Publico, surprisingly, has a front-page editorial that I largely agree with. "Secular" ("laíco") is a fetish-word for the Jacobin European Left that goes back to the French Revolution, and all good Jacobins, anticlericals to a man, believe in the secular state. Well, I do, too, but I think my definition of "secular" may be different from theirs. I agree that there should be no established church, and that the churches should stay out of other people's business. I don't want to tear down the Catholic Church, though, and I think the anticlericals need to accept that Catholicism is one of the bases of Spanish culture.

Here's Publico's ten commandments for the secular state:

1. No more government subsidies for Church schools. Completely agreed. The problem is that Spain doesn't have enough public schools for everybody, so one-third of the kids go to "concerted" schools, Catholic schools partly funded by the state. Changing this situation would require massive investment on the part of the state.

2. No more religion classes in the public schools. Completely agreed. Right now all schools must offer classes in Catholic doctrine, which are elective for the students. If parents want their kid to get religious training, they should send their kid to a religious school, not a public one.

3. No religious symbolism at occasions of state. Completely disagree. The example they give is Calvo-Sotelo's state funeral, held at a Catholic church and presided over by a Catholic priest. Well? Calvo-Sotelo was Catholic, and that's the kind of funeral he would have wanted. Such symbolism is basically harmless. No one is offended except people who want to get offended.

4. No state presence at religious celebrations. Completely disagree. Their example is government officials in Semana Santa processions. So what? Nothing's being imposed on anybody. If you don't like Semana Santa processions, don't watch them.

5. No more state religious holidays. Absolutely, totally disagree. Why change the tradition and make everybody angry? Believe me, nothing's going to piss off the people more than removing the holiday status of Christmas. Besides, about a third of Spaniards are observant enough to do stuff like take the day off to go to church on Good Friday; might as well make the day a holiday for everyone.

6. No Catholic representatives in non-Church institutions. Completely disagree. Their examples are Army chaplains and chapels in hospitals. It makes sense to me to allow soldiers religious consolation, and to have a priest around the hospital to administer last rites. Again, nothing's being forced on anyone; you don't have to go see the chaplain if you don't want to.

7. The state should confiscate Church property. Absolutely, totally disagree. Their example is "Who does Burgos cathedral belong to, humanity or the Church?" The Church, of course. I have no problem with state subsidies for the preservation of privately owned historical treasures, and such a program is an incredibly tiny portion of the budget anyway.

8. Make apostasy easy. Agreed, but who cares? Yes, the Church should allow people who want to un-baptize themselves and take themselves off the membership rolls. But if you're an atheist, who cares if you were baptized in the first place, since you believe it's a meaningless ceremony anyway?

9. State-owned media should not televise religious programs. I agree in the sense that there should be no state-owned media, period. I disagree in the sense that some people are interested in religious programming on Sunday morning, and the customer should get what he wants. If you don't want to watch it, turn the channel over to Playboy TV or whatever you like better. Nothing's being imposed on you.

10. The Church should be 100% self-financed. Completely and totally agree, with a few tiny exceptions such as, say, government cooperation with Church homeless shelters and such things. Right now there's a check-off box on your income tax if you want to give a euro or whatever to the church; get rid of that. If you want to give the church money, do it yourself and not through the tax system.

I think it's interesting that Publico didn't mention the divorce and abortion laws, both of which include religiously-based impediments to individual decisions.

I noticed that visitor traffic was way up yesterday, more than 300, when it's usually about 180 on Fridays. So I checked, and discovered I was getting dozens of Google hits for Javier Rodrigo de Santos, the Pervert of Palma, the Vice Mayor, mostly from Germany but also Austria, Switzerland, and central Europe generally. I checked even further, and discovered that Der Spiegel has picked up the story; their interest is due to the large number of Germans on Mallorca.

I don't speak German, of course, but I was able to figure out a little of the article. For example, "Gruppensex," "Koksorgien," and "Dildogeschichten." And "das Happy End einer Massage," as well.

I'm going to add Dildogeschichten to my vocabulary. "It was kind of a kinky porno vid. There were three couples swapping partners and positions, and after about ten minutes the Dildogeschichten started."

The drought has finally broken. There's a low-pressure system over the western Mediterranean bringing counterclockwise winds from the east carrying moist air. It's going to rain until at least next Wednesday, at least four inches total in all of Catalonia, and this should make an appreciable difference in reservoir levels. It'll be a green summer out in the country.

The situation in Burma is beyond scandalous. It's openly criminal. Figures (probably exaggerated) of half a million dead are being thrown around, and there are reports of cholera and malaria outbreaks. The Americans and several other countries, including the Brits and Aussies and of course the Thais, are just waiting for permission to start flying in aid, and the xenophobic Burmese junta won't let them. Even the UN and Amnesty International are denouncing the junta. Meanwhile, of all things, they're having a pseudo-election tomorrow, a referendum on a new constitution. If this doesn't bring the government down--remember last year's rioting, brutally put down?--I don't know what will.

Meanwhile, in one of those slightly admirable and slightly silly ceremonies they have around here, the Generalitat's Catalonia International Prize has been jointly awarded to Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi and a Burmese woman doctor. The honorees will receive €100,000 in cash (rather generous) and an Antoni Tapies sculpture (rather worthless). My problem here: It seems to me that the moral stature of the awardees is higher than that of the awarders, and that the awarders are attempting to buy moral stature by associating themselves with the awardees.

