Fraga, Ketchup, Democracy
June 21, 2005

I spent a few minutes in a taxi today listening to the taxi driver berate Manuel Fraga as a dictator and a murderer. A couple of days ago, Fraga, the recently re-elected 82 year-old president of the Xunta in Galicia and a former Minister of Information under Franco, is well-known for his volatile temper, which exploded a couple of days ago as an image advisor was making a comment about his jacket (click on "se estaba grabando" to see him in action). "¡Tóqueme usted las narices!" ("You're really annoying me"), the elderly gent exclaims in a video clip which was distributed over the Internet. Now it's being reported that the employee, an Antena 3 journalist, who released the clip has been fired for "boycotting" the computer system. Meanwhile, the Internet is also being used to disseminate information about the greed of a London lawyer whose secretary accidentally spilt tomato ketchup on his trousers and who duly received a four pound dry-cleaning bill from him. I wonder whether she'll be sacked after sending emails about it to her friends, via whom the story got onto the Net. I doubt it: it would be too obviously vindictive, too obviously an abuse of power. The taxi driver was also of the opinion that it'll be a long time yet before democracy is fully implanted in Spain.





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