There's been a new twist every day this week in the saga of the princess and the alleged sale of 13 properties. A couple of days ago it was the Tax Office (Hacienda) admitting it had made 2 mistakes but blaming notaries and registrars for the other 11. The notaries, basically, said 'No way'. And yesterday the head of the Tax Office 'resigned', the very first person to do so in the life of the current PP administration. If I understand things correctly, the Tax Office also admitted they made 1.5m mistakes in respect of ID numbers in 2004-5. Which is impressive, isn't it?

Anyway, the other astonishing thing to happen this week is that Sr Bárcenas - the ex-treasurer of the PP and the man with many millions in various accounts around the world - has been sent to jail by a brave judge who feared he would destroy evidence if left free. Sr Bárcenas is reported to have threatened the prosecution lawyer on his way to clink but the real interest now lies in whether he'll make good on his threat to blow the gaffe if he were ever sent to prison. Sr Rajoy says the threats don't worry him. Possibly because he knows better than the rest of us that the State Prosecutor will soon find reasons why Sr Bárcenas shouldn't stay in jail.

Here's some more tosh on Galicia. Some of it's OK but what and where, for example, is 'Galicia's rich Celtic heritage'? Certainly not in either of its official languages, Spanish and Callego. I doubt they can muster 10 Celtic words between them. Which is why Galicia has never been admitted to the Celtic League of Nations. Or whatever it's called.

The EU: I regularly say I believe the superstate will eventually collapse under the weight of its internal incongruities. Or, as I read today:- "The European Union will collapse under its Eutonian vanities". When you read how low the support for the institution now is in France, you do wonder whether this will be sooner rather than later. And the (non)results of this week's summit have done nothing to undermine this suspicion.

Nice cartoon in Private Eye this week. Ryanair flight announcement:- "Ladies and Gentlemen. If you'd like to look out of the window, there's a small extra charge."

Finally . . . I read this article in El Mundo this week. This is a Google translation that I've tarted up. If anyone knows what it's all about, I'd be pleased to know. The Spanish original can be read here:

There is a Jew

The Holy Father has said that within every Christian there is a Jew and he has thus summarised the history of civilization. Christianity is an evolution from Judaism and this evolution takes the shape of love. The universality of the Church lies in mercy. Deus Caritas Est. Judaism has been reduced to its people because it has not learned to forgive.

But, when Pope Bergoglio says that within each of us there is a Jew, he is reminding us to what point we have to go to make demands upon ourselves and that it is offensive to God to trivialise pardoning. Jesus was a Jew and it is He we carry within us. Jesus with his commitment, his tenacity, dignifying with his integrity every inch of land he walked on. Also with his infinite love, his compassion and ability to forgive the world, and to redeem it through this pardon and this love. It is Christian caritas which embraces everything: body and soul, love and forgiveness, mercy and passion.

When so many Spaniards take Christianity lightly, and forgiveness as an excuse to do whatever they please, when they believe that being Catholic is based on a hearty lunch, a siesta and going to church on Sundays; and ridicule the sacrifice and mock the Cross with their superficial lives, their hairdresser's rhetoric and their rough morals, they descend into backwardness and excess, and live as if there were no hope.

To overcome the crisis, Spaniards need to rebel against the social-democratic yoke and the various types of the Left that have always ruled them. The most socialist, by the way, was Franco. But in order not to fall into this, Spain needs to listen to the Holy Father and remember that in each of us there is a Jew struggling to be free and to be worthy of God.

Peace is not to not commit, peace is not to stay afloat, peace is not to not get dirty, "I curse the poetry conceived as a cultural luxury for the neutrals." Peace is to have tried everything, to have lost everything and then to pray an Our Father. Peace is in following ourselves, kissing the profound Son. Forgiveness is not a papal Bull and forgiveness is not hiding in your mother's skirts to avoid the consequences of your latest nonsense. Within every Christian is a Jew. Forgiveness is in being able to forgive our executioners and all the muscles of Mary are tense in Michelangelo's Pieta.

A large majority of Spaniards have forgotten that within each of them there is a Jew and therefore we have known this devastation and this cold. Without a permanent dialogue with the Jew within us, any Christianity is a parody of itself and is like again nailing Jesus to the Cross. When anger guides us and we are unable to forgive, his death is emptied of meaning.

Whenever Bergoglio speaks, he alerts the world to its repeated tragedies. In every Christian is a Jew. In each of us there is a mandate and to live is a duty. God knows how to forgive us, but we only sincerely ask forgiveness when we plough the earth and sow wonders. To work is to pray and the only love is that which bleeds.