ETA has been struck a massive blow. The police started rounding up 45 members of the ETA-front organization Ekin, who will apparently be found guilty of membership in ETA. 28 of them have already been arrested. Until now they have been free on bail. Their trial has lasted for more than a year, and the verdicts are scheduled to be released sometime before December 10.

Of course, we all expected the verdict to be guilty--in Spain, when they get to the point of actually trying somebody, they've generally got a very strong case against him. The judge has ordered their arrest on the ground they are flight risks, because they are looking at some seriously long sentences, between 4 and 19 years. Since 52 persons were put on trial, and there are warrants out for 45, seven were either acquitted or received suspended sentences.

Ekin, according to La Vanguardia, is the "social, political, international, economic, and media network of the ETA terrorist organization." Among those already under arrest are former Herri Batasuna leaders José Luis Elkoro and Francisco Murga, and ETA mouthpiece lawyer Txema Matanzas. They are going to be convicted on charges of belonging to a terrorist organization, defrauding Social Security and the taxman, and forgery. Here is the complete list of those tried.

What happened the last time that a bunch of ETA collaborators was sent to jail, when they rounded up the leaders of Segi, the youth brigade, was that they didn't surrender to the cops but went into hiding for a week. Then they held a mass ceremonial rally and turned themselves in to the law in a group, making great street theater and firing up all their supporters. Looks like the judge doesn't want to give this lot the chance to pull a stunt like that.

This means two important things. First, the judiciary has finally decided that so-called civilians who assist ETA are just as guilty as the thugs who pull the trigger. Second, one common hypothesis for an eventual deal cut with ETA--I would prefer no deals, just crush them, they're terrorists--is that ETA would turn over its arms in exchange for an amnesty for its members who didn't personally commit violent crimes. If this is the plan, then the government now has a lot more bargaining chips.

Supposedly, on Saturday, the Great Barcelona Transport Snafu will come to an end, and service on all the RENFE commuter and regional lines running south and west from Sants station will be restored. The FCG line running west from Plaza España will be out of service for several more months, and the high-speed AVE line will not enter service for at least three more months.

So get this. The extremely controversial plan to reduce the speed limit on the motorways entering the Barcelona metropolitan area from 100-120 kph (60-75 mph) to 80 kph (50 mph) will also take effect Saturday. Supposedly the objective is to reduce pollution, but I swear that don't make a damn bit of sense to me. I figure that you want the speed limit to be as high as safely possible so that traffic will clog up less. The more traffic clogs up, the more smog-producing gasoline is wasted by idling, not to mention the time wasted by everyone part of the traffic jam. In addition, driving slower than is safely possible irritates drivers a great deal, and irritating the citizens unnecessarily does not sound intelligent to me.

In Spain, we have public holidays on December 6 (Constitution Day) and December 8 (the Immaculate Conception), which means that week generally becomes a vacation for a lot of people. This year, according to La Vanguardia, Catalans' Number One vacation destination will be New York. Seems the dollar is very low and they all want to go over there and buy out the whole city. All I can say is if America sucks so bad, how come everybody wants to visit it?

So, anyway, all you folks in New York and Orlando, get ready for a flood of Spaniards the first week in December, especially between Thursday the 6th and Sunday the 9th. They're the ones complaining about the food and not leaving tips.

The six illegal abortionists arrested this week had a hearing and testified; they have been bound over without bail until Monday. Looks like they'll be charged with conspiracy, forgery, and practicing without a license as well.

The EU's economic growth rate this year is 2.9%, and the Eurozone's is 2.7%. Not stunning, but not total stagnation either.

Looks like the PSOE has reached similar conclusions to the PP about electoral strategy; they're trying to tone it down, especially in the areas of regional nationalism. The PSOE doesn't want to offend any nationalists by harping on the theme of the unity of Spain; they would rather not put off the ones they have a chance at winning over, and not fire up the ones they don't have a chance at in order to keep them at home on election day.

Fighting broke out last night around the Vicente Calderón stadium in Madrid. 17 people were injured when the local Frente Atlético hooligans took on the Aberdeen fans before, during, and after the UEFA Cup game. There was some criticism about the light touch used by the Barcelona cops on the Glasgow Rangers supporters who came here a few weeks ago; the Rangers fans drank a lot, smashed a few bottles in the Plaza Catalunya, and urinated prodigiously in public. But there was no serious fighting or vandalism, and nobody got hurt. I thought it was pretty good police work, myself; the cops kept it under control but didn't interfere as long as there was no violence. And the public urination, which is nasty, could have been taken care of by putting up a few dozen portable toilets.

This is interesting. Check this out. They found a huge trove, literally 100 times as large as a typical discovery, of dinosaur bones, while working on the high-speed train line between Madrid and Valencia.

Other news from round here: Inflation over the last 12 months, November to November, is 4.1%; half a point of that is in the last month, with a 5% increase on packaged foods. Econ minister Solbes says inflation will continue to rise over the next several months, effectively devaluing the currency.

Meanwhile, in September 2007 the number of new mortgages taken out in Catalonia declined 26% over September 2006. I think it's safe to say that the bubble has burst. In Spain as a whole, the number of new mortgages declined 10% over that period.

They did an international education study called the PISA 2006 report in 57 countries. They tested scientific knowledge, reading comprehension, and mathematics, and Spain did lousy. The United States didn't do any better. Finland came out on top, with 563 points, followed by Hong Kong with 542 and Canada with 534. Germany was 10th with 516, France was 21st with 495, the US was 24th with 489, Spain was 26th with 488, and Italy was 30th with 475. Mexico got 410, and Brazil 390. Within Spain, Castile-Leon scored highest with 520, Catalonia got 491, and Andalusia was at the bottom with 474.