Monica Terribas has been named president of TV3, so good-bye to hopes of its de-politicization. Even though the Socialists are in power, TV3 will always be the heart of nationalist influence in Catalonia. Monica is probably most memorable, at least to me, for her adrenaline-fueled (?) performance the night of the 2004 US election, and for her interview with Colin Powell, when she got a bit snippy and he bulldozed her.

Our friends in Esquerra Republicana have pitched in on the Free Franki crusade. Puigcercos and Pepelu Carod are vying to see who can be Cataloonier; Puigcercos has called on the government to liberate him. Carod took it farther and denounced "the impunity enjoyed by those persons and media that insult, defame, and lie about Catalan reality, its institutions, or its political representatives." Wow. Sounds like Pepelu's against free speech for everybody but him.

ETA update: The French cops found the car used by the terrorists who killed the two Guardias Civiles near Bordeaux, but the killers are still at large. No news on the murderers of Isaías Carrasco, who are also still at large.

Get this: 36 local cops, including the police chief, have been arrested in the Madrid suburb of Coslada for extorting protection money from bars and discos, and for collaborating with a Romanian gang that trafficked in prostitutes. I'm pretty sure that corruption among local cops is pretty well entrenched in Spain. I know some places in Barcelona that have been operating illegally for years, and they must be paying somebody off.

The cops rounded up yet another bunch of Internet kiddie-porn pervos, 17 this time. Jeez. These guys are just crawling out of the woodwork.

The Barça firestorm is growing. All the fans are mightily pissed off that the team looked so bad against Real Madrid. Eto'o, Edmilson, Xavi, and Bojan were harassed as they drove away from practice yesterday. There's a movement to get rid of Laporta, but I don't think it'll be successful. Rijkaard is officially out as coach and Guardiola in, and Beguiristain shows no signs of stepping down as general manager.

Just a comment: I've been getting several Google hits a day for "javier rodrigo de santos," the Pervert of Palma, the guy who spent €50,000 of city money at gay brothels. The fun part, of course, is that he'd posed as a traditionalist family values advocate, married with kids and all. I don't understand the international interest in him, though. Maybe he has a lot of foreign, uh, friends.

I also got a Google hit this morning for "insid a hores rectom." I'm curious about whether he meant "horse's" or "whore's." Either way it's pretty gross. The searcher is in Crowville, Louisiana, which means he's probably a native English speaker, and he managed to spell all three words longer than one letter incorrectly. I hope I never go to Crowville, Louisiana.

It's even worse in Burma than had been thought. They're talking 100,000 dead. Survivors report mountains of bodies.99,000 of the dead would still be alive if their government weren't so incompetent and corrupt. I didn't know this: The main road from Mandalay to Rangoon wasn't even paved. Now it's not there anymore.

The xenophobic and autarchic nature of the Burmese dictatorship makes it very hard to get news out of there, and the information available is very limited. Some aid is coming in through Thailand, high-energy cookies, blankets, and medicine. La Vanguardia reports that the Burmese junta has deigned to accept American aid; the Americans have offered $3 million as long as American officials get to supervise the distribution. People from the UN's World Food Program are having trouble getting in because the junta won't give them visas. People are getting desperate in the Irrawaddy delta, and there have been food riots.

You know there's not much news when La Vangua puts a photo of Madonna tongueing one of her dancers on the front page of their website with the headline, "Another Madonna lesbian kiss." Has anybody cared what Madonna does since about 1992? I never cared about what she did at all, ever. I imagine that most male Madonna fans are heterosexuality-challenged.

Econ minister Pedro Solbes says that the housing market needs to adjust (that is, deflate), and that he's not going to take any "artificial measures" to stop it. Now he's hoping that growth will return to 3% in 2010, and that Spain needs some "financial austerity." That sort of contradicts Zap's stimulus package and all the money-raining promises he made during the campaign. Whatever happened to the day-care centers at every company, or the job training for ex-construction workers, or the six-month government mortgage guarantees?

Spain is claiming that the American salvage company Odyssey "expoliated" the wreck of a Spanish navy ship which sank in 1804, found by Odyssey last year. They want the treasure that the company discovered, valued at some $500 million, for themselves, though Odyssey did the work of finding it and then bringing up the gold. I dunno. If the shipwreck wasn't found in Spanish territorial waters, I don't think Spain has much of a claim; they lost their ownership of it when they abandoned it under water for two hundred years. And if anybody but Odyssey has a claim on the treasure, seems to me it would be Peru, not Spain, right?

Remember Franki the flag-burning squatter punk? A couple of his buddies used climbing equipment to suspend themselves between the towers of the Sagrada Familia over the weekend, and this morning they suspended themselves off a bridge over the motorway into Barcelona through Sant Joan Despi, and the cops had to cut off traffic in order to get them down. If I were the cops I'd give them five minutes to get the hell out, and then cut their ropes if they didn't comply. By the way, Franki is supposedly mixed up with Laura Riera, the Terrassa girl who put the finger on a PP town councilman murdered by ETA.

The number of abortions performed yearly in Spain has increased by 99%--that means it's doubled, from 51,000 to 101,000--in the last ten years. Spanish women have their first child at age 31 on average, the highest age in the EU.

