Barcelona as a 'shelter city' (on World Refugee Day)

"*The following is an edited transcript of an interview [with Barcelona city council spokesman Marc Serra] conducted for European Alternatives’ forthcoming documentary Demos: Solidarity in Europe.

In February 2017 thousands of citizens marched in the city of Barcelona following the mayor’s call to challenge the national government over its failure to accept the country’s quota of refugees set by the EU. Like many other EU members, Spain has not fulfilled this quota, with only 1,279 people entering the country in 2018, while its citizens demand more migrants are welcomed. If cities are ready to house these people, and citizens are willing to cooperate with local institutions, what is stopping the process?

European Alternatives: What is the Shelter Cities program and how does it work?

Marc Serra: The Shelter Cities program started around the summer of 2015, when we witnessed the states’ failure to manage the human rights crisis, the refugee crisis. When the cities verified that the states were auctioning off the cities that could accommodate less refugees, we said that’s enough. It started as a cry of anger. Barcelona said “We are actually willing to take in people looking for shelter, fleeing war (in this case it was above all the conflict in Syria) in our cities.” Then, little by little, other cities joined the cry started in Barcelona. Today, almost three years later, a program called Shelter Cities exists, it combines the initial advocacy –– we have been to the United Nations, the European Commission, the Spanish government, even to the Vatican, to demand safe and legal channels to receive refugees–– with local policies, providing housing, translators, human resources teams (social workers, social educators…) to accommodate the refugees who, despite the difficulties created by the states and the EU, are arriving in our cities and, for whom, therefore, we must provide decent living conditions to – it is our duty and obligation.

European Alternatives: What would you say has been, up until today, the greatest success of the program?

Marc Serra: I believe the greatest success of the Shelter Cities program has been to manage to channel the desire to show solidarity, a growing desire among the citizenship. It has been difficult, but I believe we have been able to seize this opportunity. We must take into account that Barcelona has a very long history of solidarity; that the city had already invested a great deal in welcoming East European refugees fifteen years ago, that there had been protests against the war in Iraq, and that here the biggest protests in Europe and perhaps in the entire world took place in favour of the refugees.

The city has opened up and since the beginning of the term the number of asylum seekers it assists has grown threefold. We took care of 4,400 people applying for asylum in 2017, through our service providing counselling for immigrants and refugees, obviously for free, offering free legal assistance, hosting those in need of emergency housing, and developing a local shelter program for vulnerable families.

I believe that, above all, the program has been able to channel this desire to help despite the institutions, so also counteracting the declarations expressed in the public debate, which treat the issues of migration and refugees in a populist manner, therefore allowing us to take a stand against fascism and extremism.

European Alternatives: You talk about institutions, and right now we are in a situation where, on the one hand, Barcelona is an example of wanting to welcome people coming from countries at war, and on the other, despite the EU has imposed national refugee quotas on member states, in order to try to manage this arrival of people, the nation states are blocking that arrival. How does Barcelona cope with this “duality”, this double policy of these two institutions, at the national level and the European one?

Marc Serra: In light of the Spanish government’s reiterated refusal to fulfill the quotas, we went to Brussels to ask the European Commission to take action, as it has already done with some states that have neglected the quota issue in an even more evident way. The fact is that the deals signed in 2015 are still in force, even though they have expired, because they are agreements made not only with the EU, but also with the entire citizenship. Therefore the European Commission can, and must, initiate disciplinary procedures against the states that have failed to comply with the quota system. We want the Spanish government to actually take in the 17,000 people it has committed to take in. We want it because the citizenship wants it, and we will do everything we can to remind both the Spanish state and the European Commission of this..."


Read more from source at European Alternatives here.

spoke with Marc Serra from the City Council of Barcelona about ‘Shelter Cities’, a program initiated by the city to manage the arrival of asylum seekers at a local level.  

We spoke with Marc Serra from the City Council of Barcelona about ‘Shelter Cities’, a program initiated by the city to manage the arrival of asylum seekers at a local level.  

"Churnalism" -- My latest article for Catalonia Today magazine

[Photo credit: Cornelia Kraft]

I learnt a new word this week after reading an email from a journalist friend.

Churnalism is defined in the Collins online dictionary as: "a type of journalism that relies on reusing existing material such as press releases and wire service reports instead of original research, especially as a result of an increase in demand for news content. "

The verb 'to churn out' means “to produce large quantities of something very quickly.” Typically, it has been used to mean an industrial process and I want to give you just one example of why churnalism is produced in today's media.

