As articles surrounding the lawsuit against Paul Bradbury launched by the Croatian National Tourist Board (HTZ) continue to appear in Croatian media, a portal even brings figures like Franz Kafka into the mix.

As Express / Emir Imamovic Pirke writes, if Franz Kafka had been born exactly 100 years later, and not in 1883, and if he had been born in Zagreb instead of Prague, he would be under forty today, and he reportedly didn’t start writing his most famous novel until 2014.

His (allegedly) Croatian publication “The Trial” would not have had a little less than 300 pages in the Croatian case, and readers would either have to drive to the library in a car or have their book delivered with it. a vehicle of a kind.

“Someone must have slandered Josef K.” is the first part of the first sentence of “The Trial”, a famous book which is still relevant to this day. The situation surrounding the Paul Bradbury lawsuit must be true to the feelings Josed K has aroused these days. He doesn’t know who is going to judge him, or why.

“Ha! What have I done … My lawyer Vanja Juric is trying to figure this out herself. The point is that I have been writing in Croatia for about ten years now and nothing in the National Tourist Office Croatian no longer surprises me. Honestly this is all pretty hilarious for me but I was shocked when I got the lawsuit, ” Paul Bradbury told N1 commenting on the lawsuit brought against him by the National Office Croatian tourism, who allegedly did it because they felt offended because it had played with the slogan “Croatia full of life” on Facebook, turning it instead into “Croatia full of uhljebs”.

If, then, the social media movement defamed or slandered the Croatian National Tourist Board, then Bradbury is a slanderer who must now defend himself against such a charge in a Croatian court, even though he has voiced what has become really a majority opinion with a bit of satire. However, most people cannot be prosecuted, so the British blogger and Croatian tourism promoter will sooner or later have to face slander at his own expense as he cannot be punished for it otherwise. Namely, his guilt in this case must first be really made up.

Almost two decades ago, Paul Bradbury sold his house in the UK and, thanks to a TV commercial, decided to come and live here in Croatia. What caught his eye was a video with the usual depiction of the country’s natural beauty and that old slogan about the Mediterranean as it supposedly was, and it was produced and paid for by no less than the Office Croatian National Tourism Board.

Yes, the same Croatian National Tourist Board that has since created the very strange Paul Bradbury trial because of a Facebook post.

‘The Mad Englishman / Ludi Englez’, as Bradbury is affectionately called in Jelsa, did not realize his Croatian dream by converting the pound sterling from the sale of this house in Britain into euros and simply buying a property at Hvar with them, then staying with that old familiar blue sign “Apartments” somewhere near the door – a lot more than has been done.

During his long years of discovering a country that promotes its own tourism offer as if the whole world were still using the modem, he first launched the Total Hvar portal, then Total Split, Total Dalmatia Inland, Total Zagreb and Total Dubrovnik, and finally Total Croatia News, which has since been declared the most influential local media outlet in the English language. In addition, Bradbury is considered the most influential Croatian blogger and a very vocal critic of the Croatian National Tourist Board, seeing it as cumbersome, expensive and passive, and also claiming that its abolition would have no negative effect on l tourism industry. .

There are, for example, county, city and local offices of the Croatian National Tourist Board that have goals for themselves and themselves only, as well as those without whom much of the cultural scene independent on the coast would have even more difficulties. to survive today, just as there are employees whose only obligation is to come to work, and there are those who are not at all lazy and often find themselves engaged in tasks that go far beyond those prescribed by their employment contract.

However, the naturalized British journalist will not go to court because of his lack of distinction between the above, but because of the undue fears of some people whose terrible ineffectiveness is inversely proportional to the opposing effects of Bradbury’s hard work. , and because the deep need for self-preservation has become stronger than the interests of the body itself.

Recalling the events that took place in the aforementioned famous publication, in the Croatian trial, if Kafka was born in a different time and place – the Croatian National Tourist Board versus Paul Bradbury – the prosecutor, that is -to say the Croatian National Tourist Office, is in fact performing a Kafkaesque play in which they return their own guilt for the success of the independent initiator of tourist portals, but not because the accused is wrong – quite the contrary – because he’s basically right.

After all, could the Croatian National Tourist Board have launched the Total Croatia News portal? After the success of the Total Hvar or Total Split platform, couldn’t the Croatian National Tourism Board just buy both the author’s name and concept and continue to develop them? Does anyone, given that Paul Bradbury has already dotted all the i’s and gone through all the t’s, wouldn’t have had the brilliant idea of ​​hiring him as production companies are hired to create pretty videos? panoramic shots of islands and up close. rises of wine glasses that would bring British tourists with deep pockets to Brela in the summer?

Why, after all, does the Croatian National Tourist Board not use the resources at its disposal to develop its own network of foreign language sites – a medium that will offer better content than that of Paul Bradbury, whose Croatian mixes an English accent with a dialect of Hvar? As simple as the answers to each of these questions are, each one would involve some effort. The very notion of this would mean that the entire local administrative apparatus would end up working against itself.

Namely, everything is based on the fact that nothing changes at any cost, so that when it is shown that changes are both possible and necessary, instead of self-correction and moving forward , this begins the Kafkaesque process of removing evidence that wouldn’t exist if Bradbury hadn’t managed to find an empty space to enjoy tourism in a country that otherwise lives almost entirely on tourism. Oh, and sure, European funds, loans and … And … That’s a lot of it.

To read more about the Paul Bradbury trial (both), click here and here.