For Services Rendered

Competing in the cynicism stakes with Esperanza Aguirre was never going to be easy but I take my hat off to Francisco Camps, president of the Valencian regional government. He inaugurated a new award, the Orden de Jaime 1 el Conquistador, by presenting it to none other than Carlos Fabra! Presumably, this is to console Carlitos for Hacienda’s unreasonable policy of not awarding freshly minted medals for successful tax evasion. As if this wasn’t enough, Don Carlos also gets a change in the local party statutes of the Partido Popular, which will mean that nobody can be expelled from the party for their misdemeanours until there is a firm judicial sentence condemning them. Given that in Spain such a sentence may not come before the beginning of the next ice age, this is effectively a policy of internal political amnesty for all corrupt PP representatives. Given also that the Valencian domain covers a good stretch of the Mediterranean coast, we can expect the number of those seeking refuge in the new rules to be quite high. Perhaps, given Fabra’s overwhelming power in Castellón province, the gesture by Camps contributed to the latter receiving the very Bulgarian figure of 98% support in his re-election as leader of the regional PP. Aguirre only got a meagre 96% in Madrid....¡toma!