Urse, cave regem

(El título de la entrada, concretamente la última palabra, es totalmente inexacto, pero como suena bien y el latín no es una lengua muy popular últimamente, lo he dejado. Prometo que no volverá a pasar)

Lo tenemos aquí de nuevo, sí, señor. Ya sabéis que el criminal siempre vuelve al lugar del delito, y algo así podría decirse de Juanca, Jefe del Estado, que le ha tomado cariño a esta tierra (que encierra tanto petróleo, otra de sus aficiones) que periódicamente vuelve a ella. Lo que es evidente es que se lo pasa bien y, si no, véase la carita que le pone en la foto a su entonces colega y Jefe del Estado ruso. Entretanto, su colega ha sido, digamos, degradado un poquito, lo justo, y su lugar lo ocupa Dmitry Medvedev ¿A que alguno ya ha intentado traducir al castellano el nombre del nuevo presidente ruso? ¿No? Pues la traducción, que además queda bien, es algo así como "Demetrio de los Osos".

Ese apellido, y su encuentro con Juanca, pone al nuevo presidente ruso en gran peligro. Y, si no, recordemos las hazañas de Juanca en su última visita por aquí. Veamos lo que publicó el panfletillo anglófono local en aquel entonces, en octubre de 2006, un par de meses tras la visita veraniega de Su Excelencia.

Spanish King Caught in Bear Trap
By Kevin O'Flynn
Staff Writer

When the king of Spain went on a recent hunting trip to Russia, he expected wild bear, but instead, a local official says, he faced off with a drunk, tame, wooly beast named Mitrofan.

King Juan Carlos I now finds himself embroiled in a mini-scandal stemming from an August visit he paid to the Vologda region.

While the king issued a statement Thursday denying that he shot any intoxicated ursines, the tempest appears to be gaining momentum.

At the heart of the scandal is this question: Did local authorities provide the 68-year-old Spanish monarch with a bear that had been plied with honey-laced vodka?

To get to the bottom of these questions, Vologda's governor announced Thursday the formation of a working group to investigate.

The investigation -- and the whole hullabaloo surrounding the Spanish king and the drunk bear -- was prompted by a Tuesday letter sent by Sergei Starostin, a regional official who oversees hunting, to the governor alerting, him to the incident.

"The party sacrificed a good-humored and jolly bear called Mitrofan," Starostin wrote in his letter. After getting Mitrofan intoxicated, Starostin said, the hunting party "pushed him out into the field. Quite naturally, the massive drunken animal became an easy target. His Majesty Juan Carlos killed Mitrofan with one shot."

Starostin fingered deputy governor Alexander Gromov as one of the organizers of the hunt. A regional government spokesman said Gromov was on vacation Thursday and could not be reached for comment. The regional prosecutor's office refused to comment.

"We have our own traditions. Hunting should be real," Starostin said in an interview Thursday. Starostin said he did not believe the king had been aware Mitrofan was drunk at the time of the incident. He noted one of the king's daughters had separately shot a wild -- and sober -- bear on the same trip.

The Vologda stop had followed a visit the king and his family had paid to President Vladimir Putin's Sochi residence. It was not the king's first trip to Vologda: He had gone hunting there in 1992.

"Real hunters would never do this," said Alexander Vaisman of the World Wildlife Fund. Vaisman said he'd heard of such things, "but it was New Russians, not the King of Spain."

He added that he found it hard to believe that any hunting lodge that would include the King of Spain as its guest would stoop so low. "It's like a five-star hotel inviting a prostitute in from the street," he said.

Vista, pues, la afición de Juanca por la caza mayor en general, y los osos en particular, más vale que el presidente local, con ese apellido tan claro, se guarde las espaldas. Si no, luego, todo son líos.