Spanish politics: finally a budget for 2012

Yesterday the central government in Madrid revealed its budget plans for this year. It's sad to see that they will virtually give up on development aid to the world's poorest. The Wall Street Journal reports extensively here; it seems that it is still way to early to know if Spain will overcome its by now already 5-year-old crisis - or if it will need an official rescue like that of Ireland and Greece.

update 03.04.2012: the WSJ offers an interview with Spain's finance minister here.

Jaume Cabré, an interview [exercises in translation]

This is an unauthorized translation of an interview of the writer Jaume Cabré (JC) by Víctor-M. Amela (VMA), published on the back-cover of La Vanguardia newspaper on March 7, 2012.

Jaume Cabré, writer. I am 64 years old. I was born in Barcelona and live in Matadepera. I am married to Margarida and we have two children, Martí (37) and Clara (31), and one grand-child. I am a Catalan independent. I am agnostic but it hurts me that they use God to justify violence. Hell is that the devil does not exist.

"Educate is to teach the young person to be totally alone by him-/herself"


VMA: Why do you write?
JC: I wanted to be a musician: I play the violin, but I am not good enough...
VMA: And why musician?
JC: When I was little, at home we had a piano that my parents played with four hands... I also wanted to be a firefighter, Pope...
VMA: The Pope of Rome?
JC: A gentleman in disguise who was treated so well by everybody... I was enchanted!
VMA: Afterwards you wrote about Pope Luna...
JC: That there were different popes and that all considered the others heretics fascinated me. The one who wins declares all the others anti-popes and writes the History! What's the truth?
VMA: So, you write because you do not play the violin?
JC: Art hides some frustration, a lack that you alleviate by playing the lute, writing...
VMA: The artistic drive as a therapy.
JC: If you feel that you cannot live without following this drive, you have to follow it!
VMA: "If you see yourself able not to write, then don't write," said Borges' father to him.
JC: I haven't been able to live without writing! For some years I was a secondary school teacher, came home, corrected exams, spent time with my children... and in the early morning hours, I wrote! It was hard, but the teaching was harder: winning over the students, have them participate, excite them...
VMA: What would you do to improve the education?
JC: The parents keep themselves totally away, they delegate all to the school. If a father complains that his son doesn't read, ask him: "And you, do you read?".
VMA: To broaden responsibilities, I see.
JC: We live in a society that gives priority to a TV program on the question of a footballer's depilation over another about the History of Europe.
VMA: You find this worrying?
JC: I am discourage by the superficiality that you note in the incapacity to be alone by ourselves. Educating means teaching the young to be alone by him-/herself.
VMA: Socializing culture maybe banalizes it.
JC: I believe that it is possible to extend and democratize culture without necessarily degrading it or taking down the bar. What I am really worried about is the contempt for the study of the Humanities...
VMA: Why?
JC: If we let us carry away by an extreme utilitarianism, we will give up studying Greek and Latin, then Geography, then Philosophy, and finally History... All that makes us "cultured" and able to judge, structured persons! Just the subjects that everybody should study..., and later on, let them enter deeper into whatever subject they like.
VMA: I sign that!
JC: It all starts with being badly educated..., and then you abuse your partner..., and then you use your fist, and like this we arrive at Auschwitz.
VMA: Do you not dramatize a little here?
JC: No, the drama is that the bad resides in you. Hell consists of the fact that the devil does not exist.  
VMA: What is your idea of the bad?
JC: To pretend to do good seems very pretentious to me... Trying to not to do bad is already a lot! Look at the ecological footprint..
VMA: What does it have?
JC: Even the person that does not want to contaminate at all ends up contaminating a little. We are no angels! And a grain of sand ends up stopping a big machine: i starts with a bad gesture and ...
VMA: For example?
JC: To call a Catalan "Polish" is a beginning, comparable to the Nazis that called the Jew "rat".
VMA: Do we have to learn pluralism?
JC: We have to learn that Europe's common language is not English: it's translation! Umberto Eco says this. The European reality is plurilingual and this is a treasure!
VMA: You write in Catalan?
JC: We do not live in a country, we live in a language. I live in the Catalan language. A language that was prohibited: that is a fact that surprises a lot when you explain it around the world...
VMA: In how many languages have your works already been translated?
JC: Into twenty-something, including Spanish! I am very satisfied because of the reluctance of Spanish readers towards us, authors who write in Catalan.
VMA: Why is that?
JC: The Catalans read authors who write in Spanish but it does not happen vice-versa. And it hurts me. I heard in a restaurant in Spain a group of guests that did not want the Catalan wines for their provenance... and that hurts!
VMA: Your latest novel will be a bestseller. And what will you write next?
JC: It took me eight years to write I confess. Now... I have to wait. 
VMA: Wait for what?
JC: That I am dominated again by this necessity to write something else.
VMA: And right now, how are you?
JC: Right now, this is not the case. But I suspect that something will arrive, something will arrive...
VMA: You also wrote serials and TV series.
JC: The first serial that was made in Spain, La granja [The farm], with Puyal... I worked very well, I earned money.
VMA: What advice would you give to those who want to write for TV?
JC: Visualize everything you write, describe gestures and looks, and write things that surprise yourself.
VMA: What's the secret of your novels?
JC: I have no idea! I only know that I put in my life, that I give my full dedication to writing. And the German critics say: "We have never seen this way of writing before".
VMA: You are read widely there, I understand.
JC: Yes, they have a lot of reading clubs, they read in school, they invite writers. I believe that if everybody read one book every year the world would be different! 
 

