Brett Hetherington's Blog: "First thought:" My Substack page, page 18

"A posthumous story collection by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (2020)"

Carlos Ruiz Zafón, La Ciudad de Vapor. Todos los cuentos [The city of steam: all the stories], 2020, 224 pages.

Publisher’s summary: (from Literary Rambles blog)

Carlos Ruiz Zafón conceived this work as a recognition of his readers who had followed him along the saga begun with The Shadow of the Wind.

«I can conjure the faces of the kids of the Ribera neighborhood with whom I sometimes played or fought in the street, but none which I would like to rescue from the land of indifference. None but that of Blanca.»

A boy decides to become a writer when he finds out that his inventions give him a few moments more with a rich girl who has stolen his heart. An architect flees from Constantinople with the plans of an unassailable library. A strange knight challenges Cervantes to write a book as has never existed before. And Gaudí, navegating to a mysterious meeting in New York, delights in light and steam, the matter cities should be made of.

The echo of the great characters and motives of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books novels resonates in theses stories by Carlos Ruiz Zafón –gathered together for the first time, and some of them unpublished so far– turning on the magic of the narrator who made us dream like nobody else.

One of the most popular posts on this blog is on a book by Ruiz Zafón: Labyrinth of Spirits (2016).

The Guardian offers an obituary (June 2020), in case you are unfamiliar with this author."

SOURCE: Planeta (publisher)

Japanese flamenco dancer Kayoko Nakata talks about her career and current show "Hermandad"

 

For an article (which I'll post later this month) I interviewed this remarkable woman. 

She speaks in Castilian Spanish...

And the next most popular language used in each country is...

 

   Please comment below and let me know what you think, if you're surprised etc...

Source here: https://mymodernmet.com/second-languages-of-the-world-infographic/?fbclid=IwAR3FvSva_D6ojo7vqmEF8BOnmFgIWNtVdJtWGEHzU0u8q4kmuu4pP6syRSQ

"Gets to the Heart of the Real Spain" -- Another ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader-review of "Slow Travels..."

 

I'm extremely thankful for these lovely words of praise from Lesley Postle about my latest non-fiction book...

"As someone who used to live in Spain and has been away for far too long, for me, Brett's book was a moving nostalgia trip through a country I love.

He brought it all back to life for me in a way that could only be done by someone who knows and understands the place really well. I adored the way he describes the minutiae of Spanish life, the food, the music, and the way things often don't quite work as they should over there, like having a tourist office which is impossible to find.

For me, the mix of travel writing with short commentaries on politics, history, religion and culture works well. There isn't too much of any one topic, so it never gets boring. I just wish it had been even longer. It was really interesting to read about some of the lesser-known towns which I do not know, but which I'd now love to visit.

I could really relate to Brett's personal story, having lived in a similar area and experienced a lot of the same things. It made me quite homesick and even more determined to get back there some day.
Original reader review titled "Gets to the Heart of the Real Spain" at Amazon here.

"House closed" -- My latest article for Catalonia Today magazine

"Precarious:" a word that accurately describes so many jobs under modern hyper-capitalism.

In Catalonia over the last few months this word has become a sword that is hovering over the lives of thousands of people. 
For around 300 employees at the International House chain of European language schools, “precarious” has come to be much worse than a mere word .

In their Barcelona branch (which operated for 40 years) at least 120 teachers and support staff have lost their positions. 
This is in addition to closure of IH’s other workplaces in Tarragona, Sabadell, Badalona, Terrassa and Mataró. Zaragoza and Palma de Mallorca are also shutting up shop.

Speaking to union representative Duncan Hawthorne, who has worked for IH Barcelona for the last 23 years, he told me he’d expected to stay with them for the rest of his working life. His opinion is that it was a great school but badly run over the years, particularly due to power struggles at the top of the company.

“There’s a lot of anger towards the management and that’s who the staff are trying to hold responsible for the end of the business," he said. "Covid 19 wasn't a major cause of us closing. It was just the last straw."

Duncan believes that employees feel abandoned by the owners of the company and their recent protests outside their former office on Trafalgar Street in Barcelona are evidence of that. He explained that one of the worst problems for employees is that they are currently in a kind of financial limbo, neither being paid by IH nor able to claim unemployment benefits (which for  hundreds of thousands of others, are currently taking up to 3 months to be paid by the Spanish government.)

Duncan also told me that the company is in the hands of a legal administrator but is not yet technically bankrupt. 
Another teacher said on social media, "Many of us have worked for IH over the last 5 decades. Staff left without pay or contracts 5 days before the new school year. Staff continued to finish classes yesterday because they care about their students."

Apart from this, it needs to be acknowledged that IH has stated online:

“The closure of schools is due to a sustained deterioration in recent years of International House's main lines of business, resulting from fundamental changes in the world of language teaching. This downward trajectory worsened, without a doubt, with the crisis caused by COVID-19.”

As someone who has also worked in and for a number of different language “academy” schools for many years, to me, this disaster represents just one of many that are striking this sector. 
This is due to the so-called free-market economy failing to provide secure jobs. The (supposedly temporary) closure of Merit School in Barcelona in July is just one other example.

As long as there are native English speakers in Barcelona and elsewhere in Europe giving one-to-one “classes” for a glass of wine or online for under 10 euros an hour -- both common enough -- there will be continuing exploitation of professional, qualified and experienced teachers. 
We are witnessing an ‘Uber-isation’ of teaching and learning in the private sector.

