There have been a few unfounded and ignorant comments, demonstrating total ignorance of the American and world economies, saying the United States spends so much money going around starting wars and killing people and generally not minding its own business the way we used to before World War I, that we don't have any money left over to keep our bridges from falling down.
They're wrong.
If you do something easy like google "US budget 2006" and then look at the very first link provided, which is the White House's Office of Management and Budget's official budget report, you get this:
United States GDP 2006 $13.865 trillion
Of that:
Corporate pretax profits $1.324 trillion
Wages and salaries $6.109 trillion
Other income (presumably rent, interest, capital gains, etc.) $2.722 trillion
Federal government receipts 2006 $2.273 trillion
Outlays $2.613 trillion
Deficit -$341 trillion
Outlays by function 2006
Defense $513.9 billion
International affairs $38.9 billion
Science, space, and technology $24.0 billion
Energy $1.3 billion
Natural resources and environment $30.9 billion
Agriculture $28.6 billion
Commerce and housing credits $7.7 billion
Transportation $70.8 billion
Community and regional development $20.3 billion
Education, training, employment, and social services $89.0 billion
Health $268.0 billion
Medicare (health care for the retired) $351.3 billion
Income security (welfare) $358.8 billion
Social Security (pensions for the retired) $550.0 billion
Veterans' benefits and services $68.9 billion
Administration of justice $43.2 billion
General government $18.0 billion
Interest payments $204.4 billion
Total $2.613.3 trillion
That is, the US spends 19.6% of its federal budget, and 3.7% of its GDP, on defense.
Note also that a great deal of non-defense government spending on education, infrastructure, welfare, and the like is done at the state and local level and does not show up on the federal budget.
Some groovy politically correct bits of federal spending:
$3.2 billion, an increase of $382 million, to continue to expand the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
$4 billion, an increase of 8.5 percent, for Federal housing and social programs for the homeless, including $1.4 billion for Homeless Assistance Grants.
$1.2 billion for international food aid, including a new initiative to provide $300 million as cash assistance, allowing emergency food aid to be provided more quickly to address the most urgent needs.
$74 billion over 10 years for health-insurance tax credits for low-income individuals and families that will ultimately help 15 million families purchase affordable health insurance.
$5.6 billion for the National Science Foundation’s vital science, education, and basic research programs, an increase of $132 million.
$260 million for the President’s Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, to help reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil and create a new generation of hydrogen-powered vehicles.
$28 billion increase for student aid programs through 2015, including the retirement of the Pell Grant shortfall, an increase in the maximum Pell award by $500 over five years, and additional benefits to student borrowers, helping more than 10 million needy students cover the costs of college.
$603 million more for Title I to provide grants to improve education in low-income communities and support NCLB reforms, a total increase of $4.6 billion, or 52 percent, for Title I since 2001.
$3 billion, an increase of $1.5 billion, to expand the Millennium Challenge Account for foreign assistance, to encourage sound economic and governance policies in the developing world.
Monday, August 06, 2007
La Vanguardia's comments section has become very interesting; it's the new home in Spain of America-bashing. Check out these self-righteous ignorant fools who have never read a single book on the history of the Second World War chiming in on the Hiroshima bombing. Interesting that none of them mention Pearl Harbor, the Rape of Nanking, the sack of Manila, the Bataan Death March, the POW camps, or the battles of Okinawa and Iwo Jima.
So far there are four comments. Here they are in their entirety.
What hypocrisy. Thinking that those poor people were literally flattened by a nuclear bomb dropped by the country that is now trying to prevent the rest from having them. The only country barbarous enough to drop a nuclear bomb on the civilian population is the United States of America. We should never forget it.
So this guy is in favor of Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons. Brilliant.
When the United States bombed two civilian populations with two weapons of mass destruction, a giant parenthesis that has not been closed yet was opened in history. The atomic bomb did not stop the Second World War, but rather originated a new era dominated by the forces of terror. The United States should apologize and commit itself to eliminating any future possibility of a repetition of the criminal acts being commemmorated today.
Gee, I dunno. I thought the Japanese stopped shooting at us after we dropped the bomb. That most certainly did stop the war. And, of course, no mention that, say, Germany or Japan or Russia should apologize for, I dunno, STARTING the war in the first place. Or any mention that Spain itself, and its Communist-Anarchist led Republican government, deserves a fair share of the blame for the destabilization of Europe in the 1930s.
It's a good thing to remember, in order to ask ourselves, who had and has weapons of mass destructions? How many hypocrites, liars, and Judases are walking around?
Plenty of them in Western Europe and the Third World. But Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, the Japanese militarists, and the systems they established, are all happily dead, and the Marxist-Communist-leftist movement died with the Soviet Union and its slave states. Thanks to, of course, the atomic bomb.
Marvelous antinuclear principles: NO POSSESSION, NO PRODUCTION, NO CIRCULATION THROUGH OUR COUNTRY. Wouldn't it be a gift of life and intelligence if all countries adopted them? It's a dream; maybe someday...I join in the homage of the Japanese to their dead. NUNCA MÁIS!
I'm up for abolishing nuclear weapons as soon as we abolish human evil. Oh, wait, that might take a while.
I will pay no homage to the Japanese dead in World War II, and neither will the Koreans nor the Chinese nor the Filipinos. I am sorry that civilians died, but they died because their country attacked its neighbors and tried to make all of Asia its slaves. If Japan and its allies had won the Second World War, or if the Soviets and Maoist Chinese had won the Cold War, these fools would not be complaining about American nuclear weapons. They would be laborers in German or Russian factories (and not too concerned about minor issues like Catalan language rights, since not getting executed would be much more important to them) if they were lucky enough to actually be alive now.
So far there are four comments. Here they are in their entirety.
What hypocrisy. Thinking that those poor people were literally flattened by a nuclear bomb dropped by the country that is now trying to prevent the rest from having them. The only country barbarous enough to drop a nuclear bomb on the civilian population is the United States of America. We should never forget it.
So this guy is in favor of Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons. Brilliant.
When the United States bombed two civilian populations with two weapons of mass destruction, a giant parenthesis that has not been closed yet was opened in history. The atomic bomb did not stop the Second World War, but rather originated a new era dominated by the forces of terror. The United States should apologize and commit itself to eliminating any future possibility of a repetition of the criminal acts being commemmorated today.
Gee, I dunno. I thought the Japanese stopped shooting at us after we dropped the bomb. That most certainly did stop the war. And, of course, no mention that, say, Germany or Japan or Russia should apologize for, I dunno, STARTING the war in the first place. Or any mention that Spain itself, and its Communist-Anarchist led Republican government, deserves a fair share of the blame for the destabilization of Europe in the 1930s.
It's a good thing to remember, in order to ask ourselves, who had and has weapons of mass destructions? How many hypocrites, liars, and Judases are walking around?
Plenty of them in Western Europe and the Third World. But Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, the Japanese militarists, and the systems they established, are all happily dead, and the Marxist-Communist-leftist movement died with the Soviet Union and its slave states. Thanks to, of course, the atomic bomb.
Marvelous antinuclear principles: NO POSSESSION, NO PRODUCTION, NO CIRCULATION THROUGH OUR COUNTRY. Wouldn't it be a gift of life and intelligence if all countries adopted them? It's a dream; maybe someday...I join in the homage of the Japanese to their dead. NUNCA MÁIS!
I'm up for abolishing nuclear weapons as soon as we abolish human evil. Oh, wait, that might take a while.
I will pay no homage to the Japanese dead in World War II, and neither will the Koreans nor the Chinese nor the Filipinos. I am sorry that civilians died, but they died because their country attacked its neighbors and tried to make all of Asia its slaves. If Japan and its allies had won the Second World War, or if the Soviets and Maoist Chinese had won the Cold War, these fools would not be complaining about American nuclear weapons. They would be laborers in German or Russian factories (and not too concerned about minor issues like Catalan language rights, since not getting executed would be much more important to them) if they were lucky enough to actually be alive now.
Friday, August 03, 2007
From the comments on La Vanguardia's website about the Minneapolis bridge collapse:
That's the thing about "neoliberal" policies: they reduce taxes in order to increase business investment and consumption, then they reduce them again because the state must be reduced to the minimum and everything must be left in private hands, and then they reduce them even more to make the millionaires' lobbies happy. New Orleans was flooded because its levees were made out of cardboard and the bridges are collapsing because there is no money for infrastructure.
Instead of fixing the bridges, they keep building the wall of shame along the Mexican border. More typical arrogant American behavior.
THE ACCOUNTS ALWAYS ADD UP, IF YOU SPEND A LOT ON ONE THING (DEFENSE 50% OF THE WORLD BUDGET) THERE IS NOTHING FOR THE REST (INFRASTRUCTURE MAINTENANCE, EDUCATION, SOCIAL SECURITY ETC....) IT ISN'T THE MOST ADVANCED SOCIETY, IT'S JUST THE MOST-ARMED ONE
If there was a report two years ago showing structural deficiences, someone is responsible for the bridge collapse. Let's see if the USA responds quickly with the LAW, or maybe they'll be let off because the budget wasn't big enough since it wasn't for starting a war or going around killing people.
I understand the Americans less every day, and the current government of that country. Do you remember Caterina (sic)? Well, the poor people of that state are still waiting for the aid promised by their disastrous president, but they say everyone gets what he deserves. For me they can all go to hell (al carajo).
Things go on in every country, but a country as rich as the USA should spend more money on these things, but what they save on that and on social welfare, they spend on weapons to be the most powerful country, kill whoever they don't like, and if one dies they say he was giving his life for their country, a medal, the anthem, and see you later.
