Business as Usual While the City Sleeps

Eviction in the dead of night. This has been the de facto strategy of authorities across the west when it comes time to strip an occupy commune apart. They move in under the cover of darkness, when most city dwellers are settled in for the night. Fast asleep and recovering from the previous day's onslaught, the general public are well hidden from what might go on when riot helmets come face to face with Guy Fawkes' masks. 

In the small, quiet hours of the morning this past Tuesday, London police and bailiffs marched on the encampment outside of St. Paul's Cathedral, and served notice on Occupy London. 



The occupiers were given 5 minutes to pack up and leave. Any failure to comply would be a violation of court orders. Neon vested bailiffs, hard hats on head, did most of the dismantling, with the riot cops hovering ominously in the background, waiting for the rabble to get violent. The rabble remained peaceful though, and if those dressed ready for trouble were at all disappointed, they didn't show it. When it was all over, 20 arrests were made, and only a few skirmishes broke out. Most of the remaining occupiers began to pack up the tents they've called home these past 4 months. Resigned to the finality at hand, they complied. 

Some, however, chose to build a fortress from what remained of their broke down lodgings. 

While many packed up to go home, or go find a new home, a group of protesters quickly gathered up wooden pallets, ladders, mattresses, and what other random debris they could find to build up a barricade in an effort to waylay their eviction. Young men and women stood atop their ramshackle blockade in defiance while spotlights flooded the square around them and rubbish lorries sat idle, waiting to be fed. 

On the ground protesters and bailiffs engaged in a tug of war for control of the rubble, while at the top of the heap, a single bailiff climbed up on the unstable structure to force the occupiers down in to the waiting arms of their comrades in neon yellow and orange. When one occupier fell, another would climb up to take their place, and one clever long haired fellow managed to take the bailiff down with him as he dropped from the barricade wall. 

Their efforts to remain were admirable, but the outcome was equally inevitable. 

The last gasp occurred on the cathedral steps. A small group had gathered and, believing the steps to be safe ground, huddled at the cathedral's gateway; some kneeling down to pray. One by one they were swept off the steps by riot police. The resisters, bent in prayer or otherwise, were moved either by fear, or force. 

This final action, which saw armoured police force citizens off the steps of the church, could only have occurred with St. Paul's approval. As documented in The Guardian, at around 2am protesters reported seeing police officers on the Cathedral balcony, giving support to the idea that the police had the full cooperation of the church to remove people from the steps. Shortly after, City of London police confirmed they had the blessing of the church, leaving many occupiers stung, and stunned, by the betrayal. 

By dawn, there was little left to remind the city that there had been a camp outside of the venerable cathedral at all. The mess had been washed away before the morning's first mug of tea was brewed. 

But while the city and the church worked to sweep Occupy into the trash bins and out of sight, the banker's at Barclays were providing yet another reminder of why these voices, calling out the excesses and damaging schemes of profit chasers, remain so necessary.  

It was revealed on Tuesday morning that Barclays intended to implement two tax avoidance schemes that the bank was required by law to present to HM Revenue & Customs. The first scheme revolved around buying back their own debt, which had fallen in value during the financial crisis. The buy back of these debts at lower value would result in a rise in profits for the bank. 

The second scheme is more convoluted, revolving around authorised investment funds. The bank's goal was to convert non-taxable income into an amount granting a repayable tax credit, thus guaranteeing a refund while no actual tax would be paid. Combined, the two schemes provided a loophole that would have helped Barclays avoid 500 million in tax. 

In both cases the schemes ran afoul of a forthcoming new corporate tax dodging law to be introduced in Chancellor George Osborne's new budget next month. When faced with what were called two "very aggressive" tax avoidance schemes, the legislation was quickly backdated to take effect at the beginning of December 2011, an unusual act of retrospective legislating. Initially, the government refused to call out the offending bank by name. Barclays later admitted to being the culprit, and assured shareholders that profits would not be affected by the schemes being shut down. 

These two events are at such perfectly opposing poles, it's difficult to believe there wasn't a bit of fate involved in the timing. While Barclays bank was caught out in the end, one has to question if it would have happened without the presence of those struggling to keep a light shining on the dark corners of unbound capitalism and its scramble for new, ever creative ways to turn civic responsibility inside out in the hopes of bonus profits spilling into their open hands. 