Below is the email that my friend forwarded to me. It is apparently a leaked email sent to the subbing [editing] team at one of Australia's biggest commercial newspapers by the chief sub [editor], a British man. It was written after a strike by journalists over the sacking of yet another group of staff. He writes:

"I thought I would spell out expectations for the new gig, which has an open-ended contract (meaning there is no set time frame ... good news). The MINIMUM story output for a 4-hour shift is 16. Obviously we will give everyone a few weeks to...adjust to the new protocols. But if you fail to hit the numbers on a regular basis, we will have THE TALK! Copy flow is still appalling.... Many of you are still subbing normally...Forget it. I know it will come hard to those subs, like myself, who have been in this business for many years. You are now copy-fitting. When the story [gets to us], as far as [this company] is concerned, it is ready to print. We give it a (very) quick read, touch up any minor mistakes [then] get rid of it...We assume the story is perfect, not to be changed...and, please, do not change ANYTHING without first getting approval unless it is glaring obvious...because there will be no checking process. We will have neither the numbers nor the time to check. So make sure you get the magic zero fit...We WILL be reading pages throughout the night, but that’s the best I can do with the budget. It’s also what [this media company] is paying for...and all they want."

I now want to do a little analysis of what some of the words of this chief editor say, compared to what I believe they really mean to the journalists/sub-editors who have to read them and try to work using this email.

"new gig:" meaning you are working in the short-term contracts /freelance gig-economy now.

" open-ended contract: " conditions completely in favour of the employer.

" new protocols" changed rules that demand more production from the worker.

" hit the numbers on a regular basis:" you are on a factory production line and your output is being closely monitored and measured against your colleagues.

" Many of you" (repeated twice for emphasis) meaning: I don't know and don't care enough to communicate with you personally, giving the added benefit of confusing you about which category you might be in.

" copy-fitting:" meaning doing a lot of verbatim cutting and pasting directly from corporate and government press releases.

" we will have THE TALK! " meaning you will be warned that you will be fired unless you meet management's "expectations."

"Copy flow:" you don't write articles. You ensure a flow of content. You simply give order to the words that fill the spaces in the newspaper.

" I know it will come hard to those subs, like myself:” an attempt to convince the journalist that they have a shared past in common, pretending to care and understand how their work conditions are now worse.

" it is ready to print:" I am reinforcing that you will be doing my editing job for me.

I cannot begin to say how happy I am that I do not work for an organisation like the one above.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2017.]

How Britain's Country Farms have halved in last 40 years

"The extent of County Farms in England has halved in the last 40 years, an investigation by Who Owns England can reveal.

County Farms are farms owned by [public] Local Authorities and let out to young and first-time farmers, sometimes at below-market rents. They’re a vital ‘first rung on the farming ladder’ for newcomers to a sector that has high up-front capital costs: by providing the land and buildings, the public sector is helping get fresh blood into an industry where the average age of farmers is 60.

Yet the acreage of County Farms across England has plummeted from 426,695 acres in 1977 to just 215,155 acres in 2017, as data outlined below shows.

The revelation of the shocking decline in County Farms nationwide comes after Dorset County Council recently earmarked 6 of its County Farms for disposal and sale – 14% of its entire estate. This is despite the council officer’s report warning the sales would result in the loss of £95,000 in annual rents, and despite firm objections from the local branches of the Tenant Farmers’ Association (TFA) and Country Land & Business Association (CLA).

In his widely-praised Oxford Farming Conference speech this January, Environment Secretary Michael Gove spoke about equipping the “next generation of farmers” to grow better-quality food and do more to protect the environment post-Brexit. 

But the ongoing sale of County Farms runs precisely counter to that: undermining prospects for the next generation of farmers, just like the housing crisis is damaging prospects for young adults more broadly.

CHARTING THE DECLINE OF COUNTY FARMS

The origins of County Farms lie in the late-Victorian agricultural depression, during which widespread cries for land reform led radical Liberal MP Joseph Chamberlain (Theresa May’s political hero) to stand for election on the promise of “three acres and a cow” for landless tenant farmers. 

He went on to propose a solution whereby councils would buy up land and lease it out to small tenant farmers on cheap rents. A succession of government Acts in 1892, 1908 and 1925 created County Farms, sometimes called County Smallholdings."

More from Guy Shrubsole's article here.

