Tobacco Road: the smoking ban

Ten days to go and the puff-smoke-in-yer-face game will be over. Spain is set to bring in the La Ley del Tabaco, making it one of the last countries to be a bastion for smokers in 'old' Europe to do so. January the second will be 'T Day'. Like all changes it has been fiercely resisted to the bitter end by bars and restaurants who deny surveys that show they won't lose clients and revenue. For God's sake if the Italians can do it, anyone can!

The immediate effect of the law - apart from a less-polluted atmosphere all round - will be that barmen and waiters for example will be able to breathe more easily and live longer - 1,000

of them a year die through tobacco-related illnesses. No longer will they confront a crowd of dragon-like patrons puffing obnoxious fumes in their faces. More importantly future generations may also survive longer - smoking will seem less the norm if totally banned in public places, including children's playgrounds.

Over the last five years the Spanish government has dragged its feet over implementing Brussel´s recommendations. It's almost taken pride in being the last to make changes, citing possible loss of earnings for interested parties: tobacco sellers, kiosks, bars, pubs, eating places and inveterate smokers all protested and you could count on one hand the places displaying No Fumar stickers on their doors when the smoking ban was 'voluntary'. Really though it was all about votes. Offend one section of the population too much by tampering with their freedom of choice and come election time you're burnt toast - appropriately so in this case!

And true to form even with the new law in place it will still allow certain sections to smuggle in fags through the back door as it were, although there could be some method in this madness. Prisons and psychiatric institutions will be able to designate 'smoking rooms' since so many of their clients are addicted - (and if deprived of tobacco could be violent?). Smoking Clubs - whatever they are -will also be exempt as long as they restrict smokers to members and guests. Having many years ago got a whiff of the atmosphere in the smoking room in Singapore's Changi Airport (one of the anti-smoking pioneers) I feel the allowing such exemptions are a subtle way of exterminating problem people - a kind of societal euthenasia or 'ethnic cleansing' as it's termed in some countries.

Some things are not clear about the new law ban, however. Who for example who is going to check on whether businesses are sticking to the law - will we see a huge army of civil service workers come into being, called 'Smoke Detectors' perhaps?; what do you do if a customer who might be paying a huge bill for a blowout in your restaurant whips out a fag and lights up? If you turn a blind eye you're liable to get a heavy fine, particularly if 70% of the clients eating are likely to be non-smokers and might rat on you.

Write in and say whether you feel Barcelona will overnight become smoke-free and where smokers will now go.

Wikileaks conspiracy theories

Not only do we live in dangerous times, but also we Barceloneses live in a dangerous place according Wikileaks. Thanks to Mr Leak himself, Julian Assange, we know all about the cables sent from the US Madrid Embassy to Washington saying why Barcelona would be be an ideal place to set up a multi-agency counter-terrorism and crime-fighting centre.


Some cynics might regard the setting up of such a place as stemming from a conspiracy theory cos I wonder how many of us - except perhaps sharp-eyed Americans - have seen the 60,000 dangerous male and single Pakistanis who, according to Wikileaks, move around BCN unimpeded. On a quick random count on a Metro carriage (jam-packed, Line 3) Pakistanis scored nil. Perhaps I was travelling in a different carriage to the Embassy staff. I did see a few walking up and down Las Ramblas and manning the souvenir shops but 60,000. Come on!

Because of these high numbers of Pakistanis and a big Arab population, the Embassy suggests that Catalan cities constitute 'a Mediterranean region of jihadist activity, with BCN as a hub', supposedly used as a crossroads for people and goods moving to and from Rabat,Tunis, Algiers and the south of France.

The reports state the Pakistanis and many other Muslims 'live on the margins of BCN society' (unsurprisingly since who can afford the bloody sky-high rents here!) and that they 'don't speak the language.' Well, most of the ones I've heard in shops put all us expats to shame with their fluency. Moreover they are all deemed 'resentful since they don't have places to worship in' - ie mosques. I can understand why Catalans might be resentful with Allah Wakbar bellowing out five times a day from a digital speaker near you, but aren't we all constantly deafened by the 24 hour monster cacophony created by traffic, drunks, car stereos, over-loud club music, ambulances, slamming doors and paraqueets so who'd notice an immam or three shouting from the rooftops.


