The end of the holidays!

The cake was the most important part.

Celebrations of religious festivals, even when the religious element seems to be more of an historical afterthought than the actual basis for the festivity, seem to be only to be justified in terms of what you can eat and drink to make the day(s) special.  And presents of course.

In Britain we do not take the Festival of the Kings quite as seriously as they do in Catalonia.  Kings is very much part of the Christmas Season and I suppose part of the reason why the Sales do not really get started until after parents have made all of their purchases for Kings.

Kings is basically for kids.  There are elaborate processions to welcome the Kings when they come into a town or city, and then there are a series of floats all of which have people on them throwing sweets at the young people who lines the streets to greet them.

In Barcelona the Kings come into the city by sea and then make a triumphant progress into the centre.  We missed the procession on the day before Kings in Terrassa and instead came for the lunch in which the kids (and as it turned out, we too) got presents.

But the highlight of the meal is the cake.  This is a circular cake with a hole in the middle, with the filling being of cream and, most importantly, little things hidden inside the filling.  The official name of this cake is the Tortell de Reis or the King’s Tart, and ours was a magnificent affair with a filling divided into cream and chocolate and hidden inside the filling, somewhere, two inedible things: a porcelain broad bean and a little figure of a king.

The cake is cut up so that everyone gets a piece and then they chomp down.  Carefully!  I did and was ‘rewarded’ by finding a cream covered broad bean.  The significance of that discovery is that you have to buy the cake for the next year!  The person who gets the king figure is rewarded with the golden paper crown that is set in the hollow centre of the cake and is made King of the feast.

If you want more information about the Catalan customs at Christmas then an extensive illustrated explanation may be found at https://www.elnacional.cat/en/culture/a-catalan-christmas-explained_221886_102.html

And I assured you that these are not obscure folk customs, they are part of the everyday life of everyone who lives here!  And if you do read through it all, then I can assure you that the Belen on the stairs by the entrance to our house did have a caganer discretely squatting at the side of the stable!

With the end of that meal, I consider the Christmas Season well and truly over, but we will not be taking down all the Christmas decorations.

As you know, Catalonia and Spain are in the grips of the worst political crisis to have rocked Spain since the Dictatorship of Franco.  The Catalan referendum about independence was blighted by astonishing violence from the police forces of the Spanish national government preventing peaceful people from trying to cast their votes.  Our Catalan President and a slew of political leaders have been forced into exile or have been imprisoned.  The government of Catalonia has been disbanded and the functions of government have been taken over by PP, the minority right wing governing party of Spain whose actual popular mandate in the last election was a measly 4 seats out of 135, their percentage of the popular vote 4.2%!

Political corruption in Spain is rife.  PP is the most corrupt political party in western Europe and hundreds of its members, including all past treasurers of the party, having been accused of corruption or are in the process of being tried or are waiting to be sentenced.  This is the political slime that is deciding the future of our country!

To show solidarity with the imprisoned Catalan politicians twists of yellow ribbon are being worn.  Indeed wearing anything of the colour yellow is now considered something of a political statement by the minority right wing government of Spain.  I wear a yellow ribbon on my shirt at all times and have recently purchased a yellow scarf.  Those of you who know me, know that I never wear scarves, so this recent (and difficult) purchase shows considerable dedication!

Although the national minority government maintains that there is separation between the executive and the judiciary, too many recent examples of unequal treatment and opportunism make such an assertion difficult to believe.  The national minority government also maintains that there are no political prisoners in Spain and that the political leaders have been detained on criminal charges not political ones.  I am reminded of some of the policies of Queen Elizabeth the First who always imprisoned Roman Catholics for acts of treason, never merely because of their religion, that was always a strange coincidence!

While our political leaders are in prison we will keep our Christmas tree up.  It is not decorated in the usual festive manner, but has a whole series of yellow ribbons on the branches and even the lights are yellowish!  It will stay up until Spain sees reason and releases the political prisoners.

These early January days are a low level prologue to the political activity that will take place later in the month, when the new delegates to a new Catalan parliament will take their places.  The election, called by Rajoy, the leader of the minority right wing PP (with a mandate of 4.2% in the popular vote in Catalonia remember) in the hope that the independence parties would lose their majority.  Well they haven’t - but Rajoy and his disgusting collection of corruption monkeys, PP, lost 7 of their 11 seats.

So, if the majority of the elected representatives vote for independence Rajoy has already said that he will ignore the democratic wishes of the Catalan parliament and keep Article 155 in place which allows his 4.2% mandate to give him the right to govern Catalonia.  And don’t get me started on the way that the Spanish Senate is packed with PP fodder!

