Category: Articles
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Black lives matter in Barcelona
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2020. ] Unlike the UK or USA, one of the more visible ways that many Europeans are used to seeing black people is at work as street sellers, especially during summer in the bigger cities. These are the so-called ‘top manta’ who display their products…
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Lockdown loaded
[People outside after easing of health restrictions. O. DURAN..jpg] [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2020 and is dedicated to the memory of Theresa-Eunice “Terry” Parris (1926-2020).] The decision to send at least four million “non-essential” workers back to their jobs on April 13 strikes me as an extreme mistake. A…
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Remembering Pau Casals
[This article was first published in catalonia today magazine,march 2020.] The first Catalan name I ever (knowingly) heard was that of Pau Casals. I was around eight years old and listening to a Monty Python comedy record. An English mock-commentator’s voice introduced “The Sonatino in E sharp by Antonio Vivaldi to be played…
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Post-sentence
["February 12, 2019," photo (by the artist) of a piece from the exhibit."] [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2020.] If art is to be meaningful it has to say something significant from the private or public world and one artist who does this is Xavier G-Solis, from Barcelona.…
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The Inner Life of Animals
[Pic: Club Hípic Raúl Pinteño] [This book review was first published under the title "Animal feelings" in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2020.] Can horses feel shame? Do deer grieve for their dead? Why do roosters deceive hens? What about humpback whales that act as if they’re grateful, adulterous magpies or pigs that have learnt their own names?…
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Generation precarious
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, December 2019.] [Photo: Gran Via, Barcelona — Oriol Duran] I saw the best minds of my generation being dog-walkers or asking ’Would you like fries with that?’” This may well be the sentiment of plenty of young people under the age of 30 across the…
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“Natsukashi”
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, October 2019.] This morning, with the dying of this summer and noticing the shortening of the hours of light in the evening, I remembered that exactly two decades ago, I went with my newly-married wife to live in the city of Kyoto, in Japan. It became possibly…
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The Good Luck of Right Now
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, February 2015.] Since the huge commercial and critical success of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" by Mark Haddon, there has been a slight trend towards novels that use a main character with a degree of mental distinctiveness. Matthew Quick’s previous and…
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Que sera, seraren’t
[Photo: Edwin Pijpe] _________________[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, November 2019.] There are so many surprises that foreigners in Japan will come across. One of the more notable ones relates to the idea of the future that is held by many Japanese people. A Japanese University professor (whose name unfortunately escapes…
