Jimmy Burns's Blog, page 21

From Viña del Mar 1906 to London 2012: A Chilean family story

From Viña del Mar 1906 to London 2012 – A Chilean family story

“Mientras escribo estoy ausente,Y cuando vuelvo ya he partido, voy a ver si a las otras gentes les pasa lo que a mi me pasa…

“While I write I am absent and when I return I have already left; I am going to  find out if other people experience the same thing as I do, if they are as many as I am, if they look like each other, and and when I have found all this out, I’m going to learn things so well that in order to  explain my problems, I’ll talk of geography…” Pablo Neruda

 

My late father Tom Burns was the seventh child of  David Burns, who in the  final quarter of 19th century crossed the  world from his home in Scotland to Chile, settling first in Valparaiso and subsequently in Viña del Mar as a branch manager for Banco de Chile. There was money to be made from nitrates at the time.

Not long after David’s  arrival, he met and married a local Anglo-Chilean Clara Swinburne Echazarreta.   Clara on her father’s side was of English North Country stock but had been born and bred in Chile. Her mother descended from 18th century immigrants, with roots in  Azpeitia , in the Basque province of Guipuzcoa–birthplace of Ignatius of Loyola.

I still have a faded photograph of my  grandparents- as my father put it, “he tall and straight with a grey top hat, the height of a chimney and a grey frockcoat; she a little shriveled woman in a shawl with traces of her mother’s strong Basque features.”

My father was six months old when in 1906 a great earthquake shook Chile. The roof  fell on him but he was saved by his nanny or Ama  who threw herself on his  cot and protected it from  the falling masonry.  My father was uninjured except for a small cut on his lip which scarred him slightly for the rest of his life. His and his Ama’s  survival was no less miraculous than that of the rest of the Swinburne family . Much of Valparaiso was destroyed and there was severe damage across central Chile. Some 4,000 were estimated to have died.

My father’s  parents were profoundly  shocked by the experience and decided to leave for London with all their children. It must have been a sad departure for the Burns Swinburne family were happy in Chile and had an extended family. My grandmother Clara, for all her English and Basque origins, was a passionate Chilean patriot.

My father would later recall that for many years, once she and her family had settled in a large house in Wimbledon, Clara would celebrate Chilean Independence  day, 18th September with her numerous Chilean friends in London. I was also told that the President of Chile himself had given her the gift of a little wooden table on which the actual Independence  Treaty was signed.  It was never quite explained who, if anyone,   had ever signed at it – whether it was the colonial governor turned transitional  president Count Mateo de Toro y Zambrano  or the  great liberator Bernardo O’Higgins remained a mystery. I looked at the table  again just today. It’s a nice table but very small. Hard to imagine people signing documents on it. But its made of beautiful old Chilean wood and has my daughters’ toys in one draw, just where my mother used to keep them.

Let me fast forward now to to December 1981 when,  recently recruited by FT, I was posted to Buenos Aires, accompanied by my wife, then an English teacher. An Argentine diplomat in London told me before I left that I should look forward to lots of good wine, and  delicious steaks. It proved a rites of passage for me as  a young journalist which brought my relationship with Chile down new unexpected paths.

Scarcely eight years earlier as a young university student , studying Modern Iberian  and Latin  American Studies at London University, I had found it hard to react with anything but huge distress  to the news that a democratically  elected government in Chile had been overthrown by a military coup in 1973.

Let’s put this emotion in context. My  Spanish mother came from a liberal Catholic  family who had been forced to flee Madrid and go into exile during the Spanish  civil war after being threatened by left wing militias . I had been brought up between the UK and Spain where a Generalissimo called Franco allowed my Spanish family  to return from exile and live in peace and relative prosperity. And yet I was shocked by the images of the Presidential  palace in the Chilean capital Santiago being bombed by the  air force and civilians being rounded up , tortured, and killed in the football stadium. They included Victor Jara, the singer and author  of one of the most  beautiful ballads I knew of then ,  called Yo Recuerdo Amanda . Jara  had his fingers broken before he  was killed.

And yet  in Argentina  that April 1982 , Pinochet’s  Chile became  a country I came to trust as an ally of the British and I developed a close relationship with Chilean diplomats in Buenos Aires who seemed to be very well informed.

Chile saw itself quite clearly threatened by the Argentine junta’s territorial ambitions and provided critical support to the British , most of it covert. The UK was allowed to make use of Punta Arenas, with RAF planes disguised in Chilean  colours. Chile in turn provided the UK with human and signals intelligence on Argentine military movements. She also provided a safe haven for  British special operations  , as when several of its members turned up in a Santiago hotel after  escaping across the border .

