Terrorist news: US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in Munich, "The Barcelona cell (broken up last month) seems to be part of the terrorist network run by Baitullah Mehsud, an extremist leader based in Pakistan and linked to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, whom we suspect of being implicated in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto." Good thing they got these guys before they blew anything up.

The pro-ETA crowd came out in Bilbao this afternoon and held an illegal demo that turned into a riot, cars overturned and garbage skips burned. They even torched a bus. The cops thumped 'em good. Go Cops! Three arrests were made, which doesn't seem like nearly enough to me. The rioters are angry because Judge Garzon has prohibited their front-parties from running in the March 9 election.

Three douchebags had themselves a neo-Nazi demonstration in front of the synagogue in the Call, Barcelona's old Jewish quarter just off the Plaza Sant Jaume, back in July 2006. Among other things, they made threats and incited to violence, which isn't free speech, it's a crime. So they finally got around to arresting them, only a year and a half late.

The bus drivers say they're going back on strike, and the metro workers are going to do the same. That ought to screw up the city real good and stress out all the rest of us.

Not much campaign news. Zap's trying to identify Rajoy with the Iraq war and the Church, and run against that. Rajoy is trying to hit on a hot-button issue, and he thinks he's found one with immigration, while he identifies Zap with the economic slump. It's not really an edifying spectacle. At least they've both quit making wild promises, for now anyway.

There's a tremendous amount of interest over here in the American primary elections, and for once some of the commentary heard in the streets and cafés is positive. The Spaniards like the idea of voting in primaries for the candidates of each party, since right now the candidates are chosen by small groups of party insiders. They're confused by a lot of things about the American system; what they find especially strange is that the presidential election isn't related to whoever wins the most seats in Congress.

Other strange stuff for them: You vote for more than one office in the US elections, and so you can split your ticket, vote for candidates of more than one party on the same ballot. There's no proportional representation in the US, which means there aren't any small fringe parties in Congress. The two main parties are wide-ranging coalitions of several groups, and so it's not unusual for a congressman to vote against the leadership of his own party. They also think it's funny that we have sheriffs, which they identify with Western movies, and that it's an elective post.

Barcelona played badly last night in Sevilla, but got out with a 1-1 draw on a goal by Xavi. They looked slow and out of shape. The defense was atrocious, with both Oleguer and Thuram starting. Ronaldinho came out in the second half but didn't do much, though the quality of play did improve a bit. Sevilla's got a kid named Diego Capel at left wing who is going to be very good. He ate Oleguer's lunch. Oleguer, by the way, might be sold to Lazio, which would be hilarious, the Cataloony Commie pro-squatter idiotarian playing for the most openly Fascist fan base in the world.

Spanish champagne Communist actor Javier Bardem, of the notorious Bardem family, won some award from something called the New York Critics' Circle. He plays "a monstrous, unscrupulous being who freezes the blood of the spectators"--seems the movie he's in is a bit violent. So get this: he claimed that he got the inspiration to act the part of a psychopathic killer "from President Bush."

La Vanguardia wonders whether Academy Awards voters will hold Bardem's valiant statement against him when that vote comes out. Hell, no, this is Hollywood we're talking about. He's just won himself some bonus points.

By the way, I'm boycotting the movie because I'm not going to give Bardem any of my money. Instead, for the first time ever, I'm going to pirate it.

More Spanish leftist media silliness: Check out this Socialist campaign video, featuring the usual suspects, all of whose careers saw better days about thirty years ago: Sabina, Bosé, Serrat, Victor Manuel and Ana Belen, and the rest of that lot. They've come up with the dorkiest, most retarded hand gesture ever to show their undying support for Zap. I think they're trying to imitate Zap's pointy, Dracula-like eyebrows, but they look like a bunch of dopes. Get this: El Mundo says the alleged artists involved are "doing things the American way." I don't think any bunch of American singers, even if it included Jackson Browne, would ever do anything so uncool in public.

Campaign rhetoric: Looks like Rajoy has hit a popular nerve with his declaration that immigrants should have to sign some kind of contract in order to stay in Spain. As an immigrant, I'm in favor; Rajoy's proposal wouldn't force people to do anything outlandish, but it would require them to learn Spanish and not cut off their daughters' clitorises. Zap's comeback was weak; he claimed that Rajoy's statement was an insult to immigrants, which this idea is not. Anyway, it looks like the PP has found an issue.

There's been some talk that Zap should have called elections for last fall, before the economic slump began. Now, the slump hasn't been too bad thus far, and it's mostly due to the standard business cycle, not Zap's policies. Still, he should have known a slowdown was coming, planned accordingly, and dissolved parliament back in about September.

Judge Garzon "suspended the activities" of the ETA front parties ANV and PCTV, making sure that they won't be able to run in the March 9 general election.

ETA set off a fifteen-kilo bomb in front of the courthouse in Vergara, in the Basque country. No one was injured, fortunately. Serious material damage was done.

The first high-speed train did its test run into Sants station in Barcelona yesterday, so they may actually have it up and running by election time. The question is whether that will help or hurt--it may remind people of the whole Great Transport Snafu.

Bad simile department: The guy in La Vanguardia reporting on the space shuttle launch said that the flames of the rocket lifting off were the color of gazpacho.

Drudge is reporting that Mitt Romney is going to pull out of the race for the Republican nomination, though Mike Huckabee says that he's still in. Whatever. McCain is clearly the nominee now, no question. Now let's see the conservative wing of the Republicans prove they're adults who can handle losing. With all due respect, the moderate wing got one of our guys in this time, and it's time for you to suck it up, do your duty, and back the party's candidate.

Another case of minority political groups in Catalonia blocking progress: CiU and ERC have decided they're against the high-speed train's passing through a tunnel under Barcelona. Jeez, people, minority groups have been blocking the route of the AVE through Catalonia for years. Not to mention the expansion of the airport, an exurban highway loop around the outer edge of the metro area, the electrical hookup with the French power grid, the water plan to send Ebro water south and bring Rhone water here, and about eighteen other useful projects that make a lot more sense than subsidizing movies no one will ever see.

Campaign promise update: Rajoy says he's going to deport foreign citizens who commit crimes in Spain. Sounds good to me, but I think he's going to have to change the penal code to do that, and another penal code change seems unlikely so soon after the last one. Zap said such a change was unnecessary, leading to the question of: so why aren't foreign criminals being deported, since the streets of Barcelona are full of them? Also, Rajoy promised to plant five million trees, for whatever that's worth.

The Ibex 35 was down 0.9% at midday, below 13,000 points. The European Central Bank is holding the line on interest rates at 4%. Banco Santander earned €9 billion in profits in 2007, up 19% over 2006, which is good news for the shareholders.

Contradiction: La Vanguardia headlines, "Lack of connections at El Prat airport puts brakes on growth of tourism," and "Barcelona to increase hotel capacity by 10% in 2008." Right next to one another. Well, which one is it? And, of course, if there is a market for more flignts to Barcelona, some smart airline is going to start providing them, no? If Clickair has cut its number of Barcelona flights, it just might be because the market's saturated, and they were losing money on them.

Meanwhile, the Barcelona hotel owners' association criticized the high rate of crimes against tourists, and the lack of lighting in the streets. Seems to me this ought to be a top priority for the city government, right? I mean, you improve Barcelona's reputation for safety from crime (which is lousy), more tourists are going to come, and there'll be more demand for flights and hotel rooms and all of that, no? Arresting and deporting the dirtbags who prey on both tourists and locals would improve everyone's quality of life immeasurably.

La Vanguardia online's readers' poll: "Should the Circuit de Catalunya (the Montmeló racetrack) be sanctioned because of the racist insults against Hamilton?" 1329 persons voted. 34% said Yes, 65% said No.

El Pais has a depressing summary of the Hamilton flap, titled, "I'm not racist, but you're a fucking nigger (negro de mierda)":

...There is an essential explanation, deeper and more profound, that changes the crudity of insults into other things. "They are trying to offend and hurt the rival. There is no deep-seated racism," said the veteran researcher and sociologist Juan Díez Nicolás. These subtleties are not appreciated in other European countries, especially in the United Kingdom, where the affair is still one of the top stories of the week, and has produced shock and indignation. "Racism is under debate in Spanish sports, and this reflects on the whole society," rotundly declared the BBC.

In Spain, certainly, it is seen in a different way. "This is not discriminating against anyone because of his race," says one of the psychologists consulted, and it is the diagnosis of most of the implicated parts of society. In this case, she says, the outburst meant. "He is the rival of Fernando Alonso, and treated him badly and disloyally last year when they were on the same team."

"So why didn't they just directly call him a bastard?" wondered the Guardian correspondent Paul Hamelos, both offended and surprised, who reached the zenith of his confusion and perplexity when an Administration official argued the excuse that it was Carnival. "Carnival!" he repeated, between anger and incredulity. Some of those who insulted the Englishman had their faces painted black, wigs with curly hair, and T-shirts with the sentence "Hamilton's family" on the front. It was a day for dressing up, "and the English don't understand that."

"Spain is not racist, all the studies show that," said the sociologist Diaz Nicolas. It's something else. "It's a lack of imagination, and troublemaking. It's not right. That's clear, but let's not confuse matters. It's as if they called someone Fatty or Shorty," says this professor.

That's a bunch of crap, because no one has ever been enslaved and brutalized because of his height or weight. Millions of people were bought and sold and put to forced labor during hundreds of years because they were black, and all of Western Europe is guilty, including Spain. Black people are justifiably particularly angered by racist insults, since those insults imply that blacks are less than human and deserve to be treated as inferiors.

At a deeper level, the analysis of several British professors cited by the Times calls Spanish society "not racist, but inexperienced in living together with immigrants." And this, they say, makes people "see insults regarding skin color lightly and indulgently." According to this thesis, Spaniards aren't more racist than anyone around them, but they have less experience in dealing with different people and the subtleties that entails. To the point that the Spaniards do not know how to calibrate the importance of these insults.

