The Wholesale Disarray of European Politics

"What connects them is less a common agenda than a growing sense that the future promises less than the present generation was led to expect."

"[A] misleading narrative of a pan-European revolt [has allowed scenes of unrest to be taken out of their national context and offered] as proof that a chaotic Europe is ungovernable."

Alberta Alemanno, professor of European Law, HEC Paris business school

"We're sick of putting up with empty promises."

"Today, young people everywhere are demanding the right to a future."

"We are demanding a break with this old world that has made life difficult, not only in France."

Lena Guerrier, French student activist 

Protesters take cover behind a plywood board as French riot police and gendarmes use a water canon amid clashes during an authorised demonstration in Paris, October 24, 2026. REUTERS/Hannah McKay

 

 In Paris, Milan and Madrid, and elsewhere student rioting has been convulsing nations throughout Europe. In the East, from Bangladesh to India, students have been demanding to be heard. Slow economic growth, higher costs of food, housing and fuel and decrepit schools have aroused the anger of students here, there and everywhere. It is not just recently that it has occurred to the youth in Europe and Asia that their parents' comfortable lifestyles in a bygone era inaccessible to them, holds out no future promise for them.

 

Centrist President Emmanuel Macron grapples with a fiery eruption of anger over budget cuts and the kind of political paralysis that has led to the appointment of seven prime ministers over a period less than a decade.  Spain's Pedro Sanchez as the furthest left European leaders yet, has announced a snap election in an effort to capitalize over housing costs protests, hoping to emerge with a majority government by smearing his conservative opposition favouring landlords while threatening to privatize pension.

 

And then there is the right-wing government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, where Italy is confronting the ire of truckers facing steep energy price rises and the general public angered by the rising cost of living and other grievances. The autumn of discontent and protests throughout Europe go well behind ideological posturing, but rise on a scaffold of a universal problem that wars in Ukraine and Iran have exacerbated, with rising energy costs impacting the cost of all consumer commodities. 

 

Anti-riot police clashed with demonstrators in Milan last weekend.Piero Cruciatti/AFP/Getty Images

 

 A recent European survey saw 52 percent of  young adults between ages 16 and 26 living with the morose expectation that their futures will be nothing like what their parents had anticipated in their day. The unrest in Spain, Italy and France, the three major countries in the European Union, with leaders from the left, right and centre which along with Germany form the political and economic pillars of the European project does not bode well for the near future.

 

Enemies in the Kremlin portray the state of crisis and the chaos it has engendered in their own preferred observations, side-skipping the fallout of economic dysfunction, but representing evidence of the imminent collapse of Western liberalism. With a generous helping of unregulated, immigration. The political campaigns of hard-right and far-left parties inclusive of Alternative for Germany, National Rally and France Unbowed in France, and in Spain, Vox have been buoyed by the prospect of opportunities they see opening before them as opponents of the incumbents.  

 

Police stand guard as students protest against underresourced schools in Paris  Thibault Camus, AP

 

"The crisis brings joy to Moscow, Washington and others who fan the flames, but its origins are global and shared by liberal democracies", stated a former French ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud. No outreach by the government authorities of those countries has succeeded in convincing the protesters that their grievances are being heard, and steps will be taken to make some of the changes they demand. That argument falls on deaf ears of protesters who have faced police brutality in efforts to stem the violent tide of insurrection.

 

Hundreds of thousands of people throng the streets of France's cities, one weekend after another, and with the lawful action of the bulk of the protests, accompanying groups with grievances of another variety hoist flags of the Palestine Territories, smash shop windows, loot stores, set fire to vehicles and shops, indulging in criminal mayhem of a more worrying hostility backed by foreign interests and interference in European affairs. All manner of ideological politicians in Europe and abroad are fixated on images of burnt-out vehicles, shattered storefronts as they face deep scrutiny for their failure in containing the disorder.

 

Protesters set trash cans on fire during clashes with police following a demonstration over Spain's housing crisis at the beginning of October.  Emilio Morenatti/AP

 

 

Typically and with fairly good reason, some among the right-wing authorities have pointed to immigration and cultural disaffection with European values and opportunities for those who migrated with expectations their numbers in dissent would usher in a different kind of opposition demanding rights and entitlements not yet earned, have been responsible for the violence and looting. Voters due to go to the polls in Spain, France, Italy and Poland where hard-right parties challenge the centrist leaders of Europe will have their say at the ballot box.

 

While Italy's Meloni subscribes to the version of blame that casts a net over immigration, Macron in France denies any such ascription. While Meloni blames "second-generation Italians" for the vandalism seen in Milan, Macron denounces such rhetoric, insisting that all France's citizens must be viewed on an equal lens of fidelity to the nation, in a cross-section of society as a whole, realities in the banlieus and periodic riots of volatile violence aside.

 

Several European nations struggle with weak growth, stagnant wages and inequalities between the rich and poor steadily expanding in a continent where the world's biggest welfare spenders govern. Following years of global crises where the pandemic and Russia's war in Ukraine have strained resources and raised costs of energy and all consumer goods from food to household items that must be delivered by truck and rail, have skyrocketed in costs.

 

"We are not living through the end of the world but the end of a world -- their world", mocked Marine LePen from her nationalist anti-immigrant platform. "Look at what's happening in other European countries. You can see clearly that the youth are rising up all over.  t is a formidable moment, and I hope we actually listen to them", noted Olivier Faure, head, centre-left Socialist Party in France. 

