Fires and Heatwave in Spain: Talking to ABC TV News (Australia)

 

With Lara Hyams @ABC News In-depth I talked about the current extreme heatwave and wildfires that are the latest symptom of #climatecrisis in #Spain and across most of southern Europe

"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.]

"Rewilding the Pyrenees" -- My latest book review for Catalonia Today

 

Here’s a book about nature that is neither an impassioned rant nor a lecture. 

Instead, over a period of years, Steve Cracknell spoke directly to the horses’ mouths and with great empathy and balance, he lets us learn about the various sides of the issues. 

His central question in a new release titled The Implausible Rewilding of the Pyrenees is whether native animals should be reintroduced to these mountains, along with selected non-native animals.

According to Cracknell, rewilding comes from the idea that traditional conservation has failed to slow or even stop a decline in biodiversity in Catalonia, parts of Aragon and the border country across Spain and France. 

This is a trend that could be reversed by reintroducing key species ‘and creating suitable habitats for them. “What is most important,” he says, “is not the presence of the animal but the effect it has on its environment” and here the most controversial predators are the bear and the wolf.

With the fitness of a young goat, the author climbs up to isolated summer pastures, freezing his extremities in the quest to see a bear for the first time. He also spends hours and days with farmers doing the seasonal ‘transhumance’ where cattle or sheep are herded overland to new feeding grounds.

He interviews shepherds, ecologists and wild boar hunters, among others. In the process, he’s not afraid to get dirt under his fingernails and also (I suspect) end up reeking of sheep dung. The sadness and gore of sheep who’ve been attacked by bears is also something he doesn’t avoid.

He asks all the best questions to gently test the claims and experiences related by those who have a lot to lose and those who take an interest for non-economic reasons. I was happy to see he never made the appalling choice of calling anyone “stakeholders in the debate”.

The details in the book are often exact and surprising. For example, bears are known by the name across the region. One of them named “Goiat” (meaning boy or lad) is a 10-year-old, 205 kg male (born in Slovenia) and the only bear to have been released in the southern part of Catalonia in Pallars Sobirà in 2016. 

A remarkable camera trap photo shows another (possibly scratching his belly) against a tree in Vall d’Aran. (The author mentions that wolves from Italian stock arrived in Catalonia in 2006 after a century’s absence.)

One shepherd who Cracknell spends time with is Mustapha, originally from a sheep farm in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. With his legal status now fully regularised (and with wife and young child who joined him later) he had previously crossed over the sea to the Canary Islands from Western Sahara. Thanks to funding grants from the EU’s Project Catalunya PirosLIFE programme, conditions for those like Mustapha have greatly improved in the past four years.

He has a young assistant named Josep, when in the past he’d had to exist for over three months with only his dog for company. As well, he’s been lucky enough to enjoy the relative comfort of portable cabins helicoptered into his area at the start of summer.

Steve Cracknell is the author of two other titles on nature but apart from his extensive wildlife knowledge and deep affection for the Pyrenees, what comes across in this book is a genuine respect for individuals who work and live up there. As a long time resident, his final words sum it all up better than I could: “Exit pursued by a bear.”

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

"The Inner Life of Animals" -- My latest book review for Catalonia Today magazine

[Pic: Club Hípic Raúl Pinteño]

Can horses feel shame? Do deer grieve for their dead? Why do roosters deceive hens?

What about humpback whales that act as if they’re grateful, adulterous magpies or pigs that have learnt their own names?

These are the kinds of questions that are asked by people who spend lots of time around animals because our life experiences are full of stories that seem to support an obvious ‘Yes’ answer.

In Peter Wohlleben’s book, “The Inner Life of Animals” -- translated with warmth and clarity by Jane Billinghurst -- we get as close as (currently) possible to understanding how the creatures we share the planet with are much more complex than we might at first think. 

With our inbuilt tendency to ‘humanise’ animal behaviour, we like to compare them with our own species but this book has a remarkable way of putting us into their minds, bodies and hearts. 

Some of these are the author’s own pets and farm animals and his lifetime’s sharp observations of them bring the reader genuine insight.

The other great strength of this book is also one of it’s few weaknesses. We are moved and educated in equal measure with page after page of compelling anecdotes about the uplifting and even empathetic side of animals (squirrels adopting orphans and even cross-species pseudo-families) but there is only featherweight attention given to the cruelty that also runs through the animal world. 

Where, for example is the fox that only eats the fatty jowls and throat of the sheep and leaves it to die in slow agony with the rest of its body intact? 

If we humans are merely animals (and this is a biological fact of evolution that Wohlleben rightly points out) then surely the cruelty we routinely practice can also be found in our four-legged relatives too.

Wohlleben tells us with loving, enthusiastic praise about the crow that goes tobogganing for fun. He overlooks the cat that tortures and toys with the mouse for nothing but amusement. The book would be stronger if this was acknowledged because it would add a few fistfuls of balance. 

