life in the afternoon

With summer holiday just about to begin, I now know which book to take with me to the beach. This year, it's going to be "Death in the afternoon" by Ernest Hemingway. Not so much for the fun of it, or for an obvious debt in reading it (probably being Hemingway's most "Spanish" of books) but mostly because this book seems like the ideal way to lightly ponder about a long-lasting debate on the future of Spain's bullfighting tradition.

Were he alive today, Hemingway, a passionate bullfighting "aficionado" ever since -the legend says- witnessing the Fiestas de Pamplona back in 1920, would have suffered a blow facing last Tuesday's Catalan Autonomous Parliament's decision to abolish bullfighting in Catalunya. Given the region's historical background and its constant drive for breaking its bonds with anything that is Spanish, it is hard to see perceive this decision completely decoupled from politics. In fact, it would suffice to look at the distribution of votes on the matter to realize a -not so strange- correlation between an assumed sensitivity for animal rights and political views. In all, it was a heavily divided vote, with representatives of the local nationalist parties being strongly in favour of the abolition act, in contrast to those of the moderate ones who maintain stronger links with the Central Government.

In what concerns animal rights I am not sure how big this step is. In total, the bulls killed in arenas worldwide should not be more than a hundred every year, a number that is far inferior to the pigs slaughtered in the same period in the Catalan province alone to supply its sensitive citizens with a great variety of sausages. The obvious argument that bulls suffer an agonizing death in the bullring, whereas animals slaughtered for their flesh are killed "scientifically" does not make me feel a lot better. A great number of animals are still being horrendously tortured during drug and chemical testing and death is probably agonizing no matter the procedure of extermination being followed. I can understand the shock of a sensitive citizen at the sight of a blood-squirting, animal dying in its prime but one has to agree that there is a clear difference between slicing the throat of a baby lamp before putting it on a spit and leading a raging bull in the arena against a group of men, who have been trained throughout their lives into treating the animal with utter respect.

No matter one's opinion on bullfighting, he has to admit that the whole point of it goes far beyond simply killing the bull. As a long-standing tradition, it goes a long way back to ancient ceremonies with a great deal of symbolism embedded so deeply that has become invisible today to short-sighted modernists who choose to see bullfighting as a display of barbarism but find the running-over of animals on the highways an inescapable side-effect of progress. Yes, bullfighting is a remnant of old times, and yes a "corrida" is a hard sight to which I would think twice before submitting my children, but then again, are all things of old destined to be abolished? and to what extent is a dying bull more offensive as a sight than what one can see on TV?

I cannot say I am 100% pro-bullfighting, although I have enjoyed a couple of "corridas", and I am not the passionate fan Hemingway was, even if I appreciate a well-performed "Veronica" and can distinguish a "pase de pecho" from a "pase de desprecio". In all, I see a great deal of hypocrisy in trying to ban an activity that is has its roots in the veneration of an animal and during which animals are treated with extreme respect if not still considered sacred. Those who have never been in a bullfight, or have never read about them (by "Papa" Hemingway or anyone else) may not be aware of the fact that the bull is treated by the crowd with the same respect and admiration as the "torero", that the bullfighter is to be booed and ashamed if the animal is not killed properly (in a way that it suffers less, that is) and that in some -extreme- cases the bull can be "pardoned" by the fighter if the crowd demands it as a reward for its bravery (see for instance the great Jose Tomas pardoning a bull in Barcelona here).

But in the end, we live in a democracy and the decision of a Parliament is to be respected so there is to be no bullfighting in Catalunya as from January 1st 2012. And so the representatives of the people have decided that upon facing a bull instead of grabbing it by the horns, they might as well jump over it. Or even worse, pretend the bull is simply not there...

Cortescher

With the World Cup over, an -expected- July heat wave bringing the city to a standstill and with teaching obligations not to be resumed before early September, I am taking advantage of a loosened working schedule to catch up with some long-due reading. Over the last weeks I have decided to take up the task of reading Douglas Hofstadter's legendary "Godel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid" (also referred to as GEB-EGB by "connaiseurs").