Yeah, that was one of my theses the other day: Spaniards don't have much of an idea of what offends people of other nationalities, and they often act like they don't particularly care.

Sectors linked to the Zapatero administration wonder why the Spanish government does not either complain about or demand apologies for the behavior of the notorious British hooligans when a team from the Isles plays in Spain. "We don't say that the English are drunken vandals because some of their football fans are," they insist, in a rather nationalist manner. Definitely, they state that the English "are exaggerating" about this question, a maximalism whipped up by the sensationalist tradition of part of their media.

"Are we minimizing it or are they maximizing it?" wonder high officials in the Spanish administration. Ibarra said, without a doubt, the former. "The official message for years and years has been that this is not increasing, and that they are just a few isolated cases. and this is false." According to Ibarra, the number of racist incidents in Spain has grown to the point of affecting 200 towns througout the country.

Let's see. The British are hypocrites? Check. The British are drunken hooligans? Check. Hamilton deserved it? Check. Controversy stirred up by British press? Check. We're not racists no matter what you say? Check. The insults are no big deal? Check.

Looks like McCain is going to be the Republican candidate; I just hope he doesn't pick Huckabee as his veep. Romney would be fine, so would Giuliani. The conservative wing of the Reps is grumbling, but they'll get in line, they have nowhere else to go. Unless Ron Paul splits the party and runs as an independent, which has to be the Republican nightmare. As for the Dems, it's still up in the air. Let's hope Hillary and Obama go down to the wire, sniping at one another all the way, and that the convention ends up being brokered. That'll piss off either Hillary's base, middle-class white women, or Obama's base, blacks, and hopefully reduce Democratic turnout big-time.

La Vanguardia's coverage is again complete: a front-page headline and photo, and the first four pages of the international section. Not even Andy Robinson is especially offensive; of course, he called the California primary wrong, predicting that Obama would win because of the youth vote. The fact that his story is bylined "Berkeley" might have something to do with his misjudgment.

Judge Andreu of the National Court has charged 40 members of the current Rwandan Tutsi government with genocide and crimes against humanity during the Congo War, along with the murder of nine Spanish citizens between 1994 and 2000. He has issued international arrest warrants for them. My reaction: 1) Isn't this extraterritoriality, which the Spaniards always criticize when we lock up bad guys at Guantanamo? 2) Did Spain ever charge any of the Hutus, the group that started the mass violence, with genocide? 3) I am all in favor of punishing butchers and murderers, no matter who they are, but it seems to me that military force will be needed to get these guys out of Rwanda. Who is going to provide that military force?

The Ibex 35 was up 1.4% at midday, led by the utilities, so the market hasn't crashed on us yet. The other European markets are showing very slight gains.

That old fraud the Maharishi finally croaked, outliving two of the Beatles.

Survey: 86% of Spanish men say that if they had an affair they wouldn't tell their wives. News: 14% of Spanish men are so dumb that they would tell their wives if they'd cheated on them.

Pronunciation guide for Europeans: Arkansas is "Ar-kun-SAW." Kansas is "KAN-zus." Houston is "YOO-stun." New Orleans is "New ORE-lins." Chicago is "Shih-CAH-go." Cleveland is two syllables: "CLEEV-lund." Miami is "My-AH-mee." Ohio is "Oh-HY-oh." Iowa is "AY-oh-wuh." Detroit is two syllables: "Duh-TROYT." Idaho is "AY-duh-ho." Seattle is "See-AT-tul." Memphis is "MEM-fis." (Not "Mehn-fees.") Delaware is "DELL-uh-wear."

Oh, Lordy, the stock market's taken another dive, this time down 5.2% to 12,800 points late this afternoon. The construction firms did worse than average, and the blue chips fell less than average. La Vanguardia blames it on Wall Street's 2% decline. The other big European markets were down about 3%.

32,000 real-estate agencies closed down in Spain during 2007, which is 40% of the total. Most of these were shoestring speculative one-person shops that thought the boom would go on forever.

Food prices in 2007: through the roof. Sunflower oil went up 34%, milk 25%, flour 22%, chicken 16%, pasta 16%, onions 15%, bananas 13%, eggs 11%, and sardines 10%.

We're definitely having a major drought, despite Sunday's rain, and the water restrictions the Generalitat told us wouldn't be needed are going into effect: no more watering gardens or filling swimming pools with drinkable water. They're already working on getting tankers to deliver water from the Rhone and from desalinizing plants, and they're also going to reopen a bunch of old wells closed down years ago.

Judge Garzon charged the president of the ETA-front party ANV, along with two other party leaders, with collaboration with a terrorist gang and conspiracy. This is apparently a necessary legal step previous to banning the party and prohibiting it from running in the March 9 election.

Here's a good one. Something called the Barcelona Observatorio came out with a quality of life ranking for world cities and guess what? Barcelona came out on top! Number One! King of the hill, cream of the crop, top of the heap! For the tenth year in a row!

Here's TV3's story on the Lewis Hamilton incident:

In England they did not like it at all when a handful of fans shouted at Lewis Hamilton during last weekend's training sessions at Montmeló, and the wave of denuncistions of racism that has appeared in the British press is threatening a diplomatic conflict. The English government does not seem happy with the apologies given by the racetrack's management nor with the censure of the FIA, and has called for the suspension of the Grand Prix of Catalonia.

Lewis Hamilton is a hero in England because he was supposed to take over from Damon Hill, the most recent English Formula 1 champion in 1996. His not winning the world championship was an authentic national tragedy, and they have not liked at all the fact that a handful of fans received him at Montmeló with signs, chants, insults, and racist attacks.

The English press, the first in feeding the flames of the Hamilton-Alonso rivalry, has accused Spain of racism, recalling episodes like Luis Aragones insulting Henry or the chants against Eto'o in Zaragoza, and has mounted a campaign to censure the intolerable conduct of a few fanatics.

The racetrack had already done everything possible to put an end to such conduct--they confiscated banners, prevented hostilities against Hamilton from the stands, and expelled fans--and official bodies have criticized it rotundly, but in England they are still denouncing the attack suffered by Hamilton above and beyond the sporting rivalry with the Spanish champion.

Because of this, the British sports minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, announced yesterday that he would send a letter to the FIA and the Spanish government prpopsing the cancellation of the Grand Prix of Catalonia, while demanding that steps be taken to combat the xenophobic campaign that Lewis Hamilton is the victim of.

Even TV3 is blaming this mess on the sensationalistic English press who are out to get Alonso; it claims that the British minister's anger is due to the media coverage and not to the racist insults, it whitewashes the performance of the track management, it chalks British irritation up to rivalry between fans rather than disgust at racism, it downplays the character of the insults (they were dressed up like monkeys yelling "fucking nigger" at him), it shifts the focus from Catalonia to Spain as a whole, and it falsely claims that only a few people were guilty of the insults when large parts of the crowd were.

There are four comments. One blames the English press and its hidden interests; one says the incident was no big deal; one calls the English hypocritical drunken hooligans; and the last blames the English press and says any anger is due to Hamilton's losing out last year.

I've examined the first 206 comments in La Vanguardia's online story on the Lewis Hamilton flap, and they're generally pretty depressing. I didn't classify all of them, but I did divide them into nine categories. Some of them fit into more than one category, so I chose the one that seemed most definite. Here are the results:

Reasonable responses: 16

Now into the cesspool.

The British are hypocrites: 29
The British are all drunken hooligans: 14
Catalans are not racist / The racists must be Castilians: 26
Hamilton is a jerk and deserved it: 11
General anti-British: 9
The controversy has been stirred up to benefit hidden interests: 7
Everybody's racist, not just us: 5
It's no big deal: 9

Here are a few individual examples:

Cat: If the Spanish supporters of Alonso cannot behave themselves, they should stay at home. In Catalonia we respect people and hate all kinds of racism. England should not confuse Spain and Catalonia. Catalonia is different in all ways.

Bob: Hamilton = Hypocrite Perfidious (British) Press = Superhypocrites Am I racist? So what.

Jordi: Who are the English to give us lessons about manners and behavior? They're a public danger every time they leave their country, a gang of drunks who do nuthing but drink and start fights: the great majority of them are trash; this is the pot calling the kettle black.

SentidoComun: Enough of this racism nonsense, they insult his color because it is a distinguishing characteristic, they could also call him Shorty because he's short or Baldy because he doesn't have much hair, racism is something different. Besides, these English are still killing Iraqis to steal their oil, and they get excited because a few morons dialectically attack a young millionaire. Crazy.

Pable: In Panama it is the same. Blacks with British surnames who were brought to dig the canal are angry and violent, not so the ones with Spanish surnames. Everywhere the british have gone, the blacks are angry, look and see if it's like that in Brazil. Don't cry about how people are treated in Spain, I was treated worse in Nigeria.

Carlos: These English are too fucking much, they have their minister intervene over a few insults, and when their holligan (sic) go around European cities cracking skulls and destroying the city, they don't give a shit. They should worry about their own dear compatriots. A public person like Halmiton (sic) shouldn't give a crap what they call him. Let it be clear that I'm against insults, as I am against the federation's favoritism toward that gentleman.

Antonio: Since last year they didn't get the f1 world championship even by discriminating against Alonso for not being British, and fearing that this year Hamilton won't win either, now they're trying to close down Spanish racetracks? Is there a people more racist than the English?

Eoneguin: Racism is a natural condition among human beings. Blacks are, even more among themselves. Arabs are, a lot. Asians are, in the most cruel way. And we whites have to feel guilty. Besides, what happened to "Chocolate Milk" was just kidding, at worst a joke in bad taste.

Ironico: The English are going to give us classes in morality, living together, racism, manners, and respect to countries like Spain? If England has been characterized by anything in its history, it is not the things listed above. They only care about being the center of the world. Maybe they should begin to set an example that they have changed and give back Gibraltar. Anyway, in my opinion, fuck them!

