Dawn

Dawn

Monday, May 18, 2015

Spanish oratory; Mercedes Alaya; Party splits; Headlines; Hitler's Cross; & How to be Spanish.

Spanish politicians - especially President Rajoy - seem to have only one oratorical gesture - robotically and rapidly raising and lowering either arm, to stress their points. Presumably a lack of TV training.

Another President was at this yesterday - the new president-elect of Andalucia, Señora Susana Díaz. Having not gained an absolute majority, she's obliged to get the approval of all the other parties before she can be installed. And they've now said Niet 3 times. And Ms Díaz has begun to issue threats that needed stressing.

It had to happen. The courageous judge, Mercedes Alaya, scourge of the corrupt down in Andalucia, faces an action from one of the men she's investigated. He's accused her of perversion of justice and may yet destroy her career. This would be a shame for the media as she's rather glamorous and they never miss an opportunity to show her arriving at court. She also seems to be a great judge. Which is possibly more important.

Talking of political parties . . . Here's a nice comment from Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times, commenting on the infighting within UKIP: This is the way small political parties end. In a sort of flesh-ripping frenzy of egotism, spite, jealousy and mutual loathing. Especially small right-wing political parties. The lefties are not quite the same — they just split into smaller and smaller camps of ever greater and more cretinous doctrinal purity, until they are even tinier in number and of less consequence than Citizen Smith’s Tooting Popular Front. Spain's very-left new party, Podemos, has already split because of a move towards the centre and greater electability. One wonders if it will split further after the end-year general elections.

Couple more nice headlines:
  • Spain breaks record with world's cleanest beaches
  • Spain may take 9.1% of Europe's asylum seekers to ease burden for Malta and Italy

One of history's greatest ironies . . . The Iron Cross given to Hitler was awarded by a Jewish officer.

Finally . . . Want to be really Spanish? Well, here's what you have to be able to do. None of it will come as a surprise to readers of this blog - God bless you all. By the way, a sobremesa is table chat. Though I think it means 'dessert' in Portuguese,

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