Joaquim Sorolla 148 today

Google, at least in its Catalan version, reminds us of the 148th birthday of Joaquim Sorolla today, a realist painter from Valencia with a sharpe eye for everyday life scenes of his days' Spain. One click leads us to images like the one here, and this article from the Wikipedia.

Potential tourists beware...

Until a few days ago it looked as if this spring and summer would be great tourism seasons for Spain as a lot of northern Europeans changed their plans of going to Egypt or Tunisia for Easter or summer holidays and decided to book vacations in the Canary Islands or the Mediterranean coast of Spain. Now it could become a nightmare for those tourists if public sector unions realize their threat of going on strike during holidays. These unions want to prevent the central government from privatizing AENA, the body that controls Spanish airports, which would mean an end to public sector privileges for its 12,500 employees and more competition between airports; it would also help the government in its efforts to balance the budget.
In early December of 2010, air traffic controllers went on a strike that left hundreds of thousands stranded on a holiday weekend and that led the government to declare a state of alarm in order to force them back to work and prevent them from striking during the Christmas holidays. Now similar chaos is to be feared if ground personnel at Spanish airports during the holiday season decides not to carry baggage, not to clean restrooms, or not to empty the trash cans. This would be a real pain in the neck for the Spanish economy as tourism is one of the few areas that works reasonably well - especially due to the benign climate, not necessarily to its quality - and that gives - often temporary - employment to a lot of people.

Measures to alleviate fuel price rises

The Spanish government announced today that the speed limit on Spanish highways will be lowered temporarily to reduce the general fuel consumption. The fare price for regional and middle distance trains will be lowered by 5% - also temporarily, and the gaz providers will have to mix more biofuels into the gasoline they sell. El País has the full story in English here.
Spain is a country poor in fossil fuels, except for dirty coal the production thereof is only viable with subsidies and coercion of power companies to use national coal for electricity production. On the other hand, it is a country blessed with wind and sunshine but there are few people rich enough for the initial investments, e.g. to put up fotovoltaic panels on their roofs, and the government recently cut the clean energy subsidies to consolidate the budget - but they kept those for coal. But green issues are not very high on the agenda of a country with a 20% unemployment rate, a rather poor education system, and little overall spending in R&D.

Contemporary Music: Sonar 2011

If you like electronic music and Barcelona in the early summer, Sònar is the festival for you. This year it will be held from June 16 to 18, and you can find more information here.

Contemporary Catalan pop

Recent years have seen a remarkable revival of Catalan pop music. The most successful groups of this moment are Love of Lesbian, Manel, Els Amics de les Arts, and Antonia Font from Mallorca. To get an idea watch this video or look for others on youtube.

Remembering 23 F

Yesterday - and the days before - the media were full of remembrances of the 30th anniversary of a failed coup attempt of some militaries unhappy with the young Spanish democracy that took place on February 23, 1981; therefore its colloquial name "23 F". The daily El País even offers articles in English, here. Interestingly, a lot of the leading historians on contemporary Spanish history are British, such as e.g. Paul Preston of the LSE and Hugh Thomas.
The Wikipedia in its English verision is not really helpful on this topic but introduces the protagonists, here.

Jordi Savall won a Grammy

As I ramble at times to promote Catalan culture beyond the frontiers of the small "principate" where I live, I have to mention the Catalan master of "early music" Jordi Savall who recently won a Grammy award. Though according to the Washington Post's critic Anne Midgette, here, the Grammys should be ignored, she helpfully links directly to amazon's offer of Savall's Dinastia Borja.
The Wikipedia has this to say about Savall.