SPEAKING IN WHISPERS

Trying to get a handle on Madrid is an impossible task

WHEN I think of Madrid I think of whispers. It has always been a place of intrigue and conspiracies, of hermandes, closed societies, and tertulias, private gatherings. It is perhaps as a result of this secret history, and history of secrecy, that I have never quite been able to put my finger on the city (despite having written a guidebook to it.) Paris is a romantic idea, New York a bustling reality, London is the last vestige of an empire, Rome the ruin of one. Madrid is... I don’t know.

However, I keep going back because that is where the power in this country lies, and always has.

I have two great friends - in both senses of the phrasewho live there. They both come from illustrious backgrounds, their families affected the course of Spanish history.

Estanislao Perez, ‘Tanis’, does not often use his second surname, what in English we would call his mother’s maiden name (I wonder what banks here use to verify people’s identity...) It diverts attention, being García Lorca. His maternal grandfather Francisco was brother of Spain’s most famous poet, Federico García Lorca, whose ‘Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías’ every Spanish school child knows, with its haunting refrain of ‘at five o’ clock in the afternoon’.

joined the executive of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español, the PSOE, and in 1920 he was part of a delegation to Soviet Russia.

While there he famously interviewed Lenin, ending with the question ‘what about freedom?’

The Brief’

Federico has been a bone of contention between Left and Right ever since his death at the hands of Nationalists in Granada at the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

However, even before that he followed the Spanish trend of

To which the most famous Vlad - more so than both Putin and the Impaler - gave a chilling three word answer, ‘freedom for what?’

De los Ríos became a minister of the Republic and went into exile after the Civil War along with Francisco, an escape which Federico tragically missed

However, I am not visiting the softly spoken, highly intelligent architect from that bloodline of the Left, but instead the man they call the Godfather of the Partido Popular, the PP, on the Right.

Adolfo Suárez Illana does use his second surname, but this is to distinguish himself from his famous father, Adolfo Suárez, who was the first democratically elected Prime Minister following the death of Franco.

More than that, he was co-founder, along with his friend King Juan Carlos, of Spanish democracy itself.

I realise the former King’s star has somewhat waned, and his legacy has been apparently tarnished. However, nothing can remove the fact that he risked the same fate as the famous poet by leading this country into democracy. The story that sticks in my mind is that one of the people to whom the young Prince Juan Carlos turned for ad- vice on the future when Franco began to ail was the exiled head of the communist party, Santiago Carrillo. The prince had the renegade politician smuggled into Spain and the palace, at great risk to both of them, to ask what he should do when he took power. Carrillo’s answer was blunt. “I don’t know the answer to that but I do know that you will go down in history as Juan Carlos ‘The Brief’.”

At the end of last year, Suárez Illana stepped down from his role as congressman for Madrid, and secretary of the bureau in parliament. He has not revealed yet what he is going to do and that is, in part, what I hope to find out.

Next time I will ask Tanis the same question.

Despite their polar opposite histories, there are remarkable similarities between the two men. Both are fiercely intelligent and loyal, but also have a great sense of humour and the rare ability to be invariably good company. They also listen to the other side, as I, sitting in the middle and frequently on the fence in matters political, have often tested late into the night. It is a shame there are no more like this in politics today. Or perhaps there are, behind closed doors, in smoke filled rooms, speaking in whispers.

COVID-19 cases in Mallorca have rocketed by 124.8% at the start of August compared to a month earlier, but a leading expert says the situation is 'not alarming'.

A new Omricon variant known as BA.5 is responsible for the increase in infections..

The latest figures published by IB-Salut showed there were 852 active coronavirus infections and as of Thursday, 43 people were being treated for Covid in Mallorca hospitals. The majority of patients - 26 - are in Son Espases Hospital, with nine in Manacor, five in Inca, and three at Son Llatzer. Elsewhere in the Balearics, two patients are in hospital with Covid on Menorca but none on Ibiza.

The head of Son Espases Microbiology department, Dr. Antonio Oliver, says that increased cases are being reported after patients go to local medical centres to report respiratory problems and are given a Covid antigen test.

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Dr.Mónica Bonet – University of Barcelona

Dr. Yasmina Adebibe – B.D.S London

Susan Taylor-Vickers – BSc, EDH Mercadona Centre, Son Caliu, Palma Nova