The Moment Pablo Became President

They were at it again in Congress last week. The coconut heads were popping up from their shies on the voting merry-go-round. Ready to be shot at, aim was taken at one of them. The head belonged to Jorge Moragas. Bang!

Jorge is Super Mariano's chief of staff, his right-hand (it couldn't be left) man. In Jorge, Mariano trusts. Unfortunately, Jorge had a yes-no brain fade moment. And let's be fair, it's not difficult. Fifty-fifty, anyone could make the same mistake. Jorge made that mistake. Invited, as with the other coconut heads, to state "sí" or "no" in response to the motion of no confidence in his boss, Jorge chose "sí". He opted for the wrong half of the 50:50 equation.

Seemingly unaware of his cock-up, Jorge had to be arm-wrestled by Celia Villalobos. You'll remember her; she was the one who had words to say about Podemos's Natty Dreadlock In A Babylon, rasta-ised Alberto Rodríguez. With Celia wrenching his arm from its socket, Jorge screamed "no". Then shouted it several more times, as the tellers hurriedly revised their voting entry and the whole of Congress collapsed in a fit of collective mirth.

At the moment that Jorge uttered his gaffe, it appeared as if Pablo Iglesias was on his way to the presidency (known also as being prime minister). The Podemos vote of no confidence in Super had claimed its victim. Jorge said "no" to Rajoy, albeit he had said yes, when he shouldn't have.

Brushing it all off, a red-faced Jorge later explained (joked) that he had been "building bridges". Is that what they do in Congress, hidden behind the coconut-shy terracing? A Lego kit or some such to pass away the endless hours of having to listen to Iglesias? Here's a bridge I've made. Which, given that it is a Partido Popular bridge, would be one constructed with the aid of a dubious contract and a vastly inflated value.

This, corruption, was essentially why Pablo and Podemos had lodged their no confidence vote. "Spain is a great country. But without you, it would be even greater," opined the patriot Pablo. Super Mariano's riposte: "The PP is not a corrupt party, that's why voters renewed their confidence in us." Actually, that probably wasn't the reason for the highly muted confidence that the citizens had shown in Super and his party. Meanwhile, Mariano suggested, in not so many words, that Podemos had been having a laugh by bringing the no-confidence vote. It failed, as everyone knew it would, despite Jorge's attempt to make it work and indeed give everyone a good laugh. PSOE abstained.

The debate was otherwise noteworthy for its usual Hernando moment. The PP's Congress spokesman, the one-man demolition squad who is Rafael Hernando, having stated that more work was needed and less circus of a Podemos populist variety, then decided to allude to Pablo's romance with fellow Podemos-ite, Irene Montero. Now, usually when there's a Hernando-Podemos moment, the latter walk out. On this occasion they stayed put and confined themselves to booing Rafael in the style of rival football supporters.

Prior to all the fun and games in Congress, Podemos's man-on-the-way-out in the Balearics, Alberto Jarabo, was reminding everyone that he is, for the time being, still in charge. He did this by launching an attack on Rajoy and the PP, who were accused of having an obsession with the Balearics and displaying "persecutory mania" and "Balearicphobia". So, we had a new phobia to add to the list, which includes "tourismphobia", something that Alberto knows all about, except when it comes to subletting a holiday rental in Son Serra de Marina.

Anyway, Alberto was making it perfectly clear that Podemos in the Balearics were squarely behing the Iglesias no-confidence vote, which no doubt didn't cause Rajoy a sleepless night.

Overlooked in the middle of the debate and the vote was the fact that on Thursday there was a fortieth anniversary. On 15 June 1977, Spain held its first general election of the post-Franco, newly democratic era. At that time, Javier Rupérez, chief of staff for foreign affairs, declared that there was immense joy in the streets for having recovered democracy and that Spaniards had "found themselves".

Indeed they had. And they were to find that Spanish democracy came with something of a caveat. The Podemos no-confidence vote because of corruption wasn't a case of having a laugh. After nearly forty years of dictatorship, democracy was restored. Forty years later, they're talking corruption. Over and over.

The Podemos War Has Come To The Balearics

It wasn't the best of weeks for the Podemos sisterhood. Despite having been suspended by the politburo in Madrid, Xe-Lo mysteriously still managed to bustle into the Balearic parliament and take her place on the speaker's chair. It wasn't, therefore, the best of weeks for other parliamentarians. No one was paying any attention to them. All eyes were on the suspended Xe-Lo.

Suspension was the polite way of describing the early stages of the Podemos purge of dissidents. Along with the purge was coming the spin. Xe-Lo, we were led to believe, had applied pressure to the initials - B.B. (Biel Barceló) and C.C. (Catalina Cladera) - to seek to ensure continued funding to the laboratory run by the alarmingly big-haired Podemosite doctor, Daniel Bachiller, who could himself be mistaken for a member of the sisterhood.

The idea that there was pressure being applied seemed somewhat fanciful. Had she tied B.B. to his parliamentary chair and poked him until he agreed to handing over every last euro of tourist tax revenue to the Bachiller lab? And what about C.C.? A fully paid-up member of the PSOE sisterhood, it was unlikely that she would accede to demands made from someone - Xe-Lo - who fell out in spectacular fashion with sweet and friendly Francina Armengol when she jumped PSOE ship some four years ago and ended up in the ranks of Podemos. To put it bluntly, Francina can't stand her.

And on closer examination, what was really the fuss about the Bachiller funding? He may not have been coming up with the research goods, but it turns out that this arrangement goes back some ten years. Should we conclude, therefore, that it was all the fault of Jaume Matas? It was during his reign that the funding started, and it continued through the Antich phase and on into the Bauzá era, when austerity was all the rage but apparently not when it came to a lab that wasn't achieving a great deal.

While Xe-Lo was resisting calls from the likes of Wild Man Més, David Abril, to vacate the speaker's chair, another one of the Podemos sisterhood was active in seeking a counter-purge. The also suspended Montse Seijas, who no one had ever heard of until last week, denounced Podemos general secretary Alberto Jarabo over his connections with the broadcaster IB3. Jarabo, in his former life, was a producer. Seijas, it turned out, had commissioned a report which raised "alarm" where she was concerned because of the apparent ongoing, if indirect, relationship between Jarabo and IB3; essentially, the production company for which he had been working has allegedly been getting more work. This report was, according to Seijas, sat on because of its supposedly defamatory nature.