 

A protester holding a banner reading "we are governed by clowns" lies on the ground during a protest against skyrocketing housing costs at Rossio Square in Lisbon on Thursday.

Patricia de Melo Moriera/AFP/Getty Images

 

Trump, Excoriating U.S. 'Allies'

"You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won't n e there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us."

"Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done."

"Go get  your own oil!"

"[Paris has been] VERY UNHELPFUL]. The U.S.A. will REMEMBER!!!"

"We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us."

"All of those countries that can’t get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you: Number 1, buy from the U.S., we have plenty, and Number 2, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT”."

"I’ve long said that, you know, I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us. So … this was a great test, because we don’t need them, but they should have been there."

U.S. President Donald J. Trump

Donald Trump has also called NATO countries that do not help with the war in Iran "cowards." Evelyn Hockstein/REUTERS

 

"I hope that amid the emotions surrounding the President of the United States today, a moment of calm will come."

"And why? Because there is no NATO without the United States, and it is in our interest that this calm comes."

"But there is also no American power without NATO."

Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz 

Cargo ships in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from northern Ras al-Khaimah, near the border with Oman?s Musandam governance, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in United Arab Emirates, March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer

 

Frustration with allies  unwilling to commit themselves through the NATO military alliance in support of the U.S. conflict in Iran, has hit boiling point with President Trump who is now telling his erstwhile allies to "go get  your own oil" in respect to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran, has sent energy prices soaring. 

 

Following U.S. strikes hitting Isfahan, the central Iranian city, leading to Tehran attacking a fully loaded Kuwaiti oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, Mr. Trump's precarious patience appears to have hit its limit. A month after the start of the aerial bombardment by the U.S. and Israel, the intensity of strikes on either side has not levelled off and major disruptions have erupted to the global supply of oil and natural gas, reflected by panicked global markets.

 

Earlier, Mr. Trump  shared footage of the massive attack on Isfahan, home to one of three nuclear enrichment sites that was attacked last June by U.S. strikes, where it is suspected that much of Iran's highly enriched uranium was stored. It seems evident that no agency foretold the extent of Iran's stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, with its catastrophic results to world shipping, much less the Iranian leadership's decision to attack its neighbours' energy infrastructure.

 

The roiling of world markets and the strait-closing effect on many basic goods such as fertilizer normally shipped across the world, has had its effect on the American president who directed responsibility at the United Kingdom and France for refusing to enter a war for which no clear endgame could be deduced, a war they were never consulted on, nor an alert given that it would be forthcoming. 

 

The U.S. attack on an Iranian ammunition depot in Isfahan raises tensions and the risk of further military escalation in the region. Los Angeles Today

 

France  permitted the U.S. Air Force use of the Isteres base in southern France once it received guarantees that planes landing there would not be carrying out strikes in Iran. Europe's loudest critic of the war, Spain stated it chose to close its airspace along with its joint U.S.-Spain airbases for any planes involved in the conflict. As for Italy, an official confirmed that U.S. military assets were refused use of the Sigonella airbase in Sicily for any operation with links to the offensive in Iran. 

 

American bombers were intending to land at the Italian base prior to continuing on toward the Middle East. However, affirmed Italy's Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, Italy would still allow the US. use of its bases; no cooling of relations between the two countries has resulted over the Iran conflict.

 

The world is now on notice that should a ceasefire not be "shortly" reached and the strait reopened, the U.S. was prepared to broaden its offensive, and that would include attacking the Iranian oil export hub on Kharg Island. 

 

Luojiashan tanker sits anchored in Muscat, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Muscat, Oman, March 7, 2026. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

"We don't want to have to do more militarily than we have to."

"But I didn't mean it flippantly when I said, in the meantime, we'll negotiate with bombs."

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 

From The River To The Sea

"We are getting more and more phone calls and conversations of concerned people — if it’s Israelis who invest in Ireland and are concerned about their investment, if it’s Israelis who have relocated to Ireland into different tech companies and either are requesting to be relocated somewhere else or asking to return to Israel."

"I think it sends the wrong message about the location and the centrality of Ireland as a tech hub when there are more and more people who are concerned about moving to Ireland. I don’t think that this is the message that Ireland wants to send to the world … And this is not what we want to see."

"[Many Irish sympathize with Israel] behind the scenes. I think there is a lot of potential in our bilateral relations, if it’s cybersecurity or health care, climate change. I hope to be given that opportunity to continue that."

Israeli Ambassador to Ireland, Dana Erlich

Anti-Israel demonstrators stand outside the Israeli embassy after Ireland has announced it will recognize a Palestinian state, in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Molly Darlington

 A March poll by the Palestinian polling group elicited the data that seven in ten Palestinians approved of the October 7 sadistic barbarity that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist operatives inflicted on southern Israel's kibbutz residents. Poll results rendered the information that Palestinians in the West Bank outdid their Gaza counterparts with a greater number supporting Hamas as the duly constituted government in both territories.

Israelis, looking back in appalled anger at the carnage wrought by the Palestinian terrorist operation of October 7 are almost equal in numbers in rejecting a renewed Palestinian enclave in  Gaza. It seems that in the West, in European countries in particular, Hamas and the other Palestinian terror groups are not held in any judgement. Israel, on the other hand, is held to a standard not expected of Palestinians. When Palestinians invoking their 'refugee' status as 'victims' everlasting as long as Israel exists, commit to the goal of destroying Israel, their ongoing violence against Israel and its population is considered irrelevant.

