Nazi Pop Twins documentary
Yesterday, after watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (0/1) and Turistas (1/1) we flicked over to More 4 to watch a documentary which was first broadcast in July this year. It concerned Lamb and Lynx Gaede, the teenaged twins who comprise Prussian Blue, a Nazi pop band. I'd heard of Prussian Blue before, probably through the Popbitch message-board, but had never really given them much thought. The documentary offered some insight into these Nazi pop twins and the way they were manipulated and pushed around by their scary mother, April. The twins, aged around 14 or 15 in the film, were clearly? trying to distance themselves somewhat from the White Pride / National Vanguard movements.
The film was naturally full of unpleasant views , mostly espoused by the awful April and her equally unpleasant father. At onepoint, during a small argument about signing CDs for members of the White Pride movement, April could be heard saying to one of her daughters that she should help out for a bit and that "Then you can be as much of a cunt as you like for the rest of the evening". I hope that Lynx and Lamb find the strength to make the break with the atrocious philosophy forced on them by their mother. She's one of those annoying people, incidentally, who doesn't understand language or logic: the thought that she could define racism and that what she promoted wasn't racism because she didn't call it that. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.
Anyway, the documentary is well worth watching. It should be noted that such families are extremely rare in the USA... failure to remember this would be thoroughly anti-American.The reason they don't make many documentaries about all the other, normal families is that they probably wouldn't be as interesting as a film about some Nazi Pop Twins.
On the Catalan language
One of the big points for debate here is language. Here - as in many other places around the world - language often seems inextricably linked to culture, politics and identity. The issue of Catalan versus Castilian Spanish is probably the most abused and over-discussed issue in Catalonia. I'm not really interested in prolonging this pretty irritating debate but I would like to try to clarify a couple of the key sticking-points.
First, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) - the Catalan Republican Left - and their language policy. ERC are the fourth biggest party in Catalonia (and third partner in the regional government, la Generalitat) and their policy is pretty much totally dictated by nationalism. Culture and language, of course, play a major role in their strategy. And from time to time, they propose policies or laws which are frankly unbelievable. Take, for example, the proposal that it should be illegal for teachers to speak in any language but Catalan while they're on school premises. That's a ridiculous policy which regularly earns the well deserved moniker 'fascist'. It is clear that their policy is directed against speakers of Castilian Spanish and thus anyone who is 'non-Catalan'.
As far as I see, ERC consists of several different movements. I have some sympathy for the 'republican/left' element of the party because I'm a left-winger and would rather live in a republic than a kingdom. Unfortunately, the dominant front in ERC is extremely nationalist and sometimes verges on the racist. I get the impression that they probably wouldn't much like me as a member, because I use the odd Spanish word when speaking Catalan. I'm not from here, remember.
The crazier of ERC's policies are reminiscent of laws passed by Francisco Franco's fascist dictatorship in Spain. Under the Generalissimo, the country was reinvented as the home of Catholicism, empire and homogeneity. Of course, this was revisionism gone mad. Spain has always been an amalgamation of different kingdoms, peoples and cultures. Passing laws to cancel that out has never worked.
This is another sticking point. If you read other English-language blogs from Catalonia, you might get the impression that the story of Catalan being banned under Franco was made up by Catalan nationalists. This is completely untrue. Certain bloggers seem to have a perverse interest in undermining the history of Catalan, Catalonia and the repression during the Franco years. Make no mistake: under Franco, hundreds of laws and judgments were passed which effectively outlawed the use of the Catalan language. At best, the blogs which promulgate this myth are disingenuous. I reckon that they're aiming for an audience-pleasing tone of contrariety, which is, after all, the natural tone for successful blogs. Doesn't make it true, though.
A visit to England, a trip to the CAP
We had a great weekend in England. We stayed near Hereford in a delightful retreat with spectacular views towards the Malvern hills. It was really nice to spend some quality time with the Welsh side of my family and the wedding itself was awesome.
During the weekend (indeed, during the night of the wedding), my brother and I had something of a play fight. Those of you with brothers will know what that means. However, we've both gotten older and bigger than we used to be. To cut a long story short, I ended up with a broken rib.
For those who've never enjoyed the experience of breaking a rib, let me tell you that it really, really hurts. It hurts straight away. It hurts more the next day. And three days later, it hurts a lot more. So today, partly to confirm my self-diagnosis and partly to get some pain relief, I went to see a doctor. Despite my private health insurance, I had to go to the local CAP (public medical centre) where I realised that although I've lived here for five years, there was yet another stratum of bureaucracy I hadn't yet encountered.
