The confirmation of the hantavirus cluster aboard the Estrella de Llevant has, predictably, produced a contest of registers. From the steps, Renko charged the Crown Ministry with quarantining not only a ship but the truth, and demanded the immediate publication of the Port Sanitation Council's interim findings. From the proprietorial desk of this newspaper, Don Cordoba issued a statement of his own, declaring that 'panic costs lives' and that 'paralysis costs them too,' and calling for clear, enforced protocols without delay.

Readers are entitled to know that the Herald's proprietor spoke on a matter on which the Herald reports. The statement is printed in full on page four. Its substance — that the Ministry must act, and quickly — is not a contested proposition in the capital this morning; it is the common ground on which every serious party now stands.

Don Rafael, from the Grand Hall of the Cortes, used the occasion to remind the Chamber of the discipline he has pressed for since Monday. Ferran Ferré, writing in La Veu del Mig, chose the register of suspicion and applied it to the berth, the Ministry, and the Herald by implication. Each man wrote the column his constituency expected.

What the capital will want to know by Monday is narrower and more practical: how many of Tuesday's disembarked passengers have been reached, how the Clínica's four are faring, and whether the Council's preliminary report arrives before the fuel vote, or after it.