In Spanish we call it vergüenza ajena. Dutch speakers have the impossible term plaatsvervangende schaamte for the same concept. In English I have heard people call it "Spanish shame", but I have never heard it in real English conversations. In any case: that is what I felt when I read the Venezuelan ambassador to Spain, Julián Isaías Rodríguez, had written a poem to celebrate Spain's victory in the Football World Cup. Rodríguez was a supporter of coupster Chávez from early on. He worked as Venezuela's Attorney General from 2000 to 2007 and during that time he was more like the main Attorney Chavista than anything else, as the only thing he did was to defend the interests of boliburgueses. As a prize, he got the embassy of Venezuela in Spain. He somehow pretends to be a poet: some of the texts he has written "denouncing" visits of the regime's critics to Spain can be read at the embassy's site. He is a Llanos man, as most of the big Chavista honchos.
You can read the new "poem" on the first page of the consulate in Madrid site. He sent that poem to the king of Spain as well as to Rodríguez Zapatero and other Spanish figures. The poem is simply bad, pathetic, the kind of poems I used to write when I was ten, the kind of poems I was ashamed of when I was eleven. Mind: even the president of Europe, Van Rompuy, writes haikus these days, but he is neither uploading them to the EU site nor making the sort of very basic spelling errors Rodríguez makes. If at least the ambassador had asked someone to correct those errors - they are not artist's license -, it would not be so disgraceful. Spanish is supposed to be the ambassador's mother tongue!
I would not be so annoyed if at least the Chavista regime would count the votes of Venezuelans abroad. Even if Venezuelans abroad have taken part in several elections and referendums, the regime decided after 2006 NOT TO PUBLISH THOSE RESULTS. They prefer to say, as minister Maduro, that over half of Venezuelans registered to vote abroad actually signed a petition in support of Chávez's proposals, which is a lie. They prefer also to write bad poems in bad Spanish.
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