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Showing posts with label December 21st. Show all posts
Showing posts with label December 21st. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

'Twas the day before . . .



“¡Valiente!” commented gentleman on the stairs down from the restaurant where we had just had lunch.  I wish that I could tell you that he was commending me on some characteristic act of bravery, but he wasn’t.  He was making a comment about the fact that I was wearing sandals.



I suppose that the 20th of December is fairly late in the year still to be in denial about the demise of summer, but I am.  And I would further maintain that, as an ex-resident of Britain, I can still tell that the temperatures that I experience even in the harsher months here in Castelldefels are as nothing compared with the temperatures that I would experience were I still in my home city of Cardiff.



Not that Cardiff is really cold.  At least in comparison with the rest of the UK.  I noticed on weather maps that the temperatures in my city, while hardly tropical, were usually among the warmest on our benighted islands.  And for me, it was never really the low temperatures that got to me about the British weather: it was always the rain and grey skies.  


A cold and crisp December day in Castelldefels I can take, but take that temperature and place it in a sky sullen with washed out clouds and a soul-destroying drizzle permeating every inch of clothing in southern Wales and I start turning towards Strindburg for light entertainment!



And my feet don’t feel the cold as much as other parts of my body.  I am not an idiot, I remember my father’s comment, “Only a fool or a pauper is cold!” and maintain that I am neither, nor cold.  For example, I am typing this on the third floor, looking out (well, I can touch type) through single glazed French doors and windows that do very little to keep the cold out, so I have the central heating on.  We have two duvets and my grandmother’s eiderdown on the bed: we are warm.  But I can wear sandals without my feet getting cold.



They (my open feet) have become something of a defining feature of my winter wear here in Castelldefels.  Catalan people dress according to the month, whatever the actual weather is like.  December is Winter, you must, therefore, be thoroughly and warmly dressed up.  Young children display all the characteristics of victims about to be pulled apart by horses, as they wear so many layers of clothing that their arms and legs are angled away from their rotund bodies so that they look as though they are little neophyte priests with their (well wrapped) arms perpetually raised in blessing!  If my feet felt cold then I would wear shoes or trainers.  But they don’t, so I don’t.



The restaurant was at the bottom of our road and next to the beach, with startling views of the Med.  The meal was excellent.  It started with calçots - a local variety of an leek-like onion which are cooked over flames until the outer surface is charred and blackened, then they are wrapped in newspaper and served with a tasty sauce.



The real delight of this dish is that it is filthy.  You are provided with a paper bib and plenty of serviettes because to eat the calçots you have to peel away the outer layer, with blackening hands, extract the long oniony inside, dip it in the sauce and then lower it into your open mouth.  Not an elegant way to start the meal, but a deeply satisfying one!



My main course was of a fish called “denton” which is in none of my Spanish dictionaries and is unrecognized by Google translate.  I was told it was “salvaje” (wild) and when it arrived it was complete with head.  The flesh was juicy and sweet and I can’t say I recognized the type from its appearance.  The real joy of this course, though, was the vegetables: a mix including mushrooms, asparagus and peppers.  They were cooked al dente and had the sort of taste that makes you believe that being a vegetarian might not be such a bad idea after all.  That idea doesn’t last, but it is nice to have a dish that makes you believe it if only for a moment.



The last course was a sort of chocolate sponge, cream and caramel topping that I will not describe further as I can feel the calories adding themselves to my girth even as I think of them!



The wine was more than drinkable and my post meal cup of tea was acceptably strong and the milk was brought in a little jug and it was cold.  Believe you me, that last detail speaks volumes.  It has taken me a long, long time to get restaurants in our usual round to produce a cup of tea that would not have British people phoning for the kitchen police and, even though I give exhaustive and exhausting instruction as to how I expect my tea to arrive, I am constantly flummoxed by the details that Spanish tea making assassins can get wrong.



And so home after a little light shopping for the final aspects of Toni’s Christmas present and the realization that we are actually fairly well set to survive the season and to my delight and relief, Toni has volunteered to wrap the presents tomorrow.



