Enjoy it while you can Rajoy

MARIANO RAJOY dispensed with the services of oh-so-pious Jorge Fernandez Diaz, Minister of the Interior, who despite daily Mass planned to trap, frame and shame Catalan Secessionists.  

Minister of Foreign Affairs Margallo, with some very strong feelings on Gibraltar, was clearly another goner.  It was also on the cards that Minister of Defence Pedro Morenes would leave the Cabinet. 

Apart from these changes and some younger faces, Rajoy remains in his comfort zone. He should enjoy it while he can.

Albert Rivera, leader of Ciudadanos whose votes enabled Rajoy to return to the Moncloa, has already predicted that this legislature will be ‘short and bad’ unless the president keeps the 150 promises in their pact.  

Since this looks impossible, Ciudadanos would also be outside their comfort zone according to the latest polls. 

Rivera might be Spain’s most-highly regarded leader, but the party does less well than it deserves and in another election would slip still further.

Quick march

VASTLY ambitious Dolores de Cosped, Partido Popular secretary general, former president of Castilla-La Mancha and no friend of the vastly powerful vice-president Soraya Saenz de Santamaria has her ministry at last and is Minister of Defence. 

Unfortunately for her this gives institutional clout but no political power and will be so hard to combine with her role as secretary general that she’ll eventually have to relinquish the post.   Round one to Saenz de Santamaria as usual.

Ricocheting stones

PODEMOS senator Ramon Espinar bought a protected apartment in Madrid for €140,000 and months later sold it for €175,000 without ever occupying it.  He sought permission for the sale as regulations require but implied that he was not making a profit.  Peanuts compared with other politicians’ mega- scams but Podemos, the scourge of the corrupt, now occupies the glasshouse of the public eye and needs to stop throwing the first stone.

Erring knight errant

IT’S usually the US cavalry that gallops to the rescue at the eleventh hour, but this time it was the other way round.  The PSOE’s defenestrated secretary general Pedro Sanchez rushed to the other side of the Atlantic to assist heroine Hillary Clinton against dastardly Donald Trump.

Trouble is, Sanchez’s own election record isn’t stunning and the downhill racer, not satisfied with putting the mockers on the PSOE, did for Hillary too.