 

Israel's responses to deadly raids, however, are viewed through the magnified lens of international demands that restraint be the order of the day, not the wholesale intention of responding militarily to the rocket barrages, and suicide missions -- and above all the October 7 sadistic savagery with its death count, determined to prevent the promise of more October 7s, until Israel is destroyed -- by taking the initiative to destroy first those whose unremitting violence against Israeli existence must be final and complete.

 

Ireland has led the way in persuading Spain and and Norway -- all three countries known to be hostile to Israel -- to formally recognize the 'State of Palestine', rather than await a final agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority government on mutual recognition and a corresponding decision on conditions both agree upon, setting standards and boundaries as well as pledges of non-hostile cooperation. Israel has been available for talks in the critical issues involved, the Palestinians have evaded them.

Choosing instead their slow and steady scheduling of the poisoning of Palestinian minds against their Jewish neighbours, inculcating in those minds the need for 'resistance' against the 'occupation'; an occupation necessitated by the urgent call to protect Israelis of all ages against lethal attacks that Palestinians are taught by their governments it is their duty to carry out to martyrdom in the greater interests of opposing Israel's presence and committing to killing Jews.

Sovereignty recognition must pass some elemental standards, not the least of which under international law a state must have fixed borders, a permanent population, uncontested government with control of its security and commitments to amiable foreign relations. In light of the most recent of the ongoing attacks against Israel and its people, to proceed at this unresolved juncture to recognize a Palestinian state that refuses to negotiate with the neighbour it threatens, to agree on boundaries and future relations is beyond premature.

Granting that status for the Palestinians is not only premature, it represents a reprehensible decision to reward savagery committed against a neighbour where 1,200 lives of Israeli citizens were extinguished on one fateful day of carnage dedicated to terrorizing, slaughtering and hostage taking. Neither Palestinians, nor now Israelis favour the two-state 'solution' the West is anxious to hasten to reality, seemingly to solve a brutal, unresolved issue of two peoples rivalling one another in a competition for territory.

 

Israelis settled for a state on a small portion of their historical ancestral land mass; Palestinians rejected outright the opportunity offered them through the Partition Plan of the United Nations in 1947. Consistently since then when war after war broke out as surrounding Arab states attempted to dislodge the Jewish State from the Middle East, Israel successfully clung to its territory, militarily defeating its enemies and frustrating Palestinian aspirations to achieve a state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean sea.

 

Which is to say, without a presence of an Israeli state, leaving the entire area to the Palestinian Arabs. That remains the goal of both Fatah (West Bank Palestinian Authority) and Hamas (Gaza Strip). Fatah and Hamas oppose one another with a hostility born of ideological differences and factional rivalry. Their only area of agreement is the destruction of the State of Israel. That part of the West that is amenable to granting State status to Palestinian aspiration is effectively agreeing that the use of violent sadism was justifiable and awaited reward.

 

Countries that would never tolerate violence against their claims to sovereignty and against their populations, appear to feel that having suffered the intolerable, Israel should merely shrug and count its losses to satisfy the demands of a global community fixated with the entitlements and inalienable rights of a Palestinian population that chooses its method of persuasion, trumping lethal violence over the negotiating table. In the process the pretense for consumption by the West, frequent appeals to victimhood. Appealing for help from the international community to bypass normal international standards to qualify for statehood.

 

Looking ahead to the eventual agreement on statehood for 'Palestine', the issue of who would govern is critical to relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Palestinians make no secret of the fact that the majority reject 88-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected to his position as President decades ago, with no election keeping him in office for the past 20 years. Their choice of governance has been stated time and again in their admiration for Hamas's agenda. 

 

Ireland, Spain and Norway would never agree to live alongside another state with destructive tendencies and an agenda that included ongoing violence against a neighbour. Yet they deem it acceptable for Israel and they prefer to force the matter by supporting a Palestinian State that is loathe to bargain in good faith with Israel, since to do so would be to forego their ambition to have free reign from "The River to the Sea" in perpetuity.

 

 

Negotiated Settlements Set Aside by Norway, Ireland, Spain

"Today, Ireland, Norway and Spain are announcing that we recognize the state of Palestine. Each of us will now undertake whatever national steps are necessary to give effect to that decision."

"There is never a wrong time to do the right thing".

"It was my government’s preferred position to recognize a two-state solution as part of a peace process to bring that about, but sadly, unfortunately, such a comprehensive peace settlement now seems, in many ways, further away than it has ever been."

"We believe you can’t say you’re in favor of a two-state solution and not recognize the very existence of two states."

Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris

From left, Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris, Spain's President Pedro Sánchez and Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre are pictured.  Getty Images/PA/Reuters

 

 

Was ever a sentence uttered that should have been corrected as 'There is never a right time to do a wrong thing'? Israel, in reacting to the tripartite statement in shock and disbelief is entirely correct in chiding these three Western democracies for their gross error in judgement, deciding between them that the 'right thing' to do is to reward terrorist groups in the Middle East for their vicious penchant to declare their intention to destroy a legally and morally constituted state on its own ancestral geography that has been challenged for possession by a group of Arab (of mostly Egyptian origin) colonizers claiming it as their own. Did the three ask themselves why it was that a negotiated settlement was further away than ever?

 

The opportunity for a two-state 'solution' was offered through the UN's partition plan, promptly and gratefully accepted by Israel, furiously rejected by those now calling themselves 'Palestinians' who preferred to wait out the intentions of surrounding Arab/Muslim countries to march on the nascent state of Israel with a view to preventing the establishment of the Jewish state. Succeeding wars failed just as the initial one did, but the Palestinian-Arab determination to wreak havoc on Israel with the ultimate aim to destroy it and murder all its population has never faded.

