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?

What Freddie and Montserrat sang

Barcelona was the first place I ever saw in Spain. I thought it was brilliant. I've been back several times since. I like it less now than I did at the beginning. Two or three visits ago we got a lot of "You're inferior because you're not Catalan". We had several instances where people wouldn't speak to us in Castellano Spanish and on just one occasion we couldn't get a menu in a restaurant in Spanish or in English - Catalan or nothing. Obviously enough we left. I think it was the visit after that where the town looked so scruffy and it smelled like one giant lavatory.

So what about this time? I'd expected quite a lot of signs of the Independence debate but it wasn't particularly obvious and the publicity for the elections on the 21st were very standard. Otherwise, well it's a decent sized city so it's busy, it has a lot of traffic, it has a lot of bikes and wizzy forms of transport. There were thousands and thousands of us tourists. The prices were a shock of course, they always are whenever we leave home. There was also an element of being tricked all the time. We weren't really tricked because we knew what was happening but the set price meal without drinks meant that the drinks were going to be overpriced. A non alcohol beer in Pinoso costs 1.50€ and we were charged 4.50€ several times when the drink went with a meal. We breakfasted somewhere where there were set price offers. None of the menus showed the price of a coffee so I guessed that the croissant and coffee offer was probably a cheaper way of getting a second coffee than simply asking for another drink. Based on the loud complaints from a group of US women on another table I guess I was right. An odd thing was the table service. On no occasion did we ever get our orders at the same time. Both Maggie and I were on the receiving end of twenty minute waits after the other one had been served. It didn't seem to depend on the style either - Maggie's late salad was in a  pretty traditional place whilst I had to wait ages for a smart version of sausage egg and chips in some trendy tapas place owned by a Michelin starred chef.

I felt very 21st Century when I ordered a non standard taxi using some application on my phone but it was a complete faff and the fare didn't strike me as a particular bargain either. There were lots of interesting businesses and retailing ideas though I can't recall one at the moment. Nice range of fashions as well - lots of clothes that we country folk don't see in the flesh so often - I kept thinking of a programme I'd seen on the telly about Influencers and their Instagram accounts. We saw a place called el Nacional; not knowing what it was we just walked in anyway. It was a sort of enormous restaurant and bar complex. We think it was just one business but one area was a champagne and oyster bar, another was for ice cream, there was a ham and cheese area and so on. Full of lights too. I imagined someone pitching that idea to a jaded bank manager.

We did lots and nothing at all. The big thing was going to the Sagrada Familia - somewhere that both Maggie and I have visited once or twice before  - but not in the past twenty five years! We walked Christmas markets, went on cable cars, went to the beach, did just one exhibition and went to the cinema. It was one of those cinemas that were common in the 1970s where some huge one screen place had been carved into several smaller cinemas with screens not much bigger than modern day tellies. There were so many stairs that I was breathless by the time I got there! The entrance to theatre 5 was weird - it was underneath the screen. Actually that was something I noticed in Barcelona. So many places with stairs - it must be murderous for people with reduced mobility. Stair lifts are all well and good but they must turn going to the toilet into something that requires meticulous planning if you are a wheelchair user.

So good fun, nice to be in an exciting busy place but nice to get back on to the train and listen to the Catalan change to Valenciano as we came home.

Red Nacional de los Ferrocarriles Españoles

Maggie saw a news item on the telly that said that for the "puente", the long weekend, that stretches from Constitution day on Wednesday through Immaculate Conception on Friday, was pretty well booked up everywhere in Spain except in Cataluña. We supposed that was because of the political goings on there, because of the terrorist attack and because the good people of Barcelona have made it very clear how much they like tourists. The result was that there were lots of good deals to be had.

We decided to go. We travelled on the train. We go on trains fairly regularly in the sense that we go on them from time to time rather than never - maybe two, three or four times a year. Well actually maybe four, six or eight times a year in that we usually go there and back. ADIF is the state owned company that owns the Spanish railway infrastructure but it's RENFE (Red Nacional de los Ferrocarriles Españoles) that runs the trains. Our local stations are in Villena and Elda for conventional trains and at a different station in Villena for the high speed stuff.

We went from the railway station in Elda or maybe in Petrer. The station is called Elda-Petrer. It's just down from Elda hospital but, if I were guessing, I would have plumped for the station being in Petrer. The paired towns of Petrer and Elda are our nearest decent sized urban area. Despite living here for years I still have no idea where the frontier between the two towns runs. There are advantages to this paired town urban area though as we get access to twice as many fiestas, fairs and events using more or less the same parking spot.

Anyway the round trip cost 79.80€ or a few pence over £70 with the distance being just short of 500kms in each direction. I tried to compare prices between our trip and the one between Euston and Carlisle (480kms) but the British price seemed to depend on a great number of variables. The British website looked like one of those that would spring last minute charges (for booking a seat for instance) but, presuming it doesn't, and supposing that the suspiciously cheap £84 train (sandwiched between one at £130 and another at £115) actually exists, then the British price is just a little under two and a half times as expensive as the Spanish price for a similar distance.

On the outward journey the train was on time - well two minutes late to be honest, the coffee was overpriced at 2.20€, the train was clean, the assigned seat was comfortable with plenty of leg room, though, on the way home, our reserved seat turned out to be round a table and that was less comfortable. Bumping knees from time to time. But, all in all it was a very acceptable journey with RENFE doing a decent job as they so often have for us in the past.

Actually the only thing that lets RENFE down is their clonking website which falls over quite a lot and offers very limited route planning facility. If it were possible to decide where we could travel to on the trains we may actually use them more often than we do.

Barcelona

Barcelona was the first place I ever visited in Spain. I loved Barcelona. So vibrant, so exotic, so exciting. It's because of Barcelona, and Maggie, that I now live in Spain.

My brother, Garry, had arranged a short break in the Catalan capital along with his wife and sons. He suggested that we meet him there. It was all a bit fraught partly because we were just back from Egypt but moreso because it was an 1100km journey along toll motorways operated by bandits. We did it though and I'm glad we did.

We haven't been to Barcelona for maybe 10 years, certainly before we lived in Spain. The last time we were there we were made to feel very unwelcome by people determined to give us a bad time for trying to speak Castillian. The rivalry between Catalans and Spain is legendary. This time that wasn't so much of a problem. Written informatin was generally in Catalan but we were foreign so we were spoken to in English. It seems to me that English is becoming omnipresent.

We didn't see a lot of town. My family was staying on the Ramblas and we were in a basic hotel in Ciutat Vella. The only time we left that bit of the city was for a jolly up to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (Notice the claim to nationhood even in the name of a museum). What we did see didn't wow us though. The town smelled of piss, the prices were high, service was indifferent, food was moderate, the streets were dirty, waiters warned us about possible thefts and it all felt a bit squalid. It compared badly with Madrid where we were a couple of days ago, with the peace of Culebrón and the compact friendliness of Cartagena. I suppose it's just us - getting older, more set in our ways - or maybe we were just a bit tired.