Category: (More) Society and Social Issues
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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 Rather than the now antiquated 20th century idea of having your own bed in something as outdated as a house, for the price of…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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
Brett Hetherington 