Category: (More) Society and Social Issues
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More than teaching
[Photo of a 1-to-1 lesson by ANDREU PUIG] [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, October 2021.] Dear reader, It seems I have misled you and that I was wrong about something I suggested in this column last year. In an article titled “House closed”, which was published in November, I wrote about how the International…
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Let there be profits
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2021.] September 14, 2010, 5pm. I’m pacing in little circles outside an office on Carrer Igualada in Vilafranca del Penedes. I’m the last person in a queue. There’s half a dozen people in front of me and we are waiting for the door…
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Needled
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2021.] [Photo: Oriol Duran, Barcelona.] You could call me one of the lucky ones; one of the chosen few. A week ago, I had my second dose of Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at Bellvitge Hospital in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat just outside Barcelona. This was the same…
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Eva’s eye
[Photo: Eva Parey, from Expulsiones Anunciadas] (This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Feb. 2020.) Even if you just look at the titles of just a few of her solo exhibitions before you focus on the poignancy of her photography, you can get an idea of the scope of Eva Parey’s work: ‘Expulsions Foretold,’…
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Captured
[A surveillance camera in Barcelona. MANEL LLADÓ.] [A version of this article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2021.] “I’m the only foreigner in the Catalan government,” Italian, Francesca Bria used to sometimes say when introducing herself to a public audience. In the two years leading up to the pandemic, her team’s…
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Weightless
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2020.] What is wrong with this scene? Excited children playing together in a Barcelona street, their parents standing nearby watching, chatting, smiling. Of course, only a few months ago, there was everything natural, normal and perfectly ‘right’ about this everyday picture. Now (at least at the time…
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The moment Britain changed
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2019.] Who do you think said these words three days after the 2016 UK Brexit Referendum, in an attempt to explain the result? “Waves of migration and globalised culture washed among us, eroding our sense of self. Whole communities changed colour and…
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Women I admire
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2019.] Neus Català It took the love of an extraordinary woman for me to start becoming aware. Aware of the huge continuous struggle and achievements of women in a world that makes it all so much harder than it usually is for men. The #MeToo movement…
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Blurred lives
[Photo: Quim Puig] [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2019.] Without barely noticing it, we are routinely doing two things (or even more) at the same time. I don’t mean having the TV on in our houses, as Juan Goytisolo called it, “Spanishing on” in the background like in a…
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Bread
[This piece was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, February 2019.] I have never met a baker that I didn’t like. Some have even become friends. That’s not surprising considering what they do: getting up early every morning in the sackcloth black of heavy dark and plunging their hands again and again into pliable dough. Have…
Brett Hetherington 