The Results Could Have Been Better

Following the floods in Spain (which last week lost me my flight over the Atlantic) and a tornado that landed a few miles away from where I am currently staying in Oklahoma, the election results for the 47th president are in - and it's Trump.

The Doomsday Clock, between one thing and another, has certainly edged a few seconds further towards midnight.

I went to the local polling station yesterday - a bit worried as there were certain to be gangs of motorcyclist heavies wearing MAGA caps and tapping stainless-steel baseball bats off their thighs waiting for anyone who looked a trifle liberal, but the reality was quite different. 

It couldn't have been more peaceful.

One queues for a bit, arrives at the desk run by two elderly volunteers, is checked for a voter's registration and then a large sheet of paper is given (and a pen lent) to go mark one's choices.

There were five available alternatives for president and vice-president (I can safely say that, like you, I have never heard of the other three) and then a collection of other choices - local judges, sheriffs and street-cleaner, and then a couple of 'propositions' which one can vote for or against.

The completed paper is then fed into a machine, and away you go, with a sticker on your chest that says 'I Voted'. 

Will Trump act on his threats - to deport those who don't fulfil the current idea of Free, Patriotic American Citizen, once he is sworn in on January 20th next year?

Most probably.

I will be back in Europe long before then.

 

Spanish Floods

Right now, on Friday afternoon, the TV is warning people not to use the roads in Huelva, Cádiz and Seville because of the fierce rains there. It also warns of looting. Over in Mallorca, too, there are reports of major flooding.

Previously, as we know, the terrible storms had assailed Valencia last Tuesday, with a reported 205 dead (so far). Sad to say, the warnings had arrived late and the regional government carries the blame. The Guardian quoting a local resident of Paiporta where 62 died: 'it was a trap'. 'Timely advice would have doubtlessly saved many lives' says a climatologist. 'I got a warning on my mobile-phone while I was seated in my car, with the water already up to my neck' says a motorist. 

The AEMAT official weather agency had previously given the warnings, but the President of the Valencian region Carlos Mazón had failed to issue the appropriate order - leading understandably to security issues and political fallout.  Pedro Sánchez has sent help from Madrid and has ordered three days of mourning. The leader of the Partido Popular Alberto Núñez Feijóo is critical (for political ends) but as elDiario.es says - criticising the labour of the AEMAT is not in the best interest of society, especially with the experience of this past storm, said to be the most lethal since a flood back in Barcelona in 1962. 

“Criticizing AEMET and the meteorologists after a major tragedy is not only very clumsy, it denotes a worrying lack of knowledge when the criticism comes from people whose role is precisely the management of risky meteorological situations”, says an official. 

There's criticism too towards the larger companies operating in Valencia for not sending their staff home and closing operations for the day. The message being - making money is more important than saving people's lives. 

Meanwhile, on Thursday it was reported that only two of the 28 regional fire-fighting services had been called to help in life-saving labours.

Besides the looting, there were the inevitable bulos - fake information on social media maliciously designed to create extra panic, such as the dams upriver were bursting and so on. 

The appalling ultra-group Manos Limpias (yes, them!) did their bit - by denouncing the weather forecasters at the AEMAT for - and let's be frank here - doing their job.

Oddly, the recently elected PP/Vox alliance for the Valencian region had disbanded the  autonomous emergency service installed by the previous government. 

Vox insists that Global Warming is a chimera. 

A protest in Valencia has been called for November 9 for Mazón's resignation. 

A talking-head on LaSexta TV says - we are the only animal that merrily marches forward towards its own extinction.  

Odd, that. 

 

The cartoon says 'The DANA?', 'No, the mud'. Feijóo says 'the fault lays with the weather forecasters'.  

The Last Gargle

Right, I’ve had my tea, sorted out the list of chores for tomorrow and eaten a doughnut for a balanced diet. It’s now time to get into the car and drive across the town to my favourite bar to get sloshed.

But what is this?

They’re lowering the drink/drive limit from January to one glass of fortified raspberry juice!

The fellow who came up with that one must be chuckling into his telephone as he is whisked across Madrid by his long-suffering chauffeur.

–Diego, Old Sport, you haven’t filled up the decanter.

The new limit – to be five times lower than most European countries – will be 0.10mg/l once the traffic law is modified (early next year says N332).

