No Hard Feelings

Esperanza Aguirre has shown that she knows how to act in the best spirit of reconciliation following her unhappy time at the PP conference in Valencia. The moment she got back to Madrid she set about remodelling her regional government and the axe has fallen directly on those who showed disturbing signs of loyalty to Mariano Rajoy. Espe didn't get her candidates onto the PP's national executive, Rajoy instead chose his own preferred people from Aguirre's administration. Both Alfredo Prada and Manuel Lamela were selected by Rajoy, and both have now lost their jobs in Aguirre's reshuffle. Nobody will miss Lamela, famous for leading the charge against the doctors of Severo Ochoa, but if there was any doubt before it is now clear that you can't support Rajoy and Aguirre at the same time.

Meanwhile Aguirre's personal propaganda mouthpiece, TeleMadrid, achieved a dramatic improvement in programme quality this week. The channel went off the air altogether for 24 hours as a result of a strike and viewers were left with a screen looking like this:


The channel has, unsurprisingly, experienced a sharp decline in audience over the last few years but those few viewers that remain are amazingly loyal to TeleMaguirre. Apparently, whilst the channel was off the air it still registered an audience share of 0.7%, which has been calculated at over 9000 viewers enjoying the black screen.