The Comfy Chairs Of The Noose Inquisition

You don't get weeks like last week too often. For starters the gun went off for the start of the Trial of the Millennium. Minute-by-minute updating was being offered via the media. Faces and body language of the accused were being analysed. Diego Torres's defence lawyer referred to sexual unorthodoxy when he had meant to say procedural unorthodoxy. Everyone fell about in fits of laughter, except perhaps Torres, Ignatius and the Infanta.

For the gathered tribes of the media, it soon became apparent that they are going to have to endure weeks of total tedium. Unless the court decides that the Infanta can shoot off back to Geneva, having escaped with a Botin defence and a repayment to the Hacienda of a few hundred thousand euros, it'll be weeks before anything of any note occurs, such as one of the accused being put on oath, and months before we come to the main event, with the Infanta in the dock and faced with the wrath of the clean hands of Manos Limpias and its desire for Infantacide. Accordingly, therefore, the TotM started and then everyone promptly forgot about it.

Of the body language experts pressed into service, as they typically are on such occasions, there was the distance between the Infanta and Ignatius as they attempted to steal into the courthouse under the cover of almost total morning darkness, save for the dozens of journalists camped outside along with the dozens fewer Republicans who did what Republicans do, which is to protest. What did this distance signify? Nothing probably, given that it would have been odd had they marched in hand in hand and smiling in a beaming fashion to rival even Palma's mayoral Smiler High-la.

Where one felt somewhat sorry for them was with the seating. Can't the court system stretch to something more comfortable on which to sit for hour after hour? Or perhaps it's a means of extracting confessions. "Yes, I admit it. I nicked six million euros. But for God's sake, can I now have a comfy chair to sit on?" "Cardinal Fang, fetch the comfy chair. Nobody expects the Noose Inquisition by visitor's seat without adequate padding."

In addition to the body language sorts, various protagonists in the Noose affair were being talked to by the media who hadn't been caged into the courthouse. There was, for example, the chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Pedro Horrach. An interview with one particular newspaper ("El Mundo") was most notable because of the accompanying photo. Next to him in his office were massive boxes secured with Guardia Civil tape, and these boxes were piled up inside a Mercadona shopping trolley. This, the trolley, led readers to offer comments questioning, quite legitimately, what a Mercadona shopping trolley with boxes of Guardia evidence was doing in the immediate proximity of the chief prosecutor. One of them suggested that it might have been subliminal advertising. Or some form of product placement.

As yet, there has been no explanation as to the appearance of the trolley. Nor, or so it would seem, have Eroski, Carrefour or Lidl (other supermarket chains are available) approached other prominent members of the establishment and asked if they would like a trolley for their next media photos.