Axel_T: The English newspapers who are causing this kerfuffle are the sensationalist press, they are not serious, let us do the same thing, if it bothers them that a few guys paint their faces black for Carnival, fuck them!

Destroyer: If the English have become so polite let them teach their children not to come to Ibiza, Lloret, Salou, and the whole Mediterranean coast to set up ghettoes to get drunk and behave like vandals. Not to mention the Glasgow Rangers holligans (sic), although they're Scottish they're the same thing, when they came to BCN they destroyed everything in their path. By the way, who killed Lady Di and the "morito" who was with her? They should look at themselves first and then talk about others.

Basket Case: It's strange that the British accuse Spanish society of being racist. You only have to remember their history to see how hypocritical they are. Not to mention the character of many of them: arrogant, bossy, and against anything that is not Anglophone. Excuse me, but they disgust me as a collective.

Pere: It would be a good thing if the English were also scandalized by the invasion of Iraq or their hooligans, they are a gang of undesirables, as they have always been.

Correcaminos: Frankly I don't give a shit what the English think.

Update on the Lewis Hamilton flap: The British media is angry, and with good reason. Check out this story from the Times, including a photo of Spanish spectators in blackface wearing T-shirts reading "Hamilton's Family." The IHT is reporting that the crowd was yelling "puto negro" and "negro de mierda," and it was not just a few isolated individuals.

A quote:

Despite the perception abroad that Spain suffers from a serious problem with racism, the Spanish Government insists that there is little cause for concern.

“Spanish society does not show a racist tendency,” Estrella Rodríguez, the Government official charged with dealing with the issue, said after the attack on the Ecuadorean girl. “What happened in Barcelona is an isolated incident that cannot be tolerated, but the signs are that society is adapting to immigration in a mature way.“

Not everyone agrees with that assessment. The European Commission Against Racism, a network of pressure groups, said in a report that Spanish authorities were in denial about the existence of racism in the country. It charged the Socialist Government with “cowardice” in tackling the issue.

The standard Spanish response is, "We're not racist, we're just trying to insult whoever it is we dislike, and so if the recipient of our abuse is black, we'll give it to him for that."

Of course, I call bullshit on that. It is true, though, that Spaniards tend to be insensitive toward the feelings of others, and frequently downright rude by international standards. They hand one another the same kind of taunting that they hand outsiders. Also, Spain has always been somewhat of a provincial backwater, and many people here have no idea of what is considered acceptable behavior in the world at large.

Get this: A commenter at TV3's website said that Catalonia is not racist, and the incidents were caused by non-Catalan Spaniards. Yeah, right.

Judge Garzon ordered the arrests of Pernando Barrera, the spokesman for the banned ETA-front party Batasuna, and fellow pro-terrorist bigwig Patxi Urrutia, on charges of belonging to a terrorist organization. 19 of the 38 members of Batasuna's central committee are now in jail, either awaiting trial or after sentencing. Good.

Alzheimer's sufferer Pasqual Maragall has bolted the Catalan Socialist Party and, in an incoherent article in La Vanguardia, encouraged the citizens to turn in blank ballots at the March 9 election. Pasky's own brainchild embryonic political party, the Catalan Party of Europe, failed to submit a list of candidates and so cannot participate in the election. Somebody please get this guy to shut up before he makes a completer ass of himself than he already has. It's embarrassing to have him running around jabbering nonsense while billed as the former Barcelona mayor and Catalan premier. Oh, well, at least his silliness makes the Socialists look bad.

More racist public behavior in Spain: A bunch of fans of the racing driver Fernando Alonso screamed vile insults at his British rival, Lewis Hamilton, who happens to be black, at the Circuit de Catalunya racetrack in Montmeló. They got away with it on Saturday, but on Sunday the organizers actually kicked some of the loudmouths out, something soccer clubs do not do. The international federation has threatened the management with sanctions if it happens again, which doesn't seem like a strict enough punishment to me.

The British police, in a secret operation, arrested six suspected Pakistani terrorists at Gatwick Airport ten days ago after receiving a tip from the Spanish CNI. These guys are supposedly linked to the recently broken-up Barcelona cell.

So. This is good news. I'm always glad when terrorists get caught before they kill somebody. What I'd like to know, though, is where all the human-rights crowd is. We lock up a few hundred terrorists captured under arms, illegal combatants who have no rights at all under international law, and they pitch a fit and call us Nazis. I'd just like to know how many people the Europeans have locked up somewhere supposedly awaiting trial.

El Pais's election survey released today, in the wake of the Gallardon PP antics, and Zap's international and domestic embarrassments, shows the race very close: PSOE42.0% of the vote, PP 38.6%, IU (Communists) 5.1%. Turnout is expected to be about 73%, less than the 77% that voted in the 2004 election, which favors the PP. Also, three-quarters of PP voters in 2004 will repeat their vote, while only two-thirds of Socialists will do the same.

Campaign promise update: Carmen Chacon says the central government will spend €12.5 billion on the Catalan railway system. Meanwhile, Zap has decided he's going to use the Church as a punching bag in order to bring out his hardcore anti-clerical voters.

The shit is hitting the fan in Chad; there's an opposition revolt on and they've killed the head of the army. There is combat in the streets of the capital. France is evacuating Westerners, including six Spaniards; six more are still in Ndjamena. Let's hope this doesn't get too nasty.

Publico runs as its front-page lead story the bogus report from a George Soros-funded activist group, the self-proclaimed Center for Public Integrity, that the Bush administration made up some 900 lies about the Iraq war. As if it were a fact. They also claim that 150,000 people in Iraq have died, which is far too high, and of course they fail to mention that the great majority of those people were killed by the same terrorists who are trying to kill the Americans.

Publico is, of course, the Zap administration's lapdog media outfit. Zap's running against the Iraq war again, and there's no better way to do that than stick photos of Bush and Aznar on the front page with the headline "Five years of lies."

La Vanguardia has lots of coverage of the US primaries, most of whioh is pretty reasonable. However, they gave Andy Robinson the first two pages of the international section to use the movie "Crash" as an illustration of everyday life in LA, where the white man divides and conquers by pitting the blacks and Hispanics against one another. I swear next time somebody refers to a FICTIONAL GODDAMN MOVIE to explain purported facts about the United States, I am going to tie him up, super-glue his eyelids open, and force him to watch "The Green Berets," "Red Dawn," and "Missing in Action" over and over again until he begs me to waterboard him for a change.

So what do you know: in the magazine section Xavier Batalla uses "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" to explain Obama's appeal. Look out, Mr. Batalla, I'm coming after your ass.

When the big news today is that Catalan basketball player Pau Gasol has been traded from Memphis to Los Angeles, you know there's not much going on. Gasol had wanted to get out of Memphis for years, and has whined about it in the past. He and his family have shot off their mouths about how Memphis is too small-town hick middle American for their exquisite taste, them being from Sant Boi and all.

Now let's see how he does under big-city media pressure.

One peculiarity: The Spanish press is reporting that Gasol "signed" (fichó) with the Lakers. No, he was traded to them for a couple of other players and two draft picks; he didn't have much choice in the matter, though of course he's happy about it. "Signed" also implies a new contract; Gasol is still under the terms of his old contract, and will be until it expires.

Here's Iberian Notes's commentary on how Gasol wore out his welcome in Memphis last February, including some choice anti-American ranting.

Economic news: Automobile sales in Spain are down 13% over January last year, which does seem to point at an economic slowdown. Even Zap says there's one coming, though there's no reason to think it'll be catastrophic. Catalan savings bank La Caixa saw an 18% decline in its profits, though they were still a nice healthy €2.5 billion in 2007. At midday the Ibex 35 was up 1.1%, so it looks like the panic that started two Mondays ago has finished. The IMF is predicting that the euro's value will decline--it sure doesn't seem like it can go too much higher--and that this ought to help out Spain's trade deficit, since the high price of the euro makes Spanish goods less ocmpetitive.

Today's campaign promise: Zap says he'll spend €10 billion on the Barcelona commuter rail system, twice what he promised to spend on the Madrid commuter network.

Our friends on the anticlerical left are angry because the Church criticized the Zap government for negotiating with ETA. Seems to me that the Church should be a private organization that can say anything it wants. It's not, though, in Spain, since it receives government subsidies, in clear violation of the concept of the separation of church and state. The left tends to fantasize about an all-powerful Church, but I don't think it really has that much influence, expecially not over government or the economy.

They found a beer keg full of thirty kilos of explosives by the side of a rural road in the Basque town of Guecho. It's not a bomb, since it had no timer or detonator or anything like that. The cops figure that an ETA logistics cell dropped it off in an inconspicuous spot for an operational cell to pick up.

Everyone's talking about the demise of Tele 5's "Aquí hay tomate," the sleaziest celebrity scandal TV show in Spain, and one of the most popular. It was number one in the ratings for a long time, and got three million viewers an episode. "Tomate" was the most-sued program in Spanish TV history.

Don't worry, there's plenty more sleaze out there where it came from. Remember "Patricia's Diary"? After that scandal when the show managed to provoke a murder, they were on their best behavior for a couple of weeks, with nice stories about kitty cats and little kids. Then they went back to their old format, of course; their most recent triumph was some poor woman who was looking for her father, who had abandoned the family forty years ago. So they traced the guy down and invited the woman on the show for a surprise. The tension is building, as Patricia goes through the details of the father's life after he left, and the woman is all happy and ready for her dad to walk out on stage for a reunion--and Patricia then tells her that he's dead. The woman, of course, bursts into hysterical tears, and it's another good day for the ratings.

Although the Catalan university teachers say their students can't read or write in any language, the educational department plans to require university students to pass the First Certificate English exam to graduate. Yeah, right, when pigs fly. They're going to require that ten per cent of university classes be given in English. Yeah, right, when pigs fly. Get this: 45% of Catalans between 15 and 29 claim that they "dominate" English. Yeah, right, pigs are flying.