So, later in the month, all the rites and delights of Christmas are going to be well and truly forgotten as the political cut and thrust lurches back into action.

To find more information about what happened in the last Catalan elections in December, 2017, go to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_regional_election,_2017

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If you would like to read drafts of my recent poems please go to smrnewpoems.blogspot.com

The Pleasure and Pain of Festivity

Existential crises do not come more profound that losing your phone.  Mine is, at the moment, officially lost.  I do not have it.  It is not with me.  I am bereft.

But I take comfort from the flapping around of PP in Catalonia.  After their disastrous showing in the forced elections in the country, forced by, wait for it, PP!  PP is desperately trying to find a way to deal with the fact that they had 11 seats and now they have four.  They no longer even have the representation to be regarded as a ‘Group’ in the Catalan parliament.  So they have sacked someone, I suppose that it must be someone in the National Parliament as they do not have much choice in the people in the Catalan version!  The person they ought to sack, or who ought to tender his resignation, is the lanky lying leader of the Catalan PP.  The last leader resigned for getting only 11 seats, so he should, really, fall on his sword – literally.  But that would leave them with only three.  So, problems.

It is something of the same problem that the Conservatives have in trying to find a native to be the Welsh Secretary out of their pathetic showings in Wales.  I fondly remember one election when we didn’t return one Conservative.  Not one.  We have even ended up with freaks like Redwood when they were really scraping the barrel, though Redwood did produce one memorable moment in his role when he attempted to sing the Welsh National Anthem.  His humiliation has been replayed more times than was strictly necessary, but anything to put down repulsive Conservatives such as he has got my vote.  And this piece of YouTube film gives you an idea of the horror: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzBq0n8dxFQ

However, the confusion and chaos of both the Conservative (“lower than vermin”) parties in Spain and the UK doesn’t really give very much pleasure because we are living in their created universe: Brexit, Article 155, Social Injustice and Corruption, not forgetting the trans-Atlantic 45!

So, anyway, I phoned my phone (as one does) and nothing.  I phoned the last place that I was in and asked Toni's sister to look around.  And nothing.

At this point, most people I know would be panicking and fretting about their very identity because so much of their lives centre on the mobile phone, but I use mine mostly for reading the The Guardian.  And I can read that on my computer, so perhaps I wasn't as phased as others might have been.

And, as phones do, it turned up, found on its side at the foot of my bed resting against the skirting board.

Which meant that I was able to enjoy my meal without the pitying looks of those phone fanatics who eat a meal with the phone placed as if it were part of the cutlery!

And we did have an excellent meal to accompany my Saint's Day presents - all of which were acceptable.  I now have two illustrated copies of Harry Potter, lavishly illustrated I should say in a large format book - in Spanish.  So I have an incentive to struggle my way through the stories like the English speaking muggle that I am!

And so back home to a very cold house, but my own bed too!

What next?

 

The Day After The Night Before Syndrome has struck the political ruling class in Spain. 

They had a worrying few hours, as it seemed that their Master Plan to stymie the onrush of the independent movement in Catalonia had disastrously backfired, and then it was confirmed that far from being stopped, the independence parties had managed to retain their absolute majority in the new parliament of Catalonia.

How to spin the disaster? 

The Spanish ruling PP party did exceptionally disastrously in Catalonia: they lost 11 of their seats and now have the shaming total of 3 (three) seats in the new parliament!  And even more humiliatingly, they fail to justify the numbers to be considered a separate group and are now lumped in with the minor parties in the ‘mixed group’ of parliamentarians.

But there was one bright spot for the woefully inadequate political leader Rajoy to go on about.  The fairly new right wing party of Cs gained 25.4 of the votes and 37 seats and will be the largest single party in parliament.  But an absolute majority is 68 seats and so they are nowhere near that number.  If they were to go into coalition they could count of the mighty support of the party with whom they slavishly vote with nationally, PP - so that boosts their total by 3 (sic.) to 40, still 28 seats short of an absolute majority.

They might be able to use the votes of the Catalan ‘socialists’ PSC, as PSC have allied themselves with their natural enemies of PP and Cs against the independence movement in Catalonia.  PSC gained 17 seats, so if they voted with PP and Cs the total strength would be 57, still 11 short of an absolute majority. 

The only other party which is opposed to independence for Catalonia (though they do advocate a binding referendum on Catalan independence some time in the future) is Comú, the Catalan version of Podemos.  Comú is more left wing than the other parties in this grouping and is a very, very uncomfortable bedfellow, even if they could be persuaded to join such an unholy alliance.  And even if they did, their 8 seats would give a final total for the anti-independence grouping of 65 - 3 short of an absolute majority.

