Standing in a Spanish Doorway

Spain and Israel...25 years of diplomatic relations

2012-01-29T14:13:00.000-08:00

At a ceremony in Madrid Spain and Israel recently marked 25 years of diplomatic relations.

Prizes were awarded...to individuals and institutions that have contributed to the coming together of the two countries over the last quarter century.

Eighteen people received the Samuel Hadas Award, including former Spanish presidents Jose Maria Aznar and Felipe Gonzalez. Hadas, Israel's first ambassador to Spain, was one of the [main figures] in the process that led to the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Spain in 1986.

The ties put an end to nearly 40 years of estrangement following the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and nearly 500 years since the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492.

Read more from the source here.

Latest interview with ABC Radio in Australia

2012-01-24T22:07:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I did another interview with Tony Arthur for ABC Radio National in Australia.

To download an MP3 audio file of this, click here.

In what has now become a regular gig, we discussed some of the topics I have recently written about on this blog and also the broader economic situation in this part of the world.

Is Barcelona to become a "Slow City?"

2012-01-21T08:49:00.000-08:00

"We want Barcelona to have "slow" neighborhoods. Gràcia, Sarrià, Les Corts ...That's where the citizen lives as part of their own area. They are involved in local associations, in schools, and even spend holidays there. They know and can treat their neighbors well on a daily basis. They buy in local shops, get around streets walking and on a bicycle... In the end,let's protest when our towns are managed badly."

So says Pier Giorgio Olivetti, a Director of the Slow Cities movement during a lecture at the Institute of Advanced Archictecture in Catalunya.

There are 152 cities already part of the international Slow Cities movement.

UPDATE on Barcelona neo-Nazi bookseller

2012-01-15T00:34:00.000-08:00

By his own standards, Pedro Varela Geiss is not wasting his time in prison.

He is refusing to participate in organised discussions about racism, calling them "brainwashing" sessions, instead preferring to spend his free hours reading and making sure that his fellow prisoners know they can read his newly-introduced range of right-wing ideology.

Read more here.

The real cost of avoiding tax

2012-01-14T11:49:00.000-08:00

The cost of tax evasion in Spain is approximately 70,000 million Euros a year, about 23 % of the nation's total production. This is equivalent to the entire budget of the Spanish health system, according to an analysis by the consultants one i2 Integrity.

This report highlights the fact that the most popular forms of fraud are to avoid VAT sales tax, to create invoices for false sales, to contract workers and pay them cash "in the black," to receive undue subsidies and to carry out fraudulent international buisines operations.

Source here.

Not such a Happy New Year for Barcelona Hitler-worshipper

2012-01-02T00:12:00.000-08:00

In the continuing story of Barcelona neo-Nazi bookshop owner Pedro Varela, the latest chapter sees him due to return to court.

Currently serving a prison sentence for similar offences, Varela is likely to be released this March but is now facing new charges from the German regional government in Bavaria. They are making the claim that he has vioalted “intellectual property laws by publishing and distributing” Mein Kampf, the anti-Semitic, nationalist book by the 20th century dictator Adolf Hitler.

With the typical doublethink of a bigot, Varela maintains that he is being persecuted, despite having a long history of peddling ideas that persecute entire groups of people.

Varela’s defence lawyers have admitted that he has made a “significant” amount of money selling his self-published copies of Mein Kampf.

A statue of Hitler was found concealed in Varela’s book storeroom when the shop was raided in 2006.

X-mas interview on ABC Radio Australia

2011-12-27T11:26:00.000-08:00

I was interviewed again on Christmas Day for an early morning radio audience in Australia. I told them how we do it here, how others do it here and how it isn't done at all.

Amongst a few other more important things, I mentioned the importance of volunteers and how hospitals are increasingly giving patients so-called "informative invoices" to show how much their 'free' operation would cost if it had to be paid for directly.

200,000 reasons to join the protests

2011-12-18T00:29:00.000-08:00

The Catalan government continues to provide an ugly model for the new Spanish PP government when it comes to ways to cut services and public servants work conditions.

This week thousands of public servants took to the streets of Catalonia on Wednesday to protest upcoming cuts that will affect over 200,000 people and save regional coffers around 625 million euros.

These include pay reductions and fewer social benefits for workers, such as six vacation days for personal matters rather than nine, no more government contributions to the workers' pension fund, and no more restaurant coupons for personnel.

In the city of Girona, three of the fifty teritary students who confronted Catalan President Mas about university cuts were arrested.

If you are Spanish and reading this…then you are probably a man

2011-12-10T23:49:00.000-08:00

Latest news: women in this country have better things to do (or at least other things) than using the Internet.

Read more here.

Mini-jobs for mini-pay

2011-12-08T23:04:00.000-08:00

The faceless, unelected of the European Central Bank (ECB) have told the new Prime Minister-elect Mariano Rajoy what to do and he will happily do as they say.

The ECB wants wage cuts and the creation of "mini-jobs" to address the issue of youth unemployment in exchange for buying Spanish government bonds. These "mini-jobs" would pay salaries below the minimum wage, which in Spain is 541 euros a month.

Rajoy told union leaders that he would also use the letter from the ECB as a road map for policies aimed at ensuring that Spain remains in the vanguard of the euro zone.

Just the latest step in turning the Euro zone into a low-wage zone.

A hole in the wall for Barcelona’s unwanted babies

2011-12-07T22:56:00.000-08:00

Up until only a few years before the Spanish Civil War of the 1930’s…

Hiding inconspicuously in the heart of El Raval is a small wooden inlet that was once attached to the House of Mercy. Although it looks like ornamentation, or a small shrine of sorts, the inlet was in fact a rotating wooden, turntable used to anonymously drop off donations for the church, including unwanted infants.

Originally founded in the late 16th century, the building at 17 Ramelleres became an orphanage in the 19th century. Like many other orphanages and convents at the time, a main feature of the building was its wooden turntable, which allowed the destitute to place their babies on it and anonymously spin them into the arms of a staff member inside the home.

Active from 1853-1931, the turntable saw hundreds of babies come through its portal into the orphanage. Other donations were occasionally dropped off including money and groceries, but mostly, babies were left by parents that did not or could not take care of them. Today, a small wooden inlet is the only remnant of Barcelona's walk-up orphanage and baby drop-off.

[Source: here.]

Spanish literature prize goes to 94-year-old 15-M protestors' role model

2011-12-03T04:08:00.000-08:00

It takes two 90-year-old men to show the doubters that the protests across Spain and Europe are not just young people complaining.

A 94-year-old writer, economist and humanist...José Luis Sampedro is this year's winner of the National Literature Prize because of his defense of a "more human, more caring economy that is able to help develop people's dignity."

Sampedro, who says the terms "productivity, competitiveness and innovation" should be replaced with "distribution, cooperation and recreation," has turned into an intellectual and moral role model for the members of the 15-M movement (which inspired Occupy Wall Street and other social protests across the globe). The nonagenarian author and thinker gained recent notoriety among a younger audience by writing the foreword for the now-famous protest essay, Time for Outrage! by [Nazi concentration-camp survivor] Stéphane Hessel, also 94 years old.

[Photo of José Luis Sampedro by ULY MARTÍN, El País.]

Paying homage to the Catalan singer Serrat

2011-12-03T03:50:00.000-08:00

An interesting new musical release this week, some of the biggest names in flamenco have collaborated to honour the great Joan Manuel Serrat.

