Category Archives: Catalonia

FT: PP has not moved on from Francoism

Catalonia, Politics, PP, Spain, , , , , , , ,

While the Financial Times is not normally particularly high-up on my reading list, it does carry some interesting political comment from time to time. A few years back, I recall that the FT attacked the PP for failing to properly criticise Lt Gen. Mena Aguado who famously threatened military intervention should Catalonia pass its new Statute of Autonomy.

Well in this most recent editorial, both Zapatero and Rajoy come in for criticism, but Rajoy and the PP far more so. The present government is credited with having ‘managed the macroeconomy competently but [doing] little to address structural weaknesses such as low productivity growth, a weak technology base and a huge current account deficit”.

Then, after referring to the PP’s constant scaremongering and manufacturing of doubts about the integrity of Spain, this sucker punch:

Mr Aznar also negotiated with Eta, and allied with regional forces, just like the Socialists – as whoever wins next Sunday may well have to do. The PP’s problem is that its current leaders have not completed their journey from Francoist roots to a modern centre-right.

Thank you, FT. All it took was one paragraph but you’ve finally printed something which we here in Spain all know to be true and have been trying to get outsiders (as well as misguided expats here) to see. The language and non-dialogue of Francoism (if not its bizarre economic policies) live on in most of the PP’s currents. The ‘left wing’ of the party (Piqué, Gallardon etc) has just been effectively shut down. Rajoy finished yesterday’s debate with the words of the fascist Movimiento Nacional. They haven’t moved on and many of us here in Spain have been saying that for years.

Unlike in the UK, general elections in Spain remain a choice between two generally very different political parties. The PP, which simply is not a natural party of the centre-right, remains deeply conservative and has been painfully ineffective as an opposition. It would be a disaster if they were elected next weekend.

[Via: From Catalonia To Caledonia]

Cancel the Spanish races now!

Catalonia, Spain, , , , , , , ,

After this weekend’s disgraceful displays of racism against Lewis Hamilton at Montmelo, the FIA have warned Spain that one or both races due to take place here this season may be cancelled if anything similar happens again.

Hamilton was subjected to calls of ‘puto negro’ and ‘negro de mierda’ as he carried out test laps at the Barcelona circuit. Other incidents included a rather odd group of people actually going to the trouble of blacking-up and donning t-shirts proclaiming ‘Hamilton’s Family’.

Many Spaniards are big fans of Fernando Alonso (Dullest Man Ever™) and some have apparently used his rivalry with Hamilton as yet another excuse to indulge their pathetic racist beliefs.

Racism in Spanish sport is a serious problem. Numerous black athletes including Barça’s Samuel Eto’o have been subjected to thoroughly unpleasant taunts in recent years. It’s not long since Luis Aragones was fined for calling Thierry Henry a ‘black shit’.

The best thing to do would probably be cancel both the Barcelona and Valencia races for a couple of years. It would teach honest, non-racist, F1 fans that in future, rather than standing by as a bunch of racist scum-suckers make everyone look bad, it would be best to turn around and smack them in the mouth. Also, it would probably help to reduce pollution and hepatitis infections in the race areas significantly.

Don’t take photos of police cars

Catalonia, Home

This morning, I took a turn around Cerdanyola with the idea of photographing some of the graffiti and posters I often see around the town. I got some half-decent shots around ‘el Barrio’ which is the part of the town made up of tower-blocks and little more. It’s an area which has been improved recently but it’s still clearly a poverty-stricken area.

Well, after getting a few decent shots in el Barrio, I moved on and spotted a decent shot of some police cars parked by the Policia Local station. I’d just taken my first shot (which was pretty crappy) when I looked up to see a policeman approaching with an angry/police look on his silly face. Now, I grew up living on and visiting various military installations and one thing I was always taught was: call the police ‘Officer’ because they like that. I used to be able to show my little ID card to Royal Marines guards and that was that. Let me tell you that being 27 in Cerdanyola del Vallès is not the same as being 12 in Dartmouth.

My shit photo of some police cars

So this police officer decided that I should accompany him back to the police station because I was taking photos of the police cars outside it. He asked me what was my motive for photographing the squad cars and all I could say was “Nada… interes… arte?”. They obviously thought I was some kind of potential Etarra (as if they wouldn’t drive past photographing the police station if they really wanted to do a recce). I showed him the photo I’d taken (which was, incidentally, rubbish: I’d only had time for one shot) and he said “What exactly were you trying to photograph here?”. I felt like saying, “Look, I know it’s a shit photo… let’s just leave it at that”… instead I muttered something about the lights on their cars. I probably looked like the worst kind of antisistema/ultraizquierda/ETA suspect they’d ever seen.

Anyway, I had to present my ID card which the desk sergeant was asked to check. And I didn’t show up on the computer, something which obviously made them more suspicious of me. I explained to the desk sergeant (the ‘good cop’) that there are often problems with my name, because in Catalonia they never understand foreign naming conventions. My name is technically Thomas R—— C—— Clarke and I’ve been identified with various combinations of the four names over the last five and a half years. This causes constant hassle with local authorities but La Caixa have always dealt with it very well.

