The Spanish king's sister, Princess Cristina, has
failed in her final bid to get the courts to stay her prosecution for
alleged financial irregularities. Of course, she'll never serve any
sentence she gets but the trial will be hugely interesting
nonetheless. Reader Perry has described her plight as being up
smelly creek in a barbed wire canoe with no implement for propulsion.
Which I can't improve on.
Relatedly . . . There are an astonishing 17,621 people in Spain
who have some sort of impunity from prosecution under the laws which
apply to the rest of us. These are the aforados and El País
here describes – in English – a state of affairs
which is well past its sell-by-date. And would be even in a country
of much higher ethics than Spain.
Talking
of money badly spent . . . Here's a list – in ascending order of
funds wasted – of Spain's dubious, even worthless, white elephants of the bum
years:-
- The Centre for the Creation of the Arts in Alcorcón. €90 million so far. Unfinished and work has stopped.
- The Setas de la Encarnación park in Sevilla. €102m.
- The tram system in Parla, Madrid. €255m. €134m cost with the rest in interest payments.
- Castellón airport. €170m. Unused.
- The Caja Mágica (multiuse tennis stadium) in Madrid. €300m.
- The City of Culture, Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. Over €300m. Finished as a smaller project. Already in disrepair.
- The Palacio de Congresos,Oviedo. Over €360m.
- Terra Mítica, Benidorm. €400m. Sold for a mere €65m.
- Reform of the Palacio de Cibeles, the new town hall of Madrid. €500m.
- Ciudad Real airport. €1,000m (€1 billion!). For sale. You might be able to get it for a hundred quid.
- The City of the Arts and Sciences, Valencia. €1,102m(ditto). This city, of course, takes the national prize for civic corruption. To date, at least.
I touched on the touchy subject of transgenderism
the other day. This relatively new development is already old hat.
Now we have transpeciesism. A Norwegian woman insists she's a cat in
a human body and has adopted feline mannerisms to prove it. Happily,
she can still talk like a human and you can read her/its words here.
Anyone got any idea where this madness will end?
According
to the not-always-reliable National Institute for Statistics, the
number of foreigners here is reducing. If so, can it have anything to
do with the outrageous Model 720 provision, which fines you more than
your overseas assets are worth if you fail – however innocently –
to declare them under a 2012 law that was never publicised to said
foreigners? Could well do.
It's
always a good thing to look skywards in a city, especially on a
Sunday when traffic is light. Here's a few of Madrid's many fine
buildings near my hotel:-
And here's
the splendiferous Catedral cafe, where I've had my breakfast
for the last 2 days:-
It rather reminds me of the Philharmonic pub in Liverpool
Finally .
. . Here's my elder daughter holding perhaps the world's smallest tea-pot. She has tiny hands, by the way:-
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