Being a book I 've always meant to read but at the same time more of a project than actual reading entertainment, GEB is to be given time and space to breath between reading chapters discussing a wide range of subjects from -the obvious but rather misguiding Music and Art- to -the more proper- computing, cognition and artificial intelligence. I therefore relax my GEB-endeavour with interludes of short stories by some of the South American masters, (Cortazar and Marquez mostly), whom I have somehow always connected with the summer.
It was this way that I came to make a strange connection between, GEB (and the middle "E" in particular, that is "Escher") with a short story from Julio Cortazar's "Final del juego" that I read only recently.

The story is called "La noche boca arriba", which would be translated in English as "The night face up" (non-spanish readers can opt for this interesting comic-strip version). It starts with an ordinary motorcycle accident, with the rider -our hero- being taken to hospital to receive first aid treatment. There he drifts into a strange limbo having and a very vivid dream in which he is transformed into a central American warrior-prince being chased by the blood-thirsty soldiers of the enemy in a dense, tenebrous jungle. As our hero resonates in and out of his drug-induced lethargy the realistic description of the surgery room is more and more blending with the visions of his middle-aged American dreamscape. The warrior has now been captured and is being kept captive in a dim, moist cave. As surgery goes on, the wounded rider dozes off deeper and deeper into this horrible nightmare. His captives are now tying him up on a wooden stretcher as the preparations for his sacrifice -for he is going to be sacrificed- are under way. As the story is slowly drawing to a climax, the part of the warrior is gradually occupying the greatest part of the story, the agony of the imminent sacrifice has become the main theme with the ongoing surgery in a distant time and space shifting to a secondary allegory. The upsetting "finale" resolves in a complete reversal of the story, as we realize that the surgery room, the accident, the speedy motorcycle ride have all been parts of a futuristic vision of the moribund warrior instead of the actual facts.

These reversals are rather a commonplace in Cortazar and the rest of his kind (Borges being the most prominent). But having had recently gone through the wonderous worlds of M.C. Escher, I could not but think of his "Metamorphosen", where a main theme being gradually mixed with a secondary until completely transformed into it, and how Douglas Hofstadter might have been delighted in citing this wonderful literary analog to complementary transformations (instead of filling the gaps of his chapters with his somehow dully pedagogical dialogs).

As it was getting very late -but not much cooler- I switched off the light and tried to get some sleep myself, only to realize that I was too upset by Cortazar's complementary nightmares and that instead of taking a "break" I should have moved directly to Hofstadter's next chapter on recursion.

It's always the 26th

On July 26th 1953, some 130 men badly trained, poorly armed, wearing second-hand military uniforms, stormed the barracks of La Moncada in Santiago de Cuba at daybreak. As the attack was pushed back by the soldiers of Fulgencio Batista's military regime, a great part of the insurgents died on the spot. Others were executed the morning after and the rest of them were captured in the following days, tortured, trialed for treason and imprisoned for life.
They did not, however, serve for life. For it only took five years and 158 days for the man who had led them against La Moncada to finally triumph in kicking Batista and Co. out of Cuba. Fidel Castro's first official decree ordered their liberation and the declaration of July 26th as a national holiday.

Last week, that same man, Fidel Castro, having outlived nine U.S. presidents, several CIA-orchestrated attacks against the state of Cuba and himself, made an official appearance after being considered seriously ill (at some times even at the verge of death) for more than a year. He looked feeble but in good humour and even had time to talk to the people for a couple of hours, for remaining silent has never been his thing ever since he defended his own self in the trials of La Moncada movement.

