UPDATE: It was all a wacky misunderstanding.
An explanation is in order. What we have is Gabriel Calzada, a critic of the Spanish push for green energy, receiving a suspicious package in the mail. From the Google Translation of the original Spanish article:
On Wednesday 16 June, received a package at the Instituto Juan de Mariana addressed to its president, Gabriel Calzada, ABC News columnist. Nothing made him think the recipient could be something that could be interpreted as a threat in the form of homemade device removed. But as the shipment was not expected from the think tank, decided to contact the sender by telephone. At the other end, an employee of Thermotechnic, a company Navarre solar sector, he knew immediately what it meant and said package without doubt a second that this “is our response to the articles on Mr. Calzada energy expansion.”
The square shape of the package did not think could be a document so Calzada, in consultation with counsel for the Institute, decided to pass through a scanner before opening. The package was closed until Tuesday 22, the day he used his weekly collaboration Calzada contertulio the program as Cesar Vidal Cesar is the Night of EsRadio, to ask the security company if they could scan the package.
Private security officer recommended not to open it after checking that there were two metal objects are difficult to interpret. Sought help from a more experienced person who, after a brief viewing of the screen of the scanner, thought he knew what it was and proceeded to open it carefully under the watchful eye of security guard, Lorenzo Ramirez (Editor of Liberty Digital) Gabriel Calzada himself. In the box came a fuel filter and a piece of thread that could be adapted to the filter.
“The four of us and we look the same,” says Gabriel Calzada, “was a threat was summed up that if I kept giving my opinion on energy issues in the media, the next time could be expected that the pieces were assembled and me exploded. ”
The security expert confirmed what they thought and told them that was not the first time I saw something like that. For several years he worked in the Basque country giving personal protection to various people and had already attended such shipments, “Beware of Gabriel, this time he is sent as a warning, next time you can find a package that explodes when opened” .
This is the basis of the original article I did a one sentence pass linking back to. Since then, another blog has spent an awful lot of electrons calling this story and the blog reaction a hoax. And since the guy bothered to call me out specifically on his wall o’ shame because I spent a sentence linking back to the story, I thought I’d man up and see from whence comes the hubub. Now the above is pretty clear in that Mr. Calzada claims to have received a weird package that could have been interpreted as a threat. Over at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, they point us to the second half of this story.
Digital Freedom has been able to talk to Pedro Gil, president of Termotechnic, who has denied any connection with the shipment received by Gabriel Calzada, President of the Instituto Juan de Mariana (IJM). In his own words, “this has to be a mistake.”
The employer has secured Navarre only thing that had been sent to Calzada was a report on renewable energy. The problem is that what was the writer of Liberty Digital was a package full of loose metal parts without any explanatory note. When she called the company and ask what it meant that he had received the package replied that it was “a response to its report on renewables.”
At that time, Calzada interpreted the incident as a threat, something that Gil says he’s never been his intention, because he never raised to send something to Calzada. That would explain the response he got on the phone: the person who answered the call of IJM thought he asked for a simple study.
Thus, there are two versions for what happened: either there was a string of unfortunate mistakes by the courier company or a change made by someone who would like to spend a dirty trick on Calzada at the expense of this company.
In this sense, the president of the Instituto Juan de Mariana has confirmed he has spoken to Pedro Gil and it has given his word that there was no negative intent by the company. Gil Calzada has been forwarded to concerned about the inconvenience we may have caused, because he understands the confusion that the receiver of the shipment when he saw what was its content.
This is it, as far as I know. And what I’ve seen on the blogs has been a contest about who can assign the most bad faith to one of the involved parties, when it frankly seems that the most likely explanation is a third party intercepting the shipment, possibly a disgruntled employee shipment company making a rather large screw up. So I’ll walk back my assertion that it was a green energy company sending threats. . .
But a hoax? IMO not.