Working Women Week: Barcelona June 14 - June 18 2021

 

"This first edition of WWW, organized by Barcelona Expat Life, Barcelona Metropolitan, Planet Venus and Professional Women’s Network Barcelona, will be held from the 14th to the 18th of June and will consist of a series of hybrid (online and offline) events, workshops, exhibitions and round tables carried out by experts in their fields.

WWW has been born with the principal aim of connecting multiple organizations to exchange experiences, give support and disseminate knowledge on a variety of topics within the fields of diversity, gender balanced leadership and female empowerment.

A further objective is to connect working women with each other, create empowering synergies and enrich them with the different perspectives and resources provided by selected leading organizations, companies or individuals based in Barcelona and Catalonia.

GENDER EQUALITY
DIVERSITY
FEMALE EMPOWERMENT
LEADERSHIP
EDUCATION & RESOURCES "

For more info see here.

"MICRODYNAMICS 2020, Xavier G Solís" -- (Art in a time of Covid)

"The state of emergency confined me to my workshop, where I was putting the final touches on an installation that was to open in Barcelona on March 27, 2020. Coronavirus. I felt the collective pain touching my skin, clouding my heart.

Now in lockdown, I rediscovered a series of unpublished engravings I had made with a steamroller almost ten years ago, when the anti-austerity movement took over the country’s public squares.

Now, they revealed subtle meanings within the universe of the dynamics of abuse of power in which I had conceived them: predators feeding off disorder, sinister economic forces emerging, figures making invisible threats, examples of arrogance and cruelty.

But there are also many examples of creative solidarity. The anonymous bravery of unprecedented sensitivity that comes from looking after one other.

And in the light of coming together in this forced coexistence, I reanalysed the entire series and noticed that the engravings had grown."

More videos of his work here.

"An encounter with a Romani Gypsy singing in a park in Merida, Spain. (Author reading.)"

Author and journalist Brett Hetherington reads an excerpt from his recent book, "Slow Travels in Unsung Spain" at the SUNBOW Art Lounge in Sitges, Catalonia/Spain.

The singer I met was named Juan de Pura. One of his songs can be heard here.

2 min. VIDEO -- The gig economy is killing people'

'Platform workers' are literally dying on the job.
As ever, the working class have to risk their lives for the profits of the ruling class. This is capitalism.

"The new nomads" -- Spain's young people

   "Spanish society has got an outstanding debt with its young people, who can’t construct a personal and professional life..., who don’t have decent jobs and salaries, don’t have adequate housing and can’t start a family.

The last decade has been witness to how the concept of “mileurista” [somebody earning 1,000 € a month] has passed from being derogatory to being an aspiration.

A recent study by [the trade union organization] Comisiones Obreras with the title “#GeneraciónMóvil” [mobile generation], shows the following: unstable and unpredictable personal and career paths, always conditioned by low salaries, unbearable rates of temporality and a rotation that turns the young into nomads in the labor market: from one sector to another, from salaried to self-employed, from victims of undesired partiality to false interns, with imposed stopovers in unemployment or abroad, without safe horizons nor the least capacity to plan life projects in the medium or long term, without security...

In 2017, 66 of every 100 young people had a temporary and/or part time contract; and still worse, 20 of every 100 salaried young suffered from double precariousness (temporary and part-time contract). Only 34 of every 100 had a fixed full-time contract...

Lastly, emancipation: 81% of the young between 20 and 24 years, 53% of those between 25 and 29, and 24% of those between 30 and 34 years still live with their parents. … leading to a lower birth rate, as they have their first child later or can’t afford to have children at all.

[…] many young people are deprived of the opportunities they should have had: the right to live their own life independently has been snatched away from them, to take their own choices, forcing them to accept, in the best of cases, any job, to work at any price, to study what the job market dictates to them and not that for which they had a vocation, or to return again and again to their family’s home, hiding their frustration."

SOURCE: Joaquín Estefanía's article: “Ideas,” El País, Dec. 30, 2018, p. 8 [printed edition] (Originally found as excerpts here at LITERARY RAMBLES blog.)

Pulido - A quality Barcelona rapper (first heard on a RENFE train)

Me está rentando no ver na, entre las sombras y la oscuridad, hay pequeñas luces que se escapan, se que la vida lo devolverá, pues ella sin dudar es más trampa que trap, oh no, no me jodas con esas barreras, estamos infectaos por las monedas/ ay, ya no nos queda otra, romper con la ilusión hasta que se nos desconozca, quiero libertad sin ataduras, quiero que tu alma sea robusta en la penumbra, hasta que llegue la soledad de la tumba, donde el alma flote en universos de tundras, Me cansé de mirar en el vacío del mal, ahora debo salir ahora tengo otro plan, mi reflejo de ti, tu reflejas en mi lo que reflejo de ti, es un espejo bestial, Si pudiera verme de verdad, atravesaría mi otra mitad hasta que fuera necesario parar, y no te quiero contar, mas de lo que debo entregar, me cuesta reaccionar/ es abrirme en canal. Atravesando lo desconocido, necesito vivirlo, poner los cinco sentidos en esto, hasta que pare el tiempo, hasta conseguirlo hasta que me pellizque y no me vea dormido. Jugais todos al mismo juego y ya estoy cansado y aburrido a mi me aviva la llama cuando se enciende el sonido, y estoy perdido, entre las posiciones del destino si resumo mi camino en esos astros y su brillo Se que eres parte del todo, y no puedo sentirme separado, de ti ni de ningun humano, aunque sea malo, lo que guarda encerrado en su interior es solo causa del dolor acumulado. Experiencias tan grises que le han traumatizado, recuerdo a little supa y me hago serio en este tramo, pues vamos, a hacerlo negro como canserbero, asi estamos, desde que al amor se le asoció significado. Y yo de lado a lado, mirando todo alrededor siento mi mano, helada como páramo lejano, hay sitio para el amor estigmatizado, sin esquematizar la libertad de un compañero alado Ay,,, no no no, llega el final, siento mi voz, el corazón se me va apagando pero la esperanza sigue brillando(x2) 

Spanish photographer freed after 6 weeks detention in Libya

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.