Brett Hetherington's Blog: "First thought:" My Substack page, page 19

VIDEO: "How Brexit Snuck Up On Everyone"

 

With Brexit no deal now very likely, we can go back and see in this insightful short video showing how since the moment the UK joined Europe (at least politically) there's been a campaign to leave. 

Also focuses on UKIP's use of fear and national symbols.

"Slow Travels in Unsung Spain" to be translated into German

 

Exciting news...

My latest nonfiction book Slow Travels in Unsung Spain, is to be translated into German by Daniela Tannebaum.
It will be available on Amazon via Babelcube next year.
Ausgezeichnet!!!

"Living too together?" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

 

Back in mid-July, after more than four months, I (reluctantly) set foot in the city of Barcelona. 
I also made the mistake of driving in the centre, having wisely used public transport in the past.

I love the place and always get a thrill out of going there – we live on the edge of Barcelona province in a small town – but walking through crowds of people in the midst of a contagious pandemic, it was impossible to relax and enjoy myself as I’d always done before.

Yes, most people were wearing masks covering the nose and mouth but around 20 or 30 percent of those in the street were not. Plenty of them appeared to be tourists. The following day, regulations were changed so that it was compulsory to wear a mask in all public places across Catalonia.

I have to say though, the relief I felt when I escaped the absurdly narrow traffic lanes of Gran Via and got the car out near the space and mountains surrounding Josep Tarradellas Barcelona–El Prat Airport was a welcome one.

It seemed almost claustrophobic and unnatural to be in a city of 4.8 million on the day that a city with the same population (Melbourne in Australia) had just been locked down in Covid quarantine for six weeks.

It might also have been in my subconscious but in the days before my unusually disquieting visit, I’d read an article about Barcelona having Europe’s most densely populated square kilometre in Europe. More than 53,000 people inhabit this single 1km² area. (France also has a place with more than 50,000 people in a single km², in Paris.)

The urban zone that breaks this very dubious record lies just south of Barcelona Football Club’s Camp Nou stadium. Unlike older city locals who often refer to places (public squares) as reference points, for me as mainly a travelling teacher, I use Metro stations and recognised this ultra-dense area is between the Collblanc and Torrassa stations on one side. The other corners run along the old N340 national road to near Badal metro stop and down to Santa Eulalia station.

It’s true that technically speaking this compressed cube of humanity is in the “city” of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat but in reality it was originally agricultural land, subsumed by the Catalan capital and (as someone who has spent time working around there) it certainly feels to me like it’s a extension of Barcelona, being only eight stops on the Metro from Barcelona’s centre. When combined, the two “separate cities” make up the second most dense urban area in all of Europe.

It hardly needs saying but this particular part of Barcelona is one the poorest. It has a high number of low-income immigrants but residents say that renting an apartment can still cost 800 or 900 euros a month, which can only encourage overcrowding. This is made worse by the fact that a growing number of people living there are not registered with the local council. This leads to underfunding of social and other services.

Other problems in the area are a simple, natural result of this extreme density: major lack of parking, an almost complete lack of green spaces and related high levels of pollution. Recently, this square kilometre and surroundings have also been a centre of a wider outbreak of Covid-19 in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.

As a result, I ask the question: If living in each others’ pockets is such a good thing then why aren’t the very richest in society doing it?

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

Why do the poor suffer more from Covid19 in Spain? Interview with ABC TV.

Author of "Slow Travels in Unsung Spain" Brett Hetherington talks to Fauziah Ibrahim of ABC TV in Australia about the connection between poverty and Covid 19 in Spain.

Podcast: The surprising Spanish connection: Black Music in Europe (The 1970s)

Clarke Peters uncovers...Black flamenco in Spain, talking to Raul Rodriguez and Black-British flamenco dancer Yinka Esi Graves about how Seville's Triana area, where 15% of the population were once Black and why the dictator Franco used flamenco as a false national symbol.  

Listen here (for the first 6 minutes.)

(Photo: Clark Peters. Credit:: Alexandra Quinn)

"'We don't know what to do': asylum seekers flown to Spain by Home Office"

      [Guardia Civil at Madrid-Barajas airport arrivals hall. Photograph: Europa Press News/Europa Press/Getty Images]

One of the most disgusting acts against refugees that I can remember seeing. This, from the current British government...

"Eleven Syrian asylum seekers have been abandoned outside the airport in Madrid where a Home Office charter flight deposited them, the Guardian has learned." 

Taken without even their ID documents, according to the story. The "hostile environment on steroids" as one commenter called it.

Read more from source here.
  

VIDEO: Q & A on my book "The Remade Parent."

 

A post for today: #IndieBookstoreDay / #BookshopDay:

In this video I answer questions (in English) from the public at the SUNBOW Art Lounge in Sitges, Catalonia/Spain. Including...

*Why did you write this book? *What are your top tips for parents?

"The Remade Parent" is available at many independent bookshops worldwide and online here.

"Something remarkable happened this August: How the pandemic sped up the passage to postcapitalism"

 

"Two days ago, something extraordinary happened. 
Something that has never happened before in the history of capitalism. 
In Britain, the news came out that the economy had suffered its greatest slump ever – more than 22% down during the first 7 months of 2020. 
Remarkably, on the same day, the London Stock Exchange, the FTSE100 index, rose by more than 2%. 
On the same day, during a time America has ground to a halt and is beginning to look like not just as an economy in deep trouble but also, ominously, as a failed state, Wall Street’s SP500 index hit an all-time record.
Unable to contain myself, I tweeted the following:

Before 2008, the money markets also behaved in a manner that defied humanism. News of mass firings of workers would be routinely followed by sharp rises in the share price of the companies “letting their workers go” – as if they were concerned with their liberation… But at least, there was a capitalist logic to that correlation between firings and share prices. That disagreeable causality was anchored in expectations regarding a company’s actual profits. More precisely, the prediction that a reduction in the company’s wage bill might, to the extent that the loss of personnel lead to lower proportional reductions in output, lead to a rise in profits and, thus, dividends. The mere belief that there were enough speculators out there thinking that there were enough speculators out there who might form that particular expectation was enough to occasion a boost in the share price of companies firing workers.That was then, prior to 2008. Today, this link between profit forecasts and share prices has disappeared and, as a consequence, the share market’s misanthropy has entered a new, post-capitalist phase. This is not as controversial a claim as it may sound at first. In the midst of our current pandemic not one person in their right mind imagines that there are speculators out there who believe that there are enough speculators out there who may believe that company profits in the UK or in the US will rise any time soon. And yet they buy shares with enthusiasm. The pandemic’s effect on our post-2008 world is now creating forces hitherto unfathomable..."
Read more from source here.

Barcelona in the red zone for N02 ship pollution

  

Air Quality map of Europe above:

Maritime traffic has a significant impact on air pollution as ships release NO2 (Nitrogen dioxide) & CO2 etc. into the atmosphere.

Levels of NO2 detected by the @CopernicusEU, Sentinel5P
from Jan to Jul 2020.

New ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader-review for "Slow Travels in Unsung Spain"

I was humbled by the comments of a reader named Louise Davies recently about my latest book (available here.) 
Her online review said:

5,0 de 5 estrellas  " A traveller's tale of hidden parts of Spain "

"I love the personal sentiments felt by the author and expressed honestly...

 An unusual, inspiring travel book interspersed with literary observations. 

Well-written and researched."