"I confess"

Jaume Cabré is currently the Catalan author par excellence for reasons of prizes, number of readers, and international impact. 

He receives me in the office where he writes, in a placid and sunny semi-detached house in front of a wooded mountain to talk about his latest book and a lot of other things. Cabré made his dream reality: to make a living of his fantasies, of what he writes. Being the author of TV and cinema scripts and novels such as Les veus del Pamano, Senyoria, L'ombra de l'eunuc and Fra Junoy o l'agonia dels sons, he now finds himself in literature's first line with Jo confesso (Proa) / Yo confieso (Destino), a great adventure that includes everything that good stories need to have and with European culture as background.

In English Amazon.com offers only one work of Jaume Cabré, Winter Journey, a selection of short stories.

An observation related to Crime Novel Week 2012

Last week saw another edition of "BCNegra" (Black Barcelona, i.e. Barcelona Crime Novel Week). One of the authors who came there was Roberto Saviano, famous and persecuted by the Mafia for Gomorrah, who talked about his latest book "Come, escape with me"  (that's the title in its Italian, Spanish and Catalan editions). On Wednesday, Feb. 8, he was cited in the local press as saying that "Spain is a paradise for all the European Mafia clans who have taken up there a second or their principal residence".
As if to prove his point, on Thursday, Feb. 9, Spanish police forces captured three Serbian mafiosi in Valencia: Luka Bojovic and Vladimir Milisavljevic, the Crazy One, members of the Zemum clan, considered the instigator and the material author, respectively, of the murder of Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic in 2003, plus Sinisa Petric, aka Baku, all of them members of the paramilitary group Arkan's Tigers during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. The news article reporting on this also said that Bojovic's wife and kids had resided in different locations of Alicante province and the Canary Islands.
El País offers this article in English to explain how the assassins were captured.

Music festivals in Barcelona 2012

I still think that Barcelona is an ideal venue for live music festivals: nice weather, an international airport and great variety of accomodation. If you have the time and money, come to Primavera Sound [Spring Sound] from May 30 to June 3, you will already be able to take a bath in the Mediterranean... If you are into electronic music, come to Sonar 2012 about ten days later...

The Ramon Llull literary prize 2012

The original news story in Catalan was written by Lluís Llort and published in El Punt Avui here. The following is an unauthorized translation: 

"An accelerated Llull"

Last evening, at the Palau de la Generalitat [seat of the regional Catalan government] and chaired by President Mas, took place the ceremony of the 32nd Ramon Llull literary prize, the highest doted (90,000 euros) one for a Catalan book, organized by the Catalan government and the Planeta publishing house, which will publish the winning novel. This year's winner is Imma Monsó (Lleida, 1958) with the novel "The Fast Woman", which she presented in the competition as "We will be brief" and under the pseudonym of Alice Nes; it was chosen from 58 original manuscripts that participated this year.