That's the thing about "neoliberal" policies: they reduce taxes in order to increase business investment and consumption, then they reduce them again because the state must be reduced to the minimum and everything must be left in private hands, and then they reduce them even more to make the millionaires' lobbies happy. New Orleans was flooded because its levees were made out of cardboard and the bridges are collapsing because there is no money for infrastructure.
Instead of fixing the bridges, they keep building the wall of shame along the Mexican border. More typical arrogant American behavior.
THE ACCOUNTS ALWAYS ADD UP, IF YOU SPEND A LOT ON ONE THING (DEFENSE 50% OF THE WORLD BUDGET) THERE IS NOTHING FOR THE REST (INFRASTRUCTURE MAINTENANCE, EDUCATION, SOCIAL SECURITY ETC....) IT ISN'T THE MOST ADVANCED SOCIETY, IT'S JUST THE MOST-ARMED ONE
If there was a report two years ago showing structural deficiences, someone is responsible for the bridge collapse. Let's see if the USA responds quickly with the LAW, or maybe they'll be let off because the budget wasn't big enough since it wasn't for starting a war or going around killing people.
I understand the Americans less every day, and the current government of that country. Do you remember Caterina (sic)? Well, the poor people of that state are still waiting for the aid promised by their disastrous president, but they say everyone gets what he deserves. For me they can all go to hell (al carajo).
Things go on in every country, but a country as rich as the USA should spend more money on these things, but what they save on that and on social welfare, they spend on weapons to be the most powerful country, kill whoever they don't like, and if one dies they say he was giving his life for their country, a medal, the anthem, and see you later.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Disaster in Minneapolis. I can't believe anyone survived a 60-foot fall into a river with cars and pieces of bridge falling all around. Barcelona: Infrastructure breakdowns can happen anywhere. Our blackout was very inconvenient, but nobody died. TV3's site is leading with this story.
The Pat Tillman story has finally hit the news over here. Andy Robinson gets page 6 of La Vanguardia to speculate that the Pentagon ordered Tillman to be fragged by his own unit because he was going to meet with Noam Chomsky. How utterly senseless and irresponsible.
On page 4 La Vangua runs a very disturbing photo of the feet of five men dangling from a gallows in Iran yesterday. Seems that they were hanged for opposing the Islamist regime. 16 people were hanged at the end of June for crimes including adultery and homosexuality. But Europeans only protest when the Americans give the injection to a convicted murderer.
Zap is in Barcelona today to try to assuage la furia catalana over the blackout. Reading La Vanguardia between the lines, I get the idea that what has a lot of people around here pissed off is that Barcelona has lost its traditional competitive advantage over Madrid. Only thirty years ago Barcelona was the industrial center of Spain, and by far the wealthiest city. Now Madrid's metro area is 50% bigger than Barcelona's, and Madrid benefits from the economic switch away from industry and toward services and information more than Barcelona does. Quote: "The citizens are looking at a mirror of themselves that is very unlike the Catalan economic and social advance that was the locomotive for all of Spain."
Bergman and Antonioni croaked. That's a shame, of course, but Bergman movies bore me stiff and I've never bothered to see any Antonioni movies.
FC Barcelona is off on a preseason tour of East Asia to play three exhibition games, for which they will pocket a cool two million euros each. Some of the players have sounded off, saying that going on tour is not the best way to prepare the team for the regular season. What I would have said if I were club president Joan Laporta is, true, this is not the best way to prepare the team, but it is an excellent way to earn six million euros with which to pay you guys, so stop bitching.
Laporta's father-in-law is mixed up in a new business scandal. Mutua Universal, a Barcelona workman's-compensation mutual insurance company, is in trouble for allegedly embezzling money from the Spanish National Health, and Mr. Father-in-Law is the chairman of the board. He was in trouble back in 1999 for insider trading, but the National Court threw out the case.
The cops have run more than one thousand Romanian gypsies out of the San Roque district of Badalona. They've been arresting them for dumping garbage and defecating in the streets, hauling away unregistered or uninespected cars, and closing down illegal apartment rentals; they shut down 150 apartments where more than 1500 persons were living. So I suppose they'll move on to Santa Coloma or Hospitalet.
They've started octopus farming down in the Ebro Delta. I guess this is good news if you like octopus, and bad news if you are an octopus.
And guess what? They're holding Europe's largest gay festival here in Barcelona. More than 30,000 people are expected to attend LoveBall, as it's called. They should change the name to Bareback Mountain. Marc Almond is going to play, and there will be a "leather party" (original English). Can't wait. I bet a lot of viruses get passed around. The guys who sell poppers at the alternative lifestyle discos are going to have a great week.
The Pat Tillman story has finally hit the news over here. Andy Robinson gets page 6 of La Vanguardia to speculate that the Pentagon ordered Tillman to be fragged by his own unit because he was going to meet with Noam Chomsky. How utterly senseless and irresponsible.
On page 4 La Vangua runs a very disturbing photo of the feet of five men dangling from a gallows in Iran yesterday. Seems that they were hanged for opposing the Islamist regime. 16 people were hanged at the end of June for crimes including adultery and homosexuality. But Europeans only protest when the Americans give the injection to a convicted murderer.
Zap is in Barcelona today to try to assuage la furia catalana over the blackout. Reading La Vanguardia between the lines, I get the idea that what has a lot of people around here pissed off is that Barcelona has lost its traditional competitive advantage over Madrid. Only thirty years ago Barcelona was the industrial center of Spain, and by far the wealthiest city. Now Madrid's metro area is 50% bigger than Barcelona's, and Madrid benefits from the economic switch away from industry and toward services and information more than Barcelona does. Quote: "The citizens are looking at a mirror of themselves that is very unlike the Catalan economic and social advance that was the locomotive for all of Spain."
Bergman and Antonioni croaked. That's a shame, of course, but Bergman movies bore me stiff and I've never bothered to see any Antonioni movies.
FC Barcelona is off on a preseason tour of East Asia to play three exhibition games, for which they will pocket a cool two million euros each. Some of the players have sounded off, saying that going on tour is not the best way to prepare the team for the regular season. What I would have said if I were club president Joan Laporta is, true, this is not the best way to prepare the team, but it is an excellent way to earn six million euros with which to pay you guys, so stop bitching.
Laporta's father-in-law is mixed up in a new business scandal. Mutua Universal, a Barcelona workman's-compensation mutual insurance company, is in trouble for allegedly embezzling money from the Spanish National Health, and Mr. Father-in-Law is the chairman of the board. He was in trouble back in 1999 for insider trading, but the National Court threw out the case.
The cops have run more than one thousand Romanian gypsies out of the San Roque district of Badalona. They've been arresting them for dumping garbage and defecating in the streets, hauling away unregistered or uninespected cars, and closing down illegal apartment rentals; they shut down 150 apartments where more than 1500 persons were living. So I suppose they'll move on to Santa Coloma or Hospitalet.
They've started octopus farming down in the Ebro Delta. I guess this is good news if you like octopus, and bad news if you are an octopus.
And guess what? They're holding Europe's largest gay festival here in Barcelona. More than 30,000 people are expected to attend LoveBall, as it's called. They should change the name to Bareback Mountain. Marc Almond is going to play, and there will be a "leather party" (original English). Can't wait. I bet a lot of viruses get passed around. The guys who sell poppers at the alternative lifestyle discos are going to have a great week.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
It's August and so there's not a lot of news, which is usually a good thing. We've been going out to the pueblo every weekend, where we fart around, walk the dirt roads with the dog, and go to the pool. It's nice out there, hot but dry, and if it's too hot you go down in the basement, which is basically a cave. It hasn't been really hot yet in Catalonia; we haven't had to use the air-conditioner here in Barcelona.
We're going to London for a week in mid-August, and we'll take the train to Bath and spend two days and a night there. We'll be staying with our friend Elisabeth, who lives near Muswell Hill way up on the north side of town.
Political fallout from the blackout hasn't finished yet. Minister of industry and former Barcelona mayor Joan Clos has taken a lot of heat for saying there was nothing really wrong with the system of electricity distribution, while the rest of the Catalan Socialists have been sniping at the electric companies for their alleged lack of investment. Since Red Eléctrica is controlled (not wholly owned, but the state has the largest block of shares) by the central government, Clos obviously has to defend the performance of the Zap cabinet, and if that means he has to contradict the Catalan Socialists, then he will.
There are two big fires burning in the Canaries, one on Grand Canary and the other on Tenerife. 12,000 people have been evacuated. The fires haven't affected the tourist areas along the coasts, so no worries if you're traveling there.
La Vanguardia says 1) telecommunications engineers are badly needed in Catalonia, so if you know anything about that come here and look for a job 2) thieves have already stolen hundreds of meters of the electrical cable lying around the streets in order to sell the copper 3) Woody Allen has finished filming in Barcelona and has gone off to Oviedo 4) more than 53,000 people in Catalonia are on the National Health's waiting lists for surgery. One of them is my mother-in-law, who has cataracts; they did one of her eyes back in June, but they aren't going to do the other one until October. 180,000 Catalans are awaiting diagnostic tests 5) they're letting out the Vall d'Hebron rapist, who committed 16 rapes and did 16 years in jail. La Vangua says this has created "social alarm" 6) the Spanish guy who won the Tour de France is under suspicion as a possible doper because of his connection to the "operation Puerto" case 7) Spaniards spend €285 million a year on counterfeit brand-name products.
We're going to London for a week in mid-August, and we'll take the train to Bath and spend two days and a night there. We'll be staying with our friend Elisabeth, who lives near Muswell Hill way up on the north side of town.