I'm not the sort of fellow who goes to the doctor much. My ideal would be to never have to visit one: on the whole, I see it as a bit of a waste of time. So naturally, I hadn't registered for a doctor or signed up for my Cat Salut public health entitlement card. This, as you can imagine, led to all sorts of palpitations on the part of the guy at reception who ended up warning me that I would have to be charged €87 for seeing the doctor [not as bad as this guy's story]. I managed to get away with it by promising that I'd sign up for the card as soon as possible... I now have to go back to the CAP soon or receive a bill. Great.
The doctor who treated me was a star. Clearly very Catalan, he didn't insist on ignoring my Spanish, as I have heard other people have experienced. Side note: I've never suffered any of these Catalanista horror stories which plague the English language blogs from around here. I reckon that they're much rarer than people like to admit and that doctors, nurses and other medical staff are on the whole dedicated to providing treatment to the citizenry, even if they don't have a class C Catalan qualification.
The doc told me that there was basically nothing to be done for a broken rib, and that x-rays and scans were a waste of time. Using 'prehistoric methods' (his words), he felt for the break and assessed that it was there. Then he gave me some prescriptions for an opiate painkiller which seems to be doing the trick.
Moral of the story: don't trust your little brother to not attack you when your back's turned*... but do trust the doctors of Catalonia. They're alright.
*I know my bro wasn't trying to hurt me... we were just being a bit boisterous. I just like making him feel guilty!
Expats against immigration!
The BBC's got a story on how some expats living in Spain are getting involved in Spanish municipal elections. All EU citizens are eligible to vote - or stand - in council elections. I mentioned last week that I'll be voting for the Green/United Left (aka the communists) as they've done a lot to improve both the look and the feel of Cerdanyola.
Much further south (the traditional home of the British expat), people haven't got so much to be grateful for. Successive administrations from the PP, the PSOE and other parties have been criticised for large-scale corruption, especially in their dealings with land and building permissions.
So some Spaniards and ex-pats have united in a party called 'Progreso y Orden' (Progress and Order). The party's platform is to do away with those problems that ruin life in la Vega Baja of Alicante. Problems like corrupt politicians, excessive land speculation, 'delinquency', drug use and... immigration! Unusual as it may seem, non-Spaniards are involved with a Spanish party which is opposed to immigration. As you might have guessed, I smelled a rat. A big fat racist rat.
So I had a look at Progress and Order's homepage (web geek's observation: probably the worst designed website in existence: I had to use Firefox's 'Page info' dialogue to navigate the site!) (Updated: here's the link to their homepage!). When I eventually managed to find the Spanish language 'About us' page, I found out a lot about the founder of Order and Progress. He's called Fernando Gadea. He's an ex Guardia Civil (not that there's anything wrong with that), an 'intelligence expert', an expert in 'electronic security systems', a former Spanish legionnaire and a former municipal official. He spends quite a lot of time talking about himself (even more than I do in my 'About' section), and seems to be your typical ex-military, ex-Guardia, private detective sort of nice chap.
Unfortunately, he forgot to mention one thing on his new party's site which might be of interest to residents of San Fulgenio, as well as the BBC journalists who missed this little tidbit. When he was a 'concejal' (town councillor), he was there as a listed member of España 2000. Those of you who haven't heard of España 2000 can check out its Wikipedia entry which is both accurate and amusing. Other Nazis in Spain consider them to be something of a joke. A splinter-group of theirs is apparently based in Catalonia, and puts up stickers in Cerdanyola which call for the repatriation of 'non-Spaniards' (which we can assume doesn't include wealthy Brits or Germans: the photos all seem to be of Muslims).
So there you go... not exactly surprising that a party called Order and Progress is a bit dodgy. The BBC should probably have done some better research for their story, as it would have been interesting to read a 'Brits and Germans in far-right Spain pact' headline, but never mind. It's also worth noting that not all Brits in Spain are voting for the local equivalent of the BNP. While many expats see fit to spew invective about the 'Asians' back home, there are plenty of us who didn't leave home because we were sick of seeing brown faces everywhere.
--
As has been reported on other blogs, British involvement in Spanish politics doesn't stop at San Fulgencio. Bernie Ecclestone, short-arsed owner of the Formula One franchise, has just announced that there'll be a new Grand Prix in Valencia ciutat. But only if the electorate remember to vote PP in the regional elections, as the local party boss is a chum. What a revolting little episode. I'm boycotting it. But good luck, Lewis, anyway!
The new 'anti-nacionalismo'
Spanish-language blog, El Siglo de las Luces, has a well written and interesting post about moves by the Spanish right to expand its influence by forming and supporting supposed NGOs and pressure groups around the country. These groups traditionally start out as single-issue before becoming more and more embroiled in the two topics which seem to excite the political extremes in this country: left versus right; and the question of nationalism (this term usually only referring to Catalan and Basque nationalism/separatism.