I know how to fix the educational system. First, blow up all the education departments at every university in the country, and mercilessly liquidate the professoriate while hurling all education textbooks into enormous bonfires. And dancing the Carmagnole. Then savagely purge the teaching staffs of every school of all teachers who don't score an IQ of 90, which is about half of them. K mart is hiring, people, better get down there. Then double teacher salaries and only hire new staff with real college degrees. Then, lower the working age to 14. Allow alleged students to drop out then, or go to vocational school. Get the ones who don't want to be there, which is half of them, out of the academic schools.

The system would improve enormously.

The Guardia Civil put on a big Internet kiddie-porn sting and arrested 70 pederasts all around Spain. I had no idea so many people were so pervy that they needed to exchange photos of child abuse. Or so stupid they didn't know they would eventually get caught. Among those arrested are a high-ranking police officer and a psychiatrist, both in Zaragoza.

The Zap government held a meeting with the heads of the private TV stations regarding the "Patricia's Diary" murder. They said they should not be blamed for society's problems. What a cop-out. I don't think private TV stations ought to be censored; I do think they should have enough of a sense of decency and responsibility to follow certain minimum standards. And I would suggest that the TV stations should get on the ball and self-regulate, or the government might have to get involved, and nobody wants that to happen.

Springsteen is going to play the Camp Nou. People camped out, and they sold 55,000 tickets on the first day of sales.

Real Madrid bungled it last night in Bremen and lost 3-2, forcing them to win their last first-round match against Lazio in order to qualify for the next round. Valencia was eliminated from the Champions' League with a draw against Schalke. Chelsea, Milan, Man U, Inter Milan, Sevilla, Arsenal, and Barça have already qualified for Round Two, and Celtic is very close.

There's gonna be some Catalunacy on Saturday at 5 PM, since the Cataloonies and the Commies, along with CiU, who are usually moderate Catalanists but always have to wave the bloody shirt at election time, are gonna put on a big old demo downtown. Get this: Our old friend Joel Joan and Catalonia's only porno director who works in Catalan, Conrad Son, will be there. By the way, Son actually gets subsidies from the Generalitat in order to linguistically normalize porn. Joan and Jordi Pujol are already firing up the faithful, calling on them to come out "in favor of the dignity of Catalonia and against the insults of Rajoy and Zapatero."

The organizer of the rally is basically CiU, using the name of the Platform for the Right to Decide, which coincidentally is CiU leader Artur Mas's campaign slogan. They're trying to play on the Great Barcelona Transport Snafu, a major black eye for the Socialists, by demanding Generalitat control over the transport system, along with the right to collect all income tax paid within Catalonia and to spend it exclusively within Catalonia. The Catalanists are claiming that each Catalan pays €1000 more in taxes than he receives in government services, but they sort of skip over the fact that each Madrileño pays twice as much. And, of course, taxes are paid by individuals rather than regions, and since Catalonia is a wealthy region, it has lots of wealthy and middle-class individuals who pay comparatively high taxes. I thought all us leftists was in favor of progressive taxes.

Anyway, here's the least bold prediction ever made: The Junior Cataloony Youth Squad is going to put on a riot after the demo, probably with some help from the squatters, and some hell will be raised. The cops ought to be planning for it, and have eight hundred guys there ready to bust some heads. I bet they don't.

Other election news: Jose Bono is going to return to politics and run first on the PSOE list for Toledo. When he wins, he'll become speaker of the Congress of Deputies. I rather like Bono, he's more reasonable than your average Socialist, and I'd really like to see moderates like Ruiz Gallardon, Bono, and Miquel Roca start a Liberal Party in this country; if you could pull 10% of the vote you just might become the swing vote between the PSOE and PP.

La Vanguardia says that the PP is going to turn down the tone on its campaign and run more toward the center than the right, in response to the recent surveys that put them fairly close behind the Socialists. I've been telling them to do that for, oh, the last two and a half years or so.

Anyway, the PP thinks that there's no way they're going to gain any votes from the PSOE in the center--they've pissed off everybody who didn't already sympathize with them over this conspiracy theory bullshit--, so what they want to do is tone it down in order not to piss off the leftist voters and thereby reduce their turnout on election day. It seems that rhetoric about the unity of Spain and claiming that Zap sympathizes with ETA inflames many of these leftist voters. They would usually go Commie or radical regional nationalist, or stay home, but they may go Socialist if they are frightened enough of a PP victory that they'll vote for the PSOE as a lesser evil. Therefore, the solution is to sit down and shut up and not scare anybody.

Also, the PP figures that there are at least one and a half million shaky Socialists who are not regular voters and only came out in the last election because they were so worked up by the post-March 11 media frenzy. If those voters stay home, the PP wins, because PP voters are more faithful than leftist voters and more likely to come out and vote; the PP estimates that 90% of their regular voters are going to turn out, against 80% of regular PSOE voters. So, basically, the lower the turnout is, the more likely the PP is to win. This is probably true of conservative parties everywhere.

Oh, Jesus. The Guardia Civil found machines to shred aborted fetuses (màquinas trituradores de fetus) in two of the four clinics that were raided here in Barcelona two days ago. The clinics are accused of illegally aborting babies up to 32 weeks of gestation. They only turned the machines on in the mornings because they made so much noise.

The machines were connected to a pipe that flowed into the sewer along with the waste from the toilets.

This investigation has obviously been going on for a while, because they tapped the clinics' telephones (they had a court order). One thing they learned was that the alleged doctors referred to an abortion as a "rompecocos"--that is, a "skull-buster."

It's like something out of a horror movie.

A disgruntled ex-employee informed the authorities, which led to the telephone taps. Some of the "patients" had their phones tapped, too, and some of them were put under surveillance as well. At least fifteen of these women had late-term abortions performed on them, and they are in serious trouble.