Political fallout from the blackout hasn't finished yet. Minister of industry and former Barcelona mayor Joan Clos has taken a lot of heat for saying there was nothing really wrong with the system of electricity distribution, while the rest of the Catalan Socialists have been sniping at the electric companies for their alleged lack of investment. Since Red Eléctrica is controlled (not wholly owned, but the state has the largest block of shares) by the central government, Clos obviously has to defend the performance of the Zap cabinet, and if that means he has to contradict the Catalan Socialists, then he will.
There are two big fires burning in the Canaries, one on Grand Canary and the other on Tenerife. 12,000 people have been evacuated. The fires haven't affected the tourist areas along the coasts, so no worries if you're traveling there.
La Vanguardia says 1) telecommunications engineers are badly needed in Catalonia, so if you know anything about that come here and look for a job 2) thieves have already stolen hundreds of meters of the electrical cable lying around the streets in order to sell the copper 3) Woody Allen has finished filming in Barcelona and has gone off to Oviedo 4) more than 53,000 people in Catalonia are on the National Health's waiting lists for surgery. One of them is my mother-in-law, who has cataracts; they did one of her eyes back in June, but they aren't going to do the other one until October. 180,000 Catalans are awaiting diagnostic tests 5) they're letting out the Vall d'Hebron rapist, who committed 16 rapes and did 16 years in jail. La Vangua says this has created "social alarm" 6) the Spanish guy who won the Tour de France is under suspicion as a possible doper because of his connection to the "operation Puerto" case 7) Spaniards spend €285 million a year on counterfeit brand-name products.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Quick note: Slate's Today's Pictures feature is about Barcelona, featuring 23 historical news photos by the likes of Cartier-Bresson and Capa. Check it out.
Other news: The electricity is back on, but there are 130 portable generators around town filling in for the parts of the system that were destroyed. They make lots of noise, and they're going to be here until February. People are still pissed off at the electric companies and the government; there's a lot of populist bitching about the conspiracy of evil corporations and politicians who are screwing us citizens over. There's also a lot of Cataloony bitching about how Madrid is "stealing our tax money." Endesa will begin refunds of €30-300 to its customers who lost power today. The counselor for industry, Antoni Castells, looks like he's the one who is going to take the heat.
Other news: The electricity is back on, but there are 130 portable generators around town filling in for the parts of the system that were destroyed. They make lots of noise, and they're going to be here until February. People are still pissed off at the electric companies and the government; there's a lot of populist bitching about the conspiracy of evil corporations and politicians who are screwing us citizens over. There's also a lot of Cataloony bitching about how Madrid is "stealing our tax money." Endesa will begin refunds of €30-300 to its customers who lost power today. The counselor for industry, Antoni Castells, looks like he's the one who is going to take the heat.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Remember the signed-by-Noam-Chomsky Communist petition to have former prime minister Aznar tried for war crimes? I signed several silly things, like Ana Obregón and Sid Vicious, and encouraged others to do the same. Well, I just skimmed through the list of signatures, and they've removed all the creative stuff.
However, they still haven't figured out that they need to set their system to accept only one signature per IP, and you can still sign as many times as you want. So this time I signed as Heywood Jablome, Hugh G. Rection, Jack Meyoff, and Holden Mydick.
However, they still haven't figured out that they need to set their system to accept only one signature per IP, and you can still sign as many times as you want. So this time I signed as Heywood Jablome, Hugh G. Rection, Jack Meyoff, and Holden Mydick.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Other news from these here parts: Scary bit in La Vanguardia about the El Jueves case. It looks like the lese-majesté case against the magazine and its unfunny cartoonists is going to be thrown out of court, which is good. But the prosecutor's office is irritated because the confiscation of the issue with the doggy-style caricature didn't work; what happened was, of course, that images of the cartoon were spread through Internet, even though El Jueves's website was shut down, too.
So the prosecutor's office has suggested a change in legislation, apparently approved of by vice-prime minister Fernandez de la Vega. Confiscating publications would still be legal, and the idea is "to guarantee the effectiveness of confiscation by giving judges the power to prohibit the diffusion of any incriminated text or drawing through any medium, including the Internet, under the penalty of commiting a penal offense."
Wow. Looks to me like if this suggested law goes through, then Iberian Notes and Barcepundit would have been breaking the law by linking to websites that posted the doggy-style cartoon, and we could have gone to jail. And InstaPundit would be breaking the law, too, since he linked to our links to the cartoon. Does that mean they'd hunt him down over there in Tennessee?
Barcepundit links to El Jueves's cover cartoon this week.
Another major ETA bust in France this morning. They got a big fish, the head of ETA's logistics cell, and two of his subordinates. Yesterday they got one more etarra, a rather small fish, who ran a safe house for terrorists on the run. I really think ETA is mortally wounded, that they've shot their last bolt in this most recent failed campaign. 18 etarras have been arrested since they announced the end of their "truce" on June 6.
They let off two homemade bombs along the route of the Tour de France through the Pyrenees yesterday, with no effect. This might well have been the work of amateurs.
Al Qaeda in Spain update: The cops arrested a Palestinian and a Syrian in Madrid for raising money for the jihad. They're connected to Abu Dahdah, Al Qaeda's chief in Spain; one of them ran the photocopy shop Abu Dahdah used to copy jihadist propaganda for distribution in mosques. They're also linked to Mohamed Setmarian, a Spanish citizen and Al Qaeda military leader who was arrested by the US Army in Pakistan. Their technique was fairly sophisticated; they set up shell companies and laundered the terrorist money through them. €120,000 was found hidden in their apartments, along with lots of good evidence on their computers and cellphones.
BBVA, one of Spain's two giant banks, says the real estate market is slowing down and that prices will plateau and maybe even begin to decline by the end of 2008. Higher interest rates are causing an increase in the number of court cases over mortgage impayment in Barcelona; most Spaniards are on variable-rate mortgages.
The saga of the Afrioan boat people continues: another cayuco carrying 150 illegal immigrants washed up on El Hierro in the Canaries last night. At least this time nobody died.
Fernando García, La Vanguardia's correspondent in Havana, says that a one-liter tetra-brik of liquid milk in Cuba costs between 1.5 and 2 convertible pesos, or more than 15% of the average worker's monthly salary; it hasn't been available in the shops for the last two weeks at all. He adds that the buses are all half-broken down and don't have a schedule.
I don't know what to think about the release of the Bulgarian nurses. It's quite obvious that the guilty party in the transmission of AIDS to those Libyan children is the Qaddafi regime, and that the nurses and doctor are scapegoats. So I'm very glad they're free. But what's this about Qatar paying Libya $400 million for their release, and Cecilia Sarkozy taking part in the negotiations?
As for the Tour, I assume you heard that Rasmussen is out as well, and that another Italian rider got caught doping, too. Speculation in Europe, outside France, is that this might be the nail in cycling's coffin as a major sport.
I know that Lance Armstrong has never failed a drug test in his life and must be presumed innocent, but Jesus, everybody he rode against--Ullrich, Pantani, Riis--was on dope, and so were half the guys on his team--Landis, Hamilton, Olano. If he was actually clean when he won those seven straignt Tours, beating out an entire field of drug users, he must be considered the most dominant athlete of all time in any sport. I'm finding it harder and harder to believe that he could have been clean, though.
Barça note: The new team looks good, very good. Abidal and Touré are going to stabilize the defense. Rumors are flying about Deco, who supposedly has several good offers, and who might have to do some sitting if the front line is Henry-Eto'o-Messi and Ronaldinho drops back to midfield.
So the prosecutor's office has suggested a change in legislation, apparently approved of by vice-prime minister Fernandez de la Vega. Confiscating publications would still be legal, and the idea is "to guarantee the effectiveness of confiscation by giving judges the power to prohibit the diffusion of any incriminated text or drawing through any medium, including the Internet, under the penalty of commiting a penal offense."
Wow. Looks to me like if this suggested law goes through, then Iberian Notes and Barcepundit would have been breaking the law by linking to websites that posted the doggy-style cartoon, and we could have gone to jail. And InstaPundit would be breaking the law, too, since he linked to our links to the cartoon. Does that mean they'd hunt him down over there in Tennessee?
Barcepundit links to El Jueves's cover cartoon this week.
Another major ETA bust in France this morning. They got a big fish, the head of ETA's logistics cell, and two of his subordinates. Yesterday they got one more etarra, a rather small fish, who ran a safe house for terrorists on the run. I really think ETA is mortally wounded, that they've shot their last bolt in this most recent failed campaign. 18 etarras have been arrested since they announced the end of their "truce" on June 6.
They let off two homemade bombs along the route of the Tour de France through the Pyrenees yesterday, with no effect. This might well have been the work of amateurs.
Al Qaeda in Spain update: The cops arrested a Palestinian and a Syrian in Madrid for raising money for the jihad. They're connected to Abu Dahdah, Al Qaeda's chief in Spain; one of them ran the photocopy shop Abu Dahdah used to copy jihadist propaganda for distribution in mosques. They're also linked to Mohamed Setmarian, a Spanish citizen and Al Qaeda military leader who was arrested by the US Army in Pakistan. Their technique was fairly sophisticated; they set up shell companies and laundered the terrorist money through them. €120,000 was found hidden in their apartments, along with lots of good evidence on their computers and cellphones.
BBVA, one of Spain's two giant banks, says the real estate market is slowing down and that prices will plateau and maybe even begin to decline by the end of 2008. Higher interest rates are causing an increase in the number of court cases over mortgage impayment in Barcelona; most Spaniards are on variable-rate mortgages.
