Translated from the original by Vicenç Navarro
The message that the Spanish establishment – the power structure for the financial, economic, political and media elite – has been promoting 24 hours a day, three hundred sixty five days a year and through thirty- six years of democracy, is that, as result of a model Transition, Spain has enjoyed a democracy homologous to any Western European democracy, that under the direction and supervision of the King of Spain the country achieved levels of welfare and quality of life similar, if not better, than the rest of the European Union. The King, whose power derives from the Dictator, was the architect of representative and democratic institutions that actually meant a break with the previous regime. This is the idealized vision of the Transition, which produced democracy, and the role of the monarch in that process that the Big Media and mass means of persuasion have constantly repeated over the years. The complete lack of ideological diversity of the media ( with a very marked discrimination against the left ) explains that this view has become conventional wisdom in the country. Continue reading
Kate seems to have been selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character. She appears precision-made, machine-made, so different from Diana whose human awkwardness and emotional incontinence showed in her every gesture. Diana was capable of transforming herself from galumphing schoolgirl to ice queen, from wraith to Amazon. Kate seems capable of going from perfect bride to perfect mother, with no messy deviation.
The late Ralph Miliband made his name as a Marxist theoretician through detailed elaboration of the proposition that the Labour Party can do absolutely nothing for the working class. His two boys, or so the lefty joke has it, have very loyally done their best to prove the old man right.