Category: Articles

July 30, 2022

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…
July 18, 2022

Fires and Heatwave in Spain: Talking to ABC TV News (Aust.)
July 2, 2022

Wine and a whine

(A gripey, grapey piece from me this month…) [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2022.] As a reptile – I like to think of myself as one of those lizards that runs across the hottest desert sands with a high knee action like an Olympic hurdler, though in reality I’m probably more of…
July 1, 2022

Hands on

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2022.] On a crisp but sunny early afternoon last month, I took myself to (lower) Sant Gervasi-Galvany, part of Barcelona city. I had volunteered to be interviewed for a documentary and before stepping through the door of the rented film studio on the building’s 8th floor,…
July 1, 2022

Overheard

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2022.] Barcelona is a city where plenty takes place outside the home or workplace in full view of the public. The other day, on the edge of a hospital car park, I witnessed the awful sight of a naked young man, screaming and kicking as he was…
July 1, 2022

My Catalonia

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2022.] When I think of Catalonia what immediately comes to mind is the word ‘home’. I see the wide view across rows of vineyards, the mountains of the Penedès in the distance, the tops of Montserrat further away, only able to be seen in winter when the…
July 1, 2022

More Borics please

[This article was first published under the title “Was it sexism?” in Catalonia Today magazine, February 2022.] Was it sexism? It wasn’t widely reported in the English language media but Gabriel Boric, the new leftist President of Chile has a Catalan mother, María Soledad Font Aguilera, who was originally from the working class area of Badalona bordering Barcelona. Instead, his father’s…
January 22, 2022

The Implausible Rewilding of the Pyrenees

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2022.] Here’s a book about nature that is neither an impassioned rant nor a lecture. Instead, over a period of years, Steve Cracknell spoke directly to the horses’ mouths and with great empathy and balance, he lets us learn about the various sides of the…
December 25, 2021

The Game

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Dec. 2021.] [Photo: Andreu Puig] Millions of people are now playing it. Plenty are as desperate and traumatised…
November 12, 2021

Death cafes

— An interview with Catalonia convenor, Jordi Abad Lalanza [This article was first published in Catalonia Today, Nov. 2021] Q. What do you think is the most important thing people should know about Death Cafes? They are informal gatherings where we talk about death related topics. It is a space of complete trust. It’s non-therapeutic…