Cuba, at the request of Zap and Moratinos. I despise Zap, but I'd dislike him less if he weren't so pro-Castro. I don't get it; I don't see what he has to gain by backing a Communist dictatorship. All I can figure out is that he must actually like Castroism and believe in the Revolution. What a dope. The Zap regime also introduced a proposal to, get this, lift the diplomatic sanctions the EU laid on Cuba after the 2003 roundup of dissidents. The dissidents have not been freed, by the way. The UK, Sweden, and the Czechs, to those countries' credit, blocked that bit of groveling; the Czechs wanted to slap heavier sanctions on Cuba.

The Boys of the Squad, our regional police force, is supposedly tracking down three Islamist cells in Catalonia. Two of them recruit jihadis to go commit terrorism in Iraq, and the other falsifies documents in order to get Pakistani Al Qaeda prospects into Spain. I'm not sure they should have announced this until they'd actually captured these guys.

Rumors: Barça may unload Rafael Márquez as well as the other eight guys who are definitely out. La Vanguardia says they want to sign Eric Abidal, fullback at Olympique Lyon; Yaya Touré, midfielder at Monaco; center-back Chivu at Roma; and Thierry Henry. Supposedly they want to buy Diego Forlán; that rumor's been around for a while. I would not sell Marquez, he's young and has upside though he had a poor season, and I wouldn't spend a lot of money on Henry, he's only got about one more year left. Gudjohnsen supposedly has an offer from Man United. Saviola's pissed off, and he's claiming he might go to Real Madrid. Ronaldinho and Eto'o are staying, says the club. Deco was not mentioned. Frank says he's going to be a tough disciplinarian next season. Everybody seems to agree that there was not enough discipline last season, and that's why they blew the title. Sounds like a simplification to me, but I'm all for being a hardass on the players. If I were paying these guys millions of euros, you can guarantee there'd be clauses in their contracts specifying no doing anything the slightest bit unhealthy.

Nobody in Spain was talking about anything but football today. The League championship was down to the last game. If Real Madrid won, they won the league; if they didn't, then Barça could take the title with a victory. The games were played simultaneously, and Barça got out to an early lead over Nastic while Mallorca took the lead over Real Madrid. For about sixty minutes it looked like the title was Barcelona's, and then Madrid scored, and scored, and scored again, and they won the league fair and square. There is no way Barcelona should ever have let this one get away, they had a lead of several points with just a few games to go, but they did. You can't win them all, but this was one they shouldn't have lost.

The papers are saying no big shakeup of the Barça squad. Rijkaard will stay, and so will Ronaldinho and Eto'o. On their way out: Motta, Sylvinho, Edmilson, Belletti, Gudjohnsen, Giuly, Ezquerro, and Saviola. Supposedly they're going to sign Chivu; this rumor is a little solider than others I've heard because it was in La Vanguardia and not one of the notoriously unreliable sports papers.

I noticed something down at the bar this evening, since of course the game was on pay-TV. The place I go is frequented by working-class guys who are perfectly OK but not too refined or well-educated or anything like that, and none is particularly good-looking. However, three of them have recently scored with fairly attractive chicks who they normally wouldn't have a chance with, and they were all there for the big game tonight.

All three of these girls are Eastern European, and a Spanish working-class guy with a steady job looks pretty good to them. So there's one social result of immigration: it has improved the sex lives of at least a few of the locals no end. I'm guessing that Asian, Latin American, Arab, and African girls tend to stick with their own folks, but the Eastern Europeans, who I'm guessing are often more mature and self-reliant and came here on their own, aren't so locked into their own communities. I'm also guessing that Spanish guys are much more likely to hit on white women than those of other races.

On the exclusion of writers in Spanish from the Catalan delegation at the Frankfurt Book Fair:

Josep Bargalló, extremist Cataloony and head of the Institut Ramon Llull, in charge of this shindig which is costing all Spanish taxpayers €12 million from the Ministry of Culture, said in the regional Parliament on March 7, "The protagonists will be the writers who express themselves in Catalan; if we invite them, the authors in Spanish will come only for the dialogues and to talk about Catalan literature...We want to explain our reality as it is and, yes, we are plurilingual, but what makes us different from others is the Catalan language; without it there would be no Catalan culture in Frankfurt."

From La Vanguardia on May 6, 2007: "Until a week and a half ago, the principal Catalan authors in Spanish had not received an official invitation from the Generalitat to go to Frankfurt."

Quimera has an excellent summary of the whole kerfuffle, reminding us that on May 26, 2006, the Catalan Parliament passed a confusing resolution; "CiU and ERC were completely convinced they had agreed to the absence of Spanish at the fair. The press interpreted it that way as well. PSC and ICV understood, however, that they had agreed to give preponderance to Catalan without excluding Spanish. But from the text of the parliamentary resolution, according to which Catalan was "the unique identifying characteristic" of Catalan literature, it was difficult to deduce anything but the exclusion of authors in Spanish."

Extremely obnoxious snobbery from yesterday's El Periódico: Woody Allen is in town making preparations for his next movie, which is to be filmed here. Now, though I haven't liked any Allen movies since Annie Hall, and I can't stand the man personally, I admit this is news, and that a visit from Woody would get coverage in any city that he was going to film in. The local press has gone nuts, though, reporting on Allen's every movement in Barcelona, and Arturo San Agustín wonders in his column whether the excessive attention lavished on Allen is a sign that Barcelona is more provincial than it would like to believe.

So far so good; that's actually not a bad topìc for a throwaway column.