Where the book also charms the reader is in overthrowing misconceptions we generally have. Fish have no memory? Pigeons are “bird-brained” or pigs are simpletons? After reading this work, your mind is very likely to have been changed for good on these and similar questions. 

He also counters other popular notions by illustrating that ‘the law of the jungle” and “survival of the fittest” are only parts of how animals relate with each other.

Organised cooperation amongst individuals and groups is surprisingly common and it seems that many creatures (such as red deer) have the ability to switch off their hunger impulses when the seasons dictate this. 

When it comes to domesticated animals though, in a brave and convincing section, Wohlleben also shows that some animals undoubtedly enjoy their work with men and women.

He writes about horses happily clear forests as well as shepherd dogs engaged in keen “partnership” with their owners. This is only after stating of course, that “most animals used by people lead dismal lives.” 

Before now running his own home farm, the author worked in forestry commission woodland for 20 years and he has also written a book about the hidden life of trees.

Reading that might even persuade me to stop using paper.

[This book review was first published under the title ""Animal feelings" in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2020.]

Q and A on life as an immigrant in Europe (or "expat" if you prefer.)

From ExpatFocus.com  (November 11, 2019) 

Brett Hetherington (Photo credit: robbiekavanagh.net)           
 

Who are you?

My name's Brett Hetherington and I'm a European (Australian/British) journalist, teacher and author (most recently of Slow Travels in Unsung Spain) living in Catalonia, Spain with my partner/wife Paula and our teenage son Hugo.


Where, when and why did you move abroad?

Our first move was to Japan in 1999 (where Hugo was born) and three years later we moved to England.

After two years there we moved to live in inland Catalonia in the Barcelona region and have been there since 2006.


What challenges did you face during the move?

Plenty! Languages were a big one because we all had to deal with Catalan as well as Spanish. Hugo was only five when we came, so he picked it up quickly with the help of some great teachers at his Catalan primary school. I've become functionally fluent in Spanish and generally understand Catalan okay, though I don't speak it.


How did you find somewhere to live?

Luckily, a teacher my wife was replacing was leaving his apartment in the town where we wanted to live, Vilafranca del Penedes. I communicated directly with the landlord (in a mixture of his poor English and my even worse Spanish). Later, we bought our own place in a small nearby town, almost a decade ago now.


Are there many other expats in your area?

Very few here, but 20 minutes away on the coast around Sitges (where we used to work) there is a strong expat community.


What is your relationship like with the locals?

Friendly, and some acquainatiances, but few real close friends, I would say. Most small-town, rural Catalan people call themselves "closed." They mean that they're not open to having many new social relationships outside their already established ones.


What do you like about life where you are?

The vineyards and open spaces of nature around. It's a great balance too when you mainly work in the big city of Barcelona.


What do you dislike about your expat life?

Well, I think of myself as an immigrant more than an expat because I don't see who we are as any different to others who came here from somewhere else for a better life. I do intensely dislike the bureaucracy and arbitary kinds of decision-making in Southern Europe. The low salaries that never rise are making life harder every year too.


What is the biggest cultural difference you have experienced between your new country and life back home?

This has been our home for a long time now, but if I compare it with where I lived most of my life, I'd say I miss the more spontaneous way people socialise and talk to strangers, as well as the multi-cultural population being a part of the mainstream.


What do you think of the food and drink in your new country? What are your particular likes or dislikes?

The food is wonderful: seasonal, fresh, still not too expensive in general. It's a big reason to live here. The range of vegetables is always limited to Mediterranean ones though, unless you want to pay big money for "ethnic" ingredients.

That's the only downside, because the seafood and usual high quality in well-priced "menus del dia" is great. There's fantastic, cheap wine in this area too.


What advice would you give to anyone following in your footsteps?

Do it! But be prepared to live in a low-wage economy unless you are very lucky. On the other hand, Spain/Catalonia is a great place to bring up kids, in my opinion.


What are your plans for the future?

Stay until we can't afford it anymore and if Brexit doesn't make life impossible or any more costly.


You can find Brett's book, Slow Travels in Unsung Spain, on Amazon.

Microplastics blowing into remote Pyrenees mountains

[Photo: Bob Edme/Pool via Reuters]

"Microplastics have been discovered in a remote area of the French Pyrenees mountains [close to the border with Spain/Catalonia.] The particles traveled through the atmosphere and were blown into the once-pristine region by the wind, according to a new study published in Nature Geoscience.

This is just the latest example of the “hidden risks” posed by plastics that humans cannot see with the naked eye. For now, governments and activists are focused on avoiding plastic litter in the environment, driven mainly by concern for wildlife and worries over unsightly drinks bottles or abandoned fishing nets on beaches. Plastic bag usage has been cut in many parts of the world, and various projects are exploring how to gather up the floating plastic waste in oceans. But little has yet been done to deal with polluting plastic particles that are usually invisible.

