Spanish football feeds the hungry & cures the sick

More hilarious nonsense from Graham Keeley here. Has he just discovered The Guardian pay per word?

June 29, 2008 | Catalonia, Spain

Comments

13 Responses to “Spanish football feeds the hungry & cures the sick”

StarHound on June 29th, 2008 3:49 pm

I nearly fell off my chair reading this utter toss this morning – I note that his editor gets a credit which must mean an awful lot of editing.

'The highest television audiences of the year in Catalonia and the Basque country are when Spain plays an important football match,' said Louis Maria Anson, writing in the Spanish daily El Mundo. 'The chattering of some nationalist leaders at these times merely shows how distant they are from popular feeling.'

He read El Mundo for his research, never mind it's slight bias in this area, he did no more than read another newspaper and then filtered it through his rose or is that rosado, tinted spectacles.

There is really lazy some rubbish in the Guardian these days…Keeley, Henry Mc Donald and a few very dull bloggers for starters.

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Keefieboy on June 29th, 2008 5:53 pm

Yikes! Too many words. Way too many.

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Grey on June 29th, 2008 6:18 pm

This is too much, Jesus Christ lol.

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kalebeul » Spanish football celebrations on Barcelona Ramblas on June 30th, 2008 11:53 am

[...] of wrong 'uns in Graham Keeley's post (via The Expat Leper) over at the UK's leading idiot shoutbox (eg Franco didn't ban regional languages; the [...]

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Nick on June 30th, 2008 1:56 pm

There was definitely scope for this kind of perspective on the game but that was way too long and hard to digest. I'm not sure if he mentioned either that surely part of the reason the Basque country are probably the least interested region is the simple fact that there were hardly any Basque players in the squad.

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boynamedsue on June 30th, 2008 5:36 pm

Keeley has missed the point by a cow's arse.

The win seems to be very DIVISIVE within Catalonia. Have a look at Avui's website today, and you'll find that many nationalists are spitting venom at the "Espanyols" who had the temerity to celebrate the win at Canyaletes.

They hate being reminded of the silent majority of Catalans who don't mind being Spanish.

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David on June 30th, 2008 8:19 pm

I've had a look at above website as instructed. It's indeed full of childish, uninteresting and predictable nationalistic venom, from either side and in both Catalan and Spanish – both equally badly mangled, btw.

My impression's that of teenage, brain-amputated nationalists spitting venom at each other for stupid reasons like(the Spaniards)invading the Catalans'own turf and (the Catalans)failing to support the Spanish team and thus committing high treason…just like the Scots want everyone else to win but England, big deal indeed!

Everyone's indeed welcome to their own party. There have been a couple of nasty incidents, though. In Tortosa cars were stopped and shaken by fans until their occupants cried "viva españa" and a young guy was badly beaten up in Pl. España in BCN for refusing to join in the chanting. I suppose the current news blackout on the downside of the win will be lifted once the celebrations are over.

What I don't undertand is how someone who fancies himself as an "anarchist" can come up with the idea of a "silent majority". I thought this was a notion used by totalitarian regimes in order to justify the lack of democratic procedures and thus acquire some degree of legitimacy.

Please do correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the correct spelling of the emblematic fountain at the top of the Rambla is "Canaletes"

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boynamedsue on July 1st, 2008 2:35 pm

Correcting spelling is bad manners on the interweb I thought, but you are quite correct.

I think you are building a bit of a straw man with the silent majority thing, Catalan Nationalists are very noisy, Catalan Unionists (for want of a better term) are very quiet, yet the polls say they are a majority. The silent majority thing is quite literal really.

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Oriol on July 1st, 2008 3:33 pm

Only 10.000 celebrated in Barcelona, according to a very pro-spain source: http://www.lavanguardia.es/premium/publica/publica?COMPID=53491043765&ID_PAGINA=22088&ID_FORMATO=9&turbourl=false

With such evidences, who needs polls?

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boynamedsue on July 1st, 2008 4:10 pm

crrrrreeeeeeeeeeaaaaakkkkkkkkkkkk.

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boynamedsue on July 1st, 2008 4:16 pm

See Oriol, you're not the only one who can scrape the bottom of the barrel.

La Vangua is pro CiU if anything, CiU are not pro-spain.

I wouldn't say the number of people who come out to celebrate a football victory is a better indicator of pro-independence sentiment than polls asking the question "Do you want Catalonia to be independent?", but hey, what do I know?

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David on July 1st, 2008 8:30 pm

Dunno about this self-styled netiquette, I suppose most people make their own up as they go along. If anything I'm always grateful for precise spellings, though, since gathering info can be a real pain at times.

Anyway, I'm not a teacher, never have been, never will be, so this kind of occupational hazard's none of my concern, thankfully.

Catalan Unionists very quiet? well, they certainly haven´t got their marching bands up and running yet, to parade through the likes of Gracia or Berga. Only time will tell. There's plenty of stuff up on youtube featuring notoriously unquiet Catalan Unionists putting Catalan flags to the torch in full view of the public.

For some reason they seem to choose the main square of Reus for that kind of activity on a regular basis, the last time was a couple of nights ago, following the favourable outcome of a big away game.

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Rab on July 2nd, 2008 9:36 pm

Let's define things properly shall we?

Nobody that burns a Catalan flag is a Catalan Unionist but a Spanish Nationalist living in Catalonia.

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