The classic example of this is the AVT (Association of Victims of Terrorism). Ostensibly formed as a support/pressure group for victims of ETA and their families, the AVT long ago became a sort of rent-a-mob for high profile, low impact demonstrations in Madrid where protesters gnash their teeth and do the whole Two Minutes Hate thing.
I've written about the AVT before (I stand by everything I wrote six months ago) and currently words fail me to describe how bitterly I dislike their nasty mixture of pressure politics, rhetoric and sheer anti-reason. There is simply no point in attempting an ordinary criticism of the AVT because they are so astoundingly out of it. Sometimes, I think it's part of a clever plot to utterly confound critics: where do I start? they've opened a battle against logic on so many fronts that I get headaches just trying to list them.
Instead, I recommend reading that blog post at El Siglo de las Luces. And consider that even though it may not be working that well, the PP's strategy is pretty clever. By politicising members of the Spanish working class (nominally against one thing they don't like, e.g. subsidies for Catalan language, ETA, etc), the PP have forged a plan which, should it eventually start working, could well extend their platform of support and - more importantly - their political influence throughout Spain.
The language of 'terror' revisited
The big difference between the IDF and Hezbollah, we’re told, is that one is a terrorist group and the other a fully incorporated armed force which has rules of engagement and which most importantly does not kill civilians intentionally.
This is of vital importance: Hezbollah murder civilians randomly as their main operational technique. The IDF kills ten times as many innocent civilians in its strikes against Hezbollah but because these are not an aim of the strikes, they don’t really count.
The paucity of this argument should be plain for all to see. It can be attacked on two fronts:
(i) The aim of Hezbollah is not to kill Israelis, per se, but to pursue a radical, nationalist agenda. The death of Israeli civilians is not therefore the sole aim of Hezbollah rather than something which must happen in order to win. In this way, Hezbollah’s crimes can be justified using the same justification which the IDF uses.
(ii) In the vast majority of conflicts between Israel and its neighbours (or groups such as Hezbollah), huge numbers of innocent civilians are killed or displaced. Because this is nothing new, it must surely feature in IDF strategic planning. It can therefore be said that the death of innocent civilians is considered as a justifiable means to achieve the end which the IDF seeks. Therefore, while not the primary aim of Israeli military attacks, civilian deaths are not regretted by the IDF being, as they are, the way by which Israel will prevail.
It is therefore not the aim of either to murder civilians, but because both forces know that these deaths will occur, they are intentional. In other words, there is no fundamental difference between Hezbollah and the IDF. Both forces recognise that in order to achieve their goals, they must murder innocent civilians.
It is important that we stay on top of the language being used by our media and governments – and that we take care to question such widely accepted facts as the difference between two murderous forces.
Click here to read 'War on terror', linguistics and logic.
I disagree with you, therefore you're a fascist (and a troll)
It's the accusation that signals desperation and abandonment of reason. "Like Hitler", "Like the Nazis" or simply "Fascist" must be the most overused (and misused)insult around during political discussions. In Spanish politics, the term is used daily on both sides of the left-right divide, and rarely with any true sense.
While it can be amusing when used in exasperation - see the semi-eponymous hero of The Big Lebowski calling the chief of police in Malibu "a fucking fascist" - misusing the term exposes either an ignorance of or an indifference to what the term really means. In that sense, 'fascism' runs the risk of becoming the same as 'terrorism', a word which I never use because I'm just not convinced that it can ever be accurately explained without it involving all governments.
As I have pointed out before, using a word for convenience rather than accuracy (and especially a word as well known as 'fascist') is indicative of gross stupidity. And to misuse the term 'troll' on a website, well... I've never seen the like.
Languages and place names
It's been a long running discussion between Gemma and I that some languages change the names of towns more than others do. Admittedly, our frame of reference is fairly limited (i.e. we only really discussed English and Spanish) - but this doesn't mean that it's not an interesting topic.
The way I see it, in English, where we don't have a historical link with a place, we usually seem to use the local name of a place. That is to say, we don't change Madrid to anything else. In Spanish, London has its name changed to Londres (similar to the French form). We do change Sevilla to Seville though. We don't change Beijing (the standard international name for the Chinese capital). In Spanish, it's still called Pekín. Indian city names which have recently changed are similarly not recognised (though this is perhaps understanding: Spain has few historic links with that part of the world).
Also, the Spanish change people's names. When I was at school I was taught that speaking in a foreign language, one should never change the form of one's name to match the language being spoken. You were named William, not Guillaume, and that's how you should refer to yourself. Clearly, the Spanish don't care for this little rule. Everyone's name is converted to the hispanic form: Queen Elizabeth is called Isabel but in England, we call the King of Spain Juan Carlos.
I'm not saying that either side is right (well, I could hardly do that, given that I've not made any argument)... I just find it interesting that these differences exist. And that's it.
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