From the scullery I glance through to the 24-hour news on TV with sound muted. There is a lengthy interview with a very attractive woman. Her face when static has something of the shark about it, but the instant she begins to answer her range of expressions prove captivating, and she is drawing such delightful pictures in the air with her hands that she looks like someone telling fairy stories to a child.

Coffee made I turn on the sound to discover she's the spokeswoman for the Justice Department, her name is Gabriela Bravo, and she is telling fairy stories! She says the judgement against Baltasar Garzón is 'impeccable'.

Judge Garzón has been found guilty of illegally ordering wire-tapping in the Gürtel Case and has had his professional status removed for 11 years, effectively ending his career. Government officials are tripping over themselves to issue the 'Pronunciamento' that the trial was impeccable.

The 'impeccable' crowd can be divided into those too stupid to know any better, and the far right wing for whom lying is the norm.

In 'No Cloak, No Dagger' Benjamin Cowburn observes "People who tell lies have a tendency to believe lies. They seem to develop a queer mental kink. They are accustomed to make others serve their purposes by uttering words which have no foundation in truth or fact."

Wire-tapping is allowed under Spanish law, but the relevant wording is open to two interpretations; 1) only in terrorism cases and only if permission is given, and 2) no permission required in terrorism cases, but permission required for non-terrorism cases. It has become common for the second interpretation to be used.







So what is going on here? Well when Garzón prosecuted and imprisoned a Socialist ex-government minister there was no problem, when he took action to cripple the finances of ETA there was no problem, nor was there when he crushed drug gangs, but with the Gürtel Case and with his attempts to investigate the crimes of the Fascist Dictatorship he was going against the Saviours of the Nation and had to be stopped.

The most infamous Saviours of the Nation of the last century were the Fascist military rebels who, with the aid of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church overthrew the elected government, and imposed the brutal dictatorship of Franco.

The Fascists used murder, rape and torture as a deliberate means of terrorising the civilian population. Such is the degeneracy of the Fascist mentality that they boasted of their near medieval barbarity, until it dawned on their limited minds that while Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy applauded them the civilised world was horrified and repelled.



It is an observable fact that those in the gutter always assume the rest of us are in the gutter with them; whatever they themselves are willing to do they assume others do as well. Whenever one examines the finger pointing of the far right one has to have in mind that a process of filtering the possible and credible from the preposterous is likely to be essential.

Click here for some thoughts on the subject of The Raping of Nuns in light of the above observations.

In 'The Battle For Spain' Antony Beevor mentions that during the Spanish Civil War the American journalist Virginia Cowles found that the Fascists refused to believe anything which did not accord with their own grotesque imaginings. The degree of political self-hypnosis she encountered was so strong that 'it was almost a mental disease'.

At this point it is worthwhile introducing three words which define that miasmic entity responsible for entrapping potentially one of the wealthiest countries in Europe in a near perpetual mire of corruption, incompetence and unjustified self-satisfaction. The entity in question is the large percentage of the Spanish governing class, bureaucracy and judiciary who are adherents of Castilian imperial nationalism, militarism, and Roman Catholicism, and the three defining words - infantile, stupid and psychotic.

These characteristics are not of recent origin; the bizarre religiously inspired gamble of the Spanish attempt to invade England with a vast and expensive Armada led by a reluctant amateur was infantile, stupid and psychotic; during the Peninsula War Sir John Moore referred to the ludicrous incapacities of the Spanish strategists, and described the Spanish plan for encircling the French as 'a sort of gibberish'.

Unlike Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Fascist Spain did not invade other European nations, and because of this the Fascists of Spain unlike the Fascists of Italy and the Nazis of Germany were never forced to face up to the evil of their regime.

William Shirer in 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' observes "No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian state can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda." - true of both the victims and the perpetrators.

In Spain the Fascist dictatorship lasted 36 years, three times longer than the Fascist regime of Nazi Germany, and in Spain many of the Fascists were left active within the body politic after this. Spain still has a legal Fascist party!

In Spain the far right wing Saviours of The Nation are still living in denial, and visiting their malign psychosis on an innocent populace.

While Garzón is being tried another item on the 24 hour news is repeated visits to the 17 Roses of Gerena, Seville. It is the exhumation of 17 women murdered by the Fascists and thrown into an unmarked mass grave under the path of a cemetery, placed so that visitors would walk over their grave.

The women were the daughters, wives or girlfriends of local elected politicians, union members, or non-attenders of mass or confession. The murder of the women is believed to have followed the 'usual' pattern.



It was a common practice in medieval times to rape women who were to be executed immediately prior to the execution with the intention that the woman - who would not have an opportunity to confess 'her' sin - would go straight to Hell.

The Fascist military rebels claimed the mass murder they perpetrated on the Spanish people was done in the name of Saving the Nation, and in the name of God, and many of the victims of the Fascists were denounced by priests because they did not attend mass, the priests knowing that denunciation would lead to execution.