But perhaps there's lots of hard evidence somewhere else to make this conspiracy theory a reality. Newspaper archives for example. Yes, well they certainly show dangerous terrorists are on the loose here - especially the right-wing La Vanguardia: in 2008, fourteen (out of the reputed 60,000 Pakistanis that's 0.02% by the way) with ties to jihad groups back home were arrested and sentenced for planning an attack on the BCN Metro. The suspects had stolen passports, some of which the Mumbai terrorists were using when captured last year. (Why did they carry passports?) One (yes, you heard correctly) one passport stolen in Barcelona was used by the head of the Unit which organised 9/11; last week seven more 'terrorists' (that's 0.01%) were arrested in the city again with ties to terror groups back home. Of course there would have been many more arrests but police admit that the Pakistani community is 'very difficult to penetrate'. Should the police should start learning Urdu with so many around? A few Salaam aleekums and handshakes wouldn't go amiss either.


Then it's the 'organised crime' aspect then which provides a stronger reason for basing a US Crime Centre in Barcelona? Well, yes, there are more tangible signs for the existence of that. South American and Eastern European drug cartels market are said to operate freely here; Mafia gangs launder their money in the region's businesses so it's no wonder the Barcelona region has 25% of Europe's 500 euro notes circulating around its shops and shops; Albanians, Chinese, and Romanians people-traffic through Gerona and El Prat bringing in sad women to work the streets and clubs. High-profile Italian mafioso seem to be on permanent vacation here with their life of luxury only occasionally disturbed by the odd arrest now and then. But does it have to be an American Crime Centre? Don't they have their own problems to deal with over there?


But all this theorising might seem to be irrelevant as the idea may not even get off the ground. The Americans forgot there's a political problem to consider. Although the Spanish Government in principle is favorable to the idea of helping out Los Yonquees, it's not so happy ceding powers of national security to Catalunia. Well what's new? Back to square one again with its petty inter-regional squabbles. What did the cables recommend to get round them I wonder?



Actually the whole affair smells a bit fishy, as if America is looking for a reason to set up some kind of holding centre here for terror suspects and is usingthe high level criminal in Europe thing as an excuse. We need to remember Cuba and Guantanamo Bay are not so politically correct these days. The whole thing smacks of a desperate need for control, control and more control. Whether PM, Mr Bean, will give in to pressure from the White House remains to be seen.


Are you as a resident like me un-affected in your day-to-day-life by terrorism and crime apaprt from the occasional pick-pocket or bag heist attempt? Or do you pound the pavements of Passeig de Gracia and Diagonal with your heart in your mouth fearful that every brown-skinned man (or female) you pass could be a suicide bomber? If you thought Barcelona is bad, mosey on down to Palau Virreina and take a look at the exhibition of crime scenes by a French photo journalist from Nice. Now there's a place place to set up this Super Crime Centre.

Doping: a case of mistrust

Spain yesterday was hit by another scandal when Marta Dominguez the country's most famous athlete and world 3000m steeplechase champion was arrested. She is being investigated for supplying performance-enhancing drugs to other athletes - though not taking them herself. Others, well known trainers and medical people in the world of athletics, have also been arrested. Her arrest follows on from other investigations into the world of sport for doping this year and going back to 2006. In the cycling world, Spanish Olympic rider, Alejandro Valverde, was banned and another, Alberto Contador, is under provisional suspension.

Another separate but related piece of news is that several middle-management police officers have also been arrested in Cataluña for alleged connection to the importation of cocaine through Barcelona's port. They belong to the home-grown Catalan Police Force, the Mossos d'Esquadra, but other police forces are implicated, including the Guardia Civil and the National Police. They have been on the take, it seems, receiving 'gifts' of various types and value for 'favours' given. Apparently there are also connections to the Italian Mafia and Columbian drug cartels with certain criminal investigations concerning drugs and prostitution having been 'discouraged' or 'blocked' by senior policemen.

The first item is kind of sad in that athletes and sportmen need to resort to underhand tactics to achieve fame and success - especially as younger sportsmen look up to people like Dominguez. But now what's the point of training to get to the top, what's the point of this respect when she - and others like her are maybe cheating their way to the top? Where will it stop. Will the world of football be next? Imagine if folk heroes Messi and Ronaldo were caught up in this type of sordid cheating by taking drugs to enhance their stamina! Luckily the world's major sport seems to monitor drug-taking better than most - match-fixing seems to be a greater danger. However, implications have been made by a Spanish sports doctor in the French magazine L'equipe, Eufemiano Fuentes, that both Barca and the Spanish world champions are 'not so clean' - immediately denied by Del Bosque and Iniesta.

