Sept. 18, 2012: death of Santiago Carrillo

There remain fewer and fewer of the central figures of Spain's transition from dictatorship to democracy in the mid-1970s. Yesterday Carrillo died at age 97, El País has an English obituary here. The English Wikipedia entry can be found here. Catalans liked him because he supported their efforts for independence.

Catalan industry: the Chinese to the rescue

A few days ago, the news announced that around 400 Catalan jobs will be saved due to an investment by a Chinese company in a bankrupt Catalan company put on sale by the liquidator. Jiaxipera, the compressor arm of Huanyi, a group controlled by the state-owned Sichuan Changhong company, will buy the Catalan compressor maker Cubigel at a price of 600.000 EUR and will be responsible for a credit of 2 M EUR received by the regional government's credit unit to take up production again. Jiaxipera has agreed to maintain 386 of the 551 jobs at Cubigel, with a 15% reduction in salaries though. The Chinese company will inject 3.5 M EUR immediately to revive Cubigel's cash-flow, and they plan to install a technical institute for compressors at the factory, that will do part of the group's I&D activities, and to convert their Catalan subsidiary into their logistics and commercial base for the European market.

[The information in this post comes from an original article published in La Vanguardia newspaper.]

El País asks "When will they move out?"

Massive youth unemployment, around 50% for those below 35, is one of the biggest problems of the Spanish economic crisis. A big part of these unemployed do not have any (tertiary) education, but there are also a lot of university grads struggling to find a job that would pay an independent living. Therefore, young (and not so young) people continue to live with their parents, do not get married, do not have children and thus in the long run will exacerbate the problems of an ageing society. El País has this article on the "lost generation".

Edicions 62: publisher celebrates 50th anniversary

The Catalan publishing house "Edicions 62" celebrates its 50th anniversary . During these years, the iconic publisher has put out 5,000 titles and actually it controls a catalog of over 2,000 authors, 47 of whom are Nobel laureates.
El manoscrito del segon origen ["The manuscript of the second origin"] by Manuel de Pedrolo, is the publisher's bestselling book, with more than one million copies. Its catalog also includes key works such as Nosaltres, els valencians ["We, the Valencians"] by Joan Fuster, the first book published by Edicions 62 on May 12, 1962. Created by Max Cahner and Ramon Bastardes, it had to overcome the objective of the government of the time that wanted to put away with the Catalan language and culture that they considered provincial.
Josep Maria Castellet, another member of the founding generation, had these remarks on the radio program "Senses" on Catalunya Informació: "They wanted to keep it as a provincial culture, where the ideal would be that writers write in Catalan for a Catalan audience speaking about nothing else but Catalonia, the sardana dance and folklore. I think that's why we had difficulties in publishing foreign books that we had started to translate immediately."
This Thursday, Edicions 62 commemorates its anniversary with a ceremony at CaixaForum, where the  president of the Generalitat [regional government] Artur Mas as well as writers and editors will attend. There has also been published a special catalog with a cover illustrated by the artist Jaume Plensa, and in October there will start an exhibition.

(The original piece appeared on 324.cat in Catalan here.)

Note: Like most of the Catalan and Spanish publishers, Edicions 62 is not totally independent any longer but forms part of the Planeta publishing empire; this blogger does not know the exact participation but estimates that Planeta controls around 50% of Edicions 62. Edicions 62 publishes 50%+ of all titles published in Catalan.

Catalonia tourism promotion via social media

The Catalan news site 324.cat reports here the following:

Nine bloggers, specialized in tourism, are visiting Catalonia these days, invited by the regional government


     Nine of the most influential bloggers in the realm of tourism and recreation are in Catalonia these days to explain their experiences as tourists via their blogs, facebook entries and tweets. They are from the United States, Canada, and the UK, and during this week will visit different sights of Catalonia. The Catalunya Tourism Board, organizer of the trip, hopes to entice their numerous followers - on Twitter alone they sum more than 260.000 - to come here as well; it's already the second "blogotrip" they organize.
     One can follow the bloggers' impressions with the hash tag #catalunyaexperience. They are all collected on a page called bloctrip, and on facebook. Counting all of the visits to the different channels, they sum up around 2 million.
     The trip started last Saturday with a tour of modernist (Art Nouveau) Barcelona. On Sunday, the group visited the F1 race at the Montmelo circuit. They then went on to Lleida and the Pirineus mountains for adventure sports and star gazing. Other places on their route are a "clam farm" in Sant Carles de la Ràpita, living in first person the "human towers" of Vilafranca del Penedes, and seeing the Tarraco Viva festival next Sunday.
     A similar experience takes place at the counties of Girona. Seven bloggers have visited the city of Girona, dived off the coast of Estartit, and did skydiving at Empuriabrava. On can follow their experiences on Twitter or blogtrip.

My first impression of the bloctrip page is that the people sharing their experiences there know what they are doing, and especially the photos really make you want to visit these places, too ...

36 Hours in Barcelona (The NY Times)

The article was published here on May 3. Enjoy!

National Gallery: Joan Miró, May 6 - Aug 12, 2012

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., will host a major exhibition of Joan Miró.
The official information is here, the Washington Post has this. Already on display are the paintings by Miró of the Kreeger Museum, more information on their website here. Again by the WP here.
The exhibition at the National Gallery will be accompanied by some typical dishes at the museum's Garden Café restaurant, under the supervision of Chef José Andrés, the Huffington Post reports here.
If you want to update your knowledge of Joan Miró, the Wikipedia offers an extensive article here.