“By a small sample we may judge of the whole piece. (Miguel de Cervantes) “
You’ve got to hand it to the average Spanish politician for survival instinct. Until this late hour, they continue to pretend to be fixing an insolvent banking system, hoping against hope somebody comes up with a brainstorm to crawl out of this potentially bloody quagmire, Giggety!
Civil War can always happen again and a level of countrywide famine is but assured when the moronic EURO Ponzi plan is adhered to with such exemplary vehemence as now. Banker engineered turmoil is common practice, apparently. The heavy sigh of relief Spaniards breathed with the death of the dictator Franco was too short-lived in relative terms, a flood of easy finance debt did for them as with the rest of the world.
“No te preocupes Angelita, I’ll send all our money to your house!”
For genuine reports from Spain and up to the minute sensible dissection of the scams, we recommend you look in on The Slog. The single certainty in the debacle is that no human intervention can possibly contain the collapse of toxic instruments and bare ass naked derivatives. At the inevitable point, estimated to be around two weeks from now by the best informed, food distribution to urban areas will be critically disrupted.
History is bound to repeat itself by design, the Gold Cartel has squeezed every ounce of Americas ore Spain disembarked from her galleons since 1492. What traditionally follows is tragedy, men’s souls will be tested again as they watch children and women starve without ever devining the true reason for their predicament because apart from 26 noble families, nobody else in Spain really matters in this equation.
Don’t look for it in conventional history books, the pain of Spain is etched deep in the hearts of the people themselves with direct reference to their heroes of the day that made difficult lives more tolerable. A very good read on the subject is Dominique La Pierre’s biography of legendary Spanish bullfighter Manuel Benitez, aka El Cordobes. You take away a vivid illustration of the crushing poverty Spaniards experienced at their lowest in the past century and it’s cringe inducing to think they might re-live it!
“Always Shear and only sometimes Slaughter!”
His elder sister, to whom he was closest, begins the narration by stating how she cried the day Benitez was born because there was another mouth to feed and she, a little girl then knew there was nothing at all for dinner. La Pierre takes the reader on a trek through the miserable Civil War years to paint a portrait of a country imploding but he also makes up for the gut-wrenching empathy one feels for the never say die torrero, probably one of the best biographical book endings ever crafted for a living subject!
The clincher though, the part of the book which makes it unforgettable 30 years after reading is in the chapter that gives the book it’s title. On the fateful day of his first professional outing as a properly paid bullfighting teenager, Benitez went to see his sister to tell her the news of his good luck. He’d be fighting a bull everyone believed would gore him through for light entertainment so he counted on courage to save him.
The determination which propelled El Cordobes to legendary status among aficionados revealed itself in a tender moment with his wholly disapproving sister Angela. Political correctness may have turned bullfighting support into faut pas but even Mariano Rajoy would be the last one to say El Cordobes was not a brave man. Braver than himself certainly when dealing with the bullish Frau Angela demanding he save her Schnitzel.
“Tonight Angelita, I’ll buy you a house. Or I’ll dress you in Mourning!”
El Cordobes