They analyzed the sewage at the El Prat water treatment plant, and discovered that it accumulates between 1.5 and 3.5 kilos of cocaine a day--and it only serves half the city. (The cocaine metabolizes in the body and is excreted through urination.) That means that up to 3% of Barcelonese citizens use cocaine daily. The analysis also discovered the presence of ecstasy, amphetamines, LSD, and morphine, as well as pharmaceuticals: ibuprofen, antibiotics, and beta-blockers. The beta-blockers are killing some insects that are part of the Llobregat river food chain.

La Vanguardia again gave the first two pages of its international section to the US primary elections; Joaquin Luna calls McCain "a Republican candidate who is acceptable to European tastes." I may have to review my choice of candidate, on the grounds that if the European media likes McCain there must be something wrong with him.

Barça beat Villarreal 1-0 last night in a fairly good game to qualify for the semifinals of the Copa del Rey, the Spanish Cup. They face Valencia in the semis; the other semi will be Getafe-Racing Santander. You have to figure that Barcelona is the favorite to win out, but I don't think a Cup title will make up for two consecutive second-place League finishes. Ronaldinho played ten minutes at the end of the game, and Puyol got hurt again and is out for a month. His physical decline is appalling.

I've noticed that I've been getting links from alleged blogs that seem to be nothing more than a webcrawler, with no human attached. One of them is titled "John Edwards," one says it deals in Arkansas real estate, and one is just titled "Barcelona." Are these some kind of spam blog? Why would they exist? I don't get it.

Most of the news around here is campaign stuff. Rajoy got a feather in his cap yesterday when he received the endorsements of Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, both of whom are considered reasonable moderates in Spain. He got his picture taken with them shaking hands and everything. This makes Zap look especially bad because he didn't get invited to the big boys' EU economic meeting and Italian lame duck Romano Prodi did. Zap had a meeting with Merkel today; that must have been a bit awkward.

There has been a popular backlash against all the rash campaign promises both sides have been making; the general reaction is "They're trying to buy our votes."

Meanwhile, the PP is attacking the Catalan system of linguistic immersion, in which public schools give all classes in Catalan except for a couple of hours of Spanish a week. They're right, of course; the system ought to be bilingual, since Catalonia is a bilingual place. What the PP is proposing is a quota system, under which some classes would be given in Spanish and others in Catalan. That seems a lot fairer to me.

This strategy, of course, is aimed not only at Spanish-speakers in Catalonia, but at the many people in the rest of Spain who are anti-Catalanist, which is fair enough, and also those who are anti-Catalan, which is not.

More transport screwups: Four Renfe commuter lines into Barcelona were shut down this morning, stranding a whole bunch of people; meanwhile, the FFCC line that runs southwest out of Plaza Espanya that was shut down during the high-speed line crisis has finally reopened, after three months.

Judicial incompetence: Three Ukrainians were convicted of a 2004 murder of an Andorran businessman (in sleazy prostitution and drug circumstances), and they got seventeen years each in jail. They committed a stupid-ass mistake in the procedure, and the three have been turned loose.

Meanwhile, the three squatters who left the cop in a coma at a February 2006 riot in Barcelona have been sentenced to between 39 and 54 months. That's ridiculous. They intentionally smashed him in the head with a rock. That's attempted murder. Six other rioters got two years each. The squatters are whining and saying the big bad justice system is out to get them. How pathetic. Those losers think they're playing a fun game of being amateur revolutionaries without any fear of ever being punished. Now that a handful of them get comparative slaps on the wrist--the three who tried to kill the cop would have gotten twenty years each at least in the US--they cry like babies because it's just not fair that they should be responsible for their actions.

Economics: Inflation in Spain over the last twelve months was 4.4%, and it's climbing. At noon the Ibex 35 was down 0.9%; the other European markets were down between one and two percent. Tourists spent €3.05 billion in Spain last year. That's a whole lot of money. We are the Florida of Europe, and Barcelona is our Miami.

La Vanguardia again devotes the two main pages of its international section to the American primaries. They're actually doing a pretty good job of covering the race so far.

Fox News is reporting that both Edwards and Giuliani are going to drop out of the race, meaning that it's Hillary vs. Obama and McCain vs. Romney. Of the four, I like them in this order: McCain, Romney, Clinton, Obama. Interesting that neither of the remaining Republicans is a social conservative. Good.

You know it's election time when TV3 begins the afternoon news with the hot breaking story that the portion of the Salamanca Civil War archive that was supposed to be sent to Catalonia has not been completely turned over.

Nobody but a Cataloony could possibly give a crap about where a bunch of seventy-year-old papers are stored, but they do. See, it's a symbolic issue. Cataloonies hold a tremendous grudge against Spain and everything associated with it, and so they are very easy to stir up for electoral reasons.

So Convergence and Union (who are generally moderate nationalists except at election time) has tossed a fit, and the Catalan Socialists (who are generally not very nationalist at all) have followed their example. They're just throwing raw meat to the Cataloony vote, of course, trying to show who can work up a more unpleasant attitude toward the rest of Spain.

What's censurable is TV3's choice of what news to report, what priority to give it, and what tone to give the story. In this case, they chose non-news, and gave it top priority and a belligerent tone.

All Catalan citizens subsidize TV3 with our tax money, and TV3 responds by serving as the propaganda outlet for extreme Catalanists. I'm not claiming there's a conspiracy here; I'm quite sure that the Catalan Corporation for Radio and Television churned out this stale whining all on its own, simply because the people in charge are who they are. And what they want to do is bring out the rabid Cataloonies at the polls in March.

Another day without much news, in contrast to last week, which was pretty hectic because of the terrorist cell and the stock market. At noon the Ibex 35 was up 0.5%, while all the other European markets were down about a point. Meanwhile, the economics ministry announced that Spain's economy is slowing down just a little, but 2007 economic growth was 3.8%, which is very healthy.

In the last three weeks, three women have died in Barcelona after undergoing weight-loss surgery; one had a gastric bypass, one a stomach reduction, and one a lipoectomy, and they all died. I think I would avoid entering a hospital in Barcelona if possible; there's no telling what you're going to get infected with.

Fortunately, however, the death rate in Spain declined by 4% in 2007; AIDS deaths were down 9% and traffic deaths down 7%, which is excellent news. Suicides are also down 5%. The most common cause of death was cardiovascular illness; second was cancer, and third was respiratory illness.

The Constitutional Court upheld a very silly law that forces political parties to give half (between 40% and 60%) of the spots on their list of candidates to women. That's just plain undemocratic. Each party should be allowed to nominate whatever candidates it wants, and if they're all men (or all women), well, let the people vote and we'll see who gets elected.

You may have heard about the jerk in La Rioja who ran over a teenager on a bicycle and then sued the kid's family for the damage done to his car. He quickly became the most hated man in Spain, and he has withdrawn his lawsuit. What a scumbag.

Every time they do this it just pisses me off. The Nissan plant here in Barcelona has decided to lay off 450 workers. (Note that these people are not just being kicked out into the cold; they will each receive a large indemnization whose size depends on how many years they have worked there. Someone with twenty years' seniority will get about two years' salary.)

So 1500 of them downed tools in protest. Fair enough, they've got the right to strike and the right to express their ideas. But they then went out and blocked off the Ronda Litoral, the loop around the south of the city, for half an hour. That is, they interfered with everyone else's rights by blocking the public highway and causing a traffic jam of major proportions. Of course, no arrests were made, and the second and third shifts at the plant are going to do the same thing later today.

The Catalan Association of Universities announced that their students can't read or write correctly. Their president claimed that it's not the educational system's fault, but rather that the kids are lazy and don't try hard enough.

La Vanguardia gives the first two full pages in its international section to the Florida primaries, showing how seriously they're taking the US presidential campaign. There's no ridiculous editorializing to make fun of today, though.

It's Crown Prince Felipe's fortieth birthday. Yippie-skippie.

Here's one for you anti-Patriot Act privacy people. The EU's highest court upheld Spain's telecoms giant Telefonica in a ruling that said that telecoms operators do not have to turn over data regarding which of their users have downloaded what content. Jesus. I'm all for the EU court, of course, since I'm in favor of the government's monitoring communications for national security reasons, like for example listening in on Al Qaeda suspects. But in order to find out whether we've been illegally downloading Britney Spears albums? Please.

Not much other news from these here parts. Supposedly the high-speed train to Madrid will go into service on February 16. I'll believe that when I see it. The number of new mortgages in Catalonia in November was down 25% over November 2006; it's down 15% in Spain as a whole. At noon the Ibex 35 was up 1.8% on the day; it was down 0.9% when it closed yesterday evening. The French cops busted an etarra who was in on three murders in the late '90s. Barcelona supposedly spends €12 million a year on lighting the streets, but it seems like half of them are blacked out most of the time.

La Vanguardia stresses that Zap did not get invited to the summit between Brown, Merkel, Sarkozy, Prodi, and Barroso about the economy, thereby demonstrating his international insignificance. Zap has received a bunch of criticism for his "I'll refund everybody €400 if I get reelected" promise; the opposition parties are saying, if the government doesn't need this money, why not refund it right now? The Moroccans arrested a guy implicated in the March 11 Madrid bombings named Abdelilah Hriz, whose DNA turns up in the Leganes apartment and the van the terrorists used. Since Spain and Morocco have no extradition treaty, Morocco will try him.

Looks like the Barcelona abortion clinics that were doing the illegal late-term abortions are going broke. Good. Barcelona midfielder Deco got busted for drunk driving. That doesn't help his case to stay with the club. Look for a massive housecleaning this summer, with Ronaldinho, Deco, Edmilson, Thuram, Ezquerro, Oleguer, and Zambrotta on their way out, along with Rijkaard. They're almost certainly going to buy Cesc back from Arsenal. I'd get rid of Puyol as well, but the fans would go nuts.

Communist leader Joan Saura demonstrated yesterday exactly what a dope he is. He said, "The people often are afraid of being victims of statistically improbable aggression and don't worry about more probable things, like being the victim of a car accident or one at work." That is, he's discounting the people's concern about terrorism and crime.