Questions have been asked as to why Podemos High Command got involved in the local issue of the Bachiller lab and who put High Command up to suspending Xe-Lo and Seijas. The IB3 angle suddenly made things appear (potentially) somewhat clearer.

While all this local business was going on, High Command, in the form of Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, was stamping his authority more firmly on the party. Amidst the internecine struggle between Iglesias and the Infant Iñigo Errejón, an Iglesias man, Ramón Espinar, was named general secretary of the party in Madrid. The loser was Rita Maestre, most famed for having taken her clothes off (well some) in a Madrid chapel and therefore having ended up in court on a charge of denying religious freedom (she was fined some four thousand euros). Rita is referred to, in somewhat disparaging terms, as "la chica de Errejón".

Anyway, her defeat confirmed the progressively more left-wing shift of Iglesias, who is now firmly aligned with the anti-capitalist extreme wing of Podemos, of which the Balearics Boot Girl, Laura Camargo, is a leading light. And it is Laura, as everyone knows, who wears the trousers in the Balearics. Jarabo is her soul mate. The Seijas IB3 intervention was a declaration of internal war. And the winners will not be either another Errejón "chica", Xe-Lo, or Seijas.

The Noises Of Debate: Rajoy's Investiture

In the space of almost eight months I have watched six investiture debates. At the sixth time of asking there was a result, if you can call forming a government with a minority just shy of forty per cent a result. At the sixth attempt, therefore, something finally gave. The mould was broken, although it had been cast differently for debates five and six. There was an alternative cast member. PSOE's Antonio Hernando had moved along one seat. By the sixth debate, two days after the fifth, there was an empty seat. Tearfully, Pedro Sánchez had decided it was best not to turn up. How things had changed. At the start of the eight months - for debates one and two - he would have been crowned, if only in his dreams. 

The lachrymose Sánchez was the prelude to debate six. It might have overshadowed what was to follow, had it not been pre-destined for Mariano Rajoy to be reinstalled as prime minister. Debate six was the big noise in town. Sánchez was a weepy diversion, he insisting that he is not finished, that he will seek the recuperation of PSOE. If he does, it will be a tough ask. There's life still in the body socialist but it's in intensive care not knowing if it will emerge intact or be permanently fractured.

There were big noises and bigger noises. Several thousand had gathered to surround Congress. The protest was allowed. Not even Rajoy's wretched law could prevent it being given clearance. That law, the gagging one, was just one reason for the thousands to have gathered. Other reasons ... . Well, by now we all know the reasons, while the several thousands were having none of the carve-up by the "mafias" inside Congress. Alas for Cuidadanos, ten years young, it has been branded thus alongside the much older mafias of the PP and PSOE. It was politicians from the C's for whom the greatest jeers were reserved.

Inside Congress there were various bursts of big noise. Cheers, heckles, one of the biggest came at half-time, prior to the actual vote, when the stewards looked as if they might have been required to keep the factions apart. The PP's Rafael Hernando, who had upset Podemos so much during debate five with his four million dollar Venezuelan accusation, was in discussion with Iglesias and Errejón. Surprisingly, it didn't look as unfriendly as might have been expected.

There again, Iglesias came out of debate six with an enormous amount of credit. His speech obliterated all others. Its passion was exceptional. Iglesias is enormously impressive, and when he spoke about the need for a young and new Spain, one couldn't help but contrast the informality of Podemos (in their attire) and the stiffness of the suit-wearing ranks of the PP and indeed PSOE. What was most impressive was that he didn't resort to name-calling. His was a speech for the future, of a politician growing in stature. There may be differences within his party, but Iglesias and Podemos are not going away. Indeed, they will believe their role is ever more crucial now.

Although Iglesias and his Podemos colleagues were to applaud his intervention, the speech of the Catalonia Republican Left's Gabriel Rufián was deserving of none. It was not as if he didn't have valid points, but it was the language he used that set him well apart from Iglesias. This was the oafishness of a students' union activist not the discourse of a Congress politician. His walk to the lectern spoke volumes. He passed the ranks of the PP glowering and with the swagger of a football hooligan. At the end, he even argued with the referee - the president of the house (speaker), Ana Pastor - who switched off his mike because he had gone over time. Before doing so, though, he had reprimanded PSOE for their kowtowing to a "cacique", for their being traitors to socialism. They should be ashamed. Yes, he had valid points, but the delivery was odious. Antonio Hernando, scandalised, said that Rufián had spoken with "odio" - hate. Rufián had lived up to more than just his name. He was a disgrace.

It was a minor player who was to offer the strongest rebuke to Rufián. The diminutive Ana Oramas from the Canaries was not easy to understand - the accent is pronounced - but there was no mistaking her distaste for the disrespect Rufián had shown the house as well as PSOE. He shouldn't behave in such a juvenile way. There was big noise of applause.

And finally, when the voting was over and the result was announced, there was no big noise from PSOE. They didn't applaud Rajoy. He had won the day but there are many other days to come. He needs to show magnanimity, he needs to prove that he is capable of dialogue. If he can't, debates seven and eight might occur sooner than he would hope.


Index for October 2016

Agriculture and tourism - 11 October 2016
Airbnb and hoteliers - 1 October 2016
All-inclusives - 8 October 2015
Balearic government - 10 October 2016
Bullying - 21 October 2016
Caso Gürtel - 7 October 2016
Ecotourism and sustainability - 18 October 2016
Fornalutx and prettiest villages - 28 October 2016
Havaneres - 9 October 2016
Hiking and the history of excursions - 3 October 2016
Holiday prices - 5 October 2016, 29 October 2016
Imserso holidays - 15 October 2016
Land plans in Mallorca - 25 October 2016
Museum of Water - 6 October 2016
Pebre bord pepper - 23 October 2016
Pep v. Pepsi - 14 October 2016
PSOE crisis - 2 October 2016, 4 October 2016
Rajoy investiture - 19 October 2016, 31 October 2016
Rock music in Mallorca - 30 October 2016
Saturation, sustainability and employment - 22 October 2016, 26 October 2016
Spain's National Day - 13 October 2016
Theatres - 16 October 2016
Tourism minister for Spain - 20 October 2016. 24 October 2016
Tramuntana fairs - 12 October 2016
UFOs - 27 October 2016
Xelo Huertas in Rome - 17 October 2016

From Pablo Iglesias To Pablo Iglesias

Two Pablo Iglesias, there are only two Pablo Iglesias. That's almost certainly not right. There must have been hundreds, thousands of Pablo Iglesias. Names come around quite often in Spain, especially from the old school of names that keeps firmly to a list of saints for christening purposes.