The saga of the Afrioan boat people continues: another cayuco carrying 150 illegal immigrants washed up on El Hierro in the Canaries last night. At least this time nobody died.
Fernando García, La Vanguardia's correspondent in Havana, says that a one-liter tetra-brik of liquid milk in Cuba costs between 1.5 and 2 convertible pesos, or more than 15% of the average worker's monthly salary; it hasn't been available in the shops for the last two weeks at all. He adds that the buses are all half-broken down and don't have a schedule.
I don't know what to think about the release of the Bulgarian nurses. It's quite obvious that the guilty party in the transmission of AIDS to those Libyan children is the Qaddafi regime, and that the nurses and doctor are scapegoats. So I'm very glad they're free. But what's this about Qatar paying Libya $400 million for their release, and Cecilia Sarkozy taking part in the negotiations?
As for the Tour, I assume you heard that Rasmussen is out as well, and that another Italian rider got caught doping, too. Speculation in Europe, outside France, is that this might be the nail in cycling's coffin as a major sport.
I know that Lance Armstrong has never failed a drug test in his life and must be presumed innocent, but Jesus, everybody he rode against--Ullrich, Pantani, Riis--was on dope, and so were half the guys on his team--Landis, Hamilton, Olano. If he was actually clean when he won those seven straignt Tours, beating out an entire field of drug users, he must be considered the most dominant athlete of all time in any sport. I'm finding it harder and harder to believe that he could have been clean, though.
Barça note: The new team looks good, very good. Abidal and Touré are going to stabilize the defense. Rumors are flying about Deco, who supposedly has several good offers, and who might have to do some sitting if the front line is Henry-Eto'o-Messi and Ronaldinho drops back to midfield.
Fecsa-Endesa says that Barcelona has returned to "practical normality," but there are still some people without power here in Gracia. The Bar Vall is back on; Francesc, the owner, got interviewed on TV3 news today. The Forn Rabassa is still down, though, and the owner and the counter girl got interviewed, too. The fruit shop is still down as well.
They had some real big pot-bangings here yesterday afternoon, which I think is dumb but fair enough, but they also blocked off traffic on the Traversera de Dalt, causing a huge traffic snarl-up and inconveniencing literally thousands of people who have nothing to do with the power outage. That just pisses me off. It's the "we're angry at something, so we're going to make everyone else's life difficult, too" attitude. Where I come from, if you block the public highway and interfere with everyone else's rights, we arrest your ass and haul you off to the cop shop.
There is a lot, really a lot, of public anger here. It's mostly aimed at an amorphous "they," the Powers that Be, the hidden interests, those who control everything behind the scenes, care only about themselves, and cheat and manipulate all the rest of us. Paranoia and conspiracy theory, of course, but there's a lot of it around here.
TV3 is still most shamefully trying to deflect attention away from the political parties that control it. La Vanguardia says that the municipal Socio-Communist coalition, for the first time, is facing serious public discontent. Says Ramon Suñé:
The immediate reaction of Mayor Hereu and his team, to declare war on the electric companies, was not very convincing. Especially if we keep in mind the lack of pressure exercised during recent years by local authorities on those responsible for guaranteeing a necessary service. Among them is the Generalitat, which in 2005 promised the installation of a 220 kilovolt cable between the Vilanova and Maragall substations. That is, works planned for many years and that now, when the worst has happened, have had to be jerry-rigged provisionally.
Until Monday, foreseeable problems with the electrical supply did not particularly concern the Barcelona City Council. (There is no) reference, not even a thought, in the governing agreement signed by Jordi Hereu and Imma Mayol, on this subject.
Says Francesc de Carreras, a reasonable man, on the op-ed page:
The problem is not a cable that caused a blackout, something that could happen in any city in the world. The problem is that the camel's back has been broken; nobody trusts anyone. Not the politicians, nor the companies, nor the technicians, nor the media, that's how skeptical and disillusioned everyone is. The big blackout has been just one more turn of the screw. The paradox is that all this is happening in a Barcelona that considers itself the mirror of modernity, in a Catalonia with a high degree of well-being and prosperity. What is happening that has caused distrust to move in among us, so that many sag, rather exaggeratedly but with clear intention, that this is a Third World city in a banana republic? Probably the causes should be sought in a diffuse mixture of an ideology of self-satisfaction, cheap populism following the latest "progre" fashion, and greatly weakened political authority.
All of this began during the Pujolist period, during the '80s, in which the image of an ideal and marvelous Catalonia was manufactured, Catalans who would eat up the world. Maybe in order not to be left behind, the Left began to idealize Olympic Barcelona, "the best city in the world" in the unfortunate words of Joan Clos. All pure myth-making, sadly provincial. We are what we are: a great city, a wonderful country, but let's look in a mirror that isn't misshapen so that we don't fool ourselves. If we add to that a few drops of pacifism, feminism, ecologism, sexual freedom, and planetary solidarity, all very noble ideals, but in their most intellectually crude and demagogical forms, the cocktail is explosive; a self-satisfied Barcelona and Catalonia that "dismisses what it knows nothing of," like the Spain that Machado wrote about.
They had some real big pot-bangings here yesterday afternoon, which I think is dumb but fair enough, but they also blocked off traffic on the Traversera de Dalt, causing a huge traffic snarl-up and inconveniencing literally thousands of people who have nothing to do with the power outage. That just pisses me off. It's the "we're angry at something, so we're going to make everyone else's life difficult, too" attitude. Where I come from, if you block the public highway and interfere with everyone else's rights, we arrest your ass and haul you off to the cop shop.
There is a lot, really a lot, of public anger here. It's mostly aimed at an amorphous "they," the Powers that Be, the hidden interests, those who control everything behind the scenes, care only about themselves, and cheat and manipulate all the rest of us. Paranoia and conspiracy theory, of course, but there's a lot of it around here.
TV3 is still most shamefully trying to deflect attention away from the political parties that control it. La Vanguardia says that the municipal Socio-Communist coalition, for the first time, is facing serious public discontent. Says Ramon Suñé:
The immediate reaction of Mayor Hereu and his team, to declare war on the electric companies, was not very convincing. Especially if we keep in mind the lack of pressure exercised during recent years by local authorities on those responsible for guaranteeing a necessary service. Among them is the Generalitat, which in 2005 promised the installation of a 220 kilovolt cable between the Vilanova and Maragall substations. That is, works planned for many years and that now, when the worst has happened, have had to be jerry-rigged provisionally.
Until Monday, foreseeable problems with the electrical supply did not particularly concern the Barcelona City Council. (There is no) reference, not even a thought, in the governing agreement signed by Jordi Hereu and Imma Mayol, on this subject.
Says Francesc de Carreras, a reasonable man, on the op-ed page:
The problem is not a cable that caused a blackout, something that could happen in any city in the world. The problem is that the camel's back has been broken; nobody trusts anyone. Not the politicians, nor the companies, nor the technicians, nor the media, that's how skeptical and disillusioned everyone is. The big blackout has been just one more turn of the screw. The paradox is that all this is happening in a Barcelona that considers itself the mirror of modernity, in a Catalonia with a high degree of well-being and prosperity. What is happening that has caused distrust to move in among us, so that many sag, rather exaggeratedly but with clear intention, that this is a Third World city in a banana republic? Probably the causes should be sought in a diffuse mixture of an ideology of self-satisfaction, cheap populism following the latest "progre" fashion, and greatly weakened political authority.
All of this began during the Pujolist period, during the '80s, in which the image of an ideal and marvelous Catalonia was manufactured, Catalans who would eat up the world. Maybe in order not to be left behind, the Left began to idealize Olympic Barcelona, "the best city in the world" in the unfortunate words of Joan Clos. All pure myth-making, sadly provincial. We are what we are: a great city, a wonderful country, but let's look in a mirror that isn't misshapen so that we don't fool ourselves. If we add to that a few drops of pacifism, feminism, ecologism, sexual freedom, and planetary solidarity, all very noble ideals, but in their most intellectually crude and demagogical forms, the cocktail is explosive; a self-satisfied Barcelona and Catalonia that "dismisses what it knows nothing of," like the Spain that Machado wrote about.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
It's Day Three without power in parts of Barcelona; the areas still down include Gracia, Guinardó, Camp de l'Arpa, Sagrada Familia, Viviendas del Congreso, el Clot, and Virrei Amat. I've got power but a lot of people I know--Alberto, Choni, Nicola, Montse, Toni--don't. The fruit shop, Pakistani grocery, and Bar Zeus are all still without power. The Café Flanders and Bar Vall (which have electricity) are packed, since they have hot coffee, cold beer, non-rotting food, and air-conditioning.
They're going to have a demonstration this afternoon on Calle Escorial, bang pots and pans, and cut off the traffic. I don't like demos because there isn't much point in holding public protests in a democracy. I dislike pot-banging even more because it bothers other ordinary citizens who have nothing to do with the problem. And I specifically hate it when demonstrators block streets and traffic. All that does is snarl things up and piss off even more people. So I am not going.
Everyone is really pissed off and heads are going to roll. My guess is that mayor Jordi Hereu, who has been invisible through this whole thing, and Antoni Castells, the counselor for industry, are the most likely decapitees.
Imma Mayol was forced to admit that the city government had no Plan B in case something like this happened, and the Socialist municipal and regional governments are furiously trying to cast the blame on everyone but themselves, backed up by Generalitat-controlled TV3, which is clearly acting as a government mouthpiece and not as a neutral news outlet.
Oh, yeah, get this. They've called in the Spanish Army in order to use its portable generators; it's called "Operation White Storm." I hear no protests from the Cataloonies about this centralist reactionary militarist interference in peaceful progressive Catalan life.
