The Catalans are not happy campers. As this seems to be their normal frame of mind, I’d better rephrase this . . . The Catalans are very unhappy campers at the moment. Electricity blackouts, malfunctioning suburban trains and now 70km traffic jams on the autovias. Needless to say, the knee-jerk reaction – stoked by the local politicians – is to blame the central government in Madrid for all these evils. It got me wondering whether Catalunia’s view of itself in Spain isn’t analogous to that of the UK’s in the EU. Unhappy about losing sizeable slices of its income into central coffers in the name of ‘solidarity’ while their own quality of life is deteriorating and they’re denied the capacity to rule yourselves and sort out their problems.

And then I got to thinking about the zeitgeist which is slowly driving the break-up of European nation states into their constituent parts [the UK, Belgium and Spain, for example] and wondering whether the new political entities which emerge will ever be happy submitting to central control from the EU superstate once they’ve got rid of the current barriers to their independence. Seems unlikely, doesn’t it?

It’s reported that the company, Mutua Universal, implicated in a 6m euro fraud on the Social Security, had set up several straw subsidiaries from which to issue fictitious claims for unemployment and sickness benefits. This got me thinking – rhetorically, of course – Is there so much fraud and corruption in Spain because there’s so much paper? Or is there so much paper in Spain because there’s so much fraud and corruption? No answer, I guess.

I buy my fruit juices in tetra-paks. To get the juice out, you have to lift the hinged plastic stopper and then tear off a foil layer. If you’re lucky, the plastic stopper stays on and the foil layer comes off easily, together with a plastic film underneath it. If you’re unlucky, then stopper breaks off and neither the foil layer nor the plastic film peels off. You then have to resort to a knife and find some something [clingfoil perhaps] to replace the plastic stopper. Whenever this happens, I’m reminded of the conversation:-

You know, these packs were invented by two brothers. They made millions from them.

Really! Imagine how much they’d have made if the bloody things worked properly.

Finally, here’s a [Galician?] joke I’ve just lifted from Trevor at Kalebeul. As I don’t get it, I’d welcome an explanation from a Spanish/Galician reader. Manuel Fraga, by the way is the 80-odd ex-President of the Galician government who lost the last general election here and is now in the Senate . . .

Manuel Fraga goes into a bar, walks up to a man eating tripe, punches him in the face, and starts eating the tripe himself.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” cries the man. “I paid for that!”
“Fuck off and die,” snarls Fraga, “Los callos son míos.” [The tripe is mine].

And on that note . . .