Catalonia, Politics and Supply Chain

Blogus resurectus

2007-10-11T19:58:00.000-04:00

A couple of months ago, I decided to discontinue my blog. Some of you have asked me why. There were several reasons. The main reason was related to what I would qualify as blog stalking. From now on, I will give less information about me in order to protect my privacy.
I also needed a break, the mental pressure of having to publish something smart every couple of weeks, while working 11 hours a day, traveling all the time and having to raise a family, was a little bit too much. I needed some time without that pressure.
However I am coming back with a new blog catalonianpolitician.blogspot.com . I am not sure which language I am going to use yet. As you probably know I am a Catalan nationalist who defends Catalonia without blaming Spain for where we are. I like Spain and the Spaniards. They would make excellent neighbors. I want to influence the Catalan society towards nationalism/globalism, not towards localism. I want every Catalan to be fluent in Catalan, Spanish and English, proud of our mother tongue, Catalan, but conscious of its limited reach. The problem is that English level in Catalonia is pathetic. Should I write in Catalan? Should I write in Spanish? Should I stick to English?

Anyway from now on, you can read my posts here (catalon-IAN politic-IAN)

Blogus interruptus

2007-05-29T23:36:00.000-04:00

I am discontinuing this blog. I would like to thank all those who visited and commented during the last 2 years. I will continue to visit yours.

Take action: Jazztel

2007-05-26T22:17:00.000-04:00

While in Shanghai this week, I continued to keep in touch, as usual, with what happens in my dear Catalonia. I read in e-noticies a piece of news that described the policies of the telecommunication company Jazztel. Apparently this company only accepts communications in Spanish even though is sells products and services in the Catalan speaking territories of Spain where Catalan is the official language.I am not surprised that Jazztel tries to get away with it. Companies hate diversity, “one size fits all” is the best methodology to reduce cost. Customization and localization cost money even if you have embedded DFD (design for diversity) in your design process. But market forces are able to counterbalance the natural tendency of companies to avoid diversity. My biggest issue is the reaction of some people to Jazztel arrogant position. The worst attitude is the ‘botifleristic” approach. One guy was saying, if by having Catalan customer service I will have to pay more, forget about it. These are the kind of people who have made us lose all battles since the Trastamaras, people who would not move a finger to support their country and that would sell it for personal gain, like Mas with the Estatut (Catalan Constitution), like Carod-Rovira and Montilla with TV3 in Valencia and so on.
Let me tell you, if the vast majority of Catalans wanted products and services in Catalan we would have them, the applicable techniques: solidarity, perseveration and market economy.
Let me explain you how this would work for Jazztel. All Catalans or at least the 60%-70% who care about their language, should stop using Jazztel and switch to a carrier where service is offered in Catalan (preferably in Catalan, Spanish and English, my trilingual dream), even if it is more expensive. After a few weeks, the market share of Jazztel in Catalonia, the most affluent area in the country, would be so low that they would put together a taskforce to try to reverse the trend. After analyzing the exit interviews, they would conclude that the solution was an aggressive marketing campaign in Catalan with attractive prices and the set-up of a call center in Catalonia to serve the customers in Catalan.In order to maintain the margins in Spain, they would be forced to go for a second round of outsourcing and move more jobs from Spain to Argentina. A few months ago, Jazztel shut down the call center in Galicia and moved it to Argentina (que bueno que chamaste), read it here and here.
Conclusion, in a few months, we would have Jazztel in Catalan, we would have created jobs in Catalonia (pretty difficult to outsource, maybe to Valencia, Andorra or L’Alguer) and it would have cost us close to nothing.

In a larger scale, the solution is even easier. Let’s assume that we declare the months of October 2007 and February 2008 as the months of Catalan in labeling and services with the support of all society, consumer associations, political parties (except PP), etc. It should be a non political exercise, not a boycott, but an exercise of consumer preferences. During the month of October, only products and services that would offer labeling and customer support also in Catalan (I am not saying only in Catalan) would be chosen. We may suffer a little bit, we may have to pay more for some products, we may even have to narrow our selection, maybe have only lettuce and onions for a couple of days, but it will be worth while. In November, after having given our warning signal, we would go back to our normal consumption habits, while all the companies that got the message would start to address the Catalan market seriously developing labeling, graphic interfaces, directions for use and service centers in Catalan. When in February, the campaign would reinitiate, the choice of products would be much wider, the price differential insignificant and those manufacturers who chose to ignore the customer requirement would be definitely out of the Catalan landscape.
There is only one aspect that worries me and it is collusion. I have the feeling that it already exists today and we need to bring it to the open. I am afraid that many companies have agreed on certain rules of the game to avoid that one of them goes full speed with Catalan and the others are forced to follow. The solution is called “whistleblower”, someone needs to produce an internal document or trail of emails to prove it and the justice system will do its job. Collusion and price fixing are illegal practices.

Note: The videoclip is an edited version of an original Motorola ad. The company SardanaTel only exists in my imagination, maybe now in yours too.

Pop goes my heart

2007-05-23T19:45:00.000-04:00

Last Friday night I left for China. I had a couple of important meetings in Suzhou on Monday morning and my assistant was not able to get me a confirmed ticket flying west, so I had to fly east, although it meant a very long layover in Germany. Those who have followed me for a while, will remember that I swore not to fly Lufthansa anymore (Lufthansa nie mehr!), but this time I had no choice. The way to China was long, but I slept a lot, both in the plane where the business class seats recline to almost flat position and in the lounge where they have a special area with dimmed lights and reclining chairs. The stewardesses continued to be rude, but bearable and Lufthansa has really good planes and safety is first.
During the last 18 to 24 months flights to Asia have always been packed, all of them overbooked and with the risk that if you would not make the connection due to weather, they would send you to Anchorage and Narita prior to getting to your Chinese destination.
In the plane I watched a couple of movies. I started with a drama called Blood Diamond with Leonardo di Caprio, but I was not in the mood to see people suffer, so when they started to slaughter little kids I stopped it and decided to go for a comedy. I chose a Cantonese movie called Ngor yiu sing ming (My name is fame). I watched it in Cantonese with English and German subtitles. A nice movie with good actors, especially the very charming actress Huo Si Yan (or Fok See Yin in Cantonese) and I noticed that I understand more Cantonese than I thought. Remind me and in a couple of weeks I will talk about the trilingual territory of Hong Kong.
I did the return in First class, apparently business was full according to my assistant. I never check the itinerary before I leave. I open the folder upon arrival and all the required information is always there, including the cell phone of the driver that will pick me up in those countries where renting a car is either not possible or not advisable.
From Shanghai I called the travel agency to try to downgrade me to business but they told me it would cost me 1000 dollars. I try to always be cost conscious and business class is good enough, despite the angry stewardesses.
So I resigned myself to take First Class on the way back and surprise, surprise, stewardesses were friendly, you get a 100% flat bed, a pajamas and a sweater, caviar, Jabugo and all that jazz.
The return was not through Frankfurt, but through Munich. I hate Frankfurt, it is a lousy airport, but Munich is great. Germany has been able to create a double hub, something that Spain opposes, but Bavaria, the strongest Bundesland demanded to Lufthansa the creation of an international hub in its capital and Lufthansa did. Actually the airport is by far better than Frankfurt’s. Those of you readers living in the Jacobine country of Spain will know that the army is there to protect its unity and a citizen who challenges that principle can become a target for the army. The Spanish constitution legislates, in an implicit way, that those Spanish citizens who challenge the unity of Spain can be lawfully executed and the core conservatives consider that an international hub in Barcelona would be the first step towards a breakaway.
Months before the whole fuzz about the Barcelona hub started, I wrote about it in my blog (click here if you want to re-read it) and I advised the Catalonia government to lure a foreign airline to set up its European hub in BCN. My preference would be United Airlines of Star Alliance that could get good European connectivity through Spanair. Since I am the one making this suggestion, can I ask for a favor? Can you put a United flight from Boston to Barcelona on Friday evenings, leaving Logan at around 7pm and arriving in BCN around 8.30 am (Papa vine a recollir-me, arribo a dos quarts de nou!).
Going back to First Class, still nothing like Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class that I described in my post “I love Virgin”, neither masseuse nor manicure.
In the last leg, I watched another comedy, you will hate me for this, but I loved it. The movie was Music and Lyrics with Hugh Grand and Drew Barrymore. I think it is created after the duet Wham, a kind of caricature. It is fun to see Hugh Grand dancing and Drew is really sweet and believe it or not I decided to see the version dubbed into American Spanish and this added to the charm (remember I am a non orthodox Catalan nationalist that supports trilingualism and actually likes the Spanish language, although I do not buy the Spanish Constitution). I attach a freshly googled video-clip of one of the songs Pop goes my heart, do not kill me, I find it fun.

I am NOT Hispanic.

2007-05-12T22:31:00.000-04:00

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) loosely defines Hispanic as someone of any race whose ancestors were born in a country where Spanish is the official tongue. According to this definition, Brazilians, Portuguese and Andorrans are not Hispanic, but Catalans are. As minorities we supposedly have all kinds of advantages in what is called positive discrimination.
Many Americans (and this includes governmental employees) still confuse race and ethnicity (even in the official forms) and think that all Hispanic are what ethnically is called mestizo, that is to say, a brown skin mixture of white and native American.

But I have to tell you, I am a Catalan. Yes, I have a Spanish passport, but I am not Hispanic and I do not want to be. My mother tongue is Catalan and about my race, plain white. So, thank you very much, I do not need any positive discrimination, I do not want any help. Do you mean that if I had been raised in Spanish, I would be handicapped and I would need a favor? Absolutely disgusting!

When asked, I always tell the truth, race: white (most probably a mixture of Celts, Iberians, Greeks, Romans, Franks, north European Barbarians with some drops of Arab and Jewish blood), nationality: Spanish (that’s what my passport says), ethnicity: Catalan. I assume that some of the federal agencies have put a working group together to find out what Catalan ethnicity is (OK, the reality is that Catalan ethnicity appears under Hispanic in the US census with the code 204).

Luckily my color, my family name (Llorens) and my slight accent (Catalan, but most of the people confuse it with French or French Canadian) keep me off the Hispanic-targeted telemarketing campaigns.

I see many people in USA who are very worried about Spanish taking over from English. Two months ago, the congress quickly put together a law declaring English the official language of the United States. Calm down, do not worry too much, the Spanish spoken on the streets of USA is terrible and it is getting worse and worse, as we speak.
Phrases as: “Aplicar pa un trabajo” (Apply for a job), “Llámame p’atrás” (call me back), “El interé de tu mortgage”, make me sick. I cannot help it, I am a language purist.
However the government does not seem to have any kind of remorse when using Spanish to recruit people for the military (I took the attached picture in my town, where the Hispanic population is close to zero).

I have also observed another interesting phenomenon. When I talk in Spanish to people from South and Central America who live in USA, most of the times, they refuse to answer back in Spanish, even if they were talking in Spanish among themselves. Also very often, they switch to English when I get close by (by the way, most of them speak an American English 10 times better than mine). I dislike this attitude. Even if I do not consider myself Hispanic, I am proud to speak standard Castilian Spanish, and I would never switch language, just because a perceived Anglo is walking past.

To summarize, I do not need any kind of discrimination, neither positive, not negative. Look at my green eyes and judge me for what I am. But if I need to identify myself, I will always proudly say, I AM A CATALAN.

If we were independent, we would not starve

2007-04-23T23:22:00.000-04:00

Due to my eclectic nature, I read (or browse through) 8 or 10 e-newspapers every day: e-noticies, Vilaweb, Raco Català, La Vanguardia, El Periódico , but also ABC, El Mundo, Las Provincias (Valencia) and a couple of international ones (Reuters, BBC, CNN, Haaretz and Le Monde).

ABC always amazes me. When a Catalan does a something that they judge wrong, he is a Catalan, when a Catalan does something they judge positive, the person becomes a Spaniard.

The latest example of that, is yesterday’s report on the latest list of best restaurants in the world (Restaurant magazine S. Pellegrino’s list). According to ABC’s report, El Bulli, owned by the SPANISH cook Ferrán Adriá or Adrià (apparently, ABC also wants to re-write the Catalan grammar, it should be Ferran Adrià, no matter where it shows up in the article) is for second consecutive year, the best restaurant in the world.
According to the article, 6 SPANISH restaurants make it to the top 50 list. Good job Spain!!
But, let’s analyze the location of those restaurants:

Oh! Surprise, surprise. There’s three Catalan and 3 Basque. However, the article does not mention, not even a single time the words Catalan or Basque. I understand, it is hard to tell, El Bulli, Mugaritz, Ferran, Berasategui, Can Fabes, Celler, Arzak, nothing closer to standard Castilian, at least for ABC.es.

Anyway, Catalans and Basques, let’s not take this very seriously. Let’s not allow the single-sided, “Catalans-you-are Spanish-you-like-it-or-not-and-you-shut-up” approach of the Spanish nationalist media to cause us an indigestion.

The only consequence I can get from the ABC.es article is that when we are independent, we will not starve. Let’s toast with “cava” and “txakoli”.

Form ABC.es
El Bulli de Ferrán Adriá repite como el mejor restaurante del mundo

EFE LONDRES
El Bulli, propiedad del cocinero español Ferrán Adrià y situado cerca de la localidad gerundense de Rosas, sigue siendo por segundo año consecutivo el mejor restaurante del mundo, según la prestigiosa revista gastronómica Restaurant.
Gracias al voto de la mayoría de los 651 jueces participantes, El Bulli consigue mantenerse en la primera posición de la lista San Pellegrino de los cincuenta mejores restaurantes del mundo que elabora esta revista, a la que España contribuye con otros cinco templos gastronómicos, ha informado hoy Restaurant.
El Bulli, que en los últimos seis años no ha bajado del tercer puesto dentro de ese índice, ocupó el primer lugar en las ediciones de 2001 y 2006. Entre los elegidos de este año, y por detrás de El Bulli, los críticos de Restaurant han reconocido la labor gastronómica del restaurante Mugaritz, de Rentería (Guipúzcoa), que alcanza la séptima posición.
De cerca le siguen el donostiarra Arzak y el gerundense El Celler de Can Roca, décimo y undécimo mejores restaurantes del mundo, respectivamente. El restaurante Can Fabes, de Sant Celoni (Barcelona), logra el vigésimo segundo lugar, mientras que el Martin Berasategui, de Lasarte (Guipúzcoa), alcanza el puesto veintisiete.
Gracias a estas seis representaciones, España es el cuarto país, junto a Italia, con mayor número de restaurantes de alta cocina del mundo, superados por Francia, con doce; EEUU, con ocho, y el Reino Unido, con siete.
El brasileño DOM, de São Paulo, en el puesto 38, es el único restaurante latinoamericano que logra hacerse un hueco en esta lista de los cincuenta mejores, en la que el año pasado ocupaba el último lugar.

Future in our hands

2007-04-12T22:31:00.000-04:00

We, Catalans, cannot simply complain about the Spanish government not doing this or that to grant Catalonia the rights it deserves.

It is also true, however, that so far nothing has been done to make of the Kingdom of Spain a place that Catalans (real Catalans, those Catalans from all origins who feel our culture, language and philosophy of life has a value) can call their country.
Those who, like me, live overseas, know that in the Spanish consulates and embassies, there is absolutely no sign or indication that Spain is a multicultural, multilingual country. With a minimum investment, it would have been possible to have the key signage in Spanish and Catalan (most probably they should have had it also in Galician and Basque too), and in those locations where there is Catalan speaking personnel, a sticker on the counter saying: “es parla català”.
It would have been a great gesture by the Spanish government to push to have Catalan recognized as an official language of the EU, based on the fact that is the EU language without state that has highest number of speakers and is used at all levels of society (education, communication, literature, business, etc.). It would have been easy to make the case, or otherwise refuse to pay for those languages that are not even exclusive of their countries and used by orders of magnitude less that Catalan, like Gaelic or Maltese.
They could have supported the Catalan national teams in those sports where Catalonia is a world leader (roller hockey, waterpolo, ...), the same as Great Britain with soccer, rugby and others, instead of spending public money to avoid it.
They could have favored multi-language labeling for products with distribution nation-wide. They could have included Catalan (and also Galician and Basque) as languages that can be used to represent Spain in any foreign cultural event (even the Eurovision, I do not think that by singing in Catalan, we would be worse off).
They could have encouraged the use of the 4 national languages in Parliament, just by investing a little bit in interpreters, a small investment to show that they care.
They could have fought to get the bullet train connection Valencia-Barcelona-Paris, far earlier than the Madrid-Seville. They could have pushed to get an international airport hub in Barcelona to support the “still now” leading economy in the Iberian peninsula.
They could have used the traditional Catalan industrious and reserved character, to counter the Hispanic stereotype flamenco-party-fiesta-macho-ole that people outside Spain have in their minds.
The could have endorsed the fact that Catalan and Valencian are the same language, something that is clear as water, but they never did it because they wanted on one side, to undermine the Catalan culture, and on the other side to score points with the Valencian Spanish nationalist. The scientific truth to hell if we get the majority in congress, that’s their approach. In the 70’s, for instance, the Belgian government issue a law that stated that Flemish and Dutch were the same language (Neederlands), something unthinkable in Spain.

During the 30 years of democracy, I thought that there was hope for a federal monarchy, where Catalonia, its culture, language and personality would be valued.
As per today, I have totally lost hope, especially today after watching a hate- speech program in Telemadrid. We need to go a different route. It is all in our hands, Catalans at home, in Europe and overseas. The biggest handicap is also within ourselves. The current Catalan politicians are a scam.

I hope that one day, we will act united as Catalans and not in a partisan way. Before that happens, I have no hope.

2024 (re-print)

2007-04-05T23:17:00.000-04:00

More than a year ago, I posted a political fiction post called 2024. I am publishing it again to remind us how things change depending on where we stand.

2024
Today, February 12th 2024, the European Parliament has rejected a proposal by the Spanish representative to the European Council to re-create the Spanish tax collection agency that was eliminated in the year 2014, when the European tax collection agency was founded with the objective to collect all European taxes, except those from Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux, countries that have kept till today their own tax collection entities, claiming historical rights as founding members of the European Union.Behind the Spanish proposal, we can find the fact that only 75% of the taxes collected in Spain, come back, while countries like Turkey are taking advantage of the solidarity funds due to partisan reasons, since the votes of its 120 million citizens (one forth of the European Union population) are key to keep the EPP (European Popular Party) in charge of the European government.Due to its current fiscal deficit, Spain has been obliged to restore the inheritance tax, reintroduce tolls at all statewide highways (that had been eliminated in 2002 in the whole country, except for Catalonia) and institute a 20% co-payment for medical assistance, among other measures.
The Spanish representative explained that after the tax redistribution, the per capita income in Spain dropped four places in the European ranking, after being taken over by Portugal, Czech Republic, Hungary and Latvia. These four countries that still enjoy the solidarity funds, have been able to eliminate the inheritance tax, all medical co-payments and have even introduced free dental coverage.
The Spanish proposal has provoked violent reactions, especially in those four countries and Turkey. Since Spain started to publicize its proposal, several organizations in those countries have called for a boycott to Spanish products, especially, Rioja wine, olive oil and, of course, “cava” (Catalan sparkling wine). Sales of those products in Europe have dropped significantly (about 7%), although the selling season has been saved thanks to the marketing efforts in Asia and the USA, as well as, the sale of non labeled wine and olive oil to Italian companies.
At the same time, some groups in Madrid have started a boycott against products labeled in English, which are invading the shelves of the supermarkets, due to lower distribution costs. England has sent an official complaint to the Spanish regional government and has qualified the attitude of the Madrilenian citizens as racist.
Meanwhile the dispute between the Seville archdioceses museum and the Moroccan government continues. The Moroccan government is demanding the return of all religious objects (Christian and Muslim) that came from the Spanish ex-colonies of Ceuta and Melilla. As you will remember, those colonies were returned to Morocco in 2018, as a result of the pressure from the Turkish government to the European conservative party that needed the support of the Turkish parties to overcome a non confidence vote in the European Parliament. The leader of the Spanish conservative party, who initially signaled his disagreement, was called to Brussels for consultations and despite the fact that there were many rumors about his possible resignation, he finally accepted the party line and voted for the return of the two enclaves to Morocco.
The only positive event this year has been the return of the documents stolen from Madrilenian institutions and private owners by the French troops during the War of Independence in 1808, and that were located at the French National Museum in Lyon. The documents left Lyon in the middle of the night and with heavy escort. The mayor of Lyon has filed an injunction against the Spanish regional goverment that has been accepted by the European court.

