Has Alejandro Sánchez been let loose?

The answer: It looks like it. The Mayor of La Línea de la Concepción must feel pretty fed up by now. Puppets on strings usually do, don't they? They must get tired of being manipulated, surely.

That's my theory, anyway.

The leader of the opposition (never seen it in caps in Spain, have you?), Mariano Rajoy (PP), will go to any lengths to make life difficult for the governing party (PSOE). Maybe he thinks that's his job.

On the other hand, Alejandro Sánchez (PP) is having a very tough time paying his council staff and employees - actually, the tough time is for those who aren't being paid. The reason for the La Línea coffers being empty has an awful lot to do with past administrations (PP, or ex-GIL, the notorious Jesús Gil's personal party, he of the vast corruption in Marbella), corruption and mismanagement.

So what do you do when you're caught with your pants down?

You create a diversion. The old Franco regime in Spain called it pan y circo, bread and circus; when things weren't hunky dory you handed out bread and offered a lot of circus, usually in the shape of football, rather typical of dictators, but that's another story.

The Mayor of La Línea, though almost too young to have known the old diversion tactics, appears to have learned a lot from those in his party who are not.

The only trouble is that, La Línea being so far from Madrid in every sense, it would seem that the clever mayor has decided that following party orders (to make things as difficult as possible .... remember?) might take his council employees' minds off their blank bank accounts. Kill two birds, etc.

Not quite. His congestion charge diversion tactic seems to have blown up in his face - or at any rate he came back from Brussels, where he'd been to seek support (at vast expense, according to those who haven't been paid), with his tail between his legs. "That can't be done," said  the EU about his plans for a charge for vehicles leaving Gibraltar. "Never mind, we'll think up something else." You can almost hear him thinking, though he shouldn't be doing that all on his own, of course.

Now Sánchez says he isn't going to hand over the municipal land set aside for building the Spanish side of the joint-use airport in Gibraltar. The Spanish airport authority, AENA, says, "Oh yes you will. Ve haff vays off making you!" Legal manouvers, of course.

Meanwhile, back on the Rock, the new airport is well on the way to completion. La Línea's side is 'held up' (good phrase) by a little contretemps about letters and documents that Sánchez says he hasn't received but AENA says it sent and were signed for at the town hall. The land question has not been settled and, says AENA, "we can't build until we have the land." Fair enough.

One has to wonder whether the puppet master Rajoy has realised what an ass his puppet is fast becoming. Has become.

Needless to say, it is no comfort to all those municipal workers who aren't getting paid. Still, one can't help feeling sorry for Sánchez, who appears to be caught up in a nasty web out of which one wonders if he'll emerge.

(c) Alberto Bullrich 2010