Hiya!
Just a quick follow up on what is going on at the Kenyan/Somali border. On Sunday Kenyan troops moved across the Somali border in a show of strength against al-Shabab, perhaps the most dangerous of all of the militant groups operating in Somalia today. The Kenyans appear to have reached overload point with their Minister of Internal Security stating that Kenya '...is threatened by the most serious level of terrorism' and that government troops would be pursuing al-Shabab across the border and into strongholds in southern Somalia. All this in the wake of yet more kidnappings, this time of 2 Spanish aid workers (see this blog 14th October - http://valencia-peter.blogspot.com/). However, the official Somali government response was to insist that Somali troops are well capable of dealing with al-Shabab and, whilst welcoming 'logistical support' from the Kenyans, the presence of Kenyans troops in Somalia was unnecessary.
However, the Kenyan push was slowed on Tuesday by heavy rain as they began closing in on the town of Afmadow, with the militants fleeing in face of the advance. On Monday al-Shabab denied any involvement in the spate of kidnappings and attempted to turn the tables on the Kenyans accusing them of an act of blatant terrorism following this new advance into Somali territory and threatened severe reprisals. 'Remember what happened in Uganda's capital' it warned. A clear reference to their July 2010 bombing of a hotel in Kampala where 76 people died. That particular act was in response to Uganda's contribution to an African Union peacekeeping force stationed in Mogadishu and on Monday they promised to bring down the skyscrapers and buildings of Nairobi, Kenya's capital in a similar attack.
The Kenyan and official Somali government troops do appear to have settled some differences and were reported to be moving in concert towards the town of Qoqani, some 50 miles from Afmadow, which is expected to be captured within the next 48 hours or so.
The rapidity of the Kenyan push though cannot just be in response to the most recent of the kidnappings (see http://gu.com/p/32ya6 for more details) due to the size of the force and the apparent readiness of their preparations. It seems likely that the Kenyans have been pushed just one step too far and were already preparing a tactical response to the seemingly endless territorial violations of al-Shabab and other militant Somali groups.
All this in the wake of the death of the French woman, Marie Dedieu, a wheelchair bound tetraplegic who had been undergoing cancer therapy for the past two years (http://gu.com/p/32mvp) who had been kidnapped from her home in Kenya's Lamu archipelago. Details on the exact manner of her death have yet to surface but one seriously doubts that they will be pleasant!
And all around the famine continues. People die in their thousands and the world turns its' back. Even other African nations seem to be at a loss about what to do to combat the problems in Somlia. In August the African Union, at a meeting in Addis Ababa, pledged funds to help rebuild the Horn of Africa. However, the pledge was far short of what is truly required and a lack empathy for their fellow Africans meant only 4 African heads of state turned up at the meeting. The funds that were agreed were largely contributed by Algeria, Egypt and Angola, with the continents richest nations (South Africa and Nigeria) completely ignoring the call for help. However, so far only $500,000 of the pledged $46m has arrived, leaving Somalia, ravaged by severe famine in 4 of its' 5 geographical regions, teetering on the edge of complete collapse.
"If we truly believe in 'African solutions for African problems' we need to demonstrate this very clearly, not just in words but in actions," said a spokesperson for Africans Act4Africa. His words before the July congress falling on deaf ears as he called for the visting delegates to 'not just talk shop' and 'not just spend a lot of money on travel, protocol and their entourages.'
The UN do seem to be reluctantly pushing for aid for the region but this blogger feels that it is too little to late. Death, starvation, rape and violence are rampant across the country and the paltry amounts arriving in the country as a result of the UN's push are barely denting the fabric of this rapidly escalating disaster.
And then there's me! What can I do to help? Well, I'm writing this blog and doing my best to raise awareness of this intolerable situation. Also, given the chance and money, I would like to be able to approach Act4Africa and join them on one of their expeditions. Such things do not directly help those suffering in Somalia right now but Africans are suffering in more places than just Somalia and if I can do something that might help, then I'll do it! I do not believe that donations to the various NGO's working in the Dadaab camps will be totally effective and I feel that one's time and efforts would be put to much better use by writing strong letters of condemnation to one's MP and MEP's protesting the complete lack of British and EEC action in putting an end to the problems of Somalia.
Thanks for reading
Peter
Thursday, 20 October 2011
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Eta, Spanish nationalism and the future
Hey!
Hope you had a wicked weekend.....I did...somewhat quiet, but to be honest that's the way I like it!
So, what's happening today? Eta have hit the headlines again over here because they are finally expected to renounce violence as a means of achieving their aims. Eta (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna - Basque Homeland and Freedom) have been in slow decline for decades now, their ability to strike fear into the hearts of the Spanish people has lessened gradually to the extent that most people no longer feel scared by the homespun terrorist threat.
Founded in 1959, at the height of Franco's power, Eta has fought for over 4 decades for Basque self-determination. The Basque region is surprisingly small when viewed on a map and encompasses 4 small Northern Spanish provinces and a part of South-West France. From such humble beginnings they have gone on to kill over 800 people in a reign of terror lasting 53 years. There have been several abortive attempts at some sort of reconciliation in the past, the latest of which came in September 2010 when there was a called for a 'permanent ceasefire.' However, as on previous occasions the Spanish government rejected the ceasefire as worthless without an acknowledgement that they would renounce violence as a method of achieving their aims. This was not forthcoming and the ceasfire has remained unratified.
But now comes the news, that with Kofi Annan's visit to the Basque region this week, that Eta may be finally ready to agree an end to violent campaigning. There have been calls from convicted Eta members, as well as Sinn Fein leader Jerry Adams, to embrace the cause of peace and I fervently hope that this week they may finally see the light.
As an Englishman living in the Iberian peninsula it has been hard to sometimes get a handle on the Spanish psyche. Each region appears to be fanatically introverted in its' political persuasions and affiliations. The Basque region, with all the (negative) publicity and interest in the region because of Eta is perhaps the best known of these political and cultural entities.
In all there are 17 provinces in Spain, similar to the counties of England or the States of America. In many of these regions there are distinct dialects which are spoken only locally. In Valenciana, for example, the local language is, not surprisngly, Valenciano. It is a language with an Indo-European heritage that I'm told has many similarities to French. Not that I am able to spot any of those...to see Valenciano written down is like looking at Welsh - you just have no idea at all how to even begin to pronounce the words - but if you're French then you can just waltz in, chat away and most people will understand you. The Iberian peninsula is hotbed of dialectic activity with 6 major Indo-European languages being spoken. If you then count each separate dialect the number balloons to (depending on who you read) perhaps more than 20 distinct languages/dialects!
The Basque language though stands out as being distinctly un-Indo-European. Its' origins are still unclear but the Basque language is perhaps most similar to that historically spoken in the French region of Aquitaine. It is thought to pre-date all the other Spanish and Iberians tongues and go back to a time before the Roman conquest of the peninsula. This would make enormous sense to me. Whilst the other languages all have a common antecedent, probably dating back to the Romans, the Basque region (and also that of Galicia) remained largely untouched by the Romans simply because of the difficulty of accessing the region. The Roman influence was inevitably stronger closer to the Mediterranean coastline and waned the further inland they attempted to go. Following the decline of the Romans the various Iberian tribes sub-divided the peninsula and over the following 4-500 years re-inforced local cultures, traditions and languages, so that by the time the Moorish invasion began in the early 700's Iberia was a mosaic of different peoples, cultures and languages.
Once again during the African occupancy both the Basque regions and Galicia were left largely alone and so in these regions local culture and language were able to ingrain themselves even further. Even up to the time of the Napoleonic Wars Spain, although a single nation under a single monarch, was still largely regionalised. The vastness of the country and the endless mountainous terrain went to make travel from one region to another difficult in the extreme, and helped to reinforce local differences and cultures.
Since the death of Franco in 1975 Spain has undergone huge mechanical and structural changes. The infrastructure, for example, has improved beyond all recognition. There are now very good road and rail links between the various regions that have had the effect of improving trade and making the course of any journey much more comfortable. But the Spanish themselves though, remain hugely introverted in their social and business lives. Very few young Spanish go travelling, for example, preferring to stay at home where things are much safer and more secure. Even fewer ever leave the town of their birth to go and live and work elsewhere, let alone move to another region of the country. And whilst I applaud the family values that still pervade every level of Spanish society, this 'homebody' attitude has led to a dearth in Spanish patriotism with people more likely to wave their regional flag than that of their nation (except during the World Cup), with many commentators citing this as the reason that a unified Spanish identity is all-but absent. In my local schools they teach in Valenciano a lot of the time and not Castellano (the national language) once again reinforcing the local factor. If you go 50km down the road inland from my house they wouldn't understand a word of it! People take their holidays and stay at home to be with family. All very nice but the spirit of adventure is completely lacking, especially in the young which I find somewhat disturbing.
And in a roundabout way that brings me back to Eta. If that announcment is indeed forthcoming and they opt for a more peaceful way of promoting their ideas then I am all for it. The Basque people are a tough, uncompromising lot, who value their solidarity and uniqueness in a world which is becoming evermore homogenous and same-y! But for me though, an alien in a strange land, I will continue to be amazed and puzzled by attitudes that differ so greatly from those I grew up with. That Eta have fought so strongly and for so long for their own cultural identity can be explained largely by their unique history and cultural heritage. Their methods have been gravely wrong and I in no way support or advocate this. Peaceful and organised protest is the way. If you want things to change do it through the polss and elections. Stand up and counted if you feel that strongly. And that i what I hope they intend to do in the future.
As to whether a separate Basque state would be a viable entity I am not qualified to answer. I merely observe and wonder. I am still in a position where the Spanish mentality is somewhat perplexing, but the anwers are all there I believe, if you take the time to look. The Spanish cherish family, friends and local culture, appearing to care little for the outside world, let alone what happens on the other side of Spain. It is introverted and it is simplistic in the basic of ways, but it retains a certain charm that I love.