 

The October 7 butchery that took place in southern Israel by the terrorist groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, aided and abetted by Palestinian civilians exhibiting raw savagery in the sordid, ghoulish sadistic cruelty meted out to innocent civilians has few parallels in modern history. This declaration by Palestinians both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip who have been polled to render 85% support to Hamas terrorism and their approval of the October 7 bestiality represents the level of civilization that Spain, Norway and Ireland are prepared to recognize and legitimize with statehood.

 

Israel is dismayed, but perhaps not completely surprised by the three countries turning their backs on the only democracy in the Middle East, distinguished from all others because it is Jewish, its origins the very land it now sits upon, along with other areas the world prepared to honour and hand over to an Arab population that has no intention, ever, of living in peace with the original inhabitants of the land. In their preparation to recognize the State of Palestine, no effort has been made by Spain, Norway and Ireland to condemn the Palestinians for their aspirations to destroy Israel.

 

Nor has any overture been made to persuade the Palestinians through their leadership to turn their ambitions toward statehood infrastructure and the merits of civilized behaviour in favour of completely foregoing its lethal hostility against Israel. Needless to say, with no expectations of Palestinians curbing and abandoning their commitment to violence against Israel, the announcements of support in the form of recognition of their ambitions to form a legitimate state with no pre-conditions sits extremely well with the Palestinian leadership -- the Palestinian Authority and Gaza's Hamas rulers.

 

Envoys of the three countries were summoned by Israel in a diplomatic expression of profound disappointment in their judgement and decision-making. The European ambassadors to Israel, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said grimly, would be requested to witness video footage of the October 7 attack, to ensure they had intimate first-hand knowledge of what had transpired, through videos produced by the terrorists themselves as they rampaged through Israeli farming kibbutzim, raping and vandalizing, torturing children and women before murdering them.    

 

"[A Palestinian state is] a prerequisite for achieving peace in the Middle East."

"There will be no peace in the Middle East without a two-state solution."

"There can be no two-state solution without a Palestinian state."

Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre

 

"This recognition is not against the people of Israel and certainly not against the Jewish people."

"It’s not in favor of Hamas."

"It’s in favor of co-existence."

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez

"[Recognizing a Palestinian state would be a] reward for terror."

"This will be a terror state, which will attempt to perpetrate the onslaught of October 7 time and again, and to that we shall not agree."

"This evil must not be given a state."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

A man waves the Palestinian flag in front of the Norwegian Parliament building during a demonstration in Oslo, Oct. 28, 2023. (Frederik Ringnes/NTB via AP)

 

 

Marine Traffic Introduction to Gladis

"That traumatized orca is the one that started this behaviour of physical contact with the boat."

"[Her] critical moment of agony [made Gladis aggressive toward boats, that aggressive behaviour copied by other orcas]."

Alfredo Lopez Fernandez, biologist, University of Aveiro, Portugal

 

"At that point, we were like 'there's definitely something down there'."

"After that was when we got the first sighting of them."

"Once the main pod turned up it looked like there was a matriarch with a calf. I thought 'oh dear' when I saw them. There's not a lot you can do at that point."

"After reading reports and knowing what has been going on, I just thought we were in for a ride now."

Skipper Greg Blackburn, from Leeds

 

"The little ones shook the rudder at the back while the big one repeatedly backed up and rammed the ship with full force from the side."

"The two little orcas observed the bigger one's technique and, with a slight run-up, they too slammed into the boat."

Captain Werner Schaufelberger, Strait of Gibraltar 

Killer whales attack a sailing boat off the coast of Morocco Credit: Stephen Bidwell / SWNS

 

Ship captains have been placed on alert. There's a female orca, leader of her pack, who has a grudge. The theory is that Gladis the killer whale, has taken to leading orca gangs into conflict with yachts around Gibraltar. She now has three boats sunk in European waters to her credit. White Gladis, believes researchers, has taken a course of vengeance following a traumatic experience when she was in collision with a boat, or possibly found herself trapped in illegal fishing nets.

It has become obvious that other orcas, known to be sensitive, socially cohesive animals, are emulating Gladis's behaviour. The balance of the killer whale population has taken to copying Gladis's attack mode; they have learned how to ram vessels from their ringleader. Six of the predators slammed into the hull of the Bavaria 46 on May 2, sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar, near Tangier in Morocco.

"Heavy weather" of 25-30 knot winds and a rolling swell of two to three metres were already distracting Skipper Greg Blackburn before he realized that he had other adversaries to maritime safety to be concerned about. There were two thunderingly-loud knocks when the whales impacted his rudder. The first ram raids had been carried out by two large orcas, when another four turned up, and that's when Captain Blackburn knew of a certainty he was in trouble.

He dropped the main sail attempting to present his ship to the whales "as boring as possible", presumably to divert them and confound their attention. Eventually the whales seemed to lose interest, but before that happened they managed to cause extensive damage of thousands of dollars' worth, leaving the boat to limp back to port, another injury statistic.

 

A couple was enjoying a sailing course off the coast of Morocco when they spotted a pod approaching Credit: Greg Blackburn / SWNS

 

A pod of three orcas two days later attacked and sank a third sailboat after piercing its rudder on May 4 in the Strait of Gibraltar off the Spanish coast. A similar attack took place off the coast of Portugal last November. Spanish coast guards rescued the crew of Captain Werner Schaufelberger's vessel, but as it was being towed to shore, it sank at the port entrance of Barbate.

