Dawn

Dawn

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Interesting contrast in yesterday’s main papers – an article in El Pais highlighted the importance of Hispanics in the US elections, whereas El Mundo reported the demand from the Association of Native and Latin American students for Christopher Columbus to be arraigned on charges of Grand Theft, Genocide, Racism and Destruction of Cultures. I suppose it depends on where you are standing.

Another less-than-shattering report today – this time advising us that the anti-tobacco policies of the Spanish government rank amongst the least effective in Europe. To which my response could only be – And what anti-tobacco policies would these be, then? Principally, perhaps, allowing the maximum number of people to die early of lung cancer so that there is no one left to buy cigarettes by 2025.

Two days ago David Beckham was trumpeting that he suspected everyone thought he was too stupid to think up the deliberate-second-yellow-card-strategy. Well, David, if we didn’t think so before, we certainly do now, given that – quite predictably - the entire football world has dumped on you and you’ve been forced to make a grovelling apology. Asked today on Spanish TV about the possibility of Beckham deliberately provoking a second card, Zinedine Zidane said that he didn’t believe he could have done such a thing. And then blushed to his roots when the reporters told him that he had already admitted to it. “And I thought he was a nice guy”, he muttered. So, two idiots in the Real Madrid team, then.

Tired of Monopoly and Scrabble? Then go to the web site of the Diario de Pontevedra and send off for your free copy of Talismanes, a new board game centred on the challenge of getting from France or Portugal to the shrine of St. James The Moor Killer in Santiago de Compostela, here in Galicia. Not a big hit in the shops, I guess.

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