Tasting Catalan wines for the "Wine Advocate"

Jay Miller, co-worker of the "wine pope" Robert Parker, made theCatalan TV news this week with a visit to Falset, capital of the Priorat county. He came to taste about 70 wines of the local denomination of origin "Montsant" for the next "Parker's list" (Wine Advocate), to be published in April. What struck spectators here as strange was that he could see which wines he was tasting, i.e. it was not a blind tasting.

The news story in Catalan is on the D.O.'s official blog archive, here.

Black Barcelona 2011 - Crime Novel Week

If Catalans or Spaniards talk about "black" novels or literature ("novel·la / literatura negra") they do not have dark-skinned authors in mind, nor do they think about gothic or more sinistre stuff - it's only crime novels they have in mind.
And to celebrate this genre, a specialized bookstore in the picturesque, seafront Barceloneta quarter (literally "small Barcelona") called "Negra y criminal" (you get the idea) a few years ago started a crime literature festival that awards the Pepe Carvalho Prize to an outstanding crime novelist.
This year it will be held from January 31 to February 5, and there will be all kinds of book presentations and roundtable discussions on various aspects of crime literature from around the world.
One of the highlights will surely be a talk with Swedish author Mari Jungstedt on Thursday, Feb. 3, at 4 pm at La Capella (Carrer de l’Hospital, 56) in Barcelona.

The organizers of BCNegra 2011 have these proposals:

More than 50 crime authors and specialists from, among other places, Barcelona, Sweden, Germany, the Basque Country, Florence, Trieste, Marseille.

Six days and more than 30 events, such as talks, roundtables, readings, movies, exhibitions, workshops, and gastronomy - all with a reference to the crime novel.

26 publishers participating: Alba, Algaida, Almuzara, Alreves, Ariel, Columna, Ediciones B, Debate, Debolsillo, Destino, Duomo, Edebé, Empúries, Erein Argilatxea, Grijalbo, Maeva, La Magrana, Martínez Roca, Planeta, Mondadori, Pàmies, RBA, Roca Editorial, Seix Barral, Siruela i Viceversa.

Andreu Martín, this year's winner of the Pepe Carvalho Prize will be honored on Feb. 3 at the celebration hall "Saló de Cent" of Barcelona's townhall.

Gastronomy in "black": crime novel dishes and cocktails. For the first time, the gastronomic world will fully enter BCNegra. 6 restaurants and 9 cocktail bars invite to taste their creations inspired by crime novel authors or personalities.

A talk with judge Baltasar Garzón, former public prosecutor José Maria Mena and journalist José Martí about organized crime and the political and economic powers.

We will discover the "Kriminalroman", the crime novel that comes from Germany, with the help of two famous authors from that country: Zoran Drvenkar and Volker Kutscher [I have never even heard their names]; and we will get to know why there is so much lethal crime in Sweden, with Mari Jungstedt and José Luis Correa.

Sinister historic Barcelona will also have its space at BCNegar with a roundtable that brings the audience nearer to the assassinations and intrigues of late 19th century and early 20th century Barcelona.

The author Manuel Vázquez Montalbán will be honored in a double way: there will be a series of crime movies dedicated to Pepe Carvalho at the Filmoteca de Catalunya, and we will study the journalistic work of the writer.

Red Dani with "Confessions of a gangster from Barcelona" through his experiences will show us the criminal Barcelona of the Sixties and Seventies.

...

You find the full program at "Negra y Criminal"'s blog, i.e. here.

Catalan literature on the American market

These days, a small American publishing house, Dalkey Archive Press, has made the news in Catalonia because they are starting a series of Catalan classics translated into English.

This is what their website tells us about the project:

The Catalan Literature Series at Dalkey Archive Press presents modern classics of Catalan fiction in English translation, featuring exceptional authors at the forefront of Catalan letters. The Series aims to bring English-language readers closer to one of Europe's oldest, yet still relatively unknown bodies of literature, with a history stretching from medieval times to the present day, thanks to Catalan authors' persistent belief in the power of literature to express the complexity of individual and cultural identity.

The series is published in cooperation with the Institut Ramon Llull (www.llull.cat), a public consortium responsible for the promotion of Catalan language and culture abroad.

The Dolls' Room

Llorenç Villalonga, Deborah Bonner

A classic of contemporary Catalan literature, and a haunting and satirical portrait of a vanishing age, Llorenç Villalonga's The Dolls' Room concerns the decline of Don Toni and Dona Maria Antonia Bearn: aristocrats, cousins, husband and wife . . .

This is good news as there is in general very little literature by non English speaking authors translated into English - and a lot of good English speaking literature translated into other languages... If you are outside of the US you can surely find these titles on amazon.com or your local equivalent.

Price increases and predictions for 2011

2011 starts for Catalans (and Spaniards) in a usual though very annoying way: prices and fees controlled by the government go up. Standard postal letters will be one or two cents more expensive, not really important in the age of electronic communication. Train and metro rides will cost around 3% more, as will highway tolls. Natural gas for heating and cooking will go up, the electricity bill by a hefty 10%, the use of public bicycles in Barcelona by even 15%. These increases exceed inflation by far, and ordinary "salarymen" (those lucky enough to have a job in a country with a 20% jobless rate) and pensioners will see their purchasing power decrease.
Families will no longer receive 2,500 euros for the birth of a child; anyway an ineffective way to stimulate population growth and not really "just" as it was the same sum for the rich and the poor alike. And people won't get the same tax reductions for the purchase of a home as before.
Bitter medicines to keep Spain away from the risk of default as the government does not make progress in reducing corruption, tax evasion and social security fraud, and cutting spending where it should, not in research and education as it did last year.