With the ground troops of established rule driving the forces of dissent from the steps of St. Paul's, and the profiteers at Barclays attempting to game the system from the confines of the executive boardroom, on Tuesday night in London, it was back to business as usual while the city slept.

Eric Joyce, Drunken Master of Falkirk

Bombed House of Commons 1941

Colourful Scots' MP inadvertently casts a light on the hypocrisies of Cameron's plan for mandatory alcohol pricing. 

When the story broke in the news earlier this week of a brawl in the British House of Commons Strangers' Bar, I was busy writing about the return of the outraged here in Spain, so I'm a bit late to the carnage. My initial reaction was that "The Strangers' Bar" is far too fantastic a name for a pub where British policy makers and visiting dignitaries mingle over cheap, publicly subsidised alcohol. It sounds like the sort of haunt where you should find the likes of Camus and Sartre drunkenly hashing out the ultimate futility of existence, not Cameron and Osborne, tipsy and sniggering about draconian workfare schemes. 

My second reaction was of course one of kinship with Eric Joyce, Member of Parliament for Falkirk, which coincidentally is my ancestral home. My parents were born there, as were my older sister and brother. I was the first member of my family born outside of Falkirk, and outside of Scotland for that matter. When I was younger, during an extended family trip back, I attended Comely Park Primary School for a few weeks so as not to fall behind in my studies. During this time I discovered the strange, hitherto unknown realm of British crisp flavours, and marvelled at the elaborate Action Man displays that decorated the ceiling at Young's Toys. I also fell in love for the first time with a young girl named Chelsea. Well, I fancied her a bit, at any rate. 

Apart from the obvious connection to Falkirk, I empathised with the bruiser who pummelled a few MP's, not to mention felling one with his own skull, because like many of you, I have at one time or another felt a nearly uncontrollable need to hand a politician or two a sound thrashing. I am also not afraid to admit that a few pints of cider most likely amplified such past urges. It's a good thing select Canadian political figures were never inclined to hang out at my local pub in Toronto's Parkdale borough when the Blackthorn was flowing. Noses might have been bloodied, and I might have found myself in prison. 

On the surface, this tussle in the commons sounds like little more than a sauce'd Scots' leftie having a go at his Tory enemy after a few drams of scotch, with some of his labour chums taking a bit of friendly fire. This sort of thing will happen in a pub from time to time, nearly anywhere in the world. However, a little delving into the Falkirk MP's recent behaviour reveals the reality of a troubled man battling demons. I'm not going to get bogged down in Eric Joyce's personal life. For those interested, fellow blogger's Representing the Mambo touched on a few of the issues quite respectfully here. 

What makes this incident quite pertinent is that, in losing control in the Commons bar while under the influence of too much of the creature, Eric Joyce has turned the mirror around on British Prime Minister David Cameron's campaign to legislate minimum alcohol prices as a way to curb alcohol abuse and ease the health costs associated with Britain's drink culture. The proposal would see the cheapest brands of various alcohols rise in cost to a set minimum price, the rationale being that the more it costs, the less people will consume it haphazardly and to excess. It hasn't taken long for the proposal to tumble into the realm of class warfare. The poorest will have to pay more for the privilege of a few drinks after a hard day's work, or as a means to escape the grim realities of austerity for a few hours each day. 

The more you look at the plan, it becomes difficult not to see it as gauze bandaging wrapped over a festering wound before it's been treated. The unsightly sore is hidden away from view, but that does nothing to kill the infection. If the availability of cheap liquor were the root cause of alcoholsim and the culture of brawling, the streets of Barcelona would be soaked with vomit and blood every night. In reality, you have to try very hard here to get into so much as a glaring match with a fellow punter, much less a fist fight. 

What it certainly will do is make it harder for people without a drink problem to partake in the simple pleasure of an evening's cocktail to dull the edges. Already miserable and desperate people struggling to get by from day to day, denied a bit of liquid comfort. Because they can't be trusted to moderate their consumption, the government will have to do it for them. Meanwhile, the honourable members of parliament will continue to drink on the cheap; draining down pints of bitter and glasses of merlot while passing a nice portion of the bill onto the same taxpayers they want to rescue from the gin soaked gutter by denying them discount booze at the corner shop. 