As the work of recovering the remains at Gerena continues one of the excavators can be seen painstakingly assembling over several days a skeleton on a white board. It is only when the camera pulls back and both skeleton and excavator are in shot at the same time that the scale becomes apparent - this particular skeleton is not that of an adult victim, but of a child clearly well under the age of ten.

Click here for the photo essay Chasing the Ghosts of Franco by Álvaro Minguito Palomares.

Fascism would have continued had ETA not assassinated Admiral Carrero Blanco, the man groomed to succeed Franco. Instead a form of democracy was allowed - limited by the threat of further Fascist intervention. Manuel Fraga, the Fascist Minister of Propaganda set up the Partido Popolar (PP) as a democratic party. While the PP would like to appear the equivalent of the British Conservative Party - and no doubt many of its members would fit into the CP, it is also home to a large Fascist rump.

The PP Prime Minister from 1996 to 2004, José María Aznar had been a member of FES - the youth wing of the Fascist Party. Many current members of the Supreme Court were appointed by Aznar. Garzón's investigations in the Gürtel Case uncovered a web of corruption involving senior PP officials in a number of regions, and massive amounts of public money.

The incoming PP government - as is usual - appointed a member of their own party to head the fraud investigation unit, unusually all the highly effective police investigators were removed from their posts at the same time. A little later the new appointee was also removed, when the media unearthed their criminal conviction - for fraud.

Putting a criminal convicted of fraud in charge of a fraud investigation unit - you could not make this up!

I am sure you are joining the dots more successfully than the alluring Gabriela Bravo, who moves on to the Iñaki Urdangarin Case suggesting that the investigation into the King's son-in-law's finances may be tainted and rendered invalid because he is high profile, thus paving the way for a letting-off-the-hook judgement. Garzón is of equal high profile, but the judgement in his case is, of course, impeccable!

It emerges that Urdangarin's wife, the Infanta Cristina, has been claiming allowances for non-existent workers. No matter; in due course some lowly official will no doubt be found to shoulder the blame. The King had told Urdangarin to sever ties with his business associates because they were crooks - begs the question why didn't the King also inform the legal authorities. Eventually links emerge between Urdangarin's finances and the Gürtel Network. At the time of writing the investigation is on-going.

While Garzón is being stitched up, Francisco Camps, the PP ex-President of the Valencia Region - venal in Vuitton, is let off the hook; we hear the evidence of his guilt, he is crestfallen - the little boy outside the Headmaster's study awaiting a caning. He stands to make his final plea, unconvincingly he says "I am innocent.", we all laugh at the humbug. The final laugh is on us for the court agrees.

This judgement is an insult to the intelligence says a political opponent of Camps, he's not wrong. The next day the key witness repeats his evidence for the TV cameras, and finishes with "Camps is guilty."

In the local authority schools and colleges in Valencia they cannot afford to turn on the heating as winter temperatures dip below zero. The students sit in unheated classrooms. A great deal of public money has been spent on unnecessary and extravagant high profile projects. The bribes Camps is accused of accepting include expensive clothing.

After days of sitting in freezing classrooms college students and schoolchildren demonstrate against proposed cuts in education spending. Amongst their placards is one that reads 'More heating, less Louis Vuitton'. The demonstrations are repeated on successive days. They are peaceful, well behaved, good humoured - simply making a point about fairness. And then the PP Chief of Police for Valencia in conjunction with the PP government representative for the region takes action.

The images start in a relatively neutral way, but that doesn't last. A young man, who to me looks like 'one of the usual suspects' - the scruffy appearance, the dreadlocks - is being manhandled across a road by a couple of police officers, he is trying to break free but doesn't have a clue how to do it. This isn't 'usual suspect' material, this is a big soft lad who probably forges sick notes to avoid PE lessons. His nose has been bloodied.

The first police officer loses his footing and starts to fall pulling the demonstrator off balance, this results in the second officer - a big lad, also losing his balance and falling heavily on top of the first officer. That, presumably was at least one of the five injuries suffered by police on the day.

A casually dressed young man is lying face down on the pavement with his head turned to the side, an officer is kneeling on his back applying handcuffs. The young man neither speaks nor moves, but the officer quite deliberately kneels on his neck. A group of young girls are trying to escape officers thrashing at the back of their thighs with truncheons, one tries, without success to get behind a lamppost to avoid the blows.

A line of officers are running diagonally left to right and towards the camera. The nearest officer passes half a metre in front of the camera. Long hair streams from the helmet, so presumably it is a female officer and she thrusts violently at someone to the right of the camera. I imagine some yelling thug threatening the officer, but the camera operator swiftly follows the movement and falling to the ground is a woman, perhaps in her thirties, carrying shopping bags.

A young man is stood on a street corner engaged in conversation with someone hidden behind an approaching officer. People passing glance nervously at the policeman and scurry away, but the young man remains unaware. The officer delivers a full force whack across the face with his gloved hand. The young man was wearing glasses.

