As one of Spain's greatest living
writers, Antonio Muñoz
Molina is someone always worth reading and this
short piece of his in the English language version of El Pais
is no exception.
He expresses some opinions about Spain
that I have long thought true about my country of birth, Australia.
Muñoz
Molina lives part of the time in New York and has that
particular kind of clear sight about Spain that only living away
from your native land can bring.
I'm not sure I fully agree with him
about all that he says though. Compared to somewhere like Australia I
think there is a richness of culture that is acknowledged by
many locals and to say you are a writer or journalist provokes
more interest from the average person here than in Australia, at
least in my experience.
But then again, MM should know. I
suspect that his opinions are largely based on contact with business
people and middle-level public officials, who (all across this
planet) generally put making money ahead of anything else as piddly
as the creative “industries.”
Somebody who has never written a book
or put-together a well-researched article would probably have no
idea what it takes to do so, just as I have no clue (or real
interest) in deal-making and political schmoozing.
Moulaye Ndiaye. Photo by Jesus Cisnes from lasprovincias.es.
"Moulaye Ndiaye, a street vendor and native from Senegal, was thrown from a bridge on the eve of the 2012 Tomatina Festival in Buñol, Valencia, Spain.
Moulaye was selling his products at
the festival when a young man stole his sunglasses. After asking,
without success, for the man to return them, Moulaye decided to leave,
and then he was shoved and pushed over a bridge more than six metres
from the ground. The backpack which he was carrying and the reeds
growing in the area where he fell [probably]saved his life.
He spent a month in
intensive care at the Manises Hospital with traumas, several broken ribs
and a spinal injury. The assault has caused him to lose sight in his
right eye and a very serious neck and back injury has prevented him from
working since.
In its blog, and on its Facebook
wall, the Movement Against Intolerance seeks the help of those who
witnessed the assault, asking them to make contact with the organisation
so that the case can remain open, as the police have been unable to
find the aggressor who escaped into the night. There has also been a
large civilian mobilisation which still continues, and the residents of the town of Buñol say they are horrified at this tragic event."
Under
the slogan, "Water is a service, not a business," thousands
of villagers in Laguna de Duero (Valladolid) have successfully stood up for almost
a year to their mayor's plan to privatize the water supply in the
municipality.
What I notice from this film is the
other-worldliness of Spain at that time.
The buildings are vaguely
recognisable but the men ride donkeys like timeless, rural Africans
and the women sweep dirt streets with bent backs because their brooms
do not even have such a thing as a simple long handle.
Their faces generally show hardship (something that has recently returned here with the “crisis,”) while skinny
dogs scuttle around.
Later, we see teams of men working in
the country with hand-held hoes and when a man speaks on the
telephone it is surprising because the mental atmosphere of the film
could have been almost medieval.
The war scenes reinforce how empty
war always is. The attempts to glorify it with stirring music are
hollow only partly because we know that the end result is a stifling
dictatorship, four decades long.
In another scene, now in Madrid, ragged children play in the
street and in the next frame a man hurriedly carries a seemingly
empty coffin over one shoulder.
Food cues (for some people this is a
reality again today) crowd next to destroyed buildings and a single
corpse lies in the gutter. (We are told that the body is that of a
book-keeper on his way to work at eight in the morning.)
After more battle scenes and shots of
noble-peasant types the film, now clearly a piece of propaganda, ends with
a man's voice singing a very moving a capella song, ruined somewhat
by Hemingway's voice-over.
For a detailed explanation of the
making of “The Spanish Earth” see Open
Culture here.
Every time that Barcelona
FC plays Real Madrid it is a big event but (surprsingly) Iraq's
Kurdish population are just as divided as the rival capital cities
here.
"Those who support Real are usually richer people, while the poorer people are more likely to support Barca.
Barcelona fans appear to be more numerous, probably because
Kurdistan and Catalonia are both regions pressing for greater autonomy...
Last August, a banner was unfurled in the stands during an El Clasico in
Barcelona's Nou Camp stadium bearing the words: "Kurdistan is not Iraq /
Catalonia is not Spain"
