Liquid musing

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pool water has returned to its crystalline clarity in our local pool, but one does wonder just what “product” we have been swimming in that has been used to banish yesterday’s murkiness.  But that way madness lies, and life is too short etc etc to worry (overmuch) about such things.

     In a sign of technological spitefulness because of my forced missed swim yesterday, my smartwatch refused to record accurately my latest swim, only giving about half the meters of each length, but my internal length counter guided me to a satisfactory completion where, in spite of the evidence of the resentful watch, I think that I more than exceeded my usual lengths.

     The local pool is one of the only places in Castelldefels that can supply me with a decent cup of tea (a mixture of Earl Grey and English Breakfast) which is my reward for completing my swim.  Today, they had run out! 

     I had been prepared for this awful eventuality and took an orange juice as an alternative, but an orange juice topped up with ice cold Cava.  I have now entered that select grouping of ageing men who have alcohol first thing in the morning!  Well, not really, the orange juice was the major partner in the drink and freshly pressed too, so the Cava was more of jeu d’esprit than anything else.  Though one I could easily get used to!

    

 

I am beginning to understand that the cost of living I going to be a major problem.  Even casual shops are now costing over 100 euros.  I can still recall my parents have a serious discussion about finance after the weekly shop had exceeded five quid for the first time!  That truly was another age.

     It is difficult to think about winter when all available fans are on full strength to make the heat bearable, but with the rising cost of electricity and gas, coupled with the rise in general prices means that our minds are going to be concentrated.  Given the situations in our respective countries, I feel more secure in my adopted home of Catalonia than I would in the Conservative ridden dystopia that Britain has become.  Let us see how the future works out!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 42 – Sunday, 26th APRIL

As I had to replenish my meds I visited the pharmacy this morning, giving me a representative view of the effects of the loosening of the lockdown in respect of children under 14.

   There were plenty of kids around and with the exception of one child none of them was wearing a mask and neither was the parent.  The kids were on scooters and bikes and in one incidence on a skateboard.  The paseo was fairly full and there were people on the beach.  The fact that this is notable in a seaside town speaks volumes for what we have been going through!

     Perhaps it is naive to suppose otherwise but the kids acted as though there was nothing wrong and that there had been nothing wrong.  If that totally understandable reaction of the kids is transferred to the parents, or even more disturbingly has come from the parents, then the virus results in a fortnight are going to give pause for thought.

     If things go according to the plan outlined by the Spanish government, then next week we may see a further loosening of the restrictions, and adults will be able to exercise outside too.  What exactly that might mean is not clear at the moment – but the idea of being able to go for a bike ride at least would be something to look forward to.

     Whatever happens in the immediate future, I think the idea of breaking down the in-house seclusion will gain an inevitable momentum that will be very difficult to reign in again.

     There are hundreds of people in Spain dying every day from Covid-19, the crisis is nowhere near over, but the mind set is looking towards some sort of conclusion.  And that is dangerous.

Meanwhile in Britain, tomorrow sees the return of the incompetent politician who went out of his way to get infected with Corvid-19 and who ‘leads’ a government that dithered at the start of the crisis ensuring the grotesque figures of infected and dead that we have now.

     One wonders how he will stage his return and then how he will divide his time between trying to explain what has gone on and working towards a no-deal Brexit.  I shudder for the future of my country.

     Talking of shuddering, Cummins the creepy power behind the empty throne is a participating member of what should be a purely scientific advisory committee.  The revelation in The Guardian about his membership over the weekend has sparked a controversy, but given the way that this government reacts to such things, I wonder just how much traction such a revelation will have.

The continuing story of printing out the final draft copy of The Coast of Memory has now reached epic proportions.  The problem is the ink.  God alone knows what sort of depraved electronic jiggery-pokery there is inside a printer that limits the usefulness of the ink in cartridges, but the woeful capacity of the replacements that I have used in the printing is beyond astonishing.  I suspect that there is some artificial limiting device that is able to override the obvious and audible reserves of ink in the cartridge and ensure that it is inoperable.  I refuse to give up, but the last printing was less than satisfactory.

     I might even end up going to a commercial outlet.  Except, of course, all of those are closed at the moment.  Ah, the travails of the would be publisher are never over!

And tomorrow is the next on line Catalan meeting!

Sad thoughts from abroad!

What can we expect in the next week or so in Catalonia?

A week, they say, is a long time in politics - indeed it is!  But what can you say about a country (Spain) where politics seems like a long dead art?  About a president (Rajoy) who seems to have no understanding about the political duties of his office?  About a division of powers of the three legs of constitutional democracy that have been blended together by the governing political party so that realistic separation does not exist?

Well, say what you like - but the reality of the responses is going to dictate the lives and livelihoods of a whole generation of people living in the country of Catalonia.

A declaration of independ

ence has been signed by the requisite Catalan politicians in the parliament, but its declaration has been delayed for a month to allow negotiations to proceed with the Spanish government.  A delay which was asked for by the EU as a sign of good will towards the Spanish government so that they were not forced into precipitate action.