Vincent Villatoro, president of the Institut Ramon Llull [cultural institution modeled after the British Council or the Cervantes Institute], before presenting the winner had some words of remembrance for the recently deceased Carlos Pujol, writer, critic and jury member for 31 years. The members of this year's jury were Sam Abrams, Laura Borras, Leonello Brandolino, Teresa Colom, Pere Gimferrer, Gemma Lienas and Emili Rosales.

The first thing Imma Monsó did was to formally thank for the award and stress that it made her feel "very happy", though her facial expression never corroborated this. She then read a few lines of the novel and explained it with a well-structured speech, delivered maybe a little too fast due to her nervousness or to the influence of her novel's main character: "The fast woman is rooted in the wind, so it is like saying she's uprooted."

The main character is a psychiatrist, childless and with a sick father. "She does not have a free minute, which is her main goal in life. She does everything at a rapid pace, perhaps determined by neurological factors, and in fact the her life's motto is "the quicker the better", applied to the buying of bread, cutting of her hair or opening a drawer, "said Monsó.

As in nearly all of her works, including "Like a holiday", "A veritable character" and "A man of his word", the family has a lot of weight: "The novel is a privileged area to talk about families. It is a work about family conflicts, especially between the protagonist, her father and her brother." The protagonist is a woman who runs a lot, always fast, "as any person today living in an urban environment."

It is a vindication of the slow, perhaps in the way of Kundera, "a metaphor of the times we live in, dominated by the immediacy, which is the source of the hardships we suffer, from the ethical to the economical; is the supremacy of time over space, you cannot fit into a mold that is constantly changing, ..." she said, adding: "We are forced to live under the speed's dictatorship, everything must be in real time, as they call it. "The work includes other issues, too: "There is a generally little-treated relationship, that between father and daughter; there is also a house in a provincial town in which have lived three generations; I talked about doctors' manias, because I like that topic, and about the thirst for art. I also wanted to make a tribute to friendship and dedicate a part to personal crises, such as the depression suffered by the protagonist, in active form, of course."
The work is structured in chapters that alternate between first person and present tense, and third person  and the past, between speed and reflection. "I made a great effort not to cut too much, as I normally do; thus, this is my thickest book. I am satisfied, but not entirely; who ends a novel and remains totally satisfied is either stupid or naive." She had also some autocriticism: "Maybe they will say that my characters are peculiar... It is true that often I put them on the edge of neurosis. This time I have been more meticulous with the creation of the characters." The distressing rhythm of some parts of the work and the protagonist has a harmful element: "From the very beginning or towards the end, but I always end up being the character, and with this novel I ended up very badly ...".
Monsó confessed why she took part in the competition: "Because I have been translated into several languages, but never into French, and the fact that the prize includes this translation makes me excited." And she ended by vindicating the fact of reading, doing it "fully and trying to generate a literature that seeks to create readers, and not to count them."

 
As far as this blogger could find out, none of Monsó's novels have been translated into English. Here you can read a short biography in English and see her bibliography on the pages of the Catalan Writers' Association. There is also an informative Wikipedia entry here.

Today in History: 300th anniversary Frederik II "the Great"

The Wikipedia has an exhaustive article here. If you read German you will find a host of news articles on hin on zeit.de, spiegel.de, etc. these days.

Catalan authors: Quim Monzó

Quim Monzó (Barcelona, 1952) is probably the most international of Catalan authors and one of the most widely read contemporaneans. His works have been translated to a host of other languages. He has a very informative homepage, here, where you also find the references to the English versions of some of his books, and what is more, some links to articles, etc. of his published in English. Amazon.com lists three books of his available in English.
Several times a week he writes columns in the op-ed section of La Vanguardia, the most prestigious of Catalan dailies (though it started out as a Spanish newspaper more than 125 years ago, and only in 2011 adopted a Catalan version). He comments on daily life, political events, or articles he read in foreign-language journals not in reach of most of his readers. The Wikipedia article dedicated to Monzó has all the relevant biographical information and links to some shorter prose of his, here.