I understand the feeling one must have when, out for an evening stroll (as families do here) you know everyone that you bump into, intimately, as you have known them from the day you were born. The attractions are manifold, but I do wonder if this small town mentality will serve Spain well in a world awash with globalisation. Everyone is suffering because of the 'Crisis.' That is nothing new. But still people refuse to travel 30km down the road for work because it takes them away from the bosom of their family! Still they show no interest in changing a financial and fiscal system that plainly does not work. And why? Because they cannot see beyond the ends of their noses. But a change is what is needed here.... a radical change...to get the country up and running again. But apathy among the electorate is a rampant disease and I fear that the villagers and short-sighted businessmen who refuse to look beyond their own borders, will find very soon that this Crisis has a lot bigger bite than any of them could ever have anticipated.
Levels of unemployment, particularly in the under 25s is criminal. But still the system does not change. Starting your business here is a mission in futility. The red tape, the soaring costs and the lack of help and benefits make it difficult in the extreme for any budding entrepreneurs to even take their first step towards success. So, like everyone else, they take the easy route because financially, that is the only route the government leave open to them - they work, yes! But they work in the black economy, so therefore pay no taxes at all, whilst all the time many continue to collect healthy unemployment benefits and other social payments and then everyone wonders why the country is going bankrupt!!! Doh!
If the Spanish want their unemployment figures under control they must change the system. But I, like everyone else, know that won't happen. Why should it? If you were working, paying no tax, but earning good money and were still able to collect ample free payments on top, would you want it to change? Not me!!
Where else in the EEC can one go into a builders merchants, or a garage, or a large retail outfit or a garden centre and be offered 2 prices for what you wish to purchase. One with tax. And one without. As to which you choose might depend largely on whether you may wish to make a 'guarantee claim' at some point in the future, in which case the taxable option is best. But, in many cases and particularly with large purchases, the short term gain by paying between 15-18% less on your items is a very attractive proposition. As I write no doubt, millions of Euros in lost taxes are just disappearing this way simply because the system allows it. It´s incredible, really! And it has to be seen to be believed!
So, to some extent I understand and sypathise with those Basques who want to change the system. I would only disagree with their methods in the past.
Reading back over this blog now I´m not quite sure what my point was, or even if I had one to begin with, not it really matters I suppose. I've had my say and that is what blogging is all about.
Back again soon
Peter
Hope you had a wicked weekend.....I did...somewhat quiet, but to be honest that's the way I like it!
So, what's happening today? Eta have hit the headlines again over here because they are finally expected to renounce violence as a means of achieving their aims. Eta (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna - Basque Homeland and Freedom) have been in slow decline for decades now, their ability to strike fear into the hearts of the Spanish people has lessened gradually to the extent that most people no longer feel scared by the homespun terrorist threat.
Founded in 1959, at the height of Franco's power, Eta has fought for over 4 decades for Basque self-determination. The Basque region is surprisingly small when viewed on a map and encompasses 4 small Northern Spanish provinces and a part of South-West France. From such humble beginnings they have gone on to kill over 800 people in a reign of terror lasting 53 years. There have been several abortive attempts at some sort of reconciliation in the past, the latest of which came in September 2010 when there was a called for a 'permanent ceasefire.' However, as on previous occasions the Spanish government rejected the ceasefire as worthless without an acknowledgement that they would renounce violence as a method of achieving their aims. This was not forthcoming and the ceasfire has remained unratified.
But now comes the news, that with Kofi Annan's visit to the Basque region this week, that Eta may be finally ready to agree an end to violent campaigning. There have been calls from convicted Eta members, as well as Sinn Fein leader Jerry Adams, to embrace the cause of peace and I fervently hope that this week they may finally see the light.
As an Englishman living in the Iberian peninsula it has been hard to sometimes get a handle on the Spanish psyche. Each region appears to be fanatically introverted in its' political persuasions and affiliations. The Basque region, with all the (negative) publicity and interest in the region because of Eta is perhaps the best known of these political and cultural entities.
In all there are 17 provinces in Spain, similar to the counties of England or the States of America. In many of these regions there are distinct dialects which are spoken only locally. In Valenciana, for example, the local language is, not surprisngly, Valenciano. It is a language with an Indo-European heritage that I'm told has many similarities to French. Not that I am able to spot any of those...to see Valenciano written down is like looking at Welsh - you just have no idea at all how to even begin to pronounce the words - but if you're French then you can just waltz in, chat away and most people will understand you. The Iberian peninsula is hotbed of dialectic activity with 6 major Indo-European languages being spoken. If you then count each separate dialect the number balloons to (depending on who you read) perhaps more than 20 distinct languages/dialects!
The Basque language though stands out as being distinctly un-Indo-European. Its' origins are still unclear but the Basque language is perhaps most similar to that historically spoken in the French region of Aquitaine. It is thought to pre-date all the other Spanish and Iberians tongues and go back to a time before the Roman conquest of the peninsula. This would make enormous sense to me. Whilst the other languages all have a common antecedent, probably dating back to the Romans, the Basque region (and also that of Galicia) remained largely untouched by the Romans simply because of the difficulty of accessing the region. The Roman influence was inevitably stronger closer to the Mediterranean coastline and waned the further inland they attempted to go. Following the decline of the Romans the various Iberian tribes sub-divided the peninsula and over the following 4-500 years re-inforced local cultures, traditions and languages, so that by the time the Moorish invasion began in the early 700's Iberia was a mosaic of different peoples, cultures and languages.
Once again during the African occupancy both the Basque regions and Galicia were left largely alone and so in these regions local culture and language were able to ingrain themselves even further. Even up to the time of the Napoleonic Wars Spain, although a single nation under a single monarch, was still largely regionalised. The vastness of the country and the endless mountainous terrain went to make travel from one region to another difficult in the extreme, and helped to reinforce local differences and cultures.
Since the death of Franco in 1975 Spain has undergone huge mechanical and structural changes. The infrastructure, for example, has improved beyond all recognition. There are now very good road and rail links between the various regions that have had the effect of improving trade and making the course of any journey much more comfortable. But the Spanish themselves though, remain hugely introverted in their social and business lives. Very few young Spanish go travelling, for example, preferring to stay at home where things are much safer and more secure. Even fewer ever leave the town of their birth to go and live and work elsewhere, let alone move to another region of the country. And whilst I applaud the family values that still pervade every level of Spanish society, this 'homebody' attitude has led to a dearth in Spanish patriotism with people more likely to wave their regional flag than that of their nation (except during the World Cup), with many commentators citing this as the reason that a unified Spanish identity is all-but absent. In my local schools they teach in Valenciano a lot of the time and not Castellano (the national language) once again reinforcing the local factor. If you go 50km down the road inland from my house they wouldn't understand a word of it! People take their holidays and stay at home to be with family. All very nice but the spirit of adventure is completely lacking, especially in the young which I find somewhat disturbing.
And in a roundabout way that brings me back to Eta. If that announcment is indeed forthcoming and they opt for a more peaceful way of promoting their ideas then I am all for it. The Basque people are a tough, uncompromising lot, who value their solidarity and uniqueness in a world which is becoming evermore homogenous and same-y! But for me though, an alien in a strange land, I will continue to be amazed and puzzled by attitudes that differ so greatly from those I grew up with. That Eta have fought so strongly and for so long for their own cultural identity can be explained largely by their unique history and cultural heritage. Their methods have been gravely wrong and I in no way support or advocate this. Peaceful and organised protest is the way. If you want things to change do it through the polss and elections. Stand up and counted if you feel that strongly. And that i what I hope they intend to do in the future.
As to whether a separate Basque state would be a viable entity I am not qualified to answer. I merely observe and wonder. I am still in a position where the Spanish mentality is somewhat perplexing, but the anwers are all there I believe, if you take the time to look. The Spanish cherish family, friends and local culture, appearing to care little for the outside world, let alone what happens on the other side of Spain. It is introverted and it is simplistic in the basic of ways, but it retains a certain charm that I love.
I understand the feeling one must have when, out for an evening stroll (as families do here) you know everyone that you bump into, intimately, as you have known them from the day you were born. The attractions are manifold, but I do wonder if this small town mentality will serve Spain well in a world awash with globalisation. Everyone is suffering because of the 'Crisis.' That is nothing new. But still people refuse to travel 30km down the road for work because it takes them away from the bosom of their family! Still they show no interest in changing a financial and fiscal system that plainly does not work. And why? Because they cannot see beyond the ends of their noses. But a change is what is needed here.... a radical change...to get the country up and running again. But apathy among the electorate is a rampant disease and I fear that the villagers and short-sighted businessmen who refuse to look beyond their own borders, will find very soon that this Crisis has a lot bigger bite than any of them could ever have anticipated.
Levels of unemployment, particularly in the under 25s is criminal. But still the system does not change. Starting your business here is a mission in futility. The red tape, the soaring costs and the lack of help and benefits make it difficult in the extreme for any budding entrepreneurs to even take their first step towards success. So, like everyone else, they take the easy route because financially, that is the only route the government leave open to them - they work, yes! But they work in the black economy, so therefore pay no taxes at all, whilst all the time many continue to collect healthy unemployment benefits and other social payments and then everyone wonders why the country is going bankrupt!!! Doh!
If the Spanish want their unemployment figures under control they must change the system. But I, like everyone else, know that won't happen. Why should it? If you were working, paying no tax, but earning good money and were still able to collect ample free payments on top, would you want it to change? Not me!!
Where else in the EEC can one go into a builders merchants, or a garage, or a large retail outfit or a garden centre and be offered 2 prices for what you wish to purchase. One with tax. And one without. As to which you choose might depend largely on whether you may wish to make a 'guarantee claim' at some point in the future, in which case the taxable option is best. But, in many cases and particularly with large purchases, the short term gain by paying between 15-18% less on your items is a very attractive proposition. As I write no doubt, millions of Euros in lost taxes are just disappearing this way simply because the system allows it. It´s incredible, really! And it has to be seen to be believed!