But there are two Pablo Iglesias. One was dead well before the other was born. The first had in fact been born in 1850. By one of those further twists of coincidence his native town was Ferrol in Galicia. Forty-two years later, a certain Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde was born in the same town. His brother, Ramón, came along four years afterwards, also in Ferrol. He, Ramón, crashed his hydroplane in Puerto Pollensa in 1938. He died. His brother didn't. Not until 1975 anyway. 

Pablo Iglesias the Elder, if one could call him that, would have known little or nothing about the Franco boys. He certainly wouldn't have fraternised with them, had he lived long enough, which he didn't. Pablo the Elder founded PSOE, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party. Franco wasn't beyond having those with PSOE affiliation executed. It was as well that Pablo the Elder died when he did. In 1925 when the other dictator was at large, Primo de Rivera.

The other Pablo Iglesias, Pablo the Younger - you'll have heard of him, I think - also founded a political party or maybe movement. He would like to be president (prime minister) of Spain after 26 June. Altogether, We Can change the government of Spain. Podemos. Maybe there's some genealogical link between Elder and Younger, though I'm assuming not. Were there, one fancies Younger would have mentioned it by now. Two peas in a pod, Elder and Younger. The latter a chip off the old block.

There are similarities and dissimilarities between Elder and Younger. The first Pablo was born into poverty. His mother had to beg. He taught himself French and read about French socialism. He was no intellectual but he would have known of the works of Marx and Engels. PSOE, founded in 1879, was to indulge differing philosophies before it was proscribed in 1939, but one - often the dominant one - was to be sympathetic to the Soviet brand of socialism.

Pablo the Younger is from a middle-class Madrid family: mother a lawyer, father a teacher. He himself has been a university professor in political science. He studied, among other places, at Cambridge. The difference in background between Younger and Elder is stark. What links them, other than name, is their roles as founders and political philosophy. Possibly.

Pablo the Younger was expounding on Monday morning the nature of Marx and Engels. They were social democrats, he said, albeit he was laughing and suggesting that there are different ways of interpreting their works. That's The Younger all over. Disarmingly charming at times. The Elder, one fancies, rarely laughed. The Younger was right of course. There were and are alternative spins on the works of Marx and Engels. Lenin abused them is one argument.

He was prompted to make his remark because Podemos has hooked up with the United Left. Its leader, Alberto Garzón, is a communist. The Younger has never claimed to be. Even with the United Left, Podemos would be establishing a "new social democratic space". PSOE, the current-day distant cousins of Pablo the Elder, will be horrified to hear that.

But should they be? What vision of social democracy is this? The mere mention of Marx and Engels makes one wonder what "new" space is being considered. In the new political age, one of (maybe) post-capitalism or even post-politics, it can seem odd to drag the two of them into discussion. The Younger's sidekick, Iñigo Errejón, has said that communists and social democrats are species of the past. There's a new politics around, where Iñigo's concerned, even if its definition isn't always clear or even if it might just seem to have echoes of the nineteenth century, when Pablo the Elder would have found much to interest him.

"The Communist Manifesto", in which Marx and Engels set out the basics of Marxist theory, was published two years before Pablo the Elder was born. 1848. What possible relevance can it have now? Plenty, if one is inclined. After all, religions (and their interpretations) are predicated on very much older theories, and look where that got societies. Look where they still do get societies, for God's (sic) sake.

It would be nice - truly, it would be nice - to believe that Podemos have hit on a new politics, whatever it might be. But how do you make people believe it? Those disinclined to believe, of which there are many. Deep in the consciousness - the intellectual "space", be it social democratic or not - is the narrative of the class struggle and of the competing dictatorships of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

The Honorary Prime Minister Of Spain

In preparing the publication of calendars and diaries, they now have to include the twice-yearly Fiesta of Mariano. This peculiar fiesta, one that will doubtless assume status as being in the cultural interest (along with bullfighting), involves Spaniards dragging themselves off to polling booths in ever dwindling numbers once every six months in a vain attempt to rid themselves once and for all of the nation's honorary president (sorry, honorary prime minister). It will of course never happen. Hence, why the fiesta will become a permanent feature of the nation's fiesta calendars.

The King, who has surely been consumed by a wearisome dose of déjà vu, was obliged once more to have to receive Mariano in order that the honorary PM could inform him that he is in no position to form a new government. The King had surely already figured this out for himself. But protocol is insistent, and the first of this year's Fiestas of Mariano seems destined to take place on 26 June: a slightly delayed version of Midsummer madness. As for the second, they may as well as combine it with Christmas Day and let churches double as polling booths in the hope that turnout might edge above 10%.

Meanwhile, Sr. Churches, The Hairy One of Podemos, who appears to be increasingly agitated by the prospect of not making it into government, has taken to alienating himself ever more from the Fourth Estate. At a presentation for a book (not his) entitled "In Defence Of Populism", he not only started rambling on about there being a Freudian relationship with the media but also suggested that some journalists were thinking of their careers in writing things that were not true and that the media should be controlled by the state. Not totally surprisingly, some members of the Fourth Estate walked out.

One does wonder if Pablo isn't rather losing it. Having appeared to wish to purge the Infant Errejón, it was being suggested (by an element of the Fourth Estate) that the Infant might be aiming to jump ship and join PSOE. Worse still was the sight of the Infant getting close up though not overly personal with glamorous Madrid PP president, Cristina Cifuentes, who - horror of horrors - would have a sporting chance of replacing Mariano, were he to ever cease to be honorary PM.

At the press breakfast at which the two appeared, there was a photo of the two smiling in each other's company. What on Earth could this all mean? Well, far be it for me to suggest, but it wouldn't have made Pablo's humour any better.

Spain In A Day: Insults and tedium

Multi-tasking you could call it, were it not for the fact that the task was singular. Multi-single tasking, if that isn't an oxymoron, which it probably is. The task was writing. So, nothing unusual in that regard. But it was a day - Wednesday - that demanded simultaneous tasking, a day that was unusual in that it projected onto screens, Twitter and multimedia for the multi-tasking the coalescing of great institutions. Parliament, not one but two, the judiciary and the monarchy. All that was missing was the church, though it, buried within the bile that was being belched in Congress, was a bystander on this day of multi-institutional exposure. 