In many respects the Falklands crisis provided a graphic illustration of the primacy in policy-making of political expediency and opportunism rather than support for the international rule of laws.

Many years later, by which time I was a senior journalist with the FT, covering security and diplomatic affairs in London, I was assigned to cover General Pinochet’s arrest in London. I was as much surprised by it as he was. Some months before I had bumped into the General  as we both attended mass at the Jesuit Church in Farm Street in London’s Mayfair. As I subsequently  discovered and reported , he was on his way to a secret meeting with British Aerospace to discuss some British arms sale to Chile.

Whatever the feelings provoked by Pinochet’s arrest- and clearly  Mrs Thatcher was not the only person who was incensed by it- there can be can be no doubt about its outcome. While Pinochet was held in the UK, Chilean political  life lost much of its fear. It evolved in new positive direction, which ultimately paved the way for a consensual transition towards a democratic  society, and political and economic stability of a kind that was exemplary to the rest of Latin America. Future historians will I am sure look back on these years  as a key period in the consolidation of Chilean democracy.

But let me return to  my Dad….

After the Falklands War was over, my parents came to visit us for the first time in Buenos Aires. These were difficult  times. My wife has only just managed to get her job back after the closure of her English language school during the war. I had received a death threat. By contrast to these negatives, it struck my parents, my wife, and I that the situation provided a wonderful opportunity to visit Chile. After all, my father had not returned since leaving, aged six months- in 1906. Now entering the last years of his life aged 82, my father wanted very much to meet up with his Chilean extended family  Swinburne with whom he had kept in touch by letter over the years.

So we set out from Buenos Aires, by plane to Mendoza and from there caught the bus to the Andean border. There was a strong mountain breeze blowing.  I will never forget the site of my ageing father stepping out of the bus to have his passport checked, and then  looking up at the Chilean flag fluttering against the sky,  with tears of emotion in  his eyes. It had taken him more than eight decades to return to the country his mother had never forgotten.

“When I saw the Chilean flag” , my father later wrote in  his memories, “I realized that my feeling for the country was visceral, nothing to do with sentiment or memory. I had left Chile as an infant but it had evidently infected me in the womb as might a mother’s  drugs or drink. Here I was coming back with a sense of recognition, as happens sometimes with a poem never seen.”

That evening several generations of Swinburnes congregated  in the Las Condes neighborhood of Santiago and  celebrated my father’s return with a party.  We gathered under the stars  drinking Chilean wine, one of the best in the world. My  father made a short speech in his English accentuated Castilian  - he had learnt his Spanish while serving as a British diplomat in Madrid in WW2. When he finished , cries of Viva Chile Viva Inglaterra rang out across the garden.

My father, much later,  would wonder at the tapestry of our lives –“a jumble of multi-coloured threads and knots on one side, a day-to-day stitching of this and that, but on  the whole a coherent pattern or picture of infinite variety and surprise…”

For me the process did not end there , it was barely half way through.

Within a year the same family clan that had celebrated my father’s return, gathered with no less  a collective sense of joy and thanksgiving at the christening of our first adopted daughter Julia Isabel born in Santiago. She was destined to shine a huge light in  our lives , just as did the arrival of our second adopted daughter Miriam , also born in Chile.

We would grow older, as our daughters would grow up, living mainly between England  and Spain but always in touch with Chile through friends, through news, through books, and travel. These connections would touch us emotionally in many and varied ways:  a visit to the cinema to see  a beautiful  film based on Skarmeta’s novel about  a postman’s  friendship with a poet; the sound of Andean pipes; a pair of  lapis lazuli earrings; a good Chilean red wine warming one’s heart and  soul.

As a family,  we followed from start to finish the extraordinary saga of the Chilean miners who were buried under ground for weeks and yet whose survival would endure as a lasting testimony to a truly exemplary human endeavor – embracing as  did it the faith and selfless ingenuity and generosity of spirit of the miners and those who came to their rescue, as well as the  statesman ship of President Sebastian Piñera.  The Virgin of La Candelaria , the country were my late father was born in the midst of an earthquake , as were our adopted daughters in the midst of poverty and repression,  came to the mine of San Jose , performed her miracle, and then returned to her Church in Copiapo,  stopping on the way to pray at the hospital where those rescued were temporarily housed.

Believe me I have had my fill of bad news stories over three decades in journalism.  But this was a good news story that prevailed, on that involved  human resilience, endeavour, and  solidarity , underpinned by faith. The dramatic scenes both below and above ground, not just watched  but accompanied by  a global audience ,  showed how conditions of miners in Chile have changed, but also how much better they can be. A century ago, Baldomero Lillo, the country’s Emile Zola, wrote that down there was no distinction  made between man and beast inside the mines . But the miners were nor forgotten by the world like so many in their profession  have been in the past, but were elevated into a international cause as millions of others , beyond the mining community, identified with their  plight.

