Princess and the Pea syndrome

COMFORTABLY insulated from mundane concerns until they cause discomfort

WE must wait until February to know whether the Infanta Cristina, wife of Iñaki Urdangarin, former Duke of Palma de Mallorca, eventually occupies the accuseds’ bench, Spain’s equivalent of the dock.

What went on once the Urdangarins were behind closed doors is anyone’s guess, but most royals suffer from the Princess and the Pea syndrome, comfortably insulated from mundane concerns until they cause discomfort.  

Perhaps Urdangarin would always have tended towards dodgy deals like siphoning off public money and money-laundering.

But marrying a king’s daughter is a burden for anyone not a multi-millionaire or without munificent in-laws.

Doubledecker equations

NO political party won sufficient votes to govern alone in the December 20 elections and so far each has rejected all overtures from their rivals. However hard they do their sums the numbers just don’t add up and even algebra won’t solve the problem facing Mariano Rajoy, Pedro Sanchez, Pablo Iglesias and Albert Rivera.

Hindsight insight

PEDRO SANCHEZ, Eduardo Madina and Jose Antonio Perez Tapias resisted the efforts of former PSOE leader Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba to hand over to Andalucia’s regional president Susana Diaz in 2014.

They wanted primaries, got them and because Diaz wasn’t ready or willing for a contest, party members chose Sanchez who last month led the PSOE to defeat. Directly nominating Diaz would have been less democratic, but it might have been more effective.

Just more of the same

MUCH to his sorrow, Artur Mas had to abandon his efforts to be re-elected president of Cataluña. He was succeeded by Carles Puigdemont who as well as having a name that monolingual Spaniards will find irritatingly hard to pronounce, is doomed to follow Mas’s route map.

Puigdemont is committed to declaring independence within 18 months, although more than half of Cataluña’s population made their sentiments clear in the September 27 regional elections. Fewer than half voted for the pro-independence, cross-party voting list Junts pel Si, which means Together for Yes. On the contrary, 52 per cent demonstrated they were Together for No.