The comic opera that is the government of Spain continues,
with an impunity that takes the breath away, to cavort across the nation with
barely a nod towards what even the most debased would consider the barest moral
niceties. The proven corruption of what
appears to be the majority of the government, the continual stream of stories
which show the contempt that those in power have towards the people who elected
them, the cosy to the point of live-in partners that this joke party has with
the major firms in Spain – pointless to go on.
The more financial and power manipulation disgrace comes to light the
more the government carries on in its own defiantly corrupt way.
The latest
horror from this bunch of freaks has been a Draconian set of laws which try to ensure
that there will be fantastically punitive fines for those who protest, take
photos of police abuse, stop the banks repossessing the homes of those that the
banks themselves have impoverished – enabled to do that by the use of our money
to stay in business.
Spain,
these days, is a cynic’s delight! Take
your pick of the political character, the political party, the firm, the public
character and there will be disgrace aplenty to keep your bile duct operating
at full strength.
In
Catalonia we have the sad picture of an ex-president, together with his
Mafia-like family clan being taken to court for industrial hoovering of cash from
his time in public office. Toni feels
personally let down by this traitor as he believed in him and voted for
him. The amount of money that this piece
of filth and his equally dirty family has salted away in a variety of foreign
banks is so vast as to be in the realms of fantasy.
A further
irony about this Catalan case is that the prosecution is proceeding at a very
speedy pace – as opposed to the multitude of cases outstanding which point to
the wholesale corruption of the governing party. This, of course merely boosts the (already
gigantic) Catalan sense of persecution by the Spanish state. Every day that the living joke that parades
around as President of this country is a day when yet more Catalan separatists
are made.
Still, my poetry is going well –
they do say that the arts flourish in difficult times. If that really is the case then we should be
seeing a Renaissance taking place in Spain.
I have yet to see the fruits, except of course in the case of my poems!
Plans for
the next book are well advanced and I have been to the publishers to check that
they can do what I want. All I have to
do now is write the poems to put in it.
A minor point! I am determined
that this book is going to be somewhat different to the last ones as I intend
to give it a stronger structure than in the last ones. And that is more difficult than I thought it
was going to be. I’ve tried a draft
structure with what I’ve written at the moment and that was hard going. I am well aware that next year is a bloody
sight nearer than the date suggests.
There is always a feeling that January is a long way away, even when it
is just around the corner! However, I
have given myself a deadline of the summer to get the content of the book ready
and to have it ready for publication for a significant date in October of next
year. That seems like an expansive
timetable, but I am acutely aware that time slips away with gathering speed!
I am now in
the midst of writing the next tutor marked assignment for the Open University
course and have the delights of an on-line tutorial this evening to look
forward to. The writing has to be
submitted by the 8th of January which seems in the far distance,
but, and especially during the Christmas period, that distance has a way of
becoming illusory.
The part of the holiday period
spent away from home in Terrassa will probably be from Christmas Eve to My Name
Day – that should both of us enough time to get down to the details of our
studies. Toni has examinations in
January, so those are concentrating his mind wonderfully at the moment to the
exclusion of more festive thoughts.
As we are
going to have a domestic Christmas meal the food is going to be provided by the
participants. I’m buggered if I am going
to make anything so I am getting the booze.
This is far less intimidating for a group of Catalans than it would be
for a similar British occasion. I took
the opportunity to go to the little wine shop that I have discovered in
Castelldefels and from which I got a truly excellent Cava from a little family
winery. I have taken all of the
recommendations from the little man in the shop and have two bottles of white,
two bottles of red and two bottles of Cava.
I will probably be the only person in the meal who will be able to give
an opinion about all of those. Not
because they will all be too drunk to articulate, but because I will be the
only person to sample them all! There
are advantages to having a surrogate Catalan family at times like this!
I have also
bought an interesting bottle of some sort of liqueur that will be an
exploration for all of us. My intention
is to get a set of disposable plastic shot glasses and force the rest of the
family to sample it. Wish me luck
because I will probably end up necking it for shame’s sake!
We have
bought no presents. None. At all.
I am not panicking because all of the presents that we need to buy are
for Toni’s family. They will have bought
for us and so we have a moral obligation to get something. But I am not panicking. Not at all.
There is plenty of time.
Plenty. I mean, it’s only the 18th. Christmas Eve is a week away. No sweat.
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