And the response of the Spanish government?  A complete refusal to countenance any form of negotiation that might involve a realistic consideration of another and binding referendum about the independence of Catalonia.  Government leaders in Madrid have gone out of their way to say that all offers of outside mediation will be rejected because this is a Spanish internal problem.  No discussions will take place about the break up of Spain.  No!  No!  No!

The Catalan government has been given until Monday to clarify if it has actually declared UDI and, if they have not come back to heel by Thursday, then Section 155 of the Constitution will be invoked which takes away power from the Catalan parliament and allows Madrid to take over the running of the region.

The Socialist (!) party of Spain has said that if UDI is declared then they will support the right wing minority government led (!) by Rajoy in their actions against Catalonia.  The vacuous leader of the Socialist (!) party has suggested that there could be negotiations about changing the constitution and the relationship of the autonomous regions to start in six months time - as long as the Catalan government return to what the corrupt band of chancers who make up PP and PSOE call ‘the rule of law’.

For this to work, you would have to believe that the political group (PP) that engineered the rejection of a new relationship between Catalonia and the Central Spanish government and which was passed by both houses of parliament in Madrid and Barcelona, would suddenly change its mind and become reasonable.  PP was directly responsible for the rejection of something that could have assuaged Catalan resentment.  Nothing in the behaviour of PP over the last seven years since the rejection of an agreed settlement in 2010 suggests that they can be trusted in the slightest to negotiate with anything approaching honesty.

The action and inaction of PSOE and Cs have been equally disgraceful, and I treat anything they say with contempt.

So we have something of an impasse.  Neither side believes the other.  No common ground is clear.  No mediation is in the offing.  Disaster beckons.

The tensions in the Catalan parliament are clear.  There are those representatives who want an immediate declaration of UDI.  They say that the response of the Spanish government shows that they cannot be trusted.  They are going to get nothing by offering delay for negotiation because the Spanish government has clearly stated that they are not interested.

Indeed the Spanish government has noted the cracks in the Catalan government and they may well have thought that all they have to do is wait and the cracks will become open division.  Which they will exploit.

If UDI is declared then Spain will invoke Article 155.  Rule from Madrid.  This will infuriate the majority of the population of Catalonia.  There will be Civil Unrest.  Perhaps Rajoy doesn’t care.  He gains little electoral positivity from the poor showing of his corrupt party in Catalonia.  He can afford to ignore any loss of votes for his party because his status will increase elsewhere in Spain as some voters see a long delayed retribution for what they call the arrogance of Catalans and their open display of rejection of the law.

What else can this Titan of political inactivity do?  He could rule from Madrid.  As civil unrest increases and perhaps there are a few deaths he could then send in the army to, what was it the Russians used to say to justify their invasions of rebellious satellite countries? Oh yes, “We sent the army in at the request of the legitimate authorities in [insert name of country] to preserve law, order, liberty and democracy!”

They could then outlaw all the political parties that voted for UDI and signed the declaration.  They could fine, imprison and ban from political life those leaders who ‘misled’ the population.  They could then force elections in Catalonia allowing only the political parties that they deemed ‘legal’ to take part.

I am not Catalan, but from my observations of the people in this country, I do not think for a moment that they would stand by and allow this to happen.

An unsettled country would see institutions and businesses, including the sluttish banks of course, flee to Spain to be ‘safer’.  The financial situation of Catalonia would suffer, whether or not UDI was declared.  People would suffer.

But remember that Madrid is in the middle of the country.  It might be the capital of Spain, but there is no real geographical reason why the capital of Spain is where it is.  It is historical.  And Madrid has artificially bolstered the reputation and importance of the capital at the expense of other more attractive cities.  Like Brasilia, you have a ‘constructed’ capital city.  Barcelona however is on the sea, it has a port, it also has a major airport, and it is also on the main land route out of Spain through Catalonia and into France, part of the vastly important Mediterranean Corridor.  Spain will never want to lose that route, as it would cost it billions that it can't afford to construct another way through the Pyrenees.

Let me give you an example of how Madrid has engineered things.  When my postal vote for Brexit was lost, my replacement ballot was so late in getting to me that I had to go to the post office and get a special delivery of my “NO” vote against the lunacy of Brexit.  It cost a lot.  I was told by the post office people in Castelldefels that my letter would first go to Barcelona, and then it would be flown to Madrid and then be flown on to London and then to Cardiff.  Why?  Barcelona has a major international airport with direct flights to London and the UK.  But no, in order to bloat the services for Madrid and to make it appear more important than it actually is, all the mail was diverted on an extra, irrelevant leg of a pointless journey.  That story is not just about an important letter, but it is also about an attitude in Spain and Madrid.

Try as I might, I can only see disaster on the horizon.  An inflexible minority right-wing government has too much to lose by being ‘reasonable’, so I suspect that they will play true to form and think only of themselves and their party.  They have no concern for Catalonia and they will delight in using an iron fist in an armoured glove to crush what they see as a real threat to their comfortable corruption.

If Catalonia declares UDI then they will have to be in it for the long run, accept economic impoverishment and oppression and discover that it might be time to re-read some of the books that George Orwell wrote.  Those books have been considered as a literature of history, but they may now come to be considered as a guide to current affairs.