On the other side: JxC with 34 seats; ERC with 32 and CUP with 4, make a total of 70 - 2 over an overall majority.  They win.

So, our exiled President in Belgium has offered talks with Rajoy anywhere in Europe other than Spain (where he would be arrested as soon as he set foot on Spanish soil) to start the political dialogue.  This is a situation that needs a political solution.

Rajoy has refused.  Or rather he has offered talks, or as he puts it in his alternative universe, “continued dialogue” (!) as long as the Catalan side is legal i.e. have rejected the idea of independence.  This is a sort of Catch-22 situation where the reason that there is a problem is the only thing that can’t be talked about in trying to resolve it.

I sometimes wonder if Rajoy doesn’t have some orange sash wearing Northern Ireland protestant unionist blood in him somewhere as the only word that he can say (and does with boring regularity) with absolute confidence is, “No!”

Our Spanish “entirely independent legal system” (sic) has stated that it has its sights on other rebellious, seditious and criminal persons of interest who all happen to be leaders of independence groupings.  As some of our political leaders are already political prisoners we can see where this is going.

As these political prisoners have now been elected to the new parliament, how is that going to work?  Are the imprisoned parliamentarians going to be ferried to the parliament building in prison vans and taken back to prison at the end of the day?  How is our likely president going to function when he is in exile in Belgium?  How will the voting take place?  Will the prisoners be allowed to vote?  Is that how Rajoy hopes to reduce the absolute majority of the independence parties to allow more ‘friendly’ fellow travellers to take over?

Rajoy has already said that he will ready and willing to talk to the ‘winner’ of the election in Catalonia: the leader of the Cs.  This is not the way forward.  Unfortunately Rajoy is too politically myopic to see any way forward but his own.

The New Year will bring the first meeting of the new parliament. 

Who knows what might have happened before the vote for the next president!

Everything is still to play for.

A new day?

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THURSDAY 21ST DECEMBER 4.45 PM

Walking towards the entrance of our polling station in Castelldefels we were met by a tall gentleman who had obviously just voted.  He was striding towards us with a look of ferocious distain and contempt on his face, emotions that might be explained by the fact that he was draped in a large Spanish flag.  In the metropolitan area of Barcelona.  In Catalonia.  A country recently ‘taken over’ by the right wing minority government of PP.  It seemed to us that the wearing of the flag was a deliberate provocation, but Catalans are too canny to rise to such obvious and childish challenges.

Given his pugnacious demeanour, I did wonder how his bedecked frame had been received in the crowded room where the actual ballot boxes were.  Although there are many non-Catalans in Castelldefels, there is still a majority of ‘native’ inhabitants for whom the Spanish flag paraded in such an obvious and flagrant way will either recall direct memories of the Dictatorship and the suppression of Catalan identity, or will emphasise more recent memories of Spanish state repression.  In any case, it was a crass thing to do - but PP and the Spanish state are good at doing things to show that they are deliberately tone deaf to the aspirations of Catalans.

Toni’s actual vote was, however, unexceptional - and he was even ushered to the front of the queue as the half of the alphabet that contained his name had an empty desk available for him to register!  So in and out in a couple of minutes.  Job completed, duty done.

Now the waiting to see what other voters thought their duty was!

There are beginning to be accounts of irregularities in polling stations - but at this stage it is difficult to know whether the events are run-of-the-mill incompetence or something more sinister.

There have been reports of envelopes being pre-stuffed with the list of Cs. 

Perhaps I should explain that sentence.  You do not vote by putting a cross next to your choices.  You can choose any of the printed ‘lists’ that are stacked on tables in the polling station, put forward by the different parties.  Each party list has a series of numbered names and, depending on the number of votes cast for each party, a proportion of those on the list will be elected.  It follow that if you are Number 1 on the list you are more or less guaranteed to be elected; the lower down the list you are, your chances of election depend on the number of votes cast for your party.

There are stringent rules about the elections, and votes can be declared null and void if the rules are not followed strictly.  One rule states that you can only have one list in your envelope when you put it into the ballot box.  If by mistake you put two copies of your party list then your vote will be null.  It turns out that in one part of Catalonia some of the envelopes were pre-stuffed with a Cs party list, so if a voter put their list in the envelope without realizing that there was a list already there, their vote would be cancelled.  I am still waiting to hear confirmation of this irregularity.

In another small town the lists of one of the independence parties were missing in the polling station.  That too is being investigated.