The tasks were these: keeping across debate in the Balearic parliament; keeping across the interrogation of the one-time Duke of Palma; keeping across the debate (the wrong word) on the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. Of these, the first was uncommonly civilised and meaningful in that a key subject was of broad interest. On too many occasions, the Balearic parliament peers deep into its rectum and plucks out arguments that are of no interest other than to parliament itself.

The subject was holiday rentals. For once, parliament was capable of arriving at unanimity - consensus in today's politically correct parlance. It agreed that regulation should be introduced within six months. The unstated message was why it had been taking the government so long to pull its finger out on a subject of infinitely greater importance than the wretched tourist tax. There are times, perhaps, when messages need not to be stated. Let's just all agree to agree and get on with it.

The normal state of dysfunctionality of the Balearic parliament - puerile debate, childish remarks, egotistical posturing - was momentarily cast into the background. It was the national parliament, the Congress of the Cortes, that was to borrow what is usually the normality of Palma's institution. Borrow and graft on insults and observations that should play no part in the most important of institutional processes - the confirmation or otherwise of His Majesty's principal political officer.

It has occurred on more than one occasion that current-day Spain is in a constant state of historical regurgitation. And here was an occasion which confirmed this. While minor parties had their digs, and these included aspirations of independence for Catalonia and the Basques, there was Pablo Iglesias of Podemos, a party that is highly contemporary and yet a relic of the past. How can it be anything other than when references can be made to the Civil War and to the dark fight with ETA terrorism in the early 1980s? Iglesias's dredging up of the murder of two ETA terrorists in 1983 was reprehensible, an utterly uncalled-for stick with which to beat Pedro Sánchez. The murders were themselves appalling, but Iglesias should remember the context. Spain was still in turmoil, with ETA at the centre of this. A year before there had been another coup attempt (covered up) which had sought to deprive Felipe Gónzalez and PSOE the government it deserved. All that Iglesias succeeded in doing was to trigger suspicions that Podemos is not wholly without ETA sympathies.

The debate, which wasn't a debate just an excuse for pathetic trading in insults, was always destined to be a charade. Sánchez had no hope of winning. I had written the introductory paragraph long before the vote was taken; all that was needed was slight tweaking. Mariano Rajoy, as malicious and small-minded as Iglesias in his abuse, suggested that the King hadn't been fooled, and thus managed to suggest that the King had been fooled. The monarch should have been left out of this disgraceful exercise in his name, but this couldn't have been avoided. The King had given Sánchez his blessing to attempt to form a government. Well, someone has to try.

Inadvertently, Wednesday became a bad day for the monarchy. In the court in Palma, the ex-Duke of Palma was subject to the questioning of Pedro Horrach. Of the three tasks this was by far the most tedious. Listening to Horrach deliver questions as though he is an aloof maths teacher, listening to Urdangarin's monotonous replies, the best that one could say that it was at least civilised, albeit that the presiding judge had to rebuke Horrach for constantly asking about invoices. Rebuke? What for? Aren't the invoices crucial to the whole case?

But it was the fact that the Royal Household was supposedly overseeing all that went on at Nóos made it a bad day for the monarchy: Congress and its antics just confirmed this.

It was a curious day of multi-single tasking. A day when the institutions of Congress and monarchy seemed to be unravelling and yet when the judiciary, with its prosecutor's forensic obsessions, and - most surprisingly of all - the Balearic parliament with its consensus came to the rescue. It was Spain in a day. Contrary and exhausting.

Turning Portuguese

Some of my correspondents are shrewd analysts. I said Podemos wouldn't shift their stance on Catalonia. Oh yes they will, came the response: The Hairy One's a canny bugger. I'm happy to be told that I was told so, given that I seem to spend a great deal of time doing just this myself. Never let political opportunism get in the way of power-grabbing. The Hairy One has shifted the red line of Catalonia slightly to the right. It is now a pink line which might in due course fade under a burning Catalonian sky. So much depends.

Meanwhile, Mariano was meeting the King. What a time Felipe is having with all of this, having to forego the Fitur travel fair and a chance to sample some Mallorcan ensaimada at the Balearic stand, needing instead to attempt to knock some sense into the blockheads. I want first dibs at becoming premier, said Mariano. Or something along those lines. The King must have been sorely tempted. And how exactly do you think you will manage this? Where exactly do you think the support will come from?

Mazza's mouthpiece, Rafael Hernando, ahead of Rajoy going off to ask for royal first refusal, said that the citizens had had enough of confrontation, implying that the citizens would immediately realise how foolish they had been in voting for anyone other than Mazza and ignoring the fact that the PP had been instrumental in bringing about confrontation. The King, meanwhile, would have been fully apprised of the fact that the boy Pedro of PSOE was in the process of cobbling together the Portuguese option, one which, on the face of it, sounds quite attractive, what with that nice Portuguese clam soup thing you get, various outstanding golf courses and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Pedro's Portuguese alternative doesn't appear to embrace such delights, however. If Heath Robinson had designed governments, then he would have come up with Portugal's - and now possibly Spain's - bits of only vaguely related political parts hammered together with some enormous valve contraption to be attached to the roof of the Cortes in order to allow all the hot air and steam to be evacuated from the building.

With The Hairy One kindly offering to become Vice-President (sorry, but it does need pointing out that the Spanish don't refer to prime ministers and deputy prime ministers, only the aloof British on account of a superior knowledge of how monarchical democracies work), Pedro now faces the opportunity of presiding over His Majesty's Heath Robinson Government of Spain. This, it is beginning to appear, may well involve a rag-tag of waif and stray parties, ranging from the only somewhat weird to the very weird. The United Left are to the right of this weirdness, but who on earth are Compromís or En Marea? Frankly, even I've given up trying to figure them all out. And then we have En Comú Podem, which is sort of Podemos but isn't. This Catalonian conglomeration of ever more rag-tag-ability reckons it might be able to sway the boy Pedro back towards the Catalonian referendum red line and so away from The Hairy One's recently discovered referendum pinkness. 

Confused? Not as much as the King must be.