10,000 clients are still blacked out, and nobody knows when their service will be restored. Fecsa-Endesa hopes it will be today, but no promises of anything. 70 traffic lights are still down, and traffic is a mess all over this part of
town.
One good thing: It's not particularly hot, and you don't really need air-conditioning, so nobody is dying from the heat as people did during the last big heat wave a couple of years back. The eco-weenies are claiming that our unsustainable non-solidarious consumer society is using too much electricity and that's why the blackout happened, which of course has nothing to do with anything.
They're going to have a demonstration this afternoon on Calle Escorial, bang pots and pans, and cut off the traffic. I don't like demos because there isn't much point in holding public protests in a democracy. I dislike pot-banging even more because it bothers other ordinary citizens who have nothing to do with the problem. And I specifically hate it when demonstrators block streets and traffic. All that does is snarl things up and piss off even more people. So I am not going.
Everyone is really pissed off and heads are going to roll. My guess is that mayor Jordi Hereu, who has been invisible through this whole thing, and Antoni Castells, the counselor for industry, are the most likely decapitees.
Imma Mayol was forced to admit that the city government had no Plan B in case something like this happened, and the Socialist municipal and regional governments are furiously trying to cast the blame on everyone but themselves, backed up by Generalitat-controlled TV3, which is clearly acting as a government mouthpiece and not as a neutral news outlet.
Oh, yeah, get this. They've called in the Spanish Army in order to use its portable generators; it's called "Operation White Storm." I hear no protests from the Cataloonies about this centralist reactionary militarist interference in peaceful progressive Catalan life.
10,000 clients are still blacked out, and nobody knows when their service will be restored. Fecsa-Endesa hopes it will be today, but no promises of anything. 70 traffic lights are still down, and traffic is a mess all over this part of
town.
One good thing: It's not particularly hot, and you don't really need air-conditioning, so nobody is dying from the heat as people did during the last big heat wave a couple of years back. The eco-weenies are claiming that our unsustainable non-solidarious consumer society is using too much electricity and that's why the blackout happened, which of course has nothing to do with anything.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
I've been following the comments about the blackout on La Vanguardia's website, and I've classified them. The largest group is "Poor Me" complaints. The second largest group is complaints about capitalism and society in general and blames the electric companies; the third largest group blames the Socialists; the fourth largest are Catalanists who blame Spain and the PP. Then there are a few that blame CIU, a few defending the Socialists, and a few Spainiacs writing in from Madrid to gloat at the misfortunes of others.
Clearly the stupidest, however, was this. A woman named Nuria in London wrote in to say that they've had power outages there, too, and maybe people shouldn't get all hysterical. So some guy named Jose Luis replied:
If London is in chaos, too, that should not console us in Barcelona. The British and the Yankees are absolutely demented crazy imperialists, with cameras even in the shithouse. These genocidal speakers of inglish (sic) are not a reference for civilized people.
That's got to be an all-time record for anti-Americanism, or really Anglophonephobia, managing to work it in on a forum about a power outage in Barcelona.
Clearly the stupidest, however, was this. A woman named Nuria in London wrote in to say that they've had power outages there, too, and maybe people shouldn't get all hysterical. So some guy named Jose Luis replied:
If London is in chaos, too, that should not console us in Barcelona. The British and the Yankees are absolutely demented crazy imperialists, with cameras even in the shithouse. These genocidal speakers of inglish (sic) are not a reference for civilized people.
That's got to be an all-time record for anti-Americanism, or really Anglophonephobia, managing to work it in on a forum about a power outage in Barcelona.
50,000 clients in Barcelona still have no electricity, more than 30 hours after the lights went out. At least 30,000 will not have service restored until tomorrow at the earliest. TV3 is reporting on how pissed off the municipal and regional authorities are; they're blaming the whole thing on Fecsa-Endesa, which doesn't make any sense because it was a Red Electrica Española cable that went down and caused the blackout. TV3 is of course controlled by the same political parties that control the Ayuntamiento, the Generalitat, and the central government, so they're quite clearly trying to deflect the anger of the citizens in some other direction.
The most clear sign of TV3 manipulation: Antoni Castells, the Generalitat's counselor in charge of industry, announced this afternoon that everybody's electricity would come back on by 10 PM. That, of course, was complete bullshit. TV3 has taken that story off its website, and it did not make the 9 PM evening news. Communist second vice-mayor Imma Mayol, meanwhile, is posing for the cameras calling the situation "indigestible" and demanding that it stop right now and everybody's lights magically come on.
CiU and the PP are blaming Montilla, the Generalitat, Zap, and anything that smells like a Socialist for this mess. CiU has pointed out that the Generalitat failed to connect the Maragall substation, the one that caught fire, to two other substations, as they were supposed to have done back in 2005. Duran Lérida said that if the high-tension power connection to France had been built, as the right wanted to do a couple of years back, this wouldn't have happened as there would have been an alternate source of electrical supply. However, the environmentalists, specifically Imma Mayol's Commie-Green crowd, torpedoed the project. Meanwhile, Red Electrica is controlled by the central government, and you know who's in charge of that: Zap and, get this, former Barcelona mayor and now industry minister Joan Clos, known for bashing America and being the genius behind the Forum of Cultures.
Supposedly there are going to be more pot-banging protests tonight. If there are I'm going to crank up "High Voltage" on the CD and drown them all out.
Other news: They busted Spain's Public Enemy Number One in Portugal, a guy who had robbed thirty banks and killed three cops in the last few years. Can we please hang him? He sounds like a deserving case. Some judge in Murcia denied child custody to a lesbian mother on the grounds that lesbianism is bad, which is pretty ridiculous and will almost certainly get overturned. They busted a CNI (Spanish intelligence) agent for spying for Russia; he's been charged with treason, for which he may receive as much as--get this--twelve years in jail.
Tour de France cyclist Alexander Vinokurov, who won yesterday's mountain stage, tested positive for blood doping; Tour leader Michael Rasmussen, meanwhile, has been kicked off the Danish national team for missing two drug tests this summer. It's a very bad week for sports, what with the indictment of Michael Vick on federal animal cruelty charges and the announcement that a NBA referee has been fixing games. I'm amazed that neither US story has made it in Spain; many people here are actually NBA fans and you'd think they'd be interested, and they could use the race angle on the Vick story, something the Spanish media is never shy about doing.
The most clear sign of TV3 manipulation: Antoni Castells, the Generalitat's counselor in charge of industry, announced this afternoon that everybody's electricity would come back on by 10 PM. That, of course, was complete bullshit. TV3 has taken that story off its website, and it did not make the 9 PM evening news. Communist second vice-mayor Imma Mayol, meanwhile, is posing for the cameras calling the situation "indigestible" and demanding that it stop right now and everybody's lights magically come on.
CiU and the PP are blaming Montilla, the Generalitat, Zap, and anything that smells like a Socialist for this mess. CiU has pointed out that the Generalitat failed to connect the Maragall substation, the one that caught fire, to two other substations, as they were supposed to have done back in 2005. Duran Lérida said that if the high-tension power connection to France had been built, as the right wanted to do a couple of years back, this wouldn't have happened as there would have been an alternate source of electrical supply. However, the environmentalists, specifically Imma Mayol's Commie-Green crowd, torpedoed the project. Meanwhile, Red Electrica is controlled by the central government, and you know who's in charge of that: Zap and, get this, former Barcelona mayor and now industry minister Joan Clos, known for bashing America and being the genius behind the Forum of Cultures.
Supposedly there are going to be more pot-banging protests tonight. If there are I'm going to crank up "High Voltage" on the CD and drown them all out.
Other news: They busted Spain's Public Enemy Number One in Portugal, a guy who had robbed thirty banks and killed three cops in the last few years. Can we please hang him? He sounds like a deserving case. Some judge in Murcia denied child custody to a lesbian mother on the grounds that lesbianism is bad, which is pretty ridiculous and will almost certainly get overturned. They busted a CNI (Spanish intelligence) agent for spying for Russia; he's been charged with treason, for which he may receive as much as--get this--twelve years in jail.
Tour de France cyclist Alexander Vinokurov, who won yesterday's mountain stage, tested positive for blood doping; Tour leader Michael Rasmussen, meanwhile, has been kicked off the Danish national team for missing two drug tests this summer. It's a very bad week for sports, what with the indictment of Michael Vick on federal animal cruelty charges and the announcement that a NBA referee has been fixing games. I'm amazed that neither US story has made it in Spain; many people here are actually NBA fans and you'd think they'd be interested, and they could use the race angle on the Vick story, something the Spanish media is never shy about doing.
The Barcelona blackout means that if a) you live in Barcelona b) you do business with a company in Barcelona c) you are coming to Barcelona, then you are most likely d) screwed.
TV3 is reporting that some 70,000 clients are still without electric power, and 30,000 of them will not have service until tomorrow at the earliest. 10,000 clients got their electricity back this morning. Some of the traffic lights, for example at Calle Mallorca and Paseo Sant Joan, are still out.
Here in Gracia electric power is still hit-and-miss. My building has power; we were only down for about three hours yesterday. Last night the streetlights on my street were on, but on the other side of Calle Escorial they were out. The fruit shop, the Pakistani grocery, and the Bar Zeus still don't have the electricity back on. The main market in Gracia down on the Traversera is still down, and they've had to throw away enormous amounts of food.
Supposedly they had pot-banging protests (caceroladas) against the power outage in several Barcelona neighborhoods last night, but I didn't hear anything. Spaniards love demonstrations. I can't imagine protesting against a power outage, though. I mean, we're all against them, and we all want the electricity to come back on, so exactly what good does banging your pots and pans do?
