Catalonia Today's blog: March 2008

Friday, 28 March 2008

Resolving conflicts: Mutually assured resolution

Whether between employer and employee, next-door neighbours, criminal and victim, husband and wife or warring states, we are surrounded by conflicts that seemingly have little chance of reaching a resolution acceptable to both parties. Yet, with a dose of goodwill and constructive dialogue under the direction of a professional mediator, there are few conflicts that cannot be resolved to the benefit of both parties. Arbitration, in all walks of life, is an alternative to mutual destruction and damaging legal battles and is growing by the day. (Full story in printed edition).

US house speaker comes to town

Barcelona appears to be developing a reputation as a world leader in public transportation. No less than the third most powerful politician in the most powerful nation in the world was recently in town to see for herself what all the talk was about.
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, stopped in Barcelona on her return leg to the US after a trip to India to meet with the Dalai Lama. She took the opportunity to talk transportation with Jordi Hereu. (Full story in printed edition).

Catalonia has highest per capita population of foreign prisoners

Foreigners represent 30.4% of the Catalan prisoner population, the highest of any country in Europe. The data comes from the Síndic de Greuges de Catalunya, the Catalan ombudsman, which extrapolated information about Catalonia from an EU-wide study penitentiary systems in 2002-2004. Among other data, the Síndic highlights the fact that Catalonia has the fewest penitentiary workers in the EU – 40.7 per 100 convicts. The European countries leading the pack are Sweden with 99.6 workers per 100 prisoners and Italy with 85.1. (Full story in printed edition).

Interview. Oriol Amorós. Language, jobs and social understanding

In the past year, Oriol Amorós has instigated two of Catalonia's most ambitious immigration projects: the Llei d'acollida and the Pacte Nacional per a la Immigració. The measures are aimed at addressing the influx of migrants by providing newcomers with tools in order to aid their integration and to reorganise public services so as to offer improved attention to all citizens. The philosophy behind these initiatives is the same that has led Amorós to advocate reducing the proposed period necessary for naturalisation from five to two years and to defend the aules d'acollida as the most efficient way of promoting integration. (Full story in printed edition).

Little league football on the global stage

The next generation of international football stars was recently on display at the Mundaliet, played at different sites along the Costa Brava. Teams hailed from throughout Europe and from as far away as Brazil, Russia and Japan, but there were no surprises at the moment of crowning the champs in each category. The wee ones of the power houses continued in the tradition of their bigger brothers as Barça, Real Madrid, Brazil and Mexico took home trophies. (Full story in printed edition).

Generalitat antes up in Magreb

The Generalitat as been a big promoter of the EU's Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, designed to build closer ties between Europe and the non-EU countries bordering the Mediterranean, but now it is putting its money where its mouth is.
Behind its investment arm, the Institut Català de Finances (ICF), the Catalan government is one of the three largest partners in a new venture capital fund, Fons Mediterrània Capital (Mediterranean Capital Fund), that plans to invest up to €100 million in the Magreb countries of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. (Full story in printed edition).

Learning English on the phone

Speaking English has in recent years become as essential a skill for most Catalans as getting a driving licence or knowing how to swim. In response, a whole industry, comprising language schools, audio and video materials, books and exchange trips to English-speaking countries has sprung up. Barcelona-based company Phonelearning is now offering English language students a service whereby clients choose a date and time to be rung up for a conversation of their choosing in English. (Full story in printed edition).

Op: The sound of global English, by Mercè Vilarrubias

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and China's entrance into international economic markets, English has become a truly global language. Covering the five continents and cutting across social classes, English is now the lingua franca of the world. It is estimated that between 1.5 and two billion people in the world now speak English and that of those only about 450 million are native speakers. (Full story in printed edition).

The universal Catalan

In his day, he was the subject of eulogies from the likes of Josep Pla and Joan Miró and his engravings appear in all the manuals and encyclopaedias dedicated to the world of Catalan art, yet Enric Cristòfol Ricart remains largely unknown today in his native Catalonia. (Full story in printed edition).

Interview. Lluís Llobera. Computer animator

Lluis Llobera has a job that most would envy. At least, that is, if you enjoy long hours in front of a high powered computer breathing life into fantastic characters that will charge across big screens around the world.
Llobera, a twenty-eight year old from Barcelona, now works as an animator for New York based Blue Sky studios, the outfit responsible for the recent film Horton hears a who. Horton was Llobera's first film with Blue Sky. (Full story in printed edition).