May 2020 marked the first reports of aggressive orcas' action off the Iberian coast. Spanish authorities banned sailing boats of over 50 feet in September of 2020 from setting sail from the country's northwestern tip aiming to protect shipping following the registration of 29 orca ram raids. Since then the assaults became increasingly frequent, according to a study published in the journal Marine Mammal Science in June of 2022.

Mostly, these attacks aim for sailing boats and follow a similar pattern where the orcas approach from the stern then hit the rudder before losing interest once the boat has been engaged and placed out of commission.

Researchers believe White Gladis, pictured, is now teaching other whales to attack yachts Credit: Grupo de trabajo Orca Atlántica

The Deadly Tradition of Bull-Running

 

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You must be 18 or older to participate in the bull run. The following actions are prohibited: 

• Crossing police barriers in place along the bull run route
• Standing in areas along the course that have been prohibited by the local police force.
• Participating in the bull run while intoxicated, while under the influence of drugs, or in any other way that is deemed to be improper.
• Carrying any objects that may interfere with the event
• Wearing inappropriate footwear or clothes 
• Provoking the bulls or intentionally drawing their attention at any point along the run route
• Running backwards or running behind the bulls
• Harassing the bulls, holding them, or barring them from running or completing the course
• Jeopardizing other runners by ceasing to run, standing on or by the fence, or stopping in doorways or by barriers.
• Taking videos or photos during the run without prior official permission

A bull in Denia, Spain, charges a participant in the running of the bulls on July 17, 2022.

Zowy Voeten via Getty Images

 

At the traditional Pamplona San Fermin running of he bulls the event takes first pize as Spain's primary bull-running festival event. No death has  taken place there in 13 years. But there are regional bull-running events staged annually, festivals beloved by locals and which attract visitors drawn to the romantic ideal of the bull-running. The Pamplona San Fermin staging was immortalized by Ernest Hemingway in his 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises". 

It's been a somewhat different story, however, in other traditional bull-run summer festivals this year, with a total of eight spectator/participant deaths. The adrenalin rushes in fearful excitement as participants take part in this show of male dominance over a powerful beast taunted and confused and reacting as any animal would in self-protection imprinted by its genetic code as survival. People who answer the call to danger tend often to believe they're invulnerable.

This year's events with three goring deaths in a single day, demonstrating the wholesale foolhardiness of strutting, capering, festival bull-runners feeling they can outrun a bull that has been exposed to a chaotic experience it cannot understand, surrounded by jeering, cheering and running people challenging it to react. And it does react in the only way feasible for such an animal. 

 

A reveller tempts a bull during a running of the bull festival in the village of Atanzon, central Spain (Bernat Armangue/AP)

 

Spanish towns ring with the shrieks of excited bull runners as bulls charge through the streets. The runners imagining themselves the featured matador, fearless, skilled, energetic and successful. Rarely imagining themselves gored, helplessly ground by a piercing horn into the ground, bleeding to death from mass trauma. There is created, across the nation accustomed to these events, festivals taking place right across the country in every tradition-respecting town and village.

Revellers on foot and on horseback run with rampaging animals. A 73-year-old French woman who regularly attended these events was gored in the chest in an eastern Spanish town. In other Valencia festivals six men were fatally gored. A week ago a steer gored a 60-year-old man to death. The numbers of bull-running participants who have been injured, some seriously, amounted to 380. And the festival season has yet another two months before it is concluded.

 

A bull roams around a square as revellers tempt him in Atanzon (Bernat Armangue/AP)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deputy President Altana Mas, of the Valencia regional government, is open to debate whether it is time to prohibit fiestas of this nature, acknowledging that current legislation is "not enough". A few villages hve taken the initiative to cancel bull-running festivals. "I hope our decision brings further into the streets the debate and leads to the end of this tradition", commented Tavernes de la Validigna Mayor Sergi Gonzales, in defiance of the festival's deep cultural roots.

 

Underwater Cave Exploration Dilemma

"In the end, I thought they wouldn't find me because Guillem couldn't get out."
"He didn't know the caves well and I was scared he would end up without air."
"We are used to being alone, but to stay in a pocket without being able to leave and nobody finding you is a diver's worst nightmare."
"[The water was] brackish, but quite sweet."
Xisco Gracia, speleologist, Spain

"I think they made the right decisions and that's why [Gracia] is still with us."
"They could have tried to stretch out the remaining oxygen [between them], but surely that would have been suicide and they would have both died."
Enrique Ballesteros, civil police underwater task force

Divers spent days looking for the man (Photo: rtve.es)

People can get lost or trapped in the most desolate, isolated places on Earth, brought there by their immense sense of curiosity, of scientific enquiry, or simply the adventure inherent in reaching those inhospitable places where nature never really intended people to inveigle themselves, and where to survive the elements and the geology represents a feat of impossible endurance. There are vast, empty deserts and impossible heights of the world's tallest mountains, underground caves that beckon spelunkers, as well as great white frozen wastes of permafrost-covered land -- and there also are underwater caves.

It was underwater caverns with their labyrinthine tunnels that the power of water on rock has etched out over the vast space of time and erosion, that motivated Professor Xisco Gracia, an experienced speleologist and his friend and diving partner Guillem Mascaro, to indulge their curiosity. These underwater caves were discovered in the 1800s, with their three kilometers of tunnels, not all of which, given their remoteness and difficulty in approaching, have been explored. An irresistible lure for a specializing scientist.