Fortunately, there were no serious incidents last night, no accidents, crime, or looting.
People are blaming the power companies, which I suppose makes some sense, but many of them have their targets wrong. Fecsa-Endesa is Barcelona's shareholder-owned retail power company, and the outage is not their fault. It was a Red Electrica Española cable that went down; REE is the state-owned company that runs the electrical grid and distributes wholesale electric power to the retailers.
REE's delegate in Catalonia, Lluís Pinós, said that the electrical grid had been affected by two recent accidents related to construction work going on. I'm not sure whether that's a legitimate explanation or just an excuse. We'll see.
Mayor Jordi Hereu demanded that REE get the power back on before tonight. Mr. Hereu, what good is that going to do? We assume they are working as fast as they can, and if they can't work any faster, why are you demanding they do so? Aren't you demanding something impossible, playing to the peanut gallery, just to look as if you had some control over what's going on?
TV3 is reporting that some 70,000 clients are still without electric power, and 30,000 of them will not have service until tomorrow at the earliest. 10,000 clients got their electricity back this morning. Some of the traffic lights, for example at Calle Mallorca and Paseo Sant Joan, are still out.
Here in Gracia electric power is still hit-and-miss. My building has power; we were only down for about three hours yesterday. Last night the streetlights on my street were on, but on the other side of Calle Escorial they were out. The fruit shop, the Pakistani grocery, and the Bar Zeus still don't have the electricity back on. The main market in Gracia down on the Traversera is still down, and they've had to throw away enormous amounts of food.
Supposedly they had pot-banging protests (caceroladas) against the power outage in several Barcelona neighborhoods last night, but I didn't hear anything. Spaniards love demonstrations. I can't imagine protesting against a power outage, though. I mean, we're all against them, and we all want the electricity to come back on, so exactly what good does banging your pots and pans do?
Fortunately, there were no serious incidents last night, no accidents, crime, or looting.
People are blaming the power companies, which I suppose makes some sense, but many of them have their targets wrong. Fecsa-Endesa is Barcelona's shareholder-owned retail power company, and the outage is not their fault. It was a Red Electrica Española cable that went down; REE is the state-owned company that runs the electrical grid and distributes wholesale electric power to the retailers.
REE's delegate in Catalonia, Lluís Pinós, said that the electrical grid had been affected by two recent accidents related to construction work going on. I'm not sure whether that's a legitimate explanation or just an excuse. We'll see.
Mayor Jordi Hereu demanded that REE get the power back on before tonight. Mr. Hereu, what good is that going to do? We assume they are working as fast as they can, and if they can't work any faster, why are you demanding they do so? Aren't you demanding something impossible, playing to the peanut gallery, just to look as if you had some control over what's going on?
Monday, July 23, 2007
TV3 is reporting that 110,000 clients in Barcelona are still without electricity as of 10 PM, and that it might take days to get everyone reconnected. The most seriously affected areas are Gracia, Guinardo, and Nou Barris, where 80,000 clients depend on the Paseo Maragall substation that caught on fire. The 30,000 clients on the left side of the Eixample, which depends on the Calle Urgell substation, will supposedly be back on line tomorrow morning.
The city basically can't do business, with many banks without power, not to mention offices and shops. Everybody dependent on computers has had problems, since they don't work too good without electricity.
Here in Gracia it's a little strange, with some buildings powered and others down. The Bar Vall on the plaza has power, but not the Bar Zeus down the street. The Pakistani grocery store is down, and so is the fruit shop on the plaza. We've got electricity here, but some other people in the neighborhood don't.
The police are getting ready for a "complicated night," as TV3 put it, with no streetlights in much of the city. The cell phone system was down for part of the day, and the fixed-line phones were down for about half an hour this morning.
This is going to mean trouble for the municipal and regional governments, since whenever there's a big screwup in Spain somebody gets the finger pointed at him, his head rolls, and society's displeasure is expiated. That somebody is often from the government, and I'm guessing that Mayor Hereu and regional prime minister Montilla, both Socialists, are going to take some heat. Also expect the PP to demand the resignation of every Socialist within range, and for the Catalan nationalists to pitch a hissy fit about how not enough public money is spent--they prefer "invested"--in Catalonia.
The city basically can't do business, with many banks without power, not to mention offices and shops. Everybody dependent on computers has had problems, since they don't work too good without electricity.
Here in Gracia it's a little strange, with some buildings powered and others down. The Bar Vall on the plaza has power, but not the Bar Zeus down the street. The Pakistani grocery store is down, and so is the fruit shop on the plaza. We've got electricity here, but some other people in the neighborhood don't.
The police are getting ready for a "complicated night," as TV3 put it, with no streetlights in much of the city. The cell phone system was down for part of the day, and the fixed-line phones were down for about half an hour this morning.
This is going to mean trouble for the municipal and regional governments, since whenever there's a big screwup in Spain somebody gets the finger pointed at him, his head rolls, and society's displeasure is expiated. That somebody is often from the government, and I'm guessing that Mayor Hereu and regional prime minister Montilla, both Socialists, are going to take some heat. Also expect the PP to demand the resignation of every Socialist within range, and for the Catalan nationalists to pitch a hissy fit about how not enough public money is spent--they prefer "invested"--in Catalonia.
We got an Instalanche for the El Jueves post, along with a link from Barcepundit who himself got Instalanched, so lots of people at least looked at that one. Also, I searched Google for "el jueves," and Iberian Notes is 20th on the list of English-only searches. That brought in a lot of people.
Wacky stuff from La Vanguardia: there's a back-page interview with a guy named Francisco Klauser, billed as a "videovigilance expert," who says, "There are already companies in the United States that demand that their employees have chips implanted." So I googled "us companies chip implant," and got this story from the Times of London about how some British patients were having identifying chips implanted for medical reasons; this BBC story on how implanted chips might be used to identify dead or wounded soldiers; and this New York Sun story saying that one video surveillance company required its president and two staffers to get the chip that would allow access into the room where their confidential video footage is stored. The staffers were not required to have the chips implanted; one carries his chip on his key ring.
Oh, yeah, one more story, from the New Scientist:
Clubbers in Spain are choosing to receive a microchip implant instead of carrying a membership card. It is the latest and perhaps the most unlikely of uses for implantable radio frequency ID chips.
The Baja Beach Club in Barcelona offers people signing up for VIP membership a choice between an RFID chip and a normal card. VIP members can jump the entrance queues, reserve a table and use the nightclub's VIP lounge.
The New Scientist artiole says that as of May 21, 2004, only nine people had been implanted with the chip at the extremely tacky Barcelona bar, where I have never been and will never go. Since only two US workers have had chips implanted, and one is the president of the company, that means that there are more bar-hoppers in Barcelona carrying these chips than workers in Big Brother's United States.
The tinfoil-hat interviewee adds, "In the Unitred States there is a system called Echelon that can listen to all telephone conversations." Whoa. I've heard lots of ridiculous claims about Echelon (which of course doesn't exist; signals intelligence does exist, and always has), but saying that the US government can listen to all phone conversations is beyond normal nuttiness.
One more slightly wacky bit: there's a rundown of 20th century American first ladies on the occasion of the death of Lady Bird Johnson (whose real first name was Claudia). The author translates "Lady Bird" as "'señora pájaro,' a curious nickname." Of course, a ladybird, also called a ladybug, is a beetle with red wings that have black spots on them, and the translation to Spanish is "Mariquita." Which also means "fag," by the way.
Jesus de Polanco, the guy who ran the Prisa media empire, died at age 77. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, but his company was a Socialist propaganda organ in the same way that El Mundo and the Cope are PP propaganda organs. Prisa's 2006 revenue was €2.8 billion, and its profit was €228 million. In order, the company's biggest moneymakers are El País, which beought in an €83 million profit, Radio Ser, which brought in €74 million, and the Santillana publishing house, which earned €37 million. Polanco's TV station, Cuatro, is operating at a loss.
PP leader Rajoy made nice and went to the funeral, though he didn't like Polanco one least little bit. The PP was boycotting Prisa media outlets because Polanco called them extremists who were trying to start another civil war, and I assume the boycott will continue.
Wacky stuff from La Vanguardia: there's a back-page interview with a guy named Francisco Klauser, billed as a "videovigilance expert," who says, "There are already companies in the United States that demand that their employees have chips implanted." So I googled "us companies chip implant," and got this story from the Times of London about how some British patients were having identifying chips implanted for medical reasons; this BBC story on how implanted chips might be used to identify dead or wounded soldiers; and this New York Sun story saying that one video surveillance company required its president and two staffers to get the chip that would allow access into the room where their confidential video footage is stored. The staffers were not required to have the chips implanted; one carries his chip on his key ring.
Oh, yeah, one more story, from the New Scientist:
Clubbers in Spain are choosing to receive a microchip implant instead of carrying a membership card. It is the latest and perhaps the most unlikely of uses for implantable radio frequency ID chips.
The Baja Beach Club in Barcelona offers people signing up for VIP membership a choice between an RFID chip and a normal card. VIP members can jump the entrance queues, reserve a table and use the nightclub's VIP lounge.
The New Scientist artiole says that as of May 21, 2004, only nine people had been implanted with the chip at the extremely tacky Barcelona bar, where I have never been and will never go. Since only two US workers have had chips implanted, and one is the president of the company, that means that there are more bar-hoppers in Barcelona carrying these chips than workers in Big Brother's United States.