The second item has much wider implications than the first in that it affects all sections of society. It suggests that Spanish police are in danger of becoming like Mexican and South American police, making as much as they can out criminals while they can and letting criminals make the rules. It means very dog has its price and drug dealers seem to know who to get to in order that blind eyes are turned at the right moment and in the right place. It could mean that law and order as we know it could be in danger of disintegrating with corruption across the board. You'd expect such a situation in a Third World country where police salaries are pitifully low, but this is Europe for God's sake, so it's greed not need as the motive.

I'm not sure what the answer is. In some countries non-corrupt police when they exist have a short career or even life span and family members even shorter when threats not gifts are used by criminals, And who do you complain to when the barrel is full of rotten apples? Who do you shop a corrupt colleague to? Who can you trust? This dilemma is the theme of countless films across the globe. In many cases the answer seems to be: no one.

The first case ('Operation Galgo' or 'Greyhound') seems to be escalating - you only need to turn over more stones. Yes, it is bad but it's about sport and that's it. Society won't collapse and just a few personalities will lose respect. After all many of the tattooed iron pumpers I see everyday in my gym are on pills and powders of various kinds. To date only 14 people have been called in for questioning only two of them top athletes: Alemayehu Bezabeh, European cross-country champion and Nuria Fernandez, European 1,500m gold medalist. However if it does spread further maybe the jargon word 'contagion', used lately to describe a financial 'disease' countries can catch, might then be applicable here. How many more athletes will be 'touched'? We can only wait and see. Meanwhile in the early stages an atmosphere of political correctness reigns - the Spanish athletics captain, Manolo Martinez, has stressed that if people are guilty they should be punished and if not they should be exhonorated. Well chosen words - meaning nothing.

At least the doping affair is manageable and out in the open - all you need do is have more random tests at high levels. Police and political corruption are not so manageable, not so easy to root out and cause much more damage.

Saga Louts: UK pensioner crime

Only the Guardian newspaper could come up with such an outrageous pun - do they still have sit-down comedians to write all their headlines? The phrase 'Saga louts' recalls the 80's phenomenon of young gun Brits fuelled on gallons of high-strength lager loutishly wrecking property and people in Britain and abroad - Spain with places like Loret del Mar and Torremolinos were a prime casualities. Latterly young people in the UK seem more likely to wreck themselves at the weekend though they still manage to create no-go areas for the rest of us leaving stations, town centres and carparks awash with vomit. Luckily today's teenagers seem more concerned with how many times they can throw up in a night rather than how many fights they can pick.

But 'saga louts'? OK, saga rhymes with lager but there have to be other similarities? Well it seems there are. An increasing number of Saga members, the over 60's, are taking the law into their own hands. Financial crime, drug and weapon crime and sexual offences (must be all these purple pills available on the Internet) are on the up for pensioners, so much so that elderly prison wings are going to be the thing to go for in penal institutional architecture, fitted out with stairlifts and wheelchair ramps. Plus prison staff will also need to learn how to deal with prisoners who suffer from dementia problems and don't know why they are there or even just Why?. Will that sad infirmitythat become a legitimate and genuine defence in court? "My client doesn't remember a thing about the night of the 11th , mi lud."

The Guardian suggests the reasons for this significant increase in older-person crime could be because pensions aren't enough to live off in today's climate of increased VAT and fuel bills. The Internet makes scams easier to set up and courts are getting tougher on older criminals. It also points out that it's not only Britain where the phenomenon exist : the same has been happening in Holland, Japan, France and Israel. Increased customers on Saga Holidays and Cruises another reason then?

No figures exist as far as I know for penioner pugilists in Barcelona, though I did once see an irate abuela almost club a pink shirtless tourist to death with her brolly as he crossed the Ramblas with his mates. But things are clearly changing. Published crime figures show that a highly respecatable area of Barcelona like Sarria is now statistically regarded as a high crime area even though it's mainly populated by the over 70's. Gym chain, Dir, have classes every morning for the Evergreens in its upper Diagonal area premises. Maybe it should stop training them in Body Balance, Karate and Kick-boxing though. It's obviously putting ideas into their heads and over-toughening their aging bodies.