While I doubt Eric Joyce had any intention of doing so, in giving a fellow MP or two a few clouts about the ear on a booze fueled rampage, he has introduced a fairly inconvenient quandary within the palace of Westminster. If David Cameron truly believes that the cheap cost of alcohol leads to problem drinking, surely it's time to stop subsidising the temptation of Britain's political classes, no? 

The Light That Cracks The Darkness

Twenty five thousand marched in Granada. In Seville they numbered fifty thousand. In Zaragoza seventy thousand took to the streets, while eighty thousand gathered in Valencia.

In Barcelona, four hundred and fifty thousand Indignats flooded the streets of Catalunya’s capital city. In Madrid five hundred thousand Indignados swarmed through the city, before converging once again on their beloved Puerta Del Sol. By day’s end, more than a million people, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, marched in cities across the country, coming together to tear at the darkness that looms over them.  

This is what democracy looks like.

On Sunday the outraged returned to the streets of Spain. They returned to remind us all what the defiant energy of the downtrodden feels like; what the unwavering voice of dissent sounds like. This army of street kids and grandmothers, of workers and students, of anarchists and activists, returned to make it known that they are still here, they have not forgotten, and they are definitely not finished. 

If it was ever a question of whether or not they had given up, it’s been answered. If notions lingered in the minds of the politicians these past few weeks that the people -- turned backwards and forwards by Spain’s short but strange winter, a schizophrenic mix of unseasonable warmth and chill -- might have fallen into lethargy or a tired acceptance of the hard times plotted out for them, those notions were erased on Sunday. 

Newly elected Prime Minister Rajoy and his Partido Popular might have thought they had escaped without wounds on 20^th November, the default victors of a pantomime vote that offered the people a twisted play on democratic choice. In reality they were asked if they preferred to drown or to suffocate. This sham election was rejected by 10 million voters. They chose neither. They rejected the illusion.  These new public officials might have mistaken the unwillingness of so many to legitimise their own suffering as a mandate to replenish the coffers of high finance; to force the people to bow down, as they do, in worship of the markets.

If such a mistake was made, this return of outrage on the streets corrected it. 

What the Indignados did afford their fledgling government, was time. A few months to plot out a new course, to offer up a hopeful alternative, to lay new cards on the table and present ideas not designed to break the backs of the under classes. What their new leaders came to them with was an admission that they have nothing new to offer, and never intended to. In their eyes it’s business as usual; more of the same. "Reforma Laboral" that takes rights and wages away from the people; that affords corporations convenient new tools to rid themselves of older, poorly paid employees in order to replace them with desperate new blood that will work for even less; a fire-to-hire scheme as an answer to mass national unemployment, that amounts to little more than rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. 

On Sunday, the people kindly rejected their proposal. 

The Spanish refuse to sit by and watch as the same measures that have left mothers giving up children they can’t feed in Greece, that have more and more signing on for the dole in the United Kingdom, and that have already put more than half of their own youth out of work,  are forced upon them while executive pay is capped at 600,000 euros annually. They will not be locked into financial slavery and routinely humiliated. They have seen what these failed ideas have done to Greece. They will not have the same done to them. Not without a push back. 

The sun is shining in Spain again, and the air gets warmer from one day to the next. The ruling classes don’t have to change this course of protecting profits at all costs; of recouping their losses by scavenging from those with the least, but if they don't they should expect resistance. Summer is coming, and with nearly a quarter of the population out of work and angry, there’s ample opportunity for mass action. There is no hiding from it. Expect the acampadas to return -- sooner rather than later.