The flowers of Egypt

Barcelona's Egyptian museum inaugurates a new space with a show of 40 ancient artefacts, including 28 sarcophagi, unearthed in two tombs in Egypt's Valley of the Queens, near Thebes (ancient Luxor).
Although the 2,700 year old tombs were discovered in 1903 by the Italian archeologist Ernesto Schiaparelli, this is the first time they have been put on display to the public. (Full story in printed edition).

Smaller museums praise plan

Despite its detractors, the Pla de Museus de Catalunya, Catalonia's national museum plan, does have its fans. A group of 39 directors of local museums have signed a manifesto praising key language in the document. (Full story in printed edition).

The literary spoils of war

Militària, Barcelona's one and only bookshop specialising in the subject of the history, men and machines of modern warfare turns 25 years old this month. The shop, located on carrer Bruc 87 in the heart of the Eixample, offers a veritable war bounty for the military buff and collectionist alike. (Full story in printed edition).

From the fields to the doorstep

The horticultural home-delivery service popular in northern Europe has established itself in Catalonia.
Disfruta & Verdura, based at the l'Hort del Pilar farm in Cambrils, was formed by three partners in October 2007. Under general director Álvaro Córdoba, the company began to ship out weekly or fortnightly eight-kilo or 12-kilo boxes of fruits and vegetables to homes in Barcelona at prices ranging from €26-€36 a box. (Full story in printed edition).

Op: The Last Word, by Joseph Wilson

Wearing pants instead of a skirt costs nurses €30 in a clinic in Cádiz. La clínica San Rafael has reduced the salaries of their nurses who opt not to bare their bottom third and dock them their "collaboration and dedication" bonus. It looks like the bossman justifies this by construing "collaboration and dedication" as "for my viewing pleasure". (Full story in printed edition).

Friday, 21 March 2008

Three days when it rained iron

Seventy years ago to the day, Barcelona lay in rubble, with over one thousand civilians dead in the streets or in the ruins of their former homes. From March 16-18, 1938, at the height of the Spanish Civil War, Franco's airforce and his Italian allies bombed the city from the sky and opened a new chapter in the dark history of warfare. A new book, Tres dies de març, bears visual witness to those days of destruction. (Full story in printed edition).

The Mediterranean: a fragile sea

The Mediterranean is getting warmer. According to a comprehensive study conducted by Centre d'Estudis Avançats de Blanes (CEAB), a marine research centre, the Mediterranean sea is both warmer and saltier than it was 30-40 years ago. Likely explanations for the increased salinity of the sea are the decrease in fresh water flowing from rivers due to decreasing rainfall in recent years, and the global rise in sea level resulting from the melting of polar ice caused by global warming. (Full story in printed edition).

Sounding the depths of need

Barcelona's Town Hall says there are approximately 800 homeless people living on the city's streets day-to-day. Independent social service agencies put the number at 1,500. To find out exactly how many people live on the streets, who they are, what circumstances led them there and what they need, the city is collaborating with some of those same agencies to undertake the most extensive census of the homeless in the city's history. (Full story in printed edition).

Interview, Thomas Buergenthal. Auschwitz survivor and international judge: ‘It is important to say the truth’

As a child,Thomas Buergenthal was rounded up by the Nazis in the Jewish ghetto of Kielce in Poland and sent to Auschwitz. Separated from his parents, he survived the death camps alone. After the war, he adopted US citizenship and went on to become a judge in the International Court of Justice in the Hague. His 2007 autobiography, A Lucky Child, has just been published in Catalan under the title, Un nen afortunat. (Full story in printed edition).

Circus back in the ring

After months of negotiation with the authorities and after years of institutional neglect, Catalan circus has a future. Protracted talks between the Departament de Cultura and the Associació de Professionals del Circ de Catalunya (APCC) has brought about an agreement that will lead to the regulation of the profession and a significant increase in government funding. (Full story in printed edition).

Interview, Joan Garriga, Rumba singer: ‘Parties are serious business’

Without missing a note on his diatonic accordion, Joan Garriga sweeps down gracefully to pick up the underwear one of his female fans has thrown to him on stage. Although receiving critical acclaim and a prestigious Ciutat de Barcelona prize for Clavell Morenet, the new album by his band La Troba Kung-Fú, Garriga's high-energy Catalan rumba is far from stuffy and academic, as his knickerless fans will attest. Here he talks about disco politics, African immigration and the serious business of partying. (Full story in printed edition).