Castro will turn 84 next month but will still be at the center of attention of the whole country for today's celebrations of the National Holiday commemorating the attack on La Moncada. Fifty seven years after that first attempt to change the lives of the Cuban People, he is something more than a talisman of the state he rescued from the gangsters and the pimps. He is still active, taking decisions, forming policies and even committing errors, something Bill Clinton (to name only one) can only match with explaining the way he led the World Economy to ruins to University students all over the planet. (His fee for such "inspired" talks amounts in the thousands, they say, but maybe he plays the sax for free on intermission).

In the meantime, Castro, once the pole of an "axis of evil", demonized for trying to impose a "failed economical system" on the poor Cubans, is seeing how his country sails through the latest international economic crisis, the third one since he took over. I guess he must be entertained with the way his fellows in the US and Europe are cutting down salaries and pensions, watching unemployment rise and public spending decrease. I also guess that by now, having been harshly criticized for nationalizing banks and companies, he must be entertained with how European Governments are using taxpayers money to rescue private banks.
I 'm also guessing Castro, having been repeatedly accused for his insistence on not liberating political prisoners, will be laughing at the new laws in Europe and elsewhere forcing women not to wear burkha, forcing everybody to carry new, biometric passports, registering mobile phones, allowing landlines to be tapped "under special circumstances" e.t.c.

And I 'm guessing Castro will be having the time of his life today. Seeing Cuba maintaining its dignity in times that even sovereign states are being bullied by the IMF and some arbitrary world-dictators named G20. Seeing that Cuba -in the way he has defended it against the wishes of "liberals" worldwide- has not had the luck of Haiti or Bolivia, thus it cannot be devastated by natural catastrophes like earthquakes or un-natural ones like Lehman Brothers.

For Castro, it may not "always be the 26th" (as Omara Portuondo sings in this beautiful anthem) but in the end it looks like history may absolve him after all.

PMD (Post-Mundial-Depression)

Cuando el Mundial comenzó, en la puerta de mi casa colgué un cartel que decía Cerrado por fútbol. Cuando lo descolgué, un mes después, yo ya había jugado sesenta y cuatro partidos, cerveza en mano, sin moverme de mi sillón preferido. Esa proeza me dejó frito, los músculos dolidos, la garganta rota; pero ya estoy sintiendo nostalgia. Ya empiezo a extrañar la insoportable letanía de las vuvuzelas, la emoción de los goles no aptos para cardíacos, la belleza de las mejores jugadas repetidas en cámara lenta. Y también la fiesta y el luto, porque a veces el fútbol es una alegría que duele, y la música que celebra alguna victoria de ésas que hacen bailar a los muertos, suena muy cerca del clamoroso silencio del estadio vacío, donde ha caído la noche y algún vencido sigue sentado, solo, incapaz de moverse, en medio de las inmensas gradas sin nadie.


Eduardo Galeano
El reino magico

*(Find an English translation here)

in the end it's all about football

Last month was a month of traveling, work, reading and partying but first and foremost it was a month of football. Hard as I tried to explain to my girlfriend that the World Cup -apart from being the WORLD CUP- belongs to that special category of rare events -once every four years- that further adds to their immense importance, she still found my enthusiasm (which of course she could only qualify as obsession) increasingly irritating. Having been in a rather good mood (as it always happens while the World Cup approaches the last-16) the time seemed right for me to confront Demetra with the standard, traditional argumentation for the love of the game and the impact of the World Cup

I therefore tried to slowly introduce her to the history of the teams, the differences in the style of play that for so long -not so much anymore, but still- have been connected to the temperament of the people, the Brazilian "jogo bonito" against the Bristish "kick and rush" etc. But having had recently read Jonathan Wilson's -outstanding- "Inverting the Pyramid" I soon found myself over-excited, talking about formations and tactics, arguing for the rise of the modern 4-2-3-1 and the -apparent- decline of 4-4-2 and preaching about posession football being a pro-active strategy. As I realized the expressions on Demetra's face were rapidly shifting from slightly indifferent to utterly bored, I decided I had gone too far and I let it go. By that time the play-offs had already started and I decidedly announced I was to watch all games left till the end. I stayed in to watch USA play Ghana. She stayed in with me, partly out of support and partly -I assume- for educational reasons. Perhaps she could understand what it is that makes football so important.

