Bursting democracy

1. At the end of the escapade
2. Illa, civil governor of Sanchism
3. Sánchez is maturing
4. Cuban style
5. The Olympic Games are over

Salvador Illa is president of the Generalitat and Puigdemont has fled for the second time. Sánchez always wins and remains in La Moncloa. Only a 'pact of shame' between the Government and the Junts could have allowed the porn-political spectacle that took place next to the Arc de Triomf just a few steps from the Parliament.

It seemed that everything was going to blow up in Barcelona, seventy-nine years after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; but our rulers have only made fools of themselves and degraded the institutions. The dignity of the people is now flowing down the Cloaca Maxima of Sanchismo's corruption. But this is not a dignified people because they vote for criminals. And so it goes.

While we await Iran's revenge against Israel for the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the "narco-democracy" of the dictator Maduro has begun a brutal repression (Cuban style) against his compatriots. Zapatero, the regime's revolutionary agitator, disappeared in his mansion in Lanzarote, silent as a dead coward. Kamala has found her Tim: Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, an electoral ticket to prevent the return of Trump, the enemy of Europe and of freedom of expression.

The Sánchez-Gómez family is suing judge Peinado with the invaluable collaboration of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the (Government) Attorney's Office; all the power of the State against a just man. Corruption is still there, Renfe and Cercanías are an ordeal, immigrants arrive in small boats, Spain loses ten bars a day and the fires, despite the four heat waves (1,500 dead since June) are respecting us, thanks to the intervention of the UME.

The Paris '24 Olympic Games have confirmed that with such a progressive government, medals are won with effort. Not with propaganda. Let's get started.

At the end of the escapade

The Barcelona media circus turned out to be a travesty. The appearance in mortal flesh of the golpista Carles Puigdemont, a supporting actor, was a B show. A hasty speech to say, without the grandeur of Tarradellas, that "I am already here", -for seven minutes- and that "I don't know when we will see each other again" -hopefully never. He is a more cowardly predator than The Lion in 'The Wizard of Oz'. It must be agreed that he has laughed at us all. And that it comes free of charge.

The attacks on Justice, the PP and Vox and the repression and persecution of separatist ideas are as old as pan tumaca. Not a single criticism of his partner, Dr. Sánchez, his protégé. They are partners in dynamiting Spain.

The beloved leader escaped by car with the collaboration of corrupt policemen. The nationalist mafia. He promised to attend the investiture of the new president but did not deliver. He never delivers what he promises. That's why he gets on well with Sánchez. Two crooks at the end of the escapade.

The help of the mayor of the city, Jaume Collboni, and that of the government delegate, Carlos Prieto, were decisive for the success of this farce. They made it possible to set up the stage with a false door, the public address system and the screens installed in the surrounding area so that the message could reach the faithful of the sect of Pujolism with clarity.

The premeditated failure of the Autonomous Police allowed him to escape. The reasons given by the commanders are epic: "President Puigdemont did not want to collaborate in his arrest and "next time we will arrest him". Islamist submission. Not a single resignation. Nothing has happened here.  Nothing ever happens in the Catalan oasis.

The Minister of the Interior and the head of the CNI, Marlasca and Robles, respectively, disappeared on the beach. As cowardly as ever. Other "gudaris" in hiding to continue betraying the Nation. Where did the tenant of the House of the Republic in Waterloo enter and where did he leave? Who is still in charge of border surveillance? The state. The agents of the CNI, the Guardia Civil and the National Police were forbidden to follow the fugitive's trail. It turns out that all the blame lies with the Mossos. No, it is Sánchez who agreed to this "perfomance" in Switzerland two weeks earlier.

This shameful episode for the FSE corroborates that neither national protection, nor justice, nor education, nor health, can or should be delegated to the Autonomous Regions because separatists and nationalists prevent the fulfilment of judicial resolutions. They neither comply with the Magna Carta nor allow it to be complied with. There is a lack of constitutional loyalty.

A complete humiliation for the Supreme Court. Judge Llarena says he is going to request reports from the Mossos and Marlaska, the absent one. What are the European magistrates going to think when they receive a European warrant against Mr Carles, after seeing that he gives a rally in the heart of the city inciting hatred and secession and they do not arrest him?

We are once again the laughing stock of the world. The headlines of the main European and American newspapers, moreover, treat the fugitive, accused of high treason for his collusion with Putin, as a liberating hero. And what is the communication counter-offensive of the Moncloa and Foreign Affairs abroad? None. The story continues to be written by Catalonia's "embassies" with taxpayers' money.

On his return to Waterloo, Puigdemont boasts of having stayed several days in Catalonia, of having dined in Barcelona and confirmed what we feared: "I didn't come here to be arrested".  Another brave man like his model Dencás who escaped through the sewers to Mussolini's Rome on 8 October 1934.