Here's a good one. Yet another survey says that Spaniards are the EU citizens most likely to participate in demonstrations, with 17.8% claiming to have been in a demo during the past year, compared to 5.7% in Europe as a whole. However, after the Portuguese, they are the Europeans least interested in politics, with 35.7% saying they have no interest at all in the subject. Nearly 50% of Spaniards say they "have difficulty forming political opinions." Spaniards are pretty happy with life, though, since they rated "life in general" at 7.4 on a scale of 10.

I wonder whether individual happiness with life and lack of interest in politics are correlated. Might be; if you spend a lot of your attention, time, and thought worrying about politics, that probably detracts from the attention you can give to your family and friends and everyday life. I will guarantee you, though, that there's a hell of a strong correlation between lack of societal interest in politics and poor quality of government. Only 7% of Danes and Norwegians say they're not interested in politics at all.

Not a whole lot of news. Maleni Alvarez, the PSOE minister of development, barely won a no-confidence vote in the Congress of Deputies with the support of the PSOE, of course, and the PNV. The PP, CiU, the Commies, and the Cataloonies all voted against her, and she squeaked through on a three-vote margin.

They arrested a 68-year-old serial-killing perv in France for 18 murders. Also in France, there's been more rioting in the Paris suburbs, and there are reports some of the rioters were packing guns.

The abortion clinics that were raided were aborting 32-week babies, which of course is infanticide, and everyone involved should be severely punished. By the way, a woman who aborts illegally in Spain can get up to a year in jail. The legal question now is related to the patients' right to medical privacy; it looks like they don't have one if a crime is suspected.

And get this: Jaume Roures, the boss of Mediapro, the production company behind the Barcelona Woody Allen movie (which is titled "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," one of the worst titles I've heard), has announced that Woody will not film again in Barcelona because of "too much mean (mezquino) pressure." Some say the pressure was over the government subsidies awarded to Allen's movie; others say the pressure came from Catalan nationalists.

Barça played a pretty good game last night in Lyon and drew 2-2 against Olympique, on a nice goal by Iniesta and a penalty on Messi that he converted. Barça has qualified for the next round in the Champions League, along with Manchester United, Roma, Inter Milan, Sevilla, and Arsenal.

Sad NFL news. Washington safety Sean Taylor, one of the league's top defensive players, died after being shot two days ago in his Miami house in an apparent robbery. Taylor had been in trouble with the law, most notably for a 2005 gun incident, but reports said he had cleaned up his act. With the climate of off-the-field violence and lawbreaking that surrounds the NFL, guys with posses with guns, something like this was bound to happen sometime. (I don't doubt that Taylor was the completely innocent victim of this murder, but I will also bet that the robber was someone he knew.) The NFL is going to have to establish some kind of program to keep its guys out of bad company; the league is in serious trouble, after Michael Vick and Ray Lewis and Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson and Rae Carruth all got in major trouble with the law.

The cops arrested six people in yesterday's abortion clinic raids. The head of the prosecutor's office said the four clinics involved, all owned by Carlos Morín, were performing "radically illegal" abortions on babies as late as 30 weeks. Interesting stats in La Vanguardia: For every 1000 women between ages 15 and 44, 9.6 abortions are performed in Spain every year. In Catalonia it's 11.4; France 14.6; England 17.2; Sweden 20.6; US 20.8; Eastern Europe 44. Spaniards are always surprised when they learn that abortion on demand is legal in the US, since they think it's such a reactionary traditional religious place.

The authorities are claiming that the Great Barcelona Transport Snafu, which is still in full swing, will be cleared up by December 1. I don't buy it. Neither does anybody else.

They rounded up another kiddie-porn Internet ring, thirteen arrests throughout Spain and three in Catalonia. The obsessed weirdos who used to hang around their basement with their handful of dirty pictures have discovered that they have access to millions of them on the Net. I don't get it. Is kiddie-porn really so attractive to these pervs, that they risk going to jail and having their lives ruined over it? And they think they can get away with doing something majorly illegal on the Internet, where your every activity can be traced? It seems that every week they bust more of these guys.
The campaign for the March 9 general election is well under way, and it's really boring. Nobody has anything new to say. The PP should be way out in front, after all the failures and errors of the Zap administration, but they're running a very limp campaign and are a couple of points behind in the polls. One thing is that there's definitely a hidden PP vote. Since it's so socially unacceptable in many circles to say you're a conservative, some PP voters aren't willing to admit it even in surveys; that's why the PP usually scores two or three points higher in the elections than the surveys predict.

Hugo the Chav called Spain "an invader." Get used to it, Spaniards, Latin American populist slander is coming your way, too.

The authorities busted six people mostly linked to the PP in a Murcia real-estate political corruption scam. Good. It's just the tiniest tip of the corruption iceberg, in which all political parties are involved.

The cops cleaned out a squat down in the Ribera this morning. The squatters are claiming that the cops beat them up. It's almost too bad they didn't.

Caja Madrid has announced that it's going to increase its share of Spanish airline Iberia to 23%, but that it's not interested in taking over the company. British Airways waived its right to first refusal, and BA isn't going to bid for the whole company, either. So far one Spanish consortium has made an offer, and there are likely to be further offers from another Spanish consortium, from Air France, and from Lufthansa.

Barcelona plays Olympique in Lyon tonight in the Champions' League. A win would be nice but not absolutely necessary in the standings, since Barça is almost certain to qualify for the next round; the problem is the psychology of the fans and the front office, who are engaged in a massive freakout because the team is only playing fairly well and because nobody trusts Ronaldinho anymore. He might play tonight; so might Bojan.

