Judgment Day for Vivar

In the past I have been something of an apologist for Dr Vivar.

It was after all he who brought cobbled streets to El Panorama and many other improvements to perhaps more deserving communities around the periphery. 

I also felt at the time that his sudden demise could at least in part be explained by his having fallen foul of a far more heinous gang of crooks then in central government. 

I suppose I have always wanted there to be a clear distinction between offering jobs for the boys at favourable rates and the sort of systematic despoiling of the public coffers that we witnessed under Pérez Molina and co. 

As a former student of the medieval and early modern economies, I am of course aware that low level venality is not fundamentally incompatible with more general improvements across the relevant societies.

Yet the fact that Vivar jumped across from UNE to PP shows that the line I would draw is surely more mobile than I’ve ever been willing to admit. 

The list of municipal reprobates convicted yesterday along with our ex-mayor and his wife includes some that are on their way to the bote for the daily grind associated with the role of cómplice. 

That my wife has a long-standing relationship with two of the sisters of Susana has, frankly, provided us with insufficient protection against occasionally spiky encounters with some of her more opportunistic employees over the past four years. 

Yet the fact that she is also a close friend, from childhood, of the incoming (actually returning) alcalde, offers serious grounds for optimism in 2020. 

We're not thinking of exploiting privileged access. That would be hypocritical, to say the least. Just about feeling a good deal more shielded against the sort of nonsense that we have witnessed during the incumbent’s regime. 

Victor Hugo also has a solid reputation for getting stuff done. The highway passing through our village to El Calvario was his doing, and it remains one of the higher quality and longer-lasting asphalt roads in the municipality. 

The fate of Vivar's underlings has demonstrated rather clearly that one has to look at corruption 'in the round' and not just the specific actions of the head honcho. There are no doubt a few more ratas in the nido. A visit from the exterminator is overdue.