The return of 15M and Los Indignados should be well observed by the Occupy movement also. The manifestations that grew from a few hundred in Puerta Del Sol to hundreds of thousands taking the streets and squares across Spain in 2011 laid out the blueprint and inspiration for the occupations that exploded across the western world. Now, as Occupy struggles with irrelevancy in cities like New York, Toronto and London, it is time to rediscover your focus, to draw inspiration from the outraged here in Spain, as you did before. March side by side with union members rather than be co-opted by their leadership. Resist the plans of special interests, and of the democratic wing on the bird to manipulate you into a mass lobby group; a tea party to call their own. Reject the subtle manipulations of billionaires looking to turn you into a violent mob, and ultimately, the engine powering an agenda that will only lead to deeper control for the elites and their puppets in office. To find your voice and your resolve again, look to Spain. Mira a España .

This is what revolution looks like. 

The Mad Words of Raging Tories

"Either stand with us or with the child pornographers." 

It takes a certain sort of mind to craft such a ridiculous statement, and to do it with any semblance of sincerity. This is the sort of wild, dangerous muck racking one might expect from a Rush Limbaugh, a Glenn Beck, or an Ezra Levant, all members of the hard right media juggernaut in North America, playing on the murky fears of soccer moms and hard working dads. They terrify their audiences daily with emotional diatribes, littered with language that manipulates the ill informed fears of people who, when all is said and done, just want to live a safe life, raise a family, and pursue the American dream. Even in Canada. 

This statement was made by none of the above. No red faced Rush on his radio show, no weeping tea party enthusiast on Fox News, and no tabloid hack from the Toronto Sun, though I'm sure they all approved the use of such an emotionally charged, ludicrous bit of scare bait. No, this statement came straight from the mouth of Canada's Public Safety Minister, Vic Toews. 

The remark came during a heated debate Monday in Canada's House of Commons, as they discussed the Conservative government's proposed Bill C-30, an internet surveillance bill that would force internet service providers to turn over personal user information to authorities without a warrant. Toews fired the remark at Liberal Public safety critic Francis Scarpeggia when he dared to question the intrusive powers being proposed. The bill opens the doors for the powers that be to spy on the citizenry, all in the name of public safety. 

To keep you safe, governmental authorities need to know what you are doing on-line, whenever they deem it necessary. 

The bill is sinister enough based on this alone, but it goes further. Section 17 provides for "exceptional circumstances" under which any police officer can request access to customer information from a telecommunications provider. This section of the bill and its implications came as a shock to Toews himself, who claimed not to know that this provision was couched in the bill. The suggestion that one of the most vocal and aggressive advocates for this legislation doesn't know what it entails leaves much to be desired. If he doesn't know what he's voting for, what hope does the average Canadian have of comprehending what it means? 

I have a sneaking suspicion that lack of comprehension is what they were banking on. 

The bill's short title, Protecting Children from Internet Predators, lends weight to the idea that the Harper regime intended to use the completely understandable fear of child abuse as a cloak to force through far more pervasive measures of public surveillance. The rhetoric then kicks in that only someone with something to hide would possibly argue against an act designed to protect children from sexual predators. If you oppose the act, you either are one of these predators, or as Toews blatantly argued in the House of Commons, you support them. 

This is the stifling of dissent through guilt by association. It's a deceptive trick of language as a weapon that conservatives have become masters at. 

In the past it was communists and pinkos. Then hippies and black panthers. In more recent years, islamic fundamentalists. Now, if you don't support the government's need to spy on the populace at will, you might as well be leaving your child's bedroom door open for paedophiles to come and go freely in the dead of night. 

If you question this bill, and its potential for gross invasions of privacy at the discretion of government power and police authority, you are endangering children. No one wants to be lumped in with the lowest form of human devilry, unless they have skeletons in their inbox of a similarly dark and twisted nature. This rationale attempts to force our support of legislation like Bill C-30. The fear of being seen as a pariah by association, complicit in the evil crimes of the worst among us -- or worse -- being suspected of those crimes ourselves. 

On this occasion, the tactic appears to have failed, at least for now. Toews edged away from his comments during a CBC Radio interview aired on Saturday, claiming them as the result of a heated battle on the Commons floor. The backlash from most public media outlets in Canada, and from the public in the greater on-line forums, shut down the Tories' mad, manipulative rhetoric. The legislation will still go through of course, thanks to Harper's majority in Parliament. It is a bitter sweet victory, and we still end up losing in the end. 