This morning the cops raided four abortion clinics in Barcelona that are suspected of performing illegal abortions. In Spain, abortion is technically illegal with three exceptions: if the fetus is defective, if the pregnancy is due to rape or incest, and if the mother's life or health is in danger. The last one is the loophole; all a woman needs to do is convince a doctor that having a baby would hurt her mental health. It is said that some clinics don't bother with this formality. The four clinics raided are thought to have performed illegal late-term abortions. The guy mentioned in this post from last year, Carlos Morin, is one of those whose clinic was raided.

Hugo the Chav is still in a snit. He says King Juan Carlos is going to have to say he's sorry for being mean or he'll "freeze" Venezuelan relations with Spain. Meanwhile, the revolt against Evo Morales has begun in Bolivia, and I'll be willing to bet that something similar happens in Venezuela after Chavez rigs the referendum and makes himself dictator-for-life.

La Vanguardia says Catalonia received 7.9 million foreign tourists last year, making it the second most-visited region in Europe after Ile-de-France. This is why the complaints that some Barcelonese make about tourists rub me the wrong way. Yes, shops and restaurants catering to tourists have become more obvious, and some tourists are regrettable or even undesirable. But tourism provides 20% of our regional income, and without it we'd be really poor. It also makes us a more international city, with all the benefit that brings. Tourism receipts in Spain have increased 81% in the last ten years. Pretty good investment, that.

La Vangua also reports that rumbles among Latin American street gangs are becoming more common, and that there are five or six places in Les Corts and Sants where they've pretty much taken over a street or a plaza. Fights between the different gangs often break out in these places, scaring the locals shitless; seven years ago we didn't have immigrant gangs around here, and they're not used to it at all. La Vangua explains to its Catalan readers that Latin culture involves sitting around getting drunk and listening to loud music in public places. The four most notorious gangs in Barcelona are the Latin Kings, the Ñetas, the Mareros, and the Black Panthers (not black Americans, but Dominicans). The Latin Kings are registered as a cultural association and receive subsidies from the Generalitat. They used the dough to make a rap CD which they are now trying to sell.

Get this. In order not to stir up public opinion, the Mossos (regional police) actually maintained secrecy about a gang fight in a Hospitalet bar back in September. One gang member was badly wounded, stabbed in the back with an 8-inch knife, and those responsible have been arrested. The local cops in L'Hospitalet are cracking down big-time on the gangs, forcing them into Barcelona itself. One cop claims that a gangster told him, "You don't scare me. If I did back home what I do here, the police would take me out back and shoot me, and I'd never be heard from again."

They drug-tested 58 drivers on Saturday night in Bilbao. 16 of them, or 27%, were under the influence.

Sports update: Barcelona beat Recreativo on Saturday night, 3-0, with a very dull first half and a quality second half. Bojan scored his first League goal, Milito scored on a header, and Messi got fouled in the area and converted the penalty. The fans and the media are still up in arms and shouting for Rikjaard's and Ronaldinho's heads. Madrid tied Murcia 1-1, and so Barça pulled within two points of the lead. Villarreal and Espanyol are having excellent seasons, and Atletico Madrid and Valencia are doing OK. Levante's clearly the worst team in the league.

Missouri beat Kansas on Saturday night, and the Jayhawks finish out the regular season ranked No. 7 with an 11-1 record, much better than anyone had predicted. Great season; no one expected it after going 6-6 last year. Kansas has never finished ranked anywhere near as high, and they'll get to go to a major bowl game. Missouri has a real chance at the national championship if they can beat Oklahoma in the conference championship game.

State of the blog report: We get about 150 readers a day, and are linked by about 120 other blogs. The only one we get a significant number of visitors from is InstaPundit. Since Iberian Notes has been around for five years now, and we've commented on pretty much everything about Spain, we get a good few Google hits as well; the two most popular themes are "gypsy surnames" and "arguments for and against bullfighting." I guess every English teacher in Spain assigns bullfighting as the topic when it's time to work on the persuasive essay. There's also a lot of interest in the Spanish royal family. The biggest recent source of Google hits was the story about the thug who kicked the Ecuadorian girl on the train; that one has caught on both in Latin America and among the multiculti diversity crowd in the States.

Last 100 visitors to Iberian Notes: United States 49, Spain 32, United Kingdom 5, Netherlands 3, France 3, Canada 2, Brazil, Germany, Israel, Australia, Belgium, and Norway 1 each.

Tikrit Tommy Alcoverro has an interview in La Vanguardia with one Moshen Bilal, who is the Syrian minister of information. That is, he's the Assad dictatorship's propaganda chief. Why the hell is La Vanguardia giving this guy a platform? It's not like he's going to say anything we haven't already heard, and it's not like he's some dissenting voice.

Get Alcoverro's introduction: "Moshen Bilal is one of the best images of Syria, previously as the efficient ambassador in Madrid, and now as minister of Information. With his white hair, a friendly manner that is not habitual among Arab leaders, he occupies a prominent position in the regime of the rais Bashir el Assad, with whom he has a close relationship. He often wears jeans and a sports shirt, and says smiling, "I'm an anarchic (sic) minister." Bilal, a surgeon, gives classes at the University of Damascus twice a week. In his office in the Baath Party building, he proudly shows me a thick university textbook."

Sounds to me like Tikrit Tommy likes--and respects--Assad's Dr. Goebbels.

