The chimney stacks of the Sant Adrià de Besòs power plant are hard to miss. Any sunbather lolling away a lazy Sunday afternoon on one of the beaches stretching northwards from Barceloneta will inevitably have the three bronzed spires looming over his or her shoulder, casting their silhouettes across the sand like some gigantic sun dial counting off the weekend’s dwindling hours.

Gerard Piqué has got it.  FC Barcelona’s 22-year-old fullback has got that special something that makes everyone from a gaggle of pimply teenage girls right down to a pack of cigar-chewing socis simply swoon.  He has not even broken a sweat winning over the unanimous acclaim from the Catalan sports press and the legions of culés who take turns hailing him as Carles Puyol’s heir apparent or declaring him the reincarnation of the legendary German defender Franz Beckenbauer.  And while there is nothing at all shocking about Barcelona’s infatuation with …

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 …