Credit for  acknowledging what humanity   can achieve when there is a will, courage, and commitment to a noble purpose, must go to Chile’s President Piñera  who within minutes of hearing of the mine’s collapse, cut short a trip to Ecuador  to take personal charge of one of the  most audacious search and rescue operations in modern times.

I want to begin to close my remarks by stating that  I love football. So it is great to see Alexis Sanchez, who cut his spurs in Colo Colo, come to my team  Barca. Great too to see Carlos Pellegrini doing so well  coaching in Malaga. He should never have been pushed out of Real Madrid.

I love poetry…..Back in 1984 when we made that epic journey across the Andes with my parents, we travelled south to Viña del Mar in search of where my father had been born. Where the original  Burns/Swinburne family house and garden had been,  stood a department store. But the parish church had survived over the years and we found his name in the register of babtisms..

In my Battersea home among our Chilean mementoes , one stands out as one of my favorites:  it is a framed piece of text  and a broken clock that an artist friend of us gave to us as a present. Called Broken Glass, the text and the time recall the earthquake of 1906. The text says thus:

“These days  I came back to my home in Valparaiso, after being away a long time. Huge cracks on the walks were just like wounds. Disheartening images of shattered glass covered the floors of the room. The clocks, also on the floor, grimly recorded the time of the earthquake…

We have to clean up, to put things back, and start all over again although it’s hard to find things in the middle of the mess, to collect one’s thoughts. My last work was  a translation  from Romeo and Juliet and a long poem ….- a poem  that was never completed….

Help me , love poem, to make things whole again, to sing in spite of the pain..

It s true that the world does not cleanse itself of wars, does  not wash off the blood, does not get over its hate. It’s true. Yet it is equally true that we are moving towards a realization : the violent ones are reflected in the mirror of the world, and their faces are not pleasant to look at, not even to themselves.

And I go on believing in the possibility of love. I am convinced that there will be mutual understanding, that things will be achieved, in spite of the suffering, in spite of the blood, in spite of the broken glass.”

I read  this to one of my Chilean cousins on a visit he made to London once. “ Who wrote such wonderful lines?  he asked me, having not read them before.

Pablo Neruda I answered.  I felt Chile had been reconciled in our  London home. Viva Gran Bretaña! Viva la Republica de Chile tierra araucana  poblada , entre otros, por españoles e ingleses. Many thanks

Delivered at The Anglo-Chilean Society’s Christmas Dinner, Imperial College’s Dean House, December 6th 2012

 

 

 

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Books old & new available in print & digitally

Jimmy Burns’ books, including some  ‘classics’ of the genre,  are now available as  e-books as well as in print. (see Amazon UK and Endeavour Press websites). They include his prize winning account of the Falklands War and Argentina,  The Last that Lost Heroes ; a hugely entertaining Literary companion to Spain; the Real Deal (original title when  first published When Beckham went to Spain) , an updated history of Real Madrid ; Barca: A People’s Passion, a history of FC Barcelona and the rise of Catalan nationalism; Papa Spy: Love, faith & betrayal in Wartime Spain; and La Roja, Burn’s most comprehensive account yet of  Spanish football- its history, its politics, its brilliance.

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Cuando el idioma se convierta en una arma politica

Los nacionalismos en España se reflejan uno a otro en su esencial anti-democrática, basados en una justificación  historia  basada en la mitología y una evasión de la realidad hacia un futuro igualmente fantasioso.

La polémica alrededor del proyecto de reforma  educativo del ministerio José  Ignacio Wert se nutre de dos posiciones antagónicas  en lo que supone el sujeto de la imposición, – o sea el Castellano o el Catalán. Ya, hace semanas, Rajoy defendió el proyecto de Wert , diciendo que en materia educativa lo que él quiere es que haya “buena convivencia”, y que “todo el mundo se sienta orgulloso de ser a la vez catalán y español”. Insistió en que el objetivo es una educación de mayor calidad que haga crecer la economía, cuando en realidad lo que supone es transformar el idioma vehicular , igual que  ha hecho el nacionalismo Catalán, en una definición política.

Detrás del proyecto del Sr Wert  esta una visión de una España centralizada y cuasi-imperial que nada tiene que ver con la sensibilidades del  estado autonómico que ha evolucionado desde la muerte de Franco. Y se ha enfrentado con el Catalanismo de Arturo Mas que insiste en su propia imposición del Catalán como caballo de Troya de un movimiento independista cuyo apoyo popular a su proprio partido no llego hace pocos días  a ese  ‘mayoría absoluta’ al cual al que aspiraba.