Barça played dreadfully last night and was humiliated 4-1 by Real Madrid. Everybody was terrible. I was completely wrong about TV viewership: it was the most-watched Madrid-Barça since 2004, and the most-watched program in the history of Tele 5.

Just a reminder: The name of the city is Barcelona. The C is pronounced TH in Spanish and S in Catalan. It is never abbreviated in speech. It is sometimes abbreviated in writing as Barna or BCN (after the airport three-letter identification code.) I call it B-ville or Barneytown, but nobody else does. Often in the Spanish press Barcelona is referred to as "la Ciudad Condal," the "City of the Counts." This is never used in speech. The name of the football team is FC Barcelona, abbreviated as Barça, in both speech and writing.

Two stories in La Vanguardia's international section on US news: Georgia executed a murderer, and Obama won North Carolina while Hillary took Indiana.

From La Vangua's comments section on the death penalty:

What a civilized country! The master of the lives and deaths of its citizens...

And this is the country that "demands" that others respect human rights. Even though the crime rate in that country is very high, its causes should be studied, and possibly many would be surprised to see that their own lifestyle is one of the principal causes. Then they act like they're the example for other countries to imitate. What an example!

The causes and the errors are part of the vices of the Americans, especially the ease of obtaining guns. We have nothing to envy the people of the US, nothing at all.

I know about somebody who, if the laws of his own country were applied to him, would have to die...his name is George Bush...have you heard of him?

The Americans like death. It doesn't matter if it's an invasion with hundreds of thousands of victims or an electric chair or lethal injection. These people's moral evolution is less than minimal.

THERE IS NO BIGGER MURDERER THAN BUCH (sic).

From La Vangua's comments section on the Obama-Hillary story:

I hope they all lose, Obama, Clinton, and the Republican candidates. They represent nothing but extreme vulgarity and foolishness and they are the antithesis of what politics should be. They do nothing but support the economic mafias, the real powers, the multinationals, which sadly hold dictatorial economic power over the world we live in. A short life to all of them. They deserve nothing else, all of them, than total ostracism!

All the candidates are mafiosos, always absolutely in favor of the economic lobbies that dominate the US and the world. With this scum, because that is what they are, we will never have a world in which equality exist, but the gap between rich and poor will keep getting bigger and bigger. A bad, very bad thing. In reality, they are candidates made by the rich and the privileged.

If Obama wins we will have a Republican government for another 4 or 8 years. McCain will beat Obama easily and the Bush era will be extended in time. What are the Americans thinking? Have hamburgers filled their brains with toxins? The bad thing is all we Europeans are going to suffer. Obama, you false Democrat, withdraw for the good of your country and the world!

Obama's advisors think they have everything covered, but as soon as there is a violent Muslim attack against American interests, the nigger will lose the elections because he's a darky...and we'll have Bush's shadow eight more years. Vote for the African, the world is "de puta madre."

The average American may make thousands of mistakes, but the establishment, which really rules, above the president himself, have already thought about how to eliminate somebody who sticks his nose in. Go ask Kennedy...

THERE IS A NUCLEAR SUBMARINE AT GIBRALTAR AND THIS NEWSPAPER HAS NOTHING TO SAY.

Virtually no news today. All the papers are reporting, get this, that Franco fixed the 1968 Eurovision contest so the Spanish singer Massiel's "La, la, la" would beat out Cliff Richard's "Congratulations." Yeah, right. Franco had better things to do with his time. He was a traditional military man, a cold, hard-headed realist capable of cruelty, not someone who cared about such silliness. The number of people on the unemployment rolls increased by nearly 40,000 in April, the largest increase since 1997. Nearly half of the newly unemployed are from the construction sector. Barça plays Real Madrid tonight at the Bernabeu, but nobody cares because Madrid's already clinched the League title. I bet the TV networks are really pissed, because Barça-Madrid matches are usually among the year's top five programs in the TV ratings. Rumor has it that Milan wants to buy Zambrotta but not Ronaldinho, and that Barça is interested in some kind of Henry-Cesc swap, which I wouldn't do if I were Arsenal.

On anti-Semitism in Spain: I've come across it personally four times in the last couple of weeks.

1) An extreme left-wing gentleman of my acquaintance informed me that Hillary Clinton is the bought-and-paid-for tool of the Jewish-Israeli lobby, which won't tolerate an Obama victory.

2) An elderly gentleman of my acquaintance asked me about the US election; I explained that Hillary and Obama are competing for the Democratic nomination, and that John McCain has already clinched for the Republicans. He thanked me and asked me which candidate the Jewish lobby was supporting.

3) A relative of Remei's informed me that Israeli insurance companies are behind the conspiracy to spray anti-hail chemicals into the Catalan atmosphere.

4) Another relative of Remei's informed me that the Israelis were war criminals who were exterminating Palestinian children. (This occured last week, right after Hamas mortared and rocketed an Israeli city, the Israelis responded with an air-to-surface missile, a Palestinian family was killed, and La Vanguardia ran the photo of the bodies at the funeral on page 3 above the headline "Massacre of children in Gaza.")

Peter (not Paul) Preston had a poorly-written piece about crime in Barcelona with several inaccuracies on the Guardian's website. The piece is so poor that the Guardian has taken it off its Comment Is Free archive, but you can still access it on Google.