I think, and quite reasonably, that there is a level of mistrust on all sides about how this election is going to be administrated.  Remember the election is being run by a corrupt right wing minority Spanish government that has sacked the entire Catalan government and taken over the reins of power itself.  They have everything to lose if Catalonia votes for independence and they are running the election!

The corrupt right wing minority Spanish government has refused international observers to monitor the election and the counting and so the independence parties have mounted an operation to try and observe every stage of the election to try and ensure that there is no widespread fraud.

The right wing Spanish media and press have been one sided in favouring Cs (the right wing, PP supporting, big business financed party) as the best way of getting a PP friendly government in Catalonia.  I sincerely hope that their underhand tactics work against them and Cs are treated with the contempt by the voters that they richly deserve.

It’s now early afternoon and there is a certain calm about the day.  It is only in the evening when people leave work and vote that we might be able to gain a clearer view of what is happening in the country.

THURSDAY 21st DECEMBER 11.40 PM

Well, 97.9% of the votes are in and the independent parties have won an absolute majority.  But.  The party with the largest share of the vote is Cs.

I have had to start a new paragraph because I feel positively dirty admitting that the people among whom I live could vote for such an apology for a political objective.  This single issue party, founded to keep Catalonia in Spain has expanded itself to become a national party with the aid of shady backers, big business and prejudice.

I am appalled that such a party has become, or rather has maintained its position as the opposition in Parliament.

I have to keep reminding myself that the independence parties have an absolute majority to take away the bitter taste of Cs 'success'.

How did it come about?  Well, there are many non Catalans in Catalonia.  Some of them are recent citizens, but others are second or third generation Spaniards who originally came to Catalonia for work and a better way of life than in their home regions.  We have numbers of immigrants from Africa and from South America who have come to an industrial centres like Barcelona and Catalonia.

Just like Britain, the economy of Catalonia depends on an influx of immigrants to keep things running.  Perhaps these people feel more links with a wider Spain than with a Catalan republic.

I suppose you could also say that this electoral campaign was hardly equal for all parties.  Cs had the tacit support of PP with whom they work and vote.  They also had the clear support of most of the national media and most of the newspapers.  On the other hand, our leaders are imprisoned or in exile and our access to the media was obviously limited.  One imprisoned leader for example is only allowed a certain number of phone calls each month and, no unreasonably the majority of them are to his wife.  He was not allowed to participate fully in the campaign and had to make do with a few recorded telephone calls replayed at meetings.  Our President has done his best to be a part of the campaign from Belgium, but it is not the same as being in the thick of things.

Given the disadvantages and the fact that the 'playing field' was distinctly not level, I think that we have done well.

It is unfortunate that Cs got more seats than the largest independence party, but the independent parties have the absolute majority and we will go forward from there.

Now the ball is in Rajoy's court.  He has not got exactly what he wanted: a clear defeat of the independence parties and the election of Cs as the ruling party.  What he has got is a friendly party with the most seats, but with no majority, whatever coalition Cs try to form - the absolute majority is with what Rajoy fears most.

The New Year will see the first meeting of the new parliament and then the fun will start.  Rajoy will probably keep Article 155 going, which gives PP full control over Catalonia.

In this election the Catalan version of PP, the party of the right wing minority Spanish government managed to get 3.9% of the popular vote - a loss of 5% from their previous dismal almost double digit showing in the last election!  And they govern us! 

¡Visca Catalunya!

'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 20^th 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 21^st.

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!

Art, Politics, Religion.

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Art, Politics, Religion.

What a potent mixture those three words in the title conjure up!

Imagine, if you will, a group of nuns in Aragón living in a ruinous Convent in the 1980s.  They decide to move to another Convent in Catalonia and they further decide to sell various religious artworks that they owned to the Generalitat of Catalonia.  Contacts are signed, the move is made and the religious art works find their way to a museum in Lleida.  All is well.  The nuns are settled in their new home and the museum has gained a substantial number of interesting artworks to put on display.

But no!  All is not well.  Aragón has decided that the nuns wrongly sold off part of their regional artistic heritage and they demand the return of the works.

http://www.rtve.es/noticias/20171211/44-obras-sijena-retornan-lleida-aragon/1645140.shtml

What country, you may well ask yourself, does not have one case (or in the British Museum’s case thousands) of someone somewhere asking for the return of something cultural that was bought/sold in what approximated for good faith when the transaction was done?  The most glaring example in the BMs case is probably that of The Elgin Marbles.

 http://www.britishmuseum.org/visiting/galleries/ancient_greece_and_rome/room_18_greece_parthenon.aspx

In recent decades Greece has become increasingly strident in its demand that the Marbles be returned.  Not to the monument itself, where if the marbles had been left in place they would be today, shapeless pieces of marble destroyed by the acidic smog and rain from the pollution of the city, but rather be placed in another museum at the foot of the Acropolis.  This museum has already been built and awaits the return of the lost treasures.