Now check out San Agustín's last sentence:

"Woody Allen (is) a director who some of us Europeans like more than the numerous fat Yankees who come here on cruise ships."

What a dick.

CNN reports on bullfighter José Tomás's comeback corrida in Barcelona, which has sold out the Monumental bullring, which seats 19,000. The local press is reporting that thousands of out-of-town aficionados are paying scalpers up to €600 for a seat.

This is controversial around here because Catalan nationalists consider bullfighting to be non-Catalan, a foreign import. That's not true; Barcelona has held bullfights for centuries, had three bullrings operating in the early 1900s before heavy migration from the rest of Spain, and in 1835 saw a local revolt touched off by a bullfight gone wrong. In addition, bullfighting is popular in the town of Olot and in the Catalan towns on the Ebro.

It is true, though, that bullfighting is not as popular in Catalonia as in other parts of Spain. Andalusia and Castile are the heartland of bullfighting, but it's also popular in the Basque Country, Navarre, Aragon, and Valencia. As far as I know, the only Latin American countries where bullfighting is big are Mexico, Colombia, and Peru.

One thing is that it's not considered a sport, but rather a performance. Those who appreciate it consider it an art. I am not one of them.

I've changed my position on bullfighting at least twice. At first I thought it was barbaric and repulsive. Then I began to think that, well, I don't like it but it is part of the culture and has a long history, and who am I to tell Spaniards what to do? Now I've sort of gone back to my original idea. Just because it's part of the culture doesn't make it right, but so many people like it that you really can't ban it, that would be a miscarriage of democracy. But people should damn sure stop patronizing it unless they stop killing the bulls. The Portuguese don't kill the bull. Seems to me that doing it Portuguese-style would be a reasonable compromise.

Check this out. Fark links to this story explaining that the rules for the Miss Spain contest have been changed, and from now on mothers will be allowed to compete as well.

Here's what Fark didn't link to. Ms. Angela Bustillo, the lady who was disqualified as Miss Cantabria because she had a child, got a boob job and took off most of her unmentionables for Spanish trash mag Interviú. Check out the whole gallery of photos. Not safe for work unless you work at a strip bar.

Interesting example of European coverage of the United States in today's La Vanguardia. Washington correspondent Eusebio Val, who is normally pretty reasonable, puts up a softball piece today on page 12 of the international section. It's old news by now, at least three or four months, but some dinky little town in Louisiana banned wearing droopy pants that let your underwear show.

Now, this is not precisely big news.

Val does point out that the black mayor of the town denied that the measure was racist, as it's mostly black kids who dress like this; he's backed by the local black Baptist churches. But then he has to get all analytical, and this is where he slides off into bogosity.

Quoth Val, "The controversial law against droopy pants is a symptom of the complicated and often contradictory relationship between the Americans and questions of sex and morality." Huh? It's a little town in the middle of nowhere, not the whole country we're talking about here.

Addeth Val, "The problem goes back to the Puritan origins of the nation." I don't think the Puritans ever had much influence in Louisiana. Catholics, Baptists, Cajuns, Creoles, New Orleans ethnics, blacks, and rednecks add up to a state where they sell daiquiris at drive-through bars and where a governor once won re-election on the slogan "Vote For The Crook."

He continues, "The United States is the world's largest producer of pornographic material." Yeah, that makes sense, since we're the world's largest producer of a lot of things, including anything related to Internet.

"However, there is enormous shyness (pudor) to show certain things, and it is unthinkable to see at newsstands covers of magazines showing skin, TV programs with nudity, or topless women at the beach." I always thought that the rule was that public life is PG-rated and that private life is most distinctly rated between R and NC-17. Reason: We have a lot of people from a lot of places with a lot of different ideas, so don't embarrass other people with your own selfish behavior. Behavior that a sizable minority objects to should be done privately--don't bug the Baptists by pulling out your peter at the public pool as if you were in Germany or something. Suntan nude in your own back yard. If you want to look at skin mags, buy them and take them home with you. If you want to see sex on TV, get cable. If you want to go topless at the beach, go to a topless beach. But don't make a spectacle of yourself; that's in poor taste.

"Such an extreme is reached that it is even very difficult to find in the shops skirts for girls which do not have underpants attached inside so that their panties cannot be seen." Wait a minute. I didn't know or care about this, and I sure hope Mr. Val knows about it because he has a three-year-old daughter. If not, he shows an unhealthy interest in the subject. By the way, there's sort of a difference between this "extreme" and, say, the burka.

Then, on page 14, the next news page, there are a few international briefs, obviously much less important than the droopy-pants law in Assboink, Louisiana. One is merely a quote from the Dalai Lama in Australia: "Whether it's intentional or not, cultural genocide is happening. Without a Tibetan people, our language and culture will disappear in less than fifteen years." The second's headline is, "North Korea: Death penalty for mobile phone users." It continues, "Pyongyang has increased public executions of users of mobile phones and those who send information out of the country. The North Koreans are prohibited from communicating with the rest of the world, but some manage to listen to foreign news and use mobile phones using Chinese communications systems."

You probably already know this, but the AP is reporting that Hamas is defeating Al Fatah in the battle for Gaza; Hamas terrorists have been executing captured Fatah terrorists. The Israelis say they will do nothing unless one of the two sides attacks them. Best hope: Egypt takes over Gaza and enforces order. Not too likely. At least 20 dead and 80 wounded so far today. The bloodshed is just getting worse. And it's not America's or Israel's fault.

