Of Extraordinary People

Mallorcan and Spanish names can be extraordinarily long, though one would have thought it doubtful that any Spaniard would have been able to match or beat Mallorca's great non-Mallorcan Archduke, the Austrian Louis Salvador Maria Joseph John Baptist Dominic Rainer Ferdinand Charles Zenobius Anthony. So great was the Archduke that they named him twelve times. But Zenobius? Where did that come from? An episode of "Doctor Who"? But the Spaniards don't dabble in long names for nothing, and no one, simply no one can compare with María del Rosario Cayetana Paloma Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Fernanda Teresa Francisca de Paula Lourdes Antonia Josefa Fausta Rita Castor Dorotea Santa Esperanza Fitz-James Stuart, Silva, Falcó y Gurtubay. Try putting that lot on the back of a football shirt.

It would seem that the now ex-Duchess of Alba didn't have some distant cousinly relationship with the Archduke's Habsburg-Lorraine mob, which would have made them about the only dynasty with which she didn't have some form of relationship. Here was someone who acquired titles like other people collect stamps or beer mats. Duchess of Berwick? Don't mind if I do, she might have uttered. But a side-effect of having to support so many names and titles was the strain it placed on her physically. She had been wearing her own death mask of botox and several layers of fast-drying cement for many a year.

When they made the Duchess, they broke the mould, only for her to remould herself later in life. Sadly though, the mould is now truly broken. They just won't make royals as extraordinarily bats as she was.  

Some people are born into extraordinariness and others have it thrust it upon them. Among the latter we now have to include the "team" at the Balearics education ministry, a team so extraordinary that it has undergone Fergie-style reforms over its comparatively short life and has managed to leak political goals with a defence as porous as one made up of a handful of Duchesses of Alba. Team manager, Sir Alex José Ramón Ferguson Bauzá (short name), has informed us that throughout the current legislature his "team" at the ministry has been extraordinary, which is quite a feat as Bauzá rotation has meant that the team crossing the green white line of teacher protests has undergone constant substitutions, transfers and relegations. Or it would be quite a feat if it weren't for the fact that the team has been extraordinarily useless.

As though having to justify another 7-0 drubbing at the post-match press conference, Bauzá adopted the Wenger defence. He hadn't seen anything. Certainly nothing to suggest that there had been any problem with applying TIL trilingual teaching. Yep, he really said this on IB3 the other evening. There has been "no problem" with its application. And with this absence of problem made clear, he was able to confirm that he will indeed be seeking an extension to his contract in May. "An eight-year project term is needed to consolidate all the work that has been started", such as consolidating the chaos of TIL or the divisions inflicted on a party, electorate and society, all of whom were under the impression they had appointed someone quite different in 2011. Come spring, and the fans may disappoint José Ramón and thwart his ambitions for eight years of extraordinariness.