Es evidente que el Sr Wert ha querido tomar ventaja de un momento de confusión y debilidad del nacionalismo Catalán. Los resultados de las recientes  elecciones Catalanas  ofrecieron al país ni un paso atrás ni adelante, sino una imagen preocupante de unos de las regiones potencialmente más ricas del país estancada en un ‘limbo’ político.

Tanto en Barcelona como en Madrid hubiese sido una oportunidad para una pausa meditado sobre la necesidad de asumir parte de la perspectiva de la otra ribera. Pero en vez de esto, Mas se ha acercado  a los extremismos de  Esquerra, y Rajoy a dejado que su política hacia Catalunya se defina por lo mas  neo-con de su partido. Una vez  más se aproximan dos trenes con claras perspectivas de colisión.

 

 

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Catalonia: premature divorce averted

The Catalan electorate   have been  short changed by  headline writers. To  call this a resounding personal defeat for Arturo Mas, on the one hand,  or a sweeping endorsement of Catalan nationalism on the other is to simplify things to the point of distortion.

True,  Mas failed to obtain the absolute majority of CIU  he had been seeking but the increase, at his party’s expense , of the vote for Esquerra, suggests that a majority of Catalan voters remain deeply unhappy about their current relationship with the Spanish state as defined by the current Constitution.

It is also evident that Mas will find it difficult if not impossible to make progress towards Independence without striking an alliance with Esquerra. But this  risks alienating conservatives and christian  democrat supporters of CIU who have little  in common with Catalonia’s radical, left-wing party. Nor can he ignore another interesting result yesterday-the doubling of the vote for Ciutadans,the small non-nationalist Catalan party which has its power base in Barcelona.

Meanwhile from the perspective of Madrid, it will be tempting simply to dismiss Mas as an upstart politician who has got his just deserts, assume that the ‘independence’ project will now disintegrate , and that the best strategy for the central government strategy is  to remain intransigent.

But the PP saw only a relatively small increase in its vote in Catalonia, with its support  among Catalans smaller than Esquerra and the Catalan socialist party whose vote did not dip as dramatically as some pundits had predicted after campaigning with a somewhat ambiguous ticket on  the issue of Catalan sovereignty, inclining towards a federal rather than a full-scale independent state but nevertheless in favour of a change to the constitution..

Overall,Sunday’s results have produced a rather more complex political map in Catalonia than existed prior to the vote, one that will require real statesmanship to identify which way forward. Sadly no politicians in Barcelona or Madrid has yet risen to the challenge of opting for a strategy of compromise and reconciliation. Instead the campaign has been overshadowed by unproven allegations of financial irregularities (against Mas) and dirty tricks (against the PP) which threaten to fuel antagonisms in  the coming weeks.

I suspect  however the majority of Catalans- and indeed Spaniards- have this morning uttered a collective sigh of relief with an election  result  that despite giving the appearance of solving nothing, may have averted a premature divorce.

 

 

 

 

 

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Flamenco meets the Subsaharan migrant

A lot of water has passed under the Spanish cultural bridge since I first saw the flamenco guitarist Paco Peña   in  the late 1960’s playing his guitar in a charity fund-raising event for London’s Spanish immigrant community.

Half a century ago, Peña was slowly building up a following after  moving as a teenager to the UK from  Spain, and playing for diners at the since defunct Antonio’s  Restaurant in Covent Garden. His  fan base initially grew  among the new British mass tourism to  Spain, and other previously uninitiated  in traditional Spanish music.

In those early days, the diminutive Peña cut a solitary, sombre  and somewhat  soulless figure that nonetheless managed to engage with his audience thanks to his apparent humility, an occasional flash of a simpatico smile and the evident artistry of his playing.

What he lacked in soul –or duende , Peña made up for eventually by surrounding himself with a company  of dancers, guitarists, and singers who  helped him expand the scope and depth of what he had to offer. With the passing of the years , he hasdoggedly stuck to his understated personal style, while struggling to keep his popularity amidst a broader revival  of flamenco that has taken many charismatic forms from the back-to-roots followers of the tragic genius Camaron de la Isla to the hugely versatile and innovative guitarist Paco de Lucia, passing through the flamenco-electronic group  Chambao which has fired up a new generation of young fans.

Peña’s latest London show treads new sociological as well as musical territory . By his own admission , he is moving closer to the politically  inspired flamenco dance dramas of Antonio Gades and Carlos Saura, and the guitar and song fusions sought by Ry Cooder . First premiered in the Edinburgh International  Festival of the Arts in 2010, his latest dance work  involves two different strands of music  and movement –  African and flamenco  -as a way of portraying the encounter of the migrants from  sub-Saharan Africa with southern Spain, still one of the major  entry points for those seeking (whether legally or illegally) an escape from hunger and persecution, in the hope of a better life.