The Post-it project

An extensive exhibition at CCCB explores the phenomenom of the Post-it city: an international research project that centres on "the temporary use of public space for commercial, recreational and sexual activities." (Full story in printed edition).

Thursday, 13 March 2008

Exiles museum: Keeping the memory alive

It is somehow fitting that a museum dedicated to refugees should be located in a border town. La Jonquera in Alt Empordà witnessed at first hand the exodus of thousands of people, as Republican sympathisers fled Franco's victorious forces after the Civil War. That was in 1939 and, for some, still within living memory. Those memories now have a home at Mume or the Museu Memorial de l'Exili. (Full story in printed edition).

Palau v neighbours over hotel

A fight is brewing in Barcelona's Ciutat Vella over the neighbourhood's architectural heritage, pitting the Palau de la Música Catalana against the local neighbourhood association.
The bone of contention is the Palau's plan to purchase the Casa Agustín Valenti, carrer Sant Pere Més Alt 13, listed in Barcelona's catalogue of architectural heritage and located directly across the street from the Palau. The plan is to tear down the building and build a hotel with a small square that will widen the street. (Full story in printed edition).

ERC leads the fall-off by the left

A recent survey carried out by the Generalitat's Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió showed a growing number of Catalans in favour of independence, a trend that theoretically, at least, should have
translated into more votes for the party most closely associated with Catalan independence –the left-wing nationalist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya. (Full story in printed edition).

A new wrinkle in mystery of light

A joint team of physicists and biologists based in Barcelona has recently made a discovery that one day could be used to treat cases of severe nerve damage.
Nerve cells have been discovered to follow the pinpoint of a tiny laser beam just like a donkey can be lead with a carrot on a stick. While apparently simple, this finding has potentially groundbreaking applications. (Full story in printed edition).

Contentious Laietana turns 100

Interestingly enough, via Laietana was born on carrer Ample, when King Alfons XIII symbolically broke ground, swinging a pick axe at 77 carrer Ample one hundred years ago, on March 10, 1908.
The plan to connect the city's old port with the new district of the Eixample with a modern, wide road was coloured with an urbanistic idealism. However, it also represented yet another point of friction between Barcelona's influential bourgeoisie and the working class: in this case the unfortunate residents of dark, constricting medieval neighbourhoods that would be razed to make way for the new artery. (Full story in printed edition).

Montjuïc: From mountain to monument

Barcelona and Montjuïc have always had a relationship bordering on symbiosis. It was Montjuïc stone – renowned for its quality and durability – that was used to build so many of the city's landmarks. In return, over the years, Barcelona has turned Montjuïc into a monument of the first order. (Full story in printed edition).

Rajoy is beaten but unbowed

Mariano Rajoy announced his intention to lead the Partido Popular yet again in the next general elections four years from now, supporting his decision as "the best for the PP, the best for Spain, and because I have a good political project and because 10 million Spaniards backed a slate of candidates led by me." (Full story in printed edition).

Sports: Crisis or dip in form for Espanyol?

'It's a funny old game' is an old footballing cliche but it could well be the phrase going through the heads of many Espanyol fans at the moment.
After an excellent start to the season, in which the Barcelona team spent 21 consecutive match days in La Liga's European placings, Espanyol have picked up a mere six points from 24 since the Christmas break. (Full story in printed edition).

Keeping the wheels on the economy

The government under Prime Minister Jose Luís Rodríguez Zapatero delivered economic growth that averaged 3.7% a year and created three million new jobs, results that helped him win a second term in recent elections.
Growth like that is long gone. In the march of economic cycles, Spain has exited Easy Street (now offically known as the good old days) and is flirting with a technical recession (two consecutive quarters of negative growth), with the potential that it will become full blown. (Full story in printed edition).

Cooked offers clothing al dente

Imagine a clothes store that feels like a take-away restaurant, with goods intriguingly presented, a menu tailored to individual tastes, and items freshly prepared while you relax at the bar. Welcome to Cooked in Barcelona, a local firm promoting the fashion equivalent of the "slow food" movement. (Full story in printed edition).

Opinion, by Antoni Mir: Multilingualism means business

We never think when we go to the fridge to get a yoghurt that this word has come to us via Turkish. Or similarly, it never crosses our minds when talking on a mobile phone that the term was originally Greek. Words do not respect borders and thanks to languages our culture grows. It is this concept that lies behind the exhibition La mar de llengües. Parlar a la Mediterrània in the Casa de Cultura in Girona. (Full story in printed edition).

