Well, Barça won the league championship again this year, and it is a well-deserved title. They are by far the best team in Spain, and they have an excellent chance to defeat Arsenal and win the Champions' League as well. Sports Illustrated's Jonah Freeman has had Barcelona at the top of his Power Rankings for all world clubs all season, and I think he's right. Do not miss the final in Paris on television; they'll show it on some cable station somewhere, even in the US. Ronaldinho is at the peak of his career right now, and I have a feeling he's going to have a big game against Arsenal. If Thierry Henry has a big game for Arsenal, and he's the kind of player who very well may, it should be spectacular.

So they had the big celebration. Check out this segment from an AP story picked up by Sports Illustrated--that is, it's what all the American soccer fans read this morning with their coffee.

Greeted by fans at the city's El Prat airport in the small hours of the morning, the players traveled on an open-topped bus to meet more acclamation from several hundred fans gathered its Camp Nou stadium.

Meanwhile, a reported 24,000 more jubilant followers celebrated by dancing, lighting red flares and even firing rockets at downtown Canaletes fountain on the thoroughfare of Las Ramblas, the traditional site for celebrating the Catalan powerhouse's triumphs.

The celebrations were marred when police mounted several charges after traffic lights, shop windows and bus shelters were broken. Thirteen people were arrested, news agency Efe said.

Boy, that makes us look great, doesn't it? Just the image we want for Barcelona, a modern, sophisticated, classy city. If I were the cops I would already be planning extremely special measures, including some serious truncheon-swinging and horse-charging and other appropriate violence, in case Barça does win the Champions' League. Bring on the rubber bullets and the tear gas.

About the only positive note is that most of the thirteen people arrested are habitual offenders with long police records; that is, they weren't an accurate cross-section of society. They are, however, an accurate cross-section of the Boixos Nois, the Barça hooligan squad, known for fighting, vandalism, murder, drug dealing, and grievous bodily harm. Spanish-speakers might want to read this, this, this, this, this, or this. FC Barcelona needs to expel all these scumballs from its club and its stadium right now, and all the other clubs need to do the same with their extremist followers.

Positive news: Rajoy has made noises about getting down off his horse on the alleged ETA connection to the March 11 bombing in Madrid. He's now saying that there's no proof that ETA was connected, but that the investigation should continue, which it should. There are still loose ends that need to be tied up. Nothing radically new remains to be discovered, though.

The Paseo del Prado trees are making an enormous stink in Madrid. Everyone's against cutting them down, from what I read; I'm certainly against it, too. Century-old trees should not be cut down, especially if they form part of the city's most famous boulevard in front of the city's three top art museums. Foreigners come from all over the world to see the Paseo del Prado, bringing literally hundreds of millions of euros with them, and Madrid would be crazy to change it. Ruiz-Gallardon needs to toss out the plans, since the whole city is going to be up in arms. The Baroness von Thyssen has threatened to chain herself to the trees; more seriously, she's threatened to pull the plug on the transfer of some 300 paintings from her collection to the Spanish government. More power to her.

The other tourist-oriented stink is here in Barcelona. Josep Huguet, the ERC counselor for tourism, wants the cheesy tourist shops on the Ramblas and around the Sagrada Familia to stop selling "typically Spanish" souvenirs like dolls dressed as flamenco singers and bullfight posters. First he threatened to ban it, and then he retracted and said that he merely wanted "to encourage Catalan arts and crafts."

My attitude is that the tourist shops can sell whatever crap they want, and if people are dumb enough to buy it, great, that's money left behind here. I always buy souvenirs at the museum shop, myself. Last time I was in London I went to the British Museum, where we went through the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek stuff. I've been there several times and I never get tired of it. My wife says I'm a nerd. But I bought a miniature of the statue of the Egyptian cat-god, which is currently sitting on my desk.  It's really cool, a very elegant and stylized cat. I'm easily pleased.

And what they ought to do if they want to promote local arts and crafts is put up a very tasteful (no caganers) Generalitat-sponsored gift shop as part of their bookstore on the Ramblas. The location is perfect and it wouldn't cost much money, and your upper-middle tourists would love it. It'd probably make a profit. Besides, it's not as if there aren't plenty of shops selling nice things in Barcelona, anyway.