A close aide to the expresident of the Spanish government at the beginning of the century, José María Aznar, has indicated that the expresident, in view of the situation, exclaimed in privacy and in Catalan: “We should have learnt from the Catalans”.

Do not get married by a piglet

2007-03-30T20:48:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago, I read in the Catalan e-papers an unbelievable story. A Catalan couple who lived in Madrid, went back to Barcelona in order to have their wedding ceremony held in Catalan.
To their dismay, the judge refused to marry them in Catalan. The were told that if they wanted to get married in Catalan, they had to wait to the end of the day, after all the other couples were married, and after that, maybe someone would marry them in Catalan. The name of the judge is Antonio Lechón (literally Anthony Piglet).
The even more amazing thing is that the judge was getting an allowance (additional monies on top of his salary as judge) because he had demonstrated command of the Catalan language.

The couple sued the judge and they lost. The reason: judges are not required to speak Catalan, even if operating in Catalonia and, apparently, even if they are paid additional money for having demonstrated proficiency in the Catalan language.

But we should not be surprised, this is another clear demonstration that Catalonia is still in a colonial situation as it has been in the last 300 years.

It all started with the Decree of New Foundation issued on January 16th, 1716 by King Philip V. In the 6th paragraph, he clearly states:
"Las causas en la Real Audiencia (de Barcelona) se substanciaran en lengua Castellana, y para que por la mayor satisfacion de las partes, los incidentes de las Causas, se traten con mayor deliberacion, mando que todas las Peticiones, presentaciones de Instrumentos, y lo demas que se ofreciere, se haga en las Salas...." (this can be summarized as 'all proceedings in the Barcelona Supreme Court will be held in Castilian languange only').
For the first time in the history of Catalonia (and the County of Barcelona), Castilian was imposed as the only language that could be used in legal procedings. Before that date (1716), Catalan and Latin (in some documents) were used. Castilian was, up to that point, a foreign language.

This Decree has never been revoked and it is therefore, legally speaking, still applicable. For this reason, we should not be surprised about Mr. Piglet winnimg the case.

Conclusion: Never get married by a Piglet!!!

By the way, since we are talking about pigs, let me tell you a free translation of a joke that Johnny Tastavins forwarded to me yesterday:

José Maria Aznar, Eduardo Zaplana, Ángel Acebes were driving to downtown Madrid in a stretched limo to meet Zapatero. When they were still in the outskirts of Madrid, three pigs suddenly appeared in the middle of the road. The driver was unable to avoid them, hit them and killed them on the spot. The three politicians of the conservative Popular Party got out of the car and inspected the damage to the Party's limo and noticed that it was severely dented. When Rajoy saw the extent of the damage, he got mad and told the driver: "Go right now and find out who the owner of these three pigs is, I am going to sue him. We will wait for you here". After a couple of hours, they saw the driver staggering towards them. He was drunk, had red eyes and a smiley face. Zaplana asked him: "What happened? Did you find that bastard?". The driver nodded and said "it was a farmer and he gave me this expensive bottle of brandy, his wife gave me this box of cigars and his daughter gave me three blow jobs".
Acebes interjected, "what did you tell them?.
The driver answered. "I just told them that I was the driver of Aznar, Zaplana and Acebes, that I had an accident and I had killed three pigs".

'John Cleese is the son of a bitch' would rhyme for Manuel

2007-03-16T19:01:00.000-04:00

The comments deserve something a little more elaborated than a laconic reply. Therefore I have decided to make a post.

I would like to thank Tom for the clarification. I have changed the text to put the blame only on John Cleese, what makes me feel much better, because I actually like many of the other works of Monty Python, especially Brian's life. I also agree that Manuel is a nice guy. Most probably he would make a much better job representing Barcelona than our current rising star of diplomacy, Carod-Rovira.

I would also like to take some time to reply to Garci.
I can understand that your intellectually challenged friends (aka retarded or intellectually disabled) resonate with Manolo.

It is funny, however, that you do not identify yourself with him, but you have no problem to link him with the non Catalan speaking population born in Barcelona. By the way, the fact that 50% of the people from Catalonia does not have Catalan as mother tongue, does not mean that they do not speak Catalan (the percentage of Barcelona born people who speak Catalan is in the high 90s) and it does not mean either that they have Castilian or Andalusian accent. In general those Catalans who were born in Catalonia and have Spanish as mother tongue speak pretty neutral Spanish, sometimes with a slight palatal l and ll and use some Catalan words to describe some specific things where the Catalan word fits better, as for example “plegar” (finish your workday or quite a job voluntarily).

Regarding languages, I speak Dutch and German, Catalan and Spanish, and from all points of view, grammar, vocabulary and phonetics the percentage of correlation is very close in those 2 pairs (80% to 85% depending on the text, if you use kadoje instead of geschenk, the correlation is lower, for instance). Flemish and Dutch have dialectal differences similar to Catalan and Valencian, with a fundamental difference, in 1980 the Dutch and Belgian governments signed the “Taalunieverdrag”, a treaty that recognized that Dutch and Flemish were the same language under the name of Nederlands.

As usual, I will ignore your “under the belt” attack. Those things I mention are common themes for the Catalan stereotype in the rest of the Spain, used in jokes and parodies, and that have a certain foundation, although they are normally an exaggeration or a distortion of reality. And about my kids, I am trying to do my best to educate them well and I make them citizens of the world. However, I had my 8 year old daughter next to me when I was preparing the previous posting and she saw the video clip and asked me, are the people from Barcelona so stupid? Although she has never lived in Barcelona, she was born there. I did not reply, just closed the window.

And yes, I am upset and pissed off and I have the right to be. To be frank I would also be upset (maybe slightly less, but still upset) if Manuel had been from Madrid or Seville and a little been upset if Manuel had been from South America. However I would have enjoyed the series, if he had been Italian or French. Because I like Spain and the Spanish people. My problem is that Spain is now an enlarged Castile, and all efforts are being made to shield any other cultures and languages from the rest of the world. Today’s Spain is not my country, I do not feel represented at all, as I do not feel represented by Manuel.

But judge by yourself, let me copy and paste the description of the character from Wikipedia:
“Manuel, a waiter played by Andrew Sachs, is a well-meaning but disorganised and constantly confused Spaniard from Barcelona with a poor grasp of the English language and customs. He is constantly verbally and physically abused by his boss. He is afraid of Mr. Fawlty's quick temper and violent assaults, yet often expresses his appreciation for being given the position. When told by either Basil, Sybil, or Polly what to do, he answers, "Qué?", which means 'What?', and "Sí", which means 'Yes'.
The character's nationality was switched to Mexican for the Spanish dub of the show broadcast to most of Spain, while in the Basque region he is an Italian called Manolo”

And do not forget that when they try to explain to others the rootcause of his imbecility, they justify it as saying, “he is from Barcelona”.

I know it is difficult for you to understand the feeling since you are not from Barcelona, but Tom or even you, if you love UK, can get a taste of it when reading my rant about the British bitches, meant to be a figure of speech without much sophistication.
And the problem is that those stereotypes stick for years, especially among certain parts of the society and they are difficult to change. Be honest and tell me how would you react if you read a piece of news saying that Harvard university has decided to establish its European campus in Lepe.

I am sorry, I am from Barcelona

2007-03-15T20:17:00.000-04:00

I am just back from China. I got a couple of excellent Chinglish examples that I will publish in a couple of weeks. I am jetlagged and tired, but I need to write something about Faulty Towers.
Today I had a quite high level meeting with some pretty senior people. Whenever someone asks me where I am from, I always say, I am from Barcelona. I have a hard time to say that I am from Spain, and if I say I am from Catalonia, most of the people say Cata-what?, so since I left Spain 15 years ago I always say Barcelona.
In the meeting I met a Dutch guy who, when I said Barcelona (pronounced in the American way), told me with a grin, I thought you called it “Barthelona” (pronounced as in Spanish). I told him that we , Catalans, call it Barcelona (very close pronunciation to the English one) and that Barthelona is in Spanish, not our mother tongue.
He then told me: but Catalan and Spanish are basically the same language, like Dutch and Flemish. I replied to him that the difference between Catalan and Spanish is the same, more or less, that between Dutch and German. The he argued, the latter are definitely two different languages. I replied that it only took me three weeks to learn Dutch after having learned German (what, by the way, is true) and that I am not “Manuel”.

The reason why the Dutch guy was grinning is because of the British series “Faulty Towers”. One of the main characters of the TV series is “Manuel”, a stupid, clumsy, strongly Spanish accented waiter from, yes, Barcelona, a true stereotype of the Spain of bullfighting and flamenco that the dictator Francisco Franco sold to the world.

I saw one episode of the series once and I could not stand it. I made me vomit. I has nothing to do with our Catalan culture. I do not mind being laughed at, because we dance the most boring dance in the world, the “sardana”, or because we make human towers (“castellers”) or because we are stingy, or because we work when the other party. I do not mind to be called Polish because we speak a different language or singled out because my real Catalan first and middle names are unpronounceable by an average Spaniard, but I cannot swallow the fact that they laugh at me for things I consider are foreign to me as the Balinese dance.

Some time ago I wrote to the Catalan government and the Barcelona town hall asking them to initiate legal action against Monty Python. I did not even get a reply from them. I think they were too busy siphoning money from the law abiding citizens. I hope I can find, one day, a lawyer who is willing to start a class action law suit. If that happens, I am willing to support with one thousand dollars.

For my ease of mind, let me say that I think that Monty Python's John Cleese has done a lot of damage to Barcelona’s reputation in many of the North European countries (thanks God, the series is not popular at all in USA). That's why I have no choice but to qualify him and the other authors as morons, idiots, motherfuckers and sons of some of the hundreds of British bitches that come to Barcelona to get drunk for 2 euros. They may even have a Barcelona father without knowing it.

Catalan and Market Economy

2007-02-23T18:45:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately the best word to describe us Catalans is a Spanish one: “gilipollas”. There’s plenty of Catalan words that have a similar meaning (“beneit, ximple, babau, beneit del cabàs, curt, poca-solta, …”), but none of them describes this special kind of acquired moronity that characterizes us. Led by politicians whose brain is the size of a mosquito’s testicle, we act as a divided people with neither ambition not pride. It’s 500 years of lowering our heads and those who dared to raise it were betrayed by their own neighbors ("botiflers").

I love market economy and I am appalled by the fact that most Catalans put all the responsibility of the situation of our nation and especially, our language, on the government. Dear fellow citizens, our government is useless, the brainpower of the whole cabinet put together would not rival the one of an Australopithecus having a bad day. Write them off. They would sell you and their mother, for an ephemeral political gain.

The power is in our cash, credit cards, cash cards, checks and bank accounts. Let’s put our money only on those products that offer user interfaces, directions for use, call centers, labels and advertisements in Catalan. Let’s value the customer focus of those companies that believe that satisfying the Catalan customers is worth while the effort of creating diversity in their product portfolio.
If a company from Albacete offers a product labeled in Catalan and a company from Palau de Plegamans offers a similar product only labeled in Spanish, let’s all massively buy the one from Albacete.
Even assuming that only 50% of the Catalan speaking people gives a damn about their language, that makes a good 5 million people with a purchasing power bigger than many mid and small size European countries with solid line borders around them. When the market share in the Catalan speaking areas of those companies who refuse to offer their services in Catalan plummet, you will see how quickly all of them will offer their products and services in Catalan.
I personally hope that one day, every product distributed in Catalonia will be labed in three languages (Catalan, English and Spanish), any call center and service website will be in those three languages and every shop assistant, taxi driver, policeman, etc will be fluent in those three languages too.

It is in our hands. Let’s not look at the country of origin of the products to decide whether we buy them or not, let’s check whether they have been tailored to satisfy our needs, thinking that we, Catalan customers, are important for this or that company, let’s favor those businesses that value us and are willing to spend some resources to meet our needs and let’s be ready to pay a little bit more for those products too.

If we act this way, you will see how fast the language will be normalized and we will be able to reserve the adjective “gilipollas” only for our politicians.

Note: as a business person, I am aware that the distribution of multi-language labeled products poses a big challenge in Spain. Many Spanish people would boycott products that are labeled in Spanish and Catalan and distributed outside the Catalan speaking areas, simply because Catalan is also on the label. As you can see, Spain is not Belgium, Singapore, Switzerland or Canada.

I am getting ready to fly to Shanghai and practise my Mandarin. Zai jian.

Pep Priorat i Aguiló: Presidente

2007-02-22T01:56:00.000-05:00

As some of you will still remember, today is George Washington's birthday and so is mine. Therefore I plan to write about a president that will never exist, Pep Priorat i Aguiló, "Presidente" of Spain.

Many inside, but especially outside Catalonia thought that Catalonia would never have a president that did not have Catalan roots. They all have been proven wrong. Our current president, José Montilla Aguilera, has no Catalan blood whatsoever and he was not even born in Catalonia. He did not even change his first name to Josep (he did that only in previous elections, but not anymore) and he is clearly no "Terminator" either.

Personally I think that laws should require a president be born in Catalonia to run for office, mainly trying to avoid conflict of interests and to warranty allegiance to the country he/she serves. But anyway, José was elected legally and democratically and therefore he is our president, whether or not I like it, and most probably he will do a better job than many of his colleagues of the "tripartit".
So yes, it is proven, a non Catalan born person can become the president of Catalonia, but could a Catalan become the president of the Kingdom of Spain? The answer is categorically NO. Any party that proposes a Catalan candidate to run for office would definitely lose the elections, Pep Priorat i Aguiló has absolutely no chances at all to win the Spanish presidential elections. And you will ask me why? Very simple, Spaniards consider Catalans Spanish, but not as Spanish as the rest. They do not trust us, they believe that we are different, but they are horrified by a potential split.
Let’s not forget that when Miquel Roca i Junyent ran for president in 1986 as the candidate for the Reformist Party, he only got 0.96% of the votes and not a single representative in the House. If he had been called Miguel Piedra Afluente, he would have got a much better result, maybe even the presidency, but he had the wrong name and the wrong origin. Funnily he was born near Bordeaux (in Caudéran, to be exact) when his parents fled the ditactorship, so he could not be Catalan president either if my rule took effect (neither could my son, a New Englander).
Some of you may point out that indeed there were two Catalan presidents in the past.

Estanislao Figueres i Moragues (February 1873 – June 1873) and Francesc Pi i Margall (June 1873 –July 1873) were the first two presidents of the Spanish first Republic, but the fact that they stayed altogether 6 months in power, only proves my point.
Finally, some of you may suggest that I am forgetting one Catalan president of the second Spanish Republic, Alejandro Lerroux, but he was not a Catalan. He was, as our current president, also from Cordoba.

Conclusion: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a Catalan to become president of Spain." (Mark 10:25 with some help)

Fake politics

2007-02-04T20:18:00.000-05:00

Since New Year I have been traveling continuously. Seattle, California, Arizona, Germany, The Netherlands, Florida (3x), and I have had no time to write any meaningful posting yet.
And when I am at home, I try to spend some quality time with my wife and the kids.

Two weeks ago, I netflixed "When harry met Sally ...". I had seen this comedy 15 years ago, but I thought that my wife (remember that she grew up in communist China, where western films were normally not shown) would enjoy it.
I had totally forgotten the scene where Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm. It is one of the best comedy scenes in history. To hell, Catalan politics.

The day that the 3 Magic Kings came to Massachusetts

2007-01-06T20:21:00.000-05:00

As expected, since I had left my shoes under the Christmas tree, the three Magic Kings, Melchior, Caspar and Balthasar came to our home in Massachusetts to visit one of the few idealistic Catalans that still exist. They did a great job in combination with eBay and Barnes and Nobles, maybe because they heard that I paid off my mortgage in December.

This is the list of things I got:

A "made in Taiwan" Catalan flag (“la senyera”) that is now proudly hanging from the veranda that overlooks our family room. Unfortunately I will not be able to display it on our national day, since believe it or not, it’s on September 11th.

An old “3 QUARTOS” coin from the Principality of Catalonia dated 1811

A 1734 original map of Arragonia & Catalonia by Gerardus Mercator, published in the Mercator Atlas Minor 1734 edition; attractively colored with a fine hand, strong impression, in very good condition on clean white paper with minor marginal soiling. Absolutely guaranteed an original antique map.

A novel from Patrick O'Brian called THE CATALANS, a dark story of love and betrayal set against the brilliant colors of the Catalan country in southern France, long out of print. According to the publisher it is a powerful successor to Testimonies, Patrick O'Brian's first novel written for adults. It is set in that corner of France that became O'Brian's adopted home, where the long dark wall of the Pyrenees runs headlong to meet the Mediterranean. I am curious to read this novel that situates Catalonia in France, maybe it takes place in northern Catalonia, but I doubt it

And finally a history book, out of print, called, guess how? THE CATALANS by Jan Read. “This is not a formal 'history book' account; it touches on the literary and scientific achievements of a Ramon Llull or Arnold of Vilanova, the origins of the Catalan language, the nineteenth-century literary revival of the *Renaixença" and resurgence of nationalism, the emergence of the labour movement in Barcelona and the divisions between parties of the left during the Civil War. Jan Read's graphic and carefully researched book, the only one of its kind in English, will interest any reader who wishes to look beyond the headlines and to understand the situation in Catalonia today."

I hope you also got as many presents as I did.

Happy New year 2007 – Bon Any 2007

Catalonia, a country without “cojones”

2006-12-30T21:37:00.000-05:00

In the Spanish speaking countries, the word “cojones” is gross. Surprisingly in the Anglo countries the same word has pretty positive connotations (a bit “macho”, but positive). I have heard the word used in business meetings several times and I seem to be the only one who gets a bit shocked with the expression, even though the Catalan version of the word, “collons” (pronounced “koo-ee-ons”), is much softer and can be used without raising eyebrows.
To illustrate that the word “cojones” has no negative connotations among the North American Anglo community, I will mention the ad campaigned that Volkswagen started in USA a few months ago. The billboards describe its new Golf as the “Turbo-Cojones”. The campaign did not last much due to the complaints of people, mostly in Florida, who did understand the real meaning of cojones and did not want to be exposed to a gross ad promoting the “turbo-testicles” and maybe, did not want to see the saga continued with a next round of ads promoting the Jetta “Turbo-polla” (Turbo-dick).