As it usually happens, by the time you reach the semifinals, even women get to be -a little- interested in the action. With Uruguay about to face the Netherlands in the first semifinal we decided to watch the game in the company of friends (girlfriends included). Before kick off, having been repeatedly asked on which side I was on, I resolved -time and again- to foolish comments of the type "I don't mind", "I like them both" etc. But as the game went under way I gradually shifted from a mild sympathizer of the Uruguayans to the most loyal of their fans . So, I cheered with joy when Diego Forlan scored the superb goal depicted in this post's photo and I stood up from my chair to watch the last minutes as Uruguay struggled for an equalizer.
A few days later, Demetra decided it was high time she went out a bit. As she was having drinks downtown, I was at home biting my fingernails watching Uruguay's agonizing efforts for a late equalizer once more, this time against Germany in the 3rd place final. When Forlan (again) hit the crossbar from a free-kick on the last minute I exploded in a outcry of curses about the world being unjust, the order of the universe and the such!

It is in moments like these, that one realizes the power of football.

When simply by watching a game you start to get involved even when at the beginning you appear indifferent. It is as if you have been set up by a friend on a blind date only to find yourself strangely attracted to the other person and un-strangely in love before you even realize it. In the same way you find yourself cheering for the goals of a far-away country or feeling compassion for a guy being sent off even if you've only seen his face for the first time one hour ago. No matter what the tactics are, wether 4-4-2 is to be abandoned or if Spain's tiki-taka is a defensive or an attacking strategy, in the end it's all about football.

And one day, perhaps, women may feel it too.

Against the anonymous fan

Imagine something you love and at the same time respect too much to see it ridiculed. Now imagine someone who is pretending to love that same thing but obviously understands nothing of its grace. One that instead of appreciating it, is using it as an opportunity to show off. Someone who, in summary, is nowhere near your perception of what is considered to be your "common" passion. He is only there to make a mock out of it and outrage you with his stupidity!
Now put this guy in the position of the anonymous clown of the photo and there you have my feelings about football on one hand and the random football fan on the other.

I 've been watching the games of the World Cup just like any other civilized person who appreciates football and I cannot but be disturbed with the frequency with which the cameras turn to the crowd in search of pathetic exhibitionists like the one in the photo. I cannot be precise about the origins of this sick habit of television broadcast but I am guessing it must have started at the same time football was for the first time treated as a massive commercial product. That would be sometime between the World Cups of USA and Korea-Japan. It was around then, that broadcasting a football game started to involve close-ups of Victoria Beckham (back then Mel-C or B, I can't quite remember). And it was around that time that the anonymous idiot, realized he could have his 5 seconds of fame simply by putting on the most ridiculous kind of garment, (or in the case of women, remove every trace of it) and getting admitted into a football stadium (if only someone would stop him...).

Be it wherever and whenever, I am not here to argue on the power of the medium (that is TV in HD or any other quality). The point I am trying to make is as simple as this:
Since when have we fans become a part of the spectacle so that we deserve to be ostentatiously treated side by side with the actual protagonists, the football players and their coaches?
Since when do people feel that going to a football stadium is more about showing off their worst taste in costumes than watching the actual game?
Since when have people become so self-centered that instead of watching the game they sit patiently staring at the big screen (nowadays all big stadia have at least one) waiting for their little, insignificant existences to appear so that they can wave mommy or daddy hello?
And since when has the feeling "I saw it. I was there!" been substituted by "You saw me. I was there!" ?

It may be a sign of the times, a simple manifestation of how, in a powerful media-driven society, the passive spectator becomes the spectacle or -for that matter- how easily he can be tricked into believing he is something more than just that. A passive spectator. In a society where our ability to have a real say about things that matter has been substituted by the illusion of deciding on the next "pop idol" it is becoming increasingly important to realize what order of things we HAVE to be involved in and what not. Football -other than a great game for those of us lucky to still practice it- is a spectacle and should remain one. The moment the fans get to have their own "Fan of the match" webpage, (check it out, it exists) something is definitely going wrong.

