Don Rafael Castellan-Varro addressed an assembly of Nationalist Party members on Friday evening in the hall off Plaça del Rei, and the address was shorter and plainer than his supporters had been led to expect. "Citizens of Almaria," he began. "Monday's vote is not a procedural matter. It is a question of whether this Kingdom still knows how to govern itself."

The speech braided three threads the Nationalist leader has been drawing together for a fortnight: the hantavirus cluster at berth seven, the corridor surcharges, and what Don Rafael called, in a separate op-ed circulated the same evening, "discipline in the face of plague and turmoil." He did not name the Prime Minister. He did not need to.

His party's line on the Fuel Stabilisation Reserve remains one of conditional support, pending the Sunday sanitation report — a position indistinguishable, in its procedural effect, from the Proprietor's bulletin to the Chamber of Commerce, though the two men would dispute the comparison. The Opposition Leader, for his part, has taken a louder and less patient road, of which this edition carries a separate account.

The Nationalist hall emptied without incident shortly after ten. The Cardenal's Sunday intercessions, which will name the Poniente contacts, the Llevant four, the eleven of the Passeig and the three correspondents, were noted in the closing remarks.