However, for this posting, I want to stick to the Anglo meaning of “cojones” and definitely, at the end of the year 2006, I have to proclaim that Catalonia is a country without cojones.
For hundreds of years the majority of Catalans have believed that even though Spain is a good country with excellent people, it is not our country, it is not the country where we belong. We have allowed that people arriving in our country change our way of life in a way only seen in places where the invader had a much more developed culture (and army) than those invaded. A high percentage of the millions of people who came to our land, Catalonia, seeking prosperity (and many of them got it) have “hispanized Catalonia” instead of adapting to our culture and values.
But the responsibility does not lie on those who came. The responsibility lies on those who call Catalonia their nation. And the reality is that we do not have “cojones”, we always back off because we are afraid of losing what we have achieved so far. We hide our Catalan identity, because we believe that if we display it, Spanish will boycott it and foreigners will not recognize it and we will sell less. We are a country of “botiflers”, a country without “cojones”.
As an example, I am including a picture of two bottles I bought here in USA, both bought at Costco. The single malt bottle of scotch shows proudly on the front of the bottle “The Macallan distilleries Inc, Easter Elchies, Craigellachie, Scotland. Product of Scotland”. On the bottle of Freixenet “cava”, there is no reference to Sant Sadurdi d’Anoia, Barcelona or Catalonia, just a laconic “Product of Spain” on the back label. I told you, a country without “cojones”.

The Montserrat schism

2006-12-02T21:51:00.000-05:00

El cisma de Montserrat
The Catholic Church has always been anti-Catalan. The Catholic Church likes empires, likes authoritarian regimes, likes commonality and Catalonia does not offer any of them. Do not think that the aversion to Catalonia by the Catholic Church is something new. It’s a millennium old.
In 1301, Pope Boniface VIII fell ill. His Roman doctors were not able to heal him. Pope Boniface hated Catalans, he had done everything possible to stop their expansion in the Mediterranean and he also denied the rights of the House of Barcelona to the Crown of Sicily. However, as a last resort, they brought the famous Catalan doctor, Arnau de Vilanova, to see the Pope. Arnau had been put in prison upon arrival in Rome some time before.
Arnau was able to relieve Boniface’s suffering. After that, Pope Boniface exclaimed: “at last I have found a Catalan who does good”.
In the XV and XVI century, the situation got even worst. The fact that Catalans did not support the implementation of the Inquisition was the main reason for that. They even assassinated some of the Castilian lead Inquisitors who were sent to the kingdom of Aragon to implement the Spanish Inquisition. In my opinion that’s the main reason why Catalans were forbidden by Isabel Queen of Castile to go to America till the end of the XVIII century.
Recently, we have seen similar moves by the Catholic church establishment to weaken the Catalan identity. A few years ago, the Vatican determined that the Western Strip (La Franja), the Catalan speaking counties located in the Aragon region would not longer belong to the Lleida archdiocese (Catalonia), but it would become part of the Aragonian archdiocese of Barbastro. La Franja had been part of the Lleida archdiocese for more than one thousand years. The motivation behind the decision was to reduce the influence of Catalonia on this Aragonian region with more of 90% Catalan native speakers (the highest percentage of Catalan native speakers in any region in the world).
The last straw has been the approval last week by the Spanish archbishop conference of a documents declaring that the unity of Spain is a “moral good”, trying to quell any separatist desire in Catalonia or the Basque country. What does the unity of Spain have to do with religion or morality? Why don’t the Spanish bishops spend their time doing the real moral good, as for instance, helping the poor, putting in prison the pedophilic priests or giving support to the use of condoms to curve the growth of AIDS?
I am a catholic, I always went to catholic school and I like Jesus and his teachings, but I really cannot stand the Roman Catholic apparatus. Pope, bishops and archbishops are not a moral good, they are basically a waste. They also proclaimed that the Roman empire and the old Spanish empire were a moral good. Both are long gone. That’s the only thing that gives me hope.
Hopefully one day, pretty soon, the abbot of the Montserrat monastery will secede from the Vatican and declare the Montserrat Schism (“el cisma de Montserrat”), with the basic good teachings of Jesus, but with divorce, non abortive contraception and female priesthood.
I include a videoclip showing the entry of the Franco dictator troops in Barcelona in 1939. My grandfather was by then a P.O.W. My grandmother and my 4 year old father had nothing to eat. The rest of my Catalan relatives were crossing into France, where they have remained since.

Our naked Santa Albert Rivera

2006-11-04T21:14:00.000-05:00

The Catalan elections sucked. First of all, how do they dare to announce the results without waiting for my vote which I religiously sent on October 31st by certified mail. Hey guys, I spent 8 bucks and they have the nerve to announce the results without counting MINE. That proves that there was fraud. Remember that Cuidadanos made the 3% threshold by a mere 0.04%. Maybe a couple of votes, mine and Rab’s for instance, can bring it to an insufficient 2.99%.
In a serious note, the only fraud is the clowns we have as politicians. But you are right, we have the politicians that we deserve.
I have to admit that I am surprised by the fact that Ciudadanos made it, even though I have to thank Albert Rivera for having been the reason of more than 1000 hits to my blog last month. On October 7th, several American and Canadian newspapers published an article about Albert Rivera and for two days, when you googled any combination of Albert, Rivera, Catalonia, Barcelona or naked, my site ranked first. Now he has become a popular guy and if you put the word naked, it brings me to the 6th page (otherwise I still make the top 10).
I do not feel too bad about Ciutadans making it to the Parliament. In general, they say the right things (although they think totally differently, but that's politics). My impression is, however, that the vast majority are core Spanish nationalists that cannot deal with Acebes (most probably only his mother can deal with him). As an example, I hardly found any Catalan first names on the ballot of Ciudadanos. I only recall Albert and two Sílvias (and I had to take my magnifying glass to see the two accents ‘ on the first i). I thought they are for bilingualism, therefore I would have expected at least 50-50 Catalan and Spanish first names.

Anyway I want to make use of this opportunity to ask our naked Santa, or even better, king Melcior-Albert-Rivera, the following Xmas presents:

Trilingual schools (Catalan, Spanish, English)
A new Spanish passport written in Catalan (in addition to the current 12 languages): Regne d’Espanya - Passaport
That Catalan has the same rights in the E.U. as Gaelic, Maltese, Danish and any other official language spoken by less than 10 million people.
That the Spanish Embassies and Consulates have signs (with smaller font if you want) in Catalan (Ambaixada d’Espanya, Consolat d’Espanya).
That birth certificate form at the consulates has a box to tick if you want the inscription in the Civil Registry to be made according to the Catalan usage
That all products sold in Catalonia have Catalan labeling and directions for use
That all electronic products sold in Catalonia have Catalan user interface

Fuck yourself on the right hand side

2006-10-23T17:35:00.000-04:00

I have spent the last 8 days in Europe (Stuttgart, Saronno, Barcelona and now Amsterdam). While in Barcelona, I was exposed, once again, to the scatological and sexual connotations of Catalans politics, especially now that we are getting closer to election day.
I have to apologize once again for introducing to you so much dirty stuff, but Catalan politics are dirty. Thanks God, we do not have (yet) any child molester among the political elite, but we have pretty much everything else: politicians that go the Full Monty, actors that shit on the establishment, politicians' wives that refer to their political opponents as sons of a bitch, and so on.
The last addition to the list has been the most recent campaign by the Eco-socialist youths. They intended to promote the vote for the left by discrediting the right. So they started a campaign that included distributing condoms with what they thought was the printed Catalan phrase “Fuck the right”. However, those responsible for the ads had as much bad taste as they have lack of knowledge of the Catalan language (pretty popular among Catalan politicians who deny trilingual education to the kids, but who can hardly speak two Catalan words without making a grammar or vocabulary mistake). Instead of writing “Fuck the right” (Folla’t la dreta), they wrote “Fuck yourself on the right hand side” (Folla’t a la dreta), because independently of the willingness or not of the one who is being forced to the intercourse, ‘fuck someone” both in Catalan and English is a transitive verb and you “fuck the right” and not “to the right”, unless you have an asymmetrical penis.

The campaign has been since withdrawn, not because of its bad taste, but because of the grammatical blunder.

I promise, this is the last dirty post of the series, if the Catalan politicians allow.

Catalan national teams (II)

2006-10-09T21:15:00.000-04:00

The soccer game between the Catalan and Basque “national” teams took place last Sunday. It went well, about 60 thousand people attended the match, it was peaceful and everyone pretty much said what he/she wanted to say, a good sign of freedom of expression. The final score 2-2 did not matter at all, especially to me, since I do not like soccer (at least, I thought so).
But it you ask me, are you for the Catalan national teams? The answer is simple: Yes and No.
Yes, for those sports where Catalonia is a world power, where the Spanish national league is a Catalan league with just one or two Spanish teams dancing around. That is the case of roller hockey or grass hockey. In this case, making use of the status of Catalonia as a stateless nation, I think it is justified to have Catalan national teams playing in international competitions, no matter what Madrid thinks.
No, for those sports where Catalonia itself is not willing to abide by the rules. In order to have a national team, the requirement should be (and it is for soccer) that that particular country has its own league. I do not think that Catalans will bite the bullet and organize a Catalan soccer league, where Barcelona FC would play against Ripollet or Cardedeu, thus turning down the lucrative matches like Barcelona vs. Madrid, Seville or Valencia.

As I mentioned in my previous, the commercial - promoting Sunday's game against the Basque region - began airing in Catalonia last week but a Barcelona judge ordered the suspension Thursday. The ad showed children picking teams for a soccer game. One boy, dressed in a red jersey symbolizing the Spanish national team, refuses to let a boy wearing the Catalonian team's shirt play - unless he removes his jersey. The boy takes off his shirt and other children then remove theirs in solidarity. Then the slogan, "a country, a team," then flashes on screen.
A group, calling itself Right to Decide, urged fans to endorse the commercial by removing their shirts when players entered the stadium.
Using a high tech satellite camera, I decided to check whether any fans would follow the group’s request. I was successful enough to take one satellite picture of one of the fans that decided to follow. Since then, I have decided that I may start to like soccer and we should delay the decision on Catalan national teams for a couple of years, as long as the fans continue to show their support in a similar fashion.
What you are unable to see on the picture is what the woman had tattooed on her back:“If I was the size of Albert Rivera’s, I would also cover them with my hands,”

Catalan national teams

2006-10-06T22:37:00.000-04:00

Spain has done everything possible to suppress the Catalan and Basque country national teams. This weekend Catalonia is playing an "international" soccer match against the Basque country.
Spain would have no problems to play against Wales, Scotland or even the disputed colony of Gibraltar, but it would never agree to play against Catalonia.

The pro Catalan national team movement, created the enclosed TV ad to support the Catalan team. The ad was banned yesterday by a judge. Judge by yourself.

Mas Inglés

2006-10-01T23:19:00.000-04:00

I thought that Artur Mas was simply the typical kind of Catalan traitor (botifler) who had sold his soul to the devil (Zapatero) for personal political gains. This has happened many times throughout the history, that’s why Catalonia has gradually lost language, political rights and identity in the last 600 years.
This year, during the negotiations of the new Statute (Catalan Constitution), we lost a unique opportunity to take control of our future, by managing our taxes, the infrastructural investments, harbors and airports. The only so-called win is that we are a nation in the introduction of the law, but not in the body.
This week Artur Mas has also demonstrated that, in addition of being a “botifler”, he is also a moron. Apparently he also believes (like me) that Catalans need to be trilingual (congratulations!), but his methodology slightly differs from mine.
As you well know, I am a proponent of trilingual education where Catalan and Spanish are used to teach most of the subjects (in a 50/50 approach) and English is introduced pretty early with the objective that kids leave highschool mastering Catalan and Spanish and being very fluent in English.
Artur Mas has a “better” approach. He is proposing tax deductions for those who have a certificate proving that they speak another language. Great idea! Young kids will put a lot of effort to learn a third and forth language at school, because they know that when they grow up, they will get a tax deduction. Do not tell me that this idea is not bright!
You can also imagine the future growth of a black market of language certificates for languages that no one can verify (Tibetan, Upper Sorbian, Urdu, Uripiv, Urum or Ute) that will funnel their revenues to the Catalan political parties and their leaders.
I am already making plans to go back to Catalonia. With all my languages, most probably I will not have to pay any tax, I may even get back the taxes I paid in the 80s.
The true reality is that both the Catalan and the Spanish governments have failed to resolve the education issue in Catalonia and Spain. The OCDE ranked the Spanish education system as one of the worst in the whole organization. The Spanish teachers are the better paid, kids spend the longest hours at school, but the results are the worst with the highest number of drop-outs.
This is an area where the Catalan government could have made a difference, since it has full responsibility in the area of education, but it has not. The entrepreneurship that characterized Catalonia is gradually disappearing, and we are more and more immersed in the sea of Spanish mediocrity. And between a mediocre independent Catalonia or a mediocre Spain (with a mediocre Catalonia as part of it), I would chose the latter. As we say in Catalan, the more we are, the more we will laugh. However if by managing our own future, we can make a quantum leap in our development, starting with a very robust education, elimination of corruption, reviving the entrepreneurship, etc, then we are in business and my nationalistic spirit will arise from the ashes like the phoenix.

I attach some video clips that prove that, contrary to popular belief, Spanish leaders (famous and infamous) have reached a mastery of the English language beyond expectations. They would, at least, qualify for a 20% tax deduction.

The Dictator:

ZP+

Please Catalans, learn English

2006-09-27T20:45:00.000-04:00

In my next posting, once again I will try to convince all Catalans about the importance of learning languages, especially English.
Today, I just want to illustrate it with a couple of examples. I will leave the politics for the weekend.

Uploaded by sAdCiTy

Uploaded by Nonoche

The Emperor's New Clothes

2006-09-19T10:10:00.000-04:00

I just arrived in Shenyang (China), a city not too far from the North Korean border, but I continue to think of the Catalonia politics.
As some of you know, there is a new party in Catalonia called “Ciudadanos the Cataluña”. It is an anti-nationalistic party that is trying to attract those people from the center left that do not want to play the nationalistic game in Catalonia.
I think that every party has the right to exist. The voters will decide whether or not they become an anecdote (I think they will).
Personally, I do not agree with most of their premises and I do not like their tone in general, f.i. one of their keynote speakers said, with very obscene words, that he could not care less about the Catalan nation (a rough translation to English would be: “the Catalan nation makes my dick sweat”) and I think that they are promoting anti-Catalan sentiments, but let’s wait to the next elections and see what happens.

There are, however, two things they say that I agree with (remember I am a non-orthodox Catalan nationalist):

A push for bilingual education (I am actually for trilingual)
And that most of the Catalan politicians are crooks (remember the 3%, the revolutionary tax letters sent by ERC, the corrupt business practices by Duran Lleida, La Caixa writing off the Catalan Socialist Party loans, etc), but, to be frank, the Spanish politicians are not much better. This is not an excuse, it is a regrettable fact.

The presidential campaign will start momentarily and the new party has presented its new ad campaign where its presidential candidate, Albert Rivera, appears totally naked. I think it is a bold move, that ERC or the PSC will not be able to match (can you imagine Carod or Montilla in a similar fashion?).

However I would like to give you a piece of advice, if you meet Albert Rivera, do not shake hands with him, just in case he has the same reaction to the Catalan nation as his keynote speaker.

Finally I will say that no one in Barcelona will be surprised to see a naked person on the billboards. It is quite normal to go naked on the streets of Barcelona, either voluntarily or involuntarily. It has the advantage that no one can pick your pocket, what is a very important premise in Barcelona, otherwise ask the prime minister of Bosnia who was robbed last week on the streets of the Catalan capital (… and he thought the problem was the Serbs!). It is also a good method to avoid suicide bikers.

Valencia, California

2006-09-10T12:41:00.000-04:00

I was this week in Valencia, California, a nice little city in the outskirts of L.A. It's all brand new construction, but it has a bright fake-adobe looking downtown with the typical malls and restaurants.

One of the locals told me: 'I think you also have a Valencia in Spain', as though the Mediterranean city stole the name from the Californian town. I told him, "yes, but it has around 2000 years more history than this village'.

Talking about Valencia, the original Valencia, it is sad to see the animosity of a sizeable group of Valencians towards Catalonia due to, in my modest opinion, two reasons:

The influence of the large group of Spanish nationalists who live in Valencia, mostly around the capital, Castilian speaking and Popular Party (right wing) voters.
The stupidity of some Catalan politicians who clumsily want to impose the notion of Catalan imperialism to Valencians and citizens of the Balearic islands (and whatever enclave where 2 or more people speak a dialect of the Catalan language). If I were Valencian, I would hate it too!!!

I have to admit that Valencia has produced outstanding achievements:

One of the best books in history, Tirant lo Blanc, was written in Valencian (the way Valencians call Catalan) in the 14th century. I will write some more about this book in the future.
Valencia got immediately the status of kingdom, while Catalonia always remained as a county or principality.
Our brightest king, James I (Jaume I) spent most of his adult life in Valencia and died there.
Valencians (as Catalans) were barred from going to America till the 18th century. However, as soon as they went there, they organized an uprising against Spain and declared independence. I am referring to Josep Martí;, who led the Cuban independence. Catalans, however, went another route and made money selling alcohol (Bacardí) and Tobacco (Partagàs).
Even the concept of Catalan Countries (Països Catalans) was developed by a Valencian (Joan Fuster).

When driving that evening my rental car, a Mustang convertible, from Valencia CA to Malibu (where I would stay overnight), I was thinking that I really like the idea of a confederate country formed by Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. In a previous article, I tried to find a compromise, acceptable by all parties, but, as Habibi pointed out, the compromise was too painful for Catalonia, since Barcelona would lose the status of capital. The warm breeze from the valley caressing my skin while driving, inspired me and I came up with a slight variation that may allow me to strike a deal:

A Clicktalan from Valeària.

I also have Catalan blood (Jo tambe tinc sang catalana)

2006-09-02T22:28:00.000-04:00

According to the 19/1996 law that defines the relationship between the Catalan government (Generalitat) and the members of the Catalan community overseas, Catalonia recognizes the "Catalanity" of members of the Catalan community overseas, independently from their current passport. The Catalan nationality (as per today, just wishful thinking) is also applicable to spouses and descendants. If you read the law, you will realize that it is absolutely lousy, but at least, it will allow me to introduce two people that fall in this category.

The first one is Shakira. Years ago, when I found out that her family name was Ripoll (as many of you know, the mother's maiden name is a part of the official name of Spaniards, Portuguese and most of Latinamerican nationals), I got very curious about her ancestry. The enigma was solved when she visited Barcelona last June. There she said in Catalan (jo també tinc sang calalana, I also have Catalan blood), declared that her family name was Ripoll (beautifully pronounced, unlike the Madrilians), a family name that is more Catalan than bread with tomato rubbed over and seasoned with olive oil and salt. And if you do not believe me, check the videoclip by yourself. And please do not boycott her. As Osgood said in "Some like it hot", 'well, nobody is perfect'.
The second person I want to bring to your attention that also falls in this category is Raymond Domenech, the French national soccer team coach. He is the son of Catalans who fled Spain during the Spanish Civil war.
Many in Catalonia rejoiced when the French team defeated the Spanish one in the Germany soccer World championship. Prior to the match, Raymond had declared: "I am not Spanish, I am a Catalan", what is factually correct, since he has, most probably, a French passport.

Personally, I could not care less about soccer. And if asked to choose between France and Spain, I would definitely choose Spain. I would however, gladly accept a Catalan passport, what is, once again,wishful thinking.
Anyway, we, Ripoll, Domenech, Llorens (Shakira, Raymond, Ian) can proudly exclaim, I also have Catalan blood (Jo també tinc sang catalana), even though I have to confess that I do not like tomato.

Clicktalonia

2006-08-26T08:13:00.000-04:00

I have always been very critical of the Barcelona airport. It is a cute airport, do not take me wrong, but the head of operations is clearly below standards (see my previous posting OK, OK, Barcelona sucks a little bit). Besides I have always been an advocate of cutting ties with Iberia and transferring the control of the Catalan airports from the central government to the Catalan government.
Recent events like the "wild strike" of AENA (a central government owned company) personnel at the Barcelona airport that left stranded thousands of travelers in the middle of the holiday season the announcement of Iberia saying that it would dramatically reduce the flights in & out of Barcelona and concentrate most of the air traffic in Madrid, further justify my position.

