Tag Archives: barcelona

This is war! War makes madness! This is madness?

Catalonia, Photo posts, ,

This billboard is on my walk from the bus to work. It’s advertising the ‘This is war! Robert Capa at work’ photographic exhibition which has come to Barcelona after a successful stint in London. The image used is, of course, Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death – a fine photograph which most experts consider to have been posed (not that this makes any real difference: all images are created, one way or  another, and this is a particularly good image).

Attached to the billboard is an interesting statement from persons unknown, pointing out that Capa’s great work was staged, and then continuing for lines and lines and lines without really saying anything that makes sense. Is this madness?

One other thing worth noting: hampones is a synonym of ladrones, I’m told. It’s a new one on me.

capa2 capa1

Is Barcelona inherently gay? How about ass?

Catalonia, Home, , , , , , ,

If you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to recently, and let’s face it: you haven’t but it works as an opening gambit; I’ve been fairly busy with a pleasantly productive period of work in the real world. My new-ish desk offers me a view over the city including the Sagrada Familia, Montjuic, the Forum, that hill where they have the Parc Güell and the Mediterranean sea (pollution permitting). Well, I’ve been doing that and tweeting.

I make no apology for using Twitter. I do apologise for dissing it in the first place, because it can at times be great. Much of my time on Twitter has been spent obsessively checking my ‘hetero rating‘ on a website affiliated to Stockholm Pride, an event that kicks off next week. This fun little toy works by analysing one’s tweets and every time I check it, I get a rating of ‘42% hetero’. Apparently, this is because I use the words ‘Barcelona’, ‘coming out’, ‘opera’, ‘available’ and ‘ass’ in my tweets. These words make me a ‘hybrid hetero’ and lend support to the argument for ‘an extra orientation’. Sounds fine to me, except for the words selected that indicate my degree of hetero-ness.

Picture 1

Barcelona has long been gay-friendly and the unofficial Gayxample district contains plenty of hotels and bars which cater mainly to the gay market. But it’s not an exclusively gay city. Indeed, I’d say it’s probably predominantly not gay. But I may be wrong about that. Opera, as well as being often incredibly camp musical theatre, is the name of a web browser. Ass? Well… I can’t really explain that. I may have been calling someone a loser ass or something. Or perhaps I was talking about ass, but that might possibly have been be hetero ass.

I shall spend the next few weeks tying to increase my hetero rating. I’ll use manly terms like ‘muscles’, ‘bear’ and ‘trade’. That should fix it.

Oh, and we also went to Cotlliure in Northern Catalonia (France as the nationalists would have it), a couple of weeks back. It’s a lovely place, but I recommend visiting out of season if possible. Photos here.

Dr. Coldlove, or: Why I learned to stop worrying and love the aircon

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This post is related to my last, partly because it deals with my unpopular suggestions for dealing with common problems and partly because it involves mosquitoes (‘the devil’s moths’ as I call them*).

Last night, with an indoors temperature of 30º and level of humidity that a fan would not shift, only direct, we elected to put the air conditioning on all night. It was a simple enough decision. Gemma turned to me and said “I think we should put the a…” but by then, I’d already closed all the windows and found the remote control for our air-con unit. We continued to watch Star Trek: First Contact with the pleasant, and pleasantly guilty, feeling of cool air caressing our youthful skins. (Well, Gemma has a youthful skin; despite being YEARS younger than her, mine has developed the reddish hue and blood-vesseled texture of a Plymouthian living in Spain**).

We slept right through the night with barely a stir, except for when it got too cold. One of the many advantages of sleeping with the air conditioning on is the fact that it’s cooler when you want to sleep. Another advantage is that while you have the windows closed, all but the most ingenious mosquitoes are barred from entry to your boudoir. A disadvantage is that any cigarette smoke from the sitting room that wasn’t expelled before the airlock was sealed becomes your ‘smoke buddy’ for the night (though this probably helps some people maintain a minimal nicotine blood level and for that reason it should probably be counted as another advantage). There are no other real disadvantages… unless everyone does the same. Because that would cause massive amounts of carbon to be released into the atmosphere, by way of electricity generation.

So I ask you, people of Barcelona, Toulouse, Marrakesh, Los Angeles, Singapore, Perth (Australia, obviously) and Mumbai: tonight, switch your air conditioning off. I won’t, because I need it. But if you took some time to think about the future of the planet, you would.

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* I refer to moths as ‘the devil’s butterflies’ and mosquitoes as ‘the devil’s moths’.

** I was born in Freedom Fields

*** Obviously the title could have been “Dr. Coldlove, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the aircon” but I decided against it

Copa del Rei seen in Barcelona

Catalonia, Photo posts, , , ,

As I was walking back from the Mississippi station today, I happened to bump into a TV3 OB team and a bunch of Culés. I asked a likely young lass if, perchance, El Barça would be coming through shortly and she confirmed that they were on their way.

I stood around for about five minutes and then spotted the TV3 team moving into the middle of the road, a surefire sign that the bus was on its way. And then, there it was. Heralded by flashing blue lights, cheers and foghorns, the Barça bus made its way across Carrer Numancia towads us. The cup itself was displayed proudly at the front of the bus, and some figures could be seen behind the tinted glass, waving and cheering. I imagine Eto’o led the chants.

Behind the bus was a fleet of hundreds of motos and cars, horns sounding and flags waving.

But this was fairly subdued by Barcelona standards. Everyone knows that within a couple of weeks, we could all be celebrating a much bigger triumph. If Barça can win the Champions League and secure a historic triple (yes, that’s a big if, but it’s there to be won), Barcelona will party for days on end.