However, Preston is absolutely right about one thing: Street crime is rampant in Barcelona, and all tourists are targets. You're not likely to get hurt, but it is likely that somebody will try to pick your pocket or snatch your bag. Watch for groups of Moroccan teenagers wearing expensive sports clothing and for Bosnian women pickpockets on the tourist bus.

You should be OK if you take proper precautions and keep an eye out. Don't carry anything valuable on you. Don't let your possessions get out of your sight at a restaurant or bar. Don't get sloppy drunk, don't try to buy drugs, don't go down any dark streets, stay out of the Raval at night, and it's best if you go out accompanied. Consider staying at a hotel outside the Old City, in the Eixample or Sant Gervasi, which are considerably safer areas. Particularly dangerous tourist areas: Public transport, the Ramblas and Barrio Gotico, the Sagrada Familia, La Pedrera, the Picasso Museum, and the Parque Guell. Whatever you do, stay away from the three-card monte dealers on the Ramblas. Not only is the game a scam, of course, but pickpockets act in the crowd watching it. Also, if you are driving, and somebody (not a marked police car) indicates that you should pull over, don't do it until you get to a place where there are some other people.

Tragedy in Burma: 25,000 dead after a typhoon. I hope the US Navy is in action right now, bringing in food and medicine, no matter how awful and repressive the government is, and even though probably half the aid will get stolen by people by people who will profiteer off it.

Note the difference between Burma and Louisiana. In Louisiana, even though the city and state governments completely bungled the whole operation, from evacuation to relief, only about a thousand people died. Media hysteria didn't help, of course. But at least Louisiana, admittedly America's little corner of the Third World, had the infrastructure and organization to do something. Burma doesn't, largely because its government is corrupt, tyrannical, and xenophobic. So the country had no warning system or evacuation plan or, apparently, anything else.

Nobody's blamed global warming for this yet, though I'm sure it'll happen soon.

Food prices: Oils are up 41% over the past year, wheat flour up 28%, sterilized milk 24%, and dried pasta up 20%. Canary Islands bananas are up 19%, oranges up 15%, fresh chicken 13%, and eggs 11%. Prices that have dropped: fresh tomatoes down 17%, potatoes down 7%, onions down 7%, carrots down 5%, and lettuce down 4%. So this is good news for us salad-eating vegetarians. The cost of the official food of Spain, the tortilla de patatas, stays about the same, with eggs up but potatoes and onions down.

Note: Spanish people say Canary Islands bananas taste better than Latin American bananas. I can't tell the difference, myself.

Get this. Spanish judges have handed down 270,000 penal sentences that have not been carried out. That means there are a hell of a lot of people out there who ought to be in prison but are just walking around free, and quite possibly committing more crimes. One of the reasons for the delay is that there was a strike by the judicial civil servants, which balled things up for a while, but the two main reasons are 1) the wheels of justice grind far too slow and 2) they don't have enough prison space.

What I would do is imprison only violent criminals, and I would imprison them for a good long time. The rest of society needs to be protected from these people. There are other ways to punish non-violent criminals. What I'd do to economic criminals, from bad-check writers to fraudsters to corrupt politicians, is sentence them to poverty for a term of years. They wanted to get rich by breaking the rules? Force them to be poor, make them live in public housing and work at McDonalds. This punishment would allow these lawbreakers to keep their physical freedom, but lose their economic freedom.

Here's some guys I'm all in favor of putting in jail: They busted five pro-ETA punks who'd been committing street terrorism in and around Baracaldo. Among other things, they completely wrecked a commuter train station, torched a couple of city buses, and firebombed local PNV headquarters.

Former Barça star midfielderJosep Guardiola will be FC Barcelona's next coach, according to TV3. I think it's a good hire; I like the idea of hiring young coaches with recent playing experience. Let's just hope Guardiola can discipline these guys, because the clubhouse got out of control in Rijkaard's two last years. Rumor has it that Liverpool will make an offer for Abidal, that Edmilson will go to Newcastle, and that Ronaldinho may wind up at Manchester City, of all places.

There's a story in La Vanguardia saying that Ronaldinho failed a physical, supposedly for AC Milan, and that he's so badly out of shape that he can't play at all. This may be why Berlusconi announced that Milan was no longer interested in him. Right now the question is whether to let him play the last home game of the season as a last hurrah, and the answer will probably be no.

TV3's Washington correspondent has set up an election blog. Today he reports that he challenged a Republican voter in Indiana who said that Obama didn't have enough experience with, "And what experience did Ronald Reagan have?" Well, he'd been governor of California for eight years, the corporate spokesman for General Electric, the president of the Screen Actors Guild, one of the leaders of the anti-Communist backlash in Hollywood, a successful movie actor, and a pioneer radio announcer, and he came from a much poorer family than Obama did. Reagan is the only US president to have been the president of a labor union. Obama, on the other hand, is a professional politician who's been in the US Senate for two years, and before that was in the Illinois state senate. He's done nothing else but write self-justifying books and hang out with Chicago black nationalists and sixties-leftover ex-terrorists.

