Lavengro in Spain

Nationalist Man

Timothy Garton Ash finished his Thursday article in the Guardian by saying:

Now we are at a crossroads. One road leads back to economic nationalism, protectionism and beggar-thy-neighbour policies. Another leads forward to more international co-operation, including more regulation and transparency. Without a conscious effort, the dynamics of both democratic and undemocratic politics, which remain national, will lead us down the former road. Inside Davos Man, there is his predecessor and possible successor always struggling to get out. If you don't like what you've seen of Davos Man, wait till you see Nationalist Man get to work.

And, right on cue, here is Nationalist Man

Photo El País

Guardian geography

Iceland will be put on a fast track to joining the European Union to rescue the small Arctic state from financial collapse amid rising expectations that it will apply for membership within months, senior policy-makers in Brussels and Reykjavik have told the Guardian.

Ian Traynor in today’s Grauniad.

The whole of Iceland lies south of the Arctic circle.

Spanish banks and the crisis

Santander has announced that it will compensate people who lost money in the Madoff fraud. Private individuals will receive their original investment back but with no gain. It will be paid in Santander preference shares. These shares will cost the bank €500m but will have a value of €1,380m. All banks seem to be able to invent money whenever they want! Institutional investors will receive nothing on the grounds that they should have known what they were doing. This indirectly admits that this was not the right investment for small clients, but the bank states that it acted with due diligence. Santander has announced a profit for 2008 of €8.876bn, down 2.03% on last year. The €500m compensation is charged to the 2008 accounts. Its shares rose 13% on the news.

BBVA, another Spanish bank has made €5.020bn profit. That is down 18% and it is paying its dividends in shares (of which it has quite a lot going spare).

Meanwhile, Spain is now officially in a recession. Unemployment is rising, but there is evidence that the black economy is growing. Normally the number of people who tell an anonymous official survey that they are employed corresponds very closely with the number of people affiliated to the Social Security (health and pensions). Now there is a gap of about 80,000 people who say that they are employed but who are not paying their Social Security. This means that they are being paid out of a black fund (B account, as they say here) so that the employer can save cash. The problem is that people don’t always know this – employers have a habit of taking the employee’s contribution and pocketing it instead of paying it to the SS*. Also, VAT revenue is falling faster than consumption – another indicator that the black economy is taking off.

Immigrants who wish to return to their home countries can take their six months’ maximum unemployment benefit as a lump sum – and that would go quite a long way in Ecuador, I imagine – with a guarantee to return to Spain in three years (I think).

*When I arrived in Spain, this practice was common among language school owners, who are (with some honourable exceptions) crooks, charlatans and downright thieves.

A proud man

BBC

Sir Paul Stephenson has been named as Metropolitan Police Commissioner, the top job in British policing. Sir Paul, 55, who was deputy to the previous chief Sir Ian Blair, said he was "enormously proud" and was looking forward to the challenges ahead.

Pride is one of the deadly sins.

"I'm such a hugely proud policeman to be asked to lead the Met in bringing safety to millions of Londoners, millions of visitors and leading the Met's national efforts. I am just enormously proud".

Hmmm. Pride also notoriously goes before a fall.

Wind

We had a windy weekend. On Saturday morning I went down to the harbour front (Moll de la Fusta) and found some trees and street signs blown down and the whole place littered with debris of old palm branches blown off the trees,

But of course the big thing was the tragedy in Sant Boi de Llobregat, where four children were killed when a sports hall collapsed. They were practising baseball – Sant Boi is major centre for baseball in Catalonia – when their monitors decided that the wind was too strong and that they should go inside for shelter. A local weather station recorded a wind speed of 122.2 kph at the time of the disaster. The sports hall was run by the local council, all its papers were in order and it had been inspected by an architect in 2002.

What happened was this. It was a rectangular brick building with a ridged roof. The roof was exactly at right angles to the wind. This led to a drag effect, which is exactly what makes aeroplane wings take off. That would have been OK, but when the door was opened for the children and monitors to enter, the wind was channelled into a tunnel, which meant that it hit the inside of the hall at four times its original velocity – in other words it went at about 500 kph into a hall where the roof was already under strain from the wind. The whole thing gave way, but of course the roof didn’t come off cleanly. It brought the rest of the hall down.

There is a Catalan university (UPC) that tests structures for extreme wind effects, but only in very unusual buildings. Routine testing of all buildings is just not possible.

Barclays

I have described here how, when Jane’s Barclaycard was stolen, we were told that she would have to go in person to Barclays in person with two forms of photo ID to make an application for new cards, which would be available in fifteen days. Finding two ID documents is not easy. She has her passport of course, but the other photo ID that she has is her Spanish ID card – and that had been stolen with her purse. And anyway, I once tried to use that in a British bank in conjunction with my passport and was told that it was no good because it was foreign (a British passport is perfectly acceptable for Spanish banks, etc.) Finally, she realised that she has an NUS card because she is doing an OU course. That has a photo on it, so at eight o’clock this morning she set off for the airport hoping that she would be able to get some sense out of Barclays next week.

