Posted 10:11 AM by Paul
This is Not About You

Ana Botella, wife to outgoing Spanish PM Jose Maria Aznar has written a book about their 8 years together in power. A mixture of political comment and Hello style revelations it had obviously been planned for some time. She posponed the launch for a couple of weeks following the train bombings which slaughtered nearly 200 of her constituents - Ana is a leading member of the Conservative Madrid Council. But now the retiring First Lady of Spain is back in full promotional swing flogging her wares at book signings and on TV.

She has added a hastily written, and I suspect ghosted, extra chapter. She has called it Chapter Zero. In it she says that the time after the bombings and the subsequent electoral defeat were their "bitterest hours". She goes on. " It was such a shame to think that 8 years of hard work had ended like this".

It must have been so hard for them both. Book deal. Fabulous wealth. Friends in high places. And alive. Nearly two hundred dead and a thousand injured and Ana is thinking about her husband's place in posterity. It brings to mind the murderers who plead in the dock that killing their girlfriend has ruined their life now that they will have to go to prison.

Ana. Tgis is not about you or Jose Maria. It is about Spain.

It makes me wonder if you have to be a vain phsycopath to succeed in politics. I hope not, but there are enough of them around to suggest that you do.