From the moment Peña ‘s  guitar playing introduces his company and they in turn open up a darkly lit and otherwise empty  stage to their African counterparts from Senegal and Guinea one is drawn into a emotionally high-risk enterprise. This is a collaborative work between Peña and the no less gifted artistic director, Jude Kelly, that can at any point as easily  undermine the cohesion of the art form that  Peña carries in his blood, as dilute the identity of the invited guest performers, and yet succeeds in producing an event of sense and purpose, as well as magic.

For this is  an encounter that is presented  not as that between two musical traditions which have evolved through cross-fertilisation- but the counter-point of two musical expressions seemingly drawn from distinctive cultures, but ultimately sharing an essential vitality.

“The North African connection with flamenco is already there due to its proximity,” Peña  tells us in the programme notes, “ The sub-Saharan and West Africa music is simply so beautiful and represents a fundamental craving to be , and depth of feeling. It is simply more vital. And it is strongly connected to the earth.”

As the title of the work suggests, Quimeras (figments of the imagination) is a bold attempt to break through the alienation and prejudice involved in human trafficking between continents  to a world where humanity and creativity can prove  redemptive, even if such a transformation may seem illusory . At first the structured, slick choreography of  Peña’s flamenco artists  sharply contrasts with the wild, elemental, if occasional crude  body movements of the Africans . Then , with the Spaniards still seemingly in fiesta mode, two Africans simulate a fight between a migrant and a policeman and voice recordings tell of fellow Sub-Saharians  drowning as they cross the Straits  of  Gibraltar or facing repression and destitution if they survive and reach land.

In another scene a flamenco party has the Spanish males strutting their stuff  while  their empty seats  are dusted by African waiters, the collective indulgence of the first contrasting with the silent subservience of the second.

Only gradually do dancers and singers of seemingly separate worlds take note of each other as their  music and dance take on new more intricate forms that at the time seem to converge at key points. We witness common points of engagement and mutual respect  in song, rhythm  and movement involving equal actors where before there was only an awkward stand-off between self-considered  superior beings and a subspecies:  the flamenco male dancer takes off his high heeled shoes and, as a gesture of reconciliation as much as humility ,  goes barefooted; the African woman dancer joins  her Spanish counterpart in a rumba; a saeta to the crucified Christ  is matched by some haunting African blues. The climactic scene of the show has  Spaniards and Africans coming together in a celebration of multi-cultural music, where flamenco prevails as a form ,neither static nor reactionary  but as part of a transformative experience, both dynamic and open.

In the words of one of the songs of the show sung in Spanish… “In spite of it all, I will continue to dream, and sail through my seas of hopes Until I may fuse them with yours.”

Quimeras, directed by Jude Kelly is showing at Sadler’s Wells from the 23 November- 1 December 2012

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Politicos poco transparentes, periodismo sin rigor

Cuando amigos me preguntan qué ventajas veo en ser hijo de madre Española y padre Anglo-Sajón/ Escocés, respondo,  citando a Valle Inclán, que es el privilegio de ver las cosas con la perceptiva de la otra ribera. Ser bi-cultural no provoca trastornos bipolares sino  al contrario puede, en un buen día, facilitar cierta claridad de perspectiva basada en la experiencia de lo bueno y lo malo de una cultura y la otra.

Pues bien, doy gracias a dios que la profesión de periodista la aprendí en el Reino Unido, con más de treinta anos de carrera dedicada a las páginas del Financial Times- un periódico cuyo prestigio se basa en reportear hechos no fantasías, objetivamente  y sin perjuicio político y separando claramente el reportaje del comentario, dónde la opinión nunca es el monopolio de un partido u otro, ni sujeto a propaganda infiltrada. Siempre me ha gustado el ‘slogan’ del FT como un ejemplo del periodismo como debía de ser: Beyond Fear or Favour – Mas allá del miedo y el favoritismo..

También me orgullo que vivo en un país –el Reino Unido- donde el mejor canal público de TV- La BBC- se ha sometido voluntariamente , una vez mas, a un proceso intenso de auto-critica por los fallos periodísticos que llevaron a falsas acusaciones contra un político , y, por contraste, la libertad de acción en supuestos abusos sexuales de una estrella del medio.

Los Anglo-Sajones son en general  buenos historiadores, biografos, y periodistas porque tienen buena memoria y son serios investigadores – tienen que serlo porque las leyes de difamación protegen al sujeto y llevan a multas o prisión sin pruebas, y porque el público lector y teleoyente no perdona el hecho de que se miente.

