Things that we would never have said
1. In less than a month, the ballot boxes have brought Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, and Trump down to earth. The extreme right thought everything was going their way until democracy put them in their place. Bolsonaro didn't waste any time catching a plane and exiling himself to Florida before he could be arrested in Brazil. Paradoxically, Trump says that if he goes to Israel and runs for election there, he would win by a landslide. Should we encourage him to try?
2. Koldo García, who is in prison as an accomplice to Ábalos in the face mask case, now reveals that the PP offered him a million euros and a reduced sentence if he provided compromising information about Pedro Sánchez. When the Netflix series about Koldo is made, they will paint him as a double agent who has served both the PSOE and the PP, always for his own convenience. Let's remember that this man, who ended up as an advisor to a socialist minister and an executive at Renfe, had already been in prison for a crime of assault when he was a security guard at a landfill construction site. Who pardoned him? José María Aznar, in 1996, at the proposal of his Minister of Justice. The link, therefore, goes back a long way. What has been confirmed this week is that Okdiario, by Eduardo Inda, paid the more than 240,000 euros for Koldo's lawyer. The radical right paying for the defense of the PSOE's errand boy, smeared by corruption up to his eyebrows? In the end, everything will be known.
3. Former minister Toni Comín has returned from nine years of exile and, in every interview, repeats, with a mouthful, that it has been a victory. He always argues this with the same mantra: the State's repression has failed because it hasn't put him in prison for a single day and because the Spanish justice system has had to rectify and annul its sentences. Former minister Clara Ponsatí, who was part of the same government of October 1st, who received amnesty this week, and who always speaks bluntly, has interpreted it in a much less romantic way: "I will not make a fool of myself by telling you that this is a victory, because it is not."
4. The Ministry of Culture has published, this week, a full-page advertisement to promote reading. The protagonists of the ad that we have seen in many Spanish newspapers are Mort & Phil. Do they really believe that these are the role models that should promote reading habits? Do the youngest ones know who these two TIA agents are? It is not necessary. The youngest ones do not read the newspaper either and, therefore, they will not see this ad either. Another way of wasting public money.
5. Barcelona will unite the tram along the Diagonal. To link the TramBaix with the TramBesòs it will take four years of construction that will begin next summer. It is not understood why Mayor Collboni, of the PSC, is pushing forward an idea that Mayor Hereu, of the PSC, had stopped after a public consultation. In 2010, the people of Barcelona voted in a referendum whether they wanted to connect the two trams with a boulevard-type model (option A), Rambla-type (option B) or that they should not be connected (option C). Option C won, by a landslide. Has that 79.84% of the votes already expired? It is clear that the popular will means nothing.
6. Still talking about trams, Collboni is also doing everything possible to recover the Blue Tram, on the Tibidabo Avenue. I would never have said that, in the era of AI, we would have to return to a relic from the 19th century that will not solve any mobility or traffic problem. Quite the opposite. Lluís Permanyer, the great chronicler of Barcelona, said that trams are only useful for medium or small cities. This is not our case. Of course, this week they have awarded Permanyer the Gold Medal of the City, posthumously. They had so many years to give him the medal while he was alive... Too late. When he was dead, they gave him communion. Such excitement that recognitions bring when you are alive and so little grace they have, if any at all, when you have already passed away.