So, to some extent I understand and sypathise with those Basques who want to change the system. I would only disagree with their methods in the past.
Reading back over this blog now I´m not quite sure what my point was, or even if I had one to begin with, not it really matters I suppose. I've had my say and that is what blogging is all about.
Back again soon
Peter
Friday, 14 October 2011
I´m back; I´m bad; I´m meaner 'an hell!
After what seems like an absolute eternity I am back with a regular internet connection and perhaps...able to move forward with this bloody blog!
The weather here in sunny Valencia...is, not surprisingly, sunny.... although today promises to be a touch more hazy than the rest of the week. But hey, who wants to talk about the weather when we have so much more interesting fish to fry.
Having now got a regular internet connection I find myself darwn ineveitably towards news stories on Africa. I'm married to a beautiful African woman and despite being white, I have always had the strong sense that somewhere deep, down inside that I am more African than anything else. Is that a primal, evolutionary hangover from our our shared genetic lineage or something that has grown inside of me; a metaphorical African ghost that possesses and steers my attention ever-southward, ever drawn to the chaos that is Africa? Or is it something much simpler? I used to think it was just the wildlife. Nothing compares to watching game on an African plain, but now after many trips I know that, as stunning, as wonderful as the flora and fauna are they could not possibly snare me the way that I have undoubtedly been snared. It's not just the wildlife, it's everything that is Africa; the colours, the people, the smells, the chaos, the history, the culture, the wildlife and more...so much more. And so in some mild-mannered way I take offence when someone seeks to destroy yet more of of this crumbling, delapidated continent and one of the most destructive forces in Africa today is Robert Mugabe.
With the news today that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is to seek an audience with the despotic leader Zimbabwe's plight once again surfaces onto the front pages. Why though, this wholly unacceptable situation is not on the front pages every day is beyond me. Mugabe is without doubt a ruthlessly, efficient leader. I do not doubt his intelligence or his leadership skills persay....anyone who can remain in power in the political hothouse that is Africa is obviously succeeding in some way or another. One doubts that his longevity is down to his kind and generous spirit! His is a regime built on fear and destruction, coercion, bribery, corruption and pure, unadulterated evil.
Mugabe first came to prominence in the 1970s where, as a freedom fighter (against Ian Smith's fading colonial and pertinently, white regime) and thence to power as leader of Zanu-PF in 1979. In the early days of his reign Mugabe entered into a short-lived and ultimately destructive coalition with Joshua Nkomo. He wished to improve the lot of his people, to make Zimbabwe into a modern, shining example of black African government. But very quickly after the collapse of that initial coalition (following the discovery of a cache of arms at Nkomo's HQ) his bright new world descended into darkness. Early promises of democracy and political unity failed miserably in the aftermath of a country supposedly free from the tyrannical yoke of imperialist colonialism. Political rivals were rounded up, captured, tortured or killed as Mugabe sought to tighten the political noose. The post-colonial economy went from being one of the most profitable and productive in Africa to one the the worst performing in the world, a fact that Mugabe, now 84, continually refuses to acknowledge hiding behind a ream of paper-thin denials, insisting that Zimbabwe is still the powerhouse it once was. Deluded is not the word! The last journalist to interview Mugabe in December last year must have wanted to laugh when Mugabe insisted that Zimbabwean economy was "a hundred times better" than that of most African countries!
In 1992 I was lucky enough to visit Zim (as it is affectionately known amongst travellers) at a time when the situation was still reasonably progressive and the people of Zimbabwe still had cause to hope that their future would be as bright as they had once believed only a few years before. I saw a country with (by African standards) an excellent infrastructure; good roads, trains that ran almost on time and flourishing agricultural and tourism industries. It seemed to me at the time that of all the countries I'd visited in Africa (and there are more than a few) that Zim had indeed been singled out for a prosperous and settled future. The game parks were well run. There was food on the supermarket shelves and in the markets. People drove modern vehicles and trade seemed good. But as a toursit you often become blind to the deficiences of the places you are visiting just because you are so happy to be there. Perhaps that was me. At the time I knew all about Mugabe but the (shall we say) unpleasant face of his regime had yet to emerge internationally. He was still being wined and dined by world leaders as a 'freedom fighter' and hero whilst at the time performing political slight-of-hand to make his rivals disappear from under the very noses of those.
Now, by all accounts the supermarket shelves are empty, the fields produce no crops and the game parks have no animals. This horrid, little, detestable man is running the country into the ground and lining his pockets at the expense of his own people. Of all the evil and corrupt regimes that have come about in Africa since the collapse of colonialism roughly 50 years ago, Mugabe´s may not be the worst but it can certainly lay claim to be the most resilient. And still the powerful politicians of the world just seem to be content to let these atrocities continue. Africa always seemed to be a place apart politically. A place so far removed from the affluent West that most people, politicians included, cannot even contemplate relating to the problems of a nation so different and so poor that to save them from further suffering seems to be just too much effort to bear! How can we bring realsisation home to the people of the world? I have no idea. But something needs to be done. The politicains turn a blind eye so it is left to the likes of Sir Richard Branson who, by all accounts tried and failed to 'buy' Mugabe out of power (http://gu.com/p/32gqk). But at least he tried which is a damn site more than most men of power have! Or the campaigning Archbishop of Canterbury, who after arriving in Zim last week was kept waiting and waiting before finally being granted an audience with the despot. No doubt promises made about saving the Zimbabwean Anglicans from further persecution were warmly recieved by the Archbishop, Rowan Williams (http://gu.com/p/32gfm), but in truth I don't doubt for one minute that it is just another bucketful of Mugabe's verbal pigswill that the world seems only to grateful to swallow!
Zim is definitely a subject I shall return to. Often!
And now for Spain today....here´s the good news! This morning Standard and Poor have cut Spain's credit rating from AA- to AA causing yet another drop in the value of the Euro. The reasons cited include Spain's exceptionally high unemployment, tightening credit and high private sector debt.
They said....."Despite signs of resilience in economic performance during 2011, we see heightened risks to Spain's growth prospects due to high unemployment, tighter financial conditions, the still high level of private sector debt, and the likely economic slowdown in Spain's main trading partners."
They went on to say that they did not have confidence in Spain's projected growth for 2012, which had been predicted to be only 1.5%, but is now expected to be less than 1%. Further credit rating drops may well follow should Spain actually fail to meet it´s projections and fall in line with that S&P expectations.
This is bad news for all of us. Not just for us in Spain but for Europe as a whole. The severity of the economic climate in Spain was brought home to me last week when the various projects at the company I work for were put on hold or, at the very least, delayed because creditors were unable to pay their debts to us. It´s a vicious circle ...one cannot the other who cannot pay the other and everyone in the line falters! Companies here seem to be taking bigger than usual risks in order to swell their books and gain new business. Manufacturers and suppliers are slashing prices and taking on new clients without the usual credit considerations because they have no choice but to take the risk. The climate is desperate and shows all the signs of getting much worse. As one of the plebians, all I can do is keep my nose to the grindstone and hope that things begin to turn round. Everyone is struggling. Everyone is juggling debts and credit, deciding who to pay and when. I am lucky in that, to some extent my job is more international and so I am still able to see a future for myself, but other co-workers are not sure. They work on projects for the Spanish market and these seem more precarious than ever. The amazing thing is atht in the streets and the bars and the cafes no-one seems to be the slightest bit worried. Wednesday was national fiesta day ...again!..... and everyone was out drinking, eating and making merry. Whatever the economic situation nothing, it seems, can dampen the Spanish need for a party!
In Kenya yesterday 2 female Spanish aid workers from Medicins sans Frontieres were kidnapped from the Dabaab humanitarian camp by Somali gunmen who shot their driver in the neck (though amazingly he lives still) and escaped back over the nearby border (http://gu.com/p/32tmq). In the wake of the recent kidnapping of two French and British women the aid workers are now, understandably, feaful for their safety. OXFAM said last night that this new incident may well affect the aid missions in and around Dabaab whislt security conditions are reassessed.
To say I don't understand this madness that seems to have affected the Somali people is to only voice what everyone else is surely thinking. These gunmen have no respect for anyone or anything and to abduct aid workers such as this again and again shows that they have no understanding or apprecaition of how the rest of the world thinks or behaves. It is a hotbed of violent, criminal activity that the rest of the world seem quite happy to just let continue. I cannot help thinking that if there were exploitable resources in the country then such a situation would not be allowed to roll on endlessly. We would have been in there years before sorting things out and tying up the re-construction contracts before the last bullet had been fired. But since Somalia is of little economic value the situation endures and the innocent continue to suffer. There must be something that can be done to end this cycle of bloodshed and violence before the disease spreads and infects the rest of East Africa. Please write to your local MEP with your suggestions.
And finally....Mark Cavendish...perhaps the greatest British cyclist of his generation and, of course, the new World Road Race Champion, has announced his arrival at Team Sky for the start of next season (http://www.skysports.com/story/0,,15264_7235754,00.html). This is fantastic news....Team Sky is primarily a British outfit (though there are many international riders on the team) with British management and now British stars! I cannot wait for next year to come and to see a British cycling team pushing all before them and sweeping the board. Go Cav!
See you soon
The weather here in sunny Valencia...is, not surprisingly, sunny.... although today promises to be a touch more hazy than the rest of the week. But hey, who wants to talk about the weather when we have so much more interesting fish to fry.
Having now got a regular internet connection I find myself darwn ineveitably towards news stories on Africa. I'm married to a beautiful African woman and despite being white, I have always had the strong sense that somewhere deep, down inside that I am more African than anything else. Is that a primal, evolutionary hangover from our our shared genetic lineage or something that has grown inside of me; a metaphorical African ghost that possesses and steers my attention ever-southward, ever drawn to the chaos that is Africa? Or is it something much simpler? I used to think it was just the wildlife. Nothing compares to watching game on an African plain, but now after many trips I know that, as stunning, as wonderful as the flora and fauna are they could not possibly snare me the way that I have undoubtedly been snared. It's not just the wildlife, it's everything that is Africa; the colours, the people, the smells, the chaos, the history, the culture, the wildlife and more...so much more. And so in some mild-mannered way I take offence when someone seeks to destroy yet more of of this crumbling, delapidated continent and one of the most destructive forces in Africa today is Robert Mugabe.