You were wondering where the American Black Legend comes from? Answer: A lot of it comes from the propaganda of the Old Left, both in its American and international versions. Yesterday, in La Vanguardia's post-mod culture supplement, one Robert Saladrigas, reviews John Steinbeck's newspaper reports on migrant workers in 1930s California, which have been translated into Spanish. along with Dorothea Lange's famous photographs.

Says Saladrigas, "...the tenant farmers who, dragged by the drought and the dusty winds, went with their families to California for the harvest and were treated like human garbage...he was the witness to absolute evil that surpasses any fiction...he saw with his own eyes the subhuman living standards and the deaths from consumption of the dispossessed families...living in cardboard shacks...under the tyranny of police and bullies...they saw how their children literally died of hunger...a spine-chilling human landscape...the eyes of Florence (who appears in a Lange photo) are an icon of pain, impotence, and the barbarism of soulless capitalism...savage oppression by rich Americans of other, poorer Americans."

Boldface mine.

That seems a bit excessive, no? I actually know something about the Dust Bowl, since all four of my grandparents lived through it in West Texas, and I've heard hundreds of stories. They weren't rich folks, either, they were working and lower middle class, and had all grown up on farms or ranches. Times were tough and sometimes you didn't know when you'd get paid next. It was hard to get work, and if you got work it wasn't well-paid. You didn't have a lot of spending money and there wasn't always much to spend it on. Your diet was boring and your lifestyle very basic. Some people had very bad housing and clothing.

But nobody starved to death. Times were hard but not that hard. Many people have fond memories of those years, as others do of Britain during World War II, for example. Literally millions of people starved to death in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, but the American Dust Bowl gets one thousand times the attention of the Ukrainian famine, just as Joe McCarthy's nonsense (there were no executions, of course, and nobody spent more than a couple of years in jail) gets one thousand times the attention of the Stalinist purges.

Keith Windschuttle torpedoes Mr. Saladrigas's ignorance in an excellent article titled "Steinbeck's Myth of the Okies," which appeared in the New Criterion in 2002.

Says Windschuttle,

Steinbeck’s book was presented at the time as a work of history as well as fiction, and it has been accepted as such ever since. Unfortunately for the reputation of the author, however, there is now an accumulation of sufficient historical, demographic, and climatic data about the 1930s to show that almost everything about the elaborate picture created in the novel is either outright false or exaggerated beyond belief.

Just one of many good paragraphs:

This entourage (Steinbeck's Joad family) would have been demographically unusual. Rather than large families extending over several generations, the most common trekkers from the southwest to California were composed of husband, wife, and children, an average of 4.4 members. Only twenty percent of households included other relations. Most were young. Of the adults, sixty percent were less than thirty-five years old. They were also better educated than those of the same age group who stayed behind. In other words, they were typical of those who have undertaken migration in every era, whether over the Rockies or across the Atlantic: upwardly rather than downwardly mobile young people seeking better opportunities for themselves and their children.

Another one:

In the film of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck’s statement that people owned their land not because they had a piece of paper but because they had been born on it, worked on it, and died on it is given to the half-crazy character Muley Graves. His sentiments, and the injustice of the dispossession behind them, resonate throughout the drama. Again, however, these remarks bear very little relationship to the real farmers of Oklahoma. American rural communities have rarely been populated by the permanent, hidebound settlers that urban journalists and novelists have so condescendingly assumed. Southwestern farmers in the early twentieth century were highly mobile people who felt free to move about in search of better land or even to leave the land for opportunities in town. At the 1930 Census, forty-four percent of Oklahoma farmers and forty-seven percent of those in Arkansas said they had been on their current farms for less than two years.

And another:

Rather than a tragedy, the Okie migration was a success story by almost any measure. By 1940, well before the World War II manufacturing boom transformed the Californian economy, a substantial majority of Okies had attained the goals that had brought them west. Eighty-three percent of adult males were fully employed, a quarter in white-collar jobs and the rest evenly divided between skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled occupations. About twenty percent earned $2,000 or more a year, a sum that elevated them to middle-class status after less than five years in their new state. While their average incomes were beneath those of longer established Californian families, their earnings were significantly higher and their unemployment rate significantly lower than that of their compatriots who remained in the southwest. In short, despite the Depression, California delivered on its promise.

And his conclusion:

Rather than a proletariat who learned collectivist values during a downward spiral towards immiseration, all the historical evidence points the other way. The many sociological studies made over the last forty years confirm the same picture. In the 1940s and beyond, the migrants retained their essentially individualist cultural ethos, preserved their evangelical religion, and prospered in their new environment. In popular music, Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads proved a bigger hit with New York bohemians than with California Okies, who much preferred Gene Autry and Merle Haggard. By the 1960s, the Okies and their offspring constituted an important part of the conservative coalition that twice elected Ronald Reagan governor of California.

Game, set, and match to Windschuttle.

Jonah Goldberg linked to this fascinating map. Each US state is labeled with the name of a country with approximately the same GDP. The map demonstrates why it would be very stupid for the United States to go to war for raw materials: it just wouldn't be worth it. War is bad for business. It sucks up lives and treasure. It's destabilizing. And if we took over Saudi Arabia, the great king of oil exports, all we'd be getting is the equivalent of Tennessee--a lovely state to be sure, home of my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew, but not worth enough to go to all the trouble of invading somebody and fighting a war over. If we took over Iran, all we'd get would be the equivalent of Alabama. There's no equivalent given for Iraq, but I bet it's no more productive than, say, Delaware.