Soon young people will have to move downtown to safer places like Cuitat Vell and Trinitat where there will be fewer chances of being robbed and violated. Or run down by wild pensioners gunning their Porsches and Ferraris. Soon we'll also have 70 year olds whispering psst! as you walk up Via Augusta while pulling out plastic wrapped comforters from their shopping trolleys. A perfect cover. It's going to play hell with the city's demographics in a year or two. Its clubs and bars will be full of randy old greybeards fuelled on Viagra and Cialis leching after young women and swigging Hot Chocolate cocktails. What? They already are? OK forget that then. Certainly you can expect to see an increase of leather-jacketed Segway riders hanging out in L'Illa, sporting labels on their backs like "Turro Park Grannies" or "Les Corts Angels.
It's not going to be pleasant then for us good law-abiding types working our nuts off - I'd hate to be a Mosso in the next two or three years if Spain follows the current trend. But then maybe there's no need to worry yet as the country is always the last one to follow norms and trends. It will be the last to observe smoking bans in public places so why should it send its glamorous grannies to solicit on las Ramblas?

Catalunya's National Front.

Today I had my mailbox stuffed with electorial propaganda. I usually chuck this kind of stuff into the nearest bin - as a foreigner I can't vote in the elections anyway. But today but one flyer caught my eye. On the front was a cross printed against the phrase "Control immigration" with 'immigration'' highlighted. There was also a picture of the candidate who wanted my vote - he looked remarkably like my gym trainer, Marcus, a 'typical Catalan' face. On the back was a list of the things he promised to do if I voted him in. Amazingly, out of the ten issues highlighted by Sr Josep Anglada of the PXC party eight consisted of 'crimes' levelled against non-Spaniards. Unbelievably, as a foreigner I found myself guilty of dire crimes against (Spanish) humanity? And he wants me to vote for him. Assassinate more likely! I mean, look what the man would do to me if he got in.

For starters he'd immediately deport me if I was an illegal immigrant or a teenage delinquent.
He wouldn't allow me to wear my burka -in public - nor allow me to build mosques on any public land. If I was part of a South American gang terrorising residents in the local parks and squares he'd deport me right away. If I had a shop and wanted to keep open to catch the on-the-way-home-from-work crowd, he'd want to take my licence away, cos what I was doing would be unfair competition. As a foreign shopkeeper he thinks I'm probably part of the Mafia anyway. And if I went into selling fake handbags or DVD's on the street to make a living then God help me!

He'd certainly change all this reserving places in schools for my kids rubbish, cos he says there's no room for Catalan kids is there? My children would lower the standards of any school they were in -they'd prevent all those hard-working motivated Catalan kids from progressing quickly enough. Finally there should be no free health cards for me and my type because we clutter up the local clinics and prevent sick Catalans from being attended to.

This man certainly doesn't beat about the bush does he. He goes to town on the naming of names: he pole-axes the Chinese, the Pakistanis, the Moroccans, the Latins and by inference any one who is Muslim. He's sexist in picking on burka wearers.

Hey wait a minure you might say. There's plenty of sense in what the man says. He appeals to voters over 99 who are terrified by gangs and get their handbags snatched off them every day. He has a point too about the health centres - all these bloody Brits down in the south getting their new hips and kidneys on the cheap. Can't even get my Viagra prescription these days the queues are too long. Bloody health tourists!

But underneath this right wing garbage passed off or disguised as an electoral campaign there's something more sinister at work. It's a policy riding on the popular back of xenophobia and pure racism. It's no better than Oswald Mosely's National Front in the UK in the thirties. And what was the political climate then? An economis crisis just like now. Mosely blamed the foreigners for everything and whipped up feelings in the worker class. Look around there are plenty more examples around you. It's what Penn and more recently Sarkozy did in France, what Berlusconi says in Italy. It's the politics of the British National Party . Come to think of it isn't that how Hitler did so well too in Germany?

So Herr Anglada will you get my vote? Like hell you will! Now what can I post in your letterbox? Plans for a mosque in a space near you! Spanish architect though.