With the news today that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is to seek an audience with the despotic leader Zimbabwe's plight once again surfaces onto the front pages. Why though, this wholly unacceptable situation is not on the front pages every day is beyond me. Mugabe is without doubt a ruthlessly, efficient leader. I do not doubt his intelligence or his leadership skills persay....anyone who can remain in power in the political hothouse that is Africa is obviously succeeding in some way or another. One doubts that his longevity is down to his kind and generous spirit! His is a regime built on fear and destruction, coercion, bribery, corruption and pure, unadulterated evil.
Mugabe first came to prominence in the 1970s where, as a freedom fighter (against Ian Smith's fading colonial and pertinently, white regime) and thence to power as leader of Zanu-PF in 1979. In the early days of his reign Mugabe entered into a short-lived and ultimately destructive coalition with Joshua Nkomo. He wished to improve the lot of his people, to make Zimbabwe into a modern, shining example of black African government. But very quickly after the collapse of that initial coalition (following the discovery of a cache of arms at Nkomo's HQ) his bright new world descended into darkness. Early promises of democracy and political unity failed miserably in the aftermath of a country supposedly free from the tyrannical yoke of imperialist colonialism. Political rivals were rounded up, captured, tortured or killed as Mugabe sought to tighten the political noose. The post-colonial economy went from being one of the most profitable and productive in Africa to one the the worst performing in the world, a fact that Mugabe, now 84, continually refuses to acknowledge hiding behind a ream of paper-thin denials, insisting that Zimbabwe is still the powerhouse it once was. Deluded is not the word! The last journalist to interview Mugabe in December last year must have wanted to laugh when Mugabe insisted that Zimbabwean economy was "a hundred times better" than that of most African countries!
In 1992 I was lucky enough to visit Zim (as it is affectionately known amongst travellers) at a time when the situation was still reasonably progressive and the people of Zimbabwe still had cause to hope that their future would be as bright as they had once believed only a few years before. I saw a country with (by African standards) an excellent infrastructure; good roads, trains that ran almost on time and flourishing agricultural and tourism industries. It seemed to me at the time that of all the countries I'd visited in Africa (and there are more than a few) that Zim had indeed been singled out for a prosperous and settled future. The game parks were well run. There was food on the supermarket shelves and in the markets. People drove modern vehicles and trade seemed good. But as a toursit you often become blind to the deficiences of the places you are visiting just because you are so happy to be there. Perhaps that was me. At the time I knew all about Mugabe but the (shall we say) unpleasant face of his regime had yet to emerge internationally. He was still being wined and dined by world leaders as a 'freedom fighter' and hero whilst at the time performing political slight-of-hand to make his rivals disappear from under the very noses of those.
Now, by all accounts the supermarket shelves are empty, the fields produce no crops and the game parks have no animals. This horrid, little, detestable man is running the country into the ground and lining his pockets at the expense of his own people. Of all the evil and corrupt regimes that have come about in Africa since the collapse of colonialism roughly 50 years ago, Mugabe´s may not be the worst but it can certainly lay claim to be the most resilient. And still the powerful politicians of the world just seem to be content to let these atrocities continue. Africa always seemed to be a place apart politically. A place so far removed from the affluent West that most people, politicians included, cannot even contemplate relating to the problems of a nation so different and so poor that to save them from further suffering seems to be just too much effort to bear! How can we bring realsisation home to the people of the world? I have no idea. But something needs to be done. The politicains turn a blind eye so it is left to the likes of Sir Richard Branson who, by all accounts tried and failed to 'buy' Mugabe out of power (http://gu.com/p/32gqk). But at least he tried which is a damn site more than most men of power have! Or the campaigning Archbishop of Canterbury, who after arriving in Zim last week was kept waiting and waiting before finally being granted an audience with the despot. No doubt promises made about saving the Zimbabwean Anglicans from further persecution were warmly recieved by the Archbishop, Rowan Williams (http://gu.com/p/32gfm), but in truth I don't doubt for one minute that it is just another bucketful of Mugabe's verbal pigswill that the world seems only to grateful to swallow!
Zim is definitely a subject I shall return to. Often!
And now for Spain today....here´s the good news! This morning Standard and Poor have cut Spain's credit rating from AA- to AA causing yet another drop in the value of the Euro. The reasons cited include Spain's exceptionally high unemployment, tightening credit and high private sector debt.
They said....."Despite signs of resilience in economic performance during 2011, we see heightened risks to Spain's growth prospects due to high unemployment, tighter financial conditions, the still high level of private sector debt, and the likely economic slowdown in Spain's main trading partners."
They went on to say that they did not have confidence in Spain's projected growth for 2012, which had been predicted to be only 1.5%, but is now expected to be less than 1%. Further credit rating drops may well follow should Spain actually fail to meet it´s projections and fall in line with that S&P expectations.
This is bad news for all of us. Not just for us in Spain but for Europe as a whole. The severity of the economic climate in Spain was brought home to me last week when the various projects at the company I work for were put on hold or, at the very least, delayed because creditors were unable to pay their debts to us. It´s a vicious circle ...one cannot the other who cannot pay the other and everyone in the line falters! Companies here seem to be taking bigger than usual risks in order to swell their books and gain new business. Manufacturers and suppliers are slashing prices and taking on new clients without the usual credit considerations because they have no choice but to take the risk. The climate is desperate and shows all the signs of getting much worse. As one of the plebians, all I can do is keep my nose to the grindstone and hope that things begin to turn round. Everyone is struggling. Everyone is juggling debts and credit, deciding who to pay and when. I am lucky in that, to some extent my job is more international and so I am still able to see a future for myself, but other co-workers are not sure. They work on projects for the Spanish market and these seem more precarious than ever. The amazing thing is atht in the streets and the bars and the cafes no-one seems to be the slightest bit worried. Wednesday was national fiesta day ...again!..... and everyone was out drinking, eating and making merry. Whatever the economic situation nothing, it seems, can dampen the Spanish need for a party!
In Kenya yesterday 2 female Spanish aid workers from Medicins sans Frontieres were kidnapped from the Dabaab humanitarian camp by Somali gunmen who shot their driver in the neck (though amazingly he lives still) and escaped back over the nearby border (http://gu.com/p/32tmq). In the wake of the recent kidnapping of two French and British women the aid workers are now, understandably, feaful for their safety. OXFAM said last night that this new incident may well affect the aid missions in and around Dabaab whislt security conditions are reassessed.
To say I don't understand this madness that seems to have affected the Somali people is to only voice what everyone else is surely thinking. These gunmen have no respect for anyone or anything and to abduct aid workers such as this again and again shows that they have no understanding or apprecaition of how the rest of the world thinks or behaves. It is a hotbed of violent, criminal activity that the rest of the world seem quite happy to just let continue. I cannot help thinking that if there were exploitable resources in the country then such a situation would not be allowed to roll on endlessly. We would have been in there years before sorting things out and tying up the re-construction contracts before the last bullet had been fired. But since Somalia is of little economic value the situation endures and the innocent continue to suffer. There must be something that can be done to end this cycle of bloodshed and violence before the disease spreads and infects the rest of East Africa. Please write to your local MEP with your suggestions.
And finally....Mark Cavendish...perhaps the greatest British cyclist of his generation and, of course, the new World Road Race Champion, has announced his arrival at Team Sky for the start of next season (http://www.skysports.com/story/0,,15264_7235754,00.html). This is fantastic news....Team Sky is primarily a British outfit (though there are many international riders on the team) with British management and now British stars! I cannot wait for next year to come and to see a British cycling team pushing all before them and sweeping the board. Go Cav!
See you soon
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
Down, but not quite out in Spain
Down, but not quite out in Spain
When we came here the financial situation worldwide was precarious. In Spain it was downright appalling, but in one respect it worked for us. The glut of Brit-ex-pats who’d moved here in the boom years of the 80’s and 90’s, buying up cheap property, selling at huge profits and moving on, had come to a rapid and almost complete stop, with the vast majority returning ‘home’ rather than sticking it out (the reasons for this being many perhaps, but with, I believe, an underlying causality which I shall return to at another time). The price of property fell 50% in some places in a matter of months giving us a window of opportunity that had previously been shuttered by our under-strength purchasing power. Spanish developers who had gambled everything on a continuing boom came badly unstuck and now you can see whole estates of half-built, or even completed villas, that sit empty, boarded up, fenced in, either awaiting completion (that will never happen) or buyers (that will never arrive) and so they just rot. It’s amazing to see! Literally, whole suburbs of towns and cities built to satisfy the needs of non-existent foreign buyers sitting dormant, not dead because they’d never been alive; just frozen in suspended animation, scaffolding intact, piles of bricks, cement, sand and other building materials, half used, part-built, on permanent pause like a broken-down cheap DVD.
The Spanish government also invested heavily in an infrastructure that had been backward by the standards of other Western-European nations. They gambled on a never-ending influx of Brits, Germans and Scandinavians who wanted roads, hospitals and shopping malls like they had at home. But they lost that gamble. Spain now has the highest unemployment in Europe and is effectively bankrupt. The black-market economy here thrives (like nowhere else in the EEC I would guess) and the snails pace of legislative change and the general apathy of Spanish voters in this regard mean that Spain is fast becoming a 2nd or even 3rd world nation while presenting to the world a 1st world face. Innovation and enterprise here are stifled by bureaucracy and red-tape. There is no encouragement whatsoever from a Governmental system that does everything in it’s power to make it a difficult and costly undertaking to start a business, thereby forcing people into the black economy because they simply cannot live any other way. Old timers here will tell you that it’s always been this way and the under-25’s who exploit the system illegally and constitute the vast majority of the officially unemployed, working, selling, ducking, diving, beneath the radar of the tax man see no reason for it to change at all. The system allows them to earn, buy houses, new cars, go on holidays, avoid taxes and in many cases, claim benefits as well. They are simply not motivated to see a change which might, in the short-term, see them worse off. I empathise whole-heartedly.