Spain's 264,000 bars and restaurants are not going to be happy. 

Now, this is fine and dandy for the gentlefolk who live in the city where there's a bar downstairs and a restaurant across the street. One can take the metro or a bus or even a cab for anything further away. Pop into the disco and stagger home at 4.00am with a song on one's lips.

But me, I live in the country and my nearest bar is 45 minutes away if I walk - or I suppose I could take a taxi, have my beer and waggle my eyebrows at the new barmaid and then another taxi home for an expensive night out.

Unless the barmaid has a car.

The bar in question is part of our local petrol station, so one can assume a certain amount of vehicular traffic. It's a fully licenced bar, in case a non-alcoholic beer doesn't appeal to the discerning patron. 

How could Spain sink so low, I wonder? Isn’t this the Party Capital of Europe?

Will I still be able to have a beer with my curry?

In the UK, where they must drink without a sobering tapa, and everybody needs to get a ‘round in’, the limit is 0,80mg/l – which is eight times higher than what we will be suffering here.

Yes, I know, drunk driving causes untold misery – but so does drinking at home, which is what I shall have to be doing from now on.

The Guardians of Spanish Morality

 

Behind the scenes, there are several far-right pressure groups besides some (but not all) of the leading judiciary. The key word these days to those far-right legal efforts is ‘lawfare’ (previously known as guerra jurídica). Many cases are taken on just to put pressure on certain groups – maybe pro-abortion agencies, or comedians or even puppeteers, or Podemos and their splinters (the Caso Neurona was finally binned last week after three years of gratuitous headlines about corruption in the halls of Podemos, the Pablo Iglesias PISA fake commission scandal and some twenty other creative claims against the party sometimes took years to be put to sleep).

In the shadows, there are various nefarious organisations ready to throw trumped-up accusations, which will provide newspaper space, extra (remunerative) work for the courts and perhaps notoriety for the judge (depending on his – we might say – common sense). Most of these groups are joined at the hip with Mother Church. There’s the Opus Dei of course (the Banco Popular was one of theirs), the divine Movimiento Católico Español (it sells Francoist and Nazi memorabilia to survive), the Sinister Mexican-headed El Yunque, the Hazte Oir (it drives buses around with pictures of children on the sides illustrating the difference between their two sexes, so that you know), the litigious anti-Gay Manos Limpias and then there’s the oxymoron which calls itself the Abogados Cristianos – the Christian Lawyers.

They all know that democracy inevitably has its cracks and its loopholes, and they can sometimes play their extreme politics in the courts – to try to erode the system from within.

Fronting them all are Vox and, when it suits them, the Partido Popular.

Right now, indeed, the PP is busy with its latest broadside on Pedro Sánchez and the presumed ‘high-street of corruption’ of his party (occurring now possibly because they inadvertently lost a political opportunity in their vote to allow prisoners, including ETA prisoners, to be released after a maximum of thirty years). There will be blood.

The Inquisition may have gone centuries ago, but the Church, the Army, the Bankers and the Establishment still hold on to power as they must.

While we patiently wait for the agonising inquiries, fake news, inventions and other material to be waded through in the peculiar case against the President’s wife (whatever it may be… give us time and we’ll find something), or the Caso Koldo and its relation of Pedro Sánchez, or the slightly unlikely story of bags of cash being left by senior PSOE members at head office, or the simmering stories of the President’s brother (dear me, we have been busy); let’s examine another case, which turns on the almost sacred status of a past president of Spain, José Maria Aznar.

A famous TV comedian called El Gran Wyoming put on a priestly outfit the other evening on his comedy show and produced a skit about how he is the pope of the Holy Aznariana Sect – which offended our friends over at the Christian Lawyers (they should technically have been in bed by then), so much so that they have produced a lawsuit against the comic. Wyoming was evidently surprised by this idiocy and he repeated his ‘High Mass’, with some extra flourishes, the following night. Wyoming also had a word for Judge Peinado (the judge in the case against Pedro Sánchez’ wife): ‘Get yourself ready, there’s another juicy case coming down the line…’

The comic could get as much as four years clink for offending the sensibilities of followers of the Christian faith – at least, the Old Testament ones.

Perhaps it’s time to put some of these more eccentric organisations out to dry.