And while it is perfectly true that such resolute, enquiring minds are prepared to take great risks to fulfill their search for answers to the great mysteries of life and the natural world, none among them deliberately gamble with risks that might turn out to be inimical to the continuation of their lives. Yet this is just what happened to the pair, 40 metres underground, researching the undersea topography of the Cova de sa Piqueta in Manacor, Spain, when they were jolted by the realization that their guide wire had snapped.

A swift response to attempt to fix the guide wire took so much time that their oxygen store had been almost depleted. Insufficient oxygen to allow both men to return to the surface became their existential dilemma. Leading them to make a choice. And that decision was made by 55-year-old Dr. Gracia who urged his partner to return to the surface with the use of the remaining oxygen and he would himself await his eventual return with a rescue team. Dr. Gracia assured his friend that he would survive by remaining in a cavity in the cave that had an air pocket.

Little did they both realize at the time the decision was made that the one left behind would be stranded for fully 60 hours, unable to move from the place where some oxygen was available to  keep him alive. Without food to sustain him, Dr. Gracia drank from a thin spread of murky water. But the air that he was breathing was heavily laced with carbon dioxide, which weakened him, affected his brain, resulting in hallucinations and the loss of much of his executive function. After awhile Dr. Gracia was convinced that his diving partner hadn't reached the surface.

He had been unable to sleep since the poor air quality and extreme humidity bore heavily on him. All he could do was remain, uncomfortable and wet, in the pocket of the cave. When hypothermia threatened, Dr. Garcia clambered over nearby jagged rocks to a site close to the thin water pool which provided him with potable water. And in that place no light, only darkness prevailed. He had flashlights, using them when he had to source the water. And he resigned himself to the inevitable, that he would never be found, and there his life would end, just where he was.



Yet, his friend had not been lost, he had reached the surface and alerted authorities who prepared to mount a rescue operation by the civil police. However, rescue divers, despite being armed with precise instructions provided by Mr. Mascaro where they would find Dr. Gracia, were held back by conditions that turned the water opaque, making vision extremely difficult; if they were unable to see where they were swimming they placed themselves in a situation where they would themselves become lost inside the labyrinth of tunnels.

A few days later they managed to reach the cave and thought they knew where Dr. Gracia was.

They drilled into the cave wall hoping to deliver oxygen and food to Dr. Gracia, before discovering they hadn't found him after all. But from the cavity where Dr. Garcia was located, he felt he could hear faint sounds and that raised his expectations and his hope for rescue. The sounds stopped echoing through the cave walls when the divers realized they were not in the right place for a rescue, leaving Dr. Garcia deflated and resigned, that if a search had been underway, it had also been called off and he was now, once again, and finally, on his own.

Visibility improved, however, and the 60 people and more that comprised the rescue team waited another 15 hours, then set out again. Two divers finally discovered where Dr. Gracia was -- locating him 900 metres from the entrance of the cave.To return to the surface Dr. Gracia had no option but to swim for an hour and a half, through his exhaustion, but the canister oxygen the rescuers had brought along had the effect of "charging the batteries", enabling him to forge ahead.

The video that the civil police took shows the rescue team pulling Dr. Gracia from the depths of the cave he was trapped in, back to the surface. At that point, the rescued man was able to walk independently on his own two feet around midnight, when the surface had been reached. A short hospital stay ensued, during which Dr. Gracia's condition was diagnosed as fit and well recovered from his ordeal.

Xisco Gracia was rescued (Photo: Twitter/@112IllesBalears)

Proto Human Emotions

"Murder is an ancient feature of humanity."
"Other humans went to the top of this vertical shaft and deposited dead members of their social group down into the site, and in this way formed a kind of primitive cemetery or kind of an early manifestation of funerary practices."
"Clearly this is an intentional human disposal of the dead."
Rolf Quam, Binghamton University, New York

"Unfortunately, the intentions do not fossilize, so it is impossible to interpret the motivation of the killing."
"Not even Sherlock Holmes could help us in that."
Nohemi Sala, Archaeological study, lead author

An early Neanderthal skull uncovered from the Sima de los Huesos cave. Seventeen skulls have been discovered there. Photograph by Javier Trueba, Madrid Scientific Films

Proto human communities existed almost half a million years ago, according to archaeological paleontologists. A study published in the journal PLOS One reveals that scientists have hypothesized the reason for the presence of one fractured skull among at least 28 others whose skulls have been found intact. The remains of early proto human species , lying in a mass grave known as the Pit of Bones have brought a mystery to scientists who have deciphered that mystery as a murder.

The Pit of Bones or as it is called, the Sima de los Heusos pit, since it is located in Spain, is a deep depression over fourteen meters below a surface shaft. Under which a layer of dirt exists and it is replete with cave bear bones. But the pit also contains a collection of human fossils, In fact, 6,500 bones representing 28 individual bodies' skeletal structures of ancient remains have been discovered through excavating the pit since 1976.


Fragments of one fractured skull found alongside the remains of 27 others northern Spain have been interpreted through reconstruction as having resulted from a primitive murder. The violence done to the skull has convinced the examining scientists that the holes in the forehead of this skull represent a deliberate murder, given the shape, size and location of the holes. A face-to-face conflict, they theorize, was responsible for the head-on trauma leading to immediate death.

That the fractures indicate no signs that healing took place before death indicates to the scientists that death occurred immediately; no healing process of recovery from the injuries sustained took place. Judging from the location and the size of the holes scientists theorize a single instrument was used to strike the victim twice, in a face-to-face conflict that represented a deadly, frontal attack.