The embezzler was not able to bust the investiture of the candidate Illa, but thanks to the generosity of the Parliament he will receive from last Thursday some 100,000 euros a year for voting electronically. An excellent telework. If we add to this his privileges as fugitive ex-president after the 2017 coup, his fees paid with our taxes would exceed 214,000 euros/year; plus car, secretary, advisor, office and bodyguard. This is the 'price of state repression' against these miserable opportunists. His wife, who is paid almost another 100,000 euros for giving English classes in the Diputació de Barcelona, run by socialists and republicans. All on the payroll. The "famiglia nostra".

The image of the pro-independence mayors, that of the president of the Parliament Josep Rull -another amnestied pro-coup member amnestied à la carte-, together with the deputies of Junts and ERC escorting the fugitive, explains why we live in a country where the rule of law is not respected. Politics is a joke.

Illa, civil governor of Sanchism

The absence of the Spanish flag at the inauguration of the new president of the Generalitat announces that this single-colour government with an impossible-to-fulfil pact will lead us to an imminent tripartite with radical concessions to Junts. Another Tinell pact to isolate the constitutionalists. The oath, with loyalty to the King, the Constitution, the Statute of Autonomy and the institutions of the people of Catalonia, will have to be ratified with deeds. Mere rhetoric for distraction.

During the plumbeous investiture speech, Salvador Illa made it clear that he is encouraging support for the procés in the last stretch towards independence, starting with the linguistic immersion of Catalan; by the way, an initiative of the PSC and the PSUC since the 1980s. We still do not know the content and real cost of the Moncloa-ERC pact. Illa has not touched a ball in this burial of democracy.

Fiscal secession' will break the State of the Autonomies. That is the objective; to move towards a confederal and plurinational state. As the president said in his last appearance: "We are moving towards a federal state".

Illa, knowing that federalism is not popular among separatists, has introduced the term confederal without knowing what it means. What is clear to him is that the PSOE-Sumar Movement Executive and its parliamentary partners are committed to pluri-nationalism.

The key point of the surrender to ERC and Comunes - fiscal sovereignty, collecting all taxes, does not have the approval of the popular and socialist barons nor the express votes of the Xunta, BNG and Compromís. Nor those of the PNV. Therefore, the "Catalan quota" only exists on paper. It is another lie-trap of Begoña's husband. After Puigdemont's escape, Sánchez is more hostage than ever to this (consensual) rebel without a cause. And he has yet to bring out the budgets of the 25th after this year's failure.

In short, we have the weakest government in democracy offering singular funding to partners as corrupt as the central government itself.  The secessionist Catalans are unique only in their lack of constitutional loyalty, their disobedience to the institutions, their selfishness and hatred of Spain. The wall will fall apart.

Don Salvador's other star proposal is that, please, don't arrest Don Carles. And that "the amnesty be applied generously". This sinister guy is the same one who bet for the 155 and against the amnesty. "There will never be an amnesty in Catalonia" he desperately shouted on the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st.

He is the most opaque ex-minister of Health in history, who closed Madrid to run for the post he has just achieved; he was the executor of the (unconstitutional) confinements during the pandemic, the one who received Koldo to open the doors to the corruption engineered from the Ministry of Infrastructures and the one who managed health purchases worth 2,700 million that arrived generously to his friends in the Bajo Llobregat.
He claimed that there was a "committee of experts" during COVID-19, but we only met Fernando Simón who prophesied that "in our country, there will be 3 or cases at most". Remember: 130,000 dead.

Illa repeats the usual lies: "I will seek unity and govern for all". Infantile goody-goodyism: the PSC is just another separatist party, along with the CUP, the racists of Aliança Catalana and the tripartite. The 'cordon sanitaire' of 2003 will be extended with PP and Vox.

We know that Catalonia is not underfinanced. They cry and suckle. Victimism always pays off. It will receive an extra 13 billion a year.  This secret agreement will put an end to inter-territorial solidarity and to the socialist rattle: equality. Neither equality nor solidarity. Sanchista selfishness.

Illa, that serious and formal man, is hostage to ERC, Comunes, CUP and Junts and will end up making a third tripartite as radical as those of Maragall and Montilla. The socialists continue to accumulate power. This is the question.

The irresistible rise of Salvador Illa i Roca to MHP (Molt Honorable President) of the Generalitat will cost us another 'procés' in the rest of Spain. There is no other way out but to bust democracy as the mortar cement of the Sanchista wall crumbles with so much corruption and so many unfulfilled promises. Of course, the beloved leader will remain hostage for life to the tenant of Waterloo in Congress. A Caucasian circle closes over our magician Sánchez.