The odd thing is of course that they've all arrived at the Cortes to take their seats. In the absence of an actual government, what do they do with themselves? Take selfies and play Candy Crush? Well, if they are the Podemos member, Carolina Bescansa, they take their baby to Congress. The joyous family scene on the Podemos benches featured a beaming Pablo Iglesias, reaching out and then rocking the baby as Carolina passed her young offspring in front of the infant Íñigo Errejón, who is achieving the seemingly impossible of getting younger by the moment. Íñigo, it has to be said, looked as if he was about to throw an infant strop on account of being squeezed between The Hairy One in full cooing mode and the proud mother. In other words, he had a right arse on and didn't appear to relish the moment when he too was to be subject to the baby dribbling on him. Some wag Photoshopped his face onto the baby's. He's unlikely to ever live it down but must be hoping to God that the first act that Podemos pass in the Cortes is to establish a creche. For the record, Íñigo is 32.

The Four-Way Fight: Podemos

If you look closely at Pablo Iglesias and were the facial hair to be removed, you will appreciate just how youthful he appears. He may have reached the grand age of 37 but he gives the impression of an older adolescent, earnestly clutching a set of 1970s Krautrock albums and preparing to enter college to study graphic design. But these looks are deceiving. Firstly, he isn't as earnestly without humour as a right-on project of the left suggests that he should be and secondly, his non-political career has found him rise to the rank of interim professor in political science.

There is, though, a sense of the student rebellion (circa the 1960s and 1970s) about him. A member of the Spanish Communist youth wing at the age of fourteen, Iglesias is an idealist for whom any revolutionary tendencies have been modified in the pursuit of more pragmatic political evolution and social change. And it has found expression in Podemos - We Can.

It is worth being reminded that two years ago Podemos didn't exist. It was in early 2014 that the social movement bearing the name was first presented, with Iglesias a co-founder. From nothing then and via stunning gains at the European elections last year and Spain's regional elections in the spring of this year, there is now the prospect - according to the polls - of Podemos securing up to sixty seats out of the 350 in Congress. If Ciudadanos, as noted yesterday, was the first example of a social movement achieving parliamentary representation (in Catalonia), the Podemos example has been vastly more dramatic: the C's, in their original form, are almost nine years older than Podemos.

But Podemos had to have come from somewhere, and in the case of Iglesias this was television as well as academia. A reason he is now such an adept performer with the media is that he has experience of the camera and of production. He began to make a name for himself as a political analyst and presenter and shortly before the announcement was made of the launch of the Podemos social movement, he received an award from the Carlos III university in Madrid for his journalism.

As for Podemos itself, it was a project that was, in a sense, the consequence of the collision of different social movements, a notable one being that of Ada Colau, now the mayor of Barcelona, who had been campaigning against evictions since 2009. The "indignados" movement, otherwise known as 15-M (to mark the date 15 May, 2011 when protest burst out in Madrid and then elsewhere), was another major factor. Unemployment, corruption, austerity: these were all to add weight to what had been a gathering momentum towards a coherent political force. Aided by a co-founder with media skills, Podemos arrived on the scene, kicking and screaming and threatening to tear down the very structure of Spain's political institutions, the Partido Popular and PSOE - the despised "casta" - in particular.

The original Podemos "manifesto" (from January 2014) was entitled "converting the indignation into political change". There was more than just a touch of the left-wing about it, but to the beliefs of the anti-capitalist left and Trotskyists (among others) have since been added those which aren't quite so strident. There are red lines for Podemos, such as on debt restructuring, but the vastness of the election programme - 394 separate manifesto items - allied to the essential participatory nature of its existence and, possibly, a requirement to form a pact following the election, might well lead to a watering-down.

One says might, but although Podemos have taken on some of the trappings of the establishment by bringing into their midst a Balearic High Court judge and a former chief of defence staff, there is little sign of there being a willingness to "sell out". Podemos support for government, as evidenced in the Balearics, is on Podemos terms, not on others. But for Iglesias and Podemos to be truly pragmatic - in the sense of a political force - they may find that there have to be some trade-offs. The greatest risk for them is that, if they don't find their way into government via a pact with strings, they may fade away.

This said, there were plenty of observers who thought they would have already faded. True, the level of support may have peaked, but it is the very nature of this support which has allowed Podemos to reach and retain a position of electoral strength. This support is eclectic and it can draw on voters who might not consider themselves left-wing but are wanting a reason to get even with the PP in particular because of corruption and/or, for the middle classes, the vicissitudes of austerity. And for others, there is the very fact that Iglesias doesn't look like your everyday politician. Herein lies much of the appeal: different, very different.

There's A Starman Waiting In The Sky

It isn't known if Pablo Iglesias's mother was conceived immaculately, but on the immaculate day (last Tuesday) the Second Coming was heralded in the manger of the Palma Arena. There were no swaddling clothes for Pablo; rather the typical, non-descript colour shirt which seems to be the only one he possesses. Into the arena trooped the five thousand. And lo, for it was good and he didst come among them. The uncorrupt (through birth) of the Son of the All Righteous dispensed fish and loaves bearing no stain. The apostles applauded, and so did the five thousand. The Bishop of Mallorca was in hiding and not just because a naughty vicar-type story was leaking out. The walls of the Moncloa Jericho will come tumbling down.

One felt almost sorry for the Balearic Podemista apostles - Dave Spart, The Boot Girl, Xe-Lo and Here Come Da Judge. In this consensual, participatory and egalitarian new age of the citizens, there are citizens who are first among equals and none more so than Paul Churches, the higher authority condemning a malevolent collective Citizen Cain to the fires of the hell of the corrupt. Cain, so they say, was of Satanic origin. He most certainly was not from immaculate roots. 

The apostolic citizens in the ranks of the Podemista political caste could only look on with the shared ecstasies of the five thousand. There may, in theory, be no "I" in We Can, but minus Pablo it is questionable if we (or they) would be able or would indeed have been enabled. Podemos is spelt with a big "P", and it stands for Pablo.

The previous day was when Pablo met Albert met Pedro but didn't meet Mariano, who was either washing his hair or had managed to get a note from his mum (no immaculate connotations are known of her either). Instead, they sent the Dancing Queen, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaria Etc., fresh from her recent gyrations to "Uptown Funk You Up" on "El Hormiguero" (the anthill), but which had been eclipsed by the guitar-playing, singing Pablo. It might not have been Paul Weller (unlikely that it would have been given the hair), but here nevertheless was the Modfather of the Political New Wave. Stardust was spread both through the TV debate and in the Palma Arena, and what is more, Ziggy plays guitar.

