Yesterday I made some comments about the bonus received by the Spanish football team. Let them keep their money. There are bigger fish in the sea. A certain Mr Diamond, until recently a highly respected Barclays Bank employee, is apparently arguing that there is nothing at all wrong with his receiving a pay-off of £22 million. Compared to that, €300,000 is peanuts.
In the free paper here, the big story is of theft of a different, more ecclesiastical nature. Everyone is very happy because they have recovered the “Códice Calixtino”, a 12th century religious tome stolen from Santiago de Compostela cathedral a year ago. (Maybe it’s rather like solving the Da Vinci Code.) What’s more they have also arrested someone and charged him with the crime.
An electrician who had worked for, or at least in, the cathedral for years and years lost his job and then stole the ancient book, possibly as an act of revenge. He had been suspected for some time but the police operation had to be very delicate as they were afraid he might damage or even destroy the book if they moved in too quickly. Eventually they found it in a garage owned by the felon, along with a range of other items also stolen from the cathedral and a large amount of money, probably from the sale of other such items. So, if it was revenge, it was a very organised and profit-worthy revenge.
There is, of course, the possibility that he is also a bit of a religious maniac. Apparently this gentleman has a longstanding habit of going to mass in the cathedral at 7.30 every morning. Now, this not in itself a sign of madness but maybe in this day and age just a bit obsessive. And then, in recent months he has continued to attend the service on a daily basis but has not taken communion. Hmmm! Guilty conscience? Something he has not confessed to?
His neighbours report that he is a very polite gentleman who always holds the door open for ladies and greets everyone very nicely. It’s funny what nice people criminals can be.
Others who know him, however, say that he is a more than a little obsessive and that when he was chair of the council of their block of flats he was very bossy and wanted to control everything totally.
Recently some have noticed that he has been “triste e consternado”. Maybe he had been reading the “Códice” and had reached the appendix that says that anyone who steals the book may be punished by excommunication. Given his commitment to going to church every day, this possible punishment might worry him.
On the other hand, he could be seen as having done the church a favour. Somebody tweeted that the thief had given the “códice” more publicity in twelve months than the church had managed in eight centuries. It certainly should have alerted them to security issues. According to one report around 80% of the cultural heritage of Galicia is in the hands of the church and very little of it is secure or even properly insured. Time to act on it, I think.
Another happy tweeter remarked: “So, they’ve arrested an electrician. Now they just need to arrest the electric light company who have been robbing me every month.”
It’s not just the tweeters and twitterers who have been making wry comments about the solving of this crime. In this cartoon from the free paper, the gentleman on the left is calling the local police to tell them he thinks he has found the “Códice”. On hearing this, Mrs Thief rebukes her husband: “See? I told you that coming to the beach without an E-book would attract attention!”
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