Personally, I would like to see Iberia disappear from our skies. It is a lousy airline in all aspects and the best that could happen to us Catalans is that name of our country does not get polluted by association to such a substandard airline. This can only happen if, among other things, the airport competencies are transferred from Madrid to Barcelona.

But, so far, the reality is very different. Madrid receives more than 50% of the total investment in airtraffic infrastructure, even though, only 22% of the traffic goes through that province and I do not see any signs of this changing.

As a containment measure, Iberia announced that it would create a low cost carrier that would be based in Barcelona and that would most probably be called Cat Air. This move was intended to calm down the Catalan people, who were getting pretty upset with the "jacobinic" company.
I never believed that the low cost company would be named Cat Air, even though everyone knows that the name was created after the attached videoclip and that has reminiscences of CATania, CATalina the Great, CATamaran and CATering. Nevertheless the remote event that someone would associate CAT with CATalonia scared the hell out of the Iberia management.

And reality has proven me right. In the meantime, the new low cost company has been created with the name of ClickAir, thus avoiding any potential boycott, resulting of a very provoking name as CatAir. The company is headquartered in Madrid, although the operations center will be in Barcelona. This means that most of the work will be done in BCN, but the revenue and taxes will go to Madrid.
However I must admit that I do not dislike the ClickAir name. So I have decided that if you can't take Mohammed to the mountain, take the mountain to Mohammed. For that reason, I am proposing to rename our country with the techy name of Clicktalonia (Clictalunya in Catalan). The name has a dual advantage: it can help dissipate some of the prejudices against Catalonia and it puts us in the forefront of the new technologies.
I hope you will support this move.
Ian Llorens, a Clicktalan.

Travel nightmare

2006-08-16T01:43:00.001-04:00

I am back to China. I have been traveling intensively during the last two months and I am getting tired of the long lines at the airports. It is really annoying. I know that security comes first, but traveling by plane is getting close to being a nightmare.
I predict that the recent changes in the security procedures (no liquids allowed, no hand luggage permitted in some airports, etc.) will lead to major changes in business traveling.
I forecast that business men and woman will go to the airports totally naked and proceed through a special walk-through X-Ray screening that will explore “real-time” every hidden cavities in their (our) bodies (copies of the X-Rays will be e-mailed to the traveler’s doctor in anticipation of the yearly physical after being processed by an early cancer detection software that would flag suspicions results). As you can imagine, this will create substantial changes to our morality, especially in USA, where being topless on a beach is perceived as depravation (at least in New England).
Airline lounges would be converted into artificial beaches with artificial sun, sand and swimming pools with real waves. For the puritan, blinders will be provided to prevent them from looking to other people.
On the more technical side, every business class and economy plus seat will have a built in computer connected to the world wide web. Since no electronic devices will be allowed on board, all business applications will have to be web browser accessible (so your Lotus Notes should be viewed through a web enabled application) and at the end of the session, you should send the result of your work to yourself, since not even memory sticks will be allowed in the airports.
Personally I miss the times when the family could see you off at the gate, you could arrive at the airport 30 minutes prior to departure and you would still make it and you did not have to take off your jacket, shoes or any other thing before boarding a plane. All this is history.
When I fly back on Saturday, I will try just wearing a thong. Let’s see what happens (and NO, the one on the picture is NOT me either).

Shanghai: city of contrasts

2006-07-20T19:56:00.000-04:00

I landed at Shanghai Pudong airport pretty late. I went through immigration and customs very quickly. Especially in the summer, I try to travel always with only carry on luggage.
As soon as I appeared at the arrival hall, the driver waved at me. He has picked me there several times in the last weeks. It was hot and humid. We walked to the carpark and started our drive from Pudong to the city. The strong air conditioning was relaxing and refreshing.
I was staying at the JW Marriott. I arrived in my room and laid down on my bed for a while. I was tired, the flights, the heat, the jet lag, meetings during the day, e-mail and teleconferences in the evening.
I took a shower. Most of the rooms at JW are fantastic. The hotel is pricey (about $400 a night), but it is worth the while. My shower was directly onto the window panel. If you dim the lights, you can see the Pudong skyline while you shower. The steam gave the city a mysterious look. I felt much better.
I put on my jeans and a T-shirt. I looked down from the 47th floor and I saw the contrast of this city of 16 million souls. Ultramodern high rise buildings in the middle of old and run down housing complexes. Many of them will not be there anymore when I come back next time. I saw several white, red and blue spinning signs in one of those complexes. I needed a hair cut and a head massage (gen xi tou).
In a few minutes I was in one of those little shops. It was midnight. The hairdresser, a young guy, looked tired. I explained to him what I wanted. He washed my hair, gave me a head massage and cut my hair. He did a great job. He looked so tired. Maybe he had been working since 9 in the morning. It was past midnight now.
I asked him how much I owed him. He told me RMB 10 (US$ 1.25). I never give tips, because I do not like to alter the market price. This time I broke my rule (I would do that later again) and I gave him RMB 20.
I felt I still needed a body massage. I wandered around. It was a bit risky, because I did not know the area well. I saw another shop with the spinning sign.. In the outside there was a sign with the price list. A one hour massage for RMB 30 (less than US$ 4). I ventured in. It was almost 1am.

Japan: watersports and no money at midnight

2006-07-01T06:30:00.000-04:00

My flight from Shanghai to Tokyo was delayed due to weather. I landed in Narita at 11pm. Since I was going to stay in Japan for a day (I actually extended my stay one more day), I decided upon arrival to visit the restroom in order to give you a follow up on my previous posting “Pissing Dutch”.
The first thing you notice is that the restroom experience at Narita airport is a matter of trust. There is no lock in the door. The system detects that there is someone inside and blocks the access to another person. The toilet has all kind of controls and there are water jets in all directions. But attention guys, if you manipulate the controls while standing, make sure that you use eye protection gear. Otherwise you may find a powerful jet of water going directly into your eye and I do not think that this is what the designer was thinking when he developed these gadgets.
I also found something that you single people may find irrelevant, but it is vital if you have little kids. It is a kind of wall mount to hold naughty children. You simple place them there and forget about them for a while. However I was not able to figure out the use of the foldable stretcher inside the restroom and I leave it for your speculation.

When I got to the arrival hall, an airline employee told me that due to the late arrival of the plane, the only possibility to go to the city was to take a free bus to Shinjuku railway station. The ATM machine did not operate after hours, the bank was closed and I did not have a single Japanese yen.
During my one hour ride, I defined my game plan. I saw three possible alternatives:
Take a taxi that would take Amex credit card
Try to find an ATM machine that would accept my cash card and then take a cab
Take a cab to the hotel and change some money at the hotel service desk upon arrival.
Many options, nothing to worry.

However I realized that I had forgotten a basic requirement, a piece of advice that I always give to people traveling to countries that do not use the Roman alphabet. I did not have the name of the hotel written in Japanese characters (neither katagana, nor hiragana, nor kanji). I was supposed to stay at the Meridian Pacific.

When I arrived to the Shinjuku station I saw a long cue of cabs. I went to the first one, I opened the door and I showed my Amex to the driver. He said “hai, hai”. My first problem, payment, was solved.
Then I showed him the hotel name on my itinerary and he shook his head. Then I tried the basic trick to translate foreign words to Japanese. Use the 5 Spanish vowels AEIOU and end the word with a U (pronounced “oo”). So I told him Meridianu Pasifiku. He said Pasiku, Pasiku. I looked close enough to me and I said “hai”. He was not convinced, so he asked me the phone number. I wrote it on a piece of paper, after adapting it to what I thought would be the local form of it. He punched the numbers on the keyboard of his GPS navigator and a 3D building appeared with superimposed characters. Pasiku, Pasiku! He exclaimed. He drove through Ropongi district and shortly after, we arrived at the Meridian Pacific, a.k.a. Pasiku, opposite to Shinagawa station. It was 1 am.

Je parle Québecois

2006-06-04T23:39:00.000-04:00

I spent the long Memorial weekend in Québec, half of the time in Montréal and the other half in Québec city. Many things reminded me of Catalonia. Graffiti with independentist slogans painted on some walls, the notorious absence of the Canadian flag even in some public buildings, the seamless mixture of French and English in most public places (similar to the coexistence of Catalan and Spanish in Catalonia).
My perception is that in Montréal more English is spoken than French. When I arrived, I was so excited because I thought I was going to use my French and show off in front of my wife and kids, but the reality is that I mostly used English, since everyone spoke English better than me. The city is a bit disappointing, not much to see and with a waterfront that requires a serious face-lift. I also found prices extremely expensive, not only because we went there without any type of reservations, I always make last minute decisions that I pay dearly, but my impression is that they kind of rip off the tourists.
Québec city is different. I highly recommend to go and visit it. It is the only city in North America (US or Canada) where the colonizers build beautiful permanent structures. The old buildings and alleys are fantastic. You could be in any historical European city. In addition to the wonderful atmosphere, French is spoken throughout, or at least Québecois, the variety of French spoken there that requires quite some additional effort to understand. But I managed. And people were nice to me.
However I started to realize how Americanized my family and I are getting. We missed some of the conveniences that we have in the States, and we even became upset because we did not find any open pharmacy where to buy diapers at midnight. When we finally crossed the border to Vermont and the immigration office told us some nice and funny words, we felt back home.

Pissing Dutch

2006-05-20T18:14:00.000-04:00

Dutch are well known for their water related civil engineering and their liking for water sports. This combination has also made Dutch become leaders in male urinal innovation (Japanese lead the female related R&D).
Barcelona mayor Clos, in his civic drive, should visit the Netherlands and learn some of the key elements that make civism and human nature compatible. Some of the solutions are simple and, at the same time, ground breaking. As an example I will give the fly engraved in Schiphol airport urinals. Airport statisticians working in the janitor department report that the amount of spilt urine has gone down by 80% what had as a consequence a reduction in force of 20% of the janitor crew and 30% reduction of the cleaning chemicals used to wipe out such a corrosive substance. Between you and me, it is also fun aiming at the little insect.
But this is not all, partying Dutch males who after drinking an undisclosed amount of beers need to give back to nature what they ingested, can make use of the highly sophisticated portable urinals strategically located near bars and other alcohol serving entities, as you can see in the picture. There have been some sightings of females using this facility, although no documented proof has been provided. For the time being, I consider it a pure rumor.
However I would like to warn mayor Clos not to go on a shopping spree and buy this standard equipment from The Netherlands. With my 5 ft 11", I find it sometimes difficult to use the Dutch urinals who have been designed for the Dutch, who are, in general, 4 to 6 inches taller than the Catalans. So, Mayor Clos, please buy a customized version. Otherwise so much pulling and stretching may result in infertility problems which may reduce, even more, the dwindling birthrate in Catalonia.

Out of modesty, I will not comment on the Japanese innovations for female users of the lavatory facilities. Fake waterfall background music to mask physiological noises and remote controlled joysticks to direct the toilet bowl water jet, are things I have no experience with.

Zom una nazió

2006-05-14T20:20:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday I arrived in Barcelona in a surprise visit to my younger sister. It was her birthday and I decided to show up without warning. It took her a few seconds to recognize me, but I made her day. It was worth while flying for 10 hours 5000 miles.
We ate cake, blew the candles and drank an excellent cava, Juvé i Camps.
She treated me for dinner at a “tapas” bar at the Rambla Catalunya called “Ciutat Comtal”. They have excellent “tapas”, but it is a real “guirilandia” in miniature. It was full of foreigners and half guiris like me. “Tapas” are great. I had two plates of Jabugo ham and Andalusian “chocos” (squid) to show my support for the Andalusian national caliphal reality and “Padrón” peppers and Galician “navajas” (razor clams) to show my support for the Galician national Celtic reality and, of course, a heavily boycottable Catalan “cava”.
A few days ago, I had emailed my friends telling them that I would be in BCN for a day and asking them whether they would have some time for lunch. They all replied positively with only one condition. Lunch had to be short, not more than 2 hours (1:30pm to 3:30pm). I arrived a bit late (1:35pm), the place was a bit hard to find. The first one, J, arrived at 2.05pm, the second one, L2, at 2.25pm and the third one, L1, at 2.30pm. We had a good lunch and a good conversation. At 4.30pm, they had to “rush” to work. However, do not get the impression that the did not work his 9 hours or more. For sure they were in the office until 8 or 9pm. Barcelona, what a great place!!!

Once again, I was able to verify personally that all those lies spread by the biased media, (Libertad Digital, some contibutors to Barcelona Reporter, ABC, El Mundo, etc.) have absolutely no foundation. This is my experience of one day as a customer in Barcelona:

Lunch - El Balanci - waitress: Portuguese - I started ordering in Catalan - Waitress replied in Spanish – I switched to Spanish
Dinner – Ciutat Comtal - waiter: Filipino - I started ordering in Catalan - Waiter replied in Spanish – I switched to Spanish
Police Station (for national ID renewal) – policeman: Castilian, probably from Valladolid or Burgos – I asked my question in Catalan – Policeman replied in Spanish – I continued asking in Spanish
Airport security – screener: from South America, probably Peru – She asked me to remove my laptop and belt in Spanish. – I obeyed in Catalan.

As you see, “zom una nazió” .

Catalanity test

2006-05-03T20:25:00.000-04:00

This is a simple Catalanity test.
Watch this video of Pau Casals addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations, the day that his hymn of the United Nations was presented.

If tears come to your eyes and you get goose pimples on your skin, you are a real Catalan
If you get upset, you are a Spanish nationalist who most probably votes for the Popular Party
If you feel nothing, you are not a Spaniard
And if you are a Spaniard and still feels nothing, you'd better brush up your English

Note:
History of the unofficial hymn of the United Nations

One such song, or hymn, was written and performed at the United
Nations on 24 October 1971, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the United Nations, by Maestro Pau Casals of "Catalonia". The words were written by poet W.H. Auden of the United Kingdom.
The two, though they had never met, were brought together in this unusual collaboration by then United Nations Secretary-General U Thant. For centuries, poets and musicians have sung in praise of war and celebrated victories in battles. U Thant was intrigued by the fact that there existed no hymn to peace.
Pau Casals was a personal friend of his, and when approached by U Thant, he readily agreed to write the music. As the Secretary-General explained, the song was to be based on the preamble to the Charter of the United Nations. Although it would not be formally adopted as the official anthem of the United Nations, U Thant hoped it would be performed on appropriate occasions.
While Casals greatly liked the ideas contained in the preamble, there was no way he could put music to such a document. The task to write an appropriate poem, based on the theme of peace and ideals enshrined in the preamble, fell on W.H. Auden, then regarded as the greatest living English poet. When a representative of the Secretary-General approached the poet, he immediately agreed to write the poem. In three days’ time, Auden finished writing A hymn to the UN, which was then set to music by Casals.
On 24 October 1971, the Orchestra of the Festival Casals, with the Maestro himself as conductor, presented the hymn in a première performance at UN headquarters.

A Hymn to the UN
Music: Pau Casals Words: W.H. Auden

Eagerly, musician.
Sweep your string,
So we may sing.
Elated, optative,
Our several voices
Interblending,
Playfully contending,
Not interfering
But co-inhering,
For all within
The cincture
of the sound,
Is holy ground
Where all are brothers,
None faceless Others,
et mortals beware
Of words, for
With words we lie,
Can say peace
When we mean war,
Foul thought speak- fair
And promise falsely,
But song is true:
Let music for peace
Be the paradigm,
For peace means to change At
the right time, as the World-
Clock
Goes Tick- and Tock.
So may the story
Of our human city
Presently move
Like music, when
Begotten notes
New notes beget
Making the flowing
Of time a growing
Till what it could be,
At last it is,
Where even sadness
Is a form of gladness,
Where fate is freedom,
Grace and Surprise

This fact sheet was issued by the Public Inquiries Unit,
Department of Public Information, United Nations.
Tel.: 212-963-4475; Fax: 212-963-0071; E-mail: inquiries@un.org
Website: http://www.un.org/geninfo/faq

Ian Llorens versus the European Union

2006-05-02T21:41:00.000-04:00

A close relative of mine, who also happens to live in Massachusetts, got published the attached letter in the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. He tells me that when you send a letter to La Vanguardia, several things happen: they always give it a haircut, without any reason, even if the letter is relatively short. They love to edit it. The result is very often a little bit awkward, but the truth of the matter is that the try to keep the essence of the message.
The second thing that happens is that they correct your spelling and grammar mistakes, even though Bill Gates takes care of the first ones through his outstanding word spell check (in this case for Catalan). But my relative never learnt Catalan at school, it seems that it was banned when he studied, and from time to time, he makes some grammar mistakes, like making intransitive transitive verbs. He does not feel bad about it, however, because in the Valencian variety of Catalan, the construction would have been correct. There is always a loophole.

This is the English version of the article:
"Second class language
What Aleix Vidal-Quadras did when he voted against the use of Catalan in the European institutions, was to condemn the Catalan speaking community to become second class Europeans. The fact that Gaelic and Maltese, spoken by far less citizens and both of them co-official with English, can be used and not Catalan, discriminates us absolutely.
I would have understood that limits are imposed on languages spoken by less than 25 million people due to cost reasons, but this targeted discrimination is a violation of the rights of Catalans, citizens of the Balearic islands, Valencians, Galicians and Basques. I advise the Catalan government and institutions to file a class action lawsuit."

This is the original modified version in Catalan:

"Llengua de segona

El que va fer Aleix Vidal-Quadras en votar en contra de l´ús del català a les institucions europees és condemnar la comunitat catalanoparlant a esdevenir europeus de segona classe. Que es pugui utilitzar el gaèlic i el maltès, parlats per menys ciutadans i ambdós cooficials amb l´anglès, i no el català, ens discrimina absolutament.

Hauria entès que es posessin límits, per motius de cost, a la utilització de llengües parlades per menys de 25 milions d´habitants, però aquesta discriminació és una violació dels drets dels catalans, balears, valencians, bascos i gallecs. Recomano a la Generalitat i institucions catalanes que endeguin una acció col · lectiva als tribunals."

For those who do not know him, Aleix Vidal-Quadras is one of the vice presidents of the European parliament. He is a Catalan, member of the right wing popular party and he was the swing vote against the resolution to allow us to be able to communicate with the Eurochamber in Catalan. He is a clear example of why Catalans have never won any war in the last 600 years, there was always a "botifler" (traitor) that would sell our interests. Note that out of 14 vice presidents, there are 2 Catalans, that's 15% of the presiding body. I really cannot understand.

When asked, Aleix said that he had voted against due to technical reasons, the complexity of having even more languages in the E.U.

This is my answer to that:

You know my opinion about languages in the EU. Only English should be use by the people who work there (most probably a more legally acceptable compromise would be, however, that the 3 european union languages that are also official in the United Nations, become the three working languages in the EU: English, Spanish and French)
Communication between the citizens and the EU should be in the official language of the citizen. A webportal set up and paid by the regional or national government, should act as intermediary.
What you you cannot do is a targeted ethnic discrimination. If you are Maltese, you can use your small little language, if you are Catalan, you cannot. THIS IS A CIVIL RIGHT VIOLATION. Therefore I encourage all you Catalans to file a complaint to the European Ombudsman following this link.
Finally I would like to add that all these problems will be solved in 15 to 20 years. Today I attended a series of speaches/presentations at the JFK Library in Boston organized by MassMedic. One of the keynote speakers, Ray Kurzweil talked and demonstrated the future of interpretation with the improvement in computation. He predicted that in the next decade, google-kind interpretation algorithms will be built in our cell phones in such a way that when you call a colleague or friend in Germany, you will be speaking English and your counterpart will be hearing the same conversation in German. Both the software and the computation power will be available in any handheld device. I start to wonder why I learnt 9 languages. Looking from this perspective, Mr. Vidal-Quadras becomes irrelevant.