A puzzled man in his forties, a professional of some kind by his appearance is standing on the edge of a pavement looking across the road, his hands are spread in the universal sign of 'what's happening' and he's asking the same. A group of officers a little distance away and out of his line of sight suddenly break into a run towards him and batter him to the ground with their truncheons.

Later a still emerges which is perhaps misleading for in my opinion the hulking officer stretching out a hand appears to be offering aid, but the young woman - dwarfed by the figure who like all the others is in full riot gear - has seen enough unprovoked violence, and is cowering back against a wall, arms crossed in front of her for protection, clearly terrified and on the point of screaming.

A disturbing report emerges; a girl on a shopping expedition with her mother and both grandmothers is walking arm in arm with her mother when three police officers rush up, drag the girl away from her relatives and arrest her as a rioter.

The media contact the two PP officials 'We had to send in the police to control the violent students'. These two are living in a cloud-cuckoo past - TV and the internet are everywhere nowadays; we've all seen the reality. The government Rep shifts 'well if individual officers have overstepped the mark.....', The Chief of Police follows suit, but maintains the students were violent!

To repeat; it is an observable fact that those in the gutter always assume the rest of us are in the gutter with them.

The Spokesman for the police union calls a spade a spade; he accuses both PP officials of "A gross error of judgement in sending riot police against a peaceful demonstration.", further, they are professionally and personally cowardly in trying to shift the blame onto individual officers. At this point it emerges that before sending in the riot police the Chief of Police described the students as 'The enemy'.



The next day a mother says "My daughter's not the enemy; she's the future."

In response to the police violence students in cities all across the country go onto the streets to demonstrate their support for the Valencian students.

In Barcelona there is violence. Footage of two young men in masks, supposedly students, setting fire to a motorcycle and a large public waste bin is shown. My immediate thought is that they are not students; unfortunately Barcelona has a long history of the 'usual suspects' and of agent provocateurs, and to me this pair look like the latter.

Light the blue touch paper and stand well back; in no time the 'usual suspects' are out setting up barricades, burning waste bins and tyres, and so on. It is perfectly feasible that there may be students amongst them, but elsewhere in the city an organised peaceful student demonstration is taking place.

Some days later a middle aged man in a Valencian street comments on the police violence against the students. His comments are breathtaking in their spectacular divergence from reality - he must be a fan of Intereconomia TV.

With great complacency he states that while there was no violence from Valencian students, students from other parts of Spain had infiltrated Valencia and were attacking the police, and the police were only defending themselves against these attacks.

As Pliny the Elder noted 'There is no lie so shameless as to lack a supporter'.

When an enquiry is held the Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, clutches, pathetically, a single still image which he claims shows student violence against police. When he allows the rest of us to see the photo it is apparent that it is open to widely different interpretations.

The thought occurs that perhaps all the camera operators present during the violence were only looking for police violence. Perhaps there was unrecorded student violence?

No sooner is the thought formulated than footage of the start of the police charge is shown. It is video footage taken from behind the police and shows they are accompanied by a police cameraman. It is reasonable to conclude that if the police cameraman could not find images of student violence it is because there were none to find.

Months pass and Gabriela Bravo is back on TV, looking slightly severe in the company of Carlos Dívar the President of Spain's Supreme Tribunal. Dívar, one of the 'impeccable' crowd, has been accused of having expensive hotel stays at the taxpayers expense. He is identifiably a Saviour of the Nation and therefore by definition has never done anything wrong - all the trips, he says, were legitimate official trips, and he lists who he was meeting and why in response to specific allegations.

'Pronunciamento' made he finishes the press conference clearly annoyed that his integrity should have been questioned at all.



Inconsistencies soon emerge, and people cited deny knowledge of claimed meetings. In one incident a brief two hour meeting on a thursday extended into a five day trip.

Over 30,000euros in expenses have been falsely claimed. The trips, which Dívar later explains were of a religious nature, were necessarily accompanied by security personnel - one bodyguard in particular, who has enjoyed a faster than normal rate of promotion, and received expensive presents.

You have probably just joined the same dots as I did, but pause; religious?

This next connection is pure speculation. Think of the worst rumours you have ever heard about the Freemasons, then ratchet it up a few notches. Opus Dei (work of God) was set up as an organization of strongly committed celibate Catholic professionals dedicated to ensuring the dominance of the Church in all aspects of public and political life in Spain. Opus Dei is believed to be very strongly represented in the legal system. Needless to say Opus Dei and Fascist apologists sing from very similar hymn sheets.



Perhaps this putative connection is a speculation too far, for Dívar is soon publicly shunned. An 'I have done nothing wrong' resignation follows.

(It is believed the initial revelation of Dívar's misconduct was made by the advocate who represented Baltasar Garzón at his show trial.)

Seven months after the 'impeccable' judgement Gabriela is being interviewed on TV. She acknowledges that Jurists from outside Spain regard Garzón's trial as being unsound. Suddenly she looks like a little girl who has just discovered fairy stories aren't true after all.


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