Tomorrow.



December 21st.



Perhaps everything that I have written up to this point as been to avoid typing, or even thinking about what is going to happen tomorrow.



The election in Catalonia.



Today is the day of reflection.  Candidates have ceased campaigning, and today is the day when people can think about what has been said (and shouted) and weigh up the possibilities and make a measured judgement about how to cast their vote.



Today is also the day when the leaders of all the political parties but their rivalries aside and join together in a photoshoot which shows them all together.



But not this year.  A photoshoot of all the leaders would be a tad difficult as one of the leaders is in prison and another is in exile in Belgium!  So the shoot has been cancelled.



Now right thinking people (i.e. me) might think that this non-happening photoshoot is the clearest indication possible to voters that some sort of Rubicon has been crossed.  The courts have been politically manipulated and motivated; an 'invasion' has been mounted against the Catalan government; our leaders have been cynically deposed; a minority government has staged a pseudo coup d’état, among other things.



It is perfectly easy, of course, to take a radically different view.  To aver that the ‘deposed’ politicians have behaved in an unconstitutional way, they have used public funds in an illegal fashion, they are seditious and in rebellion against the state.  The minority right wing Spanish government therefore, has done no more than assert the rights of the majority and uphold the constitution.



If we had a Spanish national government that wasn’t so deeply mired in corruption; if we had true separation between the courts and the executive; if we had politicians who thought about the country and not their own well being; if we had a President who had political nous; if . . . and so on, and so on.



Rajoy is President, he must accept the lion’s share of responsibility for the present situation.  He has been president for some time.  His party objected to the settlement, that passed both houses in Parliament, that would have given Catalonia a different status and got the higher courts to overturn the plan.  He has been president while the situation has worsened and he has done nothing to find a real settlement.



Perhaps Rajoy’s ‘master plan’ (I use the term very loosely for a political pygmy like him) has been to force things to a catastrophic denoument then sweep in like an avenging angel and reset the relationship with that 'difficult' region/country of Catalonia once and for all.  After all his party scrapes lower than 9% of the popular vote into his grasping paws, and he has nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying whatever he feels like in a country that has constantly rejected him and his ‘ideology’.  


Perhaps chaos is what Rajoy has been working towards.  If he has, he has royally succeeded!



So tomorrow is the vote.  Toni is confident that the independence parties will get over the magic 68 seats needed to gain an absolute majority.  I'm not, but I am prepared to go with his optimism.



As an outside observer I have been shocked at the one sided reporting of the election.  Rajoy knows that his own corrupt party stands no chance of winning in Catalonia and so the power of the right wing press and the money of various industrialists have gone into Ciudadanos that, although it sometimes like to describe itself as a centrist party, votes or abstains to aid the minority right wing Spanish PP governing party.  Rajoy knows that a vote for Cs (Ciudadanos) is, in reality a vote for the continuation of his corrupt government and the only way that he is going to get anything approaching a majority in Catalonia.


The Spanish equivalent of the British Labour party, PSOE or PSC in Catalonia have sided with PP and Cs.  They do have a policy or renegotiation of the relationship between the regions and the central government.  They reject the idea of a referendum for independence.  They have lost credibility, and in all important aspects will, will have to vote with what are their natural enemies if they wish to prevent a declaration of independence by Catalonia.  They do not have individual power or the likelihood of a coalition to get their ideas anywhere.  



The same goes for Podemos, the further left party.  Their idea of a binding referendum is doomed to failure in the national government because they do not have a majority or partners who might support their ideas.  Without power these parties can say what they like, but it is not going to happen.



Even if the independence parties gain an absolute majority tomorrow, they will have to cope with the implacable opposition of Rajoy and PP with the support of Cs and the active support of PSOE voting with these parties or usefully abstaining.  PP will, therefore, get what it wants.  And it has a built in majority in the Senate.



Whatever happens, it's going to be a rough time for Catalonia.



Keep watching!