Suspicious Minds

Right, let's get back to something resembling normality - after a fashion. Or maybe not. The tension post-Palmanova was reflected on Saturday by the closure of roads around the Lago Menor in Puerto Alcúdia when a "suspicious package" was discovered. Nothing came of it of course. As ever after incidents anything looks like it might be packed with explosives. A problem is that there are any number of things that might qualify as suspicious - bags of rubbish discarded or all the stuff that just gets left out either for rubbish collection or for people to help themselves to. You could fill a house with what gets plonked on the street. Fridges, televisions, stereos, paintings, doors, drawers, entire patio suites of furniture (in need of restoration), old boilers in cardboard boxes. You name it, you can find it if you drive around long enough. And some of it could well fall into the "suspicious" category, especially suitcases. As for an old boiler, God knows what you could pack into that - a nuclear warhead probably. Reacting to a potentially suspicious bag or some such in the street does rather suggest too heightened a level of paranoia. If someone were of a mind to plant something, there are fairly obvious places to put them - like all the different rubbish containers.

And if not suspicious packages, then try the suspicious looking people. One review I read referred to someone that the reviewer thought he or she had seen on "Crimewatch". Let's face it, there are some on the loose who should be. Anyway, now we are being told that the ETA terrorists may have had contacts with radical, pro-Catalan youth groups on Mallorca. Indeed the police have in fact previously intercepted correspondence. There is no particular evidence that such a connection existed in respect of Palmanova, but it is one that naturally the police and Guardia are interested in examining, especially as they try to make sense of how a cell might have been able to exist on Mallorca for several weeks and to reconnoitre its targets. It might come as a surprise to learn that there are such groups. Mallorca is hardly a hotbed of revolutionary fervour, but there is a growing Catalan radicalisation. Any such association that may be proved would not help the cause of legitimate and honourable Catalan promotion.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Eagles, "Hotel California", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea0CDieb4yM. Today's title - impersonator, anyone?

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