Courageous creations

The images of female photographer Lee Miller are on show at the Manuel Barbié gallery in Barcelona until April 22. Miller was the subject of a recent extensive exhibition at Museu Picasso.
Multifaceted and multi-talented, Miller acted as a commercial photographer, news reporter and war correspondent during her lifetime. (Full story in printed edition).

Giving screen life to Cold Skin

Albert Sánchez Piñol's La pell freda (Cold Skin) now has a pair of scriptwriters who will bear the artistic burden of successfully turning this excellent novel into a – cross your fingers – great film.
Two Catalan brothers, David and Alex Pastor, have been tagged for the difficult task of writing an English screenplay for the novel's adaptation. (Full story in printed edition).

The artistry of botifarra

There's sausage and then there's botifarra. Catalans would probably not look kindly on one of the principal staples of their cuisine being refered to as a mere salsitxa, and as one local shop has proved, the botifarra can be as simple or as elaborate as you like.
Across the street from the church of Santa María del Mar in Barcelona's increasingly fashionable El Born neighbourhood, La Botifarreria de Santa María specialises in quality meats and cheeses, but its main attraction is its bewildering variety of botifarra. (Full story in printed edition).

The Last Word, by Joseph Wilson: Varieties of silence

Little-known-fact-of-the-week: do you know what country is the only foreigner to officially represent the insanely odd government of North Korea hails from? From China you say? No. From Russia? Nope. Did someone say from Catalonia? Go on, speak up! Say it loud and clear because we have a winner! (And who says that Catalonia doesn't have a voice on the international scene?) Yes, Alejandro Cao de Benós originally hails from Tarragona and presently is head of the Committee of Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea as well as leading the Friends of North Korea Association. (Full story in printed edition).

Friday, 7 March 2008

Barcelona’s reputation turns tame

Barcelona City Council's campaign to shed its budget holiday appeal is
starting to have an effect on the international perception of the city
as a "wild" destination for stag and hen parties. In a self-styled
"hell-raising" scale that appeared in a recent issue of the UK's
Independent, Barcelona received a low rating. The article attributed
the drop in its hell-raising status to the 2005 introduction of the
civisme policy, "a raft of measures to clamp down on drunken groups,
with heavy on-the-spot fines for antisocial behaviour and a ban on
drinking in the street." (Full story in printed edition).

Playgrounds get the butt end

Cigarette butts, scraps of aluminum foil, plastic bags, even the
occasional and highly unpleasant piece of canine excrement. Parents,
experts and city officials can agree on one point regarding
Barcelona's playgrounds for children: their level of cleanliness
leaves something to be desired.
Hannah, parent of a two-year-old girl and resident of La Ribera, says
that her neighbourhood has "plenty" of places for her daughter to play
but laments the fact they "get pretty grubby," adding that "people
treat them as vast bins and just toss their rubbish in". (Full story
in printed edition).

A quarter of water wasted in leaks

Despite suffering from the worst drought in decades and with water
resource management at the top of the government's to-do list, a
quarter of Catalonia's water is being lost on its journey from the
treatment plant to the tap.
A report from the Col·legi d'Enginyers de Camins, Canals i Ports,
based on statistics from the Agència Catalana de l'Aigua, claims that
the government calculation of a 17% loss of total water resources
through leaks to be an underestimate. What's more, the loss of 25
litres in every 100 stated in the study is well over the Spanish
average of 17.9%. (Full story in printed edition).

Joan Laporta: A sporting chance in politics

Spain's conservative Partido Popular has accused him of being an
"Ultra." An English journalist labelled him "Barça's Kennedy." A
former colleague decried his "authoritanism, opacity and power-greed."
The man who inspired that range of opinion is none other than Joan
Laporta, the charismatic president of Futbol Club Barcelona and
presumed candidate for political office. The media-savvy Laporta has
kept his future intentions close to the vest, but his transition from
sport to local politics looks inevitable. Indeed, if there ever was a
club that could prepare a man for the political arena, it's Barça,
where politics and sport are inextricably linked. (Full story in
printed edition).

