TIL Death Us Do Part

Why is anyone talking about TIL any longer? Has it gone unnoticed that the schools of the island have been thrown back to simpler pre-acronym times, that the senyera is being hung metaphorically if not physically from science blocks and that the youth of Mallorca are rejoicing in the mediaevalist purity of the ancients of Catalanism. Oh my Berenguer, my Llull, my Jaume I of times gone by. TIL is dead, long live the Catalan grammar of Pompeu Fabra. PSOE's Cosme Bonet announced that the TIL decree was a zombie decree. The Walking Dead of a decree. Empty-eyed PP sorts (the few who genuinely support TIL) are vainly insisting that the unworkable trinity of languages is still somehow operable, when more than a hundred schools suggest that it isn't. At the head of the not-quite-yet-dead is José Ramón, and what on earth is happening to him? Where has all that hair come from? Is he going for a mullet or is he, as I had suggested some months ago, aiming for the ponytail look with which to confront the devil of Podemos? Or is he finally morphing into his distant ancestor in Transylvania? Blood sucker turned Mood Hoover, vacuuming all the good mood out of the PP?

Contrast the Bauzá dishevelled look with that of Nuria. Each morning she rises for her appointment with the stylist before taking herself off for a trip around the pueblos or for a meeting with gauche student representatives. Bauzá's Batwoman, who only has a few months to save TIL Gotham City from falling into the hands of the jokers and riddlers of PSOE and Podemos. Her mission (if she should have chosen to have accepted it, which she of course did) is that of the impossible charm offensive. Is she bothered that TIL is a walking dead of a decree? Of course she isn't. That she might even contemplate a tour of the pueblos in order to convert recalcitrant PP mayors to the dogma of TIL sets her well apart from José Ramón. Mayors across the isle are desperately seeking ways of ensuring that he doesn't get within 50 kilometres of their municipalities in pre-election times (difficult given the size of Mallorca, admittedly).

So why don't the mayors just get rid of him? Send in the men in grey suits or even one with a brown suit, his chum Matty Isern. Is it because there is no one to replace him? Not so. Not since Nuria claimed the education throne. A tough job? Not a bit of it. Puts her firmly in the party and public eye. She is, so sources explained last week, "very smart", "extremely ambitious" and seemingly not afraid to put the boot in or to get the knife out. Sounds as though she would be ideal for the backstabbers party. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next leader of the PP. Nuria Riera.