I went on TV3 this morning; it went pretty well. I said what I wanted to say, that I was hopeful about the situation in Iraq, because they've had two elections with 60% participation, the Sadrites and Sunnis are on board, they've got a new constitution, their parliament held its first meeting on March 16, and they have more than 230,000 soldiers in the Iraqi Army. Nobody likes war but Saddam had to go. 80% of the Iraqis want us to leave, so leave we will--when the terrorists have been defeated. I hope it's possible in a year or two. One thing I didn't like was getting cut off at the end. The hostess, Helena Garcia, asked whether I thought the US would make the same decision to invade today, and I said, "I don't know---" and she cut me off. What I was going to say was that I don't know, because I think the Allies should have finished off Saddam back in 1991.

I'm becoming more and more disappointed in the current PP leadership. First it was the big fooferaw on whether the March 11 investigation, carried out by the former Aznar administration itself, was generally correct. Rajoy should have known that conspiracy-theory crap gets us precisely nowhere. Then Eduardo Zaplana made a fool out of himself on the floor of Parliament for no good reason, just to try to embarrass De la Vega. Now, De la Vega is just a Socialist party hack, and deserves large quantities of criticism, but there's no reason to be insulting and belittling if it isn't absolutely necessary. That makes us, the PP, look bad. They've been trying to take political advantage out of the accidental deaths of eleven firefighters, and just as it was wrong for the Socialists to use the Prestige accident against the PP, and it's wrong for the Democrats to use Hurricane Katrina against Bush, well, it's wrong for us to use the loss of life in a natural disaster as a political weapon. And they're squabbling among themselves, too, with Madrid mayor Ruiz-Gallardon making virtually an open bid to replace Rajoy. People, listen up, this is not helping our image as a responsible party in the least.

I wouldn't mind replacing Rajoy, either, but not with Ruiz-Gallardon. My first pick would have been Rato, but he's off at the IMF now and probably doesn't want to come back. I suppose my second pick is the much underrated Esperanza Aguirre, who is a very smart politician. My third pick is to ditch the party and vote for Boadella and Espada's new anti-Catalanist project. Actually, what we're all hoping is that Boadella's party will cut into the Socialist vote in Catalonia and not grab too much of the PP vote. Someone I like for the future from around here is Daniel Sirera, who just pulled off a nice little coup, forcing the Tripartite that governs Catalonia to detail some of their ridiculous spending on consultants on questions like language use in Andorra, the use of Catalan in Sardinia, and, get this, "the behavior of the Spanish market regarding the introduction of the Catalan language on the labels of brands of water." That last one cost €17,400, which is about a year's salary for the average worker in these parts.

This botellon thing is going way too far. If you asked Joe Barcelona what's bothering him in his everyday life, chances are it will generally be local issues. Traffic and parking are a royal pain in the butt in this city. It's noisy and crowded. There are a lot more immigrants than there used to be and the character of some neighborhoods is changing. Housing is expensive. Street crime exists. And the kids ain't got no respect no more. All this drinking in the street and vandalism is pushing the average Joe across the line, and there is going to be a crackdown soon. Then see how much fun you have on Saturday nights, you little bast--never mind.

Those punks torched the façade of the Bar Almirall on Calle Joaquin Costa, which was an elaborately carved wooden Art Nouveau thing, and seriously damaged it. Great, you little scumbags have destroyed something of beauty created by a craftsman-artist in the nineteenth century. They also did €50,000 damage to the Institute of Catalan Studies building. Now, while I completely disagree with the Institute politically, it is a CULTURAL organization that does valuable work in the field of Catalan philology and expresses the legitimate ideas of democratically minded, though wrongheaded, well-educated and well-read people. Great, you little cretins, if you're the future the life of the intellect will consist of screaming out the lyrics to songs by bands called things like Soziedad Alkoholika.

My solution to the problem is the good old "certain designated places" semi-libertarian argument. Prostitution? Sure, legalize it, in brothels in one district of each city. Drugs? Sure, like in the Netherlands, legalize it only in so-called coffee shops. Teenagers getting hammered? Rope off a big old field out in the country, tell them to bring sleeping bags, confiscate their car keys, set up porta-potties, charge them five bucks each to pay for the security, and they can get as drunk and rowdy as they want. Just not where regular people live.