Politics

15M Barcelona Madrid Bilbao Seville Valencia

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

I am sitting in Cornwall feeling frustrated by the UK news coverage of the protests in Spain. At least BBC Radio 4 has now started to report that something is going on but the news presenter says that a demonstration is happening in Madrid. No mention of Barcelona or any other city. They also stress the youthful nature of the protesters, somehow managing to imply that youth = naive enthusiasm = not so important.
It is interesting to move between two countries and notice how the news is dominated by local items and how those same items are considered too trivial to mention in the other country. British stories are rarely featured at all on Catalan TV and I don’t think I have ever seen a Catalan story on the BBC news. Except for sports of course. If it’s football!
So, for those of you who are wondering, there are municipal elections on Sunday in the whole of Spain. I am entitled to vote as I am registered as resident in Granollers but it turns out that I should have applied for the voting part of my rights and by the time the voting card should have arrived, it was too late to apply. Granollers is covered in posters of grinning politicians. What about this one? He gave out balloons to all the children in the Porxada………

The protests, which started on May 15th (now known as 15M which I may adopt as a new way of writing down my birthday) were publicised on Facebook and Twitter and are taking place all over Spain, not just in Madrid. People are fed up with the corruption and lies of politicians and bankers and the way the economic crisis is being manipulated to cut living standards for most people while a minority still grow richer. Unemployment in Spain is now at 21% and youth unemployment 45%.


Normally all political activity is banned on the day before an election. It is called the Jornada de Reflexión, the day of reflection, and today – Saturday – marks a change as the demonstrations are now in direct opposition to the law.  I am thinking about all those people in Puerta del Sol and Plaça Catalunya and beyond and wishing them well.
I notice that in some British papers the protestors are critisised for lack of clear objectives. this seems to me to miss the point. This is not a political party with a manifesto and a party line. These are ordinary people, of all ages, citizens who want a voice and a say in democracy. And other ordinary people are bringing them supplies – food and blankets and water – to show support.  It seems to me like a live process rather than a fixed rigid demand.
Something exciting is happening!   Som-hi!

Heated Discussions

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

On Wednesday I returned to my Catalan class feeling unprepared after a month of speaking English in Cornwall.
I was also feeling a bit jaded after leaving my Lamorna home and returning to several problems here as well as facing the house again which now feels empty after the death of my mother not in law. I haven’t felt able to write about that yet but just to say that she was a great support and a good friend to me in my first year here and I feel her loss acutely.
So, after resisting the temptation to stay at home and ‘study’ I cycled through town to the school and rejoined my class which is a mixed group of people from Latin America and Morocco.
Near the end of the session we were discussing sport and suddenly a slightly boring (to me) lesson grew legs and started to run.  One moment we were talking about which sports we like and the next we were having a heated question and answer session about Islam, the wearing of the veil and the burka, Palestine, war in Iraq, Libya, Tony Blair …….

It started when one normally quiet Moroccan woman in a headscarf said she can’t attend gym classes or the swimming pool because of her religion. All classes here are mixed gender and she can only go if it is woman-only but that doesn’t exist in Granollers.  Everyone started asking questions. Why can’t she chose to do as she likes, why wear the veil, what is written in the Koran…etc etc.  A man from Morocco spoke about the European fear of Islam and the situation in Palestine.  Someone else asked if she would have to wear a veil if she travelled to Morocco. The conversation was so fast I could hardly keep up let alone contribute anything. Most people speak fluent castellano so when their catalan fails them they fill the gaps with that.
I think that in the UK we are so nervous of saying the ‘wrong’ thing that we don’t ask lots of questions about religious and cultural differences so it was refreshing to hear everyone just being curious. But it also made me slightly anxious.  It was like a tap which once turned on could not be stopped.

Mention of the UK and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and all eyes seemed to turn to me – suddenly I realised what it is like to be seen as representative of all things questionable in your country.
How close sport is to politics.  Perhaps language classes like old fashioned dinner parties should avoid all mention of Politics and Religion and ….Sport. Or perhaps not?

Election Day

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment

Today was voting day in the Catalan elections – for the Catalan parliament. I don’t have a vote but went along to see what happens at the voting station. It was a beautiful autumn day

The streets were empty because it was a Sunday perhaps to make sure more people are free to vote and also no need to close schools for the day. ( I know that is part of the fun in the UK but here there are already so many days of fiesta)
I am just beginning to get my head round the political parties – they all have very long names which end up being acronymised. CiU  PSC ERC PPC and the lengthy ICV- EUiA and many more smaller ones.
The streets have been festooned with posters of the leaders and their slogans.