The beginning of the Catalan Legislature may be the sunset of the 15th Legislature in Madrid. If only! The Catalan differential fact is that Puigdemont is nothing without the doctor. And vice versa. And that Pérez-Castejón always pays for the party. We are condemned to bless corruption for much longer.

Illa has been surrounded by several ministers on his big day. Among them, the vice-president María Jesús Montero. She has broken her silence on the singular financing. Now, she is proud of the pact: she endorses and supports it, two weeks after criticising it. Let's see how she explains it in Congress to her own and others at the end of the month.

Sánchez is maturing

The judicial problems of Begoña Gómez and David Sánchez Pérez-Castejón are now the president's judicial problems. Everything remains the same despite the family's refusal to appear before the judges with an aggravating factor: they, the sacred Monclovite family, are the law.

Sánchez refused to testify as his wife's husband and counterattacked with all the heavy artillery: the Attorney General's Office and the Public Prosecutor's Office. The same General Prosecutor's Office and the (Government) Attorney's Office that had already prepared the resources so that, in the event that Puigdemont was arrested, they could demand his immediate release. Unworthy public servants. Vassals of PSPC. What a relief for Conde Pumpido.

Nor did Begoña declare for the second time in the Plaza de Castilla despite the chilling and costly security measures: more than a hundred policemen, twelve milkmaids, dogs, drones and again keeping journalists away so as not to photograph the president. All in order to get back into the garage by car. Another privilege for the professor. They seek the judge's disqualification for prevarication before October.  In Badajoz they are doing the same with judge Biedma so that she does not prosecute the "musician with no known repertoire", the brother David Azagra.

Barrabés, the lady's palace visitor friend from Huesca, contradicts his testimony as a witness and his situation becomes more complicated while the UCM rector, Joaquín Goyache, blames the appointment on his vice-rector. Another brave man.

We are not going to reproduce here the triumphalist summary of the first year of the Legislature. Twenty-four hours after stressing that "Spain creates half the employment in the EU", the INE reminded us that unemployment rose in August, in the middle of the tourist adventure.

In the only press conference in recent months, the beloved leader presented his ministers and collaborators in the front row. Without modesty. Journalists can wait. He did not answer any of the ten questions put to him by his colleagues. For the first time in many months, perhaps years, the press was up to the task.

The president was untruthful when he assured that he had given full explanations about his wife in Congress. "It's a case-not-a-case". Indecipherable.  Very transparent. About his brother David, he has never made any statement either. He did not reveal anything about the "pact" with ERC to invest Illa.

He praised the votes of the republican militants to decide on the matter, presumably after his secret meeting with Pere Aragonés. But not a single mention of the PSOE rank and file. Not a second of dialogue with the nine socialist federations in disagreement with this betrayal of the Autonomous Regions by handing over the Tax Agency. Emiliano García Page has advanced that "this is as far as we have come".

After denouncing the Castilian-Manchego that by keeping the key and the tax box, "equality and solidarity between Spaniards are broken", the doctor was contemptuous: "The news would have been that Page supports this government". (Humiliating laughter for the Castilian-La Mancha baron).

He revealed that "nobody can deny that our country is more federal than before" and announced that "there will be a legislature for a while". He disqualified the opposition (right and extreme right, as always) and ended by saying: "This government of progress governs; the opposition is fables". He flatly refused to pronounce on whether he would authorise a referendum on secession in Catalonia, to round off the process.  When he was accused of surrendering to ERC and Junts, he limited himself to saying: your question is an evaluative one. And he did not answer either.  As always; silences and lies in equal parts. Pleased to meet: "I am very happy and content with the fiscal pact". Moreover, he is a man very much in love. He has not learned - and will not learn any more - that "love is worse than war". And speaking of Guerra, Don Alfonso believes that "socialism should not support a robbery that eliminates the solidarity of Spaniards". Felipe and Alfonso are the past.

Sánchez is still on holiday, paid for with our money, without having said a word about the saga-fugue of his partner Puigdemont. He is maturing in a Bolivarian way.

In his last public appearance, we could hear him saying that the government of Nicolás Maduro should show the results of the electoral fraud of 28 June. Here, with his silence, he protects the Bolivarian regime and his compadre Rodríguez Zapatero, his ambassador plenipotentiary in Caracas and, by the way, in Barcelona and Brussels.

In other words: Don Pedro endorses and promotes Maragallian asymmetrical federalism (and prepares us for the next station: the new confederal state -republican, of course- and plurinational, as Illa advanced in his inauguration. The King, the Supreme Court and the free press are superfluous. Muzzling the press is easy.

Withdrawal of institutional propaganda and threats to advertisers. Dissidents to the streets. It is a matter of time. Not much time. They have everything they need to change the current regime. That is to say, to burst democracy.