If you want bluegrass, country, and Americana music, the real thing, WDVX.com from East Tennessee is by far America's best radio station. Just click on "Media Player" for the music. WDVX is a non-commercial station funded by its listeners, so you might want to send them a few bucks. Every weekday at noon Eastern US time, which is 6 PM Spanish time, they have a live concert by an up-and-coming artist. This is worth tuning in to; occasionally it's bad, but usually it's very good. Non-Americans will enjoy the disc jockeys' Highland Southern accents.

WDVX broadcasts on several different frequencies out of several different Tennessee cities; one of them is Instapundit's Knoxville, and another one is Sevierville, where my siblings-in-law Kerry and Brenda (is my brother-in-law's brother my brother-in-law, too? I think so) live. Sevierville is right next to the Great Smoky Mountains national park, America's most-visited, probably because it's the closest national park to the big Eastern cities. It's beautiful up there, though the tourist-trap towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge are best avoided unless you're going to see a band play at one of the many venues there.

Angel Acebes announced he was officially stepping down as PP secretary general. Good. Manuel Pizarro, to have been Rajoy's economics minister had the PP won, is going to resign his seat and go back to the public sector. They've also announced that the convention will be June 20-22 in--guess where--Valencia.

La Vanguardia says there's an informal alliance between Valencia and Catalonia to work together in the common interest, claiming that Valencian premier and PP heavy hitter Francisco Camps wants more Catalan-style financial autonomy for his region, that he wants better transport infrastructure between the two cities, and that he wants to form a strategic alliance to counterbalance the power of Andalusia and Madrid. Camps is willing to compromise on the water issue and on linguistic politics.

Barcelona and Valencia have historically been enemies; Barcelona sees itself as Madrid's rival for the number 1 spot in Spain, and Valencia as an ally of Madrid. Valencia has always seen itself as Barcelona's rival for the number 2 spot in Spain, and would rather play second fiddle to Madrid, which it sees as the unquestioned number 1, than to Barcelona. In addition, Valencia holds a grudge over what it sees as Barcelona's veto of the damn water plan.

All this leads to incredibly silly controversies over whether Valencian is a form of Catalan or an independent language. It's also made Valencia into the PP's strongest region. Hypothesis: Camps, a Rajoy ally, knows that the PP needs to win a lot more votes in Catalonia if Rajoy is to be elected in 2008.

The prices of food imported into the Eurozone increased by 28% in 2007. Highest increases: Oils, up 43%, and grain, up 33%.

Get this: Barcelona's homeless are moving out of the Old City to outlying areas like Montjuic because young local drunks and Romanian gypsies beat and rob them. That's disgraceful and cowardly, victimizing the weakest among us, going so low as to steal their blankets. They've got a problem with homeless people at the old hospital in the Raval, which is now a library and art school, who have moved into the courtyard en masse. Maybe for protection in numbers, I don't know.

Remember Borat's hometown in Kazakhstan? That was actually filmed in a Romanian gypsy village.

The Spanish press is making a big deal about the US State Department's report on terrorism and what it said about Spain. To wit:

1) Spain is "an important transit area at a strategic crossroads...a logistical base" for terrorists operating in Western Europe 2) Jihadi terrorists travel from Spain to Iraq 3) Most Islamist terrorists operating in Spain are North African 4) Spain's government has "acted aggressively against terrorist recruitment" and arrested 47 suspects in 2007 5) "Spain cooperated closely with the US to investigate and pursue terrorists...Spain was the first EU country to sign an agreement to exchange information on suspected terrorists" 6) The trial of the 3-11 terrorists was "exhaustive, deep, vigorous, and transparent" despite public emotion and high political tension 7) "Spain's government and citizens are aware that Spain is a major target of Islamist extremism and terrorist acts."

I'm not so sure about number 7, and it was probably Aznar's government that signed the agreement on exchanging information, but in general that sounds pretty positive, giving credit where credit is due.

Barcelona beat a Valencia team that didn't bother to show up 6-0 last night, but it didn't matter because Real Madrid clinched the League title with a 1-2 victory at Osasuna. Congratulations to Madrid, which I don't think is a very good team, but it has proven that it's by far the best of the not very good teams in the Spanish league. Milito popped an ACL and is out for six months. Rumors have Barça interested in Poulsen, Navas, Torres, and Coloccini. Some reporter followed Ronaldinho around the night before Barça played at Man U, when Ronnie was supposedly injured; he stayed out drinking and dancing "in good company," until at least 5 AM, when the reporter packed it in. Now AC Milan is backing off on its offer to buy him.

Too bad. He was such a good player for three years here, and he was really having fun out there. He seemed like a nice guy, which some jocks are not. The fame and high living got to him, though. I'll bet he has a couple more pretty decent years in him, but the rest of his career is going to be an injury-laden disappointment.

We got back from the pueblo last night. Everything is all green out there now; it's yellow and brown for ten months out of the year, but the wheat and barley is nearly knee-high right now. Remei's cousin Santi, who farms up in Albió, says it's going to be an excellent harvest. Then again, he also believes in the crazy "insurance companies spraying anti-hail chemicals and causing the drought" theory.