By way of illustration. I was offered a job just a couple of weeks before Christmas. Whoopy-do!!! All my problems over with. Or so I thought. It was with a new and expanding company. The Boss is English (luckily for me) but he was doing everything legally and above board and quite rightly so. He had taken on me and one other as a starting point, hoping to end up employing another 8-10 people if things went as expected. But right from the off it was a doomed exercise. He had applied for his S.L status; the equivalent of having a Limited company in the U.K.. This was probably his first mistake, ie. In trying to do it legally. The Spanish telecom company found out that he had applied for his S.L. and so they cut off his telephone lines because they considered him to be an unnatural risk. Okay, said the Boss, I understand (which is more generous than I would have been under the circumstances) and offered them a deposit as security and a show of good faith. The telecom company duly accepted and put 2 of the 3 lines back on. The 3rd line was mine - last one in and all that - so he asked me to wait a few days till it was sorted, which the telecom company assured him would be only a matter of days. Whilst he waited they, in their infinite wisdom, decided that he still to risky, so they cut off the 2 lines again and for good measure, also his home phone and his mobile line. Again, the Boss, showing admirable restraint, offered to pay what was outstanding on all of the lines as a show of further good faith. The telecom company again accepted. The Boss coughed up over 2000 Euro in payment for telephone lines whose first bills are not even due until the end of January 2011. Unbelievable! But even after that, they still refused point blank to reinstate even a single telephone line. In the meantime, the Government agency to whom you apply to in order to gain your S.L. discovered that his office was not functioning and told him that his application was on permanent hold because they did not believe that the business was legitimate. “You don’t even have a telephone line,” they told him!!! Aaaaargh!!!!! To cut a long story short, the would-be Boss has now given up the ghost, has taken his family and moved to Madrid and is now setting his business up on the sly because this is the only way he can get it done. How’s that for Democracy in action?
I am married to an African woman and have myself, spent many happy years in Africa and the parallels between the Spanish and many Africans peoples are blindingly obvious if one cares to look. Spain spent over 700 years as an ‘African colony’ and maybe this is just the worlds longest hangover! The climate here is mild in the winter and tropical in the summer, as we all know, the same as much of Africa. Latifa, my wife, tells me that the Spanish are Mediterranean in their looks and African in their attitudes. It is a ’mañ ana’ culture, as it is across much of Africa. Of course, there are exceptions; there are always exceptions. But it is the generalisations that make the people and in the main the Spanish see no need to change.
Latifa is working on temporary contract for a ‘customer service’ operation for a large, well-known (in Spain and France) website similar to Amazon. She has done similar work in the U.K. previously and had every expectation that it would be similar. How wrong she was! Right from the first day things started to go awry. She had her interview one day and they asked if she could start the very next day for her training. Somewhat taken aback by the rapidity, she gratefully said yes and duly cancelled other work she had (she works P/T as an aerobics instructor). She came home very happy and delighted to be working full-time. I was happy for her. The training was supposed to be 3 days long and about 3-4 hours each day. Great! On the 5th day of training they were all told (there were about 10 training in all) that the training was unpaid after all, but not only that it was now going to be only 1 hour per day and would last another 2 weeks. The reason, they were too busy dealing with all the customer service requests to spare anyone to train them!!! There’s a logic of sorts at work there!! When finally she did start work and was getting paid she found she had 3 supervisors, one of whom would tell them to deal with clients in one way (not the way in which they had been trained incidentally), which they then did, until such time as the 2nd supervisor came along and fined them all an hours pay for doing so and told them do things differently. They then did as requested. The 1st supervisor then arrived, saw that her instructions were not being obeyed, fined them again and told them to revert to the her method!! This yo-yo-ing continues to this day. Latifa has now been there almost 3 months and the supervisors still cannot decide how they want things done! Bear in mind, this is the biggest shopping website there is France and Spain!!! But not only that, if a customer phones up to find out where their item is that they purchased, and the computer is unable to find out what is going on with it they are told to hang up on the client.
To hang up!!! They have got the clients money and so now they just don’t give a fuck! Can you imagine if that happened to you in the U.K.?
But that’s not the end of it, oh no! Before Christmas, when understandably such websites are very busy, they falsify their stock lines and numbers of items available to get the clients business knowing full well that said item is no longer available and that the clients children will be without a gift this Christmas. If such a client phones up they are told to pacify them by lying that it is on the way. If satisfied and the client hangs up, thinking all is okay, they are told to go quickly to the next phone call and to do precisely nothing about the previous caller. If said client then calls again, which inevitably they do, they are told to offer the client a refund which will take over 2 months arrive.
I have never heard of such blatant disregard for basic business practice. One evening Latifa came home in tears because one particularly irate customer had asked to speak to a supervisor, who flat refused to deal with person and instead stood over Latifa whilst instructing her to tell the client to ‘fuck off’ or lose her job. Nice people eh? Luckily it is only a temporary contract that is shortly coming to an end and she cannot wait to leave, despite being asked to stay because she had dome such a good job! We might be hard up but I’d rather eat shit than take more money from a company like that.
Spain is a 1st world country with a 3rd world mentality and an even worse administration. Nothing here is computerised. After all, why store info quickly and easily on a hard-drive when you can employ 2 or 3 people to write everything down in triplicate and take all day about doing it and then lose it or misfile it? This is a 1st world country where you cannot get a mobile signal in many places once outside of a city. By comparison, I travelled to Mali last year. Officially the 4th poorest nation on the planet. I could connect to skype, phone home and send emails from the middle of the Sahara, literally over a weeks drive from what we might call civilisation. Fantastic! But do you think I can do any of those things from my house only 45km from Valencia? The answer is ‘yes,’ but only if the wind is the right direction! And you think I’m kidding, don’t you? This is a 1st world country where my neighbour, nearing bus-pass age in the U.K., cannot get any help medical help from the system for his chronic back and neck problems, or any medication for a slight psychosis that results from over 20 years of daily stress from living so far below the poverty line that he makes most Africans seem positively wealthy by comparison. His house has no electricity, no running water, no telephone line, no nothing. His bedroom ceiling collapsed some years ago so that when it rains at night he gets wet in his bed. In winter time he has an ancient old ‘estufa,’ a wood burning stove, that chokes his rooms with pallid, unhealthy smoke but it is his only source of warmth. He is not entitled to any financial assistance whatsoever from a system that does not recognise infirmity as a handicap so he spends his days traipsing over the mountains looking for wild herbs, mushrooms and plants to flavour the rainwater soup he makes. If he’s lucky he may be able to trap a rabbit or a small bird occasionally to liven things up a bit. He beams with delight if he catches a starling or pigeon, from which he will cook and eat every last, unappetising morsel, the bones he gives to his scrawny dog, his only company in his harsh world. He weighs considerably less than my 11 year old son who is built like a beanpole and sways in a strong wind, as I did at his age. But Juan, for that is his name, can always raise a smile and for all his hardships he says he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. And the same is true for us. For all it’s problems, for all it’s frustrating, backward ways, it’s red-tape and endless bureaucracy, Spain is a wonderful place to live. The culture and lifestyle are vibrant and colourful. The people, friendly and open. It really is wonderful place to live until you have to try and deal with the system. Or get a job.
We help Juan when we can. We buy him bread, a drop of vino and a bit of tobacco when we have the money ourselves, but I already worry for him (and for us by proxy) about what will become of him in a year or two. What happens when his health truly fails? What if he breaks an ankle on the mountain? Who will know? Who will care for him? Of course we shall do everything we can to help, but I’m not a rich man and I have my own family who must come first. So, do we just let him die when he cannot trap his rabbits anymore? Tell me, someone. Please?
And this is in Spain. A 1st world country we are told.
And the strangest thing of all. Juan tells us of another man, younger than himself, who lives like a hermit further up the mountain than we are, in the wilds of this region and in the middle of nowhere. Juan says he has lived up there for longer than himself, so that means he has been there for over a quarter of century I would imagine. This guy lives in a house (if that word adequately describes it) with holes in the wall (in other houses these holes would be called windows, but windows have glass or shutters or something to keep the weather out) which are open to the elements. We live at an altitude of just under 500m, which whilst not high, is high enough to make the winters very cold and biting - Spanish houses are not well insulated and lack any sort of heating. The hermit lives at near 800m where deep snow and strong winds are regular event and must make the winters seem interminable. This guy must be as hard as nails because he rarely comes down from there, finding all his food and fluids by foraging across the mountainside. Amazingly, Juan takes pity on him and when he has more rabbit than he can eat he takes what excess he has up the track to give to the hermit. Such generosity of spirit a rarity in the money-grabbing, money-obsessed, selfish world most us occupy. But that’s just how Juan is.
As a little aside, I would just like to relate a funny story. For all his lack of’s Juan is a mad footy fan! Aren’t we all? When he goes into town, which is not a frequent occurrence, he tries to home in on a newspaper and then sits in a café drinking a café solo (espresso to you and me), generally donated by a kindly proprietor, where he dives avidly into the sports pages and devours all the results, news, etc, which dominates the pages of most dailies here - because Spain is not football mad as the Brits are, but is completely football loco in a completely obsessive way that British footy fans could only dream about - and so he thereby keeping abreast of all the footy goings on. On talking to him, his football knowledge is impressive considering the gaps in his media relations. Anyway, I digress. When we first arrived and could still afford satellite TV, I invited Juan in to watch a few matches. “Who’s your team?” I asked in French. Juan had grown up in Strasbourg just after the War and he speaks French like a native, and when we first arrived our Spanish was dodgy to say the least, so conversing in my schoolboy French was the easiest way for us all to attempt to understand one another. “No-one,” he replied. “I just love football.” Fair enough. I can go with that. But it soon became clear to me that Juan’s impressive knowledge of the game was not as in depth as I’d previously thought. I’d talk about such and such a player, such and such a team, as you do when enjoying the match but Juan seemed totally out of touch with what I was saying. I was confused. Then, after having watched 3 or maybe 4 matches with me he finally said one day, “So, which one is Messi?”