"Cantares" (You will sing) gets it's title from one of the most emblematic songs of this singer-songwriter and includes such luminaries as fellow-Catalan Mayte Martin, Jose Mercé, Carmen Linares, Josemi Carmona, Tomatito and Enrique Melcho.

A new prize for creativity in Catalunya

2011-11-25T23:16:00.000-08:00

The First Year of the WALTER BENJAMIN MEMORIAL INTERNATIONAL PRIZE, PORTBOU:

The Exile Memorial Museum (MUME), in collaboration with the Democratic Memorial of Catalonia, is holding the Walter Benjamin Memorial International Prize. The prize, based on the cross-disciplinary nature of the German-Jewish author’s intellectual work, has two main objectives.

On the one hand, given Walter Benjamin’s consideration of the creative act in general, the aim is to foster artistic practice in the fields of the visual and audiovisual arts. On the other, it is to support the theoretical task undertaken by professionals associated with the study of art, photography, architecture, city planning, cinema, philosophy, history, literature and sociology. In both cases, priority will be given to projects that incorporate questions concerning the history and memory of the 20th century. The prize will be held every two years.

Read more here.

"The skin of a bull" by Salvador Espriu

2011-11-24T12:25:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it is necessary and right
for a man to die for a people.
But a whole people must never die
for a single man:
remember this, Sepharad.

Keep the bridge of dialogue secured
and try to understand and love
the different minds and tongues of all your children.
Let the rain fall drop by drop on the fields
and the air cross the ample fields
like a soft, benevolent hand.

Let Sepharad live forever
in order and in peace, in work,
and in difficult, hard-won
liberty.

"La pell de brau" by Salvador Espriu (1913 - 1985)

Three thousand "thank you's!"

2011-11-19T07:57:00.000-08:00

Today this blog just had its 3,000th viewing (this time, by someone in Russia, a special Спасибо or "Spasiba" to you) and last month alone had more than 500 hits!

Since its beginning in May 2009, about 30% of visitors to the site have been (surprisingly to me) from the United States, then Spain, Australia, Germany, Russia and Britain.

Also, somewhat unexpected was finding that there are plenty of readers of this blog sitting in South Korea, France, the Ukraine, the Netherlands and the Ukraine.

Up to this point in time, the most-read blog entry (285 pageviews) was this one I wrote about Islam and Sharia law (in Catalonia) from December 2009.

Again, I want to say that I greatly appreciate all visitors to this humble blog and invite you to comment and/or “come back again ‘real soon!”

2011 is becoming 1968

2011-11-18T10:15:00.000-08:00

With the Spanish national election tomorrow almost certain to throw up a government from the right-wing of politics, we can only brace ourselves for greater social unrest.

Mainly because of 20% unemployment and extreme budget cuts to vital public services, we are seeing increasing numbers of protests with increasing numbers of protesters.

Yesterday, one of Barcelona’s main boulevards (Diagonal) was occupied by about 10,000 students. The road I use to get to work (B-30) was also cut off by a different group of students from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB).

Other student protests included throwing coins at the entrance to the stock exchange students and a short sit-in at the headquarters of the Santander bank branch at Plaza Catalunya.

Personally, I am very happy to witness students getting involved in public issues. (In the last 20 years in Australia, almost the only thing university students ever got animated about was the issue of student higher education fees.)

A Rajoy government will cause more people to get out in the streets and some of it will certainly get violent.

The institution called the extended family has been the glue holding society here together but this cannot stick tight for all seasons.

1968 was a high-point of student activism in the USA, France, and even Japan. Co-incidentally, it was the year I was born in.

It may prove better to have been born then. At least better than having children in this coming decade of discontent.

When the Hendrix-loving, French born Cornellá-raised half-Gypsy comes to town

2011-11-12T07:32:00.000-08:00

She is Ginesa Ortega and she is doing her musical thing in Vilafranca del Penedès next Saturday night (19 November) at the Auditori Municipal. We will be there to enjoy this hybrid of flamenco, jazz, Billie Holliday and Dulce Pontes.

Japan in Barcelona

2011-11-08T21:52:00.000-08:00

The Japan Photo Project is launching its new book, simply titled “Japan” at an exhibition at the Private Space tomorrow night (Thursday, the 10th of November) at 7.30.

(Excellent follow-up reports here and here.)

Another interview with Australian national radio

2011-11-06T00:12:00.000-07:00

The other day I was interviewed again by ABC radio for their Overnights program and, amongst other subjects that I have blogged on, I talked about:

How Barcelona and dozens of cities united in world-wide protest

The stealing of children in Spain (compared to Australia's Aboriginal
"stolen generation")

Doctors at a Barcelona hospital offering to perform free operations on
cancer patients

"Catalan Footprints" exhibition in Australia recently

The economic crisis in general here (ie. More than one in five people
in Spain now live below the poverty line.)

Link to MP3 recording of the interview here.

Taking the time to live well

2011-11-05T23:43:00.000-07:00

Just in-land from the Costa Brava, Catalunya officially has two towns, Begur and the friendly-sounding Pals, in the extraordinary world-wide Slow Cities movement.

Slow cities are characterised by a way of life that supports people to live slow. Traditions and traditional ways of doing things are valued. These cities stand up against the fast-lane, homogenised world so often seen in other cities throughout the world. Slow cities have less traffic, less noise, fewer crowds.

When words do no justice

2011-10-22T03:58:00.000-07:00

A brilliant cut-up job on the political manipulation of The Word “austerity.”

"In the Spanish case, the ideology of austerity has some background music: the song about the inefficiency of the public sector, and of the regional government system as a machine for waste. Any new trial balloon or proposed cutback is accompanied by verbose rhetoric about the incompetence of the public sector, the frivolity of its spending criteria, the uselessness of its investments.

It matters little that in this country, private debt weighs far more heavily on our economy; and that the uncontrolled leverage of many companies and the irresponsibility of the financial system, cheerfully giving away money, have resulted in company closures, mass layoffs, unemployment and a throttling of the supply of credit necessary if the Spanish economy is to get back on the path of growth."

[Spanish journalist JOSEP RAMONEDA in the English language version of El País.]

Barcelona and dozens of cities unite in world-wide protest

2011-10-15T13:01:00.000-07:00

140,000 people came together in Barcelona today, according to El País.

This, under a banner reading "De la indignación a la acción. Toma la calle" (From indignation to action. Take to the streets.)

A lot of good in Olot

2011-10-11T23:51:00.000-07:00

My partner (wife) Paula bought me a lovely jumper the other day and instead of some logo or a picture of a skinny model on the label attached to it there was a large photo of a (smiling) older woman sitting at a sewing machine.

This impressed me.

But what impressed me also when I had a look at the company’s website, was that they have created and are maintaining jobs for women over 40 and are continuing the rich tradition of the textile industry in the Catalan town of Olot.

They also claim to spend half of their profits on supporting environmental or social projects.

It turns out that the original idea of their first jumper was called The Marcelino Camacho, in honor of the well-known politician and trade unionist, whose trademark was this type of zipper-jumper.

I almost never plug products but this one is something to crow about (and of course I am not being paid in any form for this endorsement.)

The stealing of children on opposite sides of the world

2011-10-08T04:25:00.000-07:00

Australia had its own “stolen generation” (Aboriginal children who were permanently taken from their families, as recently as the 1960’s) and it is now coming to light that here in Spain a systematic practice of baby stealing also occurred.

