Tag: Europe

• January 18, 2023

  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…
• November 13, 2022

  Captured

  [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 work on “digital sovereignty” for people living in the Catalan…
• November 12, 2022

  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…
• September 18, 2022

  Baldwin’s Barcelona

  [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Sept. 2022.] The book must always come before the author,” said Nobel Prize winner, VS Naipaul. Unlike another genius such as James Baldwin, Napaul spent his entire brilliant, vicious life seemingly trying to prove himself wrong. For Baldwin, words came first. By becoming a child preacher…
• 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.)
• 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…
• May 10, 2014

  Sahara sands and other’s lands

  [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2014.]      Fine, red-brown dust covered every flat surface across Europe and the south of the UK just four weeks ago. If it was ever needed, it gave the strongest physical evidence that nature does not respect borders as well as telling our eyes,…