 At the polling station there is a long table with all the possible parties to vote for.
Each paper lists the candidates for one party only.The voter takes a list – only one – and puts it in an envelope then drops that in a box. You vote for a party – the list names all the candidates in one party and the ones at the top are the leaders who will definitely get elected.

At the moment it looks like CiU have won the most votes but without a majority. So they can decide to govern an a minority or form an alliance. Artur Mas will be president and so I’ll be seeing a lot more of him on TV. Sorry there is no photo – I don’t know what happened to it as I’m sure I took one.
There are 3 possible coalition partners. Thanks to this web site for helping me understand it all a bit better – in English. Now to watch the discussion about coalitions – that will be a good way to learn more. Here there are so many levels of connection and separation – there is the question of independence as well as the obvious differences between left and right.

Blue and Red and Gold

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments

 

Two big pieces of news here.
One is the World Cup final which takes place tonight and will be a match between Spain and Holland. As a Scot I always have to resolve the vexed question of who to support when England has qualified and Scotland has not. I’m not very interested in football but I do get annoyed when people assume that I want England to win when it really doesn’t feel like my country. And something rather similar is the case here in Catalunya but it is also more complicated. As the graffiti says, Catalunya is Not Espanya! Catalunya is officially an Autonomous Region but to the majority of Catalans it is a country with its own language, culture, customs and history. Catalans do not feel they are Spanish which is why it feels complicated to support La Roja. At the start of play in the semi final 7 out of the team of 11 were players from Barça – the Barcelona football team inspires love, respect, admiration, adoration, obsession from people of all ages here and beyond. On nights when Barça plays you don’t need to watch TV – you know when there is a goal as the streets thunder with explosions and horns tooting. And if they win – cars stream along with horns never stopping and scarves and shirts hanging from the windows. Sounds from the streets after the match were loud and excited but to my ears rather less than after a Barça/Madrid game. Four of the eleven players in the semi final were Catalan. So although it is not the national team which would swell the hearts of people here it is also hard to ignore the match tonight. Mixed and complicated emotions.

Connected to this and even more complicated is the news of the demonstration yesterday which took place in Barcelona. I have struggled to get a good enough grip on the facts so I can write about it here. But in brief, the Catalunian government created a constitutional law called the Estatut. It describes how the people want the country to be organised and what is the vision for the future. But while Catalan people see themselves as a nation the Spanish government see Catalunya as no more than a region and herein lies a quagmire of power struggles, reactions, fear and anger, frustration and suppression. Within the Spanish state there is a lot of fear of Catalan independence. Financially Catalunya is a wealthy region and pays a lot into the central coffers while receiving less in return. What things make up a separate identity? Culture, history, laws, taxes, self determination, education and language. If you want to suppress a culture these are the areas to try and control. And as the Estatut gives the Catalan people rights to organise and control these areas there was a reaction from the Spanish government especially in the guise of the PP – the Spanish Right Wing party. They took the Estatut to court and in the past few days the verdict has been announced. Some parts are deemed unacceptable and others need to be changed. Now that I have read through more of the detail I can see why yesterday more than one million people – ONE MILLION – marched through the streets of Barcelona to protest that Catalunya should decide on its future. That Catalunya is not a small region of Spain and that now it seems that full independence is the only way forward.
All the areas I mentioned above are under attack –
* Catalunya should not call itself a nation
* Catalan language should not take precedence in Catalunya
* Catalan government cannot make decisions on creation of taxes
* Only the Spanish government can control and oversee Catalan banks
* As it is not a nation it cannot possess a national flag nor a national anthem
….and more…look at this site if you want to know more – its in english written by a Catalan man who lives in Holland.
I watch all this of course from the outer edges – it is interesting and also another little minefield to tread and I try to remember not to say the wrong things or put my foot in it too deeply. After years of being ‘anti english’ in Scotland, ‘anti carnivores’ as a vegetarian and more than a little ‘anti men’ as a feminist I am now more pro things than anti and I don’t like to feel carried along on emotions which make me forget my humanity or stop thinking critically. But…I can see there is a problem here – there is something out of balance and eventually there will be a shift.
The newspaper headline at the beginning of this post says ‘Catalunya shouts ENOUGH!’ I begin to think an independent Catalunya could be a positive way forward and it is an interesting time to be here and part of the story.