(All 9 pics here. By the way, the pics aren’t great: I was using our compact camera and I was somewhat hurried)

Ya Empezamos! Caja Castilla La Mancha ‘bailed out’

Capital, Spain, , , , ,

The Spanish government has moved to ‘bail out’ the first banking institution to fail in Spain during the current financial crisis.

In Spain, we have banks ‘bancos de credito’ and building societies ‘cajas de ahorros’, with the building societies being the most common place for Spaniards to keep their money. There are tons of building societies here, and the Caja Castilla La Mancha (CCM) isn’t the largest by a long way (I believe that this honour falls to La Caixa d’Estalvis i Pensions de Barcelona, ‘La Caixa’). In fact, CCM is apparently the newest of Spain’s building societies. All the same, news of troubles at CCM suggests that the building society system here, much touted as being safer than those in other European countries, isn’t quite as cast-iron as we’d been led to believe.

I bank with La Caixa (well, I have my salary paid there: I don’t get involved in anything more complex than having a credit card), and I will be damned annoyed if it appears that the Barcelona bank is in trouble too. The amount they charge me for basic services….

Let’s hope that this so-called bail out means that normal customers don’t end up losing any of their cash. But shouldn’t we be pushing for a full nationalisation of the banks? I feel a poll coming on.

thebadPoll: problems with language

Catalonia, Language, Polls

This is a bit of an old chestnut. There are a lot of stories around about people having trouble with Catalan speakers (generally in Barcelona), refusing to serve people in Spanish or being rude or unfriendly because of the victim’s lack of ability with Catalan.

Now, this isn’t a poll about whether you agree with the Generalitat’s language policies or not… maybe I’ll do that next. The question is simple: Have you ever had problems with Catalan speakers refusing to serve you in Spanish?

As usual, you can answer to the right >>

…but if you want to expand on your answer, just leave a comment.

Arrests in Barcelona: Fraud or terrorism?

'Terror', Catalonia, Politics, Spain, , , , , ,

The other night, 13 men were arrested in the Raval district of Barcelona and in Valencia on suspicion of fraud. Apparently, they were running a criminal gang that forged passports and Spanish ID cards.

But on the Catalan news yesterday morning, they were already being described as ‘jihadists’ and ‘suspected terrorists’. Channel 4 news in the UK this evening picked up the story and added drug trafficking to the rap sheet (this appears to be a similar combination as that reported in Público)

Now, I’m finding it difficult to track down the warrant that was issued for these men’s arrests. If anyone could help me out with this, I’d be very grateful.

Interesting to note that some comments in El País theorise that the story was used to ‘bury’ the large increase in unemployment in Spain, a story that broke the same morning.

Protest G20 summit this Friday at 1700

Capital, Politics, , , , , , ,

The people behind the Crisi newspaper are calling a protest against this weekend’s meeting of 20 major economies. If you’re interested in taking part, check for your nearest demo point here (there are 70 around the world Spain, plus a couple more in cities further afield).

Spain protests taking place:

Barcelona – Plaça Catalunya

Madrid – Puerta del Sol

Valencia – Plaça Ajuntament

Bilbao – Centro Civico de la Bolsa

Sevilla – Plaza Nueva

(and more). It’s worth noting that if you do want to take part, you’d probably be better off joining the protest in the largest town you can get to (i.e. Barcelona, not Sabadell).

Gaycelona versus Gayxample – does Graham Keeley ever know what he’s talking about?

Catalonia, , , , , , ,

As seen in this fluff piece by the Guardian’s Man In Spain for nice hotels under €100 in Barcelona:

Hotel California

Great value for money considering its locaton around the corner from La Rambla. The California offers decent, clean rooms and markets itself as gay friendly, though this is more subtly played than in hotels like Axel, in the “Gaycelona” district of Barcelona.

As any fule know, the so-called gay district is called ‘Gayxample’ from the Eixample neighbourhood. It seems that Graham Keeley’s articles either consist of reheating AP and El País stories or churning out ignorant tosh. Has no one at the Guardian yet noticed that while Keeley is filing tons more stories on Spain than there used to be, they are predominantly ripped off or simply inaccurate? Maybe it’s reading Flat Earth News but this guy is really beginning to annoy me.

Guardian, sort it out!

P.S. I was going to say that Graham Keeley doesn’t know his arse from his elbow but I suspect that I’d have been picked up for bad taste. So I didn’t.

PP: Acebes & Zaplana out, Camps & Aguirre in

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

The PP has had a change of leadership. As predicted, this has involved the sidelining of Angel Acebes and Eduardo Zaplana. The new members of what Rajoy is calling his ‘own team’ are to be la niña de Rajoy, Francisco Camps (president of the Comunitat Valenciana) and Esperanza Aguirre (president of the Comunidad de Madrid). Both Camps and Aguirre lead PP strongholds which gained seats in the recent election,

This isn’t a shift towards the centre, mind. Aguirre and Camps are both plenty right-wing when they want to be. Check out Graeme’s obssesive enlightening series of posts about Aguirre if you want a better idea of how she ticks.

Meanwhile, the final final final (pero que finales, eh?) results are in and CiU lost a seat to the PP. This is apparently due to the postal vote taking ages to arrive (what?! in Spain?! surely not!). This leaves CiU on 10 seats in the parliament. They’re still talking about a pact between CiU and the PSOE but I somehow doubt it. That would mean alliance in Madrid but opposition in Barcelona, which would be a pretty unsatisfactory situation for everyone, parlicularly the electorate. By the way, check out this post (in Spanish) about the peculiarities of the Spanish electoral system and how it encourages a sort of bi-partisan situation. This image in particular is interesting, as it shows how many seats the IU might have if a different system were adopted. Give you a clue: it’s seven times as many as they have now.