Update: day after elections - 29 November.
The PxC party didn't get any seats in the Catalan Parliament, but overall 72,000 people voted for its racist policies. Let's see what happens in the Municipal elections next year on which Anglada intends to concentrate. He was reported to have said said he had been greeted by voters after the election with cries of 'Anglada for President!' Dream on Señor:

Sagrada Familia: semi-ready

You'd have thought that after last weekend's Papal blessing, the polemic surrounding the newly created basilica, La Sagrada Familia (La SF) would die down while work got on to complete Gaudi's project. But no, life in Barcelona is never that simple. Tuesday's papers were full of speculation about the future of the 128 year-old building, not least whether it will come tumbling down when tunneling for the high-speed train the AVE continues, not quite underneath it but pretty close. Mind you it seems a tough old bird and survived Civil War bombs as well as an attempted burning in 1936.


It seems, however, there are other demolition matters pending too. According to freebie paper ADN, plans to knock down two housing blocks on nearby Calle Majorca are to go ahead in order to create a grand entrance for La SF and extend adjacent green areas. Naturally owners of flats in the blocks are somewhat pissed off since they haven't been properly consulted, and it seems most likely they will not be compensated fully when their houses get the metal ball treatment.

BCN mayor Jordi Hereu assures residents that this destruction is years away -though not that it won't happen. One wonders what would he feel if he knew that sometime in the vague future his house would be knocked down and that, at best, he would get less than market value. Notably on compulory purchase orders such as this, Government valuations are on the low side to say the least. And these buildings are not exactly slum clearance stuff -the ADN photo taken from the visitor's gallery of the SF shows that. Residents don't want to move even though every day tourist buses are parked all round the place and at 7 am they are woken up by construction noise. Have they ever been compensated for that I wonder? Ironically, many people criticised these same residents for renting out their balconies to Popophiles last weekend to take pictures of his highness and entourage. Perhaps they deserved this for the inconvenience of limited access to their houses for the whole weekend?

I have a feeling that there is more to this than meets ADN's eye and one of those things is money. La SF is the most symbolic building in Barcelona - even though lots of Barcelona residents have never been inside it or up its towers. A conservative estimate shows that it's worth about 30 million per year on entrances fees alone, without all the spin-offs from souvenirs, guided visits - and visitors coming to BCN proper. So it's got huge drawing power. Can't it do without a huge stepped entrance - which apparently wasn't even on Gaudi's plan anyway - so these soon to be thrown out families can rest in their beds. Well, till 7am anyway. For the next 15 years.

La SF to me symbolises all that is negative about Barcelona despite its quirky architectual uniqueness and many say beauty. You have noise and dirt from the building site from dawn to dusk. You have masses of people arriving on the Metro and in tour buses. And you have the pickpockets and con-men living off them all. Don't get me wrong I love the city but this is definitely a rip-off area. Still there's a good pub there if it all gets too much. 'Michael Collins'. Now he'd have known what to do with the pickpockets!

Barcelona Town Hall: operation clean-up

The Ciutat Vella, the old bit of Barcelona, its core, is fast becoming its bete boire too. Often in the news, usually negatively, because of robberies, residents' protests, noise and the disgusting state of its streets, it's now hitting the headlines in a positive way. The Town Hall want to make it a referent for culture and good taste. Bravo. An admirable concept even though it's a bit of a turn-around.

According to La Vanguardia, the mayor and the president went down there last week checking on the status quo - though it seems they didn't seem to notice a lot. I mean if they can't see a man peeing all over the pavement as they walk past what chance have they of seeing the zone's deeper problems? The Vanguardia's photographers saw him and branded him an 'immigrant' - though he could equally well have been a Catalan who couldn't locate one of the few public toilets around - but for a photo-shoot 'immigrant' is somehow more compelling. More cachet.

The dignitaries did see one of this zone's new symbols-to-be, the new cultural centre, Filmoteca taking shape and a definite (remember AVE!) opening date of March 2011 was mooted. Though how many of the old biddies who currently attend cultural films in the current building off posh and safe Diagonal will venture into the darkest jungly depths of Cuitat Vella at night remains to be seen. Opening night would be reminiscent of that old Monty Python sketch 'The grannies of Notlob'. Or not, when they don't turn up.

Operation clean-up of the area also started the same week in a diffent way - a moral one - when the police began to get rid of the prostitution which apparently has been endemic in the area for more than a hundred years - where hasn't it? Usually moral clean-ups in BCN are more like LAPD episodes, ie high-profile with lots of noise, doors being broken down and half-naked girls been thrown into police vans. And largely a waste of time and money. For once, using their collective intelligence, this time they tried the Swedish Method (which is not, as you might think, a sexual position) arresting and fining clients instead of the girls). With positive results too. Most fines were paid on the spot to avoid wives seeing the official letters in their post-boxes, and secondly, the number of men seeking extra-marital services dropped to such an extent that the prostitutes began complaining about the lack of business.