Spain leads world in number of jailed artists

"Spain leads the world in the number of jailed artists, says Kamchatka, quoting ‘the Danish-based Freemuse organisation which warns of the emergence of "a new global culture to silence others" [something] which is repeated in all countries of the world, "even in the traditional democracies of the West".

This independent organisation, which is responsible for monitoring the state of freedom of artistic expression, has published its annual report, in which it identifies Spain as one of the countries in which the repression of [culture] creators has increased the most. 

Specifically, Spain leads the ranking of artists imprisoned in 2017, with a total of 13, ahead of China, Iran, Egypt and Turkey, and is the third in creators prosecuted, lying only behind Egypt and Ethiopia..."

(Article found through the excellent Business Over Tapas, which calls itself 'a weekly non-commercial newsletter about Spain...without fluff nor filler.')

Spanish government freezes EU-funded solar research centre

"In the desert of Tabernas, near where the famous spaghetti western films were shot, is the largest research centre for concentrated solar energy in Europe. 

And it’s dying through the usual blend of bad politics... As early as November 2017, the PSA chiefs resigned and cuts in research staff were announced. 

But how did we get to this point? 

Here’s what has happened: the research groups, partially funded from Brussels, had to deal with the freezing of funds due to [Spanish] government-driven spending restrictions. 

That’s right: they receive funds from the European Commission that they cannot use, even though their use would not affect in any way the Spanish national budget."

The Spanish government is against the solar plant (the traditional oil-based energy producers don't like competition from the solar people - at least until they've bought them out).

Translated by the excellent Business Over Tapas, which calls itself 'a weekly non-commercial newsletter about Spain...without fluff nor filler.'

"Why not Australia?" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today

I spent the first thirty years of my life in Australia and the last twenty trying to stay out of it.

Plenty of local people in this part of the world regularly ask me why we are living so far from Australia. There are a number of reasons but visiting there always reminds me that it is landmass with a population that now badly lacks what I call ‘public intellectuals.’

I grew up in the Canberra suburbs seeing brainy egomaniacs like Richard Neville, Clive James, BA Santamaria (though he was also a genuine bigot) and inspirational Prime Ministers Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating on television -- and here I mean free-to-air-TV.

But apart from someone like journalist, author and broadcaster Phillip Adams or a humorist like Andrew Denton there are now precious few deep thinkers in popular media.

The same claim could reasonably be made about the United States today where figures like Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky and perennial US Presidential candidate Ralph Nader have been replaced by a small number of quality satirists such as Jon Stewart.

Even someone like the brilliant (Canadian) writer/activist Naomi Klein has been sidelined from  being heard on a scale that her ideas deserve. The most popular networks and cable TV stations pull in large numbers of viewers who are instead fed a daily diet of polished lies and exaggerated fear-mongering.

Australia is a part of the world where talented, clever people in the creative arts industries have to leave if they genuinely desire to have a wide and mainstream audience.

Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes, Clive James, Nicole Kidman, Jason Donovan,Toni Collette, Rod Taylor, Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue, Nick Cave, Hugh Jackman, Cate Blanchett, Tim Minchin, Geoffrey Rush, Naomi Watts, Sia, Rebel Wilson and Barry Humphries simply could not have achieved the high quality of what they have done by remaining in Australia.

There, sport is number one and everything else cultural is a distant second.

Self-styled Australian ‘feral futurist’ Richard Neville wrote a rare, honest assessment of Australia for Adbusters not long ago. He explained why “the lucky country” still tends to rely on superpowers such as the USA (and most recently, China) and how it’s leaders prefer being an international sycophant.

“Australians are easily distracted,” he argued. “The focus of mass media [in Australia] is shopping promotions and light entertainment: cooking, sport, gossip, stock shifts, celebrity trials, soft porn and big-ticket ‘must see’ events.”

The question then has to be why has this happened? 

I think it’s partly because there is no developed interest in real politics in Australia, as opposed to the personality/leader-rivals "slugging it out in a boxing match" type-journalism that Australians are served.

The internet should have been a factor in leading to discussion on politics being less mediocre but it does not appear to be in Australia, unlike the USA where Obama then Bernie Sanders were able to break new activist ground. Instead, the news cycle “downunder” is dominated by a merry-go-round of opinion polls about leadership -- both state and federal -- and that passes for proper political analysis.

Australians are generally not only politically apathetic.

