Category: (More) Society and Social Issues
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Where have all the Sad and Angry songs gone?
How mainstream music no longer reflects the temper of our time I heard a French song on the radio the other day. It sounded like one of those lovely ballads from around the time of the Second World War, and it had a melody and lyrics that were sung with just enough melancholy to somehow…
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Swimming against a sea of immigration lies
It makes me happy to see that others enjoy what I enjoy… Vicente Molina Foix once wrote about riding in the Madrid Metro: “I like to see the juxtaposition of various skin colors, and hear the melody of incomprehensible languages, as the train of the future approaches on the rails of life.” Here is a man at…
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How to read this poem
Please make sure you are:Sitting in a little child’s wooden classroom chairReading this with someone else’s glassesPiling information blocks on top of each otherStopping, starting, stopping, startingJust as importantly, make sure you are:Watering heavily in both eyesEmploying the great deftness of AI to understand the meaning of these linesUniting with the community, in a fashionWhile…
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The loneliness of the long-distance teacher
March 2020 was just the start… At least the badly-exploited Glovo guys on their bikes get together in the public square. They can have a chat or a moan with each other between deliveries. Unlike them, the average Business English teacher here in Spain is now more than likely to be sitting solo at a…
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Post PowerPoint Trauma Syndrome
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July, 2010] Have you ever sat through and silently suffered during a PowerPoint presentation? Most likely, you have more than a few times. Together with ten other teachers, I have been asked (or is it told?) to do a PowerPoint presentation about my History elective subject for…
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Barcelona’s cannibal restaurant and murderous barber
Legend has it that a certain inn was known for the quality and cheapness of its meat dishes. (Please note: No AI was used in my translation of this article.) There are two old mansions on a Barcelona street named Pou de la Figuera. They seem to stand somewhat isolated among the many modern buildings…
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Christmessi
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2023.] Is the legend now complete? Is it a case of all praise to The Great One, Lionel Messi, the Messiah of Argentina, Saviour of Rosario and FIFA-family favourite? On the whole it seems so, but like so many public figures, this 35 year old…
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Greater than skaters
Climate change, habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, ocean plastics, food insecurity and the list goes on. What can one person do? That’s a question that John French has been asking himself for nearly four decades. He moved to Spain over 10 years ago and says he has found an answer that came from a most…
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It has now come to this
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Oct. 2022.] The following is based on current and factual information… How would you fancy sleeping in a car or a van? Rather than the now antiquated 20th century idea of having your own bed in something as outdated as a house, for the price of…
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Summer at its widest
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today, July 2022.] 15 summers ago (my first full one here) the CCCB, or Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona showed French-Jewish filmaker Claude Lanzmann’s “extraordinary diptych of the Holocaust.” Coming after the critically acclaimed, monumental 9 and a half hour documentary, Holocaust [or “Shoah”] of 1985, the…
Brett Hetherington 