Interestingly, terrorism and crime are the two things that Mr. Saura, the Catalan interior counselor, is in charge of. So instead of, like, doing something about them, his response is to tell us not to worry.

Saura makes two mistakes here: He does not understand what people consider to be necessary risks, or what people consider to be a question of individual choice.

As for necessary risks, going to work and driving a car most certainly fit the category. Although, as Saura says, 10 people get killed every week on the Catalan highways, while 105 people died at work during 2007, you've got to do what you've got to do, and going to work and earning money are pretty high on the list of obligations. They're productive activities that contribute to the good of society, although they have some unfortunate side effects.

Crime and terrorism, however, are unnecessary risks. They are not a negative side effect of something useful to society, as car and work accidents are. The people feel that there is no reason they should have to run the risks of crime and terrorism, and so their demands on the government (lock them all up and throw away the key) are much stricter than in the cases of work and car accidents.

In addition, people feel that they are making their own choice when they choose to run labor and transportation risks because they think (perhaps wrongly) that they have some control over whether labor and transport accidents are going to happen to them. Folks figure that if they abide by the law at work and on the highway, and that if they are careful, then the risks they run are less.

Also, a lot of people think that at least some of those others who died in car or work accidents did so because they were careless, and there's a good bit of truth here. Far too many accidents on the road are caused by drunken speeders, and far too many work accidents are caused by disobeying the safety rules or drinking on the job.

Finally, regarding work accidents, it's well-known that some jobs (truck driver, miner, police officer, construction worker, longshoreman) are more dangerous than others (accountant, lawyer, English teacher). Those who choose a more dangerous job are accepting risk knowingly.

Whether you are a victim of crime and terrorism, however, generally has nothing to do with your individual choice. You're going about your business and suddenly some mugger pulls a knife on you or some suicide bomber decides to blow himself up on the bus. You have no control, whether real or perceived, over your fate.

Says Anton M. Espadaler in La Vanguardia:

To think that in Barcelona a terrible catastrophe has been avoided just in time, thanks to the work of the secret services, is a great relief, but it leaves one full of worries. Because we're not just talking about public transport as a terrorist target, but that anybody in a city such as ours may suddenly become the target of a mass murder. As if that weren't enough, experience has not ceased to instruct us that the threat is universal and terrorism is stubborn.

One has the impression that the only opinion people have wanted to hear around here is that Barcelona had earned a certificate of immunity against Islamist terrorism in the mass demonstrations against the Iraq war, which irritated Aznar and George H.W. Bush so much, and pleased Al Jazeera equally. A contract ratified with happy announcements about multiculturalism and other wonderful things such as the Forum.

But now exactly what we did not want to see has just been brutally proven. That is, that if Islamic fundamentalism has declared the West to be an enemy, there are no exceptions of any class. None.

By the way, Saura's genius traffic department has come up with another brilliant traffic idea. First it was cutting the speed limit on all motorways in the Barcelona metro area to 80 kph (50 mph), which has irritated every single person in all Catalonia who drives a car. Now they want to make the lanes narrower, so that people "will have the sensation that they are going faster" than they really are.

Now come on. We're all in favor of traffic safety, but making motorway lanes narrower is not precisely going to make the roads any safer. Even the counselor for public works says this is a terrible idea.

Not much news, which is always a good thing. The Ibex 35 is down 1.5% at midday; the other European markets are down about the same. La Vanguardia charges that Hugo Chaves and Evo Morales are swapping arms for cocaine through noncommercial charter flights, 330 of them in 2007. Three of the fugitives from the Barcelona terrorist cell are hiding out in France. They're looking for the cell's explosives in southern Catalonia and Valencia. Fifteen Moroccans had a gang fight last night in Lleida and two of them got cut up pretty badly with broken bottles. Barça drew last night in Bilbao after playing lousy, and they're now nine points behind Real Madrid.

Campaign promise update: Zap says he'll create 2 million jobs. Rajoy says he'll create 2.2 million jobs. Zap says he'll fund day care for 300,000 children. Rajoy says he'll fund day care for 400,000 children. Rajoy says he'll raise the minimum pension by €150. Zap says he'll raise the minimum pension by €200. Rajoy says the economy will grow by 3.8% and the budget surplus will be 3% if he wins. Zap says he'll raise the minimum wage to €800 if he wins. Rajoy says he'll exempt those making less than €16,000 from income tax, and cut income tax by 16% for the rest. Zap says he'll refund €400 to all taxpayers.

You might enjoy this P.J. O'Rourke piece on the American elections called "Letter to Our European Friends."

Al Qaeda in Catalonia update: Police throughout Europe are looking for at least six uncaptured members of the Barcelona terrorist cell. The leader of the Barcelona cell, Maroof Ahmed Mirza, is linked to the chief of Al Qaeda in Pakistan, Amir Baitula Mehsud, and to other cells in Europe, which are thought to be hiding the six men on the run. The authorities are currently tracing down all the phone calls made by suspected cell members.

Everything the confidential informant (who was to have been one of the suicide bombers) says checks out, except the cops can't find the 100 kilos of explosives he says they had. Very similar to Saddam's chemical weapons: we know he was going around acting like he had them, we took action based on his bluffs and threats, and then we just couldn't find the weapons.

Get this: El Pais says that the terrorist cell that murdered Daniel Pearl was financed by a Barcelona Pakistani cell that got its money running shops and call centers in the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona; the money was transferred to Asia through the hawala money-lending network. They also report that the CIA and FBI believe that jihadists have been using Spain as a logistical and financial center for years.

Those old sons of bitches Georges Habash and Suharto died. Good. Hope they get a nice warm reception where they're going.

Political problem: Former speaker of the Basque parliament, Juan Maria Atutxa, along with two other members of his PNV party, was found guilty by the Supreme Court of contempt of court; he refused to expel the ETA-front party Sozialista Abertzaleak from the regional parliament. The PNV put on a big protest demo in Bilbao yesterday which went off peacefully. Meanwhile, Basque Country premier Juan Jose Ibarretxe is coming up for trial, also on contempt of court charges, for having met twice with ETA leaders. This will be the first time that a regional premier has gone on trial in the history of democratic Spain. If he gets convicted the PNV will pitch a fit.

Campaign promise update: Zap says he'll refund all taxpayers and pensioners who pay income tax €400 each in June. Rajoy says he'll provide day care for 400,000 children.

Hugo Chavez is at it again; he's now claiming that Colombia (as a US puppet) is planning an attack on Venezuela. He's moved forces to the border, allegedly to stop smuggling.

Toni Soler, TV guy and sometime columnist, has a well-written summary of his linguistic ideas in La Vanguardia today. Here it is.

IMMERSION: This is what I answer when someone attacks linguistic immersion in the public schools: in Catalan linguistic policy, equality between Catalan and Spanish is not the baseline we are starting from, but the objective to achieve, since such equality does not exist. The baseline now is of evident inequality in favor of Spanish, which will not be corrected if the two languages receive the same treatment. In fact, it will increase, because of immigration and the imperatives of the market. Therefore, an authentic policy of linguistic equality should clearly favor Catalan so that it can recover what it lost after centuries of prohibitions and interference. In addition, Catalan is our own language, our own individual contribution to the world's linguistic patrimony. This is more than a sufficient reason to rescue it.

I just flat-out disagree with Soler about everything in this paragraph. 1) Catalan and Spanish are starting from a different baseline socially. The majority of people in Catalonia speak Spanish normally; the (large) minority who normally use Catalan tend to be better-educated, richer, and of a higher social class. There is nothing wrong with this, and it is not the government's job to interfere with the language that people want to speak. 2) Spanish and Catalan SHOULD start from the same baseline legally. It is the government's job to make and enforce the laws, and those laws should provide all citizens with equal rights, no matter what language they speak. In fact, Catalan-speakers have MORE rights than Spanish-speakers. If anything needs to be "corrected," it is these affirmative action (in Spanish, get this, "positive discrimination") policies that favor Catalan-speakers, especially in the job market.

3) What makes one policy of linguistic equality more "authentic" than another? Couldn't you say that the most "authentic" language policy should be one of benign neglect, letting the citizens choose on their own what language they want to speak? 4) We don't know what the status of Catalan would be now if history had not happened the way it did, and we can't make up a false history of a monolingual Catalan utopia before those nasty Spaniards came up with their "restrictions and interference." 5) Lots of people in Catalonia think that Spanish is "their own language," Mr. Soler. 6) Catalan does not need to be "rescued." It has at least five million speakers, and the Generalitat claims ten. 7) If economic history teaches us anything, it is that the less we meddle with "the imperatives of the market," the better.

Faced with these arguments, Spanish nationalism, wearing its liberal and civic sheep's clothing, is in favor of letting Catalan crash ihto the logic of the market, which blows in its (Spanish nationalism's) favor. And, in order to complete the pressure from both sides, it hides behind the defense of certain individual rights which, it seems, are only applicable to the Catalan children who speak Spanish at home, not to the thousands who speak Arabic or Urdu. Let us not let the wolf fool us: it is still the same thing, and it wants what it always did, a great and free homeland, in which "regional" languages are only used to sing Christmas carols.

1) There's not some anonymous force called "Spanish nationalism." There are people you could call "Spanish nationalists." Most of them (El Mundo, Cope Radio) don't make any more sense than the Catalan nationalists. What it isn't fair to do is to claim that all those who disagree with Catalan nationalists are therefore Spanish nationalists. 2) Just because it makes sense economically to use Spanish as the predominant language of business does not mean that Catalan is threatened as a language outside of the business world. 3) Spanish-speaking citizens have rights in Spain that immigrants do not. One of the rights they SHOULD have is being allowed to use their own constitutionally protected language in the worlds of education and business. 4) It is an extremely nasty rhetorical trick on Soler's part to identify people (98% of whom are pro-democracy) who disagree with Catalan nationalism with Francoists. 5) Supporting the rights of Spanish speakers does not mean that one wants to interfere with the rights of Catalan speakers, or that one wishes to see Catalan reduced to the equivalent of a folk dialect.

