Spanish Homework

I was just looking back at my early character précis of our Spanish teacher Victor...hmmm. After many conversation classes at his flat in Urguell, he has become progressively more militant in a pretty dogmatic socialist political ideology. He is on the verge of selling all the furniture and other items in his already spartan flat, and taking off on travels around the world. I think it is likely that he will end up living on an Ashram in India, and probably won't return to Barcelona.

Our weekly Spanish conversations tend to follow a predictable trajectory which begins with a world problem and then comes to rest with the evils of capitalism.We have had discussions about bull-fighting (Victor is not a fan of the unneccessary torture and slaughter of bulls in a pseudo Gladiatorial spectacle, nor am I). Social inequalities in London has been a topic, specifically Brixton. I ended up somewhat over-egging the gun and knife crime problem which unfairly ended up making Brixton sound like London's version of Mexican border-town, Juárez. 

Luckily, Victor ended up visiting Brixton, a few weeks later, and concluded instead that it was 'cheeky' which is an adjective that I have never heard applied to Brixton, but think is brilliant. Our conversations have become increasingly polarised into the banks v. the people and left-wing v. right-wing through conversations about the economic crisis in Spain, big business and the unemployed. So when Victor asked what we thought of Margaret Thatcher, it was already apparent what his opinion on her would be, and it wasn't that her quashing of trade-union powers, was on balance; a good thing.

As my husband and I commenced our verbal sparring match in crudely constructed Spanish sentences, I was reminded of the  lyrics to the Wombats' song 'Is this Christmas?'. They go a little something like this: 'And then it's right-wing versus left until the crowns fall off our heads.'

And the conclusion to this overly simplified political fall-out? My Spanish homework is to write an essay highlighting the bad points of Margaret Thatcher's 11 year stint as Prime Minister. John will, as ever, be enjoying the position of devil's advocate, and writing as an ambassador of Thatcherism and bullet pointing the plus points of the Iron Lady's dominion over the UK.

Street Life

Street life in Barcelona is everywhere and it's one of the best things about the city, and Spain in general. The photos show just a couple of the huge number of festivals that have happened since we've been here. Dia de San Jordi, where the city is full of yellow and red striped book stalls and rose stands is one of the biggest ones. We haven't even got to Castells, where people create human towers with four to five levels of people standing on each others' shoulders in the town square.

We stumbled across the girls doing Catalan dancing whilst walking up Carrer Gran de Gracia. The street was closed for traffic (there were a few militant drivers attempting to circumvent the people, but one driver was shouted at by an old man with a stick and the right of people to celebrate in the streets was restored.) The giant people who have swallowed the wrong potion, like Alice in Wonderland outcasts, are a lurking presence in Barcelona. There is a museum for them in the Gothic quarter, and they made an appearance at this market festival on San Pere Bai de Baix. They are called 'gigantes y cabezudos', 'giants and big-heads' in Catalan.Their heads are papier-mache and they parade through town under the control of a puppet master with a harness on their shoulder to make the giant gyrate. The figures are normally archetypes of traditional figures, the odd couple above look like peasants rather than nobility. 

To get back to the theme of festivals and street celebrations, they feel like an important part of life here. Every barrio has it's own festival. The Barceloneta festival featured parades with samba drumming and dancing with people wearing strange ship themed carnival hats made out of what looked like wooden oar parts. The festival with the giants was a barrio getting together and deciding to move the shops outside for a few days, and felt like an excuse to chat on the street and make time pass more slowly. I'm thinking about death at the moment, and feeling really sad because my lovely uncle Shaun has died. It's nice to live in a city where people are very noisily (a little too noisily sometimes for my refined English sensibilities!) making the most of the business of life by maximising the communal activities in the street, and injecting life with loud, argumentative conversation, music and colour. I hope this is a memory from Barcelona that stays with me forever.