The Chaos Of Colour: Spain's election

In just over a week's time Spain will hold a general election unlike any other in its comparatively short democratic history. If there are those who still cling to the belief that Ciudadanos and Podemos are impostors, these are beliefs of denial: two-party politics in Spain is dead, long live quadripartite politics.

Life will be breathed into this four-party system for at least as long as the life of the next legislature (until the end of 2019). Whether it survives beyond this will depend upon what happens between now and then. The deniers may, in the long term, prove to be right. If they are for the PP and PSOE, they will hope that they are.

Unless the opinion polls are wildly wrong, a prediction can be made before the electorate heads to the booths on Sunday week. Spain's political scene will be altered. It will also be highly uncertain. The country's general elections would normally expect to demand the footnotes of mainly indifference outside the nation's borders, but not this one. It will be watched like a hawk, with the eyes of Brussels, among others, firmly trained on it.

Judging by the comparative turnouts in Palma this week, the Podemos bubble appears anything but burst. Pablo Iglesias fed the five thousand at Palma Arena, while a surreal gathering - a tenth this size - wrapped themselves up against a keen breeze on the Parc de la Mar and listened to Rajoy. The prime minister observed that this was a working day and a gathering during the day. He must surely have made this remark because of events some hours previously. Iglesias had chosen a holiday and the evening: the resulting difference was political PR heaven for Podemos.

Not that these two rallies hold a key to Sunday week. Podemos has not become the mighty force it once looked as if it might; according to the polls, at any rate. The rise of Ciudadanos may explain this. Or perhaps there was always going to be a plateau that Iglesias would not be able to surmount. But in a different sense they did hold a key. Iglesias, populism aside, can be mightily impressive. He is also different.

The four-party televised debate earlier in the week had been a curious prelude to the two Palma rallies; curious because of the absence of Rajoy. This had been known a couple of weeks in advance, the official reason being the number of requests from media outlets and schedule. It was difficult to avoid believing there were other reasons.

One survey of the performances of Iglesias, Sánchez (PSOE), Rivera (Ciudadanos) and Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, Rajoy's substitute, made Iglesias the winner. Had Rajoy appeared, he might have been a greater winner. The debate itself, minus Rajoy, was a winner. There was freshness in the relative youth of the participants and the presence of a woman. There were degrees of charisma as well.

An argument for Rajoy taking part was that his seniority would afford him gravitas in the eyes of the viewer when set next to the younger upstarts - Iglesias, Rivera and Sánchez - but in recalling the debate he had with Alfredo Rubalcaba prior to the 2011 election, any such gravitas might have been lost amidst the greyness. That debate in 2011 was excruciating. Conducted by two grey men, it might now be looked back upon as the moment when the two-party system condemned itself to the political waste bin. If that was Spain's politics, with two tedious and not especially sympathetic characters representing it, change could not have come soon enough.

The new politics expounded by Iglesias and Rivera is not simply an alteration to political party dynamics, not just an assault on the sleaze and the inherent corruption of the two-party state, it is also much closer to the "citizens" through personality. Spain could abide the aloof drabness of Aznar and Zapatero during the boom times. It could also accept, for a time, the unappealing Rajoy, if this was what it genuinely had to endure. Now, battered by austerity and the greyness inflicted on society, it looks for colour, ironically capable of looking forward to this because of the at least partially successful policies of the PP. As the charismatic González supplied a vitality to the youthful democracy in 1982, so the stage awaits a similar character to advance the rebirth of a country that has been kicked but not totally humiliated, unlike Greece.

But González was able to emerge as the flagwaver of the two-party system that resulted from the chaotic transition with its alliances of convenience. A new chaos of alliance now beckons because of its dismantling. Charisma might abound, but it will be enjoyed only by minorities of supporters and rejected by the combined majorities of others. Political colour is being supplied, but who's to be the artist?

Overtaken By The Fear: Election year

Months to go yet, but election fever has already brought us out with the irritated rashes of hyped-up anticipation and psephological analysis. The intravenous drip for political overdose will become whole transfusions as the days of reckoning loom ever closer. If there were only one day, the fever might rage less, but there are two: an electoral epidemic and a plague of "partidos".

I am of course referring to the Balearics and Spain and not another place, where the fever has disturbed minds with a collective hallucination of lysergic counter-reality. The other place stands on the window ledge of a bad trip of xenophobe demons, bearing bows of burning gold, arrows of desire and chariots of fire, with a pint-swilling figure like Batman's Joker cackling maniacally and willing it to jump to a cold earth of pleasant pastures seen. But that's the other place. It isn't here.

Yet another poll has come out. A survey carried out across all seventeen of Spain's autonomous communities suggests that the general election at the end of this year would see Rajoy's Partido Popular losing its majority along with up to 73 seats in the Congress of Deputies. By coincidence, 73 seats is the lower estimate of how many Podemos stands to gain.

Rajoy's election year started last year. The raft of tax reforms should have told you that an election was approaching. Bread and circuses and all that, does he really believe that the electorate will be appeased with some cuts to income tax? The electorate are not fools. They remember the days - BC (Before Crisis) - of lower taxes. They know that IVA has not been reduced, it having been increased twice over and been applied at higher rates on items that were previously at a reduced rate.

Bits of economic growth here, bits of economic growth there. Rajoy has turned Spain round, he says and will say. But do the electorate believe in bits of economic growth? It would take very sizable chunks of growth to truly eat into the unemployment statistics.

Tax cuts, bits of growth and fear. These will be the mantras. The fear is the one to be put into the electorate at the prospect of Podemos. It will not win the general election, but with a minimum of 73 seats it would be the third force, only maybe ten seats fewer than PSOE. The fear is not yet happening. It might not happen at all. Nationally, a great deal will depend upon the regional elections. Another strong showing by Podemos will be less easily dismissed as a protest vote, which was how last year's European elections were spun. Another strong showing and momentum might actually increase. Credibility of office would have been gained. The attempts to generate fear would go into overdrive: Pablo Iglesias is no new Messiah, he is the Devil Incarnate.

