{"id":14486,"date":"2015-01-06T20:25:15","date_gmt":"2015-01-07T03:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=14486"},"modified":"2015-01-06T20:25:15","modified_gmt":"2015-01-07T03:25:15","slug":"coups-and-not-coups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2015\/01\/06\/coups-and-not-coups\/","title":{"rendered":"coups and not coups"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contrived Political Theater in Spain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wearing a top hat and surrounded by supporters mostly dressed in outlandish military uniforms, Vicente Candela stormed the town hall here briefly last month and proclaimed himself mayor of Ibi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 24,000 residents.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was, Mr. Candela said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a coup d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00c3\u00a9tat with humoristic violence,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d over in about eight hours. He then handed power back to Ibi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s official mayor, while street cleaners removed the debris of a pitched battle between Mr. Candela\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rebels and his opponents, during which they pelted each other with flour and rotten eggs, amid the deafening noise of firecrackers.<\/em><\/p>\n

This day of playful, ritualistic political upheaval is held in Ibi every Dec. 28, and traces its origins back as far as the role reversal in the Roman Empire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s festival of Saturnalia, when masters provided table service for their servants, according to Jos\u00c3\u00a9 Vicente Verd\u00c3\u00ba, a lawyer who has researched Ibi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s history.<\/em><\/p>\n

But in modern Spain, the satire has been imbued with outsize significance as scores of corruption scandals have forced the ouster of several mayors and helped plunge support for Spain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mainstream parties to record lows.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wear funny hats and take over for a day to “release steam”.<\/p>\n

Then again<\/a>… Not funny hats (totally conducive to the culture of the country) and not “release steam”…<\/p>\n

US prosecutors have charged two men with conspiring to overthrow the government of Gambia, in the latest fallout from last week’s failed coup attempt in the small West African nation.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of these days, that mock coup celebration will take hold for real, the beleagured leaders just deciding “Screw it”, and letting the guys in funny hats and egg yolks have it all.\u00c2\u00a0 Then what the rabble do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contrived Political Theater in Spain. Wearing a top hat and surrounded by supporters mostly dressed in outlandish military uniforms, Vicente Candela stormed the town hall here briefly last month and proclaimed himself mayor of Ibi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 24,000 residents. It was, Mr. Candela said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a coup d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00c3\u00a9tat with humoristic violence,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d over in about eight hours. He then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14487,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14486\/revisions\/14487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}