As one anonymous (European) online poster who had lived in Australia for 12 years wrote: “Australians as a whole are quite conservative. Just look at the government they elected! I find it increasingly frustrating. It's all about family, building a house, having a garden, a big 4WD and a BBQ on the weekend with the other families talking footy, house prices and gardening/fishing... I think maybe more adventurous Aussies leave.”

Australia is a very isolated country, but not only geographically. It is rich with beautiful landscapes (particularly the underrated desert) and its people have a lot in their favour. I just don’t want to live there because it doesn’t suit me and we wanted our son to grow up in culturally-rich Europe .

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2018.]

VIDEO: "Rich people don't create jobs" says multi-millionaire Nick Hanauer at his banned TED Talk

"As the war over income inequality wages on, super-rich Seattle entrepreneur Nick Hanauer has been raising the hackles of his fellow 1-percenters, espousing the contrarian argument that rich people don't actually create jobs.

The position is controversial — so much so that TED is refusing to post a talk that Hanauer gave on the subject.

National Journal reports today that TED officials decided not to put Hanauer's March 1 speech up online after deeming his remarks "too politically controversial" for the site..." Via Business Insider."

"Can Yanis Varoufakis Save Europe?"

[Illustration by Joe Ciardiello.]

'...he was one of those left-wing politicians critical of Europe’s economic institutions, though not necessarily of the idea of Europe itself. 

Even as a young man, Yanis Varoufakis had always been struck by the idea of a united Europe as a way to “forge bonds relying not on kin, language, ethnicity, [or] a common enemy, but on common values and humanist principles.” ' 

A well-written article on the leader of Europe's most exciting new political movement, DiEM25 here.

"In Spain, there is a fear of talking about race"

[Photo by Maité Escarria and courtesy of Lucía Asué Mbomío Rubio. Used with permission.]

Journalist Lucía Asué Mbomío Rubio talks about racism and Afro identity in Spain...

"Lucía Asué Mbomío Rubio is a journalist from Spain, the city of Madrid to be more exact. She is the daughter of a woman from Segovia, Spain and a man from Niefang, Equatorial Guinea in central west Africa.

Among other things, this multi-faceted reporter has published a Spanish-language novel titled “The Women Who Dared” (“Las que se atrevieron“), collaborated with multiple organizations such as Global Voices‘ partner Afroféminas, an online community for Afro-descendant women, and runs her own YouTube channel.

Global Voices spoke with Mbomío about her contributions to the fight against racism in the context of Spain, her thoughts about blackness, and her work as an activist.

Global Voices (GV): What are the risks or challenges of embracing the Afro or black identity in a society like Spain?

Lucía Asué Mbomío Rubio (LM): In Spain, there is a fear of talking about race (acknowledging that races, from a biological perspective, don't exist and are a socio-economic construct), or let's say of dealing with certain topics that are uncomfortable or that, as photographer Rubén H. Bermúdez would say, ‘prove to be awkward,’ among other things, because it's assumed that it's something bad.

So it's not uncommon to hear phrases like ‘I'm not racist, but,’ as if that preamble were to invalidate the racist remark that usually follows.

For this reason, Mbomío says an important part of the fight against the injustices caused by racism depends on making the discrimination visible. And that in turn largely depends on the spaces in which those affected by it can be heard:

LM: Not long ago, Luis Castellví, a professor at Cambridge, wrote in an article: ‘For the white majority of Spain, racism is invisible, just like male chauvinism is for certain men, homophobia is for many heterosexuals, and a big etcetera. But obviously that doesn't mean that these kinds of discrimination don't exist. To know how much racism there is in Spain, the minorities who are affected and those who live with them must be given a voice.’

Well, this is what often happens in this society, that various -isms are discussed by those who have the privilege of not experiencing them and when we, the affected, offer an opinion, we are automatically accused of having a victim mentality without the understanding that listening to us is an opportunity to alter behaviors and, therefore, to contribute to the improvement of a country that we too belong to."

Read more from Sandra Abd'Allah-Alvarez Ramírez' original article at Global Voices here.

In France: "Literary Vending Machines Serve Up Short Stories"

IN GRENOBLE, FRANCE, the short story addict doesn’t have to go far to get their fix. 

Across the seven square miles of the central city, 14 orange-and-black machines* are dotted like Easter eggs in train stations, municipal buildings, and even the local museum. 

At the push of a button, each one will unspool a little piece of literature, printed on a long strip of paper, like a grocery store receipt. 

