should write something on those pesky eastern nationalisms that are annoying once and again the european politics with problems nobody cares about.
kind of busy lately so i’ll leave it for another day.
04/08/2009
11/07/2009
Forgetting Spain
Published on July 10 2009 | Cafébabel.com
Young Spaniards in a Seville arts centre. Photo : Comcinco
At 35.4%, the jobless rate for young adults in Spain is one of the highest in the EU. Three out of ten Spaniards under the age of 25 are out of work. Many of them leave the country to try their luck abroad.
Sara and Kiko have just landed in Glasgow. She is 27, he is 29 and has just lost his job. “My boyfriend was unemployed and I didn’t have my dream job, we wanted to learn English and as we don’t have a mortgage or any other ties, we came to Glasgow.” Waiting for them there were Leire and Mario, two other Spaniards who settled in the city a year ago to work, learn English and continue studying.
Younger generations of Europeans have taken advantage of the Leonardo programme and other similar grants to enjoy first-time jobs abroad. Luzia admits that she ended up in Milan because of love, but with a Faro scholarship, which depends on the Leonardo programme, to work on a tourist guide project for the city. “Having finished my studies, I didn’t fancy settling for good in my home town, even though I would like to in the future. I didn’t want to start looking for a permanent job, nor did I expect I would find one that would excite me. On top of that I think that when you are young and aren’t tied down, you should travel, meet other people and discover other ways of doing things. Enriching yourself like this, I believe, is an important part of personal growth.”
Leaving to stay
Maria got Paris. Originally from Cordoba, Maria had a scholarship in Madrid and earned 300 euros (£257) a month. As she couldn’t find a job with better pay, she requested an Argo scholarship, promoted by the Spanish department for science & innovation as part of the Leonardo programme. She worked for six months in the French capital and decided to stay there. She has been relentlessly sending out her CV to companies since January, so she can eventually settle in France for good. “The situation is a bit better here than in Spain; the crisis isn’t as marked. Nonetheless it is still difficult to find work.” Maria uses her mother tongue, Spanish, as her selling point, and tries to contact companies that are looking for people with a similar type of experience as her, and who speak Spanish fluently. This is the generation that makes the most of European citizenship and tries its luck in other countries, under the protection of the EU. Nowadays it’s so easy to cross borders; to travel, shop, study and, why not, work.
Like Sara, Kiko, Luzia, Leire or Mario, there are thousands of young people who have tried their luck in Europe in order to keep learning and growing, but they don’t forget their country, to which they would like to return after a while. ‘If everything goes well and we find work soon, we intend to stick it out here for a bit. We haven’t set a return date, but we hope it will be a long way away; that means we are well and happy,’ say Sara and Kiko.
‘Employment in Spain is awful’
‘Employment in Spain is in a bad way,’ says Sara. ‘There are no offers. I know lots of unemployed people, and those that are working are not doing so in the same conditions they were a few years ago; unemployment is the norm. I think that the crisis in Spain appeared very suddenly and its solution will arrive very slowly; it will happen almost without anyone noticing it.’ Luzia is not much more optimistic: ‘The work situation in Spain now is bad, especially for the young people that can’t find decent contracts or temporary guarantees. But it’s older people that have it the worst; you see them jobless and out in the street without the same capacity to retrain as we do at our age. In any case, I don’t see that things are much better in Italy.’
‘The crisis in Spain appeared very suddenly and its solution will arrive very slowly’
Faced with the difficult economic situation experienced in Spain, in Italy, France and the UK they see an opportunity to keep growing personally, developing professionally and to learn new languages. They have the good fortune of being able to live this type of experience in a difficult global economic situation. Nonetheless, rather than playing it safe, they prefer to take a risk for themselves, even if it’s far from home. There will always be time to come back…
Beatriz Bistué Garcés – París (Translation : Astrid vW)
What people may not want to know either because it’s true or it’s not.
In the 60’s some made up this motto “Spain is different”. A very successful motto as last generations of Spaniards found themselves proud to use it like a national badge, a way of expressing “we are different but because we are better”.
There’s a fact older that this motto and it has become a part of Spanish life; “Spain is unemployed” or as an Spaniard would go; “Spain is stopped”.
Because Spain is actually stopped. This illusion of a dynamic, content, creative society that 1992 world events disguised the Spaniards was just that, a disguise. A delusive one for a number of problems that 40 years of economic development couldn’t resolve and Spaniards didn’t want to face.