Enrique Vila, a Barcelona lawyer who specializes in adoptions, estimates there might be as many as 300,000, about 15 percent of the total adoptions that took place in Spain between 1960 and 1989 [fitting into this disturbing category.]

Read more here.

The kindest cut

2011-09-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

Doctors at Barcelona’s Bellvitge Hospital this week offered to perform free operations on cancer patients.

A group of surgeons there have stated that they will work overtime without pay to lessen the impact of recently slashed health services budgets.

[Source: www.ara.cat]

Chocotourism

2011-09-29T11:27:00.000-07:00

Atlas Obscura, which calls itself “the definitive guidebook and friendly tour-guide to the world’s most wondrous places” has now recognized Barcelona’s Chocolate Museum as one of it’s world wonders.

"Upon entrance to the museum, guests are greeted by a massive white chocolate ape named Snowy, along with their own chocolate bar as part of their admission. As they gnaw down the confectioner’s chocolate, guests walk past glass-covered sculptures made entirely of chocolate. The sculptures include some famous cultural icons such as Minnie Mouse and Louis Armstrong. However, the bulk of work focuses on Spanish architecture, proudly featuring Sagrada Familia, one of Gaudi’s famous houses and creatures from Parc Guell."

BarcelonaCultura.bcn.cat

2011-09-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

...is a great little site for keeping up with the dizzying range of festivals, concerts, shows, and general event-mania that is the Catalan capital.

Available in three languages, it even has a "last-minute" ticket offer section and another link to rental spaces available for hire at the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona.

Ticket to read

2011-09-23T23:35:00.000-07:00

This week the Catalan publication El Punt Avui featured an article on a new joint venture by Catalonia Today magazine and Abacus bookshops: English language groups that discuss a different novel every month.

Along with (amongst others) Peter Law and Anne Adamson (below left and centre) we are co-ordinating and chairing a number of groups across Catalonia and into Valencia. The response from the public has already been very strong and my own meetings in St. Cugat, L'Hospitalet and St. Boi begin next month.

"The Catalan Footprint in Australia"

2011-09-17T00:28:00.000-07:00

...is an on-line exhibition presented at The Immigration Museum in Melbourne (Australia) this month. It presents stories and images of the Catalan pioneers in Australia and the human side of this migratory movement.

[Source: The Australian New Zealander Catalan Society.]

"That smell of wet ash and tiny particles of decayed flesh"

2011-09-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

"There were no EL PAÍS correspondents there at that particular moment. Elvira and I had arrived in New York just 10 days earlier with three of our children..."

Great Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina recalls how a day meant for sightseeing was transformed by the imperative need to document the horror caused when two planes were flown into the twin towers.

Wise words on immigration in Catalunya

2011-09-03T03:09:00.000-07:00

Journalist Germà Capdevila has some very thoughtful things to say in this article about the place of immigrants and religion both here and in the rest of Europe.

I couldn't agree more with what he wrote. His point that "an extra effort is needed" makes good, humane sense. Equally, it has to be consistent that no religion "has more rights than another."

I fear that increasing numbers of people all across the planet believe that just being born in a particular place or worshipping the most popular god gives a special privelege that newcomers should not have.

When the pope visits Catalunya

2011-08-19T06:46:00.000-07:00

[Via la media hostia.]

Are Thatcher and Blair's same mistakes about to be made here?

2011-08-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

It seems so.

There is a letter posted on Facebook today from a nurse working at a Catalan public hospital that is extremely frightening.

She claims that from the first of this month she has not been able to go to work because, along with 56 others she will not be paid. Her view is that the severe budget cuts being made are a first step to the current CiU government selling-off public health into private company’s hands.

This is not a rare opinion any longer.

A voice that moves you

2011-08-11T00:47:00.000-07:00

The Barcelona-born flamenco singer Mayte Martín , who has said that she seeks inspiration and calm in the city’s Montjuïc mountain.

"Another dimension"

2011-08-09T07:51:00.000-07:00

"Catalonia seems to understand the Jew as few other nations have. And so too the Jew can have some special understanding for Catalonia. The cry “perro catalán” (“Catalan dog”) or “mercader catalán” (“Catalan businessman”) is one that will not be lost on a Jewish ear.

For centuries, after the Expulsion and up to this day, there has been a persistent Jewish fascination with Spain, felt no less by Ashkenazim who may be quite indifferent to their own Eastern European origins than by Sephardim. On one level, it is due to an admiration and a nostalgia for a brilliant epoch in Jewish history. In the case of Catalonia, there is perhaps another dimension..."

Frank Talmage in an article from Commentary magazine.

The Spanish Civil War as local (recent) history

2011-08-08T04:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I visited an exhibition about the Spanish Civil War specifically relating to the area of the Penedès that I live in.

What affected me even more than the old hand-grenades and rifles inside the glass displays or the photo of the victors making the fascist salute behind a smug Franco was seeing images of familiar landscapes.

Except these scenes showed uniformed soldiers in places I go through often. I also saw maps showing sites where bombing took place on roads I use every day.

It is the sense that history here is so near, so close behind you. These horrific events of the recent past give me a stronger feeling of connection with this land in the present.

Sick cuts

2011-07-28T00:31:00.000-07:00

One of the many reasons to live in this part of the world is Catalunya’s very good public health system. Sadly though, it seems that is all about to change for the worse.

“Between the sky and the earth”

2011-07-23T00:16:00.000-07:00

The stunning photography of Cristina Garcia Rodero...

"I tried to photograph the mysterious, true and magical soul of popular Spain in all its passion, love, humor, tenderness, rage, pain, in all its truth; and the fullest and most intense moments in the lives of these characters as simple as they are irresistible…”

Wise words on Spain and Israel

2011-07-14T07:06:00.000-07:00

"I am not referring...to legitimate criticism of Israeli policies. But the talk one hears in Spain often crosses the line of legitimate criticism. In this newspaper one commentator, who shall remain nameless, said that the creation of the state of Israel was a mistake, and that it would be better if it disappeared. In a recent opinion survey, 10 percent responded that the disappearance of Israel would be the preferred solution to the Middle East conflict. Israel is now the only country that is the object of such remarks."

Raphael Schutz, the Israeli ambassador to Spain writing in El Pais.

"Francoism isn't over in Spain"

2011-07-08T01:14:00.000-07:00

91 year-old Galician man who as a youth lost both parents to the extremes of the era asks "...What can you expect from a country that does not even dare say that Franco was a dictator?"

He is here refering to the recent controversy over a biographical dictionary published by the Royal Academy of History that only mentions Franco as "head of state."

Spain's "whistling island"

2011-07-05T10:41:00.000-07:00

On the small mountainous island of La Gomera, one of the Canaries, the children speak to each other from miles apart using one of the most unusual languages in the world. Known as Silbo, the whistling language of Gomera Island has a vocabulary of over 4,000 words, and is used by "Silbadors" to send messages across the island's high peaks and deep valleys.

Read more here.

Barcelona professor supports warnings on seafoods

2011-07-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

Joan Llobet, a pharmacy professor at Barcelona University, is backing the call by the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) on its stricter recommendations about the consumption of certain seafood.

In an El Pais article, he described the recommendations as "reasonable" even if they create "social alarm" and are "economically dangerous."