There is, however, growing concern about these micro and nanoplastics, classified as particles smaller than 5mm. These come in part from deliberately manufactured sources, such as scrubbing materials in cleaning and cosmetic products, but also from secondary sources, such as the inevitable breaking up or wearing down of larger items such as tires or fibers shed from tumble driers and washing machines. We are becoming increasingly aware of their presence but know surprisingly little about how much is out there, how it behaves in our environment and what the implications are for human and animal well-being.

As more studies publish their findings we are learning that microplastics are more widespread than we imagined, and that they are found in every environmental system investigated. Plastic particles have been found in record-breaking quantities in river sediments in the UK, for instance, while a study in Paris found plastic fibers in wastewater and the air."

Read more from source here.

"The author's mouthpiece" -- My latest review for Catalonia Today magazine

Elizabeth Costello is that very rare thing: a commercially successful writer of fiction from Australia – the far end of the world that has typically given very little attention (or much else) to people who use words for their living and plenty of attention to those who are professionals in sports or make big bucks some other way.

It’d be an exaggeration to say that someone like this author would have to be invented in fiction because she simply couldn’t exist in real Australian life, but this is almost a forgivable exaggeration, given the interests of the populace there in mainly competitive activities.

Being in the creative fields in Australia is often a bit like being labelled as a poser. In that wide, brown land the word “intellectual” is sometimes used as a type of insult.

At one point in JM Coetzee’s novel, Costello apologises to her audience: “I usually take care to conceal the extravagances of the imagination.”

Costello though, as the author sets her out at least, is as good as a polemicist in the public lectures where she is invited to speak.

Within a few paragraphs of her first long monologue about the philosophy of vegetarianism, I wondered whether I was actually listening to Coetzee’s real opinions because the arguments the character makes are so heartfelt. (A glimpse at the Acknowledgments section placed on the final page confirms that several of the chapters called “Lessons” were in fact published as non-fiction previously).

Later in the book, after Costello publicly compares abattoirs with the Nazi’s murder camps, we read variations on the first meat-free-living theme. “A sparrow knocked off a branch by a slingshot [or] a city annihilated from the air: who dare say which is worse?” a narrator asks on Costello’s behalf. 

Even the smell of a boiled egg “nauseates her” and this extreme Buddhist-like respect for the sacredness of all life swings between wholly convincing and repetitive ranting. It takes up large parts of the book, as does a dry examination of Greek myths.

In one of the most moving sections though, Costello talks about what she ultimately believes in when she has to justify herself. In lovely images she explains where frogs live during Australia’s long dry spells. 

Oddly, it is here that she seems to be speaking for the writer in general, saying this “is a story I present transparently, without disguise.”

The book is lifted and somewhat lightened by the contents of a letter that Costello writes to her sister, who is a nun. In a surprisingly erotic scene, she tells of her lack of inhibition and displays of “humanity” one afternoon in her younger years.

Religion plays a key part in the book and a clever analysis of “The Virgin” Mary is a highlight. Costello ultimately has a strange belief in the devil but not in god and this forms a counterbalance with her sister and another author she battles with.

I also speculated about the possibility of Costello having been modelled on the great writer, VS Naipaul, clearly also a real arrogant doo-dah and a highly selective eater but undoubtedly deserving of his Nobel Prize for titles such as “A House for Mr Biswas”. Costello is best known for her novel “The House on Eccles Street”.

JM Coetzee’s semi-autobiographical “Boyhood” is a tighter, more consistent book than “Elizabeth Costello” but this book about a strong-minded woman is still certainly worth a read.

(This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2019.)

"Greed, ineptitude and austerity fanned the flames of the Greek wildfire" -- Yanis Varoufakis

[DiEM25 co-founder, Yanis Varoufakis]

"ATHENS: A biblical calamity befell the Attica region last [month.] 

I saw its first sign in the late morning at Athens airport, where I was seeing off my daughter to Australia. A strong whiff of burning wood caused me to look up to the sky, where a whitish-yellow sun beckoned, surrounded by the tell-tale eclipse-like daytime darkness that only thick, sky-high smoke can cause. 

By the early evening the news had cascaded in. Many of our friends’ and some of our relatives’ houses were destroyed in northeast Attica. Forest fires had run amok, spreading westward towards the heavily built-up coastline, cutting the settlement of Mati and the town of Rafina off from Athens, forcing residents to flee towards the sea.

The first I knew of casualties was when told of the plight of activists belonging to our political movement, DiEM25. Their house in Mati was destroyed by the flames, along with every other house on their street, but at least they had escaped with their lives, just. Next door their neighbours perished, their corpses discovered next morning, crouched together, their three-year-old girl in the middle of a heart-breaking huddle.