Eventually, they found me on the computer (I told them to check my address) and they didn’t seem very happy as they just handed me my Targeta de Residència and turned away. I said sorry again and went on my way. Later, I saw a Mossos car and I was so conscious of being questioned that I actually turned by camera off and turned away. All because I took a shit photo of some policia local cars.

News from Spain

Catalonia, Politics, PP, Spain, , , , ,

Quite a big split has taken place in the right-wing Partido Popular, with the more Catholic conservative side (Aznar, Rajoy, Aguirre and Acebes) now claiming victory over the more centrist elements (Gallardon & Piqué). This is good news for the PSOE as a right-wing shift in the PP might convince potential non-voters to come out and back the centre-left. John at Iberian Notes (in between a couple of misogynistic and racist remarks) reckons that it would still be better for Spain if Rajoy won, if only to prevent Zapatero from having two terms. Now that’s what I call party loyalty. Mariano Rajoy is a politician who somehow manages to make Zapatero look statesmanlike, confident and wise. Actually, I wouldn’t vote for either candidate but on balance, Zapatero hasn’t had that bad a time in office.

The national anthem lyrics which I mentioned the other day, after being firmly rejected by the Spanish public, have finally been withdrawn by the Spanish Olympic Committee. They were, as you can see, awful lyrics. But it seems that the ‘Viva España!’ rallying call (which features twice in the proposed song sheet) was what upset the most people. ‘Viva España!’ is a phrase which for most people still evokes Franco’s fascist regime – the old coot used to say it every other breath. Tourists – this may be why people stared at you and muttered under their breath when you tried to express how much you love Spain.

Actually, this opens up an interesting debate about Spanish nationalism in general. At some point in the future, it’ll become more possible to shout ‘Viva España!’ and not be called a fascist. But for the moment, expressions of nationalist or patriotic pride always seem to hark back to the dictatorship. You would think that the chap who wrote the proposed lyrics for the national anthem, would have known the import of including a couple of ‘Viva España!’s… but I doubt that he realised he was saying anything that could cause anyone offence. An unemployed man from La Mancha (‘Castilla la Nueva’), I suspect he is in fact pretty cut off from public opinion in the big towns.

My wife has quite a lot of family in Ciudad Real province and while the older generations are lovely, warm and sensible country people, the cousins who are our age, are spectacularly badly informed, racist and nationalist. They even took part in that pathetic anti-Catalan boycott a few years back (and had the temerity to invite Gemma, who lives in Catalonia and is Catalan, to take part). Actually, one of them also intended to have a medieval-themed wedding at which all the guests would have to dress up in silly costumes. I found this even more offensive than the stupid boycott.

CiU’s man and the Mafia boss

Catalonia, Site news, , , , ,

An interesting story has been bubbling away for several months. Antoní Fernández Teixidó, a CiU member of the Catalan Parliament, failed to turn up at court the other day for a hearing into his links with Malchas Tetruashvili, an alleged Georgian mafia boss. Apparently, during an anti-mafia operation, police found a letter from Teixidó, written on official notepaper, thanking the Georgian for dinner. The mafia guy could then take that note and show people how well connected he was. It’s an old trick, but a pretty stupid one as most people don’t write a note on official notepaper to say thanks for dinner. It makes you look a bit odd. Hopefully more details on the case will emerge soon.

My favourite bit so far is some of the information surrounding Teixidó’s failure to turn up at court. Officials said that he must have known about the case because they’d sent him a telegram. A telegram! One wonders why they didn’t send the pigeons like normal.

===

By the way: you may have noticed some strange characters and symbols cropping up in my posts. There’s some sort of problem with my character encoding settings which I don’t currently have time to look into.

Can’t have it both ways: the ‘Cataloonies’

Catalonia, Politics, , , , , , , ,

I don’t have much of a problem with the term ‘Cataloony’. But it does seem to be something of a handy shortcut past debating an issue which concerns a large minority of people here. John at Iberian Notes, ‘expat wanker’ according to a fan, loves using ‘Cataloony’ to describe any Catalan who dislikes the king of Spain or wants more independence for Catalonia. Statistically, some of those people probably are lunatics, so he probably scores a couple of hits with his scattershot.

The problem is, if I use the terms ‘dumb Yanks’ or ‘stupid Americans’* to describe American citizens who still support Georgey boy and his gang of no-good rats, then I’m being anti-American. Moi? But calling Catalan nationalists ‘loonies’ ain’t the same thing. See, I get more than a little whiff of hypocrisy from this. So my proposition is simple: either quit using the ‘Cataloonies’ tag or quit whining when someone has the temerity to insult one of your stupid countrymen (like your stupid president). Name calling is just as clever/silly, whatever side you’re on. It’s exactly the same thing and you can’t have it both ways.

