About Catalonia and not about my adventures at all

I presume that you have seen images of the disturbances at Barcelona's el Prat airport or the pictures of Barcelona on fire. As you may imagine it has been big, big news here and it continues to be so. 

I presume you know that it started when the Spanish courts handed out long, long prison sentences to the leaders of the Catalan independence drive at the time of the illegal referendum a couple of years ago. Following the ruling I suspect that Spanish judges spend a lot of time reading law books but have very little idea of what's happening amongst ordinary people. The legal arguments the judges made were absolutely sound, the ruling was coherent but it took little account of the context in which it was being issued. When the Catalan politicians made their choices they knew they were acting illegally and they knew they could end up in prison. Nonetheless, if the judges had chosen to pitch the decision at a different level there may have been much less of a backlash. Instead it would have been pictures of the paroled prisoners hugging their families and heading off for a nice meal. And the ill informed foreign press might not be harping on about political prisoners and suggesting that there is no separation of powers in Spain.

Watching the live feed last night, with the video tinged orange for the burning tyres, cars and rubbish bins and with the subtitles saying that as well as petrol bombs the crowd had been throwing acid at the police lines it struck me that some of the crusties at the front looked like they were there for the fun of it rather than because they had strong political views. Not all of them though. There are obviously lots and lots of ordinary people who live in Catalonia who are genuinely angry and who feel that they need to voice that rage.

I'm not with the Catalans. I think they have handled their campaign badly. Mind you the politicians in Madrid have been equally torpid. The last President of Spain, Mariano Rajoy, will, in my opinion, go down in history as the man who started the loss of Catalonia to Spain.

But I didn't set out to take sides. I have a staunch Valencian nationalist pal who is very happy to tell me about the wrongs done to his people by the Castilians in 1714. Biased balderdash plucked randomly from history to support his completely blind acceptance of the arguments on one side. His discourse just brings home to me how pigheaded the whole Catalan thing is. On the other hand I've heard the "Madrid" side talk equal rubbish and I've never heard anything that hasn't been straight condemnation of the "Catalans" without any suggestions other than playing hard-ball. The sovereignty of Spain is non negotiable they say - they worry about Basques and Galicians. I have no real knowledge of the processes involved but it seems to me that Czechoslovakia handled its internal disputes better than say Yugoslavia or Sudan. At least the first involved fewer bullets and fewer dead.

But that wasn't the point I set out to make. The point is how do you get out of this mess? Watch the Hong Kong Chinese attack a bank and you know that sorting it out involves the central government starting by withdrawing the extradition bill. For the French Yellow Vests the starting point is about taxes and wages. In Ecuador the root is the austerity measures and the mistreatment of the indigenous population. But in Catalonia you tell me. One side says - we want independence. The other side says - you can't have it. Where does that go? Neither side can back down on the basic premise. There is no common ground. There's nothing to talk about. I like strawberry ice cream. I don't. There's no negotiation about other flavours - we're only talking strawberry.

Some Spanish politicians are demanding direct rule of Catalonia from Madrid again. How long for? Do they seriously think that the Catalans are going to put up with that for long. Last time the direct rule and the calling of new elections went hand in hand but try one without the other and watch the bonfires. Send in the army? Consider that you're an ordinary sort of Catalan (and remember that no poll has ever given the separatists the majority) - happy to be Spanish and happy to be Catalan - and suddenly you have a Leopard tank parked in your street. Radicalised or what? The Catalan president has no idea what to do except to spout independence claptrap. He sends the Mossos d'Esquadra (the regional police force) to keep the rioters in check but he has been openly supportive of the mob. After mounting pressure he did finally offer the lightest criticism of the violence but this man is a bigot and not a negotiator. And on the other side there is no unity. If a "Spanish" politician suggests talking to the Catalans they are an independence apologist threatening the sovereignty of Spain. That's something that would quite likely play badly at the ballot box so it's not a good option. Complete deadlock.

The country I came from is in chaos. The country I moved to in chaos. Is it me?

Preparing to die

We had a will written in the UK years and years ago. A really tall, avuncular chap did it for us. His office was like something from Dickens with big ticking clocks, overstuffed chairs, a leather trimmed desk and legal documents tied with ribbons. Leeds Day in St Ives.

Spanish inheritance law is quite keen on blood. Distant relatives outrank unmarried partners by miles. For years, several years, we have been going to get a Spanish will.

Last week we finally got to a solicitor, un abogado. The chap who talked to us wore jeans and a T shirt and looked significantly younger than some of the clothes I was wearing. There were no ticking clocks. "We're more your juvenle delinquent and petty thief office," said the boy lawyer. "One of our colleagues down in Alicante can come up and help you write a will but why don't you try the noatary? If your will isn't tricky they can do the job faster and cheaper than us."

Notary sounds really old fashioned to me. Like scriveners. Something to do with Guilds and quill pens. Notaries are busy people in Spain though. Their services are used all the time. The notary's office in Pinoso never seems to have sufficient waiting space and people lean against the walls clutching sheaves of paper.

We waded through the waiting throng and spoke above the insistent telephone to get ourselves an appointment. We didn't need the notary apparently. It was the notary's secretary for us. She started by asking for various ID documents. The rest was very strange. I think she described to us, though we may have given her some clues, more or less exactly what we had written down in our notes. We apparently want just about the most basic and straightforward will imaginable.

Our notarial representative said that she'd give us a bell when she had a first draft ready. I have high hopes that all we'll have to do is correct some of the spellings of the names and we will finally be rid of at least one of those recurring summer jobs.