This afternoon the Ibex 35 was up 1.8% to 13,365 points, and it looks like the ride might be slowing down. Nobody get too excited yet: only one of the 35 stocks on the index (Sogecable) has gained on the year, and most companies listed are down some 15% since January 1.

Yesterday the market closed up 7%, the third biggest rise in Spanish history. Iberdrola was up more than 16%. La Vanguardia cites Wall Street's recovery, China's report of 11% growth in 2007, an increase in German business confidence, and BBVA's profits report of nearly 30% for 2007 as key reasons.

Unemployment, meanwhile, is at 8.6% in Spain, which is far too high and a direct result of Spain's restrictive labor laws. I mean, I know a guy who is an executive at a big company, and he has been offered a promotion, which would involve moving to the company's Paris headquarters. One of the factors he is considering, when making his decision, is that if he is fired from his current job in Spain they have to pay him an indemnity of more than one year's salary. By law. He would lose that security if he moved to France.

They busted 51 Internet kiddie porn pervos throughout Spain yesterday. Don't those idiots know everything they do can be traced?

Well, they can't call us "fat Americans" around here any more, since a health ministry study says that the percentages of overweight and obese Apaniards are now the same as in the US. It also says that Spaniards have reached the average European height. If you look at older Spaniards, one of the first things you'll notice is they're all short, and I mean the men are five-foot-four; this is, of course, the result of malnutrition in the postwar years. People under about 40 are a good bit taller.

Election update: It should be easy for the PP to make political hay out of the Barcelona terrorist cell. First, they can blast Zapatero's immigration policy and especially his amnesty for illegal aliens. Second, they can argue (sort of unfairly) that the Socialists claimed that Spain wouldn't be an Islamist target if Spanish troops left Iraq, and look what's happened now. Third, if the statements made about the imminent danger of the cell turn out to have been exaggerated, the Socialists look incompetent at best and like liars at the worst. Fourth, Joan Saura is a dope. If I were the PP I would make a documentary short showing exactly what a dope he is, and stress that this pseudo-Catalanist tree-hugging multiculti Commie was placed in charge of the Catalan police by Zap and the Socialists. I'd make sure that everyone in Spain saw it, and I'd tell them, hey, look, this is what we're running against.

Turns out that most of the evidence leading to the arrest of the terrorist cell in Barcelona comes from information provided by an informant. All the rest of the proof is the four timers and the fifty grams (two ounces) of an explosive chemical substance that were found by the police when they searched the suspects' apartments and the mosque on Calle Hospital. Now the cops are looking for more explosives that the cell might have had.

The various authorities are publicly disagreeing about the possible danger presented by the Pakistani terrorist cell broken up last week. The National Court, the prosecutor's office, and the secret service (CNI) all agree that the terrorists were planning suicide bombing attacks for last weekend; now the possible target list includes two subway trains on the green line (L3), a shopping center, and a rival mosque.

Interior minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, though, is less convinced; he said yesterday, "We don't have any proof, but we believe the statement of the protected witness." He's backing off the assertion that the attacks were to have been last weekend, saying that they didn't have enough explosives.

One thing: When some of the suspects were arrested, they were practicing the use of explosives, using modeling clay rather than the real substances.

Another thing: Something big must have been up, because by making the arrests the cops burned their inside informer, thereby giving up a major source of future information. They would be complete idiots to burn an informer over nothing, and I don't think the professional security forces are idiots. (The politicians in charge of them are another matter.)

Investigators say that the leader of the cell was Maroof Ahmed Mirza, one of the imams at the Calle Hospital mosque, who had arrived from Pakistan several months ago and who "controlled the group, ideologically and operationally."

The cops say that the group's aim was "to create a state of general psychosis in the Catalan capital, and to transmit the feeling that no one is safe." Well, they achieved that much.

Today La Vanguardia has a story on page 16 headlined "Mistrust in the Raval: Suspicions isolate Pakistani community in Barcelona neighborhood." The story says, basically, that nobody liked the Pakistanis in the first place, not the other immigrants (not even the Moroccans) or the local Catalans/Spaniards, and that now people like them even less.

Pilar Rahola writes today that radical imams and what they tell their faithful should be watched. Well, yeah, that's what the authorities are doing, infiltrating an informer among the faithful, and I bet this isn't the only guy they have. She adds that the Generalitat is subsidizing an organization called the Islamic Council, which the Calle Hospital mosque was associated with, to the tune of €90,000. Well, first, the government should not finance non-governmental associations; the whole point of being a private NGO is that you don't depend on the government, right? I wouldn't give any tax money to the Islamic Council or to anybody else's council. Second, of course, they should emphatically not subsidize organizations whose goals are violently subversive.

Spanish Attorney-General Candido Conde-Pumpido, among other things a former defense lawyer for ETA members, just said that of the ten suspected members of the Barcelona Islamist terrorist cell who have been held in jail, six were suicide bombers, two were explosives experts, and two more were the leaders.

Six suicide bombers to have blown themselves up on the Barcelona metro. That would have made March 11, 2004 in Madrid look comparatively small. This story isn't getting any international press, which surprises me, because it's a big deal around here.

Catalan interior counselor Joan Saura, a Communist, looked like a doofus yesterday when he told the Catalan parliament that there was "no danger of an imminent attack." Then a couple hours later Interior announced that the suicide bombings were to have gone off last weekend. Now Convergencia is yelling for his head to roll on the ground that either he doesn't know what he's talking about or he's lying to the citizens. I'm just guessing that the Spanish authorities don't trust him any more than I do, and they don't let him in on any information that he'd probably blab.

I sure hope the people writing comments on La Vanguardia's website aren't representative of Catalan society as a whole; I don't think they are, since I don't think most folks are excited enough to take the trouble to write in to a newspaper comments section. The people who are writing in, though, are showing some very nasty racism. They're planning an anti-Pakistani demonstration; just what we need, a lynch mob.

A few quotes (by the way, "moro" is the Spanish insult for a Muslim in general, an Arab more specifically, and a Moroccan in particular) from 16:00 to 16:45 Spanish time:

16:42: We don't want them to impose their culture on us. Prohibit the burqa! Prohibit the veil! Prohibit mosques! Prohibit "moros" from entering (Spain)!

16:39: You give them a job, a salary, you build them mosques, and you see how they pay you back, trying to commit a massacre. Enough "progre" incompetent politicians, enough uncontrolled illegal immigration. Let us be firm against this threat.

16:32: "Moros" get out now!!! We should expel them all and eliminate the ones who refuse to go.

16:28: "MOROS" GET OUT OF SPAIN!!! GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY AS YOU CAME, IN A BOAT.

16:22: There are lots of lazy "moritos." Even worse, they hate us, they spend all day criticizing us, and when you're not looking they go terrorist.

16:21: I'm racist...so what? I'm sick of your subculture. You are an ugly caricature of what you were. When you allow women to be freed from Islam, when you allow freedom of expression, when you stop stoning women, then we will respect you. Meanwhile we will prohibit you from owning property in Spain and if that doesn't make you leave, we'll throw you out with cannon fire.

16:05: "MOROS": If you don't like how we treat you go home and that's all. Go pray to your god and ask him to bring democracy to your countries. And we have to be the ones who bend over to you. It's come this far!! Prepare to all go home to Africa, you don't have much time, or else lynch your terrorist compatriots.

16:04: Get airplanes working to send Pakis back to their countries. SAURA RESIGN.

There are already more than 750 comments, and too many of them are in this vein. We can't go around blaming all Muslims for a plot only a dozen of them were part of, and we can't blame the ones here for things we dislike (with justice) about some Muslim countries. Only a very few places stone women or force them to wear a burqa, and for every reactionary Iran or Saudi Arabia there is a comparatively liberal Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, or Malaysia. No, I don't want to defend Islamist terrorism in the least, but let us not blame many innocent people for something a few (probably--we haven't seen much evidence yet) guilty people did.

More from the stock market: At noon today the Ibex 35 was up 4.8%, a huge recovery, in heavy trading. Frankfurt, London, Paris, and Milan are all up between 3.5% and 5%. BBVA and Santander are up 6% each, with Repsol up 5% and Telefonica and Endesa showing smaller gains. Iberdrola is up almost 9%, but that seems to be the result of a bogus report that Electricite de France was going to buy a piece of it. La Vanguardia is guessing that todsy's strong showing is a result of yesterday's good results on Wall Street.

Yesterday the markets declined by 4.6% to 12,255 points; Santander fell 4.8%, BBVA 3.4%, Endesa 5.5%, Telefonica 5.6%, Repsol 4.3%, and Iberdrola 6.8%. La Vanguardia blamed it on Trechet's refusal to cut European interest rates.

This is quite a roller-coaster ride, down one day and up the next. Of course, if you're a small investor, you're nuts if you're not in for the long term, so don't do anything silly like sell out now. Says Mr. Financial Genius.

More African boat people: A cayuco with 70 illegal immigrants was found off Grand Canary. Fortunately they were rescued before anyone died.

In today's La Vanguardia, on page 17, Alfred Rexach called Socialist candidate for Barcelona Carmen Chacon an airhead. Actually, he said, "Mrs. Chacon is a politician who has very set ideas, and she is not affected by the doubts and vacillations that so many people suffer from, those who do not have the good luck to always feel as self-assured as she does. Example: The PP is bad, very bad. The Socialists, on the other hand, are good, very good. Sometimes they make a small mistake, that's true and she admits it, but they always fix it quickly."

Also, Francesc de Carreras takes a whack at TV3, Catalan public television. Seems they promised up and down that they weren't going to be politically biased any more. Then they went ahead and nominated twelve new members for the board of directors according to strict party quotas, and the Catalan parliament approved. The new chairman of the board is currently the Montilla government's press secretary, also a former assistant editor of the nationalist newspaper Avui.