A few quotes from the Fascist Baath Party mouthpiece:

"The majority of the Western media is in the hands of multinational companies, and in the United States above all it is dominated by Jewish companies. Most of its news is concentrated on subjects like Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas. With its tremendous campaign of defamation, it presents Syria as a dangerous, trouble-making, aggressive country that provokes insecurity. But when official delegations like the one of Nancy Pelosi, of the United States Congress, visit us, they realize that Syria is one of the few states in the Middle East that enjoys stability...The United States ambassador in Beirut is the real ruler of Lebanon...Our biggest problem is that, because of the United States and Israel, the government must acquire defensive weapons for our protection...(The recent Israeli air attack) was an act of provocation, and it reveals that the Israeli government has neither the intention nor the desire to make peace or renew diplomatic negotiations."

The thoroughly despicable American Klansman and Nazi David Duke is here in Barcelona today to give a speech to our local scum of the earth. Duke is going to say exactly the same thing as this worm Bilal did. The difference is that our local Illustrated and Enlightened have pitched a fit about Duke's presence. Somehow I bet nobody is going to complain to La Vanguardia about giving a Baath Party Fascist, a toady of a murderous dictator, all of Page 4 of Catalonia's largest newspaper to spew his Jew-baiting. And nobody is going to call out Alcoverro for fellating the dictator's propaganda chief in his introduction, either.

Oh, and congratulations to US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, of the Democratic Party, of course. It's not often that you get a favorable mention by an anti-Semitic Fascist propaganda boss. I wonder if Ms. Pelosi knows or cares that the Syrian regime is using her for its own anti-American and anti-Israeli purposes.

Other news from around here:

The Pope made Barcelona archbishop Lluís Martínez Sistach a cardinal, which I guess is good for Catalonia. Maybe he'll be able to get us some cash to restore a few churches and artworks around here. By the way, one of the most underrated sights in Barcelona are the smaller medieval parish churches; Romanesque Sant Pau del Camp is my favorite, and Gothic Santa Anna, Sants Just and Pastor, and Sant Pere are pretty cool, too. A lot of people miss Santa Maria del Pi, too, which is a big Gothic church with a huge interior space and an enormous rose window. Something else well worth seeing, which almost everyone misses, are the several side chapels in the Cathedral that contain 14th and 15th century Gothic altarpieces. Those need to be thoroughly restored and then better-lighted so they can be more easily appreciated; they're kind of hard to see right now. Oh, by the way, in the Cathedral check out the baptismal font, to the left going in the front door. Looks very modern, but it's 14th century early Italian Renaissance.

What they're calling "public dissatisfaction with the political situation" in Catalonia has reached 50.8%. I'm a little surprised it's that low right in the middle of the Great Transport Snafu, along with the educational mess, the immigration controversy, the rising crime rate, inflation of food prices, the bursting of the housing bubble, and the continued sniping over the nationalist issue.

Fernando Onega lets loose with a massive gilipollada today in La Vanguardia. On page 22, he says, "'Tomate' (a TV show) announced the upcoming divorce of a politician who was at the top, isn't there anymore, and crossed the pond. The whispering machine got started, and since there are few who have been at the top, they've named him. If it is confirmed, it would have more impact than the separation of the duke and duchess of Lugo. Infinitely more."

There's some ethical reporting for you! Way to check those sources! If he had, he'd have known that on page 20, Vanguardia readers had already seen the following: "José María Aznar and Ana Botella have been forced to make public a press release denying the rumors of a divorce, which they consider slanderous, and they will take legal action against those who have expressed such calumnies in the media." I wonder if they're going to sue Onega? That'd be hilarious.

Terrific editing there by whoever's in charge of that, too. Nobody caught Onega's rumor-mongering in time to pull it when the report of Aznar's denial came in.

Paco Candel died; he was a writer back in the '60s and '70s whose big book was "The Other Catalans," about the wave of Spanish-speaking migrants that were arriving in large numbers at that time. He was one of them; he tried to convince his fellow migrants to integrate into Catalan society, while also trying to convince the Catalans to accept the migrants. Everybody liked him. He was a Commie for a few years, but not one of the obnoxious ones. I never met him, but I know a guy who was a good friend of his.

A bunch of thugs--not a racist gang, just anti-social low-life types (what they call "quinquis" or "quillos" around here) because it included a couple of Moroccans and Latins along with Spaniards--attacked a bunch of middle-class alternative types at the fiesta mayor in Berga, near here, in 2005. They stabbed a guy to death, and seven of them just got convicted of premeditated murder and two more got convicted as accomplices. They got sentenced to between 25 and 43 years each, though no one serves a full sentence in Spain. Eight other minors were involved, and they have been sent to juvie for three to seven years. Some Catalanists have been claiming that the victim was picked out specifically because he was a Catalanist; I dunno, my guess is that the dirtbags involved just wanted to beat up on some middle-class youths, whom they despise as pampered pussies, wimps, mama's boys, etc. I have no problem with these guys going down for premeditated murder, since they did plan to attack this other group with knives.

Sports update: Ronaldinho has begged out of tonight's Barça match versus Recreativo, claiming that he's tired coming back off his stint with the Brazil squad. I think he's sending a clear signal that he doesn't want to play here anymore, and it's time to sell him to the highest bidder. Too bad. I've always liked him, and he was a tremendous player during two years here. Barça needs to win tonight; the pressure is high, though they're only four points behind Real Madrid with 26 games still to play.

The Barça game is one of my weekly social events; you can't beat watching the local sports team (and for you folks back in the US, people here are much more fanatical about the Barça than they are about your team in your town) among a noisy crowd of extreme fans knowledgeable about the game. I remember last year when the Barça got eliminated by Chelsea from the Champions League, Xavi the bar guy took his triangular chalkboard from out in the street and smashed it over one of those iron posts they put up so people don't park on the sidewalk. Also, beers at the bar where they show the games are only €1.30, so you can't beat the price, either.