Dieu et mon Fromage

My daughter and her companion went to France for a few days to stay in a château and stomp grapes with a few friends (apparently, while a neighbour attended the event, playing a harp). 

Cor, I said, bring back some fromage while you're there.

On the way home to the south of Spain, she made a small detour and passed through Oporto in that small but agreeable country over to the left of us. 

And here we are, enjoying a very ripe lunch of various different cheeses (that thing that looks like bread in the middle of the photo was the runniest and most pungent of the lot - I swear it winked at me once).

And with a bottle of port to help wash it down, the three of us had a very jolly lunch.

Decolonisation Again

 The Brits have returned the Chagos Islands – or all except one (Diego Garcia) – to Mauritius and to the people who used to live there, the Chagossians. Or more likely, since they were unceremoniously chucked out back in 1969, to their descendants.  

While this item may not have made a major impact in the lives of the good people who inhabit the United Kingdom, it certainly has here in Spain, with the suggestion that, well, since you’re in the mood, what about handing back Gibraltar (and, sure, maybe the Falklands too while you are at it)?

The Telegraph – a British newspaper that leans solidly to the right – says ‘Keir Starmer has refused to rule out ending British control of Gibraltar and the Falklands, amid an ongoing backlash over his Chagos Islands deal’. Yes, The Telegraph and its more conservative ‘Sun never sets on the British Empire’ readers may well become excited about the Chagos Deal, and maybe for them it will become the Suez Crisis of the 21st Century.

Mind you, at a mean height of just four feet above sea-level, the Chagossians will need to roll up their trouser-legs, as it’ll likely all be underwater by 2050 thanks to Global Warming.

I’m vaguely fond of Gibraltar. I got married there to my American bride on the second attempt. Word had reached us as we were dickering with the judge that my father had suddenly died in Madrid, so we pleaded cause of absence and returned for another try a couple of weeks later. The judge, give him his due, let us have our wedding papers and sundry costs on his shilling, making our match one of the cheapest in history (one jolly night at the Holiday Inn). A year later, we went to Paris for the honeymoon.

Then, The Express brings us: ‘Gibraltar tries to calm fears it will be returned to Spain after UK and Chagos fiasco. The people of Gibraltar have been assured by their Government that Sir Keir Starmer's decision regarding the Chagos Island will not affect their future’.

I like Gibraltar. I mean, I don’t (it’s ghastly), but I like that it’s there. Some pink glitter for the map, a change of pace and the chance to see a British bobby talking in llanito. 

So, leave it alone. There are thirty four thousand Gibraltarians who want to remain British, but without going anywhere near the United Kingdom (ring any bells, Readers?). If the colony fell to Spain, then what would they do with the Gibraltarians?  Leave them there, but make them do this and that – or enjoin them to take out Tarjetas de Identidad Extranjera and deprive them of the vote? Maybe give the people living in nearby San Roque ‘back’ their properties. As Gibraltar en la Corazón says (back in 1704, the British possession of Gibraltar was only formalised nine years later at at the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713), ‘…It is easy to imagine that column of men and women dragging their belongings: some children, others elderly, heads bowed, stripped... 5,000 people walking towards the hermitage of San Roque, located a few kilometres away…’

San Roque

These days, it looks lovely.

Ah, decolonisation. Gibraltar is a British problem: let Whitehall build a nice camp on Salisbury Plain for them.

Some say, well why not just give the Rock to the Spanish and give Melilla and Ceuta to the Moroccans? Easy enough if you are living in somewhere like Albacete or Torquay.

There are of course, several differences. For one, there are 170,000 Spaniards in the two North African enclaves, and right now, Spanish politicians are busy squabbling about what to do with a handful of immigrant minors stuck in the Canary Isles (another territory that Morocco claims). Since they would likely not be treated favourably by the Moroccans, I doubt that they would want to stay and at the same time it would be hard to comfortably house 170,000 indignant colonos over here in Almería and Málaga.

The population of the Falkland Isles – whose inhabitants are even more British than the Gibraltarians (they’ve been there since the 1830s) – runs to about 3,700 souls. Wiki says that there are even a few llanitos living there. They probably would rather stay where they are, too.

It’s all well and good righting ancient wrongs, but for every victor on the one hand, there has to be an eviction on the other.