The electorate, however, can see through fear, that which emanates from Rajoy every time he presents himself for the electorate to witness. And what fear might there be in the televised debate? If Podemos maintains its poll position, how can Iglesias not be invited to join the table with Rajoy and Pedro Sánchez (assuming Sánchez hasn't been usurped by Susana Diaz)? Rajoy was cringeworthy in a winning cause during the debate last time. Iglesias would savage him. Rajoy would have to rely on the kind of sympathy shown to a wounded animal, were the electorate minded to be sympathetic. Not that it would. Corruption, the hypocrisy over abortion reform (clearly with another election in mind, despite the electoral pledge of 2011), the "gagging" law and the anti-democratic tendencies his government has shown: all cases for the electoral prosecution.

The fear will come in attacks on Podemos's own anti-democracy. So-called. But Rajoy and many others still fail to understand the dynamics that have propelled Podemos to where it is. Progeny of anti-globalisation, of the indignados movement, of the cruelty of evictions, it is also a product of what for some time has been envisaged as the new democracy of the internet. Citizen democracy, citizen participation: a legislative agenda predicated perhaps on the popular legislation already permitted for certain matters, as was demonstrated with bullfighting in Catalonia. This is far from undemocratic, but because it is new, there is a question: where are the limits to such citizen democracy, to the citizenry deciding policies? Are there any?

I refer at the top of this article to a plague of "partidos", but it is wrong to even refer to Podemos as a party. It is a movement, a mass that is liable to alter its form in accordance with popular will. It is of the left but it isn't of the left. It is new, entirely new, not comparable with parties elsewhere, be they in Greece, the UK or wherever. Over 200 years ago, Spain gave the world the notion of political liberalism. In 2015, the country is poised to give the world a whole new meaning of politics, one of an engagement that has broken down through conventional politics. Herein lies the fear. For Rajoy, for Sánchez. They fear being overtaken by something they don't understand.

Times They Are A-Changing: Podemos

Maria Dolores Cospedal is the secretary-general of the Partido Popular. Like Nuria Riera in the Balearics, the regional education minister and PP spokesperson, Dolores cuts a sympathetic appearance. She is the soft-looking, acceptable-to-the-public face of the PP in contrast to the scary and habitually scared-looking Rajoy and the frankly terrifying dominatrix of a vice-premier, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaria. It is Dolores's lot, therefore, to have to make public pronouncements that, were Soraya to make them, would have everyone dashing behind the sofa. Last year, Dolores addressed a gathering of Nuevas Generaciones in Toledo. This is the PP youth wing, the equivalent of the Young Conservatives but without the tweed jackets and the leather patches. Dolores, talking to the converted conservative, informed her audience that, economic crisis notwithstanding, the young people of Spain had more opportunities than ever before. For some reason she then decided to quote the then 71-year-old Bob Dylan in observing that the times they were a-changing. Perhaps she did so in the belief that by invoking a lyric from fifty years previously she would be appealing to the youth. Almost certainly she appeared not to have recognised that the now septuagenarian had penned what was considered to have been the anthem of the 1960s' protest movement.

Dylan, were he to be starting out today and to be Spanish, would in all likelihood be the musical voice of Spain's protest - Podemos's lead singer and poster boy. Dolores, now probably apprised of Dylan's cultural significance, didn't mention him the other day when being the obvious choice to front what will become a full-frontal assault on Podemos and its leader, Pablo Iglesias. Podemos, said Dolores, was "very dangerous for democracy". Much as one doesn't wish to be too harsh on someone as nice as Dolores, she has some brass neck to start issuing lectures on dangers to democracy when so many members of the PP have managed to swell prisoner numbers and keep judges and prosecutors in gainful employment. But then, there have only been "some issues of corruption", she continued, echoing Mariano's "few small incidents".

Depending on which survey you preferred, Podemos was shown to either have a slight lead or to be running a close third in the opinion polls. Both of them have put a gale force wind up the PP, and so Dolores was sent out to try and prevent the roof tiles of government being loosened and crashing on top of the PP by painting Podemos as being anything but a soothing breeze. She alluded to the now familiar and alleged Venezuelan connections and style of Podemos and - item for the brass neck prosecution number two - also suggested that the freedom of the press would be endangered. This would presumably be the same freedom of the press which, by way of a couple of examples, led to journalists at the RTVE national broadcaster, who were asking tough questions of Rajoy and his government, being found other jobs and to a threat to sue Telecinco over a debate regarding the Bárcenas affair.

Podemos and Iglesias can now anticipate not being out of the glare of publicity for a single day as opponents dredge up whatever dirt they can, such as the video of a drunk Iglesias singing "The International" alongside rapper Pablo Hasél, who was sentenced in April to two years for glorifying terrorism, or indulge in wild frenzies of tweeting, as in the PP spokesperson for the town hall in Paredes de Nava who last week tweeted that Iglesias was a "hija de puta" who should be shot in the neck. Whether Dolores considers that tweet to be dangerous for democracy is, as yet, unknown.

Dismantling Elites: UKIP and Podemos

It is a land I once knew but one which now exists in the periphery of vision, periodically demanding attention but then fading from view, obscured by the immediacies of a land that once upon a time I knew nothing of. The tragicomedy of Britain's political stage is one of those plays which from time to time does capture the attention and draws the irregular theatre-goer to the auditorium. The characters are flawed or incomplete. Rosencrantz and Guildernstern, the identical leads, unsure as to who is who: Cameron and Miliband rehearsing their obituaries for Yorick. Alas poor Clegg, we knew him. And enter stage far-right, the boastful buffoon, the Falstaffian Farage.

Tom Stoppard plucked his characters out of the obscurity of minor roles in "Hamlet" and offered them centre-stage, one on which they could indulge themselves in their endless vacuity and shifting philosophies. These were characters of inherent irrelevance, engaged by the audience but ultimately disengaged from it. Falstaff has been reinvented many times but has remained a figure of comic genius, as he now is, his braggadocio and vanity tempting a Prince Hal of the British public astray. As for Yorick, in truth he was never more than a cranial footnote, now being prepared for the political mortuary.

The inseparable, indivisible unidimensionality of the Rosencrantz and Guildernstern of the Conservatives and Labour, their ineffectualness have opened the curtains to the Falstaff of UKIP to take to the boards littered with the recent bodies of immigrants, recession, fundamentalism and a disconnection on a European scale. The critics have not been completely unkind. Indeed, Farage might be an invention of Paul Dacre, were it not for the fact that UKIP has for so long been a slow burner, a cooker on a low heat mixing a concoction of far-right scraps thrown periodically into an inedible stew. To the thin gruel of one-time minority inconsequence have been added the bones of Farage's indiscreet tastes. Here, for example, boil the ideas of a Machiavellian, one-time BNP egghead strategist, exposed as an infiltrator. There are many other ingredients which have combined to make this odious casserole.