I talked to two older people about the Civil War in Vallfogona and learned: 1) the town was divided 50-50 into "rojos" and "fascistas" 2) the "rojos," CNT and POUM, set up a collective, but didn't force anyone to join 3) the "rojos" killed four people at the beginning of the revolt, a doctor who lived at the spa and three men from Cal Felip 4) the "fascista" air force bombed the bridge on the Riu Corb two kilometers up the valley from the spa 5) the Regina Hotel was used as a Republican hospital during the Battle of the Ebro, and that's where the bodies buried in the cemetery came from 6) Ramon from Cal Matruqueu may have made up the story about dumping the bones that they dug up in the ravine 7) some of the locals hid the priest and guided him along the back roads to Igualada; the CNT came looking for him but he was already gone 8) the "rojo" government came around regularly and confiscated the peasants' farm produce, or at least what they couldn't hide.

Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, Spanish prime minister for nearly two years (February 1981-December 1982) died on Saturday at age 82. He was an accidental prime minister, succeding Adolfo Suarez after the latter's resignation; he was defeated in the 1982 election by Socialist Felipe Gonzalez. Calvo-Sotelo was the second prime minister of democratic Spain, and the first to die.

(Sadly, Adolfo Suarez doesn't have long to live; he has a severe case of Alzheimer's.)

Calvo-Sotelo's most important achievement was surviving and keeping the young democracy alive. Elements of the army and Guardia Civil attempted a coup on February 23, 1981, the day Calvo-Sotelo was invested with the premiership. He weathered the storm, overcame another abortive coup conspiracy, and was also forced to deal with a severe economic downturn (with inflation and unemployment both at 15-20%) and ETA's murderous rampage (they were killing fifty people a year in the early '80s). Most importantly, he led Spain into NATO and established the basis for Spain's admission into the EU.

Calvo-Sotelo had been a technocrat in the late Franco regime, held a couple of ministries (Commerce and Public Works) in the post-Franco transition government, and then became Suarez's top economic advisor before succeeding him as premier. He was considered honest, competent, and moderate, and was respected by all political groups.

Quick news brief before we take off for Vallfogona for the four-day weekend. It's International Commie Day. They had the usual union marches this morning, and a few thousand people came out: I remember twenty years ago they really managed to pull off mass demos, but now it's all rather perfunctory, as if it were more an obligation than something people get all excited about.

Everybody's talking about the pervert in Austria who imprisoned and violated his own daughter. The general tone down at the café this morning was pro-death penalty, and some discussion ensued over which precise method should be used.

ETA exploded three small bombs at labor ministry buildings in the Basque country; nobody was hurt, fortunately. They called in warnings for two of them, but not for the third. Speculation is that the bombings are a response to the jailing (on charges of membership in a terrorist organization) of the pro-ETA mayoress of Mondragon, the town where ETA's last victim, Isaías Carrasco, was murdered in March. By the way, Carrasco's killers have not yet been caught.

La Vanguardia reports that Angel Acebes is being demoted from his position in the PP leadership. Good. About time his head rolled.

Efficient management: The estimated cost for line 9 of the Barcelona metro, which will run from El Prat to Badalona looping around Barcelona on the northwest, has multiplied by more than three to €6.5 million. Apparently much of the extra cost is due to improvised, ad hoc changes to the original plan. Not to mention the three percent kickback from the construction companies to the political parties in power.

Massive Barça firestorm after the elimination from the Champions League. New coach: either Guardiola or Mourinho. I'd go with Guardiola. 80% of the fans want president Joan Laporta to resign, but he's not going to. Players whose contracts expire who won't be back: Edmilson, Thuram, Ezquerro, Pinto. Players on the shit list, to be sold or given away: Ronaldinho, Deco, Henry, Marquez, Zambrotta. Player on thin ice: Eto'o.

Meanwhile, Ronaldo is in big trouble after his little escapade with the transvestites: his girlfriend has left him, and Nike is talking about breaking his contract--presumably there's a morals clause, and the cops are investigating his possible cocaine use. But baseball pitcher Roger Clemens is in bigger trouble: he's been having an affair with drug-addled country singer Mindy McCready. So what? you may ask. Well, they met when she was fifteen. In addition to the steroids charges, he's looking at Statue Tory Rape. I would say at this point there are several players whose reputations are permanently trashed. In order: Clemens, Canseco, Bonds, Palmeiro, McGwire. I will bet these guys all get blackballed from the Hall of Fame, except Canseco, who would never have gotten close anyway.

You already know that Man United eliminated Barça from the Champions League last night with a 1-0 victory; Scholes blasted home a shot from outside the area after a bad clearing kick by Zambrotta early in the match. Barça put up a fight, but just could not score a goal--I think this is the fifth straight game they haven't scored. Now what they have to do is catch up with Villarreal in the league and make sure they get second place so they don't have to play an elimination round in next year's Champions.

Both general manager Beguiristain and head coach Rijkaard are out, though I bet team president Joan Laporta weathers the storm. Out of the players I would keep: Eto'o, Messi, Bojan, Iniesta, Xavi, Toure, Milito, and Valdes, along with Sylvinho and Puyol if they don't mind not being starters. Sell all the rest of them and buy good young players. Specifically, I'd buy Fabregas from Arsenal and Xabi Alonso from Liverpool, along with Navas from Sevilla.

Al Qaeda has called on its members to carry out attacks on European maritime interests off the Somali coast in particular and in the Indian Ocean in general. No, Zap, you didn't buy us immunity when you bailed out of Iraq. And now you've lost your friends in France and Germany, and you've made the Americans mad, and your pet project the Alliance of Civilizations is dead on arrival, and your best friends now are Latin American populists.