Kansas plays Missouri tonight for the Big 12 North title and the winner will be top-ranked in the country, since No. 1 LSU got upset by Arkansas. The Aggies beat Texas, so it looks like Oklahoma wins the Big 12 South, but they have to beat Oklahoma State tonight.

Unintended irony alert: For some reason, all Spanish governmental bodies spend lots of money on publicity campaigns for or against something of civic importance. I have no idea how much it costs them, but they run slick, professional TV commercials on prime time and print full-page, full-color ads in the daily papers. My guess is this whole shebang is part of the political patronage system: incumbent-friendly ad agencies and media outlets that are party clientele get the biggest piece of the cheese.

Recent campaigns I remember have been against driving too fast, snorting coke, drinking on the job, and beating your wife, and in favor of eating fruits and vegetables, speaking Catalan, reading books, and recycling. Now the Generalitat is running one...well, I'm not sure exactly what the point is, except it's against the patriarchy because the Institut Català de les Dones (Catalan Women's Institute), a well-known source of public subsidies for feminist organizations and sinecures for party activists, is behind it.

(Among the Catalan Women's Institute's priorities, according to its website, are "the lesbian collective, migrant women, non-sexist language use, sexism in the media," and establishing gender quotas for public spending.)

So. The most recent campaign against the patriarchy has a rather "hippy happy flowers" (as they say here) aesthetic. The print ad features photos of attractive, alternative-looking teenagers, with the slogan, "Love has to be free. Free of sexism, free of anger, free of jealousy. You can make a new era begin. You just have to exercise the right to choose your friends, your beliefs, your way of dressing and acting, of thinking, of having opinions, and of loving. Don't let your partner give you orders, control you, shout at you, or limit your freedom. Love is either free or it is not love."

Aw. How cute. Of course, it will have absolutely no effect.

Here's the YouTube video of the TV commercial. The slogan is the same. Again, the aesthetic is "hippy happy flowers"; a bunch of alternative but well-groomed children of the Catalan bourgeoisie put on a fun demonstration, dancing around and singing just like it was against the Iraq war or something. Or an ad for Coke. No throwing rocks at the riot squad like it was a real demo. The song that accompanies the ad is, for some reason, in English, and it sounds sort of '60s folk-rock. I've never heard it before, so I assume that it was written specifically for the commercial.

What's strange about the song, though, isn't its sound, but its lyrics. It's a male voice singing lead. The first verse goes:

I've been walking along
Singing this song
I'm gonna play it for you

Which is not quite native English, but does sound like something that Donovan might have come up with on a bad day. Or like the beatnik in "Animal House" who gets his guitar smashed by John Belushi. Anyway, it's nice and non-threatening and gentle, right?

Now check out the second verse:

I've been walking along
Going too long
I'm gonna make it with you

Wait a minute. That sounds a lot more like James Brown. That sounds like, "Honey, I've got such a bad case of blue balls that when I get you home I'm going to bone you till I blow my jizz out your ears." Doesn't sound like the woman is going to have much choice in the matter to me. Where I come from, we call that date-rape. At the very least, it's sex-objectification.

What I wonder is: Was the choice of lyrics intentional? Does the Catalan Women's Institute have any idea what they mean?

I have a piece up over at Pajamas Media on the "El Diario de Patricia" murder story, along with a few reflections. Go read it.

"Democratic" Spanish Communists Support Iraq Terrorism

The Alfonso Comín Foundation, a Spanish Communist liberation-theology group named in honor of a notorious agitator, awarded its 2007 International Prize to one Mada al Hadeethi, "the co-founder of the Iraqi National Foundation Congress of resistance to the occupation." Past recipients include the late PSUC political commissar Gregorio López Raimundo, School of the Americas Watch, "the innocent people of Iraq" (in 1991), Abbé Pierre, "the Palestinian people" (1988), and "the Nicaraguan people" (in 1984).

Supporters of the Iraqi National Foundation Congress on the net include the UK Socialist Worker, the UK Socialist Review, Common Dreams, Indymedia, Counterpunch, the Workers World Party, and, of course, our friends at the Huffington Post and the Guardian. That is, the ususl suspects. Now we know who we're dealing with.

And in Spain? The Iraqi National Foundation Congress is supported by our old friends at CEOSI, the National Campaign against the Occupation and for Sovereignty in Iraq. The CEOSI, if you'll recall, has been inviting "representatives of the Iraqi resistance" to Spain for the last three years, and is actively collecting funds "for health care purposes." And who's behind the CEOSI? The United Left, the Spanish Communist Party, and the pro-Communist union Workers Commissions.

Now, no one in Spain claims to be more democratic than our local Communists. (They were against Franco forty years ago, don't you know.) So it is contradictory when they invite representatives of the Iraqi "resistance," who justify and practice terrorism against both Allied troops and their fellow Iraqis, as their honored guests--and actually help them to raise money.

The so-called Iraqi resistance kills people, American, British, and Iraqi. And the Spanish Communists support them through the CEOSI.

Apology for terrorism is illegal in Spain, and an ETA supporter would be immediately prosecuted for speaking in favor of the organization, much less for raising money for it. And the Political Parties Act says that organizations which support terrorism are illegal in Spain. Looks like forming a party that is speaking in favor of and raising money for a terrorist organization whose first priority is killing American troops would be apology for terrorism, along with a violation of the Political Parties Act, no?

I guess it isn't, though, if you're a democratic Spanish Communist, and if the Socialist Zapatero central government (along with the current governments of Catalonia and Barcelona) in power needs your support in the Congress of Deputies.

La Vanguardia has decided that it's going to interview everybody that the Iraqi "resistance" sends to Spain for propaganda and fund-raising; they already interviewed a Baath Party spokesman in October.