Escribo estas líneas cuando aumentan las  acusaciones e insinuaciones alrededor de cierto políticos en  Cataluña. Mas allá del ‘timing’ claramente político de tal maniobras, lo más notable de esta campaña es la falta de  claridad por parte de los acusados por un lado, y de rigidez periodística en general, por el otro. A pocos días de unas de las elecciones regionales más importantes desde la muerta de Franco, el debate político y la cobertura periodística- haze tiempo,  de poco nivel-se debilita más aun gracias a una conspiración que no está probada ni ningún equipo periodístico  aparentemente tiene la capacidad profesional de confirmar o destruir.

En vísperas de las elecciones, la falta de transparencia –por no decir honestidad- por parte de ciertos politicos, y falta de rigor periodística por  parte de ciertos medios, hace poco servicio a la democracia.

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The difference between Stamford Bridge and the Nou Camp

As anyone who reads some of the comments on my blogs will know, I have an obsessive follower.  He follows me continuously  so as to conduct an unrelenting campaign of criticism verging on defamation whenever I write anything positive  about  FC Barcelona- which is quite often, I admit.

I can reveal  that ‘Captain Terry’ –for that is the alias under which he pursues me on the web- is known to me as a good friend from childhood on any other subject but football- otherwise I would have set the dogs on him by now.  He is Anglo-Spanish , like I am- but happens to be a life-long supporter of Real Madrid and Chelsea FC-whereas I am a fan of Barca, full-stop. That is the crux of our problem. It is evident that Captain Terry and my uncompromising exchanges are not simply about football rivalries- and Barca’s matches against FC Chelsea have become uncomfortable grudge matches just like their encounters with Real Madrid have always been- but have to do with a  way of looking at life as played on the pitch and beyond.

Both Florentino Perez and Ramon Abramovich, the president of Real Madrid and the owner of Chelsea FC respectively, are businessmen who want to see quick returns on their investment. There is of course a distinction to be made in so far as Real Madrid is not financially owned by Perez but by its members whereas Chelsea is owned by the Russian. Nonetheless Perez has imposed his will as much as Abramovich has done, and sees Real Madrid like he sees his multinational construction company ACS- a necessary predator.  Players and managers are simply cogs in a money making machine which in turn is supposed to bring ever greater conquests at home and abroad. Style and conduct come second to achievement. The ends justifies the means. Be on a trophy conquering side, and you will be a superstar. Cease to oil the machinery, and you are out on your ear,  before too long.

At Real Madrid,  Mourinho-who moulded Chelsea in his image before going on to forge mental and operational synergies with Florentino  Perez after Italy- has survived because he has delivered some success, although were the Spanish  club to fail to  go beyond the quarter final of the Champions League and lose La Liga to Barca, then Mourinho would almost certainly  be given  his marching orders  just as Di Matteo has been given his at Chelsea.   Mourinho knows this which is why he has been preparing a return to the Premier League for some time. Don’t rule out Chelsea, eventually.

At both Real Madrid and Chelsea ,  human beings are as dispensable as faulty widgets, as Vicente Del Bosque discovered some years back. But the problem with this hire and fire , this conveyor belt policy,  is that a club that pursues it risks losing  any sense of collective identity, team ethos, philosophy and style of play-in short,  it risks disintegrating leaving nothing but a core of frustrated, thuggish fans.

Which is  why I would be very surprised if Pep Guardiola   would allow himself  to be hired by either club. ( Man City offers a more complex proposition with former Barca men now in the club’s management structure). Guardiola owes everything he was, is, and has become, to FC Barcelona, a club that has accepted Qatar’s sponsorship, but can still claim to be about much more than just winning  and making money . It is a club with a set of values  that have to do with integrity, generosity, and creativity and inseparable from the political context it finds itself in.

Guardiola, let’s not kid ourselves , is no aesthete. He lives currently in a luxury Manhattan apartment,  loves his  family  and luxuries, and expects money to pay for it all. But either Bernabeu or Stamford Bridge would kill his soul and his reputation-that is my faith.   And I know Captain Terry will want to prove me wrong and that Rafa Benitez will want the Chelsea job if nothing else but to prove he can make Torres help win trophies again. The Russian would warm to that. After all, Abrmaovich spent a lot of money on El Nino, the player Benitez originally  tempted  out of modesty.

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Keeping the BBC in perspective

Looking back over the thirty years I worked for  the FT, I still cannot believe how lucky I was to have worked for an organisation that believed there was such a thing as journalistic integrity. It meant that however difficult the assignment we were expected to get our facts right, and on stories of particularly sensitivity,  there were hierarchical checks and balances in place that went via down-table sub-editor to the editor, as well as legal ones, with a lawyer at the end of a phone, or if needs be, at our desk.  We also had a motto, which we sometimes  printed on our mast head- beyond fear or favour. I cannot remember an instance when an investigative piece I wrote or collaborated on did not count on our editor’s support if, as often happened, the subject tried to stop publication, not because it was wrong but because it was embarrassing.