The new master plan for the zone is a good compromise - in theory. It will re-define areas, vetting any new businesses, moving those labelled 'entertainment' or 'touristic' away from residential areas. It will hope to draw in heavyweights to give the zone more class and the residents more peace.

The trouble is officials sanctioning the clean-up of Ciutat Vella forgot to look at what was happening under their noses first. It seems corrupt government officials have for some time been taking under-the-table payments - big ones too, including cash, investments, and property -from the owners of flats in that same area who wanted government licences for short-term holiday letting. Not a good start to a clean up. Mmm, should be some interesting election speeches this month.

Tourism: Please, no tax.

The idea of a tourist tax surfaced again recently according to today's El Pais newspaper. Spain's Balearic islands tried to impose this 10 years ago and after two years of protests by hoteliers it was revoked. One member of the Barcelona's City Council, Joan Gaspert (that's a man by the way) thought it a brilliant idea for a time when the Government was increasingly strapped for cash and was having to scale down many projects to say nothing of salaries for civil servants.

To be honest, most tourists wouldn't notice if they had to pay another beersworth for their stay here. They don't seem to protest in France, New York or in Tokyio. But the real question is not whether or not it should be introduced but whether such a scheme is ethical. The ethics thing of course wasn't mentioned when Señor Gaspert re-introduced the concept but the idea of it backfiring was, so it was eventually buried again. Phew! Someone mentioned (a hotelier?) that such a tax would make the city less competitive and the tourists would all go to Madrid or Valencia instead. And then where would we be? Empty streets means empty coffers.

Of course a tourist tax might be more ethical if some of the proceeds were ploughed back into making tourists feel wanted. Like providing them with toilets in, say, the Las Ramblas area which they frequent the most. Like paying shopkeepers to smile at them when they buy things in their shops and cafes and insult them by holding up their fingers to indicate how many euros a coffee costs.Some of them do speak Spanish you know. You could also make the streets safer for them by paying for more police to patrol certain dark and dingy streets where they get robbed and on the Metro too. In 10 years living here I've never seen a security officer on a Metro, only in the stations. But no, good citizens of BCN, you want your pan y tomate and to eat it. You want tourists money (read 'need' here) but not the noise and the mess. You want tourists who shop in your luxury shops on Passeig de Gracia and eat in your expensive restaurants in Born. You're trying to target the wealthy classes in your Tourist Office publicity.

Sorry Barcelona, but you can't choose tourists. They choose you. And if they go off you, they won't come back. Nor will their friends, no matter how many EasyRyan flights arrive at El Prat Airport. You can build all the 4 and 5 star hotels you like but if the city isn't safe they'll stay empty. And putting a tourist tax on top will really make the tourists roll in won't it?

Language: 2B or not 2B a Catalan

Visitors have often asked me if Catalans are different from the Spanish but it's difficult to give a simple answer because it's like asking are the Scots different from the English or the Welsh. There are so many different aspects to this question.

Like the Welsh, Catalans certainly have a different language - of which they're very proud - and one which was banned by Franco so you can understand why. To me as an outsider, it seems a part French, part Spanish mix with a few local words thrown in - though that's probably an over-simplification as well as being heresy. For me in many museums and galleries that pride-in-your-language thing goes a bit far in the way information is presented in bold in Catalan and fainter in Spanish - and English if you're lucky. One presumes it's a political thing - and it really is - or that the optician lobby badly needs business. But almost all Catalans can speak Spanish (not necessarily want to though) I've only met one Catalan who said that he doesn't like to speak Spanish but there must be a lot more. Even the President, Montilla, had to learn Catalan to be accepted here. Surprisingly foreign films in Catalan cinemas tend to be dubbed into Spanish not Catalan. Maybe there's a bigger market for them worldwide? For many foreigners too, Spanish has a greater currency value in terms of communication than Catalan, so unless they want a job with the Catalan Government or are married to a Catalan they're more likely to learn Spanish to communicate not just with natives in Catalunya but also the rest of the Spanish-speaking world. The language certainly causes problems in schools where many South and Central American kids resent having Catalan as the medium of education and not Spanish. What's on Catalans' passports, they say. Catalan no. Spanish, yes.