Read more here.

Video: An inside look at FC Barcelona

2011-06-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

La Masia is a training school for future Barcelona stars.

This video gives you an inside look into the training school, which is based on the three pillars of athletics, values and academics. Only one of every 10 graduates typically makes it to the Barcelona senior team. Current squad members who are also alumni include Xavi, Messi, Andres Iniesta, Gerard Pique and Carles Puyol.

La Masia is a place where art and science are fused together to create the finished product you see on the pitch each week during the season...It's a pretty guarded place when it comes to media intrusion, and you won't get too much detail out of the school's coaches about their training techniques (they guard it like Coca-Cola protects its secret recipe). But it's interesting to see Xavi and Lionel Messi talk about their experiences at the academy -- how they played all day, every day, learning the Barca way...

Titanium - A Poem for Barcelona

2011-06-24T00:12:00.000-07:00

fold tomorrows rain

and under the loose world night

play blind on young ground

............

one earth full of single stars

blown here by unrelenting years

those seas of sorrows know

written in liars lines

saying

come and become the past

full like her darkest pity

to show

such thought is mine

……….

might I tonight

pocket a kinder hour and

look long into todays spare quiet

(B.Hetherington, 2011.)

Barcelona neo-Nazi's go free

2011-06-10T06:13:00.000-07:00

In a disturbing decision this week, Spain’s high court has overturned the conviction of four men involved in circulating Nazi propaganda from a Barcelona bookshop.

(Pedro Varela, the owner of the now-closed bookshop is already well-known for being the first person to be jailed for similar crimes in Spain following the reform of the Penal Code in 1996. On that occasion, he received a five-year sentence, reduced to six months on appeal to the Supreme Court.)

Along with the three others, including a publisher from Molins de Rei, Varela was acquitted on Monday of fostering xenophobia and anti-Semitism through the selling of literature.

In 2009, the four men were each sentenced to 3 1/2 years in jail after being found guilty of selling publications that justified the Holocaust and praised the Nazi regime.

In the Supreme Court's ruling, Justice Miguel Colmenero wrote that the selling of Nazi propaganda that promotes genocide is only a crime when there exists a danger that it could create a climate of hostility that would incite violence.

"Jews in Spain view with extreme concern the fact that the Spanish judiciary, so sensitive in certain situations, does not consider as criminal conduct the sale of books denying the Holocaust and promoting racism, in spite of standing criminal legislation to the contrary," the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain said in a statement.

Before the court's decision this week a prominent Israeli Rabbi had praised Spain's progress with Jewish relations while touring the city as the first Jewish religious leader to visit Granada since Jews were expelled from Spain over five centuries ago.

Leonard Cohen wins Prince of Asturias award

2011-06-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

"Veteran songwriter and musician Leonard Cohen has won a top Spanish literature award for a body of work which has influenced three generations around the world" it was reported today.

Amongst many others, his inspirational classic 'Who By Fire' has stood the test of time.

Who is in Plaça Catalunya...(and who is not.)

2011-05-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

An inspiring short video that seems to beautifully capture the atmosphere of the huge (prohibited) protest camps in Barcelona’s Plaça Catalunya.

"“There is no ‘we are.’ There is a ‘doing’ or a verb....What we have here: It’s not that they are students. I am not a student. It's not workers, it's not revolutionaries. It is something; it's debate, it's [social] movements and in that way it's interesting. But it's a verb. An action." (Alberto Villaneuva, an activist at the site.)

Spanish photographer freed after 6 weeks detention in Libya

2011-05-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

Manu Brabo, a Spanish photographer who had been detained with several GlobalPost journalists, was released by Libyan authorities and crossed the border into Tunisia with Spanish officials earlier today.

Forces loyal to Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi first captured Brabo and three others on April 5.

Brabo had languished in a series of detention centers in Tripoli for weeks, during which time the Libyan government allowed them little to no communication with the outside.

Covering the Libyan conflict has proved dangerous for journalists.

A number of Libyan journalists are missing and several other foreign journalists remain in custody, Human Rights Watch said.

Several journalists have also been killed while covering the fighting, including British photojournalist and filmmaker Tim Hetherington [no relation] and American photographer Chris Hondros. The two were killed in April during clashes between rebels and government forces in the Libyan city of Misurata.

In Majorca, Atoning for the Sins of 1691

2011-05-14T11:04:00.000-07:00

"They gathered Thursday for a memorial, the first by a local regional government in Spain, to confront a dark legacy of buried memories. Jews, who secretly practiced their forbidden religion during the Inquisition, were burned here in Gomila Plaza in a “bonfire of the Jews” in May 1691, and the descendants of Jews who converted were subject to discrimination that flourished even into the 20th century."

Read more of this fascinating New York Times article here.

A Catalan eye

2011-05-08T05:14:00.000-07:00

It was announced today that Manresa photographer Jordi Cohen Colldeforns has won an award for Travel Photographer of the Year in the category of Best Single Image in a Portfolio - World in Motion (above) which is now being shown at the Royal Geographical Society in London.

Audio slideshow here.

How good is it to be a mother in Spain?

2011-05-07T01:43:00.000-07:00

Mothers in Spain have some more good reasons to celebrate Mother’s Day this year.

A report published this week puts this country in 12th position out of 43 “more developed” countries when it comes to the best places in the world to be a mother and a woman.

While Spain lags just behind other fellow western European neighbours, it also appears that it can learn quite a bit from the highest placed Scandinavians nations (and even Australia, who surprisingly to me came in at number 2 in the ranking, though their conditions for children were as low as number 30.)

The report criticizes the United States for placing lower than 30th for both categories relating to mothers and children.

Researchers from the Save the Children organization used indexes on criteria such as percentage of women using contraception, female life expectancy, maternity leave benefits and educational opportunities in assessing women’s status across the globe.

The science of success in Barcelona

2011-05-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

[The following blog was also published as a short article in the new Monocle Guide to Barcelona.]

Reimund Fickert, project director at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), points to a plethora of businesses and projects that make Barcelona a European hotspot for biotechnology.

“Almost 50 new firms have set up here in the past decade and we now have six independent research centres with close to 1,400 people from 52 different countries working on the site.”

He puts PRBB’s success down to a change in clinical research methods across the pharmaceutical and medical industries that now emphasise biotech, and heavy local government investment in facilities and infrastructure since the 1990s.

“We have some of the most sophisticated imaging technology in Europe so when the King of Spain got sick last year he came to Barcelona for specialist treatment,” he says.

Occupying rare ground

2011-05-02T12:37:00.000-07:00

This week in Barcelona (and it is good to be back here again) the British writer Sarah Waters did something almost “un-British”. She has written about social class.

In her new novel “The Occupant”, according to Spanish media, she has dealt with the conflict between classes and reflected the moment of tensions over social change that was affecting England at the end of the 19th century.

"Granddaughter of illiterate servants, Waters has criticized the enthusiasm of the English for an out of date system of social classes."

No new posts here for the next month...

2011-03-18T02:21:00.000-07:00

Because of a family illness I'll be away in Australia until late April. Best wishes until then to you, my valued readers.

A pluralist Spain...?

2011-03-11T09:50:00.000-08:00

This guy talks a lot of sense in an area where common sense is rare...