Spain the land of the “this is so”
Custom is a strong weapon and in Spain is a generational massive destruction one. The custom dictates that, although you might think, Spaniards live in a modern world, that is just marketing. Spanish people keep reproducing the same life patterns as their grandparents use to have 60 years ago. The lack of ambition, of purpose in life is absolute. All in all, having an stable and regularly paid job is their first step for a life script that dictates the formation of a family, the ownership of a house, expending sundays with the family, and with luck, doing it by expending the money in a popular restaurants. That’s what the regular Spaniard expects from life. Keep on reading and you’ll find why.
Spain, the land of university lobbies.
You may be impressed for the amount of people who decorate their walls with degrees. Crap. The education system in Spain is fully focused in scaring to death curious minds and entrepreneurial spirits. This come to an state of the art psychological torture machine when we look at the university ways. As you may hear when talking to someone whom professional future is linked to the university, it’s an institution “to create minds, not professionals”. You may agree with it or not, but the fact is that 3 out of 4 students ambition to decay into public serves rather than fight for their career when they finish their theoretical-pathic studies. You’ll hardly find someone that actually wants to explore anything after they get a paper that qualifies them as A group candidate for the public administration.
Spain, the land of the padrino
You know the Godfather, all that italoamerican uses, “i’ll make you an offer you won’t refuse”, …
Well, in Spain the Padrino is that person that gets you a good job in a tradition of corrupted connections that stop free market to work in any way. you need padrinos to get a job, to sell a product, to interview a new client, to get prices with a supplier, to achive a public contract, to get an official certification, and any other situation you may be thinking of, yes, you need a padrino also for that.
Spain, the land of the unions
Funny country Spain, more than 95 percent of the companies and more than 70% of the GDP is due to SME’s. Nevertheless no one cares about this part of the economic fabric. Unions are constantly hijacking the government and improving public workers conditions. This interfere so much with the reality of the job market that actually no sane person may think of better conditions than working for the state. Funny though as an average of 6 productive workers are needed now to maintain the posh public employees, while these 6 misleaded dreamers are squized by taxes.
Spain, “hhhhellaw, mi name issss Antonio”
In spain you study languages for 10,12, 16 years, depends on the type of school you go to. Any person can master 6 languages in that time. Unfortunately the education system states that you are there to study, not to learn. So, that’s why most of the spaniards are not even able to have a normal conversation in English or french after they’ve finished their “formation” life.
Spanish young professionals have a problem of formation. Spanish companies have a problem of competitiveness . Spanish society have a problem.
So, there is unemployment in Spain. Does it surprise anyone?
26/06/2009
Battle of the burka
Published on June 25 2009 | Presseurop
Photo: AFP
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Whether it’s the burka in France, or the niqab or headscarf in Belgium, the debate about whether to ban certain Islamic forms of dress is back on the European agenda. The European press has been weighing up the issue at a national level about the need to legislate or not.
In France, the debate on burkas (long robes that entirely cover the face and body worn by some Muslim women) was recently relaunched by a communist member of parliament. On 17 June, André Gerin submitted a proposal to create “a parliamentary commission of enquiry on the wearing of burkas or niqabs [which reveal the area around the eyes] on French national territory.” A few days later, at a congress that brought together both houses of the French parliament in Versailles, President Sarkozy announced his position when he declared that “Burkas are not welcome on French national territory.”
In the Daily Telegraph Cassandra Jardine wonders what would happen if the Queen of England went before a combined meeting of the House of Lords and Commons to announce that her government intended to “ban the burka?” Nothing of the kind is likely to happen in a country that tolerates the wearing of religious symbols, though the idea might be favourably received by some members of the Muslim community. Dr Taj Hargey of the Muslim Education Centre of Oxford praises the French President’s initiative, and describes the growing belief that Muslim women should cover their faces as “doctrinaire brain-washing.” Other Muslims were outraged to the point where they wondered if Nicolas Sarkozy had ever spoken to any of France’s four million Muslims. They were also puzzled by the fact that he should choose to target the burka, which is only worn by 5% of Muslim women. Muslim News journalist Ahmed Versi remarks that when Labour Minister Jack Straw complained that he felt “uncomfortable” talking to someone whose face he could not see, “more women began to wear veils just to defy him.”
In France, there is a consensus that an enquiry should be undertaken to establish the extent of the phenomenon which jars with French social and cultural mores, but commentators have expressed doubts about the usefulness of a legalistic approach. In Le Monde, Hassan Safoui, the leader of the 15 March Committee, an association which advises Muslim schoolgirls on the 2004 law banning religious symbols in schools, questions the ability of legislation “to draw a distinction between someone who is forced to wear a burka and someone who wears one voluntarily.” With a view to identifying people, managers of some public buildings like town halls, railway stations and banks, can refuse access to people wearing burkas or niqabs. But is it possible to regulate what adults wear in the street, without specifically targeting Muslims?