‘Which one is Messi?’ I couldn’t believe my ears. The worlds greatest player and for all his supposed knowledge of the game, Juan couldn’t tell who Messi was. What on earth was going on?
Upon investigation, it turned out that he’d never seen a match on TV before and had no idea what team played in what colours, what any of the players looked like, how old they were or anything. It turned out that he never looked at the pictures in the papers because he didn’t see the point! Even the graphic in the top corner of the TV screen showing the score was baffling for him. “What is BFC?” Barcelona Football Club I told him! “Oh, now I understand!” he said. “I didn’t know who was playing who (me, being the selfish Brit had the English commentary on!) and who was whom. Now it becomes clear!”
There’s a lesson in there somewhere. If someone can wheedle it out then please let me know.
So, to summarise: I will be blogging when I can get to an internet café to do so or when one of other of us manages to secure employment with a legitimate and conscientious company. We are having a hard time of it. There’s no point denying it. But in the end, I’d rather be having a hard time of it here than in the U.K. There are many things here that I do not agree with, most of which I have found out since moving here. After all, you don’t really know someone till you live with them and the same is true of nations too. But we won’t be running for home even if things get worse before they get better. We left the U.K. because we didn’t like many things there, but what you realise is, that nowhere is perfect unless you’re rich. Money can smooth over any amount of difficulties and whilst we came here with money in the bank, almost 2 years of not working makes a sizeable dent in any amount of savings for a most families. We are no different. So, if you are thinking of moving to Spain like us, then come here with your eyes fully open and your bank balance sufficiently in the black, because over here you have to help yourself, no-one is going to help you.
Until next time.
Peter
P.S. Feliz Año Nuevo.
Sunday, 17 October 2010
Life in the Campo
I can see sticking to writing a regular blog amongst many other things to do and duties to perform is not going to be easy. No sooner have I started than it's been a week or more between posts. Not the most auspicious of beginnings, but from small acorns....blah de blah de blah!
Not a whole lotta news this week, but what there is isworth telling. The employment situation in Spain is pretty poor, as I'm sure most know. Unemployment is just over 20% and is the highest in Westren Europe. It's not that there isn't work here, because there is, but getting into the position to be able to actually impress a potential employer is albut impossible. Well, maybe not impossible, but bloody difficult, to say the least. A friend who works in Valencia in the service industry told us that she had over 600 applications for a part-time receptionist vacancy. The vacancy before that had over 800!! And on both occasions the job ended up going to someone who was known personally to one of the managers. This seems to be the way in Spain. Nepotism is rife and everyone accepts that is how the job market is largely controlled. If you don't know the right person then your chances diminish whatever your knowledge and experience. It's talked about openly and, whilst it is against the law, the Spanish don't get too uptight about such things, certainly not like the Brits do. So bearing all this in mind it gives me great pleasure to announce that my lovely wife, Latifa, whose Spanish is already near fluent, has landed herself a job (albeit a temporary posting) without any prior knowledge of the Company or any of the employees. She did so well and it will help to take a bit of the pressure off and also return Christmas to us which, until that point, had been cancelled!
I've been doing some fruit picking to supplement the household income but it's very hard work, bending all day, scrabbling amongst thorns, cacti and ants nests to gather algarrafas (can't tell you the name in English because I've nevere seent hese in the UK) by the sackload for sale to the local co-op. By the end of a day 260kg, or 12 sacks and two delieveries later, my neighbour and I pocketed the princely sum of 40 Euros. We did this every day for a week, along with many other locals short of a bob or three, until the co-op said 'no more' for this season. I'm not complaining though. Less than £20 for a day's hard labour is not minimum wage for sure, but if that's what I have to do in order to keep my Spanish dream alive, then that's what I'll do. Juan, my picking partner, says that prices have been slowly dropping, relative to the cost of living, for the past 10 years. Before you could make good money, especially before the conversion from Pesatas to Euros, he tells me. Not enough to be rich, but enough to keep a small house and family. But now.....ouch!.....it doesn't go anywhere.
Even so, the co-operative system is not something I ever came across in the UK, but here it seems that every peublo has it's cooperativa and they buy pretty much whatever you can find to pick, provided it's in season, it was not stolen (raiding a farmers fields to pick his bounty is not recommended) and it's in good condition. They buy grapes, olives, oranges, lemons, almonds, basically whatever you've got, until they have sufficient quantities to make it commercially viable. This way the community can produce it's local varieties of wine, cava, olive oils, olives, sugared almonds (a Casinos speciality for which it is known all over Spain), juices or other foodstuffs and all, I might add, much better quality and tasting far finer than what you might pick up at your M&S.
We've got only 3 olive trees, 2 almond trees, a fig tree and several vines but it's amazing how much they produce. This years almond crop was destroyed by a vicious hailstorm (stones the size of golfballs, I kid you not!) in May, but even so, no pasa nada, we're stiil eating last years! We've planted some lemons and oranges but probably won't get any fruit till next year when they are a bit bigger. I'd never grown any veggies in the UK, but here I've got lots of space so I thought I'd give it a go. We tried onions, courgettes, tomatoes, peppers, chillis, even some rhubarb! It was all so easy I couldn't believe it. Nature really is an amazing force. Whilst the rhubarb didn't really take off, but the rest produced a yeild far higher than I ever imagined. We also had many seedlings destroyed by the storm, but from just 4 courgette plants I was extracting at least 1 per plant per day. Far more than you can eat without turning green! The tomatoes are still outside in mid-October, still producing 4/5 a day. The other plants as well are still churning it out but are perhaps on the wane now. So next year, watch out. If times are still tough then I'm going to start early, produce many seedlings of various veggies and fruit and then sell them on by starting a market stall. In tough times you do what you need to do.
We've been here long enough to have a pretty good idea of how things work, what life is like and feel we have enough experience to offer an opinion on Spain and on our own lives here. We both love it, and as tough as things are at the moment, returning to the UK is not an option we could ever consider. The pace of life here is slower, especially in the campo, the stress and tensions I felt in the UK are all absent. Admittedly, some of those stresses have been replaced by new ones, but somehow it's just the same. I sleep so well, feel happier and more content than I have ever done and that is a lovely position to be in and a lovely thing to be able to say. My health is better, I've lost more than 10kg since being here (which I think is more than 2st, but I'm not sure of my conversion rate!) and feel stronger and younger than I have in many a year. So, if breaking my back picking fruit for a meagre supplement is what I have to do give me peace of mind then that is exactly what I shall do. The olive harvest starts very soon, so bring it on!
Peter
Not a whole lotta news this week, but what there is isworth telling. The employment situation in Spain is pretty poor, as I'm sure most know. Unemployment is just over 20% and is the highest in Westren Europe. It's not that there isn't work here, because there is, but getting into the position to be able to actually impress a potential employer is albut impossible. Well, maybe not impossible, but bloody difficult, to say the least. A friend who works in Valencia in the service industry told us that she had over 600 applications for a part-time receptionist vacancy. The vacancy before that had over 800!! And on both occasions the job ended up going to someone who was known personally to one of the managers. This seems to be the way in Spain. Nepotism is rife and everyone accepts that is how the job market is largely controlled. If you don't know the right person then your chances diminish whatever your knowledge and experience. It's talked about openly and, whilst it is against the law, the Spanish don't get too uptight about such things, certainly not like the Brits do. So bearing all this in mind it gives me great pleasure to announce that my lovely wife, Latifa, whose Spanish is already near fluent, has landed herself a job (albeit a temporary posting) without any prior knowledge of the Company or any of the employees. She did so well and it will help to take a bit of the pressure off and also return Christmas to us which, until that point, had been cancelled!
I've been doing some fruit picking to supplement the household income but it's very hard work, bending all day, scrabbling amongst thorns, cacti and ants nests to gather algarrafas (can't tell you the name in English because I've nevere seent hese in the UK) by the sackload for sale to the local co-op. By the end of a day 260kg, or 12 sacks and two delieveries later, my neighbour and I pocketed the princely sum of 40 Euros. We did this every day for a week, along with many other locals short of a bob or three, until the co-op said 'no more' for this season. I'm not complaining though. Less than £20 for a day's hard labour is not minimum wage for sure, but if that's what I have to do in order to keep my Spanish dream alive, then that's what I'll do. Juan, my picking partner, says that prices have been slowly dropping, relative to the cost of living, for the past 10 years. Before you could make good money, especially before the conversion from Pesatas to Euros, he tells me. Not enough to be rich, but enough to keep a small house and family. But now.....ouch!.....it doesn't go anywhere.
Even so, the co-operative system is not something I ever came across in the UK, but here it seems that every peublo has it's cooperativa and they buy pretty much whatever you can find to pick, provided it's in season, it was not stolen (raiding a farmers fields to pick his bounty is not recommended) and it's in good condition. They buy grapes, olives, oranges, lemons, almonds, basically whatever you've got, until they have sufficient quantities to make it commercially viable. This way the community can produce it's local varieties of wine, cava, olive oils, olives, sugared almonds (a Casinos speciality for which it is known all over Spain), juices or other foodstuffs and all, I might add, much better quality and tasting far finer than what you might pick up at your M&S.