There's no equivalent for Spain either, but probably Texas or Florida would be about right. Shocking: Russia's economy is no bigger than New Jersey's. How the mighty have fallen. What a complete disaster area of a country. They have never had a decent government in their whole history--probably the best ruler ever was Catherine the Great, who was comparatively enlightened, being German and all. And that wasn't precisely a liberal free-market constitutional democracy. France is economically about the size of California, meaning the only countries whose GDP is larger than any state's are Japan, Germany, and the UK. Kansas is comparable to Malaysia, which is a pretty successful country, and Missouri is comparable to Poland.

Check out the whole blog. It's cool.

Fortunately, it's a rather dull week here in Barcelona (knocks on skull). TV3 is playing up the latest bit of Catalunacy: Seems that "Catalan culture" is the "guest of honor" at the Frankfurt book fair. The Institut Ramon Llull, whatever that is, has decided that only Catalan authors who write in Catalan will be represented. That means Catalan authors who write in Spanish will not be.

Catalan authors who write in Spanish, to be excluded: Eduardo Mendoza, Juan Marsé, Javier Cercas, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

Catalan authors who have received the Katalanisch seal of approval: Pere Gimferrer, Baltasar Porcel, Quim Monzó, Joan Francesc Mira, and Carme Riera.

Gee, is there some difference in the quality and reputation of the authors in the first group and the second? I submit there is, that the first group is much better, and also sells a hell of a lot more books. Monzó is the only author in Group Two you might want to consider reading; the rest produce boring wank. Especially Porcel, the stupidest intellectual this side of Harold Pinter. Besides, Porcel is Mallorcan, not Catalan at all.

Since Mendoza is no less Catalan than Monzó, it seems to me that the writers in Spanish are being unfairly discriminated against, and if there is a dime in tax money going to this shindig then a big stink should be made. It also seems to me that, since all these books are to be sold to foreign publishers to translate into their own languages, it doesn't matter what the original language they're written in is. As far as I know every book by a Catalan author in Spanish is immediately translated to Catalan anyway.

And this is a subject that has been "bitterly debated for months." Why? Should such a small thing be such a big deal? The problem with identity politics is that nobody can see beyond his own little group.

International news: Hamas is shelling the crap out of Gaza. 36 dead and 50 wounded so far. No one is indignant. Of course, if it were the Americans or, God forbid, the Israelis... I feel very strange, knowing that Al Fatah are actually the least bad of the two warring forces. Hamas is even worse than Arafat's corrupt thugs.

With the Palestinians killing each other, naturally British intellectuals have decided to boycott Israel. I am therefore boycotting all British intellectuals who are boycotting Israel. Step One is not reading or listening to or watching any British media but the Telegraph. Goodbye Guardian, Independent, and BBC.

Here's Rafael Ramos on page 10 of La Vanguardia yesterday: "The British university professors' union...joined by groups of doctors, journalists, architects, and even the Church of England are enthused by the possibility that a boycott similar to that decreed against apartheid South Africa may push the government, the Israeli ruling classes, and the Jewish lobby in the United States toward the real search for a solution to the Palestinian conflict...The disproportionate influence that the Israeli community exercises in North America (sic) is already well-known."

Complete and total anti-Semitism. Boycotting Israel while not boycotting Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Zimbabwe, Burma, et cetera, shows that the boycotter has his priorities confused, and the reason is that he doesn't mind leftist murders but he hates Jews. Comparing democratic Israel to apartheid South Africa is a foul, stinking piece of moral equivalency. And saying the Jewish lobby in the United States is behind Israeli policy equals believing that the Jews are running America for their own purposes. As an American, I call bullshit on that. The Americans are running America, and calling America a Jewish sock-puppet is the rankest Protocols of the Elders conspiracy theory.

More Ramos gems: He accuses Alan Dershowitz of "threatening" the British anti-Semites by calling for a counter-boycott, calling it "an attempt at intimidation." Says Ramos, "Money rules...the pressure organized by the hardest-line sector of the Israeli lobby in the US will probably succeed in watering down the boycott."

Largest immigrant communities in Spain: Morocco 575,000; Rumania 525,000; Ecuador 420,000; UK 315,000; Colombia 260,000; Bolivia 200,000; Germany 165,000; Argentina 140,000; Itasly 135,000; Bulgaria 120,000; China 105,000; Peru 100,000. Regions with more than 12% immigrants: Madrid, La Rioja, Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia, Balearics, and Canaries. Makes sense; except La Rioja, that's where the jobs are. Northern and western Spain get the fewest immigrants.

La Vangua's foreign correspondent in Havana reports that food rationing is making poor Cubans fat since they get lots of greasy carbs and not much else. Those rations last ten days or two weeks. Then they have to scrape up the rest of their food through the black market, theft, money sent by relatives, and prostitution. He also says that a high-capacity submarine fiber-optic cable is being laid between Cuba and Venezuela, which will multiply Castro's communications capacity by 2500. Since Cuba has about eight phone lines, prohibits Internet, and has no use for such a cable, since one-tenth of the cable's capacity would be enough to monitor all Venezuelan phone calls, and since a Cuban-Venezuelan company got a contract from Chavez to produce new ID cards and passports for all Venezuelan citizens (including a chip with all personal information), he is a bit suspicious.

The cops found two GRAPO weapons caches, one outside Barcelona and the other in Murcia. Let's hope this really is the end of the road.