Vendrell: Catalonia's new CEO

2006-04-22T22:08:00.000-04:00

We, Catalans, are masochistic by nature. We not only have lost every single war in the last 600 years (we did pretty well before that time), our national day commemorates a defeat and guess what, it falls on September 11th (do not take it personally, it's been like that for almost 300 years, but it kills me that I cannot even celebrate my national day in the States) , but also we have a broken hand when choosing our politicians.
Our last achievement in the political arena has been the appointment of Xavier Vendrell, the famous alleged CEO (Chief Extorting Officer) as our new Interior Minister ("Conseller de Governació").
As you may remember, Xavier Verndrell allegedly sent letters to all those who had been hired to work in the departments ruled by his party (Esquerra Republicana Bananera de Catalunya) telling them that if they did not contribute part of their salaries to the Party, they would be fired on the spot, and some were indeed fired.
This guy is now responsible to appoint the chief prosecutor that will investigate his alleged crimes. It is believed that he is close to a deal with the former prosecutor in Aruba of the Natalee Halloway case, but he is still open to other options if they are proven to be even more incompetent.
Should I have a Catalan passport (something that I have longed for some times), I would tear it to pieces right now. I love Massachusetts more and more.

Andalusia: national reality

2006-04-19T21:45:00.000-04:00

In the new Andalusian Statute, Andalusia will be defined as a “national reality”. What’s a national reality (“realidad nacional”)?, have I made an error in translation? Did I actually mean a national realty? No, they really mean a national reality, what is a euphemism for nation.
Yes, Andalusia has defined itself as a nation. To be frank, I could not care less how the Andalusian people define themselves. I like people from Andalusia and I like their land, even though I do not share many of their values and priorities in life. But diversity is what makes the Iberian peninsula such a wonderful place.
But the big surprise to me is that there is no uproar in Spain because of this. I would have expected a call by the Spanish hardcore nationalists to boycott the Jabugo ham, the Seville olives or the Andalusian ‘fried fish” (“pescaito frito”) and the proliferation of websites attacking Andalusia for its attempt to create a nation within a nation. But nothing of this has happened. Most of the Spanish right-winged press have criticized it a little bit, but they all have put the blame on Catalonia (!?), as you can read by yourselves in the linked article that appeared, guess where, in ABC newspaper.
As I said, I do not care how the Andalusians call themselves. No matter whether they are a nation, a region, a nationality or an empire, I will continue to consume their products and visit their land, even if sometimes I am called names, because I am a Catalan. I will continue to eat as much Jabugo Ham with cava, whenever I go back home and cry every time that the US customs officer confiscates my 2 pounds of Jubugo ham at the port of entry.
But it is obvious that in Spain there is a triple standard, a virulent reaction against Catalonia, a subdued reaction against the Basque country (most probably out of fear) and tolerance vis a vis the rest of the peoples in the Iberian peninsula. Why? I remember that about 20 years ago I saw a program on Spanish TV where a reporter was asking people in Andalusia what they thought about Catalans in a point of time where the political situation was extremely quiet. Many people responded: “los catalanes son muy suyos”, that literally translated would be “Catalans are very themselves” and in a free translation I would put it as, “Catalans are different”. Food for thought.

Catalan - Spanish equalizer

2006-04-17T20:45:00.000-04:00

My perception about nationality is most probably different from many other people. Objectively my nationality is Spanish. The funny thing is that, according to the Constitution and the body of the Catalan "Estatut", Catalonia is a "nationality". According to the preface, you all know that Catalonia is a nation. However even though Catalonia is a nationality and a nation, this does not make my nationality Catalan. I admit it is messy.
The way I feel my nationality is exclusive and not additive. I do not think that someone can be Spanish and Catalan at the same time. I think someone can feel 50% Spanish and 50% Catalan. In a normal day, I feel 70% Catalan and 30% Spanish. When I read some of the statements made by the thugs of Esquerra Republicana, my Catalanity descends to a mere 50% (that's my minimum, no matter how upset I may be). When I read ABC, EL Mundo, the trancripts of the COPE radiostation or I listen to politicians like Acebes, my Catalanity moves to 90%, leaving a mere 10% for my "Spanish Nationality".
Some Spaniards may get upset about it, but I cannot help it. The Spanish flag and the Spanish national anthem do not resonate with me at all, I feel absolutely nothing. When I see the Spanish flag at Boston national airport (among many other flags there), my eyes go directly to the Catalan flag that appears in the royal logo. But if I see a Catalan flag or I hear the Catalan national anthem ("els segadors"), that makes my flesh creep.
There might be a psychological reason for that. Most probably it is related to the fact that many Catalan babyboomers like me (the Catalan babyboom was in the sixties) unconsciously relate the Spanish symbols to the Franco dictatorship.
For those of you who did not understand anything, because you are not familiar with Catalonia, Spain and our futilities, I would like to provide this comparison as a reference:

Catalonia = Massachusetts = state
Països Catalans (I like to call them Baleària) = New England = A conglomerate of states with common culture and origins
Spain = United States of America = country

The Brigand - El Bandoler

2006-04-02T18:15:00.000-04:00

It is tough to be a Catalan nationalist. You bet. Our biggest enemy is not the conservative Popular Party or the government in Madrid, our biggest enemies are the Catalan politicians. Many of them are dishonest, arrogant, inept, clumsy and with the IQ of an ant (I hope that those ants who read my blog will not be offended).
There is no party in Catalonia who escapes from this pandemic disease. However, there is one that shines above them all, ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya), soon to be known as ERBC (Esquerra Republicana Bananera de Catalunya). They are the worst, like Tom Delay to the 5th power, a bunch of bandits or brigands. As W.H. Hudson would put it, a typical ERC politician is "an ignorant ruffianly gaucho, who... would... fight, steal, and do other naughty things without a qualm".
The latest event that proves their criminal activity is the discovery of the fact that top ERC politicians who have key positions in the Catalan government have been sending letters to all those contract employees who work in the departments they manage asking for compulsory contributions to the Party, otherwise they would lose their jobs. Some of those refusing to pay what I would qualify as "revolutionary tax" (similar to the ones imposed by terrorist organizations to business owners), have been already fired from the Catalan institutions.

What a shame, what a terrible shame. All leaders of ERC should go to prison and spend there 30 years. And they still try to justify it. They say that being financed by party members and supporters makes them independent from the business contributions and this maybe true, but extorting law abiding citizens instead, makes them criminals.

I cannot imagine a Catalonia governed by those crooks. If they ruled the country on their own and you would like to get a governmental job, anything from an administrative assistant to a Secretary of State, you would only need to fulfill three relatively easy pre-requisites: speak Catalan reasonably well, be a ERC party member or supporter and agree to pay the revolutionary tax. All the rest is secondary, your qualifications, your international experience, your expert knowledge, all useless if you do not meet the three basic conditions. I told you, a bunch of bandits. We will get rid of them sooner or later.

I know that some Spanish nationalists will turn this article against Catalonia and the Catalans. I do not care. I just want to influence the politics of my nation, Catalonia, so that they are Sarbanes Oxley (SOX 404) compliant. We will get there, no matter what those who hate Catalonia think or say.

Lluis Llach's song, el bandoler (the brigand) is playing obsessively in my brains. It is a good song and suits this posting very well.

Las Vegas (II)

2006-03-24T22:57:00.000-05:00

When I went to Vegas and I was sitting on the 22nd floor of the MCM Grand hotel, my memories brought me back to my childhood. I remember when, as a child, we went through the dessert-like landscape in Los Monegros, a county in Saragossa (Aragon) that resembles a lot the surrounding areas of Vegas.
I thought that it would be great that Catalonia starts to invest in Los Monegros and creates a "Las Vegas" type of set up with nice hotels, celebrity shows and "bullfight arenas".
You know that I am totally for banning bullfighting in Catalonia as soon as possible for two main reasons: first, it has nothing to do with our culture (we only have it now to satisfy the appetite of misguided tourists), second, because I think Catalans should not support an activity where people get excited watching an animal suffer. For those reasons I am hoping that the Catalan parliament will pass a law forbidding bulfighting in the Catalan territories (I assume this will happen soon after the new Catalan Estatut is approved. Doing it before that happens,would endanger the objective to have the Estatut passed in the Spanish parliament).
In the picture you can see a protest from the anti-bullfighting party (PACMA) staged in front of the seat of the Catalan government and the Barcelona Town Hall. Surprisingly, this is the same location where the Nativity scene was located. Remember that the "caganer" was banned from that display, what I interpret as: "you can pull down your pants, as long as you keep control of your sphincters".

So why would I like to have bullfighting in Los Monegros? I like Aragon and the people there. Setting up something like a "Las Vegas" there would create employment, would develop the area and would add some additional attractions to the vicinity of Catalonia without having to develop the oversaturated space in the Principality. We could have one or two days tours originating in Barcelona to attend a bullfighting show, a David Copperfield magician-like show and gambling for a while in Los Monegros. I would encourage Catalan businessman to invest heavily in Los Monegros, but do it low key. They should avoid the boycott (or boyCATt) prone hotel names as the Maragall Grand or the Carod-Rovira Imperial Palace. Just invest in hotels and give them standard names (I would even consider Melià Sol as provoking), theaters and other touristic attractions, link them with stays in Catalonia and we are all set.
Some of you maybe asking why do I support bullfighting in Los Monegros and not in Catalonia. Frankly speaking, I think that if bullfighting bulls were asked, they would prefer to continue to die in the arena, rather than being forced fed in overcrowded farms and killed slowly but surely hanging from a conveyor hook in a modern slaughterhouse. Therefore I leave it up to the Spaniards what to do with it, I just want it out of Catalonia. If one day, farm bulls and cows are roaming freely on the prairies for a few years and after that driven in stretched limos to the slaughterhouses, where they are killed through lethal injection after being sedated by an anesthesiologist, I may change my mind and campaign for a ban also in the rest of Spain. In the meantime, let's invest in Los Monegros (Saragossa).

I love Virgin

2006-03-15T06:09:00.000-05:00

Do not worry! This continues to be a respectful political blog. Note the capitalization of the noun and the fact that is not plural. I am referring to Virgin Atlantic, the airline that belongs to Richard Branson, the eccentric millionaire.
In general, I never fly Virgin Atlantic because of two reasons, I hardly use its partners and its hub is Heathrow. I have tried to avoid Heathrow for 20 years. The terminals are far apart, you need to take a lousy bus to commute from one to another, security guards are very often rude and especially because I felt very offended by the signs at customs when I was there 20 years ago. One of the signs said “Europe and Gibraltar” and the other said “Spain and rest of Africa” (that’s at least what I recall, maybe in reality, it only said “Spain and Africa”, but who cares, the damage was done).
However, last month when I was in Malta, I was called back for an urgent meeting in Boston, and the only way to make it in time was taking Virgin through Heathrow.
Heathrow has not changed much, it is still a lousy airport and the buses are still there. Security guards are nicer, even one of them noted that it was my birthday (February 22nd) and wished me happy birthday!! (isn’t that nice?) and the signs at customs had been removed and replaced by the more neutral “E.U. countries” and “non E.U. countries”.
But that’s nothing compared to the Virgin Atlantic “upper class” (that’s the way they call it) lounge. It is like a high society club. You sit down and a waiter will come to take your order. He will offer you drinks, the menu and will recite the daily “specials”. While he brings you the food, you can help yourself at the Deli counter where I got some fresh sushi and sashimi after booking an appointment with the hairdresser (you can also have a massage, spa, manicure, etc.). All of this free of charge (in relative terms). Let’s say that this is included in the $4000 that you pay for the one way ticket from Malta to Boston. But the luxury does not end there. In the plane, the “upper class” features real individual flat beds (not the almost flat that you find in other airlines) with pillows, bed sheets and blankets. They give you a supercute black pajamas that almost everyone will wear (you change is the toilet, in case you are interested). In addition to that, a “Spice Girl” looking therapist will offer you her services that range from a head massage to finger acupuncture or even a manicure. At first, I politely refused because I had missed the word complimentary (and you know how stingy Catalans are and I was sure my company would not foot the bill), but when I realized that the Scottish guy lying next to me had accepted, I changed my mind while promising myself to work on my British English listening comprehension. After this experience, Heathrow moved twenty places in my airport ranking, I started to wonder whether I had actually seen the sign “Spain and rest of Africa” and I ordered myself a Virgin Atlantic frequent flyer card.
You must be wondering what these last two postings have to do with Catalonia Politics. I will try a hat trick. One of last points being debated in the Catalan Statute is the ownership of the airports. The Catalan government wants to manage them and the central government does not want to give them up. In this case, I fully support the transfer of the Catalan airports to Catalan jurisdiction. Looking at the current events, if we live them to the central government, Barcelona airport will become a provincial airport with a handful of European flights and no intercontinental direct connection.
If I were the Catalan government, I would fight for control and immediately after, I would partner with a good international airline like KLM, Singapore airlines or Cathay (or even Virgin), I would turn Barcelona airport into one of their European hubs and I would pass to them the management of the airport to convert it into a Schipol, Changi or Hong Kong airports. This would make of Barcelona an even more attractive city for leisure and business that would outshadow our archrival Madrid with Iberia that tops the ranking this year of European carriers that have lost more pieces of luggage.
I am now on my way to Sao Paulo in Brazil with United. No pajamas, no masseuses, no haircuts.

Lufthansa, nie mehr!!!

2006-03-06T20:46:00.000-05:00

Last Friday I had a terrible day at Frankfurt airport. It was snowing and the flight out of Stuttgart got delayed. My flight to Boston was gone when I landed in Frankfurt and that's when the odyssey started.
I proceeded to the gate hoping that the flight to Boston would also be delayed but it was not. The gate was deserted, no one greeting us, no one with our alternative boarding passes ready, nothing, not a single soul in the vicinity of gate A63.
I quickly proceeded to the business lounge to try to get an alternative routing. After waiting for about 20 minutes, the lady at the business lounge told me that they were not trained to carry out these complex changes (complex!?) and that I should go to the transfer desk in the main terminal. I went through security and waited for 20 minutes at the transfer counter until it was my turn. There they told me that they were not authorized to do this change and that I had to go back to the terminal. I had to control myself to keep calm. I went back through security again, unpacked my laptop, took off my belt, shoes, jacket and so on and went through immigration. It was snowing outside, but I was sweating as if I were in the Sahara desert.
I finally reached the transfer desk in terminal A that had no counter for business class passengers. I queued for three hours, till I got to the counter. In the meantime I missed two possible connections, one through Washington DC and the other through Detroit. After three hours of wait time in line, I got a good connection one through London. Only the people at the transfer desk were working, the rest of the employees servicing the gates, were basically idle, because the airport was operating at 20%. I even saw a policeman talking in these terms (in German) to an American tourist who understandably had lost his temper in the situation: "In Germany, we speak German and we do not need to put up with assholes like you" (the American guy did not understand German and I did not translate for the safety of both of us).
When I was already in the runway and about to fly to London, the pilot said that the de-icing equipment for small planes had broken down and that we had to go back to the terminal. I deplaned and ran to the terminal B transfer counter (someone in the plane told me that in terminal B, they had a transfer counter for business class passengers and it was true). There were hundreds of people in the tourist class line (maybe also 3 hours wait), but it only took me about 20 minutes to get to the service person in my line. I told him that I just wanted to get anywhere in the East coast of the USA, I would handle the rest. I got a flight to JFK late in the evening. I landed in New York at 9.30pm. The customs officers were so nice to me, I felt at home, I must have looked tired. My luggage was lost and is still lost. I had to make the lost baggage report. But I was close to home. A nice rental car was waiting for me with navigation equipment. Everyone was nice to me, everyone smiled at me. I felt happy to call USA my home.
I drove for 3 hours and 45 minutes through New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. At 2.30am on Saturday I got home and I had to wake up my wife, because my home keys were in the lost luggage. I went to my room and I saw my 2 little kids sleeping in our bed. It was really worth while so much effort to return home for the weekend.

I am going back to Germany in 3 weeks. I have changed my reservation to KLM. Lufthansa nie mehr!! never again!! or at least until the next airline screws up even worse.

George and I

2006-02-22T19:00:00.000-05:00

Today it’s George Washington’s birth anniversary. Yes, the first president of the United States was born on February 22nd, and so was I (a few decades later). I have browsed through Washington’s life to see whether there was any other common characteristic in our lives, but I cannot find any significant coincidence.
However I still have time to add some more common characteristics in our biographies. As you may have guessed, when I go back to Catalonia, I plan to join politics. My intention is to return when I retire, in about 25 years. I may then become the first president of Catalonia, not an independent Catalonia, I still think that this is not the right way to go in the new Europe, but of a Catalonia that has found its sweet spot in Spain and Europe.
Do not ask me what this sweet spot is, I do not know it yet, but I have 25 years and hundreds of blog postings to figure it out. Maybe a nation within the Spanish nation, maybe a US-type state in a federal Iberia, perhaps part of the extended nation of “Baleària” (my politically correct alternative to “Països Catalans” or Catalan countries) formed basically by Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencia with the following main characteristics:
- Name: Baleària
- Capital: Castelló de la Plana (Valencia)
- Language: co-official Catalan and Spanish
- Flag: equal to the Catalan flag
I am hoping that this compromise would satisfy the majority after reaching a number of trade-offs:
- Name after the Balearic islands, avoiding complex name combinations like Pirineus-Mediterrània (Pyrenees-Mediterranean) or stupid acronyms like Cavaba
- Capital in the old kingdom of Valencia
- The official languages recognize the unity of the Catalan language (Valencian could be used as the unofficial synonym of Catalan, or the variety of Catalan spoken in Valencia as described by the Spanish Language Royal Academy). Spanish would also be official at the same level to warranty the rights of the Spanish speaking and to make sure that Baleària remains competitive in Spain and the Spanish speaking markets
- Flag: the Catalan version of the flag is common to all existing flags.

This could only be possible if politicians like Carod-Rovira and Camps only get a small minority in the parliament and the vast majority vote for people with common sense, like …, I cannot find any name among today’s politicians …., let’s say someone like me.
Baleària would be a part of a federal Spain with only 4 or 5 states, because having 20 states or autonomic regions is hurting the economy now and will hurt it even more in the future due to the unbearable level of overhead and duplications in the public sector that create a non “lean” environment with lots of waste (in the context of a “lean” supply chain that, in my opinion, can be applied successfully to the public sector).