I share this by way of reflecting on the plight of the BBC, the only other media  organisation for whom I have always felt a similar respect for.  I believe that John Entwistle had no option but to resign-although the buck should not stop there. Eventually others in management and those most directly involved not just in the Newsnight report leading to a former Tory treasurer being wrongly accused as a child abuser, but for whatever ‘cover up’ is proved in the case of Jimmy Saville.

Those who argue that they cannot understand why the BBC has been pillored for not naming a suspect and other TV companies have escaped for naming at least one Tory, and producing lists of others , forget the BBC’s special status as a public corporation funded by the taxpayer.

However it would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that the BBC has lost all moral authority, with the assumption that its mistakes are the product of an endemically flawed organization. This is not, I would argue, an equivalent to News International and Hackgate.

The BBC’s coverage of the US election night and today’s Cenotaph memorial service show, in the midst of its crisis, that it can still hold its head high as the best public network in the world-one that in the past has known when to stand up for what is right and just and true, in defiance  of political pressure. The BBC continues  to be an essential part of our democracy, rightly criticized when it gets things badly wrong, but also deserving to be judged  from a longer -term perspective.

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Love-in at Celtic Park

 

Its rare to recall a football game in which your team’s defeat doesn’t leave you with a bitter after-taste.

But few Barca supporters looked dejected last night as they emerged into the Scottish rain after seeing their team lose 2-1 to Celtic in their Champion’s league tie. From earlier in the day Barca and Celtic supporters had been sharing pints, swapping travelers tales, previous match anecdotes, and shared good memories of a Swede. When the match was almost upon them , the 1,000 cules who had scraped their spare euros for the trip happily joinedin You Never Walk Alone-the anthem, if ever there was one, to community  and respect.

Earlier in the day, Glasgow University had hosted a conference on the culture of FC Barcelona-its roots in the Catalan identity, its democratic values,its team ethos, its universality The audience, much of its Scots students, participated enthusiastically. A history of struggle and disputed nationhood  have forged enduring bonds that contrast with the destructive rivalry that for years has characterised the Celtic/Rangers encounters.

There was more to yesterday’s match than a love-in however. Messi for one walked off without even a handshake- and I could understand why. Minutes earlier he has just reduced Barca’s deficit with a characteristically predatory finish.The result would have been very different had Barca translated their dominant play and passing into more successful shots at goal. But for the inspired saves and deflections of their goalkeeper Fraser Forster, things would certainly have turned out rather worse for Celtic. Goals by Jordi Alba and Alexis, and two more goals by Messi.

This was a game where, for long periods, Barca mesmerised, the individual skill of most of its players combining in a display of creative football that showed its main weakness in the defence of the goalpost against Celtic’s set pieces. In both halves, Celtic nonetheless absorbed wave after wave of Barcelona pressure. In terms of sheer resilience, it was a heroic performance by the home team, personified in Tony Watt,the Celtic teenage striker who snatched what proved the decisive goal seven minutes from time having exploited a rare mistake by Xavi Hernandez.

And when the game was over, Celtic’s coach Neil Lennon described his side’s victory as one of the greatest nights in the club’s recent history and the best moment in his professional career.   It was good to be in on the celebrations, Neil-but you were lucky against a better team and to have a stadium in which fans chanted and sang their hearts out-win or lose.

 

 

 

 

 

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Los Catalanes y el bien comun

Nací en Madrid, de una tradición familiar influenciada más que nada por el liberalismo esencial de mi abuelo Marañon- la política no como dogma, sino como una manera de ser, de respeto hacia el otro, de reverencia hacia el buen común. De padre Escocés, crecí en el país (Inglaterra) con la tradición parlamentaria  más antigua y hoy dia- mas representativa del mundo- donde mi religión (la Católica) fue perseguida en tiempos pasados y donde los fieles aun somos minoría. Debo mi educación, y mi fe en la humanidad hecha posible por Cristo a los Jesuitas y mis tutores neo-marxistas del London School of Economics.  Hoy tengo casa en Londres y en Sitges (Catalunya) y amigos de toda España, además de otros estados de Europa, Estados Unidos, y Latino América que han sobrevivido la amenaza de dictaduras  para gozar de sus libertades. En Madrid me hospedo cerca de Las Cortes en un hotel llamado Catalonia, y mi taverna preferida sigue siendo Casa Ciriaco.