To all those that will arguably point out that football without TV would be something very different than what it really is, I can simply offer to lend them a couple of my DVDs of old World Cups where the TV was present only without the occasional morons staring at the camera, making the V-sign instead of watching the game they had paid for.

Please, keep this in mind, for the next time you see a clown like this popping up on your TV screen in the middle of the semis.

So long and thanks for the fish...

(A guy walking down Carrer dels Flassanders in el Born, Barcelona. Photo by Julien Lagarde)

Some ten days ago, in a bar close to my old working place in the Barceloneta, I indulged into some serious dancing and partying for three main reasons. One, Greece had only won their first ever game in a World Cup on that same afternoon, two after having watched France losing to Mexico in the company of a predominantly French audience I felt we needed to be cheered up and three I was back in the company of good friends I haven't seen for quite a long time. Moreover, we found ourselves in our "natural" environment, the place where we all met, worked and have shared similar moments (that is both vivid disappointments and sudden impulses of joy) over the last years.

It was during that dancing that one of us (I was told later, it was Micha) told someone else (who was Julien): "We were a good group once"

Be it nostalgia, grief or simply "girly-talk" as my own girl put it, there is substantial truth in that. We "were" a group once, we are now individuals that used to be part of the same team, still very good friends, still in the position of meeting every now and then and have fun like we used to. As time goes by and we grow old, some things will necessarily change. And instead of thinking back in sorrow, I prefer to glance forward in joy. I am happy to realize that even though life has moved on, I can still meet my friends and have a great time with them, be it for ten days every few months. A lot of things change in between, but it is as natural, as well as desired.

As time goes by and the perception of time itself is adjusting to a more fragmentary way of "grown-up" life, I choose the most optimistic way of looking at things. Yes, we "were a group" once, but yes we also "are" still a group in a certain sort of way. And no we won't be able to celebrate all of the French defeats, (or any other kind of "defeat" for that manner) but it is quite astonishing that we manage to keep this rate of constancy of celebrating once every few months considering the distances we are all transversing in both space and time.

A few days later during a wonderful ceviche dinner at the place of a couple of friends we remembered the last time I was there. It was almost a year and a half ago, the dinner was lunch then, (but it was again fish), and my friends' precious daughter was sitting at the table with us. Seventeen months later, the precious daughter was sleeping in the room next door, with her -also precious- baby brother who was born on the same night of my last visit. As we wondered what the changes will be the next time we have dinner or lunch together, I thought that witnessing change may be as important as meeting again to share it.

As I once again rode the bus to the airport, on my way home, I promised myself I will be back soon. Not as soon though as not for some change to have taken place. It looks as if I have irreversibly connected Barcelona with the point of reference for my personal development plan ;)

So long, then, and thanks for all the fish...

Barcabios - La vuelta

(Downtown Barcelona as seen from Montjuic. Photo by Julien Lagarde)

So, I am back in Barcelona, as promised. It took me more than fifteen months to fulfill this -seemingly- simple promise. But things are not always what they seem to be and what has been placed between me and Barcelona over these months ended up being as difficult to cope up with as it was to let go.

So it's been one year, three months and two weeks since I took my girl, my suitcases and two backpacks full of memories on a taxi to the El Prat airport. We had had a paella and then coffee in Absinta in the Barceloneta, had said "hasta la proxima" to those friends who stood there till the end and at the door, it looked as if as even "hard" Giuseppe, my flatmate for over three years was about to cry. Then we flew back to Athens on the first day of March and the story changed so suddenly that it would be hard for one to think it's not a different story altogether.

