Monday, January 13, 2003

Here's a good one. Right after the Prestige oil spill, an organization called Nunca Maís (Never Again in Galician) made a big old hoo-haw about the whole thing, and specifically spent a lot of time slamming the conservative People's Party, which governs in both the Galicia region and Spain, for having screwed up the whole thing. Nunca Maís tried to place the blame for the whole mess on the government, which after the shipwreck and spill might have taken different actions that might have been more successful, true. But they were faced with a crisis and did what they saw as best, and of course, they did nothing to cause the problem, as Nunca Maís implied. The organization did a lot of fundraising, too, and received money from people all over Spain who thought they were helping either a) the cleanup effort or b) the fishermen out of work because of the oil spill. Well, all the money went into divulgation and education and consciousness-raising on the part of Nunca Maís. That is, it went to bash the government. Interestingly enough, the folks behind Nunca Maís turned out to be the Bloque Nacionalista Gallego, the thoroughly obnoxious left-wing Galician nationalist political party. Contributors from all over Spain are now reclamando their money back, since they thought they were chipping in to help folks in trouble, not to fund a partisan political organization.

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