Note: De Carreras uses a term that would definitely be considered racist in the US; he says the situation might end up like a "merienda de negros," literally "a black people's dinner," and figuratively "a Chinese fire drill" or "a Mongolian cluster-fuck."

Most recent stats on daily newspaper circulation in Spain: El Pais 435,000; El Mundo 336,000; La Vanguardia 214,000; El Periodico 180,000; La Razon 154,000; Avui 29,000.

Equivalent-sized American papers would be: El Pais = St. Petersburg Times; El Mundo = Orlando Sentinel; La Vanguardia = Raleigh News and Observer; El Periodico = Fresno Bee; La Razon = Knoxville News-Sentinel; Avui not among top 100 American dailies.

National Court judge Ismael Moreno yesterday charged three of the suspected Pakistani terrorists with planning suicide attacks on Barcelona public transport (probably the metro) last weekend. Undoubtedly mass carnage would have been wreaked, London- or Madrid-style. Good thing they caught them in time. Moreno jailed ten of those arrested without bail. The three potential suicide bombers arrived in Barcelona in November and December of last year.

Moreno ruled, "Those arrested made up an organized group with a clear and specialized division of functions, ideologically linked by their profession of an extremist Islamic posture, in accordance with the principles of the Tabligh e Jamaa movement...The group had moved toward a more radical position that justified the indiscriminate use of violence as a legitimate tool to reach its political-religious goals...The nucleus had reached operative capability and was very close to achieving technical explosives capability, to be used in jihadist attacks, leading to the inference that the members of the alleged terrorist cell planned to carry out several different suicide terrorist actions last weekend, between January 18 and 20, on Barcelona public transport."

Judging by what I hear on the streets and the reader comments section in La Vanguardia, there is a serious backlash of anti-Pakistani racism going on around here. La Vanguardia's print edition repeats a few urban legends: that the government gives immigrants free apartments, that Pakistanis harass owners of shops they want to rent in order to force them to leave, that Pakistanis are all part of an illegal mafia organization that brings them over here and pays off the authorities, and the like.

We got a Google hit for "why do mens penises get stuck while having anal sex".

I don't think Iberian Notes has ever addressed this question, nor does it have any firsthand knowledge of the topic. Just a wild guess: Lubrication might be a factor.

Stock market news: The Ibex 35 was down 2.6% today at noon. Frankfurt, London, Paris, and Milan are all down a couple of points. La Vanguardia points at European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet, who said this morning that controlling inflation was more important than lowering Euro interest rates. Investors, therefore, figure there will be no rate cut and thus no cheaper credit. However, it looks like the panic has been headed off at the pass.

Both political parties are trying to make hay out of the citizens' worries about the economy (which, I repeat, is not doing too badly, though things could be better). The PP is blaming everything on the Socialists, and the Socialists are blaming everything on the Americans. Both, of course, are wrong.

The Spanish government is going to begin the legal process of banning ETA-front political parties PCTV and ANV, under the Political Parties Act, on Friday. This means that they will not be able to run in the March 9 general election. Good. They've got evidence that these parties have the same funding structure as the already-banned front party Batasuna; among other things, notorious jailbirds and Batasuna bosses Arnaldo Otegi and Joseba Permach were using a PCTV credit card for their own nefarious purposes.

Get this: we had another major blackout in Barcelona this morning that affected 70,000 households in the city itself and its northern suburbs Badalona, Santa Coloma, and Sant Adrià. The power was off for twelve hours after a fire at the Badalona substation. They've jerry-rigged electrical supply again, but it'll take them fifteen days to repair all the damage. The infrastructure here in Barcelona really is crappy. The usual suspects say it's all Madrid's fault, of course.

The Guardia Civil arrested five members of the GRAPO's legal team this morning on charges that they're members of the organization. The Interior ministry says they were involved in "propaganda, financing, recruiting, proselytism, training, international relations, and information-gathering" for the terrorist group, which is Spain's leftover from the 1970s days of the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhofs. These guys are no joke; they've killed some 50 people in their career. The cops believe that they broke up the GRAPO's last functioning cell last year.

The judge released on bail two of the fifteen suspected Al Qaeda terrorists arrested last week in Barcelona. The rest of them get their hearings today.

Finally the Spanish press has an article on the death penalty that isn't full of hypocritical blasts at the US: La Vanguardia has a piece on capital punishment in Japan, where 46 death sentences were issued last year and nine criminals were hanged. They add that in Japan, the criminal's family is not informed of the execution until it is carried out, in secret. La Vangua says that the US, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are the only democracies that use the death penalty; what about India? And do Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand count as democracies or not?

La Vangua also has a full-page piece on the South Carolina Democratic debate. Their reporter's take is that Obama was the loser: "(Obama) has a serious problem connecting with the lower-middle class and the Hispanics. His message is beautiful, but too intellectual and ethereal. He is a candidate who may captivate many Europeans, but will have a more difficult time with the Americans."

What they seem to be forgetting around here is that there are two political parties, and whoever gets nominated by the other one has a good chance at beating either Clinton or Obama. It's not just a Hillary-Obama horse race.

Local news: Wild pigs (jabalíes) are becoming a pest in the Barcelona suburbs and even on the fringes of the city near Collserola. I like them, myself, but the same thing is happening here now that happened in the US 20 years ago: wild animals, like deer, raccoons, Canada geese, and even black bears, have moved in with us because our nice, safe, green suburbs make an excellent habitat, with plenty of food and few predators. It seems, by the way, that the wild pigs' favorite foods are corn and sunflowers, but they also like pretty much any sort of human garbage.

This morning I tore out Pasqual Maragall's article from Monday's El Periodico; I derived great satisfaction from using it to pick up Perla the dog's poop while on our daily rounds.

There are two possible interpretations of this: 1) I am absorbing, osmosis-like, Catalan culture, along with its delight in everything scatological (see Robert Hughes, Barcelona), or 2) I am maturing and becoming more able to take pleasure in the smaller joys of daily life.

The Ibex 35 was at 12,880 late this afternoon, up 2% on the day. Looks like the fears of a crash have subsided. Telefonica is up 2.4%, Repsol is up 3.7%, Santander is up 4.5%, BBVA is up 2.9%, Iberdrola is down 2%, and Endesa is up 1.2%.

This afternoon the Spanish Ibex 35 came back, and is now more or less where it opened this morning. The other European markets have also recovered on the day. Everyone is waiting to see what Wall Street does. The Federal Reserve has just announced an interest rate cut of three-fourths of a point.

Here's Larry Kudlow of National Review. Note the second paragraph.

There’s a global stock market tsunami gathering force. It may hit U.S. shores very hard this morning.

Much of this is panic over a U.S. recession threat that has yet to clearly materialize. The world sell-off also vastly overestimates loan and credit problems among international financial institutions.

In any event, world central banks should immediately reduce rates and add liquidity first thing in the morning, no matter what the time-zone.

Fed head Ben Bernanke should have cut rates 50 basis points last week. He should do it first thing this morning. Then cut rates another 50 basis points on January 30.

Importantly, central banks must work together and cut rates together. They must coordinate to avoid major financial consequences. They must show investors, financiers, and business people that they are in charge.

In this deflationary environment, plunging commodities, stocks, and credit-risk-free government bond yields are all signaling central bankers to take charge. That means lower rates and more money creation.

Pronto.

Looks like the Fed more or less followed Kudlow's advice.

What happens when you give a retired politician with Alzheimer's a full page in El Periódico to opine on the American primary elections?

This, by former Catalan premier and Barcelona mayor Pasqual Maragall, on page 5 of yesterday's issue.

It is very difficult for Obama to win the elections in a country in which the "white anglosaxon protestants" (sic) have always governed. But the primaries seem to show that a miracle is not impossible. And I say a miracle, after the murders of John and Bob Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcom X (sic), that is, the blacks or merely Catholics who have dared to say what America should be like and to have impossible dreams.

Some dreams kill, and if you don't believe it, ask Martin Luther King's widow. "I had a dream," (sic) said King. And he was a Protestant pastor, not a Catholic. But he was black, and they killed him. Or ask the wife of Colin Powell, the hero of the Gulf War, who said no to her husband's being a candidate for vice-president and, eventually, president. "They will kill him," (sic) she said. America is like that. On Main Street (sic), there is room for only one gunman, and that is the sheriff. They made poor Gary Cooper the sheriff against his will in High Noon, and he just barely got away in one piece.

Jeez. 1) What does High Noon have to do with the American primaries? 2) Talk about trying to explain everything about America through images from movies, all too common a sin in Spain. 3) Does anyone seriously believe that if Powell had run for office, he would have been assassinated because he's black? 4) Does anyone seriously believe that the Kennedys were assassinated because they were Catholic?

In Europe, authority comes from above: from God, the Church, history...In the first American Union it was different. The Pennsilvannia Dutch (sic) were there, with their wagons, hats, and beards. There were the South (Gone with the Wind) and the North. The North won, of course, and the Hispanic, Latin, and Catholic heritage nearly disappeared.

What the hell is this shit? What does Gone with the Wind have to do with anything? Or the Pennsylvania Germans, of whom the Amish are a minuscule sect? And since when were the antebellum Southerners Hispanic, Latin, or Catholic? They were more WASP than anyone else.

Northern Europe won out over Southern Europe in America too. As when, after the Invencible Armada, England won out over Spain. "You are a conquistador when you can't be a pirate," said Francis Drake, a pirate who was made a sir (sic) by Elizabeth I of England. But now something extraordinary is happening: the blacks of the South, though Obama was born in the North, may govern North America.

I mean, really. What does Sir Francis Drake have to do with the Nevada primary? And what do American black people have to do with Southern Europe? It's racist as hell, genuinely racist, to say that "the blacks of the South" will govern the country if Obama wins. The whole point is that Obama is an individual, not just some black guy, and if he wins, the minority group he belongs to will no more take over power than the Southern Baptists did when Carter was president. I mean, come on. If Joe Lieberman were elected, would Maragall say that the Jews had taken over America? If Romney wins, does that mean the Mormons are going to take over? With José Montilla as premier, does that mean the charnegos have taken over Catalonia?

