Families, famous folk and oddities about animals.

It must be hard to belong to a family which is always in the spotlight. One member of such a family must have been feeling that this morning when she had to turn up at a court in Mallorca, on charges of tax evasion along with her husband. The UK newspaper in which I read about the story still referred to Cristina Federica Victoria Antonia de la Santísima Trinidad de Borbón y de Grecia – her full title - as a member of the Spanish royal family and sixth in line to the throne. Now, I may be wrong but I am pretty sure they sort of threw her out the royal family at an earlier stage of this case coming to light. She still gets to visit members of the family. After all, you can't actually change the DNA and Queen Sofía is still the grandmother of Cristina's children. Come to that, the current king of Spain is still their uncle. But Cristina and Iñaki no longer seem to get invited to the big royal family holidays or have any official duties. She is no longer truly an Infanta. 

What a come down. I remember the razzmatazz of their wedding, a very glamorous affair. Her sister Elena had been married some years previously in the huge cathedral in Seville; the first royal wedding Spain had seen since before the civil war and a televised event to rival the UK's royal weddings. But Cristina and Iñaki's wedding in Barcelona was heralded as a kind of unifying ceremony for all sorts of diverse bits of Spain. She was from the old royalty (de Borbón y de Grecia, after all), he was from an old Basque family (a troublesome region that needed some TLC) and they were marrying in Barcelona, Cataluña (another troublesome region that needed some TLC). What could be better? Such high hopes! 

I wonder how they managed to get themselves into the morass of corruption and tax evasion. You would have thought that they had people to advise them about such matters. 

Meanwhile Barcelona popped up in another news story. Trade unions there are fighting to prevent Pablo Picasso’s former art school being turned into a museum devoted to the film director Woody Allen, which they say would hold more appeal for the city’s legions of tourists than for its residents. It would seem that the mayor of Barcelona had promised that the building would be restored and reopened as an art school once more. But presumably a Woody Allen museum would make more money for the city. However, I do wonder WHY there should be a Woody Allen museum there. Surely New York is more his city. I know he filmed "Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona" in the eponymous Spanish (oops, Catalan!) city, which incidentally gave him a big chunk of cash towards the making of the film, but I would have thought that was the only real connection. Maybe he should also have a museum in Paris; after all he made "Midnight in Paris" there! Then tourists in both places could take selfies the. 

Which leads us onto ownership of selfies and a silly story. A US court has ruled that a macaque called Naruto cannot own the copyright to “selfies” that he took with a nature photographer’s camera, throwing out a lawsuit brought by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), which sought to use proceeds from the photograph to help other monkeys. Here's a link to the story behind the court case. Well, of course monkeys are clever enough to work out how to use a camera and take selfies and the story is quite amusing but, as the person who wrote the article where I found this story said, surely the PETA organisation should be spending the donated money on more important things than monkeys owning the rights to photos. Even if they took the photos themselves! 

And finally there is the story of a Chinese tourist who tried to kiss a snake. She went to a show organised by a Thai company and decided to lean forward and kiss one of the pythons. The snake was clearly not the sort to be kissed by just anyone and bit her on the nose. She has been paid £2,200 in damages. 

And there I was, thinking the silly season didn't start quite yet!