Francisco Sosa Wagner, a Spanish member of the European Parliament, enjoys a modest fame as a doctor of law, university professor, historian, and prize-winning writer. His columns on European political, legal and other topics appear regularly in the Spanish press, and he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Saint Raymond of Peñafort for his outstanding contributions to the field of justice and the law.
His European Parliament profile shows him to be a conscientious attendee of the plenary sessions (103 out of a possible 109 days); he has asked 28 parliamentary questions, delivered 15 plenary speeches, contributed to the amendment of 13 reports and given two opinions.
A fit-looking 65, stylishly bow-tied and coiffed, dignified but with the trace of an impish smile, Wagner might not bestride the European Parliament like a colossus, but he is clearly not to be taken lightly or in any way disrespectfully. All of which makes the most famous and recent photograph of him initially puzzling and certainly surprising.
Wearing one of his trademark colourful bow ties, Francisco Sosa Wagner, MEP, is standing at his parliamentary desk holding at head height a long green cucumber. His message: 'We need to restore the honour of the cucumber!'
It may not have been one of his more telling or resonant speeches — though it was surely his briefest — but it was topical because the cucumber had, of course, been grievously besmirched when identified — wrongly — as the cause of the recent deadly E.coli outbreak in Germany.
It's fairly difficult to look dignified and serious while brandishing a cucumber. Cucumbers are themselves vaguely comic and are central to innumerable phallic jokes and claims. Waving one of these priapic evocations above your head is bound to have a deflating and distracting effect on your spoken message no matter how passionate, powerful and apposite your words might be.
But it is a measure of Wagner's dedication to the cause that he was prepared to risk ridicule and, perhaps, deliberate misinterpretation both of his motives and his imagery, to rescue the innocent vegetable. Anyway, it worked. His dramatic fist-full of penile cucumis sativus prompted further investigations which exonerated the inoffensive cowcumber, as it was once called, and pointed the finger