And the ominous news continued to stream in: a friend and her husband, whose house is in ruins, are missing. A cousin, whose house sits on a cliff by the sea, had to jump more than 200ft into the rocky waters below as his house was burnt down — thankfully to be rescued by fishermen. However, 26 other people, who had come very close to the same coastline, succumbed to the smoke and flames before they could jump. As I write this, the official death toll stands at at least 83. Dozens are still missing.

Why did it happen? On this, our Black Monday, the weather conspired with Greek society’s, and our state’s, chronic failures to create the murderous inferno. A particularly dry winter had produced large quantities of forest and bush fuel ready and willing to wreak havoc on a Monday that brought to Attica temperatures of 39C and 80mph winds.

In addition to nature’s guilt, there is of, course, stupendous human culpability. Greek society’s postwar economic model, which relied on anarchic, unplanned property development anywhere and everywhere (in ravines, pine forests and so on), in effect invited nature to punish us, like any Third World country, with lethal forest fires in the summer and flash floods in winter. (Indeed, last winter 20 people died in houses built on the bed of an ancient creek.)

Society’s collective failure is aided and abetted by the Greek state’s perpetual lack of preparedness: for example, the failure to clear fields and forests of accumulated kindling during the winter and spring, or to organise escape routes for residents in case of an emergency.

Then there are the usual crimes of the oligarchy: for example, the enclosure of the coast around seaside villas for the purposes of illegally privatising the beach. Many died or were badly injured flailing against the barbed wire the rich had put in their way as they struggled to get to the sea. And last but not least, humanity’s collective guilt due to the manner in which rapid climate change is turbocharging the natural phenomena that punish our human foibles.

As is often the case every time Greece is ravaged by forest fires, the government hinted at arson. While I cannot rule out the possibility of foul play by profiteers, I am not convinced of this. Greek governments have traditionally found it convenient to blame profiteers, arsonists, terrorists, foreign agents even. Why? Because in so doing they avoid having to confess to their lack of preparedness, for having failed to impose laws and safety regulations, for not having organised or funded the emergency services properly.

What role did austerity and Greece’s ongoing Great Depression play in the ineffectiveness of the response? The fire department, the citizens’ protection agencies, the ambulance service and hospitals are terribly understaffed because of austerity, undoubtedly.

While the fires would not have been stopped if we had had three times the fire brigade staff and firefighting aircraft, a country that for a decade now has witnessed the steady diminution of its public services, its communities, its morale, can scarcely be expected to prepare itself well for a calamity boosted mightily by climate change.

Journalists ask me: is the EU helping? The reality is that Europe has made itself irrelevant when it comes to such issues. Truth be told, we had destructive fires before Greece entered the EU, before we swapped the drachma for the euro, and afterwards. Europe played no role in helping us fight the flames, a task that is not in its remit. But while Brussels cannot be held responsible for the fires per se or for 70 years of Greek society’s abuse of our natural environment, it is unquestionable that it has depleted the Greek state of most resources and capabilities.

Might, therefore, this not be the moment (the same journalists ask) for Athens to rebel and demand the end of austerity and of the spending cuts that are detrimental to Greece’s survival? Of course. Every moment is a good moment to confront Brussels, Berlin, Frankfurt and so forth to break free from the straitjacket of inane austerity and misanthropic social policies that are responsible for Greece’s permanent humanitarian crisis.

For a decade we have been losing many more people to the tragedy caused by the EU establishment than to any flood or forest fire. The number of suicides rose sharply immediately after the introduction of new austerity measures in 2011, while more than 1m have emigrated because of the economic depression the EU has imposed on Greece.

While I fully expect crocodile tears to be shed by Brussels over our burnt-out victims, and similarly hypocritical gesturing by the Greek government, I do not expect any reversal of the organised misanthropy afflicting Greece just because so many Greeks died last Monday.

Until and unless progressives get organised across Europe, willing to accept local responsibility while banding together to impose a change of policy at the European level, nothing will change, except perhaps a further strengthening of Greece’s Golden Dawn and other populist political parties in Italy, Germany, Austria and the Polish-Hungarian illiberal nexus.

Greece’s forest fires, in this context, are a tragic reminder of our collective responsibility as Europeans."

© Project Syndicate, 2018. (Also published in The Sunday Times.)

The author is Greece’s former finance minister and co-founder of DiEM25, the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025.

A WeMove petition on the fires in Greece here.

"9 year old Spanish boy becomes Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year"

"Since 1964, the National History Museum in London has been organizing their annual Wildlife Photographer Of The Year contest.




This year, the Grand title winner in Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year, which includes photographers up to 17 years of age, was Carlos Perez Naval – a 9-year-old boy from Spain."


Read more from source here.