Finally, under pressure by CiU, the Catalan "historical memory law" will pay homage to all the victims of the Civil War, and "not just those of the Francoist repression." The law will refer to "the memory and the dignity of the victims of political violence in the Republican rear-guard and the persons who suffered persecution because of their religious option." Pretty good but not good enough. If the law refers specifically to Franco and the Nationals as a band of murderers, but doesn't do the same to the Republican government in general and the CNT, POUM, and Communists in particular, it's not balanced.

Get this. The Air Force actually considered spending $7.5 million back in 1994 to research a chemical weapon ("hormone bomb") that would turn enemy soldiers gay; presumably, they would then proceed to arrange flowers and stage musicals while our troops would just, uh, cruise on by.

Not much big news. Zap and Rajoy had their meeting and nothing really happened. Maragall formally resigned as president of the Catalan Socialist Party, but he's been effectively in retirement since Montilla took over the Generalitat. Spain topped the 45 million mark in population; 4.5 million, a full 10%, are immigrants. Sarkozy's UMP cleaned up in the first round of the French parliamentary elections, with 40% of the vote; the Socialists got 25%, Bayrou got 8%, and the Commies, Greens, and National Front all got less than 5%. The runoff is next weekend and the Socialists are in a panic, calling on all the left parties to back them to "fight against the hegemony of the right." Bet it don't do no good.

Saturday night football was wild. With about one minute left in the simultaneous matches, Barça was beating Espanyol on two goals by Messi, one with his hand, and Zaragoza was beating Madrid. Barça would nearly have clinched the league title, as they'd have a three-point lead with one game to go. But Tamudo scored for Espanyol and Van Nistelrooy scored for Madrid, and both games suddenly ended in a draw. The Bar Els Rossos became very quiet and Xavi, the owner, went outside and smashed his signboard over one of the posts that keep people from parking on the sidewalk. Now Madrid has nearly clinched the league title, since all they have to do is beat a weak Mallorca team, and it doesn't matter what Barça does.

Barça had the league in its pocket twice, and gave up goals in the last minute first to Betis and then to Espanyol. They blew it. You can't win them all, though, and I wouldn't shake up the squad too badly. Ronaldinho and Eto'o still have upside to their careers, not to mention Messi.

Note: I do not know all the details of this story, but I do know that Messi signed with Barça when he was only about 13, and they gave him growth hormone, saying that he was undersized and had a deficiency. Players signing for pro teams below age 16, and pro teams giving their kids such powerful drugs, both seem wrong to me.

Andy Robinson, La Vanguardia's New York correspondent, is one of those guys who can never pass up an opportunity to sneer at American society. Never once has American society ever done anything sensible or reasonable, in Robinson's way of thinking.

So Andy decides to write a softball piece on food in the US. Naturally, he has criticized what he sees as the burger-laden "American diet" many times, never considering that many Americans do eat fresh vegetables and fish and lots of healthy stuff like that.

Now he's suddenly discovered that there is such a thing as a farmers' market. In case you'd never heard of them, every town of any size has one at least once a week. Local truck farmers sell their produce. My dad goes to the one in downtown Overland Park every Saturday morning in season to buy green beans and tomatoes and canteloupes and peaches and corn on the cob. You get a good deal both on quality and price. Not everybody shops there--Andy says only about 8-10% of Americans--but it's an available option that's becoming more popular. Andy adds that there are 44 farmers' markets in New York, more than ever before, which means that it's not only us folks out there in Kansas who can get this stuff.

This looks like a promising trend, Americans buying healthy fresh food locally, doesn't it?

Nope. Andy's take is that the reason behind it is that the Yanks are--get this--"frightened of the contamination of massified foods." The headline is, "Global fear, local food." It wouldn't be because the Americans are developing better tastebuds or want to be healthier or any other intelligent reason, it has to be because they're afraid. The Europeans constantly peddle the line that everything we do in America is because of fear.

He adds, "Ironically, 30 years ago massified and scientifically reconstructed food was considered safer and more hygenic than natural, local products." Huh? I remember lots of natural, local products available for sale in 1977. Hell, I remember going out to the local pick-your-own strawberry farm every summer, to the apple orchard every fall, and planting a fairly large garden as well. I don't remember anyone ever saying that such food was unsafe or not hygenic, at least not if you washed it first. In fact, that was the collectivist Seventies, when everybody was into brown rice and stuff like that. Duh. The other thing I remember people doing, which they don't do as much anymore, is putting up fresh foods for the winter in Mason jars.

Since ETA hasn't killed anybody yet, the big news here is the football. Real Madrid and Barcelona are tied on points at the top, with Sevilla two points back. Madrid holds the advantage in case of a tie in the standings. Each team has two matches left; Barcelona plays Espanyol tonight at home, Madrid plays Zaragoza away, and Sevilla plays Mallorca away. The games are all scheduled at the same time, 9 PM.

Madrid can clinch the title tonight if they win and Barça and Sevilla lose; Barça fans, of course, are rooting for a Madrid loss or draw combined with a Barça victory. Even a Barça draw would be acceptable if both Madrid and Sevilla lose.

Realistically, the most likely team of the three to fail would be Real Madrid, since they are playing away, Zaragoza is a good team, and it also has something to play for; with a victory it can clinch a spot in the UEFA cup next year. So Zaragoza will be a hyper-motivated opponent. Barça is playing at home, so it has the advantage; Espanyol is not a bad team, but they're playing for nothing but pride, since they're set in the midtable. Agreed, pride is a pretty strong motivation to beat your crosstown rival. Sevilla is playing away but Mallorca has nothing to play for; they're also set in the midtable. So Sevilla is likely to pull out a win.