"...the pluralist fervor that was alive in Spain during the final years of the dictatorship, when young people from Granada would sing Lluís Llach [a Catalan song-writer] as if he were one of their own, half understanding the lyrics of his songs."

New listing...

2011-03-04T05:46:00.000-08:00

This blog (described as "a sharp look at the often baffling world of politics and social issues in Catalonia and Spain...) is now linked to the Barcelona Blogosphere page on BarcelonaLife.com - a good quality site with plenty of strong info on the city and the region.

A new idea (for many)...

2011-02-25T00:58:00.000-08:00

"A considerable part of our intellectual and journalist class still thought poorly of resistance to dictatorships other than fascist ones. I happened to be watching the [November 1989 scenes of people breaking through] the Berlin Wall on TV, in a house where the company included several writers, publishers and critics of apparently progressive inclinations. They watched the images of people embracing in Berlin with long faces, as if viewing the broadcast of a funeral."

[Pointing out a clear example of hypocrisy, Spain's Antonio Muñoz Molina comparing his own joy at the Cairo revolution with a similar historical event, in El País. ]

I share his feelings but there is one problem here. Liberty is a universal desire for mankind, including the men and women of the Arab world. But (unlike the Western world) democracy is a new idea, an unknown experience and barely understood in an Arab society that instinctively regards the strong leader as the best kind of leader, maybe the only kind of leader.

[La libertad es un deseo universal de la humanidad, incluyendo a los hombres y las mujeres del mundo árabe.

El problema es que (a diferencia del mundo Occidental) la democracia es una nueva idea, una experiencia desconocida y apenas entendida en una sociedad árabe que instintivamente considera al líder fuerte como la mejor clase de líder, tal vez la única clase de líder.]

Catalan speakers denied a voice in Valencia

2011-02-20T04:13:00.000-08:00

In a pig-headed piece of small-minded politics, the right-wing People’s Party (PP) in Valencia have created a law that meant that after 25 years the Catalan language broadcasts on channel TV3 in that region stopped yesterday.

This move is in spite of the fact that (as one report put it) “in this territory, around 40% of its inhabitants have Catalan/Valencian as their mother tongue, and in some… towns or counties, they are the vast majority.

Una mujer que tiene duende

2011-02-19T06:18:00.000-08:00

Video: A perfect example of some of the best flamenco you will ever see or hear. Concha Buika, from Palma de Mallorca is a Spanish singer whose family came from Equatorial Guinea and who grew up among gypsy people.

Considerate words in black times

2011-02-18T06:57:00.000-08:00

"I’m not worried about my professional future, but rather the future in general. It’s a great time for me, and I have work for the next year, but what about everyone else?”

Agustí Villaronga, Mallorcan director of the Catalan language film Pa negre [Black bread] which won nine Goya awards, including Best Film and Best Director.

(Last week I lost my teaching job, incidentally.)

A universe of pain

2011-02-06T10:58:00.000-08:00

Video: This week an exhibition in Barcelona. Photojournalist Gervasio Sánchez culminates a decade of his work with a new exhibition called 'Disappeared'. He has pictured the pain of family members who face the loss of a relative disappeared by a dictatorial regime. The work is shown simultaneously in Madrid and León.

Attacks on Catalan reporters in Egypt

2011-02-04T05:24:00.000-08:00

Joan Roura, a correspondent for TV3, a Catalan public television station, was attacked [yesterday] by men who tried to steal his mobile phone while he was conducting a live broadcast for the 24 hours news channel.

Assaults were also reported against Sal Emergui, a correspondent for Catalan radio RAC1 [and] Gemma Saura (amongst more than 30 other members of the international media.)

Source: here.

The Brit, the lesbian, the priest...and a terrible miscarriage of justice

2011-01-29T03:35:00.000-08:00

In 2001 Dolores Vázquez was found guilty of murdering Rocío Wanninkhof, a 19 year old woman in a small southern town.

During testimony, Vázquez was described as hombruna, [‘man-ish’ or butch] with a violent temper. A host of witnesses were called in, including a spiritual medium, a priest, two (Ukrainian) maids, and a barman. The priest said that when he told Vázquez of the death, she began vomiting, which could have been a sign that she was possessed.

Vázquez had been involved in an intimate relationship with Wanninkhof’s mother and one of the first ever public juries eventually found that she had killed Wanninkhof because she blamed the teenager for problems between them. The court sentenced her to 15 years in prison, but after serving over a year in prison on appeal, DNA on a cigarette butt at the murder scene shifted the investigation’s attention Tony King, a British expat, already serving a 36-year sentence for the August 2003 rape and murder of another teenager.

In 2006 King was sentenced to 19 additional years for the murder of Wanninkhof.

According to a recent news report, “Dolores, or Loli as her friends and family call her, is now waiting for the State to compensate her for the miscarriage of justice, confirmed by the arrest and imprisonment of Tony King. Her solicitor has asked for four million euros to compensate for the time Vázquez served in prison and the media harassment and personal damages she endured. The Ministry of Justice has made an offer of 120,000 euros.”

Money for something

2011-01-22T08:19:00.000-08:00

Faced with new, tougher European stress tests and international concerns over their exposure to the property bust, Spain’s savings banks, or cajas, are very likely to soon be partially nationalised.

A very good idea to get what is actually public money back in public hands, but the decision to do this would only be a fair one if Spain’s larger commercial banks were also dealt with in the same way.

A photograph (of what is there)

2011-01-07T01:19:00.000-08:00

(Photo: Javier Berasaluce Bajo)

In this diary entry Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina makes the crucial observation that "often literature does not consist of inventing but in telling clearly what one has seen with one's own eyes."

Another great writer, George Orwell who spent time here (fighting against Francoism in the 1930's) said a similar thing. "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."

A New Year Warning!

2011-01-02T01:34:00.000-08:00

The (Catholic) bishop of Córdoba has a New Year revelation for us all. He believes that UNESCO has a program to make half the population homosexual and says that this United Nations organization is bent on “implanting an ideology” that already supports this theory in schools.

He then goes on to warn that sexuality is not “a game of pleasure “and on the subject of abortion states that “Spain walks proud of her progress towards her own destruction” due to a declining birthrate.

I look forward to more pearls of wisdom from church spokesmen over the coming twelve months.

Barcelona VS bamboo

2010-12-29T01:55:00.000-08:00

For sheer beauty alone this building beats Gaudí ‘s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona hands down.

Another interview for Australian radio

2010-12-23T09:49:00.000-08:00

On Sunday I will be interviewed again on Australia’s publicly-run ABC Radio, this time about the festivities of this time of year in Spain and Catalunya. The program is Overnights – Round the World and will be at broadcast there on Boxing Day morning.

I will mention the caganer, the El Gordo lottery, calcats and romesco sauce, caga-tio and other oddities.

Will Europe do anything about child slave labour in Uzbekistan?

2010-12-18T09:05:00.000-08:00

As someone who prefers to buy cotton clothes I have sometimes thought about the apparently back-breaking work of picking cotton plants from out of the ground.

The mental picture of children (as young as our 9-year old son) being dragged from school only to spend hour after hour twisting their bodies in the fields is a very disturbing one.

The single biggest destination for Uzbek cotton is the European market. Despite strong condemnation from the European Union over the use of child slavery in Uzbek cotton production, the EU continues to allow the Government of Uzbekistan to benefit from reduced trading tariffs for its cotton imports to the EU despite its own rules that these benefits should be withdrawn.

