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Elections in Catalunya

~ Kate Wilson ~ Leave a comment

One week from now there will be elections in Catalunya to elect the new Parliament.
I am still trying to make sense of it all but little by little am getting more informed.

The current President is Artur Mas. His party is Convergence and Union otherwise known as CiU. All the parties have names like this – ERC, EUiA, PPC, ICV, SI etc etc.
Goodness, it’s no wonder it has taken me three years to even begin to understand.
The streets are now lined with posters, dominated by the faces of the candidates. People will vote for a party, choosing one piece of paper with a list of all that parties candidates in order of importance and will place this in the voting box. No ticking of boxes or putting a cross against a name.
The more votes a party has, the more candidates are elected. The first named on the list will be the leader, eg Artur Mas, and the candidates will get in, according to their place on the list.
How do they decide who gets a high or low place on the list? After all, if you are at the bottom then you are very unlikely to get elected.
In CiU for example, the leader decides who goes where.
However in SI – Solidaritat Catalana per la Independencia – the list is created more democratically, according to a voting system.

Here is a list of the political parties of Catalunya.
I wonder who the Pirates of Catalunya are?
Here’s what I found on Wikipedia:-

Pirates of Catalonia is a political party in the Catalonia region of Spain. The party is based on the model of the Swedish Pirate Party and is a member of the Pirate Parties International. it supports intellectual property reform, open access to culture and knowledge, transparency and Direct Democracy.
The party was founded in August 2010 and was officially registered as a political party in October.

Of course the main item of interest at the moment regarding the coming elections is that fact that Artur Mas has said he will call for a referendum about independence.  And this is causing a lot of ripples in the relationship between Catalunya and the government in Madrid.
Here is a really interesting article on the reasons for session and the viability of a Catalan state.

General Strike 14N

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments

Bonnie and I walked into the centre to see what was happening today, the day of the General Strike

The shops around us were all open – little independent ones.  Further into town there were a lot of closed shutters, especially the big chains like Mango or Caprabo. There were enough places open so you could buy bread, some boots, a handbag, a computer or a newspaper and some cafes had customers eating and drinking. But the general feeling was of a quiet lunchtime, some people wandering around with their dogs and children but all fairly low key. Schools are closed – we have two boys here enjoying yet another day off.
I think I had missed a demonstration – in the Porxada there were a few groups of people chatting who looked as if they had been at some protest. The Catalan flag with the star is the Independence flag.

Caldes De Montbui – Part One

~ Kate Wilson ~ Leave a comment

It was a huge effort to get myself off the couch and into the car on Sunday to drive to Caldes de Montbui.  I’m struggling a lot at the moment to find energy to go out.  I like walking into Granollers for coffee and cake, I am fine about driving to the beach at St Pol or taking the high road to the Costa Brava and Sant Nicolau. But every time we plan to do something cultural here in Granollers, I start to feel sleepy, to crave another chapter of Anthony Trollope, to remember emails I need to send.

But, in the end we went and of course the healing waters of one of the Catalan spa towns gave me a massive energy boost which I am still feeling today.

There was a dance and art festival on there this weekend. It is called Miao and I wrote about it before here.  Caldes is an amazing place with constantly running hot mineral water which you can sample in the various balnearis in town. It is also available in the safareigs which were traditionally the places the women went to wash the clothes

The first performance was in the vegetable allotments below the church. What a place!

  It is an incredibly beautiful vegetable patch with lemon trees

 and peppers plants and little ditches which carry the mineral water around the land

We all walked in single file along the narrow walls.

 Afterwards Pep and I went for a beer and missed the second performance in the little safareig where two years ago we wrote our desires on the walls.  Instead we watched the bars and cafes preparing for the Barça Madrid match.  And then we went back for the next dance, described in Part Two!







Communication Problems

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment

Is Mercury retrograde or something?
I was listening to the Spanish station Radio 3 yesterday while dozing on the sofa after lunch. Then it stopped. It sometimes does that – something to do with streaming – so I didn´t worry. But later I noticed the internet wasn´t working at all. Nor was the phone.
Today after several long phone calls with Orange we are still without either.
So all my good intentions of phoning people, emailling people, and writing regular blog posts once more, have gone out the window.
Now I am in the local locutorio on C/Girona and battling with all the usual problems of memory and faulty keyboards – what are all my passwords? how do you make this sign @ on a spanish keyboard? and why do these internet cafes always have a pause before the letter appears on the screen so that you press it hard, more than once, and after 5 seconds or so, it apppppppppears like that?

Will get back to normal soon I promise. But meanwhile I can´t do more – this computer is driving me crazy.
But I should add that today we had a wonderful swim in the sea at last. At Tossa del Mar. With dear friends from Canada and a very happy dog.

What happened?

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

If I was reading my blog I would have thought yesterday: 
‘What’s going on?  How can you write nothing for almost a month and then just reappear with no explanation with a post about paella in Cornwall?’

I have been unable to write for the past month.  Not because there is nothing to say nor because I don’t want to say anything but because I don’t know how.
So here it is. Unadorned reality.  In early August we heard that my brother had died, unexpectedly, suddenly and without warning.  And when you write a blog, especially one that is semi-personal, this kind of real life event poses a problem.  Ignore it? Write about it? Refer to it in passing?
Impossible decisions while in the middle of an emotional crisis.

For myself I have no problems writing about my life and what happens but it’s not just about me, there are others who might prefer total privacy.
So silence ensued while I mulled over this question and many others

Someone dies and in a strange way you feel more alive. I suppose it is because you are shaken out of the dream in which you live forever and change takes place slowly and gently.
Boom!  Suddenly you wake up to time and mortality and uncomfortable words like ‘too late’ and ‘never’ and ‘the end’. And exciting words like ‘now’ and ‘do it’ and ‘yes’

This blog is about my life in Catalunya but I sometimes wonder what exactly that should include and what is better left out. I never wanted it to be just a travel blog nor a blog about culture and language. For me it was always more about what happens when you step outside of the familiar and comfortable and go in search of Self.  The Catalan Way is a sort of joke I have with myself about taking a different path and I want to describe all the adventures I have along the way. 
But I notice now more than ever that there is a censor – internalized and strong – that sometimes makes it hard to write exactly how I would choose to

My brother was a writer – he wrote fiction while I have chosen this different way.  But our own lives when described become a sort of fiction, we include some things and miss out others.
Writing here is important to me so I include this part of my life. 

Rather tentatively, I must admit, but with love.  And with a heightened sense of the importance of following your dreams, appreciating each day whatever it brings, and loving everyone in your life as much as possible.  We are all fragile and we are all strong.