And all I have to say is that Greece will get those Marbles over my dead body! 

That almost happened (my death I mean) when, as a backpacking Greek island-hopper back in the day, in a roughish bar in an insalubrious part of Athens I maintained (drunkenly, loudly, but articulately) that the Elgin Marbles were works that I had grown up with, they were part of my heritage and I valued them as an essential part of what it meant to be British and that we would never, ever let them go!  As one Greek later confided to me in the bar, “The only reason we didn’t kill you was because you were obviously so passionate about them!”

In the same way, the Assyrian bas-reliefs of The Lion Hunt, and especially the poignant depiction of a dying lioness.

 

These are objects that I always visit first when I go to the BM.

 http://etc.ancient.eu/photos/assyrian-lion-hunting-british-museum/

Another part of MY history and MY culture, no matter where the artwork was originally made.  I would be very loath to give those back - even if it might be difficult to work out exactly who to give them back to, history being what it is and places and people changing so much over time!

But the ‘decent’ person inside the voracious art-lover persona knows exactly what the issues are and, while questions of ownership are difficult they are not impossible and the ‘right thing to do’ trumps smaller questions.

That being said, I still wouldn’t give them back!

So, what I am saying is that I do understand the passions that can be aroused by ownership and siting of works of art.  Which brings us back to what, this morning, was packed into a van in Catalonia and taken, through a police cordon and angry crowds, to Aragon.

There has been an acrimonious court case about the ‘ownership’ of these religious works of art and the latest twist was a judge saying that they should be ‘returned’ to Aragon.  In normal times, that judgement would be the prelude to further rounds of legal argument and a procession through various courts until, possibly it found its way to the highest court in Spain.

But that didn’t happen.

Given the present situation in Catalonia, things are a little different.

After the threat of the Catalan government’s proclamation of independence, the minority right-wing Conservative (PP) national government in Spain declared article 155 of the Constitution and took away the elected government from Catalonia imposing their own rule from Madrid, arrested members of the government and issued an international arrest warrant for the President who is now in exile in Belgium.

PP managed to gain 9% of the popular vote in Catalonia in the last elections.  9%!  And now that party runs the country!  And they are showing exactly what their ‘running’ of the country means.

Iñigo Méndez de Vigo is the minority, right-wing, Conservative national Spanish government’s Minister of Culture and he has now intervened in the dispute.  As an Article 155 Minister imposed on a country that did not vote for him, he has ordered the treasures to be returned from Lleida to Aragón.  But not just to Aragón, but to the small town of Villanneva de Sigena - population 512.  From the museum in Lleida - population 140,000.  It just so happens that the party of government of the small town is PAR, a party closely associated with PP!  Well, there’s a surprise!  Funny how things work out when you are looking for a spiteful opportunity to denude Catalonia of its art!

Iñigo Méndez de Vigo has used the imposition of Article 155 to short circuit the legal procedures and give himself the power to take autocratic decisions against Catalonia.

Many people will not care much about old religious art, but the crowds of protesters outside the museum in Lleida did, just at the staff of the museum did when they came out of the building  en mass and applauded the support of the protesters.  This is not the end of the protest, even though the van carrying the disputed treasures has left for Aragón, and it should be a wake up call to those who think that they can trust any of the so-called ‘Constitutional’ parties in the forthcoming election to behave with anything approaching understanding following the events of the past months.

The taking of these art works is a clear indication of how the minority right-wing Conservative (PP) government is going to work.  It will use the power of Article 155 to manipulate and damage Catalonia in a way that it would never have been able to do if its measly 9% popular support was its mandate.

If it is prepared to do this with artworks, then imagine what is it likely to do with the actual structure of government and the finance of institutions in Catalonia!  PP is not to be trusted.  It is clearly the most corrupt party in Western Europe, with hundreds of its members in courts accused of or condemned for criminal activity.  And these are the people ‘governing’ Catalonia; preparing for the election on the 21^st and, most disturbingly, counting the votes.

Now, more than ever, Catalonia needs the eyes of the world, and especially those of the EU, to scrutinize the arrangements for, the supervision of, and the results from the local election in Catalonia on the 21^st of December.

All the Catalans ask for is fairness and honesty.  A big ‘ask’ from PP.

Watch what happens in Catalonia.  Ask questions.  Demand answers.  Support Democracy and Liberty!