There are rumors of maletines flying every which way; a maletín is a briefcase, and it is assumed to be full of cash. Everyone in Spain believes that Barça has offered a huge bonus to the Zaragoza players if they beat Madrid, and that Madrid has done the same to the Espanyol players. This practice is strictly illegal but everyone assumes that it happens all the time. You get in big trouble in the States if you get caught making payments of any sort to opposing players, and we just assume it isn't done at all.

Earlier this season Torii Hunter of the Minnesota Twins tried to pay off a promise he made at the end of last season; if the Kansas City Royals swept Detroit, Minnesota's rival for a playoff spot, he'd spring for a couple of cases of champagne. The Royals swept them, against all odds, and Hunter (known as an all-around good guy) was going to pay off at the beginning of this season when the Twins made their first visit to KC. Now, this is obviously just a fun thing, not real money--what does that cost, a couple grand for the good stuff? That's pocket change to a ballplayer--and a sign of respect between guys on different teams, but the league told them no, Caesar's ballplayers must be above all suspicion.

So tonight Ronaldinho can't play because of that ridiculous foul he got red-carded for in the last game two weeks ago. Rijkaard's lineup is going to be Valdés; Zambrotta, Puyol, Thuram, Van Bronckhorst; Xavi, Motta, Deco; Iniesta, Eto'o, Messi. Looks pretty good except for that large hole right in the middle named Motta. Márquez will be on the bench; why not play him there?

Batasuna leader Arnaldo Otegi was imprisoned at 1 PM today; the Supreme Court made his 15-month suspended sentence effective and he will have to serve it. Good. Zap is finally showing a little backbone. Now he has to ban the ANV, Batasuna's front party, in order to meet the PP's conditions for their support. Rajoy is not going to demand any firings; he said he didn't want to humiliate anyone, and declared that the PP would "shoulder its burden" against ETA as long as "there is no return to the path of negotiations."

Said Rajoy, "I will tell Zapatero that I will support anyone, no matter whether he has done things well or badly in the past, if he wants to defeat ETA." Good. Rajoy is going to be responsible and cooperate in order to reach everyone's goal. I think the PSOE is on board now and ETA will be crushed very soon. Unfortunately, it should have been crushed at least two years ago, and it wasn't thanks to Zap's acceptance of the alleged truce. Now some more people are going to be killed in ETA's last stand.

De Juana Chaos has already gone back on hunger strike and Judge Castro of the National Court ordered that he be force-fed if necessary. I wouldn't bother force-feeding him, I'd just let the son-of-a-bitch die. He wouldn't be missed. José Bono called him "an excrement of the human species," which is a pretty good one.

Nicolas Sarkozy is off to a good start: He's proposing an €11 billion tax cut, including the elimination of estate taxes for spouses and an €150,000 exemption for children, the elimination of taxes and "contributions" on overtime wages, a direct tax (income, property, capital gains) maximum limit of 50% of total income, an income tax exemption for students who earn less than three times minimum wage, and an income tax deduction on mortgage interest payments for the first five years. Sounds pretty good to me, since we all know that as much of national income as possible should stay in private hands. Viva Adam Smith.

Coincidentally, France is to hold national parliamentary elections next week; the first round is June 10 and the runoff is June 17. Sarkozy's UMP will roll.

A bunch of squatter hippie anarchists tried to disrupt the G-8 meeting. Fortunately, they didn't get within five miles of Bush and Merkel and Sarko. Way to go, cops! Beat 'em, thump 'em, let's go, Cops! I thought it was cool when the police launch ran over the Greenpeace boat.

By the way, here's the video of the Mossos roughing up the Russian girl.

Chemical Lali Solé claims today in La Vanguardia that the arms manufacturing sector is "the pivot" of America's GDP. America's GDP in 2006 was $13.2 trillion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Total American exports, including arms, and also food, machinery, technology, entertainment, raw materials, manufactured goods, and so on, added up to $1.4 trillion, while the domestic service sector alone accounted for $5.5 trillion.

The hippies at Common Dreams say that US arms exports totaled $9.7 billion in 2001, and that future contracts worth $12 billion were signed that year. $9.7 billion in arms is a very small percentage of $1.4 trillion. Gee whiz, looks to me like the "pivot" of the US economy is services, and arms exports are insignificant.

Meanwhile, in 2006, total US defense spending was $621 billion. That means total US defense spending is a little more than 2% of GDP. And Wikipedia says that a maximum of $1 trillion is spent on arms in the entire world per year.

You'd be surprised how easy it is to find neat statistics like these if you google "united states gdp", which Lali doesn't seem to have thought of doing.

Here's something interesting I came across by accident: an interview with former Barcelona mayor Pasqual Maragall in the International Herald Tribune from 1991, the year before the Olympics. Note the concern with street crime and heroin addiction; one has multiplied and the other has disappeared, because all the heroin addicts got AIDS and died. Maragall is rather dismissive of Catalan nationalism, hopeful about the European Union, and concerned by ETA terrorism--some things never change. Problems like immigration had not reared their heads yet.

One thing that all of us who criticize Maragall have to admit is that the Olympics really were a great success, and he probably did more than anyone else to make them one. Too bad he was such a lousy regional premier.