The EU's stats bureau reports that Spain is the EU country in which unemployment has climbed most in the past year, from 8.1% to 9.3%. Meanwhile, the Euribor interest rate hit 4.8%, meaning everybody's mortgage has gone up an average of €600 a year. The Zap government has made an informal agreement with Spanish lenders to allow mortgage holders to extend their term and thereby pay less a month, with no charge. Let's see if the lenders actually stick to this.

There are 280,000 immigrants living in Barcelona, 17% of the population. In the Old City 40% of the residents are immigrants. The largest groups are Ecuadorians and Italians over 20,000 each, Bolivians, Pakistanis, and Peruvians over 15,000 each, Moroccans, Colombians, Chinese, and French over 10,000 each, and Argentinians, Brazilians, and Dominicans over 7000 each.

Comments: By far the largest number of immigrants are Latin Americans, who integrate very well as a general rule, as they already speak Spanish and are Catholic, as well as sharing other cultural values. Barcelona is definitely not becoming Eurabia, since the only large Muslim groups are Moroccans and Pakistanis. A sizable percentage of Barcelona foreigners are Europeans, especially Italians and French; they don't tend to stand out, since they look and dress much like Spaniards. I doubt most of these people are here to stay. I'm surprised that Eastern Europeans didn't show up on the list.

One thing: 3 of every 10 children born in Barcelona has at least one foreign parent.

In case you didn't notice, I love statistics.

From La Vanguardia, page 3 today: "(Bush) denied that one of the principal causes of the food situation is the diversion of corn and other cereals to make ethanol and biofuels in general. According to him, the basic reasons for the price increase are the climate, the increase in demand, and the rise in energy prices."

OK; I thought the US only used corn to make ethanol, and it's not climate change that's to blame, it's a bad harvest in the Southern Hemisphere, but OK.

From La Vanguardia, page 4: "UN director for the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, stated that turning crops into biofuels and financial speculation, along with the IMF's aberrant policy (which forces many countries to orient agriculture toward exports at the cost of the subsistence economy), are the main causes of the price rises...Ziegler called for a "total moratorium" on biofuels for at least five years. "We must fight climate change but without starving people to death," said the Swiss sociologist. Several days ago, Ziegler had already told the media that "the use and encouragement of biofuels is a crime against humanity.""

Now, wait a minute. Seems to me that the use of biofuels is due to two causes: high oil prices caused by cartel control of the resource, and the global warming panic touched off by the Greens. So if anyone's guilty of a crime against humanity, it would be OPEC and the environmentalists, no? Note that Ziegler blams the Jew-American financial speculators and IMF policy encouraging competitive advantage--that is, market forces--for the current crisis.

From La Vanguardia, page 64: "The high cost of agricultural staples in the international markets is due to the increase in biofuels in the United States." That seems to be rather a stretch, no?

Meanwhile, Thailand is organizing an Organization of Rice Exporting Countries, to include Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma. They're going to set up their own cartel and strike back at OPEC, and the very poorest in the world are going to get screwed over again.

So the Generalitat's traffic department predicts that 550,000 vehicles will leave Barcelona beginning this evening for the Mayday long weekend; Friday is International Commie Day, and people are taking a couple of extra days off. I would like to point out that talking environmentalism and fretting about grain prices are incompatible with car ownership.

Obama and Reverend Wrong are getting plenty of press over here, but the big story in all of Europe is the pervert in Austria whose kids are also his grandkids.

Other news: PP hard-liner and conspiracy-theorizer Eduardo Zaplana has announced that he is retiring from politics and taking a job at Telefonica. He doesn't want to get in the way of the renovation of the party, he says. Good. More proof of the PP's movement toward the center, merely two-and-a-half years and one blown election too late. Next to go: Angel Acebes.

The freed crew of the Spanish tuna boat say that they were treated very badly by the pirates, though they were not physically abused. While they were captives, they were able to talk to their families on cellphones, and obviously told them that everything was fine so they would not worry. I guarantee you that these criminals only hold crews of Western boats for ransom, and just massacre everybody else.

By the way, the Spanish press continually referred to the 26 crew members as "five Basques, eight Galicians, and 13 Africans." Why not 13 Spaniards and 13 Africans? Or even better, they could have taken the trouble to mention the Africans' nationalities, too. Are they Ivorians, Tanzanians, Angolans, or Cameroonians? There's a big difference, you know.

They've finished the work necessary at the port, and it's ready to recieve water brought in by tanker ship from Tarragona and Marseille. The first shipments should arrive by May 15, and will supply 12% of the metro area's water needs.

Good economic news: In April yearly inflation declined four-tenths of a point, to 4.2%, and econ minister Solbes predicts it'll keep declining. This is in line with what Alan Greenspan said about how controlling inflation is right now more important than stimulating growth.

El Periodico reports that Raul Castro has promised to commute several death sentences to mark the sixth Cuban Communist Party congress. However, Raul "specified that this decision does not mean that capital punishment will be removed from the penal code, since "it would be ingenuous and irresponsible to renounce the dissuasive effect that capital punishment provokes among the real terrorists, mercenaries in the service of the Empire." You know, I've heard thousands of complaints about the death penalty in the US over here, but never once about Cuba. Note, by the way, that Raul thinks the death penalty dissuades criminals, something American conservatives have been saying for years.