In reality, across our continent there is no law; there is only power. Or at least the power to enforce it. The “convenio” standard that legally exists has been widely abused for years and the pandemic has meant a genuine drop in pay rates. I’ve seen this for myself in trying to find teaching work since August.

So, what do we have in the industry? We have closed houses and open slather.
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, November 2020.]

A free read of "Slow Travels in Unsung Spain"

If you like armchair travel you can now read any part of the book for free at Scribd!

Click here.

"a compelling and eclectic narrative full of the unexpected" -- Nick Inman, Rough Guides

[5 min. video:] The good news and the bad news from Trump's defeat

Balanced and clear-headed comments from Yanis Varoufakis, co-founder of DiEM25, a pan-European, progressive movement that aims to democratise the EU before it disintegrates.

 

 

Controversial art exhibition opens in Barcelona, Nov. 5

 

[12 de febrer de 2019. Xavier G-Solís] ESTATAMBESTAT/ESTATCONTRAESTAT

              by Xavier G-Solis

From November 5 to December 5, 2020,at the  Contrast Gallery: C / Consell de Cent, 281, 08011, Barcelona.

The Contrast Gallery will remain open during the following hours during the month of November:

Tuesday to Saturday from 12 to 6 p.m.

They guarantee all safety  measures and the capacity is reduced to 33%: 6 people.

Openings cannot be held these days.

Next Thursday, November 5, from 12pm to 6pm the artist will be in the gallery for anyone to meet.

 

"Man of protest: Xirinacs" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

  Pic: Fundacio Randa LL

 

Do a Google search (or to my preference, a much more private search on DuckDuckGo.com) for Lluís Maria Xirinacs i Damians in English and you’ll find a decent but short Wikipedia page on him and precious little else. None of his books have ever been translated into English either. 

So, why bother knowing anything about this man? Why should history remember him? Because Xirinacs led a fascinating, varied and ultimately controversial life. A truly unique life. 

Seemingly he is best known in Catalonia for being nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. This was mainly due to his 12 hours a day, solitary, standing, human rights protests outside the Modelo prison in Barcelona during the last decade of Franco’s dictatorship. There, Xirinacs was regularly arrested after being beaten by the police or right wing thugs. 

I spoke to a good friend of mine, one of his former philosophy students. He gave me personal insights I didn’t expect. This is what he told me: 

“Xirinacs was an intellectual academic, a really good teacher. He’d quit being a priest. We’d have big arguments together about Nietzche or Socrates, getting very heated with each other. Two Latins just working it out, I suppose.

During his life Xirinacs was a big supporter of independence for Catalonia but plenty of people here had doubts about him too. He was sentenced to prison near the end of his life for making public statements in favour of ETA, the terrorist group from the Basque country. He gave a speech at that square where they do the annual national memorial at the eternal flame and he basically said that he didn’t agree with any kind of torture but that he was an enemy of the Spanish state and a friend of ETA because their soldiers have to live like secretive rats, in hiding with no girlfriends or children and that they give public warnings before they blow up areas where ordinary people are.

Of course, that contradicted the pacifist views he’d had all his life and in his teaching of Gandhi-style non-violence strategies. 

When Xirinacs was an older man, in his seventies, he said to a small group of his other students, “One day you’ll find my body in the forest.” We didn’t know if it was a hint that he was going to commit suicide or whether he thought he was going to be seized and taken out there to be shot. 

The official autopsy [in 2007] found that he died from natural causes. I accept that because they discovered a note on his desk bitterly criticising Catalan politicians and previously he’d talked to us about Eastern philosophies of wasting away in more of a long, peaceful meditation out in nature.

The funeral at Santa Maria del Mar cathedral was something else too. The head monk from Montserrat, he stood up and said, “Xirinacs was a great model for everyone; a fine example of what we can be in life…but not in death. At that moment, everyone in the church and outside too, started clapping, applauding really loudly. The crowd were drowning him out and also applauding Xirinacs. Maybe. Probably.  

After a minute, the Abbott tried to calm the crowd but they just went on clapping; five minutes, ten minutes; they finally stopped at twenty minutes. That noise was their protest in favour of a great protester.”

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, October 2020.]

"Opportunity"

A penetrating editorial from Lenox at the superb news summary service, Business Over Tapas...

"Spain has a political system which allows opportunity.

From the most humble councillor in the town hall (well, with a voice in the local government, that is) to the very top, there is opportunity. One can make use of it or not, as each and every politician must decide. 

Many did, and that led to the eventual fall of the last conservative government: for corrupción (Wiki)!

The famous mantra of ‘…y tú más’, which translates as something like ‘Oh yea? and what about your guys?’  was shattered with the rise of Pedro Sánchez (one recalls how the PSOE apparatus of the time did all it could to get rid of him) and, to the far-left, the arrival of Podemos with Pablo Iglesias.

Neither of these two is well seen by the Spanish Establishment. Business – and opportunity – is not best served.

From this comes the continuous plots and ferocious political opposition. 

This time though, the electorate is more attuned to the manipulation of the media.

 

In short, their enemies do all they can to find some dirt on either Pedro or Pablo, whose fame rests to a large degree on their integrity, knowing that any sign of having feet of clay will probably topple them.
And for this, the right-wing, much of the judiciary, the media and big business look under every stone and in every sewer, as they seek to manufacture some scandal that would stick, above all in the eyes of the voters."
This editorial was first published through BoT here.