We've got only 3 olive trees, 2 almond trees, a fig tree and several vines but it's amazing how much they produce. This years almond crop was destroyed by a vicious hailstorm (stones the size of golfballs, I kid you not!) in May, but even so, no pasa nada, we're stiil eating last years! We've planted some lemons and oranges but probably won't get any fruit till next year when they are a bit bigger. I'd never grown any veggies in the UK, but here I've got lots of space so I thought I'd give it a go. We tried onions, courgettes, tomatoes, peppers, chillis, even some rhubarb! It was all so easy I couldn't believe it. Nature really is an amazing force. Whilst the rhubarb didn't really take off, but the rest produced a yeild far higher than I ever imagined. We also had many seedlings destroyed by the storm, but from just 4 courgette plants I was extracting at least 1 per plant per day. Far more than you can eat without turning green! The tomatoes are still outside in mid-October, still producing 4/5 a day. The other plants as well are still churning it out but are perhaps on the wane now. So next year, watch out. If times are still tough then I'm going to start early, produce many seedlings of various veggies and fruit and then sell them on by starting a market stall. In tough times you do what you need to do.
We've been here long enough to have a pretty good idea of how things work, what life is like and feel we have enough experience to offer an opinion on Spain and on our own lives here. We both love it, and as tough as things are at the moment, returning to the UK is not an option we could ever consider. The pace of life here is slower, especially in the campo, the stress and tensions I felt in the UK are all absent. Admittedly, some of those stresses have been replaced by new ones, but somehow it's just the same. I sleep so well, feel happier and more content than I have ever done and that is a lovely position to be in and a lovely thing to be able to say. My health is better, I've lost more than 10kg since being here (which I think is more than 2st, but I'm not sure of my conversion rate!) and feel stronger and younger than I have in many a year. So, if breaking my back picking fruit for a meagre supplement is what I have to do give me peace of mind then that is exactly what I shall do. The olive harvest starts very soon, so bring it on!
Peter
Monday, 4 October 2010
Spain and Spanish cycling
Since this is my first post I guess I should tell you something about myself and why my blog is called 'Spain and beyond'. I am English, have been living in Spain for the past year and I am just getting to grips with Spanish life, the people and customs. This blog is going to be about my experiences, my life and my views of what I see locally, nationally and internationally from my tiny perch outside Valencia. I hope that anyone interested in Spain or possibly living in Spain will take an interest but, just to make things clear, I will not be limiting myself to comments on the Iberian peninsula for the simple reason that my own interests range far beyond these shores so I will be discussing whatever or whoever takes my fancy. That said, in this first entry I shall be concentrating on Spanish goings on, just to set the tone really. So here we go!
I live about 45km north-west of Valencia in the 'campo,' more commonly called the countryside. The nearest pueblo, or village, is Casinos and I'm lucky enough to have stunning views. On a clear day (which is most days) we can see clear down the valley all the way to the coast and the Med. We sit in the curve of a horseshoe with mountains ranging either side of us that offers protection from some of the vagueries of the Spanish weather. We often note that the Valencia region has different weather from the rest of Spain as a result of the mountains. The climate can be extreme here though. When it's hot, boy! is it hot! When it rains, it's a veritable torrent. And in the short, sharp winters (of which we have had only one, thus far) it is bloody freezing, not just because of the lack of central heating in Spanish houses, but also by virtue of living at an altitude of 488m. Anyone who lives in a rural area spends an inordinate amount of time pawing over the weather forecast and we are no different. It really can make or break your plans, but in a different way to the unreliable UK weather. We can plan a BBQ and know the weather will be good. We can say, a week ahead of time, 'let's go the beach' and know it will be sunny. The question often is, 'just how sunny will it be?' If it's 45C in the shade then a day at the beach can turn into a BBQ of a different sort! So, making plans with some advance warning of the weather is a must!
All in all we love it here. The people are friendly and have opened the doors of their community and their houses to us in a way that I could never imagine possible in the UK. It is safe, very low crime levels and stunningly beautiful everywhere, from the cities to the pueblos to the mountains. As time passes and blog entry follows blog entry I hope that some of you begin to develop a feel for life here and how two foreigners have been made welcome. I will try to avoid anything too personal because I am a private person and I have no wish to live my life in a fishbowl (assuming anyone reads this of course), so be patient and so will restrict my comments to the more impersonal rather than relating what I had for dinner and what colour my underwear is. Comments are of course most welcome, as are questions. And so, onto my first mini-blog and what for me is a sad time for Spanish sport.
Spain is a country rich in sporting pedigree. In the last year alone Spanish sports stars have won the football World Cup, have dominated world tennis, won two of the three Grand Tours of world cycling to mention but a few. I, myself, am a cyclist, so one of the things I was looking forward to most on moving here was to get to grips with some tough, rugged cycling routes, both on and off road, and so I have. Spain is cycling mad. The campo is jam-packed with cyclists every weekend of the year and this weekend was no different, but this weekend there was only one topic on the minds of most as they pounded out the kilometres. Alberto Contador, Spanish hero, 3 time winner of the Tour de France, arguably the best cyclist in the world, had failed a drugs test. When I heard I was just shocked. I heard on CNN initially, then an hour later Contador held a press conference where, inevitably, he expressed his sorrow, his own shock and his innocence.
The facts are these. On July 21st, on a rest day at the Tour de France, Contador, as yellow jersey wearer was tested, as he was the day before and the day after. This is standard procedure. What was not standard were the findings of the tests. As is normal in these cases, both the A and B samples have to be tested and provide the same result before any further action can be taken. At the UCI (cycling's international body) testing centre in Cologne, Germany, minute traces of clenbuterol, a banned substance and a steroid to boot, were found in the samples provided by Contador. He was informed himself on August 24th, but in line with UCI recommendations, he kept silent until September 29th when the official announcement was made. In the press conference Contador said how, even if he is eventually cleared, that his reputation and credibility would be 'seriously damaged' and he told how he had even considered retiring from the sport in the wake of the accusations, first published in L'Equipe, the highly respected French newspaper. Ina subsequent article in L'Equipe it was suggested that the substance had found it's way into Contador's system by way of a blood transfusion, although Contador himself strongly denied this, blaming some contaminated meat for the aberrant results.
Clenbuterol is a a constituent part of many asthma medications and acts not just as steroid agent, but also as a stimulant, and as such has been on the international banned list for some years. It is now being phased out worldwide in favour of safer medicines but is still used in some veterinary products as a way to stimulate the growth of lean muscle tissue. Professional athletes are deemed responsible for what enters their own system but the levels of the substance found in Contador's system do give rise to a level of doubt and may give some weight to his contaminated meat explanation.
"Knowing the history of Clenbuterol intoxications in Spain and knowing the fact that nowadays Clenbuterol can be detected in extremely low amounts, it is obvious that in this particular case the scenario of an accidental intake of Clenbuterol by consumption of meat is extremely likely," says Contador's cheif scientific advisor Dr Douwe de Boer.
On the day's before the 21st Contador showed no sign of the drug, and on the 22nd the level was so low as to be almost undetectable. The levels detected, say Dr de Boer, were 50 picograms/ml, a value that is 40 times lower than should be detectable in the testing labs and is a level 180 times below the level needed to induce any sort of physical effect (or advantage, in this case). But this is still early stages in this affair and the story will run and run, thus while further investigations are made Contador has been suspended from competition and, if found guilty, will face a probable 2 year ban.
Those are the basic facts of the case. However, what you don't hear or even see is the damage done to a sport struggling for credibility after years of drug-related trauma. I was just a kid when Tommy Simpson, a 29 year old British cyclist, dropped dead of exhaustion on the upper slopes of Mont Ventoux in the 1967 Tour de France, his body bloated with amphetamines and diuretics. Since then professional cycling has reeled from one drug disaster to the next, with many of the legendary names of the sport falling victim to the lure of victory at all costs. Names such as Marco Pantani (the Pirate), a climber par excellence and winner of both the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France in 1998, who was found guilty of blood doping in 1999 and died tragically in 2004 of a cocaine overdose; Floyd Landis, 2006 Tour winner subsequently banned and stripped of his title; Djamolidin Abdoujaparov, Leonardo Piepoli, Stephan Schumacher, Alexander Vinokourov, Ivan Basso, Jan Ulrich and Britain's David Millar amongst many, many others, have all faced bans and have added to the cloud of suspicion that hangs over the sport. Millar (see pic) of course, has gone onto become one of the sports most outspoken critics and is now a highly respected anti-drugs campaigner and one of the first people journalists turn to in the wake of any new allegations. Millar has, incidentally, publicly stated that he stands '100% behind' Contador and does not put any credence in the allegations against the Spanish rider, in the same way as he supported Lance Armstrong throughout his post-cancer, Tour winning career despite a seemingly never-ending list of accusations that still linger to this day.
More than any other sport in living memory, cycling has seen it's star wane and wane again under the weight of endless drug-related traumas. Tour cyclists are rare breed of man. It is hard man's sport, perhaps the hardest of any sport, anywhere. They place incredible strain on their bodies, day in, day out, and perform physical miracles the like of which us mere mortals can only dream about. In the face of such adversity and such immense physical exertion it is perhaps understandable that some may resort to questionable methods to gain the upper hand, but this is no excuse. I love cycling. I marvel at their courage, determination, their physical prowess, their ability to hammer their bodies into submission hour after hour, day after day, and so, for me, these latest allegations cause great sorrow and I cannot help but wonder when it will all end.
Sadly, as if to add fuel to the flames, within hours of Contador's press conference, came the news that 2 more Spanish cyclists, Ezequiel Mosquera and David Garcia de Pena, have both tested postive during this years Vuelta a Espana which only finished last month. Mosquera finished second overall and was involved in some the Vuelta's most exciting days including the epic mountain top finish against eventual overall winner Vincenzo Nibali (of Italy) on the Bola del Mundo. Some amazing performances from a cyclist who had shown great promise throughout his career but only at the age of 34, and in his twilight year(s) has fulfilled that promise. Perhaps now we understand why!
Pat McQuaid, UCI President, has forcefully expressed his views on the Spanish cycling authorities saying that they 'don't want to battle against doping' and in the wake of Operación Puerto, the doping investigation that started in May 2006 and centred round Dr Eufemiano Fuentes, they are not doing enough to get to the bottom of the problem and that, as a consequence, Spanish cycling is suffering more doping scandals than it should be.
