The Zapatero clique's claim that an Anglo-Saxon plot was underway to bring down the Spanish economy (which is doing just fine, thanks) was a smart appeal to lingering Spanish nationalist paranoias re the loss of Cuba and Philippines to the US, but in the end it was just too silly to sell very well for very long.

And now it turns out too that those nasty Jews, who usually take the underlying rap for the evils of international capital, have actually been working to protect southern satrapies from the accountants.

So who can the Spanish government blame for market assaults on a country with 20% official unemployment and no discernable plan? Why, Martin Luther, of course.

Germany seems to have concluded that letting Europe go down the plughole would end its chance of playing a strategic role in world affairs, and that the only reasonable alternative is to assume the (macro-economic) management of ungovernable European states like Greece and probably eventually Spain. So the obvious mad conclusion waiting for the lemmings to leap is that we are seeing a reinvention of the Black Legend.

The opening cultural shots in the neo-Lutheran scheme to return Papist-Marxist Spain to Satan's fold have already been fired. Last night we caught one at Barcelona's disgracefully under-rehearsed and overpriced Liceu, in the form of the Jewish apostate Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah/Elias.

Now, it's kind of bizarre to see a piece written for the great, comradely choral societies of industrial Britain--a nation of oratorio-singers, not shopkeepers--performed professionally and without soul for a sparsely populated island of effete and elderly mafiosi amid the quite considerable deprivation of the Raval.

And it's also something of a shame--remember that Fèlix Millet still hasn't spend a night in custody--that the punters were asleep and the People absent when Elijah cried out:

Take all the prophets of Baal; and let not one of them escape you, bring them down to Kishon's brook and there let them be slain!

The implication of schlachten and the brook is clearly that the social elite is to be beheaded, but the Catalan translator actually used degollar, which I thought was a nice touch. Perhaps next time the halal butcher around the corner will be prepared to give a demonstration.

Tags (experimental automated caching of WP extracts):

• Baal (1) Baʿal is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu.
• Barcelona (881)
• Black legend (1)
• Catalonia (998)
• Crisis (8)
• El Raval (28) El Raval is a neighbourhood in the Ciutat Vella district of Barcelona, Spain.
• Elijah (1) Elijah, was a prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of Ahab, according to the Books of Kings.
• German language (42) German is a West Germanic language related to and classified alongside English and Dutch.
• Germany (12) – in Europe   – in the European Union    — 
• Greece (4) – in Europe   – in the European Union    — 
• José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (62) Don José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party.
• Karl Marx (42) Karl Heinrich Marx was a Prussian philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist.
• Luther (1) Luther may refer to:
• Mendelssohn (1) Mendelson is a Polish/German Jewish family name, meaning "son of Mendel", Mendel being a Yiddish diminutive of the Hebrew given name Menahem, meaning "consoling" or "one who consoles".
• Merkel (1) Merkel may refer to:
• Politics of Spain (162)
• Prophet (2)
• Reformation (1) Eastern Christianity
• Sovereign debt default (3)
• Spain (1423)
• Translation (416)
• Trussed (1)
• Trust (2)

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