De Juana Chaos is in jail in Madrid, and they've ordered that he be force-fed if he goes on hunger strike again. Judge Garzón pulled the passports of Batasuna leaders Otegi and Barrena, and prosecutors have petitioned the Supreme Court to imprison Otegi based on his previous convictions and suspended sentences. Otegi may go to prison as soon as this evening. Zap and justice minister Fernández Bermejo publicly warned the ANV that it might be banned at any time under the Political Parties Act.

At 6 AM today, the French cops arrested three ETA medium-size fish, part of the recruiting squad, in a town near the Spanish frontier. One of them was in on the robbery of 350 pistols last year at a French factory, and another one is a suspect (he was acquitted in 2006) in a murder in Zaragoza, as well as being an instructor in explosives and firearms. French cops had been surveilling them for a couple of weeks, and decided to make the arrests now because they thought this cell might be ready to pull an attack in Spain.

Looks like Rajoy is pretty much getting what he wants, though I'd hold out for Conde Pumpido's head before I'd be willing to make nice. Then the responsible thing for Rajoy to say would be something like "We have many differences with Mr. Zapatero and the PSOE, but we know that we must work together with the PSOE and other democratic parties that oppose violence in order to form a united front and finally defeat ETA. We are willing to put aside our disagreements until the next election if the PSOE is willing to do the same." Besides being the right thing to do, it would also be politically expedient; the PP could go around saying "We're not dividers, we're uniters." They'd gain a lot of votes in the center and lose very few on the right; the right has nowhere else to go anyway.

The pundits say there's no way Zap's going to call an early election; it'll be in March 2008, and the Andalusian regional election will be held the same day. Reason: Andalusia is the PSOE's breadbasket, and Zap figures that the regional election will bring out even more voters there.

There's another piece of important terrorism news that won't get much play outside Spain: The Guardia Civil arrested six persons in Barcelona's Sant Andreu district last night. They're accused of being members of the "very violent Marxist-Maoist organization" GRAPO, sort of the Spanish version of the Red Brigades. They've been killing people since 1975, though not nearly as often as ETA. Two of those arrested murdered the wife of a Zaragoza businessman in February 2006, the gang's last killing. The other four were infrastructure, running safe houses and the like. This was apparently GRAPO's last operative cell. The leadership was arrested in June 2006 in Reus, and they ratted out this last bunch; one of them personally led the cops to the GRAPO safe house where the bust was made. The Guardia Civil says there may be more arrests, and that they have evidence that will solve several bank robberies.

Goodbye GRAPO and good riddance.

La Vanguardia's worst columnist, Baltasar Porcel, was awarded something called the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes, which is passed out by an Catalanist organization called Ómnium Cultural. This guy is Earth's most boring novelist and least astute political commentator. He's getting old, though, and he just went through a bout of cancer, so we suppose this will make him happy in his twilight years without really hurting anyone else. A couple of people might actually be encouraged to read one of his books, but the damage will likely be minimal because no one has actually gotten beyond page 38 in any of them.

Past Porcel posts here.

Yesterday evening the Catalan police, the Mossos d'Esquadra ("Boys of the Squad") held a big old demo in downtown Barcelona, about 4000 strong, demanding that Communist interior counselor Joan Saura, in charge of the regional cops, resign. The Squad Boys say that they're demoralized and feel discredited, and that it's Saura's fault. Yeah, Saura is a dope and couldn't manage an ice cream stand; he's still a Commie, for Christ's sake. But the problems in the Mossos go back much farther than Saura's term in office, and Saura wasn't the guy who told the Mossos to beat up the Russian woman or not restrain the gypsy kid who jumped out of the squad car. I'm generally pro-law and order, but the Mossos have not looked at all good recently and they've got no one to blame but themselves.

TV3, which is not precisely a PP sock puppet, is reporting, based on anonymous police sources who met with Zapatero yesterday:

ETA is capable of immediately attacking anywhere in Spain...According to police information, ETA has taken advantage of the 14 months of truce to recover from the most recent police roundups. At this moment, ETA has about one hundred militants ready to take action, of which between 20 and 25 are organized into cells. It also has explosives and the technical and human means necessary to make car bombs.

The police fear that the gang will decide to commit an attack in order to cause alarm, and therefore is not ruling out a murder. Evidence confiscated from the "Donosti" cell, broken up at the beginning of this year, shows that the first target might be police officers, though ETA might also attack PSOE, or even PNV, political office holders, as the ETA communique announcing the end of the truce harshly criticized these two parties.

I don't know if my comment the other day had any effect or not--I know that a couple of people at La Vanguardia read this blog--but La Vanguardia has redesigned their website, which they have obviously been working on for months, and they have dropped the link to the prostitution classified ads. They have not quit running prostitution classifieds in the print edition; there's a full page of them today.

TV3 is reporting that, at a press conference this morning, Zap said that he would not call an early general election (his term runs out in March 2008), and added that he wanted the PP to help "shoulder the burden." Mr. Zapatero, I think the PP already told you what you'd have to do if you wanted to convince them that you now believed in fighting ETA for real. You've only done one of those things so far, jailing De Juana Chaos. You have a few more policy and personnel changes to make. Rajoy is absolutely right on this issue. He doesn't trust you, and I don't either. You've made so many errors dealing with ETA already.

One thing. If I were Rajoy, my bit of collaboration would be not calling for a new election, on the grounds that terrorism had already succeeded in changing Spain's ruling party once, and taking down the Socialists now would be giving terrorists another success. The responsible thing for the PP to do is just let Zap hang himself. Why give him a push when he'll fall without one?

