By Paul Gessell
Citizen staff writer
THE OTTAWA CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, March 27, 1996
You can read some of Spanish Ambassaador José Luis Pardos's thoughts on page A2. All his comments are on the Spanish Embassy's Internet home page: (http://www.DocuWeb.ca/SiSpain/)
Spanish Ambassador José Luis Pérez has posted on the Internet a vitriolic, sarcastic and humorous package of diaries, policy statements and propaganda that disparages the actions of Brian Tobin and Canada in last year's turbot war.
These tales of anger, intrigue, threats of military action and back-room lobbying are written in extraordinarily undiplomatic language. They can be found in English on Sí, Spain, the Spanish embassy's home page.
"I couldn't refrain from saying it", Pardos says with a theatrical flourish. "I expected Brian Tobin to call one day and shout, but he never did".
Pardos is a self-confessed Internet "addict" who starts browsing his E-mail on a home computer at 7 a.m. Eighteen hours later, at 1 a.m., his wife is pleading with him to stop playing with Windows 95, turn off his Compaq computer and come to bed in their official residence in Rockcliffe Park.
It is from a tiny second floor office that once was the tea-room of the former owners, the Southam family, that Pardos has been pounding out Internet rhetoric he says has been read by 700.000 people around the world during the past year.
That's just one side of Pardos. There are many others. He is an author whose books champion various human rights and environmental causes.
He is the national capital resident who has worked diligently to draw attention to the Rockcliffe Park wonders -including his own home- of architect Allen Keefer.
He is the "frustrated professor" who has been helping Third World embassies get on line. In sum, he is one of the most unusual creatures to hit Ottawa's diplomatic rows in years. After a four-year posting here, he will return to Spain next week and tearfully bid adios to his cross-country ski jaunts with the Austrian ambassador next door.
Pardos is a multilingual whirlwind in person and a demon on the Internet, where he employs a dramatic, inventive and sometimes ungrammatical vocabulary to chronicle Canadian attempts to stop Spanish overfishing: Brian Tobin was "impertinent" and "tactless"; Canadian diplomats were "useless"; the Canadian public was "manipulated".
There are frequent forays into cyberspace to criticize or belittle Tobin, who was federal fisheries minister during the turbot war, became a national hero nicknamed Captain Canada for staring down Spain, and has since replaced Wells as Newfoundland premier.
The ambassador, for example, coined words such as "Tobinescal" and "Show-bin" to make snide commments about Tobin and the Canadian government staging publicity stunts to hoodwink Canadians and to foment anti-Spanish sentiment.
In person, Pardos dismisses most questions about the turbot war as old news. He does drop hints that he has little use for André Ouellet, then Canada's foreign affairs minister; says he would love to meet Tobin now; and praises "the Royal Canadian Navy and the Spanish Armada" for practising restraint, even as the countries were basically aiming cannons at each other.
But on this day, as he contemplates his legacy in Ottawa, Pardos is more interested in showing off Spain's new embassy across the Rideau River from Ottawa City Hall than in talking about those "very tense days".
Looking through a window of his new embassy, Pardos points to the mayor's office and quips: "I can wave to Jacquie Holzman". And then he does.
Woven throughout his thousands of Internet words is the recurring theme that the Canadian government had a peculiar fetish for orchestrating mischievous manoeuvres in the turbot war either on Fridays or to coincide with religious festivals in Roman Catholic Spain.
"There is always an important Spanish date behind every Canadian move", says a diary entry for June 23, 1995. On that day, "the eve of the patron saint day of the King of Spain", Tobin's office made claims of yet another example of Spanish overfishing on the tail of the Grand Banks.
Some of the most interesting Internet material concerns plans to display the "alleged" net from the Spanish fishing vessel, the Estai, at the Central Canada Exhibition last August.
This is the same "alleged" net Tobin had earlier shipped too New York to show news organizations from around the world that Spain was using illegal-sized nets to catch immature turbot east of Newfoundland.
The federal Fisheries Department said it wanted to display the net at the Ex as part of a pro-conservation show.
Pardos, upon hearing the news of the "New-Net-Show-bin", went ballistic, believing this was simply a move to heighten Tobin's "politically near-sighted glory".
Pardos immediately requested two meetings: One with Ouellet and another with Jim Bartleman, the Privy Council's assistant secretary to the cabinet for foreign and defence policy.
This is the same Bartleman "who had kindly warned me on Good Friday afternoon to be ready for Canadian military action against my fishermen and the two Spanish Armada patrol vessels, the Atalaya and the Centinela, who were protecting them in the area from the constant harassment and dangerous behavior of the Canadian Coast Guard's vessels, planes and helicopters".
Pardos had meetings on Aug. 11 with Bartleman and someone from the Foreign Affairs Department identified only as Mr. Dubois -presumably Paul Dubois, director general of the western Europe bureau.
"I was very firm while they were utterly bureaucratic and useless", Pardos says. "As a last resort, I decided to set in motion, hoping it would work, the so-called hotline for emergencies".
This was a procedure to link Gordon Smith, Canada's deputy foreign affairs minister, and his Spanish counterpart, Javier Conde, by telephone. This was no easy task, because Conde was vacationing at a Malaysian beach and Smith "!was completely isolated in the forest".
The call was finally arranged, but all for nothing.
Pardos then turned to Jean Pelletier, Jean Chrétien's chief of staff. At last, Pardos seems to have found a kindred sipirit. His meeting with Pelletier, a true "caballero", was "frank, expeditious and clarly coherent".
The net was ordered removed, and removed it was, although not before a few more "very painful, distressing and bitter" telephone conversations with the person put in charge of the task -"a nervous Mr. Bartleman".
Pardos will be replaced in April by Spanish diplomat Fernando Valenzuela. Pardos is confident he is handing his successor a country where all "the bitterness and hate" towards Spain has ended.
Internet musings from the undiplomatic diplomat on the Spanish embassy's home page (http:/www.DocuWeb.ca/SiSpain/).
Upon learning the illegally sized net from the Spanish vessel, the Estai, was about to be displayed at the Central Canada Exhibition:
"The venue was a summmer camp of some sort: The 1995 Central Canada Exhibition in Ottawa, chosen by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and God knows who else to manipulate once again the average Canadian citizen -the event attracts, some 600.000 visitors - into thinking that the aim was conservation; this time to renew a dispute which only benefited Brian Tobin himself in his ambition to preserve and progress in his politically nearsighted glory! "
On officials from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans:
"To make a long story short, we must never forget that with Canadian experts, especially from DFO, you never know which stage of the operation you are at: Negotiations, conversations, intonations or perhaps declarations toward total confusion or 'chaostion' ".
Assessing an Easter weekend news conference by Brian Tobin:
"Easter Saturday night, at 7 p.m., the Hon. Mr. Tobin produces his Pascal Vigil conference amidst a big paraphernalia of trophies, numerous graphical charts and a great emotional need for drinking water while thanking the men and women who intervened in this epopee (epic)".
On the ambassador's first encounter with Brian Tobin:
"Hearing for the first time his plain and impertinent language, the ambassador of Spain pressed the Hon. Mr. Tobin to produce the evidence of the many unfounded accusations against his fishermen".
On the disappearance of cod around Newfoundland (and with no apology for paraphrasing Brian Tobin):
"What a pity, indeed, that, contrary to some little turbot of our acquaintance, they did not have finger tips to cling to the sea bottom, waiting for a hero to save them at the 11th hour ".