At ten o’clock this morning the post arrived. One envelope contained two new Barclaycards, one for each of us.

Atheist buses in the Catalan nation

On 7 January the Guardian published an article by Giles Tremlett in which he said:

Next week, Barcelona will become the first city in predominantly Catholic Spain to copy the controversial UK campaign when its buses use a direct translation of the slogan adopted in Britain by the scientist Richard Dawkins and other prominent atheists.

"Probablemente Dios no existe. Deja de preocuparte y goza de la vida," it reads. "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy life."

On 15 January the Guardian published a letter from the Catalan Nationalist journalist Matthew Tree (sic) in which he said (my emphasis):

Giles Tremlett's piece on atheist buses in Barcelona needs one small correction. He translates the now famous slogan "God probably doesn't exist ..." into Spanish, unaware, perhaps, that the buses carry the message in Catalan only: "Probablement Déu no existeix. Deixa de preocupar-te i gaudeix de la vida." In Madrid, Catholic organisations have already financed pro-Christian buses, which read: "God does exist. Enjoy life in Christ." These, as is only natural, are in Spanish.

Well, here is a photo that I took today of an atheist Barcelona bus, and its message is not in ‘the language proper to Catalonia’. It is most definitely in ‘the language of the empire’.

I suppose that the poor bus has now been taken away for rehabilitation and re-education in the Generalitat’s Centre for Politico-Linguistic Correctness.

And then I saw this bus.It says (also in Spanish):

‘There are buses that ask us: Does God exist or does he not?

This bus assures you that the magazine pronto exists.

Gaza and young men

An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal puts the Gaza problem in an anthropological / demographic context.

As the world decries Israel's attempt to defend itself from the rocket attacks coming from Gaza, consider this: When Hamas routed Fatah in Gaza in 2007, it cost nearly 350 lives and 1,000 wounded. Fatah's surrender brought only a temporary stop to the type of violence and bloodshed that are commonly seen in lands where at least 30% of the male population is in the 15-to-29 age bracket.

Fascist minister killed

The BBC reports:

One of the top Hamas leaders in Gaza has been killed in an air strike, Hamas and Israeli officials have said. Said Siyam, the Hamas interior minister, was killed in an air raid on his brother's home near Gaza City … As interior minister, Mr Siyam controlled thousands of Hamas security troops in Gaza and was said to be widely feared.

Once, there was a European country run by Catholic fascists, a country where the Interior Minister controlled thousands of security troops and was widely feared. In the 1930s many people from other countries feared the coming to power of such a system and went to fight against it; sadly they failed and Spain and Europe suffered terribly as a result. But when the fascists are Muslims and their opponents are Jews, well that’s a different matter isn’t it?

Now, let’s get this straight: the people of Palestine voted in a free and fair election for a party whose Interior Minister controlled thousands of security troops and was widely feared when he was governing them. Wow! Not even Britain's Labour Party has got that far. But it is awfully reminiscent of East Germany and its apologists among the socialist Left.

A Tale of Two Banks

Jane has phoned me to say that her purse has been stolen in the street. Among other things it contained Spanish credit cards and a British Barclaycard. I phoned the emergency number for the Caixa Catalunya and was connected immediately to a real person. I explained the situation and gave her Jane’s name and ID number. Her cards were stopped immediately and new ones will be available for collection from our usual bank branch in three days. My cards, which are on the same account, remain valid meanwhile and will not be changed. If she gives the bank a copy of the police report of the theft, the bank will waive the €4.00 fee for replacing the cards. Because her ID card was stolen, they will also cancel that. The whole call took 3 minutes and 17 seconds.

Then I rang Barclaycard in the UK. After pressing a few buttons I got through to their lost and stolen cards section, and a woman whose Indian accent was not easy to understand. I gave Jane’s name but then – well I didn’t have the number of the card that had been stolen. What was Jane’s post code? The answer 08023 didn’t get us much further forward. The operator then gave up and transferred me to another department, who eventually sent me back to where I had been to start with. Finally, I got someone who was clued up, I gave him my card number, and he cancelled Jane’s card. But he had to cancel my card too for some unfathomable reason. What about new cards? The main account-holder has to go to a branch of Barclays with two forms of photo ID. Will the cards be issued on the spot. Yes. Really? Well, no. The process will be begun on the spot but the cards are not made in the branch. It will take ten working days after that for the cards to be available. He asked for my phone number in case they wanted to contact us, which suggests that they don’t have it related to the account in their data base. Jane is going to Britain next week. Even if she can initiate the process while she is there, she will not have the replacement card before she returns to Spain.

Just what is it about British banks? See here for another banking story.