Personally, as someone who believes in freedom of expression, I reckon that John should be able to call Catalan nationalists whatever he likes.

__

*sorry, these names don’t quite have the same ring to them as Cataloonies. I’m not a very experienced name caller. It’s a short cut to thinking, really, isn’t it?

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

Catalonia

Tibidabo from behind - a very welcome sight!

One of my favourite pastimes is walking. It’s an agreeable, physically stimulating exercise which gives one time for thought (or debate, if you’re not alone). So it was with this in mind that I set out at midday today, to walk from Cerdanyola to Barcelona. Solo.

It’s a walk I’ve done several times in a group, and it involves walking out of our front door and ending up at Tibidabo. I’m not sure about the distance but I reckon it’s about 18km – pretty short really. The route takes you across the Parc de la Collserola, the green, forested ridge behind Barcelona, and offers stunning views and lots of nature to see.

I divide the route into 3 unequal parts. The first part takes you from my street via the headquarters of the Catalan handball team, into the Collserola and eventually the picnic area at Can Coll. This part is hard in the sense that you’re just getting into the swing of things. There are a couple of steep hills that never fail to make me feel knackered, but there are also some amazing views of unspoiled forest, as well as lots of flora and fauna. Today I saw a butterfly which was significantly bigger than my hand. It scarpered too fast for a photo, unfortunately.

The second part of the walk is by far the hardest. It takes you to Can Borell, an old fashioned Catalan restaurant (the path actually leads through a dining area!). And then (after a weird sort of zoo in the middle of nowhere), you have the biggest uphill/downhill part of the walk. I had to get a stick to clear undergrowth and brambles on the decent; it was really hard work. Finally, I stood looking up at the path cleared for electricity pylons before me. The ascent (believe me, it warrants the name) is a steep hill consisting solely of rock: I considered turning back but decided to press on. No point, you see.

At the top, where even in May or October, I feel hot and tired, I realised that I was certainly beginning to suffer from heat exhaustion. I was out of breath, nauseous and my pulse was very high. It was at this point that I decided to break away from the path in order to find a shortcut (rather than do yet another descent/ascent as the path dictated). As I broke away from the path, I saw that the forest creates a lot of shade! I picked the nearest spot and sort of collapsed. Actually, it wasn’t so much a collapse as a very fast, arbitrary lie-down. I actually wanted to call my wife and let her know that I was potentially in trouble but I couldn’t even speak. Besides, I was lying under a bush in the middle of Collserola: who could help me, anyway?

When I picked myself up, I felt terrible. I considered throwing up but I didn’t want to waste any fluids, or throw up. I pressed on with my made-up shortcut and within minutes found that I was on the right path! I probably cut half an hour off my walk, and probably avoided a very embarrassing and potentially lethal dose of heat stroke. Yay!

The 3rd and final part of the walk is much easier, but always goes on for longer than expected (all walks end like this, though, really). You hit the path for Tibidabo very quickly, and after a lot of twists and turns, you cross a beautiful viaduct. My trusty hat (which I credit along with my stick, my iPod, my choice to find a shortcut and my body, for saving my life), chose this moment to blow off my head and sail down under the viaduct. so I had to get it (honour trumps all), and pretty much crossed the valley, negating the need for the viaduct.

The rest of the story is pretty simple. I got to the drinking fountain just before Tibidabo and moaned ecstatically as I doused myself with cold tap water. I filled my belly and my bottle with cold water. Then I got to Tibidabo and stopped at a bar for a beer and some more water. There are few things that have tasted better in my life than the ice-cold Voll Damm I had at that bar. I was a mess. Stinking, covered in earth from my very fast lie-down, cut by bramble and thorn, I didn’t cut a very heroic figure. But I felt great. I had beaten the mountain. Sure, I’d nearly killed myself, but isn’t that what being 27 is all about?

Moral of the story: Noel Coward had a point. That walk is far more enjoyable in May or October. But nowhere near as rewarding.

UPDATE: some pictures of my trek can be seen here.

On the Catalan language

Catalonia, Language, Politics, ,

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.

ERC breaks Tripartit in Barcelona

Catalonia, Politics, , ,

Yesterday afternoon, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya mayoral candidate, Jordi Portabella, pulled out of talks to convene a tripartite city government in Barcelona. His move has shocked PSC officials and, apparently, even his own party leadership.

As El Periódico points out, ERC lost 43,000 votes in the recent local elections. This disaster called for one of two moves from Portabella; his immediate resignation or some sort of major strategy change. Evidently, he considers himself above resignation.

It’s evident that while outwardly backing Portabella, the ERC leadership don’t agree with this tactic. To put ERC back in to opposition after a period of shared government is not part of party strategy… but with some voters dissatisfied with the modern party (they’ve done much to drop their nasty, racist image of previous decades) voting for PxC and other more extremist groups, Esquerra has lost its way. Portabella’s move will likely precipitate a major internal crisis for the party.