2024

2006-02-14T23:59:00.000-05:00

Today, February 12th 2024, the European Parliament has rejected a proposal by the Spanish representative to the European Council to re-create the Spanish tax collection agency that was eliminated in the year 2014, when the European tax collection agency was founded with the objective to collect all European taxes, except those from Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux, countries that have kept till today their own tax collection entities, claiming historical rights as founding members of the European Union.
Behind the Spanish proposal, we can find the fact that only 75% of the taxes collected in Spain, come back, while countries like Turkey are taking advantage of the solidarity funds due to partisan reasons, since the votes of its 120 million citizens (one forth of the European Union population) are key to keep the EPP (European Popular Party) in charge of the European government.
Due to its current fiscal deficit, Spain has been obliged to restore the inheritance tax, reintroduce tolls at all statewide highways (that had been eliminated in 2002 in the whole country, except for Catalonia) and institute a 20% co-payment for medical assistance, among other measures.
The Spanish representative explained that after the tax redistribution, the per capita income in Spain dropped four places in the European ranking, after being taken over by Portugal, Czech Republic, Hungary and Latvia. These four countries that still enjoy the solidarity funds, have been able to eliminate the inheritance tax, all medical co-payments and have even introduced free dental coverage.
The Spanish proposal has provoked violent reactions, especially in those four countries and Turkey. Since Spain started to publicize its proposal, several organizations in those countries have called for a boycott to Spanish products, especially, Rioja wine, olive oil and, of course, “cava” (Catalan sparkling wine). Sales of those products in Europe have dropped significantly (about 7%), although the selling season has been saved thanks to the marketing efforts in Asia and the USA, as well as, the sale of non labeled wine and olive oil to Italian companies.
At the same time, some groups in Madrid have started a boycott against products labeled in English, which are invading the shelves of the supermarkets, due to lower distribution costs. England has sent an official complaint to the Spanish regional government and has qualified the attitude of the Madrilenian citizens as racist.
Meanwhile the dispute between the Seville archdioceses museum and the Moroccan government continues. The Moroccan government is demanding the return of all religious objects (Christian and Muslim) that came from the Spanish ex-colonies of Ceuta and Melilla. As you will remember, those colonies were returned to Morocco in 2018, as a result of the pressure from the Turkish government to the European conservative party that needed the support of the Turkish parties to overcome a non confidence vote in the European Parliament. The leader of the Spanish conservative party, who initially signaled his disagreement, was called to Brussels for consultations and despite the fact that there were many rumors about his possible resignation, he finally accepted the party line and voted for the return of the two enclaves to Morocco.
The only positive event this year has been the return of the documents stolen from Madrilenian institutions and private owners by the French troops during the War of Independence in 1808, and that were located at the French National Museum in Lyon. The documents left Lyon in the middle of the night and with heavy escort. The mayor of Lyon has filed an injunction against the Spanish regional goverment that has been accepted by the European court.

A close aide to the expresident of the Spanish government at the beginning of the century, José María Aznar, has indicated that the expresident, in view of the situation, exclaimed in privacy and in Catalan: “We should have learnt from the Catalans”.

Ian Llorens
http://www.ianllorens.com/

Note: This article can only be reproduced if the author Ian Llorens and his website (http://www.ianllorens.com/) are mentioned.

2024
El parlamento europeo ha rezachado hoy, 12 de febrero del 2024, una propuesta del representante español en el Consejo de Europa para recrear la agencia tributaria española que fue eliminada en el año 2014, cuando se fundó la agencia tributaria europea, con el objeto de recaudar todos los impuestos europeos con excepcion de los de Alemania, Francia, Italia y el Benelux quienes aduciendo derechos historicos como miembros fundadores, han mantenido hasta hoy en dia sus agencias recaudatorias.
El fondo de la propuesta se basa en el hecho de que solo el 75% de los impuestos recaudados vuelven a España, mientras que paises como Turquía se están beneficiando de los fondos de solidaridad por motivos partidistas, ya que los votos de sus 120 millones de habitantes (una cuarta parte de los habitantes de la Union Europea) son fundamentales para mantener al Partido Popular Europeo en el gobierno de la Unión.
Debido al deficit fiscal, España ha tenido que restablecer el impuesto de sucesiones, los peajes en todas las autopistas del estado (que a excepcion de Cataluña, se habian eliminado en casi todo el pais en el año 2002) e introducir un copago del 20% en la asistencia sanitaria, entre otras medidas.
El representante español argumentó que tras la redistribucion de impuestos, la renta per capita de los españoles perdía 4 lugares en el ranking europeo, viendose sobrepasada por Portugal, Chequia, Hungria y Letonia. Estos cuatro paises que todavía se benefician de los fondos de cohesion, han podido eliminar el impuesto sucesorio, los copagos en la sanidad y han incorporado la cobertura dental gratuita.
La propuesta española suscitó violentas protestas, especialmente en esos cuatro paises y en Turquia. Desde que España hizo publica su propuesta, varias organizaciones de esos paises han hecho llamamientos al boicot de productos españoles, especialmente el vino de Rioja, el aceite de oliva y como no, el cava. El descenso de ventas de esos productos en Europa ha sido notable (un 7%), aunque la campaña se ha salvado gracias al esfuerzo comercial realizado en Asia y en Estados Unidos y a la venta de vino y aceite sin etiquetar a empresas italianas.
En Madrid, a su vez, se ha iniciado un boicot contra los productos etiquetados solo en inglés, que estan invadiendo nuestros supermercados dado los menores costes de distribucion. Inglaterra ha enviado una protesta formal al gobierno regional español por esta actitud de los madrileños calificada por el representate inglés como racista.
Entre tanto la disputa entre el museo diocesano de Sevilla y el gobierno de Rabat continúa. Rabat reclama la devolución de todos los objetos religiosos (cristianos y musulmanes) procedentes de las excolonias españolas de Ceuta y Melilla, que como recordaran fueron devueltas a Marruecos en el año 2018 debido a las presiones de Turquia al gobierno conservador europeo quien necesitaba el soporte de los partidos turcos para superar una moción de censura. El lider del partido conservador español, quien inicialmente mostro su disconformidad, fue llamado a Bruselas y a pesar que se rumoreaba su dimisión, aceptó finalmente la disciplina de partido y voto a favor de la devolución de los enclaves a Marruecos.
La unica nota positiva este año ha sido la devolucion por parte del Archivo Nacional Francés de Lión, de los documentos robados por las tropas francesas a instituciones y particulares madrileños durante la guerra de la independencia de 1808. Los papeles salieron de Lion escoltados y de noche. El alcalde de Lion ha interpuesto una querella contra el gobierno regional español que ha sido aceptada a tramite.
Un colaborador allegado al expresidente del gobierno español de principios de siglo, José María Aznar, ha comentado que el expresidente, a la vista de la situación, habia exclamado en la intimidad y en catalán: “Deberíamos haber hecho caso a los catalanes”.

Ian Llorens
http://www.ianllorens.com/

Nota: Este artículo sólo puede ser reproducido si se menciona al autor Ian Llorens y a su lugar de red (http://www.ianllorens.com/).

The first boycott lasted 300 years!!!

2006-02-09T22:42:00.000-05:00

Last year results show that the boycott against Catalan products has had a negative effect on the sales of, at least, one of our flagship products: "Cava" (Catalan sparkling wine). Sales in Spain dropped by almost 7%, and if you take into consideration that the market grew and that, in some areas, consumption went up, it means that sales in the hardcore boycotting regions (Castilia, Valencia and Murcia) may have gone down by 15% or 20%. Fortunately exports offset this reduction and the top line remained almost flat (slightly up).
Boycotts can have very damaging effects to the economy, especially for those activities that are more hardly hit. I remember the boycott against French products when I was living in Singapore, as a result of their nuclear test at Mururoa atoll. Restaurants around the world boycotted French products. For example, Beaujolais wine was a product that was particularly targeted. DeBoeuf Beaujolais had more than 44,000 cases cancelled. In 1995, tourism to France declined by 8% while Club Med's resorts lost $1 million in profits. At the same time South African, Chilean, Australian and Californian wines, among others, seized a substantial part of shelf space in the wine shops and grocery stores that would not give away after the boycott ended.
However, we Catalans should really learn from this experience not by giving in (we are not dropping bombs, just defending out identity as a people) but by diversifying our markets. Sales to the Spanish market should be below 25% of our output. We are so vulnerable having most of the eggs in the same basket. I also think that Codorniu and Freixenet (the main producers of "cava') should buy those non Catalan cava producers that have a better quality product.
On the other side, this is not the first time that Castilia initiates a boycott against Catalonia. Even before Spain was formed, in 1486, the year in which Columbus reached Spain, the Catalans were expelled from the Casa de Contratacion, the commercial centre of Seville, which in 1504 would get exclusive rights of trading with America.
Before dying in 1504, Isabel added an appendix to her will , stating that Catalans were not only excluded from enjoying the benefits of the great discoveries, but were even forbidden to settle in or trade with the new lands.
My interpretation is that the hatred of Isabel against Catalans was due to their obstinate refusal to embrace the Castlian Inquisition and we paid the price.
It was not until 1778 that this prohibition was cancelled by Charles III who came from Naples, imbued with European ideas.
During almost 300 years, Catalonia fell into the dark ages, while the rest of Europe benefited from the discovery thanks to the Dutch, Portuguese, Genovese and Hanseatic merchants and businessmen who settled in Seville. Most probably this also shaped our spirit as a nation, creating entrepreneurss who had to rely on their own work and not on the wealth coming from the colonies and that's why Catalonia was the only area in the Iberian peninsula that did not miss the boat of the industrial revolution.

To finalize and before I go and buy some Danish pastry (I understand that some countries are calling for a boycott against Danish products), I will add the picture of a poster dated 1932 that many of you must have seen this week in the Catalan press, calling Castilians to boycott Catalan products while the first Catalan "Statute" was being debated, yes, 1932. It is worth while reading.

Note: Some of the historical data has been extracted from Josep Trueta's Spirit of Catalonia, 1946.

Thanks God, the judge understood Catalan!!!

2006-01-28T22:32:00.000-05:00

The judge who was handling the case of Iu Forn, the journalist of the Catalan-language newspaper Avui, who wrote an article called "Manual of a good coupist", has decided to file the case and not to press any charges. The reason given for dismissing the charges is that the article refers to hypothetical military “coupists” (and his mothers) that want to destroy the constitutional and democratic regime that we have today, and it does not refer at all to the current democratic military institution in Spain.

The right wing press manipulated the article to give the impression that Iu Forn was referring to the whole Spanish military when he, in a more or less subtle way, insulted their mothers, when it is clear from the article that he was referring to the mothers of potential participants in a coup d’Etat against the democratic institutions.

That’s why it is so good to have in Catalonia, judges, policemen, teachers and lawyers who understand our language.

Judge by yourself. I have tried my best to make a literal translation of the article. You can find the Catalan original here.

Manual of a good “coupist” - "Manual del bon colpista"
Forward it

(Iu Forn Jan 12th, 2006. Diari Avui)
(Free translation by Ian Llorens)

We suffer a pandemic disease of high ranking military officials (most probably absinthe liquor[1]) who do not like the new Catalan “Estatut” [2] . This is to say that since they are a little angry, they spend their time threatening us by saying that they will take over the streets with their tanks.. Ok, either they take over the streets or they shut up (for ever). And if finally they do what they have historically done, let me give them a small piece of friendly advice:

If they enter Barcelona along Diagonal avenue [3], please park your tanks and get on the tram, that you are in an environmental friendly city.

Once at the Diagonal Avenue, you will see on your right hand side, the “La Caixa” headquarters [4] those who are trying the hostile takeover [5] and want “Espain”[6] to starve to death. It is evident that it is worth while trying to seize it. But, be very careful!!! If you find a tall and blond girl in an office, do not bother her. She could well be the King’s daughter who works there [7].

If while ransacking the city, you decide to take away some documents, you ‘d better wait for the ones on the way back from Salamanca [8] to come back. It you take them away together, you will make better use of the transportation and you will save a few bucks, what’s always good.

Please remember that the new civic ordinance in Barcelona prohibits prostitution in certain cases. For this reason, you’d better come without your mothers. [9]

Important warning: do you know that the Financial Times, the newspaper that last Tuesday said that article 8 of the Spanish Constitution [10] is “not perfect”, also said that the desire to be a nation is a democratic quest and that the attitude of the Popular Party vis-a-vis the general Mena [11] case could be a bigger threat to the unity of “Espain”[6] than the autonomy ambitions of Catalonia? So this newspaper is not Catalan. If you want to bomb it, you need to call the UK yellow pages and ask them for the address.

Oh! Another important thing that I almost forgot. Please do not pay attention to the words of the Spanish Supreme Court chairman. As soon as you arrive, sign up for some flamenco dance lessons, otherwise you may end up learning Catalan [12].

[1] The Catalan word for ranking (“graduació”) is also used to describe the alcohol content of an alcoholic drink
[2] Statue or Constitution
[3] One of Barcelona’s main arteries
[4] The most powerful Catalan savings bank
[5] Gas Natural, a “La Caixa” group company is trying a hostile takeover of Endesa, a Madrid based energy company
[6] Iu Forn uses the word Ej-paña, Castilian dialect for Spain
[7] King Juan Carlos’s daughter, Cristina, works at La Caixa
[8] The central government recently decided to return to Catalonia the documents that were stolen during the civil war and that were stored at Salamanca’s national archive. This has caused outrage in the rest of the nation.
[9] This is the sentence that caused commotion in Spain after having been maliciously translated by the right wing media as being applied to all Spanish military personnel, when it is clearly applied to potential participants in a hypothetical military coup.
[10] This article states that the Spanish military needs to preserve the unity of the Spanish territories
[11] General Mena said that if the Catalan “Estatute” were approved, the military should intervene
[12] The chairman of the Spanish Supreme court said a few weeks ago that learning Catalan language was comparable to learning “Sevillanas” (a variety of flamenco dance)

Politics is fun, ... sometimes

2006-01-21T13:58:00.000-05:00

Apparently, the leader of CiU (Artur Mas) and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero have brokered a deal on the content of the new Catalan Estatut. Even though it is too early to call, it seems that Artur Mas has followed my advice and given priority to the financial aspects of the reform. It appears that we are only a nation in the preface. The text will run more or less like this: "the Catalans are a group of individuals that believe that they are a nation, so let them dream". The validity of the term nation in the preface seems to be very limited. My deep knowledge of Catalan law tells me that it may mean that we are a nation only on those Sundays when Barcelona Soccer club plays at home and on our national day.

It is obvious that Politics is a joke, most of the time. For this reason I will finish with a political joke (free translation from the Spanish original) that L1 sent to me last week (some of you may have seen it also when 'my other me' was fighting an American hawk that insulted the Spaniards, yes, the Spaniards) :

"This is the first day of school at a US high school when the teacher introduces a new student called Akito Suzuki, son of a Japanese business man.
The teacher starts the American history class by asking who pronounced the sentence 'Live free or die'.
Suzuki quickly raises his hands and replies 'Patrick Henry 1775'.
'Excellent' says the teacher and continues 'who said -Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth-'.
The whole class remained silent until suddenly Suzuki said 'Lincoln 1863'.
The teacher was flabbergasted and said to the whole class: 'you all should be ashamed. Akito Suzuki, who just arrived in our country, knows more history than you, Americans'.
Then someone in the rear of the classroom whispered: 'To hell those damn Japanese'.
'Who said that?' The teacher inquired.
Again Suzuki raises his hand and says: 'General McArthur, 1942 and Lee Iacocca, 1982'
The whole class was silent when one of the students said: 'I am going to throw up'.
The teacher asks again this time: 'Who said that?'
Without hesitation, Suzuki says: 'George Bush Sr. to the Japanese prime minister 1990'.
One of the students totally mad shouts at Suzuki: 'Suck my dick'.
Akito intervenes again: 'Bill Clinton to Monica Lewinsky 1997'.
At this point in time, the smartest guy in the class yells: 'I was the first until this bloody Japanese arrived'.
And Suzuki answered: 'Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian elections 1990'.
The whole class became hysterical, the teacher fainted. The students gathered around the teacher and said to one another: 'We screwed up, now how do we get out? '
And Akito Suzuki said: 'Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, 2005/2006'.

Cartoon: Ventura & Coromina. La Vanguardia

Some guidance on Language

2006-01-16T22:27:00.000-05:00

Before I elaborate on why I think that Catalans should start investing in Los Monegros (Saragossa = Zaragoza) and develop a Las Vegas type of environment, I will touch on the language issue for a little while.
I get mad when I read the ABC newspaper. It is strictly an anti-Catalan forum. They only publish articles and letters that denigrate Catalonia and the Catalans, and at a lesser extent, the Basques. It is no secret that this is where they got its name (Anti Basque and Catalan) or maybe I made it up?
However I have to admit that Catalan politicians are clearly misguided. They show daily their provincialism and lack of global approach.
First a couple of facts:

The traditional language in Catalonia is Catalan and it has been Catalan for the last 1000 years. Before that, Latin was the language that the previous invaders, the Romans, imposed on the Iberian peninsula. As far as I know, no one in Catalonia is mad at the Romans or their direct heirs, the Italians.
When Catalonia lost the Succession War in another tragic September 11th, Philip V's decree of new foundation (January 1716) was the start of the penetration of Castilian (=Spanish) in the Catalan territories, especially Barcelona.

But, by now, all this is history and we need to be pragmatic and smart. Spanish started as an imposition, but in the course of the centuries, it has become an asset. That's why Barcelona is the city where, most probably, more books in Spanish are published every year.

So Mr Maragall, Mr Carod-Rovira, Mr Mas and company. Here a piece of advice:

Invest all the additional money you can get as a result of the new "Estatut" in education. Make sure that every single resident in Catalonia is fluent in Catalan, Spanish and ENGLISH. Do it quietly, it will take 15 years to get the next generation up and running, but DO it.
Make sure that all students get at least 40% of their education in either Spanish or Catalan, not a Catalan only education with one hour a week of Spanish.
At the University, all studies should be offered in Catalan and Spanish. Students should make the decision. This way we would be able to attract talent from other parts of the world, what would generate more income to be reinvested in our education system and hopefully some of the students would settle in Catalonia increasing our brain power. I would also suggest some of the curricula be taught in English to increase the cross-fertilization even further
We should recognize that Catalan outside Catalonia, the Balearic islands and Valencia is useless. It is a beautiful language that I love with all my heart, but is certainly useless outside the territories where it is spoken
We should not try to impose it outside those territories. It will cause not only rejection, but it will be detrimental for our economy. Sending invoices or other paperwork in Catalan to non Catalan speaking customers outside the areas I mentioned before is not only disrespectful but also the fastest way to commit economic harakiri. Customer should always be first and if they want the invoices in Swahili, we should provide them
We should not campaign to get Catalan in the European institutions. We should lobby to remove all languages but English from the European institutions as a way to get a lean European public sector. Only English should be spoken there, all master documents should be English, all public servants and bureaucrats should master English, otherwise they should lose their European job (we can give them some transition time to adapt, like a month or two). Who can get a job in a multinational if he or she does not speak English fluently? Translation to local languages should be undertaken by the respective countries and regions. So the Catalan government could run the Catalan EU website with all translations in Catalan, the same as the Spanish government, the French, the Danish or the Maltese (obviously UK and also Ireland should contribute with some cash, otherwise it would be a free ride for them)
In Catalonia, Catalan should be used as a way to promote the economy. Everything should be customer driven. If customers demand Catalan, localization in Catalan should be required. If you come to invest or you are a tourist or visitor, you can speak in whatever language you want or use smoke signals, that we will understand you.

So please, politicians, get me the money, do not squander it (you know, the 3% commissions and things like that), start spending heavily in education and shut up for 2 or 3 or 15 years. Once you deliver, you can open your mouth again.