SIGN THE PETITION calling on the EU to remove trade preferences for Uzbekistan to stop child slavery.

"Piensa es gratis"

2010-12-11T05:52:00.000-08:00

Think, it's free of charge.

These were the words that greeted me when arriving back at Barcelona airport after five weeks away in Australia not so long ago.

Piensa es gratis is the title of a new book by Joaquín Lorente which was the first words I consciously noticed, glancing at the airport bookshop while wheeling my luggage trolley along. Ah yes, I am home now, I thought. Back in the land of the mind: Europe.

The genius George Orwell devoted his last years on the earth to digging deeply into, amongst others, the idea that thought can only be truly free when there is freedom of speech to go along with it.

Many economists tell us that nothing is free of ‘cost’ because there is always “opportunity cost” – that we are constantly doing things at the expense of doing something else. I am writing this instead of sleeping on the train at this moment.

But to me freedom of thought is important because without it we are no more evolved than beasts.

"Thanks to life"

2010-11-21T03:16:00.000-08:00

Video: Mercedes Sosa - Gracias a La Vida: surely one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded in the Spanish language (and one of the most well-known songs in Latin America apparently.)

[Lyrics translated into English:]

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me two beams of light, that when opened,
Can perfectly distinguish black from white
And in the sky above, her starry backdrop,
And from within the multitude
The one that I love.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me an ear that, in all of its width
Records— night and day—crickets and canaries,
Hammers and turbines and bricks and storms,
And the tender voice of my beloved.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me sound and the alphabet.
With them the words that I think and declare:
"Mother," "Friend," "Brother" and the light shining.
The route of the soul from which comes love.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me the ability to walk with my tired feet.
With them I have traversed cities and puddles
Valleys and deserts, mountains and plains.
And your house, your street and your patio.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me a heart, that causes my frame to shudder,
When I see the fruit of the human mind,
When I see good, so far from bad,
When I see within the clarity of your eyes...

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me laughter and it gave me longing.
With them I distinguish happiness and pain—
The two materials from which my songs are formed,
And your song, as well, which is the same song.
And everyone's song, which is my very own song.

Thanks to life

Parents with a fear of rubber

2010-11-20T23:02:00.000-08:00

Yes, despite the Pope softening his words on condoms there are still a few parents here in Spain that object to the idea that someone should put a sheath over their penis before sex.

Do these parents believe that it is better for their kids to run the risk of sexually transmitted diseases or an unwanted pregnancy?

The Spanish Ministry of Health is doing the sensible thing and promoting condom use through their ‘yopongocondom.com’ campaign but have been criticised for their efforts by an organisation called The Confederation of Catholic Parents Associations in Spain (CONCAPA).

Considering that a couple of years ago two 19th century (pig gut) condoms were found in a Salamanca library book, contraception is nothing new in Spain.

How to confirm a stereotype

2010-11-13T00:09:00.000-08:00

One standard opinion of Spanish people is that they enjoy cruelty to animals. Unfortunately, this is supported by some of the festival activities here.

“In the Basque village of Lekeitio, the celebration of Antzar Eguna (Geese's Day) is honoured with contestants who try to hold onto a dead goose for as long as possible while being jerkily dipped into the ocean on a rope. The winner is the one who decapitates the goose with his bare hands. In earlier times, the geese was alive…”

See photo of this “event” here.

"I like the fact that there are things I don't like."

2010-11-07T06:44:00.000-08:00

These words (from Madrid University of Complutense Philosophy Professor Fernando Savater) are as good a definition of tolerance as you are likely to find anywhere.

YouTube video of him here.

[It's good to be back after a month without internet at home!]

Tomorrow in Spain...

2010-10-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

Avaaz.org says: This Sunday, at more than 6300 events in 187 countries, citizens around the world will shatter a dangerous myth: that the global climate movement has somehow disappeared.

On Sunday, October 10 -- that's 10/10/10, a date to remember -- we will gather in climate "work parties" around the globe to demonstrate our determination and trumpet a call to our governments: "We're getting to work... what about you?"

For environmental events to be involved in: click here.

The generation that is hoping for Plan B

2010-09-25T00:31:00.000-07:00

I have an acquaintance who is a waitress even though she has a high-level science degree. These days some people would consider her to be lucky to have any kind of paid work.

"For Spain’s twenty-somethings, the dream was over before it began. Two years after Wall Street crashed, a crisis that seemed far away has now taken over their lives.

Spain has the highest unemployment rate in Europe, and joblessness is most severe among the under 25s. The question people like Iván Miguel, fired from his job as a waiter the day after Spain won the World Cup, are asking is whether they are doomed to a life without meaningful employment."

The first part of an EL PAÍS report on Spain's "Generation in crisis."

“They piss on us, and the newspapers say it’s raining.”

2010-09-15T13:10:00.000-07:00

Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano says he saw these words painted on a wall in Buenos Aires once.

"Walls are the printing press of the poor. Yes, it’s still raining and language is the tool of lies...The international community is simply a club made up of bankers and warmongers who control the world."

Last week Galeano visited Madrid and gave this interview to El Pais newspaper.

Made in Catalonia

2010-09-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

Catalan culture continues to be spread in Australia. The Casal celebrates its 3rd annual 'Made in Catalonia' Film Festival (MiCFF) by presenting this year in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra [my city of birth.]

Why is sport a good thing in Catalonia?

2010-09-12T05:45:00.000-07:00

Our 9 year old son Hugo played his first two games of roller hockey (hoquei patins) for the Vilafranca club today and what struck me is the same thing I am usually struck by at sporting events here: the atmosphere is one of congeniality.

Unlike children’s sport in some countries (such as England, where parents were banned from all state school sporting events because of abuse, fights and general nastiness) my impression of amateur sport in this part of the world is that it is for enjoyment not for the venting of spleen.

The atmosphere is civilized, the other parents are generally friendly (though sometimes a bit shy and cliquey) and the kids get a pleasant experience along with a healthy amount of fair competition.

As a teacher as well as a parent, this is not my first time with children doing sport so my opinion of the way it is done here is not just from this one day.

It seems likely to me that this amiability balanced with the right amount of seriousness to do well is one reason why Spain are current European and world champions. Amateur coaches are well-trained and largely well-respected instead of being blamed for results.

Some older kids in our son’s roller hockey club have a hand in training and looking after the younger players and this is not unusual at all. It helps those player-coaches to develop responsibility and is a natural way to give them time before they may become adult coaches.

I am looking forward to our son growing up in this kind of environment.

The people next door

2010-09-08T10:18:00.000-07:00

Spain is one of the EU countries with the largest volume of foreign residents, data released by the European Union’s Statistics Office, Eurostat, revealed.

In total, there are 5.7 million foreign residents in Spain— or 12 percent of the population — second only to Germany with 7.2 million. Of the total in Spain, 2.2 million foreign residents hail from the EU.

Romanians are the largest foreign group in Spain, followed by Moroccans, Ecuadorians, Britons and Colombians.

Report from El País newspaper.

“When we are born, we are all Moors”...

2010-08-30T15:00:00.000-07:00

...says a character in Àngel Guimerà’s play La filla del mar (The daughter of the sea, 1900.)

Agata, this fictional female whose “origins are unclear” was born among Moors and for this simple reason she is despised and considered to be a heretic. The theme is just as relevant today. Human beings still judge and discriminate against other human beings over aspects of our identity that are beyond our control. We still love hating.