You can select for length—one, three, or five minutes—but precisely what you’ll be served up is in the hands of the gods. These are story dispensers, built by Grenoble-based publishing company Short Edition.

When the company began producing the machines in 2015, they were hardly set on global domination. But today, they are found around the world, with some 30 dispensers across the United States alone. (A map of the machines can be seen here.) 

In restaurants and hotels, libraries and government buildings, loiterers and literati alike can help themselves to these free stories, pulled from a digital bank of more than 100,000 original submissions.

The stories come from writing contests, with each entry carefully evaluated by Short Edition’s judges. At some point, they hope to translate them, and to “have some Asian authors read in Europe or America, American authors read in Africa or South America, etc.,” Loïc Giraut, an international business developer for the company, told LitHub. 

“We want to create a platform for independent artists, like the Sundance Institute,” Kristan Leroy, export director at Short Edition, said in an interview with the New York Times. “The idea is to make people happy. There is too much doom and gloom today.”

(* Dispensers cost $9,200, with an additional $190 monthly fee for content and software. COURTESY SHORT EDITION)

Read at source, Atlas Obscura.

Syrian refugees to finish university studies in Catalonia

"Students who were forced to interrupt their studies because of the war in Syria and who are now refugees in Lebanon, will finalise their degrees in Catalonia starting next year. 

The 20 students will be spread across 12 Catalan universities, thanks to a pioneering project promoted by the Generalitat. Each will have a grant of €10,000 a year to study and maintain themselves in a student flat."

Source: Catalonia Today (news.)

Review of "This Boy's Life" -- My latest article for Catalonia Today magazine

It’s a great relief to read something as authentic as this memoir of Tobias Wolff’s childhood.

In 2018, when (even for adults) predictable superhero and action movies are dominating the western world’s popular culture as a form of escapism, my bowels were nicely warmed by having come across a one euro second hand copy of this little printed gem in Barcelona. 

It had been republished in 1994, seemingly given away with an end of year issue of ‘Esquire’, a North American men’s magazine.

I happily absorbed all the low-lights of the author’s young life in Concrete, a small company-town just south of the Canadian border, dominated by a cement factory. 

The reader learns that Jack (as he preferred to be called, after novelist Jack London) needed to drag himself through an upbringing that had all the underhandedness of Spain’s ultra-conservative government and the punishing violence of a month in Syria. 

Punches and kicks at school were the norm and sometimes the same at home with added insults from Dwight, an ornery stepfather who drank to excess whenever he had the money to indulge.

Like plenty of working class women of her era, Jack’s bright and capable mother is shown to be trapped in low paying jobs and a string of abusive relationships. In a sign of what is to come, she and Dwight come back early from their two-day honeymoon “silent and grim, not even looking at each other.”

One of the refreshing things about this autobiography is how honest Wolff is about his own character. 

With the perception of a fine mimic, he picks apart his family and friends but he also openly acknowledges how he uses lies to beef up his status with the locals and how he steals like a modern-day financier. 

Wolff even details the deceptive methods he employed to swindle his way into an (unsuccessful) scholarship interview for an expensive private high school.

Touchingly, the author also explains where he found relief from the daily grind of school and unending chores at home. 

Through music he gained some mental freedom and earning boy scout symbols provided a way to “compel respect, or at least civility from those who shared them and envy from those who did not.”

The official scout publications (where the book’s title comes from) Wolff read with the kind of fanaticism that is common in teenagers. “What I liked about [their] Handbook,” he remembers, “was its voice, the bluff hail-fellow language by which it tried to make being a good boy adventurous, even romantic.” 

The Scout Magazine he reads in a trance, “accepting without question its narcotic invitation to believe that I was really no different from the boys whose hustle and pluck it celebrated...Reading about these boys made me restless, feverish with schemes.”

As you can see, for a book that was first published in the late 1980s its language is pleasingly still rooted in a much earlier post World War II rural USA.

As well as this, Wolff’s work stands out to me because it examines a cross-section of American society that is still badly neglected in English language literature. Today, these are the same gun-carrying people who voted Donald Trump into the White House, in the hope of something better for their receding lives and now dead or dying industries.

In a recent interview, Tobias Wolff quoted Auden’s line that “writing an autobiography [is] like being a leper showing his sores in the marketplace.” 

He could just as easily have mentioned Flannery O’Connor, who argued that anyone who survives adolescence has enough material to write about.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2018.]