También me gusta el buen futbol. Naci cerca del Bernabéu de la década de Di Stefano & CO. Me hize culé desde la época de Cruyff y hoy soy seguidor de La Roja de Del Bosque, un Salamantino que sabe dialogar y crear, por lo menos en el campo,  de lo mejorcito que el país puede ofrecer.

Si siento necesidad de compartir parte de mi CV con el que no me conozca, es porque acabo  de  volver a Londres después de pasar unos días entre Barcelona y Madrid, testigo de  un diálogo de sordos en el tema Catalán entre gente que reducen una opinion intermedia en perjuicio.

Solo un viaje cómodo en Ave separa a las dos grandes ciudades de España, pero pasar un rato en una o el otro es darse cuenta que las tendencias que dominan el debate -tanto en el nacionalismo Catalán- como en el gobierno majoritario (sino absoluto) del PP-parecen cada día mas enfrentadas,  como dos trenes en rumbo hacia un choque frontal, sin posibilidad de desviación o pausa.

La  analogía  transportista sugiere una falta de dialéctica , y en vez de ella una dinámica esencialmente destructiva. La política carece de ‘seny’  por el lado Catalán, y de habilidad y nobleza política por parte del gobierno de Rajoy, con su único lazo  común la falta de honestidad y civismo.

El Sr Mas persigue un  escape hacia el futuro- una Catalunya independiente- , el PP del Sr Rajoy  un escape hacia el pasado, un concepto de país grande y unido, o sea más centralizado y intolerante.  Ambos están de acuerdo de que el modelo constitucional ha caducado en ciertos aspectos , sin acordar en cuáles Pareze imposible que sea de otra manera ya que ambos simplemente ven la Constitucion como un instrumento de poder. O sea se abre el melón pero nadie está dispuesto a acordar como se comparten las piezas

En su discurso  político ambos lados distorsionan  la historia  política  de un país que , según lo que pintan ellos, fue, es , y será siempre incapaz de jamás acordar una narrativa consentida.

Hablando con ciertos representadas del CIU y de Ezquerra  pareciese que la historia de Catalunya fue simplemente  una de  persecución y no , en  muchas ocasiones, de complicidad y colaboración. El  victimismo que se sufre en ciertos ámbitos Catalanes recuerda a el que una generación de cules años atrás sentía con el Barca , cuando el Real Madrid  ganaba más trofeos por culpa de Franco y los árbitros y no gracias al bueno o el mal juego, a pesar de que ambos clubs han tenido seguidores, jugadores , y hasta presidentes Franquistas.

Los progandistas del CIU presumen de democratas pero piden apoyos en su discurso de autodetermcaion a Moscu y Tel Aviv. Olvidan, o quieren que olvidemos, que Mas y los suyos no solo han sido parte del juego económico pactado por Rajoy y Bruselas pero los más severos en aplicarlo después del  desgaste de la Generalidad co-partidista. Hoy se flamea la bandera independista  , según cuentan mi amigos Catalanes, por puro cabreo con la política de Madrid. Hace meses las manifestaciones en Catalunya se multiplicaban por puro cabreo hacia la Generalidad. Se ha pasado de la política opositora al populismo donde el país se divide entra Catalanes y Españolistas.

Es una transformación  que tiene su equivalente en el nacionalismo y- porque no decirlo- en el separatismo del PP que desde su oposición al Estatut del 2006 hasta su más recién rechazo de un dialogo sobre una financiamiento más justo  hacia Catalunya  ha demostrado  un menosprecio hacia los Catalanes no compartido por gente que considero demócratas.

En contraste con la negatividad que siento del populismo de un lado y de la intransigencia de otro , he podido respirar  algo más positivo en el dialogo que he mantenido con amigos que se sienten Catalanes pero no independistas, y buenos democratas en Madrid,  que aun no han perdido esperanza en que la cuestión de Cataluña se solucione tarde o temprano, en base de una reconciliación y no de una ruptura, para  el bien no solo de todos los Españoles (Catalanes included) sino de Europa.

Con ellos comparto el párrafo mas esperanzado del manifiesto subscrito por escritores, abogados políticos, economistas y artistas- este pasado fin de semanas y que no dudo en repetir , aunque los extremos me culpen de perjuicio político o cultural.

“Consideramos…que todas las fuerzas democráticas deberían sumarse en la búsqueda de un mejor encaje institucional para Cataluña, de una financiación más justa y de una federalización del deteriorado Estado de la autonomías, que inscriba en su norma suprema la solidaridad interterritorial y los criterios de su aplicación compatibles con el esfuerzo común de todos y el principio de ordinalidad. Por ese camino podemos seguir ampliando las cotas de libertad, igualdad, progreso y respeto mutuo logradas con la Constitución de 1978.” I say Amen to that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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