So on November 9, La Vanguardia ran an interview with Ms. Al Hadeethi of the CEOSI-supported Iraqi National Foundation Congress (La Vangua gets it wrong and calls them the Iraqi National Congress, which is a very different kettle of fish). On their back page in their daily featured spot. At least this time La Vanguardia's interviewer (Lluís Amiguet) does not fawn all over her, as they did when they interviewed the Baath party representative.

We'll cut to the chase and give you the best part first:

Interviewer: Do you justify armed resistance?
al Hadeethi: According to international law (article 51 of the United Nations Declaration), we have the right to defend ourselves against an invading army; we demand that resolution 1546 of the UN Security Council be applied.

Yep, she justifies it. She's supporting terrorism, and La Vanguardia is giving her a public platform to do it.

Here's some good stuff from the rest of the interview:

I: Who would be capable of planting a bomb in a market and killing hundreds of innocents?
al H: The Americans.

I: That would cause chaos, which would hurt them.
al H: It benefits them, because they want to provoke the division of the country, and the first phase is dividing us and firing up factions, according to their plans. And they pay mercenaries, who pay other Iraqis to plant the bombs. These bombs divide us and prevent us Iraqis from reorganizing ourselves and standing up to the neocolonial invasion.

I: I don't think it is the way you say it is.
al H: The bombs cause fear and pain and prepare the Iraqis for the next step, which will be creating three states where there was one before. They are trying to divide us into three states that will be easier to control, because while there is a drop of petroleum, the US will not leave Iraq...It is no accident that the US and Al Qaeda arrived together; they need one another to justify their violence and the occupation.

I: What does your political activity consist of?
al H: We used to meet daily to unmask the neocolonial operation that the occupation has caused. But the coordination of resistance groups in which I participate has had to reduce our meetings, because they persecute us and arrest us.

I: What is this discourse of occupation?
al H: It is banal democracy. Simply, the oil companies that are friends of the Bushes have divided up our petroleum reserves supported by an army of mercenaries that is paid by the American taxpayers. They say they have brought us democracy and freedom, and what they have done is simply steal our oil.

I: You have had free elections.
al H: Under American military occupation and that of its allies! What sarcasm! Would you call elections free in your country if it was occupied by another? All the ideological discourse of democracy and freedom is a pantomime to justify the division of our natural resources. It is a division that the Bushes have been preparing for years.

I: You voted for your government.
al H: The Iraqi government are puppets who only meet with Washington's permission, and I know because I have cooperated with the Ministry of Justice, and it is to laugh: they ask permission from the CIA to go to the bathroom.

La Vanguardia gives them a propaganda outlet, the CEOSI sends them money and moral support, the Communists and the CEOSI are the same people, and the Zapatero government depends on Communist support. Something stinks.

American agents formed a brutal gang of robbers that murdered 28 people in Belgium in the early 1980s? El Periodico says it's true!

The "Brabant massacres," as this dark episode in recent Belgian history is called, continue to torment the people's memory. Especially because it is suspected that these crimes were motivated by political reasons to destabilize the Belgian state, and that former secret service members in the service of American geostrategic interests were involved.

Wait. Why would the Americans want to destabilize the allied government of Belgium, a NATO member? And why would they do so by forming a gang of robbers and killing a bunch of people?

The "Brabant massacres" occurred during the years of the massive protests of the people against the installation of the American Euromissiles in the last episodes of tension of the Cold War.

Oh, that explains it. We want to destabilize Belgium's government, which is supporting our missiles policy, because of anti-nuke demonstrations.

The gratuitous violence of the robberies, the small booty, and the cold, precise, and military action of the group support the thesis of a plot to destabilize the State and harden government policy, as finally occurred when the power of the gendarmerie was increased.

Okay, that proves it. The Americans wanted the Belgian gendarmerie to have more power, so they killed a bunch of people.

The researchers Rene Haquin (Belgian) and Daniele Ganser (Swiss) argued, in different books, in favor of the implication of the American secret network Gladio and NATO in these episodes.

What more evidence could one possibly want? It must be true, and so we urgently need to run an article on it!

Of course, this is complete bushwah, bosh, bunkum, and baloney. According to the US State Department, the entire "Operation Gladio" conspiracy theory is 30-year-old Soviet disinformation.

The Greek writer making the claim – and a Swiss researcher who wrote a 2005 book on the “stay behind” networks – both give credence to a Soviet forgery from the 1970s, which has long been publicly identified as a phony document...Grivas and other prominent “stay behind” researchers appear to have been influenced by a bogus text that first surfaced in 1976, a Soviet forgery purporting to be Supplement B to the U.S. Army’s Field Manual 30-31.

So what's the Spanish connection?

FM 30-31B reappeared in 1978 when it was reprinted in two Spanish publications, El Pais (18 September) and Triunfo (23 September). This was the work of a Spanish communist and a Cuban intelligence officer. Since September 1978, the manual and/or articles concerning it have appeared in the world press in more than 20 countries, including the United States.

Oh, so that's it. El Pais fell for this one back when they were pro-Soviet, and that's how this conspiracy disinformation has stayed alive.

Here's the State Department's conclusion:

A thirty year-old Soviet forgery has been cited as one of the central pieces of “evidence” for the false notion that West European “stay-behind” networks engaged in terrorism, allegedly at U.S. instigation. This is not true, and those researching the “stay behind” networks need to be more discriminating in evaluating the trustworthiness of their source material.

Gee, I think that sums it all up pretty well.

Someone called me biased for not mentioning that the two Cataloony jerks who were fined for burning the King's photo whined afterwards about not being allowed to speak Catalan at trial. The reason is simple: I hadn't heard about it. If I had heard about it, I would have slammed these Cataloony jerks even harder, since the trial was held in Madrid before the National Court. Of course the judge refused to allow them to testify in Catalan, since judges in Madrid have no obligation to know Catalan. Madrid is not in Catalonia. Besides, the aforementioned jerks know Spanish perfectly well anyway, so it's not like they were put in unfair legal jeopardy by being tried in a language they didn't know.