We know how we got here: by degenerating. Resistance will be forceful because we have come this far. We will continue the resistance.

Cuban style

The dictator Maduro follows Cuban repression to the letter - 65 years of Castro's tyranny - which extends not only to the dissident but to all family, friends, neighbours and acquaintances. All are enemies and counter-revolutionaries. Physical, moral and psychological extermination is imposed until civil death. Including exile. Bullets always tell a story.

The war report after 15 days of terror, fear and torture is as follows: 32 dead, dozens disappeared, almost 2,000 illegally detained and fifteen days without showing the minutes of the end of June. As Josep Stalin wrote: "It does not matter who votes, but who counts the votes". In this case, the votes are once again being counted by Chinese experts, arrived via Havana, creators of the most 'infallible and manipulable system in the world.

These experts, sent by Beijing, are drawing up new minutes that do not correspond to those collected by the opposition "comanditos" after the election count. The Carter Center, officially invited to supervise and monitor these presidential elections, has declared Edmundo Gonzalez the winner by 67/30 after the Maduro-dominated Electoral Commission stopped the count.

It is the classic trick of the dictators; they simulate a sabotage by the 'fascist opposition', with criminal cyber-attack and impose false results. "When you come to power, you must never leave it", we learnt from Cuban pamphlets to maintain the Revolution.

In the middle of the night, Nicolás Maduro was proclaimed president-elect with 52.4% to Edmundo González's 44.6%.  The repressive machine was set in motion. For two hours I listened to the "narco-democrat" Maduro Frías, in total collusion with the army high command - he has 2,000 generals on his payroll - demand the arrest and killing of all those who protest against him without complications: "In Venezuela there is no right to protest; they are shot and that's it".

Today Venezuela is a prison as cruel as those in Cuba. Chavista paramilitaries demand $1,500 in cash from parents who are desperate for their missing children to give them news of their whereabouts. An unattainable amount on a salary of 5 dollars a month. They are so desperate that they take to the streets with the slogan: We are not afraid, we are not afraid!

Although the United States, Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador and Costa Rica have proclaimed Gonzalez president-elect, the revolutionary government has mobilised all the Armed Forces and Public Order to contain the protests, has threatened to kill Maria Cortina Machado, the soul of the Unitary Platform and, in spite of everything, this brave democrat has led the demonstrations in the streets.

The Puebla Group, led by ex-president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, refuses to acknowledge the fraud and thus, by its silence, endorses the 'victory' of the tyrant. Just like Podemos and Yolanda Díaz. Lula, Pietro and AMLO, the three communists, know the results and seek a re-run of the elections so that the manipulation confirms the legitimisation of Chávez's successor. Argentina has abandoned its diplomatic legation, which houses several leaders of the democratic opposition.

Sánchez, who does not understand bullfighting, cowards at the tables and quietly demands the minutes of the election night but does not disavow ZP's dirty work on Venezuelan soil.

Make forty trips to Venezuela, corrupt the ambassadors you appointed there - let's say I'm talking about Raúl Morodo -, let yourself be called "my prince" by Vice-President Delcy, the one with the suitcases, and have everything paid for in those latitudes.

Sometime we will know the level of villainy it takes to serve a tyrant who runs a state ruined by drug trafficking and corruption. Now Maduro has waged a digital war against Musk, the owner of X by censoring this platform for ten days.

We stand with the Venezuelan people and demand that this "narco-democrat" go to hell. There will be time to talk more about freedom in Venezuela.

We stand as always with the brave Ukrainian people who have just received the first F-16s from the United States to defend their people, their territory and our freedoms.

Beware of these inhuman heats and of this entire government that plays golf and keeps silent while a whippersnapper humiliates all Spaniards.

The Olympic Games are over

The Olympic flame was extinguished on Sunday night. Paris'24 has been an example. A country without a government is capable of responding with strong institutions that support the Republic and democracy. France has lived up to all expectations despite the terrorist threats. This XXXIII edition has restored confidence to half the world after the confinement of Covid-19 and Tokyo'20. The world wants to compete with the same sporting rules.

The Spaniards have delivered: 5 Golds, 4 Silvers and 8 Bronzes.  The medals are becoming more and more expensive due to the rise of Asian and African countries. China and Australia do not rest. In the opening session, beyond the irreverent last supper, Paris surrendered to Rafa Nadal. The French have recognised a racket god and an excellent and humble person. The Seine needs more cleaning and Notre Dame will open its doors before Christmas.

Glory to France! Paris is still a very beautiful city. Well worth a trip. See you - TVE through - in Los Angeles '28.

Antonio REGALADO is a journalist and directs BAHÍA DE ITACA at:

aregaladorodriguez.blogspot.com