Xavier Fàbregas believed that “the theme of the misfit, the outsider” is a reoccurring one in Guimerà’s Catalan literature and partly puts this down to the author having parents who were unmarried.

A wet nurse, a Jewish boy, a mad woman – Guimerà’s choice of individuals to focus on his writing seems to confirm his affinity for society’s overlooked.

According to Ramon Bacardit “He wrote about conflicts of passion that, at bottom, implied power relations, frequently highlighting issues of non-adaptation…[as] the backdrop onto which he projected relationships containing…elements of masochism and tormented sensuality.

The street I am soon to live in is named after Àngel Guimerà.

Seeking shelter from the economic storm

2010-08-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

The current plight of Spain’s immigrants is now being recognised in the international media.

Andrea Comas reports in Time magazine that “Over a million migrants have lost their jobs, homes and small businesses in a boom-to-bust cycle not seen since the Great Depression…And unemployment isn't the only issue. The rate of mortgage delinquency among foreigners in Spain is 10 times higher than among native Spaniards. Tax revenue and social security contributions, along with consumer spending, are also falling within the immigrant community, making it all the more difficult for Spain — with one of the highest deficits in the OECD at 11% — to stimulate its economy.”

Josep Oliver, an applied economics professor in the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona and one of the lead authors of Yearbook of Immigration in Spain 2009 is quoted saying: “The Spanish case is a lesson. If a country's economy is based on low-skilled labor, like construction, and there is a crisis, the blow can be traumatic."

“Most immigrants…will weather the storm because they have little to look forward to back home.”

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2013057,00.html#ixzz0xjbldcR0

A prince of reason

2010-08-23T13:28:00.000-07:00

“Nationalism was a reaction to the forces of globalization and modernization in the 19th century, a reaction to "population explosion, rapid urbanisation [and] labour migration."

Ernest Gellner writing in 1983 but is this sentence still relevant to Catalan nationalism today?

Ignore these changes at your peril

2010-08-06T01:50:00.000-07:00

It makes me happy to see that others enjoy what I enjoy.

Vicente Molina Foix in this piece in El País writes about riding in the Madrid Metro:

“I like to see the juxtaposition of various skin colors, and hear the melody of incomprehensible languages, as the train of the future approaches on the rails of life.”

Here is a man at ease with one of the biggest changes to Spanish life in the last few decades. He realises that this country is becoming one great human paella with a tasty mixture of ingredients.

Those Catalans and Spaniards who make the effort to appreciate the benefits of migrants from across this odd little planet will be doing little more than opening their senses.

The continuing mixing of cultures is one of the great success stories of human history and closing ourselves off from the results of migration is as pointless as trying to ignore the music from a neighbour’s radio drifting into our ears.

Migration in Europe will not end, though it has slowed down somewhat in the last couple of years due to the Great Recession.

The human animal that adapts best to the changes in its surroundings will continue to be the human animal that thrives.

[This blog was also published as a Letter in El País ENGLISH EDITION WITH THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE on Saturday, 10 August, 2010 under the title "Savoring the melting pot."]

An interview with Salvador Dalí

2010-08-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

"I adore three things, weakness, old age and luxury."

He was a public supporter of Franco but apart from that Salvador Dalí had an interesting and highly original mind, and it can be appreciated with him speaking his own style of English in this video link here.

Amongst other things (and despite the patronising interruptions of the interviewer) he talks about his genius, the subconscious, weakness, old age and luxury, death, religion, and dreams.

A view of Barcelona in the 1930's

2010-07-29T04:54:00.000-07:00

It was five years since I had been in Barcelona. In 1932, the revolution had already been in progress two years. Yet the changes to be observed in the externals of its life were few. The native bootblack who had shined my shoes as I stepped off the train then had expressed it succinctly: "The revolution? The king is gone, yes, but otherwise what is changed? Nada, nada."

Albert Weisbord was a Jewish American activist who visited Catalonia a number of times and wrote about the class struggle in particular.

Sisters are doing it

2010-07-28T00:27:00.000-07:00

Girls earn better grades and have less tendency to repeat courses. Women are the majority in Spanish universities…and they dedicate more time to make studying a priority.

A report by Gloria López (AmecoPress) on work by the Institute of Women in the Asturias region.

More languages in Spain?

2010-07-19T00:50:00.000-07:00

Muslims in the Spanish autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla on the North African coast are now calling for official recognition of Darija (Moroccan Arabic) and Tamazight, the language of the Berber people.

Their biggest supporters should be those Catalan people who already have their language as a major part of public life here. (I am proud that my son learns Catalan as his major language at school.)

I have heard Berber spoken before and was struck by its’ murmuring vowel sounds and cadences full of long S’s.

Making sure that smaller languages thrive across the planet is just as important as maintaining the rich biodiversity of living creatures.

My latest article from this month's "Catalonia Today"

2010-07-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

Post Power-Point Trauma Syndrome

Have you ever sat through and silently suffered during a PowerPoint presentation?

Most likely, you have more than a few times. Together with ten other teachers, I have been asked (or is it told?) to do a PowerPoint presentation about my History elective subject for secondary level students at the international school where I teach, near Barcelona.

I will not do it.

Read more: Link here.

Como peces en el agua (Somorrostro Dansa Flamenca)

2010-07-10T06:59:00.000-07:00

Video link: here. At Vilafranca del Penedès Municipal Auditori, Monday 22.30, part of the Festival Calima.

Is "the Spanish mind" contradictory?

2010-07-07T00:55:00.000-07:00

A survey of Spanish social attitudes shows a mixture of liberal and conservative outlooks…

More than 60% of Spaniards between 15 and 64 years of age are in partial or complete favour of euthanasia, but only 21% view suicide as permissible, a study titled Social values and drugs presented in Madrid yesterday, shows.

Of 1,200 people surveyed for the report, carried out by anti-drug organizations alongside Caja Madrid’s social foundation, 54% agreed that there should be total freedom to abort a pregnancy, but only 44% said that same-sex relationships should be permitted.

Just 46% of those polled said they were against the death penalty for serious crimes, a significant increase since 2001.

[Raquel Seco in El Pais.]

What Franco did for the Holocaust

2010-06-24T02:51:00.000-07:00

The reality wasn’t just that the dictator’s propaganda was entirely untrue. He had in fact been very tempted to play his part in resolving the “Jewish problem in Europe.”

At the end of World War II, Franco largely succeeded in convincing the world that he had contributed to saving thousands of Jews from extermination at the hands of the Nazis.

Thanks to the patient work of a Jewish journalist, Jacobo Israel Garzón, the only document addressing the issue that still survives has surfaced in the National Archive’s collection. It was originally issued by the regional government of Zaragoza. It has since been published in the history magazine Raíces. This is the story behind it [in Spanish from El Pais.]

Sant Juan: un noche cuando...

2010-06-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

Una cosa que me chocó poco después de venirme a vivir aquí fue que muchos padres españoles están demasiado viciados con dejar que sus hijos jueguen con petardos. Personalmente, en mi primera celebración de la verbena de San Juan, fui testigo de un caso bien desagradable.