I will add that if the evil cold heartless system had wanted to screw over these poor idealistic oppressed youths, the judge could have sent them to jail for fifteen months each. However, he decided to let them off with a fine.

Here's the story from El Periodico, with a photograph of the oppressed viotims of centralistic imperialism. Note the flags behind them as they give their impromptu press conference. The one on the left is the Catalan independentista flag.

All right! We're Number One! Spain is the leader in Europe! 20% of us have smoked weed during the last year! According to a European Union study, of Spaniards between 15 and 64 years old, an amazing one-fifth have smoked up, and not at some time in their lives, but within the last 12 months. The European average is 13%. I'll bet it's a good bit lower in the US. The report congratulates the EU because cannabis use has "plateaued and stabilized." Yeah, a stable 20% is a pretty damn high plateau. More worrying: 3% of Spaniards between 15 and 64 have used cocaine during the last year, as against 1.3% in the EU.

The most recent government survey of voter intention puts the PSOE barely two points ahead of the PP, 39.7% to 37.4%, which is within the margin of error, and a smaller distance between the two parties than previous surveys had shown. Meanwhile, an El Periodico survey has the PSOE well out in front of the PP, 43.5% to 37.6%. Here's their graphic in case you're interested.

The actor Fernando Fernan-Gomez died yesterday. Too bad. I liked him. You've seen him as the old guy in Belle Epoque and All About My Mother. His career went back to the '30s, and he was also a director, an author, and a member of the Real Academia de la Lengua. Quite a life. A lot of people didn't like him personally because he had an image as a rude loudmouth. He also claimed to be an anarchist, but he didn't say anything about that before about 1975 or so.

Jack Chiraq has been indicted for corruption and embezzlement while he was the mayor of Paris, only four months after his term as president ended. He'll probably be able to weasel out of going to jail until he finally dies, though. And this isn't the only case against him; there are several more coming up.

Internet news: At the request of a Catalan government agency, Microsoft (the server) has shut down four Spanish blogs that promoted anorexia and bulimia. This is a precedent because it hadn't happened before without a court order.

Comments: 1) These blogs seem to have been set up by anorexic and bulimic teenagers themselves, with the goal of reassuring and supporting one another. There must be hundreds of them. 2) You can find them in both Spanish and English; just google "ana mia" and see what you get. "Ana" refers to "anorexia," and "Mia" to bulimia. 3) A quick look through a few of them shows that these girls have a Peter Pan-ish pre-sexual identity; they compare themselves to "princesses" and "dolls," and their tone is prepubescent. Anorexia and bulimia allow them not to grow up. 4) It goes without saying that this is a serious mental illness, and its sufferers have all my sympathy.

5) Microsoft, as a private company, has every right to ban anything it doesn't like from its hosting service. And these blogs' message is unhealthy and anti-social. 6) But. There are a lot of other things out there, like drinking and goatse.cx and anarchism, that are unhealthy and antisocial as well. Ought websites devoted to them to be banned? Then, what about pro-terrorist websites? 7) It's the old slippery-slope problem, where do you draw the line? I would prefer for the line to be drawn as libertarianly as possible, and I guess the place we draw it is what's defined by law. Terrorism is against the law. So is kiddie porn, and so is making violent threats, and so is libel. Anorexia isn't.

More censorship: American Nazi and Klansman David Duke is coming to town on Saturday to speak to a bunch of Fascist scumbags. He's gonna bash the Jews. A group of pretty reasonable local intellectuals, Francesc-Marc Alvaro, Magda Oranich, Joan B. Culla, and Pilar Rahola, have asked the government and the prosecutor's office to do something. The problem is that in Spain, it's not quite clear if apology for Naziism is against the law, and the Constitutional Court said that denying the Holocaust is legal. I'm personally in favor of enforcing the law, and if they can ban Duke legally, do it. I don't like such laws, though; I'd prefer not to ban political speech of any sort, no matter how hateful.

Note: The story going around here is that Duke is a former Republican senator from Louisiana. That's wrong. Duke has run for office many times in both the Democratic and Republican primaries, and he got elected to the Louisiana state House of Representatives for one term back in the seventies. Other than that, he's never won anything, and he has nothing to do with the political mainstream.

Big corruption news: Former FC Barcelona president Jose Luis Nuñez, hia son Jose Luis junior, a famous crooked wheeler-dealer named Javier de la Rosa, and several other people have been indicted for defrauding the taxman out of €13 million. If they're convicted, they're going to jail; the prosecutor has demanded eight years for both Nuñezes. Nuñez pere is probably the city's biggest real-estate developer, and he ran the football club for more than twenty years.

Guess what? Catalonia's educational system is not only the worst in Spain, it's the worst in the European Union! The high-school dropout rate is 34.1%, at the bottom in Spain and better than only Portugal and Malta. The high-school graduation rate is 60.3%, fifteen points below the EU average. They're blaming it on heavy immigration and not getting enough money from the Madrid government. Remember, nothing around here is our fault!

Well, we've had our Jerry Springer moment here in Spain. Some guy went on the afternoon trash-TV program "El Diario de Patricia" in order to get back together with his ex-girlfriend, and to propose to her. She turned him down flat, on the air. So he cut her throat four days later. Turns out he'd been convicted of abusing her, and there was a restraining order out on him. "Patricia" is as bad as any American talk show, and there are voices calling on the Antena 3 network to pull it off the air. I say it's trash, but if the people want trash, that's what they're gonna get.