What a sad time it is that might be true!

There's no place like home?

A late night, slightly drunken telephone conversation in the early hours of the morning, offered me a safe haven in Cardiff if the situation in Catalonia descended into chaos as a result of from the referendum for independence.  While much appreciated, I felt the offer was unnecessary and made me think about early warfare.

In history going back, say, to the Middle Ages, battles could take place and, unless you were in the immediate vicinity, you probably wouldn’t know about them.  If you were living in another part of the country, you might never find out about them.  Royal houses might rise and fall and, unless you were near the centre of activity or could read, it would always be something going on beyond your imagination - and have nothing to do with the quotidian duties of your daily life.

Today with television, radio and social media there is a (grainy) immediacy to important events as everyone with a functioning telephone uses it to take pictures or film of what they can see.  The Spanish national police brutality during the referendum in Catalonia on the first of October was captured in a horrific gallery of professional and amateur images that flashed around the world.  A friend of mine held an umbrella over a television company’s camera to capture the full violence of the Spanish police trying to stop voting in her local school - one of the focal points of trouble in Barcelona and the site of many injuries to citizens trying to vote.  No sooner had we seen one image of unprovoked barbarity than another succeeded it.  But, and this is my point, the violence was ‘over there’ in Barcelona, not ‘here’ in Castelldefels.

The scenes at our polling station (in fact my medical centre) were cheerfully chaotic.  Yes there were police there, but they did nothing to impede the vote.  Yes, when Toni came to vote there was a delay as the polling staff retrieved the hidden ballot boxes that had been put in a place of safety because of the threat of a police raid, but he was able to vote and had his photograph taken to prove that he had done so.  Yet 19 kilometres away from us Spanish police were swinging batons, dragging people by the hair, breaking fingers, firing rubber bullets and bloodying faces.

The next day there were demonstrations throughout Catalonia to protest against the police brutality.  Our demonstration was in front of the city hall.  It was well mannered and polite: kids were playing and people were sitting in the cafes drinking coffee.  It’s a week from the day of the referendum.  It’s sunny and Saturday.  The paseo next to the beach is filled with promenading visitors.  I can hear the sound of the sea as I type and not the rumble of encroaching tanks!  Life goes on.

And even if the representative of the Spanish government’s ‘apology’ for the brutality was on the we’re-sorry-anyone-was-hurt-but-you-Catalan-people-are-to blame level, it does at least admit that the publicity was the most disastrous own goal since the last corruption scandal of this scandal-prone minority government.

Having seen how badly Spain has been presented throughout Europe, surely the reasoning goes, they will do virtually anything to stop a repeat of what they did.

The key word in that last paragraph is ‘reasoning’ and the key part of that word is ‘reason’.  Unfortunately that is not something that seems to guide PP in their approach to anything, least of all Catalonia.

Even if politicians in Spain seem incapable of finding a solution to what could be a fatal problem in the modern history of this country, there have been no shortages of advice from commentators from around the world.

As a dyed-in-the-wool Guardian reader I have to admit that I have taken most of my information from that newspaper, together with a judicious seasoning from the BBC and my final position is I suppose based on a hopeful fudge.

Although I think that the present situation is largely the fault of PP and President Rajoy, that is in the past and recriminations (no matter how necessary for one’s state of mind) do nothing to help the present position.  Both sides in recent days have conceded something by toning down their rhetoric and, although a realistic settlement seems as far away as ever, there are signs that both sides are looking for some sort of compromise.  I hope.

Let’s face it, even though the fact that the referendum took place in spite of the paranoid opposition of the government is something to be admired, the real facts of the situation are that only 42% of the electorate voted and, even though 90% of the votes case were for independence, that means that something like 36% voted for it.  Realistically, how can a country where only just over a third of the electorate voted for independence expect to be taken seriously?

But you also have to consider that in a country where the whole might of the government (with police brutality to the forefront) was unable to stop an ‘illegal’ referendum, the fact that over a third of the electorate voted to become independent suggests that there is something seriously wrong with the way that government is being implemented at the moment!

The unity of Spain is a concept that is worthwhile and positive, but that cannot be used as something to nullify any discussion about why such a sizeable and vocal minority of a constituent autonomous region is so deeply dissatisfied.

Perhaps it is too late for the German model to be used for Spain to reform Catalonia as a republic of federal state, but it does seem to me to be the best way forward.

But before that, there will have to be meaningful discussions and negotiations where everything is on the table and nothing (including another binding referendum) is excluded.

Next week could see the proclamation of UDI.  If that happens then Rajoy has not ruled out the imposition of rule from Madrid.  I shudder to think of the extent of civil disobedience if that is his chosen option.  The police, whose reputation was wiped out on October 1^st, are still here as a shadow army for possible occupation.  And there are of course, the armed forces themselves.  Rajoy has said that he has ruled out nothing to support his adamant assertion that UDI will not take place.

Reality is about to get a little sharper.  By Tuesday we should know what route our politicians have taken.

Keep watching Catalonia.