Yesterday, while out riding some horribly tough and steep farm tracks, I asked some of the guys what they thought about it all. Most just shrugged their shoulders and had nothing to say, almost as if they had been expecting this somehow. Only one offered an opinion and that opinion was undefined. He said 'he would just wait and see what happens in the end,' the same as Millar (despite his support), Frank Schleck (2nd in the Tour this year) and others had said. I wasn't sure what I was expecting as a response, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn't this. I guess I was looking for his fellow countrymen to offer words of support, to show a little sympathy for the man perhaps, but maybe it's gone beyond that. Maybe everyone is just tired of all the crap, all the cheating, all the lying. I know I am, but I'm not sure I would ever get tired enough to be quite so ambivalent in the face of the loss of a national hero. Maybe the Spanish ran out of sympathy when Alejandro Valverde was caught and banned two years ago? I don't know. What I do know is, that whatever comes to pass in this latest sordid affair I will still be watching and marvelling next year.
Peter
NB. Biggest congratulations to Thor Hushovd for his fantastic win yesterday in Geelong, Australia! All Hail Thor! World Road Race Champion 2010
I live about 45km north-west of Valencia in the 'campo,' more commonly called the countryside. The nearest pueblo, or village, is Casinos and I'm lucky enough to have stunning views. On a clear day (which is most days) we can see clear down the valley all the way to the coast and the Med. We sit in the curve of a horseshoe with mountains ranging either side of us that offers protection from some of the vagueries of the Spanish weather. We often note that the Valencia region has different weather from the rest of Spain as a result of the mountains. The climate can be extreme here though. When it's hot, boy! is it hot! When it rains, it's a veritable torrent. And in the short, sharp winters (of which we have had only one, thus far) it is bloody freezing, not just because of the lack of central heating in Spanish houses, but also by virtue of living at an altitude of 488m. Anyone who lives in a rural area spends an inordinate amount of time pawing over the weather forecast and we are no different. It really can make or break your plans, but in a different way to the unreliable UK weather. We can plan a BBQ and know the weather will be good. We can say, a week ahead of time, 'let's go the beach' and know it will be sunny. The question often is, 'just how sunny will it be?' If it's 45C in the shade then a day at the beach can turn into a BBQ of a different sort! So, making plans with some advance warning of the weather is a must!
All in all we love it here. The people are friendly and have opened the doors of their community and their houses to us in a way that I could never imagine possible in the UK. It is safe, very low crime levels and stunningly beautiful everywhere, from the cities to the pueblos to the mountains. As time passes and blog entry follows blog entry I hope that some of you begin to develop a feel for life here and how two foreigners have been made welcome. I will try to avoid anything too personal because I am a private person and I have no wish to live my life in a fishbowl (assuming anyone reads this of course), so be patient and so will restrict my comments to the more impersonal rather than relating what I had for dinner and what colour my underwear is. Comments are of course most welcome, as are questions. And so, onto my first mini-blog and what for me is a sad time for Spanish sport.
Spain is a country rich in sporting pedigree. In the last year alone Spanish sports stars have won the football World Cup, have dominated world tennis, won two of the three Grand Tours of world cycling to mention but a few. I, myself, am a cyclist, so one of the things I was looking forward to most on moving here was to get to grips with some tough, rugged cycling routes, both on and off road, and so I have. Spain is cycling mad. The campo is jam-packed with cyclists every weekend of the year and this weekend was no different, but this weekend there was only one topic on the minds of most as they pounded out the kilometres. Alberto Contador, Spanish hero, 3 time winner of the Tour de France, arguably the best cyclist in the world, had failed a drugs test. When I heard I was just shocked. I heard on CNN initially, then an hour later Contador held a press conference where, inevitably, he expressed his sorrow, his own shock and his innocence.
The facts are these. On July 21st, on a rest day at the Tour de France, Contador, as yellow jersey wearer was tested, as he was the day before and the day after. This is standard procedure. What was not standard were the findings of the tests. As is normal in these cases, both the A and B samples have to be tested and provide the same result before any further action can be taken. At the UCI (cycling's international body) testing centre in Cologne, Germany, minute traces of clenbuterol, a banned substance and a steroid to boot, were found in the samples provided by Contador. He was informed himself on August 24th, but in line with UCI recommendations, he kept silent until September 29th when the official announcement was made. In the press conference Contador said how, even if he is eventually cleared, that his reputation and credibility would be 'seriously damaged' and he told how he had even considered retiring from the sport in the wake of the accusations, first published in L'Equipe, the highly respected French newspaper. Ina subsequent article in L'Equipe it was suggested that the substance had found it's way into Contador's system by way of a blood transfusion, although Contador himself strongly denied this, blaming some contaminated meat for the aberrant results.
Clenbuterol is a a constituent part of many asthma medications and acts not just as steroid agent, but also as a stimulant, and as such has been on the international banned list for some years. It is now being phased out worldwide in favour of safer medicines but is still used in some veterinary products as a way to stimulate the growth of lean muscle tissue. Professional athletes are deemed responsible for what enters their own system but the levels of the substance found in Contador's system do give rise to a level of doubt and may give some weight to his contaminated meat explanation.
"Knowing the history of Clenbuterol intoxications in Spain and knowing the fact that nowadays Clenbuterol can be detected in extremely low amounts, it is obvious that in this particular case the scenario of an accidental intake of Clenbuterol by consumption of meat is extremely likely," says Contador's cheif scientific advisor Dr Douwe de Boer.
On the day's before the 21st Contador showed no sign of the drug, and on the 22nd the level was so low as to be almost undetectable. The levels detected, say Dr de Boer, were 50 picograms/ml, a value that is 40 times lower than should be detectable in the testing labs and is a level 180 times below the level needed to induce any sort of physical effect (or advantage, in this case). But this is still early stages in this affair and the story will run and run, thus while further investigations are made Contador has been suspended from competition and, if found guilty, will face a probable 2 year ban.
Those are the basic facts of the case. However, what you don't hear or even see is the damage done to a sport struggling for credibility after years of drug-related trauma. I was just a kid when Tommy Simpson, a 29 year old British cyclist, dropped dead of exhaustion on the upper slopes of Mont Ventoux in the 1967 Tour de France, his body bloated with amphetamines and diuretics. Since then professional cycling has reeled from one drug disaster to the next, with many of the legendary names of the sport falling victim to the lure of victory at all costs. Names such as Marco Pantani (the Pirate), a climber par excellence and winner of both the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France in 1998, who was found guilty of blood doping in 1999 and died tragically in 2004 of a cocaine overdose; Floyd Landis, 2006 Tour winner subsequently banned and stripped of his title; Djamolidin Abdoujaparov, Leonardo Piepoli, Stephan Schumacher, Alexander Vinokourov, Ivan Basso, Jan Ulrich and Britain's David Millar amongst many, many others, have all faced bans and have added to the cloud of suspicion that hangs over the sport. Millar (see pic) of course, has gone onto become one of the sports most outspoken critics and is now a highly respected anti-drugs campaigner and one of the first people journalists turn to in the wake of any new allegations. Millar has, incidentally, publicly stated that he stands '100% behind' Contador and does not put any credence in the allegations against the Spanish rider, in the same way as he supported Lance Armstrong throughout his post-cancer, Tour winning career despite a seemingly never-ending list of accusations that still linger to this day.
My wife with David Millar at the 2009 Tour of Britain
More than any other sport in living memory, cycling has seen it's star wane and wane again under the weight of endless drug-related traumas. Tour cyclists are rare breed of man. It is hard man's sport, perhaps the hardest of any sport, anywhere. They place incredible strain on their bodies, day in, day out, and perform physical miracles the like of which us mere mortals can only dream about. In the face of such adversity and such immense physical exertion it is perhaps understandable that some may resort to questionable methods to gain the upper hand, but this is no excuse. I love cycling. I marvel at their courage, determination, their physical prowess, their ability to hammer their bodies into submission hour after hour, day after day, and so, for me, these latest allegations cause great sorrow and I cannot help but wonder when it will all end.
Sadly, as if to add fuel to the flames, within hours of Contador's press conference, came the news that 2 more Spanish cyclists, Ezequiel Mosquera and David Garcia de Pena, have both tested postive during this years Vuelta a Espana which only finished last month. Mosquera finished second overall and was involved in some the Vuelta's most exciting days including the epic mountain top finish against eventual overall winner Vincenzo Nibali (of Italy) on the Bola del Mundo. Some amazing performances from a cyclist who had shown great promise throughout his career but only at the age of 34, and in his twilight year(s) has fulfilled that promise. Perhaps now we understand why!
Pat McQuaid, UCI President, has forcefully expressed his views on the Spanish cycling authorities saying that they 'don't want to battle against doping' and in the wake of Operación Puerto, the doping investigation that started in May 2006 and centred round Dr Eufemiano Fuentes, they are not doing enough to get to the bottom of the problem and that, as a consequence, Spanish cycling is suffering more doping scandals than it should be.
Yesterday, while out riding some horribly tough and steep farm tracks, I asked some of the guys what they thought about it all. Most just shrugged their shoulders and had nothing to say, almost as if they had been expecting this somehow. Only one offered an opinion and that opinion was undefined. He said 'he would just wait and see what happens in the end,' the same as Millar (despite his support), Frank Schleck (2nd in the Tour this year) and others had said. I wasn't sure what I was expecting as a response, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn't this. I guess I was looking for his fellow countrymen to offer words of support, to show a little sympathy for the man perhaps, but maybe it's gone beyond that. Maybe everyone is just tired of all the crap, all the cheating, all the lying. I know I am, but I'm not sure I would ever get tired enough to be quite so ambivalent in the face of the loss of a national hero. Maybe the Spanish ran out of sympathy when Alejandro Valverde was caught and banned two years ago? I don't know. What I do know is, that whatever comes to pass in this latest sordid affair I will still be watching and marvelling next year.
Peter
NB. Biggest congratulations to Thor Hushovd for his fantastic win yesterday in Geelong, Australia! All Hail Thor! World Road Race Champion 2010
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