La Vanguardia has finally picked up on the Obama and Reverend Wrong story, correctly concluding that the Rev is going to torpedo Obama's candidacy and that the fight to the death between Obama and Hillary is going to benefit only the Republicans. Vangua reporter Eusebio Val did point out that the Rev would not back off "God damn America" or his "the government invented AIDS" crackpottery, nor did he back off his "America deserved 9-11" filth, and that he repeated his "they're attacking the black churches through me" conspiracy theory.

Former Barça star Hristo Stoichkov, a great player but an offensive jerk of a human being, a nasty piece of work, beat up a photographer outside a Puerto Olimpico bar several days ago. He punched the guy in the teeth, knocked him down, and then started kicking him, while pushing away the guy's pregnant wife and screaming obscenities and threats. He ought to be in the Modelo right next to Franki.

If you come to visit Barcelona, I'd stay away from the Puerto Olimpico and Maremagnum at night. Nothing good ever seems to happen there, and the clients are a bunch of drugged-up drunk chavs. There are hundreds of more interesting bars in this city.

And get this one: Former Barça star Ronaldo picked up three prostitutes last Monday night in Rio de Janeiro. They turned out to be transvestites. Ronaldo paid them $600 to go away, but one of them demanded $30,000 in blackmail, threatening to expose Ronaldo's allegedly kinky tastes and to accuse him of drug use, so all four of them wound up at the police station. Seems that Ronaldo had turned his car over to one of them to go buy cocaine in a shantytown, and the guy kept the ownership papers, which is why Ronaldo went to the police.

So the former Barça star trifecta is now in play. Prediction: The next one to get in trouble is going to be Patrick Kluivert, and what he does is going to be a lot worse than these two. He's been convicted of vehicular manslaughter and acquitted of rape so far, and, as a convicted felon, he's banned from entering the United States, as Barça found out once when they did a tour over there and Immigration at Kennedy Airport put Kluivert on the next plane back home.

And tonight's the big game, do or die against Manchester United at Old Trafford in the second leg of the Champions League semifinals. Barcelona needs to win or to draw by 1-1 or more. An 0-0 draw goes to penalty kicks. The way Barça's been playing, a victory's unlikely, but anything can happen. Probable lineup: Valdes; Zambrotta, Puyol, Milito, Abidal; Xavi, Toure, Deco; Messi, Eto'o, Iniesta. On paper that's a good lineup, but it just hasn't been getting the job done.

Some punk kid who goes by the name "Franki" decided back in 2002 that it would be a good idea to get some of his buddies, go to the Terrassa city hall and charge right in, get in a tussle with the cops, and torch the Spanish flag hanging off the front balcony. As the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow, his 32-month prison sentence has been delayed for years, until now. The judge ordered the cops to go get him and lock him up in the ancient Modelo prison, the "Black Hole of Catalonia," for "insulting the flag."

Comments: 1) I don't think flag-burning should be against the law, though I consider it to be very offensive 2) I'd put the guy in jail for fighting with the cops, trespassing, and destroying public property, not for burning the flag.

So Franki's in the slam and his squatter punk friends graffitied my street last night with slogans like "Freedom for Franki," "Cops get out," "PSOE = oppressors," and the like. They also graffitied a bank branch with "Speculators" and a supermarket with "Steal here." The municipal street brigade hasn't gotten around to cleaning it up yet.

Of course, these jerks have no idea of how to go about civil disobedience: you break a law you consider unjust and then you accept society's punishment, thereby establishing your superior moral status. Whining about getting jailed is not civil disobedience, it's wanting to get away with breaking the law, which establishes your inferior moral status.

Quick news update: Another crazy-ass drunk truck driver, this one in Almeria. He blew nine times the legal blood-alcohol level. Spain seems to specialize in these guys.

Speaking of which, remember the scuzzbag who beat up the Ecuadorian girl on the train in Barcelona, and the film went around the world? He hasn't been tried yet on those charges, but he got fined €1000 and lost his license for ten months after getting busted for drunk driving. It's the same scum who keep committing the same crimes.

The EU commissioners are predicting a 2008 economic growth rate of 2.2% in 2008 and 1.8% in 2009. That's pretty much in line with the Spanish econ ministry but well higher than what the private sector forecasts.

Home sales are down 24% in Spain over the last year, and mortgages issued are down 26%. In Catalonia those numbers are worse: 41% and 36%, respectively. Oops. Meanwhile, farm prices are up 11%, so we can now cut some of their subsidies, please.

El Periodico has a story on Al Qaeda in the Maghreb and its preparations in Algeria; they have mortars and grenade launchers, as well as satellite communications and, most importantly, money. The Algerian press says they have more than 1600 active members, present in all areas of Algeria, and with their base in rural Cabilia. They are continually training new recruits, and El Periodico reminds us that their leaders have threatened Spain specifically and repeatedly.

The health ministry annouced that of the 800 brands of sunflower oil on sale in Spain, 200 are guaranteed safe, and the other 600 present minimal health risks. Health minister Soria told a press conference, "Bring me a bottle and I'll drink it right now!" I'd still throw out any sunflower oil I'd bought recently--it's not like it costs more than one-twenty a bottle or so.