With corruption scandals erupting across Spain like a bad case of acne, angry taxpayers are all coming to the same conclusion; if in addition to walking and quacking like a sleazy conman, it also goes by the name of a sleazy conman, then in all likelihood you are dealing with a sleazy conman.

The biggest pimple to burst (and it is still oozing) is el caso Gürtel that has implicated major players in the Partido Popular from Valencia to Madrid in a web of shell companies and multimillion euro kickbacks (even scoring off the Pope’s visit to Valencia, have they no shame?).  However, not ones to go down without a fight, the Partit dels Socialistes del Catalunya and Convergència i Unió, in a rare act of bipartisanship, just got busted for some very dirty real estate deals right here in Santa Coloma, Badalona and Sant Andreu by Captain Justice himself, Baltasar Garzón.

The strangest trait these cases share is that the respective “brain” in each scam is the guy who is most obviously a shady character and has absolutely no intention of hiding it.  In fact, both puppet masters seemed dead set on accentuating their crookedness in any way possible – right down to changing what people called them.

Just look at the mover-shaker at the center of the caso Gürtel.  His mother gave him the good Christian name of Álvaro Pérez, which sounds innocent enough and, as logic dictates, appropriate for a man who has decided to commit massive fraud of public funds.  But Álvaro must have found it boring or not sexy enough, so he decided it would be cooler to be called “El Bigotes”.

The same goes for the rotten property developments in greater Barcelona.  It turns out that the ringleader of the entire 45 million euro operation is one Luis García, a former member of the Catalan parliament for PSC.  But Luis also wanted to spice it up Mediterranean-crook style.  Unfortunately, he could only come up with “Luigi”, which does sound a little greasy, but only in a small-time mobster way since it is, after all, Italian.

This predilection for suspicious sounding aliases cannot only be traced back to the practical need to hide one’s true identity.  No, there is something more to it since neither one of these characters seemed too concerned about concealing his unlawful persona from his public life.  This phenomenon says something about the culture of corruption here in Spain.  Names like “El Bigotes” or “Luigi” inspire zero confidence in the world of legitimate business, but they appear to do exactly the opposite in the Iberian underworld.

It is unfortunate for the sake of this thesis that el caso Millet, involving the Palau de la Música Catalana, stubbornly breaks the pattern since it has not turned up one single moniker so far.  Until it does, el caso Millet will just have to serve as the exception that proves the rule.

photo: lady in the radiator