"Wine and a whine" – My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

 

As a reptile – I like to think of myself as one of those lizards that runs across the hottest desert sands with a high knee action like an Olympic hurdler, though in reality I’m probably more of a slow-moving komodo dragon – waking up to yet another spring morning with a sky the colour of an iron lung is all too much.

Most likely, you’re reading this with summer’s heat well underway but I actively resent the idea that most foreigners have moved to Mediterranean countries solely for solar delight. 

Not true. 

Speaking only for myself, there’s plenty of other reasons to live here long-term and I’ve written in detail about them in this column over the years.

But yes, I admit, I don’t remember a spring here in the last decade and a half that was so bloody gloomy. 

Apparently, March had the least number of sunlight hours in 50 years and April/early May didn’t feel much better. 

I want my money back. I didn’t sign up for these relentless, grim overhead conditions and general damp.

Simon Winder in his book Germania, makes an argument (with Germany as the exception) that “one very odd aspect of European countries is that if you start in their north-wests they are generally unattractive, harsh places but if you head south-east life gets better.” 

He goes on to put this down to fairly obvious factors like the existence of more sun, olives, melons and an outdoor life including wine and vineyards.

Then the author uncorks some wider history, quoting a British wine-merchant who maintains that for most people in England until the First World War, “wine meant drinking ‘hock’ (German Rhine/Mosel white) or [what was popularly called] ‘claret’ (French Bordeaux red). 

Following this, post-war, the German drop “tasted too much of steel-helmet” and apart from the sweeter “Blue Nun” it largely disappeared from many British tables.

It seems to me that a lot of 21st-century Europeans, including Catalans and Spanish of course, take good wine slightly for granted. 

In some areas, the geography supports that. Just travel [I almost remember what that verb means] down the roads or look out the train window between Martorell and down the line through the Penedès to near the coast at Sant Vicenç de Calders. 

The landscape is a non-religious hymn to the grape.

That great truth-teller Eduardo Galeano wrote, “We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.” 

Personally, I can’t remember ever having anything better than an ice-cold Chilean dry white called Concha y Toro in a Canberra restaurant called El Rincon Latino.

With the recent scarcity of a penetrating heat and further east a war that must’ve taken any warmth out of any scattering of sun, I hope that rays of natural serotonin are soon seeping into our souls like “that first swallow of wine… after you’ve just crossed the desert.”

Now I’m reminded of the basic and essential difference between climate and weather, though I doubt Leonard Cohen was thinking about that when he wrote, “Springtime starts and then it stops in the name of something new.” 

What else is new apart from the season? Anything? Something?

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2022.]

    

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"My Catalonia" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

 

[Photo: C.Morell]

  

When I think of Catalonia what immediately comes to mind is the word ‘home’. I see the wide view across rows of vineyards, the mountains of the Penedès in the distance, the tops of Montserrat further away, only able to be seen in winter when the leaves on the bare trees allow it. That, from our back terrace.

I have to think about our house too. A narrow but tall and modern ‘adossat’ terrace that has been ours to enjoy (and pay off back to the bank) for the last eleven years. The nighttime light from the old church tower across the street still angles in across our lowly bed. Its bells still ring every fifteen minutes to remind me I rise and sleep in Europe, not Australia, England or Japan.

I am also compelled to recall the splendours of the food here. Discovering the joy in simple ‘pa amb tomàquet’ and the savoury wonder of salt cod, ‘suquet’ seafood stew or the earthy richness of ‘calçot’ green onions cooked on a wood fire.

In Catalonia too, I found the pleasure of chewing the sweet, scant flesh on rabbit bones and diving into a bowl of snails ‘a la llauna’ hot from a tin tray, freshly out of the oven. We still drink the co-op white wine from Covides (an unfortunate name in these times.) Good, cheap stuff pressed from Xarel·lo, Macabeu and Parellada grapes.

Of course, Catalonia is so much more than just that. It’s where we’ve worked. I’ve written, taught and travelled thousands of kilometres to do these things. It’s an hour-long seat on RENFE trains, it’s driving the hills up and down the single-lane N340 running past Vallirana.

Equally, this place has sustained us and drained us; given so much but also taken so much energy and expense. It’s where our son went to school and learnt to use two languages. Catalan is his second language and as he makes his way as an independent young adult he still uses it every day in his work and study, I’m immensely happy to say.

Catalonia gave him superb teachers all through primary and secondary school. Every one of them were caring and dedicated women, apart from a handful of young men and they too were the exact kinds of male anyone could hope for as role models for him.

As well, my thoughts can’t go much further than to the selfless people who work with such heart and humanity in the public health system here. I owe a great deal to them all and so does my wife.

And there’s always The Big Smoke, the capital that brings tourists from everywhere. I was first one myself almost 25 years ago and now as a local I love to busy myself in the crowds on the streets. Every part of Barcelona is a gift, even the least attractive corners.

My Catalonia continues to spur the imagination. (I once had the idea of a book of photos of every rambla in every town where they could be found across the land).

Now, in my more optimistic times, I see somewhere I’d never want to leave. As it is, I don’t want to live anywhere else. Here is as good as it gets.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2022.]

"So, how was your summer?" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

 

When people ask me this question I’ll be able to say it was unique. I had some novel experiences. 