TV3 is reporting that De Juana has already been arrested and is being sent back to a Madrid prison to serve out his sentence for writing threatening letters. They also say that Arnaldo Otegi will most likely be jailed tomorrow, as he is currently out of prison awaiting the results of his appeal on his conviction for exalting terrorism.

More on ETA: José from Barcepundit has expanded his post of yesterday and put it up on Pajamas Media. The Big Chorizo and Colin Davies have more.

ETA's announcement has been a punch in the gut to the Zap administration. El Periodico's headline today was, "Against the ropes." La Vanguardia calls the announcement "the tipping point" for the administration. Zap went on TV yesterday afternoon and didn't say much, except for his call for support from the other political parties. He was going on again in the evening, but cancelled even though TV1 had been running announcements that Zap would do an interview for several hours.

The PP's terms, as announced by Angel Acebes yesterday, are: Ban ETA front parties PCTV and ANV; fire attorney general Candido Conde Pumpido, an outrageous choice for the position as he used to be an ETA defense lawyer; jail De Juana Chaos and ETA spokesman Arnaldo Otegi. The PP also wants to bring fairly moderate regional nationalists CiU and the PNV into any deal they cut with the PSOE. It looks like Zap is going to give in on the jailings, at least; he is going to turn loose the prosecutors on these guys. Which shows you that Zap was lying the whole time when he said that the soft treatment that De Juana and other ETA prisoners got had nothing to do with any negotiations with ETA. I would demand the head of interior minister Perez Rubalcaba as well.

Judge Grande-Marlaska said he was irritated that Judge Garzon was handling all the ETA cases, and announced that he was opening another case against Otegi for exaltation of terrorism. Again.

And the cops said that ETA has several cells ready for action in Spain, and others in France waiting to cross the border. This is pure wishful thinking optimism about negotiations on Zap's part. ETA's truce, as usual, merely gave them a chance to rearm and reorganize themselves, and Zap did nothing about it. The police must have been telling him what ETA was doing; if they know now that ETA has several cells ready, they must have known that the cells were being organized a long time before this. Zap ignored them.

Francesc-Marc Alvaro, the Vanguardia's best columnist, tears Zap a new one today. He says, "Only the very gullible are surprised at the end of the truce. Unofficially it ended with the Barajas bombing in December. And the signs come from even farther back, from the previous summer. After so many years of activity, ETA has developed a code (of behavior) that experts know how to read: what the gang thinks and what its plans are. Well, the ones who were not being advised by those experts are the Administration, concretely Mr. Rodriguez Zapatero. Or, if he was advised, then he didn't listen, which is even more irresponsible...ETA has taken advantage of such irresponsibility."

Cartoon in Sunday's La Vanguardia: An African woman is preparing what looks like a meager meal for six skinny children; the children are rather unattractive caricatures of black people, with thick lips and jutting jaws. They're sitting on the ground in front of a hut. The woman says, "The US has spent $565 billion on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 42 times what would be needed to eliminate hunger in the world in 2015." A child replies, "And what are we going to eat in 2015? Crude petroleum?" (Play on words in Spanish; see, "crudo" means both crude and raw. Ha, ha.)

a) Who really thinks that the world's hunger problem could be solved with $15 billion? Where did that figure come from?
b) I don't see Spain or Europe stepping up to do anything about world hunger. The cartoon seems to assume that world hunger is America's responsibility.
c) Iraq and Afghanistan are comparatively cheap wars; see Niall Ferguson in the Wall Street Journal today.
d) The US spends lots of money on defense. This is largely because it's our job to be the world's policeman. It's our job because Europe wimped out. Any European who dislikes the American role as the world's cop needs to immediately call for the quadrupling, at least, of his own country's defense budget.
e) It is a lot easier to get your people to pay taxes for their own benefit than for the benefit of some people in a faraway country who they do not know. This is why your country isn't helpìng Africa out too much, either.
f) Could Africa's situation possibly be Africa's own fault, and if this is true, why is it the United States's job to send money?
g) If Africa's situation is to be blamed on colonialism, where does the US come in, since we never tried to colonize Africa? Shouldn't it be England and France and Belgium paying the bills, not us?
h) For the last time, Afghanistan has nothing to do with oil, and neither does Iraq. Afghanistan has no oil, and Iraq's oil was its problem, because any bandit warlord like Saddam who managed to seize control of the state suddenly had a lot of money to spend on weapons. America does not need Iraq's oil, and even if we did, it's a lot cheaper to buy it than steal it. No American president would ever go to war to grab raw materials, because we have plenty of our own and war is bad for business. The very idea of going to war for raw materials is an 18th century mercantilist concept popular in Latin countries, where economic thinking is very backward.

But left-wing Radio Ser, Spain's least responsible radio network (much worse than Cope, whose lies are limited to Spanish internal politics; Ser regularly lies about the entire world) is running two-page ads in the Spanish press. On the left page, there's what looks like a blurry photo of a violent Baghdad street scene, with the title in large yellow letters, "Weapons? No, petroleum." On the other page there's a photo of the aging, egotistical, and unintelligent radio host Gemma Nierga, a PSOE mouthpiece, who read the manifesto at one of those anti-American rallies they had in 2003.

Looks to me like Radio Ser is advertising that they're going to tell you the lies you want to hear.

Speaking of oh-so-holy do-gooding La Vanguardia, they link from a prominent place on their own website (under the masthead, run your cursor over "Clasificados," and "Contactos" will appear) to this. That is, they're acting as pimps, shilling up clients for prostitutes, some of whom are victims of debt slavery.

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.