The tinfoil-hat interviewee adds, "In the Unitred States there is a system called Echelon that can listen to all telephone conversations." Whoa. I've heard lots of ridiculous claims about Echelon (which of course doesn't exist; signals intelligence does exist, and always has), but saying that the US government can listen to all phone conversations is beyond normal nuttiness.
One more slightly wacky bit: there's a rundown of 20th century American first ladies on the occasion of the death of Lady Bird Johnson (whose real first name was Claudia). The author translates "Lady Bird" as "'señora pájaro,' a curious nickname." Of course, a ladybird, also called a ladybug, is a beetle with red wings that have black spots on them, and the translation to Spanish is "Mariquita." Which also means "fag," by the way.
Jesus de Polanco, the guy who ran the Prisa media empire, died at age 77. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, but his company was a Socialist propaganda organ in the same way that El Mundo and the Cope are PP propaganda organs. Prisa's 2006 revenue was €2.8 billion, and its profit was €228 million. In order, the company's biggest moneymakers are El País, which beought in an €83 million profit, Radio Ser, which brought in €74 million, and the Santillana publishing house, which earned €37 million. Polanco's TV station, Cuatro, is operating at a loss.
PP leader Rajoy made nice and went to the funeral, though he didn't like Polanco one least little bit. The PP was boycotting Prisa media outlets because Polanco called them extremists who were trying to start another civil war, and I assume the boycott will continue.
We had a major power outage in Barcelona this morning. TV3 is reporting that a high-tension transmission cable in L'Hospitalet went down about 11 AM, which led to two fires at substations, a big fire at the one on Paseo Maragall. The traffic signals went down and the city completely snarled up. Three of the subway lines went out of service. Hospitals were left without electric current and had to resort to generators. People were stuck in elevators. Today is going to be a total economic washout; there goes 1/250th or so of our yearly productivity.
About 300,000 customers were blacked out. Supposedly 150,000 customers are still down; the power came on here about fifteen minutes ago. There'll be a lot of criticism, and this was a massive malfunction. They don't know what happened yet. I still think most of Barcelona's infrastructure is pretty decent.
Problems: 1) Traffic; there are too many cars and not enough roads. 2) The commuter train system; it just plain sucks. 3) To my knowledge, some of Barcelona's sewage is still not treated before it gets dumped in the sea. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this. 4) The sewer system downtown needs to be completely replaced, since on bad days the Ribera smells like human feces. 5) The telephone-Internet system could stand some modernizing. 6) The traffic lights still go out when it rains. 7) Spanish road-building planners are lousy and there are some bottlenecks, like when you get off the Diagonal onto the Ronda de Dalt coming into town from the west, that were obviously designed by unusually bright chimps.
Positives: 1) The metro is pretty good. 2) Utility services--gas, water, electricity--are pretty good. 3) The sewers, and sewage treatment, are better than they used to be. 4) The airport is functional and is being expanded. 5) Long-distance train service is pretty good, and it will be better when the high-speed train reaches Sants station in a few months. 6) The port seems to function just fine. 7) The system of distribution of consumer products somehow manages to keep everyone fed and happy. 8) The Spanish National Health is actually quite good if a little inconvenient, and at least we don't have epidemics.
About 300,000 customers were blacked out. Supposedly 150,000 customers are still down; the power came on here about fifteen minutes ago. There'll be a lot of criticism, and this was a massive malfunction. They don't know what happened yet. I still think most of Barcelona's infrastructure is pretty decent.
Problems: 1) Traffic; there are too many cars and not enough roads. 2) The commuter train system; it just plain sucks. 3) To my knowledge, some of Barcelona's sewage is still not treated before it gets dumped in the sea. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this. 4) The sewer system downtown needs to be completely replaced, since on bad days the Ribera smells like human feces. 5) The telephone-Internet system could stand some modernizing. 6) The traffic lights still go out when it rains. 7) Spanish road-building planners are lousy and there are some bottlenecks, like when you get off the Diagonal onto the Ronda de Dalt coming into town from the west, that were obviously designed by unusually bright chimps.
Positives: 1) The metro is pretty good. 2) Utility services--gas, water, electricity--are pretty good. 3) The sewers, and sewage treatment, are better than they used to be. 4) The airport is functional and is being expanded. 5) Long-distance train service is pretty good, and it will be better when the high-speed train reaches Sants station in a few months. 6) The port seems to function just fine. 7) The system of distribution of consumer products somehow manages to keep everyone fed and happy. 8) The Spanish National Health is actually quite good if a little inconvenient, and at least we don't have epidemics.
Friday, July 20, 2007
The satirical comic magazine El Jueves has been censored. Remember Zap promised us all €2500 for each new kid we have? So on the cover they ran a cartoon of Prince Felipe doing Princess Letizia doggy-style and saying, "You know what? If you get pregnant this will be the closest thing to working I've done in my life." Here's a link; scroll down to see the cover with the naughty bit Xed out. Not very funny or well-drawn, unfair to the Prince who actually works pretty hard as a PR rep for Spain, and in lousy taste, I agree.
However, censoring anything is an extremely bad idea. This whole fooferaw will simply draw more attention to the magazine.
Anyway, Judge Del Olmo of the National Court ordered the issue to be withdrawn from sale, and El Jueves's website is shut down. The basis for Del Olmo's action bans "calumniating or slandering the king and his descendants," lese-majesté, which is punishable by up to two years in prison.
That's ridiculous. The cartoon is clearly anti-monarchical political speech. I'm behind El Jueves, of course, even though it hasn't been funny since Ivà died back about 1994. What pissed me off is that the guy who drew the cartoon claimed disingenuously that it was a caricature of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, and that Del Olmo's dirty mind was imagining things. What a jerk. At least show some guts and stand by what you said.
In case you're interested, after that flap about the caricatures of Mohammed in that Danish newspaper, El Jueves's response was a drawing of its sweating, nervous mascot (who wears a court jester's hat) with the title, "We were going to draw Mohammed, but we shit our pants!" The mascot says, "Mohammed? No Mohammed here. Just keep going," while erasing a drawing; all that's left of it are some sandals and the bottom of a robe. The editor said the point was "to ironize the fear that these people inspire," but added that "the reactions of our readers are one thing to keep in mind, but it's different if you publish a drawing that might get your country's embassy burned down."
One more link: The people spreading scare stories about the danger to the Sagrada Familia caused by the tunnel for the high-speed train under Calle Mallorca have made a fake news video showing the "consequences" if the tunnel is built. Note the horrible English subtitles. I need to call these folks up and offer my translation services.
Political news: Josep Piqué has quit as leader of the PP in Catalonia. Looks to me like he was pushed out, since PP headquarters in Madrid picked the candidates for the general election without consulting him. He resigned the next day. Daniel Sirera, who was the head of the Catalan PP youth organization, has replaced him, which just confirms that headquarters was all ready for Piqué's resignation.
They might have to hold new regional elections in Navarra, since the PP, the Socialists, and the Nafarroa Bai Basque nationalists cannot agree among themselves who is to form a government, and they've each got about a third of the deputies.
UPDATE Monday: I don't know why this post wasn't posted when I posted it, if that makes sense.
However, censoring anything is an extremely bad idea. This whole fooferaw will simply draw more attention to the magazine.
Anyway, Judge Del Olmo of the National Court ordered the issue to be withdrawn from sale, and El Jueves's website is shut down. The basis for Del Olmo's action bans "calumniating or slandering the king and his descendants," lese-majesté, which is punishable by up to two years in prison.
That's ridiculous. The cartoon is clearly anti-monarchical political speech. I'm behind El Jueves, of course, even though it hasn't been funny since Ivà died back about 1994. What pissed me off is that the guy who drew the cartoon claimed disingenuously that it was a caricature of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, and that Del Olmo's dirty mind was imagining things. What a jerk. At least show some guts and stand by what you said.
In case you're interested, after that flap about the caricatures of Mohammed in that Danish newspaper, El Jueves's response was a drawing of its sweating, nervous mascot (who wears a court jester's hat) with the title, "We were going to draw Mohammed, but we shit our pants!" The mascot says, "Mohammed? No Mohammed here. Just keep going," while erasing a drawing; all that's left of it are some sandals and the bottom of a robe. The editor said the point was "to ironize the fear that these people inspire," but added that "the reactions of our readers are one thing to keep in mind, but it's different if you publish a drawing that might get your country's embassy burned down."
One more link: The people spreading scare stories about the danger to the Sagrada Familia caused by the tunnel for the high-speed train under Calle Mallorca have made a fake news video showing the "consequences" if the tunnel is built. Note the horrible English subtitles. I need to call these folks up and offer my translation services.
Political news: Josep Piqué has quit as leader of the PP in Catalonia. Looks to me like he was pushed out, since PP headquarters in Madrid picked the candidates for the general election without consulting him. He resigned the next day. Daniel Sirera, who was the head of the Catalan PP youth organization, has replaced him, which just confirms that headquarters was all ready for Piqué's resignation.
They might have to hold new regional elections in Navarra, since the PP, the Socialists, and the Nafarroa Bai Basque nationalists cannot agree among themselves who is to form a government, and they've each got about a third of the deputies.
UPDATE Monday: I don't know why this post wasn't posted when I posted it, if that makes sense.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Antena 3 led off its afternoon news today with the steam pipe explosion in Manhattan, which killed one person. TV3, by the way, got the story wrong, saying it was a transformer that blew up. Both networks took the opportunity to remind everyone who might have thought that America is a normal place just like, say, most of Europe, that the panicked Yanks spend their lives shaking in fear of terrorism.