Un niño de (entonces) 5 años, amigo de mi hijo, había estado jugando con petardos solo durante varias horas, con muy poca supervisión directa por parte de sus padres. Este niño estaba muy cerca de una pequeña hoguera que ardía en la plaza donde estábamos, y lanzó algún petardo dentro. Tal y como era de esperar, éste explosionó, hiriendo a una niña que estaba cerca además de herirle a él mismo la cara y los ojos. Mi mujer tuvo la suficiente presencia de ánimo como para echarle agua en los ojos; se lo llevaron rápidamente a un hospital para que recibiera tratamiento.

Si lo tuviéramos que juzgar únicamente por el tamaño de la explosión que salió del fuego, yo diría que el niño fue muy afortunado de no haber sufrido daños permanentes en el ojo. (Quizá el único resultado positivo que podemos extraer de ello es que nuestro hijo, al ver lo que le pasó a su amigo, todavía tiene miedo de los petardos años después de que sucediese).

Otra persona que comparte estas preocupaciones es Juan Pedro Barret, jefe de la unidad de quemados del hospital Vall d’Hebron de Barcelona. El doctor Barret está cansado de ver heridas causadas por el mal uso de los petardos, entre las que se incluye la necesidad de amputar dedos, manos o pies.

Él cree que la noche de San Juan es una de las peores que te pueden tocar de guardia en el departamento de urgencias. Según él, hay un flujo constante de personas heridas, pero que, desde que se introdujeron medidas de seguridad a mediados de los años noventa, el número de heridos graves ha descendido ligeramente.

En una votación (entre 2165 personas) que llevó a cabo el periódico El País, el 70% estaban de acuerdo en que se establecieran medidas restrictivas en cuanto a la celebración de festivales con pirotecnia debido al peligro.

Sant Juan: An explosive night to remember

2010-06-23T10:05:00.000-07:00

One thing that shocked me soon after moving here was that many parents in Spain are quite blasé about letting their children play with fireworks. I personally witnessed a very nasty example of this at our first Sant Juan’s Day celebrations.

A (then 5 year old) friend of my son’s had been allowed to play with firecrackers by himself for several hours and with little direct supervision by his parents. This boy was standing very close to a small bonfire in the square where we were and he threw some kind of cracker into. As was likely, it exploded, injuring a girl nearby as well as damaging this boy’s face and eyes. My wife had the presence of mind to throw water in his eyes and he was rushed screaming to a hospital for treatment.

Judging purely from the size of the blast from the fire, I would say the boy was quite fortunate to have not suffered permanent eye damage. (Perhaps the only pleasing result from that is that because our son also saw this happen to his friend, he still has a strong fear of firecrackers years after the event.)

Another who shares these concerns is Juan Pedro Barret, the head of the burns unit at the Vall d'Hebron hospital in Barcelona. Doctor Barret is fed up of seeing injuries caused by the misuse of fireworks, including the need for hands, fingers and feet to be amputated.

He believes that the night of Sant Juan is always one of the worst times to have to be on duty in the accident and emergency department. According to him there is a constant flow of injured people but that after the mid-nineties when safety measures improved the number of those seriously harmed has decreased somewhat.

In one El Pais newspaper poll (of 2165 people) 70% supported the placement of restrictions on festivals with fireworks due to danger.

Please let me know what you think…

Oil and water don't mix

2010-06-19T22:57:00.000-07:00

This November will mark 8 years since the devastating oil spill on the coast of Spain’s Galicia region.

This linked image represents the size of the current catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico as if it had happened across the Barcelona region.

Mean while, speaking about the disaster President Obama does little more in this video than make an appeal to some higher power, saying: “And we pray that a hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day.”

It is no longer "Yes, we can!" It is: "Maybe The All-mighty can..."

Coming to a town near you! Some of the world’s most powerful people…

2010-06-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

There were some particularly “special visitors” to the beach town of Sitges (where I work part-time) earlier this month.

As usual, the elite Bilderberg group went to extreme lengths to avoid any publicity and equally extreme lengths to make sure that the agreements made in these meetings remained secret.

What would be worse? If high powered decision makers did get together to make high powered decisions, or if they didn’t meet at all?

It’s not difficult to conclude that the world financial crisis would be even worse is if there had not been some kind of international co-ordination behind it.

But how is it that these public figures can get away without any explanation of the results of these discussions? It took the publication of a guest list in an article by Victor González in the leftist Extremadura Progresista to alert world media to the existence of this year’s annual event.

If there is any truth to the suggestion that the Bildberbergers are not just a think tank, and that they in fact exist to ensure that the rich and powerful stay rich and powerful due to the labour of millions of poorer working folk, then we should know a lot more about this.

It is seems likely to me that the powerful do not just waste their time talking about ideas. These 7 Spaniards and 63 others would not give up their days to simply gasbag with each other (as the group has been doing every year since 1954) if there was not some exercising of heavy power that came from it.

An idea whose time has come

2010-06-10T10:25:00.000-07:00

Finally, someone with (at least a bit of) power has spoken out with a logical proposal to make irresponsible greed in the finance world more difficult.

The EU internal market commissioner [and politician] Michel Barnier stated recently that to prevent future financial crises, there should be a network of national funds should be introduced so the cost of bank failures are not met by the taxpayer.

But as one commentator argues, the big problem with this (and similar) proposals is that it fails to tackle the problem of 'moral hazard', whereby banks take excessive risks, knowing that they have the protection of a safety-net. Indeed, by reducing the consequences of excessive risk-taking, these bail-out funds could have the opposite effect to that intended.

I believe there must first be a way to ensure that any new levies are not simply passed on to consumers in the form of higher fees or in-built secretive charges.

Similar measures have also been put forward to restrict European hedge funds and this is also a step in the right direction.

A Spanish mother speaks about her son surviving Israel's deadly boat raid

2010-06-04T23:51:00.000-07:00

I am David Segarra’s mother. It is 5am, June 2, and I wake up in Valencia learning that all the kidnapped victims in Israel have been freed, including my son.

I don’t harbor any hard feelings toward Israel at this time. And it isn’t because of some noble or religious cause but purely egotistical reasons.

Hate destroys, and Israel is showing a good example of this. I don’t want to detail the personal hell that I have gone through these past few days. It would be ridiculous to compare it to what Palestinian mothers go through each day. I am fortunate because my son David has survived the massacre aboard the Mavi Marmara and will be coming home safe and sound.

The Israeli soldiers may have destroyed his only lethal weapon: a video camera. But they forget that human beings have eyes, ears and mouths to tell the world of the horrors they have witnessed. — Cristina Soler Crespo. Valencia. [From a letter to El Pais.]

An idea whose time has come

2010-05-27T05:11:00.000-07:00

Finally, someone with (at least a bit of) power has spoken out with a logical proposal to make irresponsible greed in the finance world more difficult.

The EU internal market commissioner [and politician] Michel Barnier stated this week that to prevent future financial crises, there should be a network of national funds should be introduced so the cost of bank failures are not met by the taxpayer.

But as one commentator argues, the big problem with this (and similar) proposals is that it fails to tackle the problem of 'moral hazard', whereby banks take excessive risks, knowing that they have the protection of a safety-net. Indeed, by reducing the consequences of excessive risk-taking, these bail-out funds could have the opposite effect to that intended.

I believe there must first be a way to ensure that any new levies are not simply passed on to consumers in the form of higher fees or in-built secretive charges.

Similar measures have also been put forward to restrict European hedge funds and this is also a step in the right direction.