Spain Has No Defence Against Zombies

Buried beneath all the news about the travails of the Balearic tourism minister and of the British ambassador spreading joy of a citizens' rights variety, there was news that THEY clearly wish to keep quiet. I don't wish to alarm you unduly but the Spanish government has admitted that it doesn't have a plan to deal with an invasion of zombies.

While it might be said that there are politicians stalking populations who fall into the category of the living dead - Bauzá, for example - there is a far greater and far more dangerous threat, and Madrid is doing nothing about it. For us to have become aware of this gross negligence, we have to thank Carles Mulet of the Compromís party in Valencia. Carles, it needs saying, does not have a mullet. He sports a more shorn affair and can't himself really be described as resembling a zombie, while his party is alive with various greens, Republican leftists - that sort of thing.

It may be the case that Valencia is at greater risk of a zombie attack than other parts of Spain (I honestly wouldn't know), but whatever the level of danger is, Carles has raised the matter in the Senate. What plans are there for a zombie apocalypse, he wished to know in a written question. The government was caught on the hop. Nevertheless, once it managed to respond, dealing with an apocalypse (in a general sense) appears to be easier than tackling one that specifically involves zombies. Bodies (sic) ranging from the state security forces to the Civil Protection volunteers are capable of handling an apocalypse because the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy says so.

No, that's not strictly true. The dictionary doesn't state this as such - it's not the job of a dictionary to go into the detail of security matters - but it does have definitions. One of these, a "catastrophic situation", is, says the government, something which the security forces can tackle. The other definition is rather more tricky. "The end of the world", implying as it does the end, is not something that the government can plan for. There would, it concludes, be little time to plan for it. Which, let's face it, isn't terribly reassuring.

When it comes to the specific threat posed by a zombie apocalypse, the government has also consulted the dictionary. "People who are supposed to be dead and are revived by the art of witchcraft in order to dominate their will," is more or less how the dictionary defines zombies. Given this definition, the government has concluded that it doesn't believe that such an eventuality is likely. There is "doubtful probability of such a circumstance arising".

This may be designed to allay citizens' fears (citizens in Valencia at any rate), but the response is surely not good enough. And Carles, for one, most certainly isn't prepared to give the government the benefit of the doubt. In fact, he's indignant at the lack of preparedness. "The government has no plan of action for the zombie apocalypse. Its answer can be interpreted as meaning that the government itself is a zombie apocalypse, a human catastrophe brought about by stupefied and automaton people."

Are the PP therefore themselves zombies? Worrying.

Just to add, in case you think that Carles is off his tree, he was being ironic (as was the government in its replies). The zombie issue was raised because Carles doesn't think much of the government's ability to respond to questions.