As with all countries there are always stereotypic qualities - both the Dutch and the Scots are said to be mean, Germans organised and efficient, Americans friendly and the Brits reserved, for example. The trouble is these are general characteristics, often are not true and certainly don't apply to everyone from a particular country. But they certainly exist so I'll trot out a few that I've heard people use when describing Catalans.

How's this for starters: devious, loud, pushy groupies, clannish, tight, image-conscious, parochial and matriarchal biggots. And how many times have you had to walk round a group of them standing talking on the pavement or had to push past someone sitting on the outside seat on the bus or Metro? If you've read the papers this month maybe you could add 'corrupt' in the way that a scandal is currently blowing up about Barcelona civil servants on the take - but then that's a Spanish thing too isn't it, corruption? Oh, and we'd better add football crazy too.

The newish (well I've never seen it before) monthly newsheet, Barcelones, states in an article on Catalan culebrons or soaps that the audience for Catalan TV channels is homogenous, whereas a Spanish medium channel's is less so and therefore might have more difficulty in focusing its themes and could more easily offend or insult sections of its wider audience. Thus Catalan channels can contain more risky elements, societal taboos like incest for example or pederasty in the church because its audience can deal with such issues better. In other words perhaps there are some qualities that are after all general to Catalans.

That doesn't, I know, answer the question as to what they are and I don't suppose Catalans are any more or less incestuous than any other race, but it does point to something that you don't always hear stated - that Catalans are perhaps more liberal and worldly than you think despite their so-called fondness for separateness and tradition. You notice an acceptance of others' beliefs and ways of life and it's only the 'far-right' fringes who call for the expulsion of gypsies and immigrants from Eastern Europe. Maybe the question is unanswerable because every Catalan, like any other nationality, is an individual and is made up of perhaps some of the stereotypes mentioned plus several more positive ones.

What facets of the Catalan character have you noticed? Is there anything that you could say 'that's very Catalan?

Not another Barcelona blog!

Right now there's another blogette setting off in life, a tadpole recently hatched and swimming in a murky pond with all the other blogettes waving their flags for attention. Much more importantly the weather's warm. It's not raining and there's an intensely blue sky outside on my terrace. Which is one of the main reasons why a lot of people like me come from chilly damp northern Europe to live in Spain. Actually in my case that's not strictly true as I came from the other end of the thermometer scale, from 20 years in the 50º Celsius fry-eggs-on-your-car-bonnet Middle East summer temperatures in order to escape excessive amounts of sun. Barcelona, I considered, would be a compromise between the London in my own country and Dubai.



I arrived eight years ago and wasn't disappointed.  I found Barcelona to be a city with lots of positives and only a few negatives. In the Middle East I suffered achingly from CDS, culture-deficit syndrome. Now I gazed open-mouthed at the splendour of Barcelona's awesome modernist and contemporary architecture, its elegant shops, its museums and galleries, its wide boulevards where people actually walked - you only drove in the Middle East! Its exciting night life with thousands of bars, clubs and restaurants all had me transfixed like a wild boar in car headlights. And within a couple of hours from the city I could be skiing or scuba-diving . It was glaringly apparent why the city ranked high in the most visited cities in Europe list. Perfect you might think.

And you'd be right. It was. But you have to remember visitors and residents are never a homogenous mass. A society is composed of many strata.  Criminals like the good life too, and a city like Barcelona offers rich pickings to its criminal high-life. Lots of money can be made out of prostitution, drugs, money-laundering, robberies, scams - just to name just a few areas of lucrative 'free enterprise' on offer. The city has good zones but also bad zones where after midnight the police patrol in threes. In the eight years I've been here I've seen several examples of violence in the streets and had my wallet stolen twice. Mmm perhaps not so perfect!

I've set this blog up - after abhorting an earlier one (http://spanishflyonthwall.blog.com/ ) I'd had for two years - to write about the city from the point of view of outsider/resident so if you want objective description, this blog is not for you nor for the tourist who is just visiting 'the sights' for a few days. I'll be using newspapers as my main source and adding my comments to their new.  Hopefully the views expressed will be interesting enough to get you to comment.


So please feel free to agree - or just as important - disagree. I look forward to your comments. Let me know too if you are blogging about Barcelona .