It is easy to style UKIP's performance as by-election blues that will turn to true blue or true red at the election. But was this just an Orpington moment or a Crosby moment, the signals for the Liberals in 1962 and the SDP in 1981 to take meaningful places in British politics which came to nothing or very little? Perhaps, but one should not underestimate Falstaff. The public can be partial to a buffoon. Boris Johnson might one day surpass Farage's interpretation.

UKIP is part of a wider tendency. It shares its place in the spotlight with the most unlikely of other cast members. Right-wing and Europhobic, it has tapped into a mean-spiritedness but also into a disaffection with an established political system. It is the peculiar distant cousin of Spain's Podemos, which would appear to be its polar opposite but which is a product of a similar disaffection.

Podemos is left-wing and anti-European. It is the progeny of the anti-globalisation and indignados movements. It is a protest political organisation. Votes for it at the European elections might be thought to have been protests, but like UKIP one fancies there is more staying power.

An oddity with Podemos was that its emergence was not from a slow burner. It was spontaneous combustion, and that of the left not of the right. But when one looks at opinion polls, it becomes clear that it has to have drawn support from across the political spectrum. A sharp decline in sympathy for the Partido Popular can be explained in different ways, and one of these is that Podemos has grabbed a sizable chunk of the PP floating voter.

Pablo Iglesias, its leader, is a kind of Count of Monte Cristo, taking revenge for a nation's imprisonment by a corrupt party political system, the current head of which is Mariano Rajoy, a man who can stare at a camera with eyes which seem to look into the void and which betray constant fear. He is right to be scared. Podemos's sudden eruption might have only sprayed lava on to the upper reaches of a political volcano, but one should not exclude the potential for it to slide into the valleys and plains.

Podemos's principal reason for being is its distaste for the political elite. It does not harbour the resentments of minorities that UKIP does, but it shares an antagonism towards elitism. However, UKIP cannot disguise an inter-breeding of its own elitism, and so it is very unlike Podemos, an organisation which, for now at any rate, can realistically claim to be of the people.

We will discover next year what the people really think of UKIP and Podemos. Falstaff and the Count of Monte Cristo. Who would your money be on?

Young Pedro Versus Young Pablo

In February 2012, I wrote of Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba's re-selection as leader of PSOE that the party had "opted for a safe pair of hands, ones that, in his own peculiar style, play a piano when's he's speaking. For safe pair of hands, read boring. Not for the first time ... Spanish politics has refused to dump a loser". Rubalcaba's continuing as leader following the spanking that Rajoy and the PP had given PSOE was a massive mistake. Consequently, 2012 to 2014 have been the lost years for PSOE, wandering in the wilderness without a compass and having no idea as to which direction it was heading other than in the wrong one. When the European elections this May showed that the sage-like Rubalcaba had been leading the lost tribes of PSOE ever deeper into a political desert, his time was up. His staff has now been kicked away, his sackcloth removed, his beard shaven off. Welcome to new PSOE. Pedro Sánchez. Young PSOE. And hardly a facial hair to be seen.

Much is being made of Sánchez's youth and indeed the youth of leaders of other political parties in Spain, with the very obvious exception of Mariano Rajoy. Will Sánchez, in addition to leading PSOE back to civilisation, also lead them - and the country - towards the sun of a new dawn with youthfulness to the fore in shaping a whole new politics in Spain? Well, some are suggesting something along these lines. But before we get carried away, it should be noted that youth is very much a relative term. Sánchez is 42. He is 17 years younger than Rajoy and 20 years younger than Rubalcaba, so he does represent a bit of a change in the current political scene, but in the wider scheme of things he doesn't.

When Felipe González became prime minister, he genuinely was something new. Apart from being a socialist, he was dynamic and charismatic and young. Youngish. He was 40. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was 43 when he won the 2004 election. And if you want other examples, there is always the Balearics' own José Ramón Bauzá, also 40 when he won. Or how about Tony Blair? 43 on the day, that beautiful spring day when a warm sun shone and a new dawn really did dawn. Or so we thought. Little did we know that we were getting a narcissistic, control-freak lunatic with two heads.

What really has alerted political commentators to this new youth movement in Spanish politics is the younger-than-Sánchez leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, who shouldn't be confused with the Marxist Pablo Iglesias who was the founder of PSOE. He, were he to still be alive, would be 164 in October this year. It might be felt that, in terms of Marxist ideology, there isn't a great deal of clear blue water between the two Pablos, but there is a vast ocean between them when it comes to years. The new-age Pablo is a mere 35. 

This mere stripling of a politico has, along with Podemos, firmly put a very determined cat among the fat, lethargic pigeons of Spanish politics. PSOE has been caught on the hop by Podemos more than the Partido Popular. The left has been invaded and has been, moreover, by a ponytail-wearing populist who looks as though he should be mixing the decks at an Ibiza rave club rather than trying to clear the decks of the detritus of rotting Spanish politics. PSOE, desperate for a new image, turned down the nerdy appeal of Zapatero Mark II, namely Eduardo Madina, and opted instead for Felipe González Mark II, i.e. Pedro Sánchez. What he lacks by comparison with Iglesias in terms of seven years and a ponytail, he makes up with a winning smile, good looks and a name that is about as Spanish as you can get. Pedro. Sánchez. The Catalonians must already hate him.

The Catalonian question is just one that Young Pedro will have to get his head around. Of other questions, we know comparatively few if any answers. One thing we do know is that he has suggested that he "is going to be as left as the membership". What exactly does this mean? It sounds potentially ominous. Or it sounds as though he doesn't have a clear idea. Or it sounds as though he is taking the notion of being customer-driven and placing it in a political context: you tell me how left you want me to be, and I'll lean that way.

Being vague probably suits him. It gives scope to move towards the left and attempt to reclaim the territory occupied by established, more left-wing parties and now Podemos. Alternatively, it gives scope to be centrist. What it doesn't mean, one might hope, is that Young Pedro goes as far to the left as Old Pablo. Young Pablo's out there. Ponytail and all.