In Belgium, the election to the Brussels regional parliament of a veil-wearing representative – Mahimur Özdemir – and a Ministry of Justice proposal to allow civil servants to wear the veil, has reignited controversy on the issue of religious symbols and the non-interference of the state. Michel Konen, editor of La Libre Belgique reminds readers of the manner in which the issue is managed in Turkey. In 1999, a Turkish parliamentarian had her mandate withdrawn when she entered parliament wearing a veil. “In Brussels in 2009, should we be more indulgent with regard to individuals who want to display symbols of their religious opinions in the chambers where laws are decided?” wonders Konen. “Over the last two centuries, Western governments have been right to separate church and state, so as to safeguard freedom of speech. Now that these democratic values are well established, should we seek to prevent members of a parliament, where all manner of opinions both secular and religious can be freely expressed, from showing their allegiance to a particular religion?”
In Flanders, debate has been heated since a high school in Anvers announced that it was banning the wearing of visible religious symbols next autumn. “The problem is that if we limit one personal freedom we will also inhibit the expression of a second personal freedom: when women no longer have the right to wear a veil, their right to not wear a veil disappears and they are simply left with an obligation not to wear one,” says Rik Torfs, a professor of religious law at the University of Louvain, writing in De Standaard.
Mayrem Almaci, a Green party member of the Belgian federal parliament, believes that a ban would not reduce the pressure on young Muslim women, but would simply displace it onto other questions like “the length of their skirts, or their hairstyles and make-up […] Instead of undermining “victims”, schools, communities and societies should attempt to influence boys’ behaviour.”
I don’t really care about what people wear, I don’t really care about what I do wear, so…
Anyway this reminds me of that guy that used to practise skating in my neighborhood, close by, in Plantage/Artis. I remember him graciously, you know, dancing like if it were some kind of ballet on the skates, with (just) his t-string, with his unawareness, with his amsterdammer winter, … you know, don’t bother. Too cold for my ass but it’s fine.
But burka me no likes. I know about that etnocentrism, eurocentrism, fashioncentrism, whatever. i want to see peoples faces and think is quite unpolite not show the reactions, the gestures, the feelings. Communicating it’s not just like throwing words away and in this sense wearing a burka is not really the best thing you can do to greet your neighbor in the elevator. Just imagine, 6.30 am, you’re like trying to pretend still that you actually woke up, then you manage to sleep for 10 seconds in the lift, and when it get’s to the garage some dark middle sized thing sais good morning, neighbor!… WTF, the what!
Still you can get used to it. It would take a bit longer for me to feel the person behind but i son’t really see it as a big thing. What I don’t really want to get used to is that kind of backyard of wearing conventions. That meaning that makes clothes not just fabric but symbols of people telling to you, right, this means I see things so different to you that it’s actually a big point. Now, that really makes me grind my teeth. I cannot help it, but people tending to think that they are right no matter what, is really disturbing. it might be because they have different opinions, they have different habits, or directly they look to have no brain. Never tested it myself but i suppose that, even though i didn’t open many humans heads, there must be something inside any of them. However, sometimes reality forces you to accept that something must be escaping from you.
Recently, in my way to work, i saw some small groups of middle aged people going in the same direction, men and women, wearing these strange chulo-agropecuario folkloric dresses. They were happy, they were different. Thanks God! different and scarce. They were heading to El Rocio, if you happen not to know what that is, that’s a good thing in your life, so let me spoil it. It’s a so called romeria, which in plain english could be explained as a bunch of drunk pointless believers that gather together around some icon to worship the goodness of the fiesta and futility of the soul. The whole group carries with them a set of typical impedimenta like horses, flies, decorated wagons, hang overs,…and an idiot with a drum.
They wear in a particular way because they feel better, better but like better than you rather than better than before. They “know”. They “understand”. They “see”. And you don’t. They feel sorrow for the people that cannot see. But the main thing is that they feel themselves entitled to speak with a moral superiority on any public or private subject. It’s like if they are in drugs. They can see better than you even things that you don’t give a shit about. And they dance sevillanas. They use the dress as a symbol to recognize each other because when you think you are a part something bigger than you, you want to see how big is the “thing”. probably they feel less stupid this way.
But then, what’s the problem with the burka? i want to know! show me what you want and show me what you think. there’s no need to put a barrier. I do trust you and trust you are not rociero!