This meme is very common in the Spanish press, and I think it's rooted in the wishful-thinking idea that, well, the US may be richer and stronger and more important, but we're better than they are at quality of life and we have to continuously remind ourselves of this in case we forget. This is why there are so many reports on crime and guns in America, though violent crime in the US is not much higher than in much of Europe and suicide is far less common. It's also why there's so much to-do in the press about the so-called "Mediterranean diet" and its superiority to fast food, as if that were the only thing Americans ate.
The steam-pipe explosion that killed one person was clearly more important than the sinking of a cayuco south of Tenerife in which fifty African illegal immigrants are missing and feared dead. We have been saying for years, literally, that it is time for the international press to wake up to the horror story of the African boat people; they're too interested in criticizing the American plan to put up a wall along part of the Mexican border, though.
Breaking news: This morning a suspected ETA member bailed out of a taxi near Castellón when it stopped at a police roadblock. He left his sports bag behind him, which contained explosives. The guy is currently on the run but they'll get him pretty quick.
13.4% of people living in Catalonia are immigrants, almost one million total; the rate of immigration is slowing, but not by much. In 2006 more than 50,000 immigrants arrived, fewer than in 2004 and 2005 but still a lot. Some professor dudes say that many of the jobs immigrants are occupying are the lower-status ones abandoned by Catalan women as they move up in the job market.
They ran an extremely foolish documentary on channel 33 last night called "The Corporation," which featured about ten minutes of Michael Moore, along with the other usual suspects like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Naomi Klein. It went through all the old bogus propaganda stories, from the alleged "business plot" against FDR to the alleged collaboration of American companies with Nazi Germany, and called for "democratic control" over corporate actions. Of course, what that means is giving the government control over the economy. Now you connect the dots and guess which political parties control channel 33. Note that, of course, they won't be showing "Free to Choose" anytime soon.
The Washington Post, Tech Central Station, and Spiked all say the movie's a bunch of crap. Here's the whole damn thing on YouTube in case you want to watch it.
This meme is very common in the Spanish press, and I think it's rooted in the wishful-thinking idea that, well, the US may be richer and stronger and more important, but we're better than they are at quality of life and we have to continuously remind ourselves of this in case we forget. This is why there are so many reports on crime and guns in America, though violent crime in the US is not much higher than in much of Europe and suicide is far less common. It's also why there's so much to-do in the press about the so-called "Mediterranean diet" and its superiority to fast food, as if that were the only thing Americans ate.
The steam-pipe explosion that killed one person was clearly more important than the sinking of a cayuco south of Tenerife in which fifty African illegal immigrants are missing and feared dead. We have been saying for years, literally, that it is time for the international press to wake up to the horror story of the African boat people; they're too interested in criticizing the American plan to put up a wall along part of the Mexican border, though.
Breaking news: This morning a suspected ETA member bailed out of a taxi near Castellón when it stopped at a police roadblock. He left his sports bag behind him, which contained explosives. The guy is currently on the run but they'll get him pretty quick.
13.4% of people living in Catalonia are immigrants, almost one million total; the rate of immigration is slowing, but not by much. In 2006 more than 50,000 immigrants arrived, fewer than in 2004 and 2005 but still a lot. Some professor dudes say that many of the jobs immigrants are occupying are the lower-status ones abandoned by Catalan women as they move up in the job market.
They ran an extremely foolish documentary on channel 33 last night called "The Corporation," which featured about ten minutes of Michael Moore, along with the other usual suspects like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Naomi Klein. It went through all the old bogus propaganda stories, from the alleged "business plot" against FDR to the alleged collaboration of American companies with Nazi Germany, and called for "democratic control" over corporate actions. Of course, what that means is giving the government control over the economy. Now you connect the dots and guess which political parties control channel 33. Note that, of course, they won't be showing "Free to Choose" anytime soon.
The Washington Post, Tech Central Station, and Spiked all say the movie's a bunch of crap. Here's the whole damn thing on YouTube in case you want to watch it.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Time for another blog roundup.
Spanish Shilling comments on language use in Spain. Some of our regular readers will disagree with him.
Spanish Pundit has a news roundup. This is the first blog in English from Spain by a woman that I've seen.
Observing Hermann says Germans are stingy.
Notes from Spain doesn't see the point of going to Pamplona for the Sanfermines.
¡No Pasarán! slaps French bashers of McDo's.
La Liga Loca has the dope on the off-season Spanish football transfers.
LA-Madrid Files thinks there's too much porn on Spanish broadcast TV.
Ibex Salad has lots of Spanish stock market news, just in case you invest your money instead of spend it like most of the rest of us.
Guirilandia features a slice of Barcelona life.
Fausta sets us straight about the "shrinking Americans" story. I'm 183 cm, or 6 foot 1, and I'm noticeably taller than most folks around here. Younger Spaniards are a good deal taller than older Spaniards, but neither group matches the Americans or Northern Europeans.
Expat Yank spanks the new high mucky-mucks in the British foreign office.
Eursoc fills us in on aggressive Russian behavior in Europe.
Davids Mediakritik is tearing up the biased America-bashing German media. This is great.
Colin Davies just keeps on blogging from Pontevedra.
The Brussels Journal has a must-read post on the failures of Zap's foreign policy, especially toward Cuba. Don't miss this one.
A Fistful of Euros ponders the idea of European culture.
Spanish Shilling comments on language use in Spain. Some of our regular readers will disagree with him.
Spanish Pundit has a news roundup. This is the first blog in English from Spain by a woman that I've seen.
Observing Hermann says Germans are stingy.
Notes from Spain doesn't see the point of going to Pamplona for the Sanfermines.
¡No Pasarán! slaps French bashers of McDo's.
La Liga Loca has the dope on the off-season Spanish football transfers.
LA-Madrid Files thinks there's too much porn on Spanish broadcast TV.
Ibex Salad has lots of Spanish stock market news, just in case you invest your money instead of spend it like most of the rest of us.
Guirilandia features a slice of Barcelona life.
Fausta sets us straight about the "shrinking Americans" story. I'm 183 cm, or 6 foot 1, and I'm noticeably taller than most folks around here. Younger Spaniards are a good deal taller than older Spaniards, but neither group matches the Americans or Northern Europeans.
Expat Yank spanks the new high mucky-mucks in the British foreign office.
Eursoc fills us in on aggressive Russian behavior in Europe.
Davids Mediakritik is tearing up the biased America-bashing German media. This is great.
Colin Davies just keeps on blogging from Pontevedra.
The Brussels Journal has a must-read post on the failures of Zap's foreign policy, especially toward Cuba. Don't miss this one.
A Fistful of Euros ponders the idea of European culture.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
I asked my wife Remei about her memories of using Catalan during the Franco regime. She was born in a village named Vallfogona de Riucorb in 1960, and so was fifteen when Franco died and the transition to democracy began. Her parents were farmers who moved to the working-class Collblanc neighborhood in the Barcelona suburb of L'Hospitalet in the late sixties, and they spoke only Catalan with the family.
Says Remei, "It wasn't as bad as people say from my experience...In elementary school around 1972 we had an hour of Catalan class a week, it was like music, not really important like math or history...Outside class we spoke Catalan with the teachers who were Catalan, but they only used Spanish in class...It was mostly official, if you went to the city hall you used Spanish, and with the police. You always spoke Spanish with the Guardia Civil...In elementary school they told us that Catalan was a dialect, not a language. They made a big deal out of that...When I was born I was named Remedios, in Spanish, because that was the rule. I changed it to Remei in 1976 as soon as I could...In the early Seventies I remember music in Catalan, Serrat and La Trinca, and humor on the radio, I don't remember the comedian's name. My mom has some tapes by him. I don't remember TV in Catalan...In the village it was all Catalan, and in the city it was about 60 Catalan--40 Spanish. At work my parents spoke the language the clients spoke, just like today. People only knew how to write in Spanish, though...Nobody I know ever got in trouble with the government for speaking Catalan. About once a year you would meet an asshole (cabronazo) who would give you trouble and tell you to speak Spanish...Once I went to the doctor's office with my mom and she said, "Qui és l'últim?" and some woman said "Hable usted en cristiano, que no se la entiende."...I never felt discriminated against because I was Catalan. There was no pressure in my social class...In general things are much better today, of course. Catalan is really protected, actually."
I read this back to her and she said, "Perfect."
Says Remei, "It wasn't as bad as people say from my experience...In elementary school around 1972 we had an hour of Catalan class a week, it was like music, not really important like math or history...Outside class we spoke Catalan with the teachers who were Catalan, but they only used Spanish in class...It was mostly official, if you went to the city hall you used Spanish, and with the police. You always spoke Spanish with the Guardia Civil...In elementary school they told us that Catalan was a dialect, not a language. They made a big deal out of that...When I was born I was named Remedios, in Spanish, because that was the rule. I changed it to Remei in 1976 as soon as I could...In the early Seventies I remember music in Catalan, Serrat and La Trinca, and humor on the radio, I don't remember the comedian's name. My mom has some tapes by him. I don't remember TV in Catalan...In the village it was all Catalan, and in the city it was about 60 Catalan--40 Spanish. At work my parents spoke the language the clients spoke, just like today. People only knew how to write in Spanish, though...Nobody I know ever got in trouble with the government for speaking Catalan. About once a year you would meet an asshole (cabronazo) who would give you trouble and tell you to speak Spanish...Once I went to the doctor's office with my mom and she said, "Qui és l'últim?" and some woman said "Hable usted en cristiano, que no se la entiende."...I never felt discriminated against because I was Catalan. There was no pressure in my social class...In general things are much better today, of course. Catalan is really protected, actually."
I read this back to her and she said, "Perfect."
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