Village life (V): Snowed in

Yesterday the weatherforecast announced snow from an altitude of 200m+ for today, and today it snowed; we are at around 230m above sea-level. Already in the morning, the village hall secretary told us via the loudspeakers for messages for the villagers that there would be no transport for the schoolkids who go to school in the county capital 7kms away. It snowed all day and the village got more or less cut off from the outside world. The trains are still running, though the first one at 7 a.m. did not come. Around midday the snowing got heavier and from late afternoon onwards there have been some short power outages; a little annoying but everyone's glad if the power comes back after a few seconds or a minute. In a winter storm on January 24, we were without electricity for 12 hours - and that was quite uncomfortable as our gas heating depends on electricity to run. Fortunately, my in-laws have an emergency generator so that we could spend some time with light and heat there.
It would be troublesome if the snow lasted for a longer time as we would run out of food soon but for a day or two it is still enjoyable for the kids.

P.S., one day later: I forgot to mention that yesterday the physician could not make his usual visit to the village, neither the grocery seller, and today there was no mail service.

Village life (IV)

Living in the countryside does not mean being eco-friendly in one's behavior. If you stroll around the fields you find a lot of places that the local wine growers use as makeshift dumps for construction waste. Some also leave empty herbicide and pesticide plastic containers there.
As there is virtually no public transport for short distances - except for the train (for middle distances)- everybody who works outside the village needs a car. That means two to three cars for a lot of families. The problem is that the village was built in pre-automotive days, the streets are narrow, and there is only limited parking space. On weekends, when most people are at home and the owners of second homes come to the village, traffic gets quite dense and parking becomes nearly impossible. Another problem is that most villagers either cannot or do not want to spend a lot of money on a car, which means that the local fleet is quite old; and there are some cars that might hail from pre-catalysator days with the resulting exhaust fumes...
There are other factors that influence negatively on air-quality. Tractors are diesel-engine powered and the engineers of Fiat Agri and the likes do not seem to pay too much attention on reducing fume and noise emissions. Another point is that a lot of houses rely on open fire places and wood-fuelled stoves for heating. The problem here is that some seem to burn whatever they find (judging from the smells) and that few houses have adequate filters for the fumes.
The good thing is that one can usually walk out into the fields and enjoy the fresh country air there - if one does not do it on a foggy day with a farmer burning his waste, as the fumes stick around underneath the fog...

Village life (III)

One aspect of life in a small village that one discovers only after a certain time is that there is a high incidence of mental illness, at least in our village. One finds a lot of "strange, rare" people. Normally, one doesn't see them very often, they don't participate in village feasts, etc. And their condition is normally of a mild to moderate kind. They are often loners. I feel uncomfortable in the presence of some of them. All have fixed habits. One woman walks a dog regularly. One middle-aged guy talks to himself and drives his car to a neighboring village every day at exactly the same time. One is a runner. One left for a convent to become a nun. Some appear to be stored in the countryside, away from their family in the city. The relatively high number of cases is probably due to a kind of "in-breeding" over the centuries. Our area has always been sparsely populated and before cars became a common good (as recently as maybe 30 years ago), communication and contact with the outside world was difficult. So the villagers married their kids to their neighbors' kids, and so on, and everybody ended up being related to most of the others - and the gene pool became relatively small. Today marriages between villagers are rare. Those unfortunate enough to be mentally ill can get treatment at a hospital around 25km away from here, i.e. if they have relatives who acknowledge their condition, support them actively and drive them there...
A pertinent entry for a grey, stormy and cold fall day.

St. Martin´s little summer

On or shortly after St. Martin´s (november 11), summer is coming back to Catalunya for a few days or a week; they call it "l'estiuet de Sant Martí" (Saint Martin´s little summer). The temperatures are not as high as in summer but the days are sunny and nice and the temperatures are above normal for late fall. It's been the case again this year; yesterday afternoon, the temperature rose to 28ºC. For the next days the forecast is less sunny and with temperatures between 20 and 25ºC. Unfortunately, with the nice weather, the flies have been back, too... but who wants to talk about the weather?

Day of the Imprisoned Writer

To mark and remembered the international Day of the Imprisoned Writer, I paste a piece that I found on the International Freedom of Expression eXchange: The global network for free expression (ifex.org) page.

To mark the Day of the Imprisoned Writer (DoIW) on 15 November, the Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN (WiPC) is highlighting the cases of imprisoned writers and honouring those who have been slain for defending free speech. WiPC is calling on all activists and writers to show solidarity on behalf of persecuted writers by sending appeals to authorities. This year WiPC is shining a spotlight on five people from around the world.

WiPC is urgently asking for help for two dissidents facing long prison sentences.

Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo, former president and current board member of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre, has been detained since 8 December 2008, for advocating political reform and the protection of human rights. He was charged in June 2009 with "incitement to subversion of state power." If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison. He has had limited access to his lawyer and family. He has a long history of human rights activism and has been harassed, arrested, imprisoned and censored on numerous occasions. Liu Xiaobo first received support from International PEN in 1989 after he was arrested for protesting in Tiananmen Square.

The other imprisoned dissident that WiPC is focusing on is singer/songwriter Lapiro de Mbanga who has been detained since April 2008 and was fined US$640,000 for writing a song critical of Cameroonian President Paul Biya. He is serving a three-year sentence for alleged complicity in anti-government riots. In October, it was reported that he was suffering from typhoid fever.

WiPC also continues to advocate for Maziar Bahari, a journalist, playwright and filmmaker with dual Iranian and Canadian citizenship who was detained during this year's media crackdown after the disputed Iranian presidential elections in June. After four months in Tehran's Evin prison he was released on bail on 17 October. Although he is now in the U.K., Bahari still faces charges.

The 15 November campaign is also an effort to remember killed journalists and bring attention to the dangers their colleagues continue to face. Russian journalist Natalya Estemirova was abducted from her Grozny apartment in Chechnya and murdered in July this year. She was found shot to death in nearby Ingushetia. She uncovered massive, ongoing human rights violations and was the only reliable source of information on Chechnya for other journalists and human rights organisations. In Mexico, Miguel Ángel Gutiérrez Ávila, an anthropologist, author and indigenous rights activist, was beaten to death in Guerrero state in July 2008.

Please send appeals for these highlighted cases on or around 15 November to the correct authorities as well as to the embassy concerned in your own country. Other suggested actions include organising a petition that can be sent to the embassy of the country on 15 November with a letter requesting an audience with the ambassador or organising a signature campaign to get prominent writers, media personalities and others to sign an appeal. Letters to newspapers, peaceful marches, or an event where works by imprisoned writers will be read, to which the press is invited, are also possible actions. Please report back to WiPC if you get a positive response.

For more information on each of these cases and on where to send specific appeals, please contact Sara Whyatt or Tamsin Mitchell at tel: + 44 (0) 20 7405 0338, or email: sara.whyatt (@) internationalpen.org.uk or tamsin.mitchell (@) internationalpen.org.uk

Diari del Priorat - The Priorat Daily

The title is misleading as it is meant to become a weekly paper. Right now it is a biweekly that wants to inform the small and scattered population of Priorat county (9700 inhabitants) of what is going on in the 23 villages that belong to it. The first pages are normally dedicated to a longer report, then come op-ed pages, economic news, stories from the county capital Falset (2700 inhabitants) and the rest of the territory, some culture, sports and picture pages with photos of recent events. There is a poster at the center pages, normally of a local sports team. The paper depends very much on the information of its reader as there is a very small editorial staff that cannot possibly know what is going on in all of the already mentioned villages.

Political corruption

I don´t want to comment or to judge here, just to give testimony of a situation that I find noteworthy and troubling.
For quite a while now, the news on Catalan and Spanish television have been dominated by corruption scandals in various parts of the country. The party that comes off worst is the ultra-conservative Popular Party (PP). It all began with a spying scandal within the ranks of the PP in Madrid. Then came "el caso Gürtel" (Gürtel=German "belt"=Spanish "correa") around the corrupt relationships between a public relations firm (Orange Market) headed by a man named Correa and the Popular Party in Madrid and Valencia. Correa was a guest at the wedding of former Prime Minister Aznar's daughter to Alejandro Agag, another one involved in the scandal, at the El Escorial royal palace. In Valencia, the state governor was accused of taking suits in return for giving PR events to Orange Market, there headed by a name nick-named "Bigotes" for his spectacular moustache, but the case was ended inconclusively. In Mallorca, the former PP government is accused of financing the party by over-charging for a bicycle arena (PalmArena). And the latest case coming to light was around the Socialist mayor of Santa Coloma de Gramanet, a Barcelona suburb, who worked with a building firm and some intermediaries in money laundering and reclassification of land. This is the most notorious case of political corruption in Spain and it normally works like this: the municipality sells land not specified for building that it owns to a building firm on the cheap; a short time later the council decides to reclassify it, which increases its worth manifold, and the builder builds houses, shopping centers or whatever there. The builder makes a handsome profit and the municipality gets a nice tax revenue for the building, but nothing for the increased value of the land that originally was not for building. And the mayor and the others implied get a nice unofficial and tax-free bonus by the builder... These mentioned were only the most spectacular cases but it is like a national scourge. Part of the fault lies with the poor financing for communities who depend very much on building taxes. By selling the land in their property, they find a short-term remedy for their financial problems but sell the only "family silver" they have; and in the past they helped to create the real-estate bubble that burst about two years ago.