Catch Me If You Can!

Well, let’s see, the Catalonian parliament was having its debate and vote to invest Salvador Illa as president of the region (good news for the party back in Madrid), as, out in the street, the long-exiled Carles Puigdemont suddenly appeared like a puff of smoke from a Arabian lamp, gave a speech to around 3,500 supporters, and abruptly disappeared once again.

Right under the noses of endless numbers of mossos (the Catalonian police), snitches, journalists and members of the Vox and PP – all failing to know how he did it.

He had even warned us that he’d be coming, and yet, with Barcelona closed tighter than a drum, he still reappeared the next day back in Waterloo, Belgium.

I wrote a little poem. Baroness Orczy fans may recognise it. Ahem.

 

They seek him here,

They seek him there,

Those mossos seek him everywhere.

But they can't find

That man they want,

That demmed elusive Puigdemont!

 

Everyone is running around in a panic, looking for someone to blame. It must have been that Perro Sanxe (Pedro Sánchez) back in Madrid (or in reality, the president and his wife are on holiday in some secret location – By Jingo! This whole disappearing thing is getting out of hand. No, he’s not in his apartment in Mojácar he bought back in 2001– I looked through the window yesterday).

The next worry, after the PP and Vox spokespeople have shouted themselves hoarse calling for the President to appear in the Senado and explain how Puigdemont made the whole country look foolish, will be to see if Pudgi’s party the Junts per Catalunya will continue to support the government once it returns to political business later this month… or go over to the opposition (where it will find some highly uncomfortable allies).

Meanwhile, back in the Catalonian parliament, the new president Salvador Illa, upstaged, is now apparently in charge.

The Prisoner-Swap.

While we have been confused (or maybe hoodwinked) over the gender of that Algerian boxer at the Olympics, another longer trick has been played particularly on the Spanish.

This is the Spanish journalist who had been held without charge in Poland for the past thirty months, while the foreign ministry apparently did nothing at all to help.

But maybe they knew something we didn’t.

The journo, known to us as the left-wing Pablo Gónzalez, but to the Russians as Pavel Alekseyevich Rubtsov, has been released as part of a major prisoner swap between the USA and Russia.

In all, sixteen prisoners returned to the West last week, while another eight of them headed East.  

That’s right, Pablo was on the list of prisoners claimed by the Kremlin and he’s now in Moscow.  

We read that ‘Pablo's legal team has issued a statement stressing that the release was made possible thanks to Russia's "genuine interest" and "intense negotiations" between the parties involved. According to his lawyers, while Russia was working to resolve the situation, others were focused on criminalizing the journalist instead of protecting his rights’.

Now, his return to Russia raises new questions about his true identity and the reasons behind his detention and release. Was he one of ours unjustly held by the Poles for thirty months, as the Spanish press has claimed all along… or perhaps one of theirs?

The Americans at least aren’t in any doubt: ‘Foreign affairs journalist Anne Applebaum noted that “a group of brave journalists and democracy activists are being exchanged for a group of brutal spies.” The exchange included no money or sanctions relief…’

Elsewhere, we read that ‘Poland's former foreign minister during most of Pablo González's imprisonment, Zbigniew Rau, said on Friday that this Spanish citizen is, in fact, a "senior officer of the Russian military intelligence", thereby justifying his confinement…’

In honour of these brave men returned to Mother Russia, Vladimir Putin has promised to dish out medals to all of them, including Pablo and also the notorious hit-man Vadim Krasikov, who was being held by the Germans.

A comment floating around underlines the Spanish disenchantment: ‘Full marks to Putin for caring about the plight of an innocent Spanish journalist. No doubt but that he will have done it to protect press freedom and not because he worked for the Russians’.

Will Pablo (Pavel) return to Spain? His wife certainly hopes so. See, he has double nationality, says the media (come to think of it, it’s odd that we aren’t allowed the same privilege).

Anyway, Joe Biden got the Wall Street Journal journalist Even Gershkovich back (with several others held by the Russians), so everything worked out fine.

Except for that poor Algerian pugilist, who remains on the Facebook (s)hit-list.