Tag: Spain

February 12, 2023

Grabbing Granados

[This article* was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Feb. 2023.] A huge boat is sinking in The English Channel. A man is clinging on to the side of a tiny raft, only big enough for one woman to kneel on. Soon, both drown in sight of other passengers. According to witness Daniel Sargent, this…
February 7, 2023

Pandemic poem

(30 Jan. 2022) cut down cut down to bone cut off to spite it and cut off from cut away to put away just to stay away cut out cut out your needy cut me down I’m not cut out for it
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…
December 23, 2022

Promenade of Desire

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, Dec. 2022 under the title “Promenade of multitudes”] A really good book is a universe away from its marketing. One vibrant new piece of nonfiction, “Promenade of Desire, A Barcelona Memoir” is being promoted as “a sensual coming of age story: From Catholic virgin to Mata…
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…
October 16, 2022

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 Rather than the now antiquated 20th century idea of having your own bed in something as outdated as a house, for the price of…
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.)