Obama has some of all the "non WASP" (sic) ingredients, except that he's Protestant. He is a Gary Cooper who dares to defy the more or less corrupt establishment (sic); he is black like Malcom X (sic), King, and Powell, and he is charismatic like Kennedy, or he may be.

Are they going to kill him? It is more difficult now. The United States is not what it was. They can no longer completely ignore world public opinion. Europe is tied in per capita income and has a tighter spectrum of wealth distribution. Less poverty. This may help Obama, if the people are conscious of it. Possibly the minority that votes in the American elections, about 50%, is. Soon we will know. Everything points to a mobilization of women and Afro-Americans. We can't ask for more novelties.

Who is this "they" who might murder Obama? Is it that same evil conspiracy that did away with King and Malcolm X while ignoring world public opinion? What is this crap about the so-called establishment in the US being more or less corrupt? And what the hell do the facts that Europe is not tied with the US in per capita income, and that Europe does not have less poverty than the US, have to do with anything?

To finish, have you noticed that if the black Barack Hussein Obama wins the confrontation with the most extremist third world (Bin Laden), it will be a confrontation of first cousins? Obama/Osama? Isn't this a foretaste of a world scene different from the habitual North/South, East/West?

Obama and Osama are first cousins? What is this shit?

More stock market news: The Ibex 35, Spain's main stock index, is down more than one percent in the first hour of trading this morning. It fell 4% in the first few minutes, and then recovered somewhat. The Ibex went below 12,000 points before its (temporary) comeback. All the banks are off, with Santander and BBVA down 5% each early today. Repsol is down 7% and Telefonica is down 3%.

In Europe this morning, Frankfurt, London, and Paris are down three percent, Zurich is down four, and Milan is down five.

Yesterday's final results showed the Ibex down 7.5% to finish at 12,625 points. The biggest losers were Iberdrola (-12.5%), Sacyr Vallehermoso (-11%), Gamesa (-10%), Repsol (-10%), Santander (-9%), and Acciona (-8.5%).

La Vanguardia's finger-pointing focus this morning is Bush's tax cut plan, supposed to stimulate the economy, which it says is insufficient to stem the market slide. Maybe, but there must be dozens of other factors as well.

Stock market update: The Madrid Ibex 35 stock index fell 7% today to finish well below 13,000 points. Iberdrola, Banco Santander, and Repsol are all down eight or nine percent. Frankfurt is off six percent and Paris is off 5%.

Fortunately today is Martin Luther King Day in the States and the NYSE is closed, so everyone will have time to calm down a little and reflect.

I know nothing about the stock market except that schloops like us can't beat it, that there's no way (without illegal inside information) to predict which stocks will rise or fall at any given moment. The only thing you can do is put your cash in a diverse mutual fund, which ought to give you results more or less the same as the market average. And the stock market average does do better than any other investment does, over the long term.

Small investors will be hit hard; 7% of their share value has just disappeared. If you had €10,000 in Santander stock yesterday, you now have €9300. Unlike some folks around here seem to think, though, this money hasn't gone into someone else's pockets. If we use the standard analogy of the pie, then it's the whole pie that shrank, and everyone's piece just got smaller. Nobody's piece got bigger.

Iberian Notes's honor has been slandered. We have been accused of misogyny for calling Carmen Chacon an airhead.

We plead innocent, and adduce two pieces of evidence:

1) In the very same post in which we called Ms. Chacon an airhead, we praised Manuela de Madre and Pilar Rahola, both of whom are women.

2) A search shows that Iberian Notes has only used the word "airhead" once before: to describe two men, John Kerry and John Edwards, on April 26, 2003.

The Spanish stock market is taking a sharp slide today. At noon it had fallen below 13,000 points, down more than 4 percent. Sacyr Vallehermoso (the contractor that just won the bid to dig the tunnel under Barcelona to connect the AVE to La Sagrera) and Repsol YPF are down by more than 7%. Iberdrola is down 6%, Banco Santander is down nearly 5%, and Endesa, BBVA, and Telefonica are all down about 3%.

Stocks are down around the world this morning, with Paris, London, Frankfurt, and Milan all down about three percent and Tokyo down four percent. La Vanguardia's analysis says it's due to fear over an upcoming recession in the US; El Periodico and TV3 more or less agree.

Just a comment: I have no doubts about the honesty and patriotism of the Spanish intelligence service and the police, and I have no doubts about the staff of the Catalan police, either. However, I do not trust the politician in charge of the Catalan regional interior department, the Communist Joan Saura, and I certainly hope nobody tells him about any intelligence or police work that needs to stay secret.

Further information on the terrorist cell broken up in Barcelona: The fifteenth man arrested is also Pakistani. Most of the members of this cell are part of a radical Islamist sect called the Tabligh; the mosque that was raided on Calle Hospital is run by an imam from that group. They were planning attacks in both Barcelona and France; the Barcelona attack was to be a suicide bombing in another Barcelona mosque at prayer time on a Friday.

Police had been watching them for five years, and the cell had recently received financing through the Pakistani hawala money-lending network. They say that not all those arrested had the same degree of implication in the plot. More arrests may yet be made.

La Vanguardia has an election survey out (note: it was taken before the Pizarro and Gallardon stories broke), showing the PSOE with 42.3% of the vote and 162-164 seats, compared with the PP's 39.8% and 154-156 seats. Neither party would have an absolute majority, since 176 seats are needed. Presumably the Communists and their 5 seats would join up with the Socialists, meaning that they'd still have to deal with some combination of CiU (8 seats), the PNV (7), and ERC (6).

This is really close, just barely within the survey's margin of error. Though the survey shows that most Spaniards have a better opinion of Zap than of Rajoy, they don't completely hate Rajoy either. The PP has a chance at winning this one. Let's hope the Gallardon affair doesn't do too much damage. PP voters don't have anywhere else to go but abstention, but Gallardon is popular in Madrid and a few of his supporters might be so angry they'll stay home.

The debates that Zap agreed to with Rajoy take on new importance. They give Rajoy a chance he wouldn't otherwise have had at a direct confrontation. You can't dance with the champ, you have to knock him out, and Rajoy needs to clobber Zap, which I think he can do. Even better: the second debate is only six days before the election, meaning that Zap won't have much time to counter the effects of a defeat in the debates.

The results in Catalonia will be a clear Socialist victory, with the PP gaining a seat or two, the Commies and CiU staying about the same, and Esquerra losing a seat or two. No surprises here.

La Vanguardia predicts the key to the election will be the voters' pocketbooks, which does not look good for Zap. Not that the economy's going too badly, but inflation is up and credit is tight, and there are complaints among the citizens. El Periodico has a survey saying that Catalans asked to name the region's three top problems answered: transport and infrastructure (32%), unemployment (26%), housing (25%), and immigration (24%). Well behind are "the economy," the cost of living, "politicians," health care, pensions, and crime.

The US primaries are getting plenty of coverage over here; La Vanguardia is claiming that the Hispanic vote was key to the Nevada primaries, for which they show absolutely no evidence. The cliché they love to mention in Spain whenever Nevada comes up in the news is that in the state's rural counties, there are a good few descendants of Basques who came over as shepherds about 125 years ago.

The anthropologists at Atapuerca report that the Homo antecesor people who lived there 800,000 years ago ate each other, and that the Homo sapiens who lived there much later did the same.

Al Qaeda in Catalonia update: This evening the police arrested one more man in the Raval, bringing the total of arrests to 15. The Catalan interior counselor, Mr. Feng Shui himself, Joan Saura, claimed that Catalonia was "not a nest of terrorists." TV3 says that, of all suspected Islamist terrorists arrested in Spain, one-third are arrested in Catalonia.

El Periodico is out ahead of everyone else on this story; they say that the foreign intelligence service that tipped off the Spanish CNI was the French, that the authorities have been surveilling these guys for three years, and that they made the decision to arrest them because an important Pakistani radical was coming to town.

The police found 50 grams of peroxide of acetone, which was the explosive used by the London transport bombers, among other substances that can be used to make explosives. They're investigating whether the radical big fish brought the peroxide of acetone to the Barcelona cell.

These guys apparently have connections in both Great Britain and Portugal. They are also connected to a group of Pakistanis rounded up here in Barcelona in 2004, who were sentenced to up to nine years in prison each for belonging to an Al Qaeda affiliate called Sunni Therik.

El Mundo has a photo gallery, but it's not very exciting.

Breaking news: The Guardia Civil arrested fourteen people, twelve Pakistanis and two Indians, suspected of forming a terrorist cell, early this morning in Barcelona. Police operations have not yet finished, and there may be more arrests. The cell was planning a terrorist attack in Barcelona; police discovered bomb-making equipment, including timers, and chemicals that can be used to make explosives. They are also thought to have recruited and financed volunteer terrorists for Afghanistan.

Interior minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said that the cell had been very recently discovered by the CNI, Spanish intelligence, with assistance from authorities in other unnamed countries. He added that the cell has not yet been linked to Al Qaeda, but that a connection has not been ruled out, and that it was a well-organized group. (El Periodico headlines that the cell was part of Al Qaeda, specifically a Pakistani branch called Mohammed's Army.) Rubalcaba also said that radical Islamists consider Spain a top priority target.

All the arrests happened in the Raval district, the area of the old city between the Ronda Sant Pau and the Ramblas, with a very heavy immigrant population; some of them were arreated at the unofficial mosque on Calle Hospital.

Note: The Spanish press has a language problem when talking about Indian citizens. "Indio" always refers to an indigenous North or South American, and so a citizen of India is a "hindú." Now, of course, some 10% of Indians are Muslims, and there are other religious groups like the Sikhs, too. In particular, I will bet you euros to churros that the two Indians arrested were most definitely not Hindus, but rather Muslims. But that's what La Vanguardia called them.