Las Vegas (I)

2006-01-03T20:22:00.000-05:00

We spent the Christmas holiday in Vegas, ideal location if you are traveling, as I did, with a 7 year old and a 1 year old. Las Vegas is far from Boston, almost 6 hours by plane, more or less like London, but with those little kids, it felt to me like New Zealand.
Despite the tiring trip, we had a great time. Weather was good, temperature around 65F degrees, mostly sunny, great. Our hotel was fantastic, the MGM Grand, and our room had a great view to the northern part of the Strip, we could even see the water show at the Bellagio from our room. Most of the foreign visitors were Chinese, some Europeans and people from South America, but the vast majority was Chinese. I only saw one Spanish couple.
I also saw a guy wearing the Madrid track jacket with the Barcelona soccer club logo on. I tried to take a picture, but the result was not so good. You can hardly see the jacket, but you will recognize it if you click here. I was going to delete the picture, but I thought it may become useful if he decides to go to Spain in his next trip instead of going back to Vegas. The plastic surgeon may need it to reconstruct his face.
We also went to see David Copperfield’s magician show in shifts (someone had to stay back to look after the 1 year old). It was a good show but I was somewhat disappointed. The tricks are OK, but I think I can guess the kind of technology behind and I am afraid that half of the volunteers are part of the show. In addition to it, the guy is so presumptuous. He spends 45 minutes of the show either talking about himself or showing video clips of people who praise him, but we had fun at $97 a pop.
In the wine shops I was not able to find any of the Toledo, Logroño or Murcia cava bottles that seem to be hot in the "rest of Spain" boycotting market. There was plenty of Catalan cava (Freixenet) at $14.99. What a price!!! I buy it at Costco at $6.99 and you can buy it in BCN for less that $4.00, so I decided to celebrate the new year with Bacardí;, the founder of which was born in Sitges (Barcelona) and together with some coke it lasted me for a few days, that's the cocktail we call Cuba Libre (free Cuba = Bacardí-Coke).
Another remarkable thing is that while Freixenet sales have dropped 4% in Spain as a consequence of the boycott, all the advertisement made by Freixenet in USA is Spanish stereotype centric (something that really kills me). If you go to Gloria Ferrer's website (a Freixenet group company), you will see that they advertise the Catalan Festival with Flamenco dancers (put your cursor on the picture and you will be able to read "Catalonian dancers") and a Valencian paella (I do not have a big problem with the paella, but I do not want to debate this time the Països Catalans issue).
I cannot accept that the Spanish government portrays all Spaniards in their promotion campaigns as bullfighters or flamingo dancers, but I find it even more intolerable that a Catalan company bastardizes our culture for one point of market share. Why not using the “calçotada” (grilled spring onions more or less), the “castellers” (human towers) and the “sardana” (Catalan traditional collective dance) instead?. And I have already drunk by myself two cases of Freixenet this Xmas to counter the boycott. My goodness!!!
Changing subject, in part two I will explain why I think we should create a Las Vegas in Los Monegros (Zaragoza).

Bon Nadal - Feliz Navidad - Merry Christmas

2005-12-25T11:06:00.000-05:00

I was born in the sixties, I am a so-called Spanish/Catalan baby-boomer. At that time, in Franco's Spain, we were all born catholic. When I grew up, I did not know anyone who was not a catholic. You needed the baptism certificate for almost everything: to be admitted in a school, to get married, to become a public servant, etc.
I never heard anyone complaining about it. At that time, I thought that this was normal, that other religions belonged to remote locations and that by definition, Spaniards were catholic. My only sign of rebelliousness was my insistence on taking my first Holy Communion in Catalan. Do not ask me why, I cannot recall. I lived in a community with a high degree of immigration from other parts of Spain, Catalan was hardly spoken, there was only one nun in my school (out of 25 or 30) who could speak Catalan, but with 7 years I was determined to make a difference. And I did it, I learnt the whole thing in Catalan and I took my first Holy Communion in an “all Catalan ceremony” (when the dictator was still alive and kicking), dressed like a sailor, together with 5 other kids. The ceremony in Spanish took place the weekend prior with 300 children.
However after having been in Catholic schools for 14 years (4 with nuns and 10 with Salesian priests), I cannot call myself a practicing catholic. I am very critical of the catholic hierarchy, I am upset by the sex scandals where catholic priests played a leading role and were concealed by the Vatican, I am unhappy about the fact that the Spanish bishop conference radio station (COPE) has orchestrated a campaign against Catalonia and the Catalans, about the fact that the Catalan speaking parishes in Aragon (La Franja) were segregated from the Catalan archdiocese of Lleida where they belonged for more that 700 years, that the Pope continues to condemn the use of contraceptives, even the non abortive ones, while thousands of children in the world die because of overpopulation.

However I still believe that I have to preserve some of our traditions, those traditions that were so special to me when I was a kid. So this year we laid down the Nativity display (we call it “Pessebre” or “Belem”) with Joseph, Mary, baby Jesus, the Angel, the cow and the donkey, the three Magic kings and two “caganers” (one boy and one girl) that I had to hide behind the bushes, not because of the new civic ordinance approved by the Barcelona Town Hall, but because my daughter, as a good puritan New Englander, found the figurines distasteful.
The other tradition that I try to keep is Epiphany. That is the day, January 6th, when the kids use to get their presents. I find it much more appealing than the northern European tradition of Santa Claus (Papa Noel) and clearly more educational than the Catalan-only tradition of the “Caga Tió” (shitting log).
I will not spend much time describing the Catalan tradition, it is clear that this basic need is one of our common places, because , as I said, it is a tradition that I do not follow. I will, however, explain why the three Magic Kings (or Wise Men) are much better than Santa Claus:
• First they represent a much more democratic environment. You can choose which King, White, Brown or Black, will bring your presents. My favorite was and still is the Black King.
• Second, it a tradition that promotes diversity. The Magic Kings came from the East, had different origins, different skin colors, brought presents, they were humble and peaceful. A big contrast compared to all white Northern European Santa Claus.
• Finally, they bring the presents on Epiphany day, January 6th. By then, all those kids that received their presents from Santa on December 25th, have wrecked most of their toys.

This time I will refrain from making comments on the Dutch tradition. I like Dutch and I always put the Netherlands as a mirror where Catalonia should look, but in this aspect they went too far. Presents are brought to kids on December 6th (you can imagine the state of the toys by now) by Saint Nicholaes. The terrible part is that the Santa Claus looking Saint Nicholaes is accompanied by a black servant that comes from Spain!!! The servant is called “Zwarte Piet” (Peter the Black) and threatens kids who did not make it to the nice list to be put in a sack and brought to Spain. Now I understand why so many of them make it to the “naughty” list. They want to eat free “tapas”.

Bon Nadal -Feliz Navidad- Merry Christmas

ABC's confusion of languages

2005-12-14T23:14:00.000-05:00

On November 30th, an editorial in the Madrid based conservative newspaper ABC titled “Confusion of languages” put the blame for the reduction of Spanish interpreters in the European Union (from 100 to 67) on the push to get Catalan recognized in the E.U. Since that very day, José Montilla, a minister in the Spanish government, a Catalan born in Andalusia, had used Catalan to address the EU assembly, the editorialists blasted at him, saying that he had chosen a very bad day to speak in Catalan.
In one of my future postings, I will elaborate my proposal on EU language policy that can be summarized by saying that all sessions should be held in English and all master documents should be generated in English. If any MP or speaker does not speak English, he/she should stay home (as I said, more details to follow).
After I read the article, I felt the urge to write a letter to the editor and I did it. As usual, also this time they did not publish it. However I have taken the liberty to include a free translation of my letter herebelow:

Every day is good to speak in Catalan

I take as a personal offense, someone saying that this or that day is not good to speak in Catalan, especially coming from a newspaper with distribution nation wide. Dear Sirs, there is never a bad day to speak in Catalan, nor to speak in any other language. It is downright insolence trying to blame on my modest but rich language (Catalan) for errors made by the Spanish diplomacy that have nothing to do with the defense of our native languages (or did they happen to reduce the number of English interpreters when Gaelic became official in the E.U.? obviously not), but has to do with the weakness of our economy in relationship with the European powers, the substandard education system as compared to our rich neighbors (UK, France, Germany,...) and the inexperience of our present and past politicians in the international arena.
Because the reality is that the central government only dares to take on Catalonia, a pacific and law abiding people with special passion for its language and culture, a passion that should the Spanish speaking have a similar level, the Spanish language would be in a much better position internationally.
When several US states proposed laws to end with bilingual education (basically dropping Spanish), I did not see you attacking the Spanish diplomacy led, at that time, by political parties much closer to your ideology. You did not show either any signs of outrage when Gibraltar got its .gi domain (1), when Spain plays “international” matches with Scotland (2) or when Spain accepted to foot its part of the bill for the Gaelic translation services in the E.U. (Gaelic is spoken by 50 thousand people) as a good E.U. member, when at the same time had to foot the total bill for translations to Catalan, a language that is spoken, as first or second language, by 10 million people.
And the reality is that you, the Spanish Central government only dares to take on Catalonia, and, OK Morocco too, if there are few of them (3), but USA, UK, France and Germany are off limits, they are too strong for Spain.
I hope that you will enjoy your toast with French champagne(4). That gives me hope because it shows how short the memory of the Spanish people is(5). As a person of good moral character, I will toast with cava (Catalan sparking wine) after having had dinner with Rioja and Ribera de Duero red wines and I will finish with an Alicante “turron” (nougat) dessert. Unfortunately I will have to do without Jabugo ham, since the US customs always confiscates it when I declare it upon arrival.

(1) There was a big uproar when the Catalan language/culture got the .cat internet domain
(2) It refers to the total opposition to having Catalan national teams, as for instance, in roller-hockey
(3) This refers to the “heroic” seizure by the Spanish military of the Perejil island, an island the size of a soccer field off the Moroccan coast that was “invaded” by a handful of Moroccan soldiers in 1999. However when hundreds of thousands of Moroccans invaded West Sahara (Green March), the Spanish military, ran away.
(4) It referes to the current boycott to Catalan products, especially "cava" (Catalan sparkling wine)
(5) In the 80s, French farmers use to burn scores of Spanish trucks carrying fruits and vegetables in front of the passivity of the French police.

Here is the Spanish version for whose who want to either practice their Spanish or check on my translation skills:

Todos los días son buenos para hablar en catalán

Tomo como una afrenta personal que alguien diga, sobre todo en un diario de difusión estatal, que tal o cual dia es malo para hablar en catalán. Muy señores míos, ningún día es malo para hablar en catalán, como no lo es para hablar en cualquier otro idioma. Tratar de echarle la culpa a mi modesta pero rica lengua de los fallos de la diplomacia española achacables no a la defensa de las lenguas vernaculas (o acaso redujeron el numero de traductores ingleses cuando dieron entrada al gaélico), sino a la debilidad de nuestra economía frente a las potencias europeas, a nuestro deficiente sistema educativo frente a muchos de nuestros socios ricos, a la inexperiencia en el terreno internacional de nuestros politicos, pasados y presentes, es una auténtica desfachatez.

Porque la realidad es que el gobierno central, solo puede con Cataluña, un pueblo pacífico, que cumple con las leyes y tiene una pasión especial por su lengua y por su cultura, que si los castellano hablantes tuvieran la misma, otro gallo le cantaría al español.

Cuando varios estados de EE.UU. prohibieron la educación en español, no vi yo que se ensañaran ustedes con la diplomacia española dirigida en aquellos momentos por partidos más afines a ustedes, ni cuando Gibraltar logró su dominio de internet .gi, ni cuando España juega partidos "internacionales" contra Escocia, ni mucho menos cuando España aceptó sufragar los gastos de traducción del gaélico (hablado por 50 mil personas) como buen socio comunitario, mientras a su vez aceptaba pagar el 100% de los gastos de traducción del Catalán que es hablado como primera o segunda lengua por 10 millones,

Y es que solo nos atrevemos con Cataluña, y, de acuerdo, con Marruecos también, si no vienen muchos, pero Estados Unidos, Gran Bretaña, Francia, Alemania, esos no, que son muy fuertes.

Les deseo que les siente bien el brindis con champán francés, lo que me da esperanzas porque demuestra lo corta que es la memoria del pueblo español. Yo, como persona como Dios manda, brindaré con cava, después de haber regado la cena con Rioja y Ribera de Duero, para acabar con turrón de Alicante de postre. Muy a mi pesar, tendré que prescindir del Jabugo que siempre me confiscan en aduanas.

Tourist in my own city

2005-12-04T16:08:00.000-05:00

From Germany I flew to Barcelona to spend a long weekend. Every now and then, I feel the uncontrollable desire to go back to my beloved and heavily criticized city, and the €45.00 two hour flight from Stuttgart was too enticing to reject.
It’s been a long weekend here, they call it an aqueduct, because both Tuesday and Thursday were a holiday (the day of the Spanish Constitution and the day of the Immaculate Conception). So many people take the week off.
My arrival was impeccable, they have either fired the operations manager at the airport as I requested last time, or the guy went for some training to Schiphol or Changi (the airport, not the prison) and learnt something. My flight was on the monitors and the right conveyor belt was mentioned and, you are not going to believe it, my luggage was already standing there, someone had already removed it from the belt. Luck or improvements? I hope for the latter.
On Friday night I met my old friend Jordi, the creative director of a BCN based on-line fashion magazine called dRESSLAb. It was refreshing to talk to someone who was neither an engineer, nor a financial controller and in my own mother tongue.
We went for dinner to a restaurant I had never been in, it’s run by two young Basque entrepreneurs and serves what I would describe as Mediterranean “nouvelle cuisine” with an excellent presentation. The restaurant is called Freud b’ART and it is very close to the BCN Town Hall. That’s what we ate (unedited copy directly from their English menu):
o Bites of shrimps over black pepper pears and “ajoblanco” soup of coconut with duck ham oil.
o Sautéed scallops with mushroom vinaigrette and caramelized almonds
o Codfish loin candied at low temperatures with juice of red fruits and sweet pepper to the vanilla
o Black chocolate creamy cake in a soup of white chocolate and Brazil nut powder

We had a nice conversation about the new Catalan Estatut seen from inside and outside Catalonia only interrupted a dozen of times by his palindromic Polish girlfriend who sent constantly incomprehensible SMS messages.

Then we went to visit the controversial “caganer”-less Nativity display in front of the building of the Catalan government. It is a sterilized sort of environment and I have to agree that the “caganer” does not fit there at all, there is nowhere to hide.
After that we went to have a drink (or maybe two) at an area called Born (used to be BCN central food market). It has not changed much since I was a regular 20 years ago, it looked to me safer than before (although I always carry the wallet in the front pocket) and with many more fashion shops. We continued our nice conversation with Scotch at a bar called Mudanzas while the SMS messages continued to come.
And all these stories about people not willing to speak Spanish, nothing I came across, maybe just the opposite. I went to the central government representative office (“Delegación del Gobierno”) and absolutely no one spoke Catalan, so if you have to deal with any immigration issue, your Spanish is more than enough, none of the waiters that attended us were either Catalan or spoke a word of Catalan, and when I got close to a couple of Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police that has just been deployed in Barcelona, they were speaking in Spanish!!!, in front of the Catalan government building. Everything is fine to me, I am glad that everyone talks in the language that he or she wants, but please stop telling false “hear-say” stories about Catalan language being forced onto visitors, because they have nothing to do with reality. And did I write a complaint because no one would reply me in my mother tongue? No, I switched to Spanish and continued with my speech, something I have always done and will always do. That’s why I learnt 9 languages.

Holy shit! From the “caganer” to the Rockettes.

2005-11-20T20:44:00.000-05:00

It was in the news last week that the Barcelona mayor has banned the traditional character in the Catalan Nativity display, called the “caganer” (shitting man, excuse my Catalan). This year’s display was designed by an Argentinean art student, that in principle did not contain the famous character, because she was not aware of it (it seems that it is not famous in Argentina, things happen). After being reminded of her omission, she tried to put it in, but she was not allowed to do so by the Town council. Apparently, this is a side-effect of the new civic rules that have been put in place by mayor Clos that prohibit urinating and obviously defecating on the streets (although vomiting is allowed, due to its uncontrollable nature).
Even though I agree with most of the new civic rules that have been put in place, I am afraid that killing a traditional symbol that has been part of our Nativity displays for hundreds of years, is going too far. The character tries to symbolize that among so many divine and royal figures (Jesus, Holy Spirit, the angels, the three Magic Kings, etc.), we, the average humans, still exist and have to fulfill our basic needs. A little bit gross, I admit, but that’s way the “caganer” character is always placed in a very discrete location in the display, very often behind a bush. If you are looking for this piece of Catalan art tradition, I recommend you visit http://www.caganer.com/ where you can find some gift ideas with traditional and also less traditional “caganers”.
Talking about Christmas traditions, last week I went to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular show in New York City. They use a different, similarly effective and clearly more classy way to bring you down to Earth. The method is called the Rockettes. These girls are hot (I know I am not supposed to use those terms in a political blog, but I am sorry they are hot). Their methodology is linked, however, to a different type of basic instinct in humans that I will refrain from elaborating.
Moving back to the serious political speech, I need to say that from the point of view of non-discrimination, the “caganer” is my choice. It depicts an average person, neither old not young, neither handsome nor ugly, discretely doing his unavoidable business, whereas the Rockettes exhibit miles of naked legs, mostly white (except for 4 black and two Asian legs, 2 and 1 girls respectively for those who have problems with maths) and they draw completely the attention away from the central religious message.

Sports and Politics 0-3

2005-11-20T10:11:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, we should not mix sports and politics, but this time I will make an exception. Personally I do not like soccer (football for the Europeans), but after a month of anti-Catalan rhetoric by the Castilian nationalists, I had to tune Catalunya Radio on the web to listen to the big match, Real Madrid against Barcelona, that took place in Madrid on Saturday.
The match took me back to my childhood, the last years of the Franco dictatorship, where those matches were real political statements. The expression, "Barcelona is more than a soccer club", was cast long ago, but it appeared to me to have regained this year its original meaning.
And we won 0-3, and we not only won, but we also played well and even part of the Real Madrid fans applauded Ronaldinho's last goal. Does this mean that the approval of "l'Estatut" is not a dream, that one day the Spanish Parliament will celebrate the approval of the new Catalan Constitution in a standing ovation? I doubt it, but who knows.
I had to do something to celebrate the victory, so I took out a bottle of "cava" from the fridge (excellent quality at only $6.99 at Costco), I asked my daughter to come, I poured "cava" in my glass, Sprite in hers and I explained to her that we had to toast because Barça had won a very important match and then she asked me what Barça was. I could have gone to tell her stories about our glorious history and how Barça was the symbol of that. I could have also told her that it is the expression of the global spirit of the Catalan people, with only 4 Catalans playing in the main team and a Brazilian and a Cameroonian being the stars, but I thought that I would use an alternative form that would make my life easier: 'Barça, I explained to her, is daddy's Red Sox'. She showed me her beautiful Sino-Catalan smile and said to me "gan bei" (bottoms up in Mandarin).
For years, Catalonia has tried to get international recognition in the sports arena., especially for those sports where Catalonia is strong, like roller-hockey. After being admitted to the roller-hockey world federation last year and winning the only international tournament where it participated, Catalonia was kicked out after heavy lobbying by the Spanish federation. Our only success so far, has been the admission of Catalonia as a national team by the Korfball Federation. What's korfball? How do you dare to ask what Korfball is, after their bold decision?. Korfball is a sport, the federation of which believes that Catalonia is a nation and I think they use a ball.