Because the Spanish government doesn’t seem to have the ability to get its Social Security department to pay welfare benefits properly, I was one of the millions of unemployed who received nothing from them.

Like most private (or non-government) teachers in August I had no income.

This meant that the only state support for my household of three adults was a voucher for 100 Euros that I could spend in our little village’s only food shop. Still, I’m grateful for that. The town council helped.

Of course, it didn’t stop me worrying about the possibility of losing our house. That’s another new feature of 2021 but not confined to summertime.

What else? Well, we didn’t travel anywhere. We couldn’t afford it. Same as last year and the year before that. Instead, I spent hour after hour looking for the best place to sell some of my wife’s inherited jewellery. My mother in law’s gold bracelets paid for some of our mortgage.

I also put some time into a new hobby: persecuting myself and my wife and son to only use electrical appliances during the low-charge periods of the day, 2pm to 6pm. 

Of course, it didn’t work. Our electricity bill has gone up anyway. But we’ve almost stopped eating meat and drinking tea (the real, expensive stuff) so that might help even things out, do you think?

But surely I did something worthwhile? Yes. For my one glass of it a day, I found a bottle of wine I can actually drink that costs less than 1 euro. Also, I kept beavering away on my first novel. It’s getting close to finished. Nice. I watched my son with his girlfriend and I was proud of him. Also very nice. (She’s moved in so now there’s four of us.) 

As well,I walked here and there. It was free. Nice, again. It meant I discovered new patches of nature and parts of nearby towns that I hadn’t explored before: Pacs del Penedes and it’s Roman aqueduct in the medieval shade of a leafy forest, the thickest vines on the side of unfashionable Santa Margarita i Els Monjos and yet more wonderful Roman arches next to Sant Jaume dels Domenys.

All those in silence and with no one else around to distract me.  I went home and learned a lot reading Doris Lessing then dreamed about going to a restaurant again one day. It’s been more than 18 months since we did that.

On top of those fun and games, I enjoyed the heat of the sun. I always do. There was a part of me though that sometimes thought of that melancholy Bob Dylan line. “It’s not like the sun that used to be.”  

In short, while on a reluctant holiday, I tasted the stale, acrid taste of relative first-world poverty, or at least the sensation of sliding hundreds of metres towards it from what was once a comfortable middle-class existence. Surely, this is “The New Adventure” of the 21st century.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Sept. 2021.]

"Lockdown loaded" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

[People outside after easing of health restrictions. O. DURAN..jpg]

The decision to send at least four million “non-essential” workers back to their jobs on April 13 strikes me as an extreme mistake. A dangerous one. 

This was a Spanish government move and was opposed publicly by Catalan president Quim Torra. He (and little ol’ insignificant me) will have been proved to a significant degree, right or wrong by the time you are reading this article a few weeks later.

If I’ve been shown to be mistaken then I humbly apologise to Mr Sanchez and that means you can stop reading my words from here on in. But in my opinion, which is also the opinion of countless medical and scientific professionals, the risk of so many people returning to workplaces, public transport, cafes, restaurants, street pavements, parks and everywhere else in between, is too many million risks to take.

This is because Mr Sanchez’ decision is highly likely to lead to another jump in coronavirus cases, including the numbers of people needing specialised medical treatment. That, as we have already seen this spring, puts unbearable stress on those masked heroes we have been applauding (and grossly underpaying) in the public hospital system. Again, they too are facing possibly being infected and even dying themselves.

Going back to work ‘en masse’ simply means that new cases of Covid-19 infection here are added to the existing ones, multiplying and magnifying the pandemic’s devastation. This is easily avoidable by continuing the quarantine period. That’s my argument.

Tragically, countries across southern Europe, and most especially ours, have failed to learn from the much more successful strategies used in places such as Korea, India, and New Zealand. There, they tested huge numbers of the population and applied more restrictive quarantine measures a whole lot faster, sooner (now longer) and comprehensively.

In essence, they took the threat of this invisible killer extremely seriously and their cautious-minded leaders were not afraid to act in the entire public’s interest. They put people’s health ahead of any concerns about costs to business or the national budget.

Meanwhile, as the virus ebbs and flows across the globe, one thing that will not be saved is the living conditions of so many in Catalonia and wider Europe. Unless of course the historical idea of spreading wealth more fairly and collectively takes off again and our representatives see the merit in it. There are plenty in the shrinking middle class and suffering working classes who are desperately hoping for genuine economic change as a result of these troubled times.

Unfortunately, we can seemingly forget that the European Union will really help out. As progressive pan-European DiEM25’s Yanis Varoufakis recently commented, the Eurogroup’s underlying message to a large majority of Italians, Spaniards, and Greeks ,etc (given that 97% of the €500bn “stimulus” package is new national debt) is that it must all be repaid through further austerity via new cuts to each nation’s budgets and services. This burden of course falls most harshly on the very citizens who can afford it the least.

Out here though, in Penedès, where I live, the farmers in the vineyards continue to go about their business of being in the “business of pleasure,” as I heard a French wine producer call it. After all, the grapes don’t know how to self-isolate. They don’t understand the gravity of the spring they have just sprung up in. And it seems to me that this year their leaves seem bigger and greener, earlier than I’ve ever seen them.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2020 and is dedicated to the memory of Theresa-Eunice “Terry” Parris (1926-2020).]