Opinion: When less means more in politics, by Joan Abril

Slogans for political campaigns or electoral programmes have to
conform to the magic formula: "less is more". What this means exactly
is that a few, carefully selected words have to carry maximum force in
their meaning. A good example is the slogan for the PSC-PSOE (Partit
dels Socialistes de Catalunya) candidate Carme Chacón. "La Catalunya
optimista" is a phrase that transmits an optimism that the work of the
governing Socialist party will continue, while the phrase "Si tú vas,
somos más" also rings with optimism. This latter slogan is
complemented by another – "Si tú no vas, ellos vuelven" – that shows
spooky silhouettes of the opposition leaders of the Partido Popular
(PP). (Full story in printed edition)

Interview: Joan Manuel Treserras, Culture and Communications Minister - Catalan on the box

Q: You were very critical of the Audiovisual Council of Catalunya
(CAC), an organisation of which you yourself were part.
A: That's right. However, it seems to me that these criticisms must be
seen as a contribution to the process of changing the relation the
political class has with public media. In other words, changing from a
model of very strict relations where there public communications
system must basically submit to the political system to a more
separated, autonomous model that would allow the Consell català de
mitjans audiovisuals or [Catalan council of audiovisual media] to
assume more responsibility. (Full story in printed edition)

Romanesque Catalonia

Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya with the support of Sociedad Estatal
de Conmemoraciones Culturales (SECC), a Madrid-based governmental body
dedicated to recovering and restoring cultural heritage, presents an
exhibition entitled Romanesque art and the Mediterranean, Catalonia,
Toulouse and Pisa 1120-1180. (Full story in printed edition).

Interview: Josep Grau-Garriga, artist - The language of tapestry

Q: What does the Any Tapís 2008 mean to you?
A: The aim is to show the importance that this artistic technique has
had in Sant Cugat, thanks to the efforts of the Escola Catalana de
Tapís. (Full story in printed edition).

Opinion: Johnny get your gun, by Joseph Wilson

Spaniards, even those dastardly Republicans, mostly see their royals
as modest, spendthrift and dare I say modern when put side by side
with the likes of the House of Windsor. The general consensus is the
House of Bourbon somehow symbolically pays its way while being
generous enough not to run up the tax payers' bill too much. (Full
story in printed edition)

Wednesday, 5 March 2008

Racism and xenophobia cannot be kissed away

During election times, in other countries, they kiss babies. In Spain,
it seems they kiss blacks, if a cursory look at some of the newspapers
is to be believed. OK, not all political parties it seems, so I will
omit the Secretary General of the PSOE Zapatero from such activities
but not Rajoy.
I would like to know what is it about Mariano Rajoy and PP that they
manage to get themselves in photos and stories with prominent black
people – presumably immigrants or pictorially seen as images or
representatives of immigrants – when the substance of their message is
racist, xenophobic and intimidating.
One of these cases was the one covered prominently by several
newspapers, prior to the official election kick-off, was that of Khady
Koita on a PP platform with amongst others Rajoy, which I will discuss
further below. Recently, Público's (page 8, 29 February 2008) feature
article Habrá agua para todos also ran a photo of about a quarter the
size of the tabloid page dedicated to Rajoy kissing a black woman
sympathiser, who was unnamed. The huge image represents Rajoy as being
sympathetic, open and fair to say the least to blacks and immigrants
concerns - something the accompanying article (Llamazares tilda al PP
de ¨xenófobo y sectario¨) clearly contradicts.
In addition, the photo does not serve to illuminate the importance of
responsible water utilization and the failed water policies of PP but
represents a Rajoy simply as a happy campaigner!
In the former case of Koita – president of a group called European
Network against FGM –, her message to PP was to tackle female genital
mutilation (Rajoy afirma que su propuesta de contrato ayudará a
prevenir la ablación genital, El País, 8 February 2008), whilst there
seems to be no corresponding call for support nor participation
towards the PSOE, and other left parties in the country. Apparently,
during 2007, the Senegalese born activist received an award from PP's
main women leader Esperanza Aguirre.
I do not have any problems with this, but I have concerns when Black
people and an activist ostensibly committed to tackling such anti
women and anti human practices is privatised by a party whose message
on women and immigrants is at best paternalistic. As regards
immigration, it is racist and xenophobic and I do not believe any
immigrant, let alone any Black person, must be used in process that
will only facilitate his/her own subjugation. What is clearly called
for is resistance and alliances with those who seek genuine dignity
and equality for all in a world where immigration is both inevitable
yet not always equitable and just.

[Hassen Lorgat is on short sabbatical in Spain and studying at UPC.
Was the former chair of Transparency International – South Africa, and
manager of campaigns and communications with the South African NGO
Coalition.]

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