It sounds weird that I get to remember all these details so vividly. But memories are very much like the forgotten souvenirs one brings home from a trip. You only find them once you accidentally hit on the cupboard in which you have been keeping them. In my case the cupboard is a rectangle defined by Montjuic, Gracia, Gottico and Poble Nou. And as it appears I have carelessly left something in every little corner of it, I am delighted that not a single moment passes by without me remembering, names, places and faces. A terrace in the Barceloneta where four people had dinner yesterday was enough of a reason for my being here and my coming back once more.

A couple of days ago, my good friend Kostas, suggested I listened to "Boots of Spanish Leather". As I now realize my "souvenirs" from Barcelona are something more than a pair of boots, I feel like I am at peace. It's certainly more than a pair of boots I will be bringing back home to my beloved as it's more than certain that my cupboard, with its "loyal guardians" will always be here with for me to randomly go about digging for lost, but not forgotten "souvenirs de Barcelona".

today

Oh the time will come up

When the winds will stop
And the breeze will cease to be breathin’
Like the stillness in the wind
’Fore the hurricane begins
The hour when the ship comes in

Bob Dylan,
When the ship comes in

let it spread*!

* Yield spread: The difference between the quoted rates of return on two different investments, usually of different credit quality.

Greeks learned what the "yield spread" (or simply "spread") is only recently. The Portuguese, the Spaniards and many more are soon to find out themselves. In simple words it represents a rate at which a government may borrow from other financial entities. Low spreads mean a country is trustworthy and thus can sell its bonds easily. High spreads reflect a generalized doubt on the government's ability to pay back, therefore borrowing becomes more difficult. At usury rates, borrowing becomes impossible and the country goes bankrupt.

Over the last few months the yield spread of the 10-year Greek government bond rose from about 2.5% (last November) to a prohibiting 8.5%, right before Greece was forced to submit to the IMF and to a record high of 10.4% last Wednesday while the Greek MPs were discussing the ratification of the IMF memorandum and with the house of Parliament being sieged by an uncontrolled mass of demonstrators.

As the value of the yield spread is said to reflect the fiscal reliability of the state economy, I find it hard to understand the degree to which my country's credibility has improved within the last five days. The spread dropped by 50% within thirty minutes yesterday morning and it lies now only marginally (and suspiciously) below 5%, which equals the rate at which Greece is to borrow from the IMF and the EU. As from yesterday, everything seems like business as usual for the "markets". Yield spreads are dropping, the Greek Stock Market marking a rise of almost 9% on Monday and news throughout the media of mass deception talking about "a reversal of the climate", "a new hope" and "the light at the end of the tunnel".

All over Europe, people stand amazed with the clarity and consistency with which the "markets" are behaving. Two days ago, the EU announced a "rescue plan" of 750 billion Euro thus openly admitting for the first time that a number of states -and not only the lazy Greeks- are at the verge of fiscal collapse. To this grave danger, the thoughtful "markets" immediately responded by reducing interest rates and with stocks rising all over the continent. Well aren't they nice?

Well, in Greece in particular, there are a couple of things that happened in the meanwhile. These were the -unprecedented- signing of a treaty that is granting to an outside independent organization (the IMF) the right to decide on critical matters of the daily life of citizens of a member state. These were the complete abolishment of working rights, these were the reduction of the lowest salaries in the EU with a simultaneous rise in taxation. These were all "necessary", "unavoidable", "inescapable" sacrifices the people had to undergo in order to convince some German Bank to lend them money with less than 5% interest.

There are of course the skeptics. The ones who look at the salary reductions, the "reformation" of work rights, pensions being cut down even for the poorest and see "a tunnel at the end of the tunnel". Those who take to the streets because they fear they will soon be living on them, who try to sack the Parliament before it is completely run down by un-elected "loan sharks", who refuse to pay the bill for a country whose 60% rise in GDP over the last decade has gone anywhere else but in their pockets.

And this is what is happening in Greece today, in Portugal and Spain tomorrow and soon to a country near you.