The bone pit remains are not those of modern humans, but members of Homo heidelbergensis, who were the first to live in colder climates, and routinely hunted large animals, and were able to alter their environment by building shelters. The existence of the Pit of Bones also suggests that they cared for their dead. The 28 skeletons discovered in the pit appear to indicate their placement was intentional.

Paleontologists unearth fossils at the Spanish cave site. Photograph by Javier Trueba, Madrid Scientific Films

The pit, on the evidence, represents the oldest evidence of ritual burial. Leaving the impression that those early humans mourned the death of those they cared for. An emotion of sorrow that lies deep in the emotional psyche of present-day humans representing the attachments of love and concern. Emotions that are generally shared by all humans, along with the emotions of hatred, suspicion and rage leading to violence.

What was once representative of an emerging species given to reacting to their genetic inheritance of emotions motivating them to preserve their genetic code through procreation and caring, is also representative of the species that since evolved, carrying with it down through endless time those other all-too-human emotions related to territoriality and advantaging survival of the fittest, advancing evolutionary traits not much different from those of our predecessors.

Marcos Rodriguez Pantoja: Did this man live with wolves?

By Laura Plitt BBC Mundo, Spain

Stories abound of humans brought up by wild animals, but often they are pure fiction. It's rare to find someone who re-entered society after living in the company of animals and is able to talk cogently about his experiences - including, apparently, sharing food with a family of wolves.

The first time Marcos Rodriguez Pantoja sat in front of a bowl of soup, he didn't know what to do. He looked carefully, cupped his hand and plunged it into the bowl. The contact with the boiling liquid made him jump and the plate ended up in little pieces on the floor.

It was 1965 and he was 19, but he hadn't sat down at a table to eat since he was a small child. He had been living for up to 12 years alone in the mountains with only wolves, goats, snakes and other animals for company.

When he was little - about six or seven, he estimates - his father sold him to a farmer, who took him to the Sierra Morena mountains, to help out an ageing goatherd.

Born to be wild

• Rochom P'ngieng (pictured): Found naked and walking on all fours in north-east Cambodia in 2007 - thought to have spent 18 years in jungle
• John Ssebunya: Lived from the age of two in Ugandan jungle and is said to have been brought up by monkeys - was found in 1991, aged 14
• Vicente Cau Cau: Found in southern Chile in 1948, when he was about 10 years old - believed to have lived among pumas
• Victor of Aveyron: Found in France in 1799 - Dr Jean Marc Gaspard Itard failed to teach him to speak, as seen in the 1970 film, L'Enfant Sauvage

Soon the old man died and Marcos was left alone.

Having suffered years of beatings from his stepmother, he preferred the solitude of the mountains to the thought of human company, and made no attempt to leave.

What little the goatherd had taught him before he died was enough for him not to go hungry. He learned to hunt rabbits and partridges with traps made of sticks and leaves.

"The animals guided me as to what to eat. Whatever they ate, I ate," he says. "The wild boars ate tubers buried under the soil. They found them because they smelled them. When they were digging the soil looking for them, I threw a stone at them - they would run away and then I would steal the tubers."

Marcos says he established a special bond with some animals. Many will find it hard to believe this story, about his relationship with a family of wolves:
"One day I went into a cave and started to play with wolf cubs that lived there and I fell asleep. Later, the mother brought food for them and I woke up.
"She saw me and looked fiercely at me. The wolf started to rip the meat apart. A cub got close to me and I tried to steal his food, because I was hungry as well. The mother pawed at me. I backed off.

"After feeding her pups she threw me a piece of meat. I didn't want to touch it because I thought she was going to attack me, but she was pushing the meat with her nose. I took it, ate it, and thought she was going to bite me, but she put her tongue out, and started to lick me. After that, I was one of the family."

Marcos also says he had a snake as a companion.
"She lived with me in a cave that was part of an abandoned mine. I made a nest for her and gave her milk from the goats. She followed me everywhere and protected me," he says.

These relationships kept loneliness at bay, Marcos says. He was only lonely when he could not hear animals - and in such cases he would imitate their call. He can still reproduce the sound of the deer, the fox, the aguililla (booted eagle) and other animals.

"Once they answered, I would be able to sleep because I knew they hadn't abandoned me," he says.

Marcos was 19 years old when Spanish police found him

Bit by bit, sounds and growls replaced words. Marcos stopped speaking - until, one day, he was found by the Guardia Civil, and taken by force to the small village of Fuencaliente, at the foot of the mountains.

 

His father was brought to identify him.

"I felt nothing when I saw him," Marcos says.
"He only asked me one thing: 'Where is your jacket?' As if I would still be wearing the jacket I had when I left!"

Marcos is a great talker, a storyteller who knows exactly when to pause, when to make a noise, or hiss, to increase the dramatic tension of his tale.

But how true is it? Can men and wolves actually be "friends" or snakes "faithful guardians"?

"What happens is that Marcos does not tell us what happened, but what he believes happened," says Gabriel Janer Manila, Spanish writer and anthropologist at the University of the Balearic Islands, who wrote his thesis on Marcos's case, and 30 years later published a novel about his life.

 

"But that's what we all do - to present our take on the facts," he says.

"When Marcos sees a snake and gives her milk, and then the snake comes back, he says she's his friend. The snake is not his 'friend'. She is following him because he gives her milk. He says, 'She protects me' because that is what he believes has happened."

