Corruption - or just "the way we do things here"?

There are a a couple of things that can be said about this latest reeking, venal scandal in Catalonia.*

The man at the heart of it,  Jordi Pujol is a hero to many people here as he largely seen as the main person responsible for Catalonia's post-Franco autonomous powers.

His son has allegedly been laundering his family's allegedly dirty money from an alleged trunk of an alleged car to an also-alleged bank in Andorra (which is a vile, ultra-consumerist ski-resort city in a tiny principality where people like to drive their big black cars too fast through narrow roads.)

This part of the world (still) has a lot going for it but institutional honesty is obviously not one of the strong points.

Cheating on your income tax and using the "black" or cash-economy is largely the done thing. In my experience, cheating, in whatever form, is thought to be the clever thing to do.

Children do it from a very young age and at a local (wealthy) private school where I used to work, it was completely standard to cheat in tests and teachers knew about it and did not punish it.

The family is probably the most important single unit in Mediterranean Europe, so favouring a brother, son or cousin is entirely normal.

It is not just those at the top of the political pyramid who do this. It is a practise that is as ordinary as drinking a glass of wine here. Having connections is called "enchufe" - literally, 'plugged-in.

It is difficult living here without some kinds of connections to help you advance your lot, so the common-place act is the one that scratches a friends back when they will also soon scratch yours.

The latest cases of corruption are logical but extreme, grotesque extensions of some basic dishonesty.

An edited version of the above text was first published under the same title at the World Voices blog.

[*I strongly suggest reading one of the comments from 'reload' under the original article for an insightful explanation about the surprising use of 500 Euro notes.]