TALK TO ME IN "CHRISTIAN", THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMPIRE

2005-11-11T18:44:00.000-05:00

It is difficult for me to understand why people are so concerned about languages. I grew up bilingual (Catalan and Spanish), then I learned English, French and many more. I always used the language to communicate and I tried to adapt to the person that I was talking too. In our home in Massachusetts (a real Babel tower), we use 5 languages on regular basis (Catalan, Spanish, Mandarin, Suzhouese and, of course, English). We all understand, more or less, what the other one is talking about, and if not, we go back to our safe haven, English. The only one who seems to rebel at the situation is my 13 month old. He seems to think that everyone in the world (at least his little world) has a different language, that’s why he, so far and I hope not for long, sticks to the universal gugu, gaga.
Sometimes it is difficult for the mainly monolingual Anglo-Saxon world to understand how embedded languages are in our psychology. I find it extremely difficult to speak to someone in a language that is different to the one we used when we first met and when I have to do it, because I do not want to offend other people that may not understand our common language, I feel extremely uneasy. As an example, we are a group of four friends that know each other since childhood, all Catalan, all fully bilingual (Catalan and Spanish). I met one of them speaking Spanish (J) and the other two speaking in Catalan (L1 and L2). When we meet, we switch language depending on whom we are looking at. If I look at J, I will speak in Spanish and as soon as I turn my face to L1 or L2, I will switch to Catalan and the other way around (switch, not mix). It may look stupid, but it is a reality, it shows you how both languages co-exist in Catalonia, how embedded are both in our daily life and how natural it is for us to live in this dual environment.
All those catastrophists that say you have to be careful when speaking Spanish in Barcelona, that people will not answer you if you address them in Spanish, are simply lying, it is a big fat lie. In your first encounter, people will talk to you in the language that comes natural for them and I am assuming that you do not walk around in Catalonia with a Spanish flag tattooed on you forehead to indicate that this is your language of choice. If you politely indicate that you do not understand Catalan, people will switch to Spanish or English (if they know it). I say politely, because if you raise the voice and say, DO NOT TALK TO ME IN POLISH (that’s how Castilian people refer to Catalan), TALK TO ME IN CHRISTIAN (that’s how Castilian people sometimes refer to Spanish), THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMPIRE (i.e. the lost colonial Spanish empire), you may get somewhat less cooperation.
Next month I will go back to Barcelona for a weekend. I will let you know whether things have changed or not, and whether I get arrested for talking to J in Spanish.

TARGET solves the "Estatut" issue

2005-11-05T17:48:00.000-05:00

This week I have e-followed the debate on the Catalan Constitution (l'Estatut, English version) through all webpapers. I have read all kind of commentaries, from the right and the left, from Catalan nationalists and Spanish patriots, from Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Galicia, Andalusia and the Basque country. I have also read the speeches of almost every speaker. My conclusion is that the story will continue for years to come.
In my opinion the best speech came surprisingly from Josep Lluis Carod-Rovira. I do not like him as politician, I think that his statements have damaged Catalonia and the Catalan cause, but this time he was superb. He was even witty when he replied to the Popular Party leader in Galician language "the more you attack me, the more votes I get". Mariano Rajoy, the current conservative party leader is from Galicia although his wife has always insisted to deliver their kids in Barcelona, a matter of trust, I guess.
Unfortunately none of the sides listens to what the other has to say. Both have valid arguments, but no one wants to give in.
However, last week when I was shopping at the US retailer Target, a track jacket caught my eye. Immediately I realized that they had discovered the perfect answer to the problems we are currently facing in Catalonia and Spain. They have created a track jacket with Madrid in big letters and the Barcelona soccer club logo right next to it (imagine a track jacket with New York in big letters and the Boston Red Sox logo next to it in a moment in which New England would be debating the secession from the Union).
I think that the jacket can be safely worn in USA, but I would not recommend any of you (unless you are a masochist) that you wear it in Spain. I was planning to give it as a present to one of my friends from Madrid who lives now in Kenya (although since I started this blog, I do not know whether he still calls me friend or not), because I thought it would be pretty safe to wear it in the Kenyan jungle, but you never know.

Nation or financing, LET'S TAKE THE CASH

2005-10-26T08:04:00.000-04:00

I am in Hamburg (Germany), Hansestadt Hamburg to be precise (that's why the car plates have a double HH, I love double letters), at the airport lounge wirelessly connected to my blog while drinking schnapps. I am in a federal country, something that in Spain seems to be a heretic concept. I am sure that some of you have seen this beatiful palace in an upscale neighborhood in Brussels with the sign, free state of Bavaria embassy to the European Union. What an insolent behaviour? If the Spanish Popular Party ruled Germany, this would have never happened. Only Bonn has the right to have international representation, or it is Berlin now? Things can even change in the old Europe. They will even have a new chancellor that comes from Eastern Europe and is a female!. The concept of having a Catalan president in Spain is totally unthinkable independently of gender, any party who would nominate a Catalan candidate for the Spanish presidency would commit political harakiri, we saw that already.

That brings me back to the Catalan Constitution (L'Estatut) and which aspects need to be preserved in the final negotiation. The way is going to be long, and we need to make sure that we advance in the right direction with detemination and resolve, with common sense and avoiding confrontation and rupture. There are two main concepts in the Estatut that are controversial, the notion that Catalonia is a nation and the control of our finances and taxation, one is emotional, the other one is practical. My advise is to be pragmatic. Let's give up the first one and focus on the second. We all know we are a nation, even the Castilians know we are a nation even though they do not want to admit it in the open, so let's not spend our efforts in the evident. Let's take the cash, let's make sure we can control our finances, that we can fund all our development plans, that we can invest on education, infrastucture and R&D, let's not forget that "pesseta", the old currency is Spain, is a Catalan word. Let's agree on less controversial denominations as a "national entity", but let's not give away control on a single euro cent.

“boyCATt” me

2005-10-19T21:37:00.000-04:00

As a result of the approval of the new Catalan constitution (L’Estatut) by the Catalan Parliament, many in Spain have called for a boycott to Catalan companies and products. This is not the first time, by the way.
In order to facilitate the work of those individuals who want to boycott Catalonia, a good Catalan Samaritan has created a website called “boiCATeja’m” (“boyCATt” me) that provides good reasons to boycott Catalonia, as for example:

One I said a few bad words about Spain
I have a basque friend
Once I celebrated the defeat of the Spanish national soccer team
At home we speak Catalan, just to annoy Spaniards
I read the Catalan constitution and I think it is not that bad
In addition to Catalan, I am gay/lesbian
My parents gave me a very Catalan name (Jordi/Montserrat)
I would not mind if we would give away the north Africa enclaves (Ceuta/Melilla) to Morocco
Etc.

I like the site because it radiates good humor. Almost 4000 people have already signed up and provided a wide variety of reasons to boycott us.
The creator of the website is Emili Junsalba who works in a textile company in Barcelona. He created the site after receiving a letter from a Castilian customer who informed them that that they would no longer buy carpets from them, because they had read in the papers that Catalonia did not want to remain as part of Spain and they refused to learn Catalan (a sheer misinterpretation of the facts, but anyway).

It is going to take a long time to get where we want be as a nation. We need to be relentless, but, at the same time, face the daunting job with good humor and without a revengeful attitude. We can make it, yes we can.

I am a “blocaire”

2005-10-11T22:26:00.000-04:00

I was thinking of writing something about the draft of the new Catalan constitution (L’Estatut) that was approved in the Catalan Parliament last week and has been submitted to the Spanish parliament for “rejection”. I say rejection because the Spanish nationalists have already started a campaign against not only against the new Catalan Constitution but also calling for a boycott against Catalan products as a reprisal (there is several websites giving the name of Catalan companies and asking people to boycott them).
The document is a beautiful piece of legislation, very progressive, with the highest levels of human right protection. There are, however, two areas that the Spanish nationalists cannot swallow (especially those of the right wing Popular Party). The first one is that the document describes Catalonia as a nation, the second is that the task of raising all taxes is given to the Catalan government that will hand over to the Spanish government an amount to be agreed upon (now everything goes to the big pot in Madrid and Catalonia gets whatever the Spanish government wants).
That’s why, to my despair, I am convinced that the Catalan Constitution will never be approved. Last time we tried something similar, in the thirties, there was a military “coup” that lasted 40 years. I hope this time we can handle it better, but anyway we need the funds to become a leading nation. My benchmark is The Netherlands and that’s a tough goal if you cannot manage your finances.
However today I do not want to talk about the draft constitution (L’Estatut), I want to share with you that the organism that regulates the new terms that can be used in Catalan language (Termcat) has accepted two new terms: “bloc” (for blog) and “blocaire” (for blogger) that substitute the previously accepted forms that would translate as “personal interactive diary”. I have to congratulate Termcat for its flexibility to adopt new words. That makes Catalan a language that is much more dynamic than Spanish, where it is very difficult to get neologisms accepted and sometimes they sound so ridiculous that no one uses them, like “cajeta” for cassette/tape or güisqui for whisky.
So yes guys, I am a “blocaire” and you are reading my “bloc”.

www.queenofnamibia.cat

2005-10-04T21:32:00.000-04:00

Who cares about borders, fences, walls, border patrols, barb wire and all that stuff. We live in a cyber world. Her Excellency the Queen of Namibia was trying to justify the inexistence of the Catalan nation based on the fact that she did not find solid lines in the map around the Catalan territory. What an old-fashioned mentality! I can scientifically prove that Catalonia is a nation using "inference" as a reasoning tool.
In a world dominated by routers, search engines, email, websites and bloggers, the concept of nation can be proven if those companies dominating the cyberspace devote the necessary attention to Catalonia, Catalan people and the Catalan language. Let's start with Google (I assume some of you will find this the most powerful argument, because of its co-founder Sergey Brin). All Google applications are available in Catalan, the search engine googlecat and gmail. Microsoft has a very effective spell check in Catalan that allows me to write in Catalan virtually spelling mistake free, even though it was forbidden to teach Catalan at school when I was a kid. Finally the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) approved in September the .cat domain to be used by everyone related to the Catalan language and Catalan culture. Even though I do not agree with Chomsky's definition of language, I think it is 100% applicable to nations: "a nation is a group of people that think they are a nation, especially if they have a web domain". Therefore it is scientifically proven that we are a nation, at least a virtual nation, and that's all that matters.

As you can imagine, some Spanish nationalists are outraged by the concession of the internet domain to the Catalan people, what they qualify it as secession, a virtual secession, even though the .cat domain is not ISO compliant (.ct would be the ISO-correct domain for a Catalan nation). However they kept the mouth shut when Gibraltar got its domain (.gi) what, in my opinion, goes against the Utrech treaty. Other remarkable domains are .hk (Hong Kong), .tw (Taiwan) and especially .tk (Tokelau), all of them with a two letter national denomination. Food for thought.

Singapore, Barcelona and wallets in the front pocket

2005-09-25T08:02:00.000-04:00

It was good to be back to Singapore . I lived there from 1992 to 1995. I love the city. I love the people. I love the food.
I did not see much of the city this time. I was in meetings from early in the morning to late in the evening, but at least, I was able to go to Newton Circus on Sunday night to eat one of my favorite dishes, sting ray with lots and lots of chili and one big Tiger beer (actually, two). On Friday night my Singaporean friends brought me to a new place, Fullerton One, to a seafood restaurant next to the relocated Merlion. We had delicious food, pepper crab, steamed fish, drunken prawns, baby kailan and a yam based dessert.
I really like Singapore as long as I do not read The Strait Times or watch the local TV news. I am sure that you can learn much more about Singapore from Orange Raindrops. By the way, I was told that now you can finally buy chewing gum in Singapore with a doctor's prescription (!?).

One of the characteristics of Singapore is how safe it is. You can walk around almost everywhere in the island without fear of being robbed or assaulted. I wish Barcelona were the same thing, but it is not. I still remember when I moved to USA in 1999 and called the VISA hotline. I noticed a familiar accent in the service staff that answered my call. He was Chinese and we switched the conversation to Mandarin. He asked me where I was from and I told him from Barcelona (I would never say from Spain). He was shocked. He said, "I am sorry for you". I argued, "why sorry, it's a great city!". "No", he said, "many of the calls I receive every day to report stolen Visa cards come from Barcelona. So many people get robbed there, it must be a terrible place".
It is obvious that it is more difficult to prevent crime in Barcelona than in a tightly controlled island as Singapore, but I am convinced that much more can be done by city officials and the Catalan government to dramatically reduce crime levels. If pickpockets are released, while victims are still filing the police report, we will not go anywhere. The Catalan government needs to address two of the main sources of crime, uncontrolled immigration and drug addiction and at the same time, provide the tools to police and judges to address the unacceptable level of crime on the streets of Barcelona. We get about ten million visitors every year. We want to make sure that they have an enjoyable experience, that they have fun, learn a bit about our culture, dine and party, participate in our traditions, shop and spend money. I feel bad when I realize that some of them just remember the four hours they spent at the police station trying to file a report and the 2 hours on the phone, canceling their credit cards.
However, before the Catalan government finally steps in, I still encourage you to visit our wonderful city, just make sure that you have the wallet in the front pocket and your camera always under control.

Bullfighting, souvenirs and "guiris"

2005-09-12T20:34:00.000-04:00

There are two things that I would like to see banned in Barcelona and Catalonia at large. One of them is bullfighting, the other one is Mexican hats sold at souvenir shops.
Before I elaborate on the reasons behind those draconian measures, let me say a few words about the word “guiri” that has created some controversy. In my opinion, the word “guiri” is only mildly offensive and in many cases, it pretends to be funny. The origins of the word, are pretty old (early 19th century) and it described the members of the “Carlist” party and it became also a synonym of the word “liberal”. It was also used to describe certain members of the Civil Guard (“Guardia Civil”) that most probably led to the term “guripa”, still used today. There are many theories about the origin of the word “guiri” applied to the Anglo and North Europeans, whose only interest in Spain was the sun, the beach and the cheap alcohol but had no interest at all in the country they were visiting. It clearly originates in the early 60s, when Spain started to open up to tourism. The Spanish society at that time was totally unprepared to deal with this influx of tourists who did not speak the language (hardly any Spaniard spoke English at that time either), behaved in a strange way, were noisy and got drunk all the time, became red as lobsters and had no interest at all in the country they were visiting or its people. They had to create a word to describe them, and this word was “guiri” as I said, not a terribly offensive word.
Going back to the main discussion point, in Catalonia, bullfighting and certain souvenirs like Mexican hats are offered just for the consumption of misguided or misinformed tourists. Bullfighting has never been popular in Catalonia and the vast majority of Catalans is against it, so let’s devote the arenas to other activities like concerts, displays of local culture (human towers, “sardanas”, the national dance, ...), circus, etc. If someone wants to see bullfighting, he/she can go to Madrid or Sevilla and mingle with the locals who appreciate this tradition. Let me be clear, I am not proposing a bullfighting ban in the rest of Spain, only in Catalonia. Those who voice animal rights concerns should devote their time to other issues first like animal testing. If asked, 100% of the bulls would prefer to die in a bullfighting rink, 20 minutes of suffering after having enjoyed 5 years in the wild with plenty of food and cows, rather than being forcedly fed with “contra-natura” food in overcrowded farms and later being hanged alive from a moving conveyor, electrocuted and skinned while still kicking.
The issue with the Mexican hats is obvious, what do Mexican hats have to do with Barcelona or Catalonia? I take it as a personal offence, a lack of tact, a total disregard of our culture and our feelings. But those who buy them are not responsible for this cultural disgrace, they are simply ignorant, those who sell them are to blame. That is why the Catalan government should ban their sale in souvenir shops (they could be sold in Mexican or ethnic shops, I have absolutely nothing against Mexico, in fact I worked there for a few years and have excellent Mexican friends).
What would New Yorkers think about a group of tourists visiting the Big Apple dressed in full cow-boy attire and franticly looking for the nearest rodeo show, because they want to enjoy some "local" entertainment? Anyway, be careful, I hear that it starts to be popular in DC.

Cartography in Namibia

2005-09-09T06:44:00.000-04:00

Cartography is a very dynamic science. Just compare the map of Europe from 30 years ago and the current one. Dozens of new countries with its small little borders have appeared. Is the Queen of Namibia implying that the inhabitants of those little countries (Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Rep., Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Slovakia, Slovenia, etc) deserve more respect than Catalans, that their languages deserve more recognition than Catalan, because they have little borders around them? That’s obviously ridiculous and does not stand any analysis, but the very fact that some people think this way and even try to promote it from the outside (and from the inside), may lead us to a Europe of micro-states, unable to compete with the almighty USA.

OK, OK, Barcelona sucks a little bit

2005-08-30T01:48:00.000-04:00

The original intention for creating this blog was to try to drive fundamental changes in my country Catalonia with the objective that it becomes a leading country in trade, education, technology, communications and social fairness. I have some ideas about how to do it and I wanted to steer Catalonia’s future from my blog. I was hoping that the politicians that rule our country, to be frank a bunch of useless individuals, would take note and start the required reforms.
After reading Ale’s insidious remarks about my city, I decided to start my blog with a different objective, fight back!.
I think that, by now, I have already put the record straight, everyone believes now that Barcelona is still on the biting edge of fashion, architecture, food, style, music and good times.
I do not think that anyone can take seriously the comments of an American woman who expects everyone to wave and smile at her when she goes for a stroll in Barcelona, dressed with a crop top, low cut jeans, pierced belly button, a tattoo on her lower back partially hidden by a purposely misplaced thong and a one meter radius (40 inches, someone asked for translations) Mexican hat (that’s precisely what Ale would describe as orthodox Vogue style).

Going back to my original intent requires some criticism to my city and my country to Ale’s delight.
So yes, Barcelona sucks a little bit. Its airport gets on my nerves. Whenever I arrive, I have to wait for my baggage for half an hour, it always appears in the wrong conveyor and many times the monitors do not even show the right flight. If you ask someone with uniform, they will always tell you that they work for another airline. They should simply fire the operations manager. At the airport, newcomers get the first impression of the country and I have to tell you, the impression is NOT good.
In coming weeks, I will highlight other areas of opportunity, but one thing is clear, I still love my city Barcelona and my country Catalonia. And after all I think Ale has good intention, maybe they lost her baggage at the airport and that biased her during the whole stay.

Those who say that Barcelona sucks suck

2005-08-26T18:13:00.000-04:00

This was my reply to SemprePrimavera's posting titled "Barcelona STILL sucks!!!":

I am from Barcelona and live in New England. I am just back from Barcelona and I have to tell you that it is still a great city. I have been gone from Barcelona for 13 years, and the only thing that shocks me when I go back is how few native people are left in the city. I did not meet any waiter or waitress who were either Catalan or Spanish.

If you were looking for "fiesta" the Andalusian way, you went to the wrong location. Barcelona is Catalonia. Flamingo and bullfighting are staged only for "guiris" like you, but have nothing to do with our culture. If what you are looking for is the southern warmth, go back to Sevilla, or go to Cadiz, Malaga or Huelva. Great people, great climate, great food. As a Catalan, I recommend to everyone to visit Andalusia, as well as many other regions in Spain.

Regarding your taxi driver from Sevilla, most propably he did not tell you that his kids feel 100% Catalan, that they support Barcelona soccer club and vote for CiU (the Catalan nacionalistic party) and that he loves to go back to Sevilla every year for a few weeks, but after that, he is looking forward to going back to the organized life in Catalonia.

Finally, being from New York, how do you dare give lessons of friendliness? Next time go to Antarctica. Penguins are really nice and really southern.

Global, not provincial

2005-08-18T22:54:00.000-04:00

I am a Catalan married with a Chinese lady with American kids, living now in the States after having lived and worked in 3 other continents. Wherever I went, I learned the local tongue, including Malay/Indonesian, Mandarin and as much as I could Suzhouese. I also speak at different levels 7 European languages.And I can tell you, Catalans are not the problem. We have the democratic right to wish we were independent, we have the right to speak our language and expect that people who want to join our community learn it. We have the right to proclaim that we are not Hispanic (that's theoretically my "race" in the USA), since we did not participate in the colonization of America (I remind you that Catalans, Valencians and residents of the Balearic islands were not allowed to go to America freely until the 18th century) and we do not speak Spanish as mother tongue. We are respectful and I agree we should do much more to promote English as a third language in Catalonia, while keeping a very high standard in both Catalan and Spanish. We should be very pragmatic and have multilingual offerings in our Universities that attract top students and make use of the language to promote our economy. My formula is very simple, if you come to sell things to Catalonia, make sure that you are able to communicate your message in our language, if you come to buy or invest, you can speak swahili that we will manage.

My blog creation

2005-07-25T22:04:00.000-04:00

I have been reading some nasty stuff about my home town, Barcelona. I am creating this blog to put the record straight (or at least try) and give you my opinion about politics and supply chain. What's the relationship between those two? Don't know yet, but we'll see.