This way of interpreting the facts, his imagination and intelligence was what enabled him to survive in the solitude of the mountains, says Janer Manila.

It was thanks to Janer Manila that Marcos's story became widely known.
He listened to Marcos and filmed him 10 years after he had returned from the mountains.
"My first impression was one of amazement. He was a nice young man wanting to communicate with people, despite his limitations," Janer Manila recalls.

Is it possible to recover?

Gabriel Janer Manila, anthropologist: "Marcos broke his link with society at a crucial time. A child needs to receive the necessary stimulus to grow up in all senses: in intelligence, affectivity, imagination… Marcos couldn't receive them and that's why some aspects of his personality are blocked, because of marginalisation. He could have relationships that are more or less pleasant, he can be more or less happy, but he will never recover."

Hector Rifa Burrull, psychologist, Oviedo University, Spain, who treated the feral child of Cambodia: "It depends on what were his needs and at what time he had suffered them. There is no set of instructions for recovery; in any case, what is needed is to promote communication and mutual empathy. These are the preconditions for any learning process, and this objective requires a lot of time and specialised dedication."

"But at first, when I heard it, I did not believe him. I thought, 'It cannot be.' But the story was so consistent and so well told, and also, every time I asked him about it he would tell me the story using the same words. So I said to myself, I will have to check all this."

Janer Manila travelled to the places he had named and talked to the people he had mentioned.
Some people corroborated parts of the story.

"I talked to people who had engaged with him when he was found, with people who welcomed him in their homes, with the employee who bathed him for the first time, with a seminarian who took care of him... All these people highlighted his wild character, his ignorance of the social world and his inability to follow the rules of a game. The account matched what Marcos had told me," says Janer Manila.

"And when I saw him telling his story later," he says in reference to the interviews Marcos gave after the 2010 premiere of a film inspired by his life, "it hadn't changed."

Marcos describes his return to society as the scariest moment in his life.
"I didn't know where to go; I just wanted to escape to the mountains," he says.

Everything was traumatic, from his first visit to the barbershop - when he thought the barber would cut his throat with his razor - to the fights he had with nuns in Madrid, who tried to make him sleep in a bed.

"A trooper... was passing along the bank of the river, near Chandour, about noon, when he saw a large female wolf leave her den, followed by three whelps and a little boy," begins one of Sleeman's six cases.

"The boy went on all fours, and seemed to be on the best possible terms with the old dam and the three whelps, and the mother seemed to guard all four with equal care."

But Sleeman portrays wolf children as "dumb, savage, filthy and wretched," says Dr Daniel Karlin in his introduction to The Jungle Books (Penguin, 1987). Kipling made Mowgli the exact opposite.

This habit took him a long time to acquire. 

"Once he rented a small apartment and he showed it to me," says Janer Manila. "The bedroom had no bed or furniture, there were blankets all over the floor along with lots of wrinkled sheets of magazine and newspapers, as if there had been an animal there. When I saw that, I asked him if he wouldn't be better sleeping in a bed? And he said: 'No.'"

What most disturbed Marcos most of all was the noise and the hustle and bustle of human communities.

"I could not cope with so much noise… the cars… and people going back and forwards like ants. But at least ants all go in the same direction! People went everywhere! I was scared of crossing the road!" he says.

The nuns of Madrid taught him some lessons.
"They taught me to eat properly and they put a piece of wood in my back to help me walk straight because I was all crooked from walking in the mountains," he says. Also, he remembers, they put him in a wheelchair for a while, because he couldn't walk after they cut all the calluses on his feet.

What followed was a journey from one job to another, and a brief stint in the military.
People regularly took advantage of Marcos's naivety, and he ended up living in miserable conditions in Malaga, until a chance encounter with a retired police officer, who invited him to live in Rante, a small village near Orense in Spain's north-western region of Galicia.

Inside Marcos's home

 

Now in his late 60s, Marcos bears few grudges, but he does wonder why, after forcing him to come down from the mountains, the state didn't prepare him properly for life in society.

"When I got out of there, the first thing they should have done is send me to a school, teach me to talk and how to behave in the world," he says. "What was the point of making me first do communion and military service? So I could learn to shoot and kill people?" he asks, with a rare note of anger in his voice.

In Rante, where Marcos has been living for about 15 years, everyone knows him and treats him with respect.

Listen to Marcos Rodriguez Pantoja speak to Outlook on the BBC World Service

His home is a small house, with slightly cave-like low ceilings, packed with memorabilia - photos of his moments of fame, drawings and a curious collection of cigarette lighters. The tiny patio is full of flowers and plants. 

In the corner of the room there is a piano and a guitar. Marcos learned how to play them by ear and he doesn't play badly at all.

He tells me he had a few girlfriends in the past, but nowadays he is single. He has many friends, though, and people who love him and help him.

He no longer works. He gets a half-pension for an injury he sustained while working on a building site - but whenever he can, he lends a hand at Rante's only bar.

"Marcos is a very good person, a bit childish but a very nice guy. He is always here," says Maite, the owner.

Does he ever contemplate returning to the Sierra Morena?

Marcos entertains his neighbours in the Galician village of Rante

 

"I thought about it many times. But I'm used to this life now and there are so many things that I didn't have there, like music for instance, or women. Women are one good reason to stay here," he says.
"Now I am accustomed to it, I'll remain where I am."

Marcos's story is the subject of a documentary by Spanish director Gerardo Olivares, whose film Among Wolves (Entrelobos) was premiered in 2010. He is planning to release it commercially next year.

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