But it has finally seen the light on smoking. From January 2 smoking will be prohibited in all closed public spaces in Spain, i.e. bars and restaurants, discotheques, hospitals and even open-air playgrounds. And it has announced a further increase in tobacco taxes, currently among the lowest in the Euro area.

I saw two predictions in a list by the Financial Times that I thought worth reproducing here:

Will social unrest worsen in Europe?

In all probability, yes. Across the European Union, governments are cutting spending and unemployment is rising. This month, violent protests erupted across Europe. The immediate cause varied, but economic austerity was the common backdrop. That climate of austerity is likely to worsen and spread in 2011, as Greece and Ireland press on with International Monetary Fund-backed cutback programmes – and Portugal, Spain and perhaps Italy and Belgium struggle to ward off sovereign debt crises. Cuts will also be the order of the day in Britain. Meanwhile, the unpopularity of President Nicolas Sarkozy in France and his allegedly “bling” style – plus the approach of a presidential election in 2012 – makes unrest probable. Europeans have demonstrated in the past (1848 and 1968 spring to mind), that an atmosphere of social disorder, protest and unrest can easily spread across the continent’s national boundaries. Gideon Rachman

Will there be a global food crisis?

Yes. The global bill for food imports will surpass the $1,026bn record of 2008 and prices of several agricultural commodities will also top their previous record. The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s benchmark food index will also set a new high. Among key crops, wheat, corn, barley and oilseeds such as soyabean will see large increases; only rice will have limited gains.

Behind the spike is a string of supply problems related to bad weather. Demand is also strong, partly boosted by biofuel consumption. But there may be fewer food riots than in 2007-08: African crops have been abundant, shielding poor countries from the brunt of surging prices. Javier Blas

As to the Spanish stock market: the IBEX fell by 17% in 2010; if you compare this to a 9% gain in the FTSE 100 during the same period, there is a lot of margin for a rise in 2011.

Mistakes of 2010 - DIE ZEIT

I wanted to write about aging: the biggest problem that I see in it is the sad fact that more and more of the people you liked, you learned from, you admired are leaving this world, some earlier some later. But this would be a sad note to say goodbye to a year not at all bad for me personally.
Thus, on a funnier tone, I will publish an unauthorized translation of a few of the mistakes made in 2010 cited in this week's magazine (dated Dec. 30, 2010) of German weekly DIE ZEIT, my favorite newspaper.

Things that went wrong this year:

Harald Ehlert, chairman of a Berlin charity dedicated to the aid of the homeless, is caught in a "radar trap" speeding in his official car, a Maserati with a price tag of 114,000 euros.

While Yonni Barrios is trapped in the mine in San José, Chile, a few hundred metres higher his wife gets to know his lover.

The former French justice minister Rachida Dati says in late September that currently there is "hardly any fellation" (she meant inflation), then Brice Hortefeux, the interior minister, talks about "genital finger prints" (instead of genetic).

Stephanie zu Guttenberg flies to Afghanistan. (She is the glamorous wife of the current German minister of defense, who many believe will be German chancellor after Merkel.)

The oil platform "Deep Water Horizon" explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the greatest environmental disasters ever.

The referee does not see a regular goal by the English team during the World Cup in a match against Germany.

Silvio Berlusconi justifies extramarital affairs and sex parties: "Better than being gay."

Miss Philippines is asked during the Miss World contest for the biggest mistake of her life and says that she did not commit any.

Byron Scott, basketball coach wears for a photo shooting a tie with a swastika motif.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck makes the movie "The Tourist".
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck talks in interviews about his new movie "The Tourist".

The A/C in Germany's high-speed trains ICE do not work due to the high summer temperatures - and the windows cannot be opened.

Three German newspapers print a fake interview of Michael Douglas.

The grey sky over Germany in a far too cold August.

Millions of Toyota cars in the US have to be called back to the dealers as there is a problem with the gas pedal.

Pop singer Rihanna has herself made a tatoo with faulty grammar ("rebelle fleur" instead of the correct "fleur rebelle").

After it has become public that he paid a 17 year old occasional prostitute for sex, Franck Ribéry declares that he only gave her "pocket money".

iPhone 4 users complain about difficulties - especially left-handed ones have a bad call reception.

Take care and have a good 2011!

Mourning Richard C. Holbrooke (1941-2010)

I experienced him two times in person. The first time was in 1995 in Washington, D.C. where I did a student internship with NBC's "Meet the Press" and he was a guest on the Sunday morning show - it must have been around the time of the Dayton Peace Accords. I remember an agreeable diplomat. The second time was in May 2000 in Bologna, Italy, where he was the keynote speaker on Alumni Weekend of Johns Hopkins U's Bologna Center. At that time I still dreamed of becoming a diplomat or an EU official myself.
If you need some background information on the person, view today's article of the New York Times here.

"Buy nothing day" and shopping guides

Today, the day after Thanksgiving in the US and traditionally the most important day for retailers there due to a lot of Christmas shopping by people on a long weekend, is also "buy nothing day" for those that deplore the excesses of materialism. You find more information here.

In contrast to that, on Spanish TV one starts to see a lot of perfume comercials these days and on the radio supermarkets encourage one to buy the traditional seafood early at a discount price to keep it in one's fridge until the holidays. The traditional holiday TV spot by champagne-maker Freixenet will star the Colombian pop star Shakira, supposedly clad in very little golden stuff. On newspaper websites appear shopping guides (the NY Times' here, the Financial Times' here) that tempt one to forget that the Spanish economy is in crisis and that a lot of people who already lost their jobs will also lose their homes as they cannot pay their mortgages any longer. Banks are now the biggest property holders in the country.