But in the least, perhaps it has given them cause to question how effective this old tactic can be in the future. It isn't difficult to understand why governments are attacking the internet, and our ability to use it freely. The web provides us all twenty four hour access to perspectives that in the near past would have just been out of reach. Within moments of such an absurd statement like this being made, thousands of keyboard warriors can flood the super highway with detailed synopses of the real meaning behind the fiery rhetoric, and point out all the devils hiding in the details, covered in the trappings of righteous, moral responsibility. 

These days, even soccer moms have friends like me. 

Panic on the Metro

An inconvenient game of "chicken" is brewing amidst the metro lines and bus routes of Barcelona. Who will flinch first? And will there be an app to follow the drama on?

The 2012 Mobile World Congress is set to descend upon Barcelona the weekend of 27th February. Some 60,000 attendees will flood the Fira - Montjuic area of the city, eager to test out the newest trinkets and gadgets on display from the giants of the mobile technology world. New smartphones from the likes of HTC, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson will be unveiled. A potentially company saving, game changing operating system from RIM will be previewed as Blackberry attempts to stave off irrelevancy in the face of the Android and the iPhone. Sleek new tablets will be plentiful. Except for the iPad. 

Apple is staying at home this year. 

The keynote speakers for the conference include major power brokers from across the digital playing field. Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, and Facebook CTO Brett Taylor plan to address the corporate hordes in attendance, and those are only the companies with the most "cool" factor.  The list of CEO's, CFO's, Presidents, and Chairmen speaking is long, and relatively unattractive. I can't confidently say why the CEO of Citigroup is coming to address the crowd, but I can confidently say that his mere presence may cause many banks in Barcelona to declare insolvency and demand a bailout to be forked over by the taxpayer. To my local friends, I suggest emptying your accounts and hiding the money in your mattress until he leaves town. 

The conference has called Barcelona home for a few years now, and on 22nd July 2011 confirmed it would remain in the city through 2018. The event is a grand feather in the cap of the local government. It ushers in wealthy big wigs willing to spend lavishly on hotels, high class restaurants, and the finest cava they can find. I am mildly curious to find out if the working girls in Raval see a spike in revenues over the weekend, but getting official numbers from them might prove difficult. The conference directly employs roughly 1,500 people for each day that it runs. Millions in revenue is expected to flow into the city as the rich and innovative discuss new apps and the future of various technologies. 

This year, though, attendees may find themselves walking a bit more than usual. Bring good trainers. 

The CGT (Confederación General del Trabajo) anarcho-syndicalist trade union and employees for the TMB (Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona) have voted in favour of striking during the congress, as a result of TMB management attempting to deny them wage increases agreed to by both parties in their last collective agreement. The bold decision to effectively bring public transit to a grinding halt during such an important event for the city has set off a fierce panic among all affected parties. The MWC organisers are scrambling to find alternate methods for transporting attendees about, the city's hoteliers are in a rage over the possibility of lost revenue from the union's proposed action, and city mayor Xavier Trias has called on the workers to "apply common sense" and hold their strike action on a more convenient date so as not to tarnish the city's image. 

In other words, do as we say, not as we do. Apparently the bosses don't enjoy the taste of their own medicine. 

There's no denying it's an aggressive move by the union and the transit employees represented within. They are pushing back at TMB management and the municipal government by threatening a hugely profitable event for the city, essentially playing the one trump card they have. 

Opinion on the strike is sharply divided amongst the public as well. Many support the workers and are quick to point out that they are asking for only what was promised to them. On the other side of the divide, many are questioning how they will get to their own jobs without access to public transit. Those in direct opposition to the strike, management and the city, are stoking the fires; playing worker against worker, accusing the transit employees of holding the city to ransom, in an attempt to divide and conquer.  TMB Management contends they cannot afford to give what has been rightly earned. The company line is an echo of similar austerity measures stifling the poor working classes, and the squeezed middle classes, throughout the rest of Spain. We have made mistakes, you must pay for them. 

Workers have started fighting back, and this conference represents an ideal opportunity to show the power they hold as the engine in the societal machine that makes a city run. Those in control should hardly be surprised. You can only beat someone down for so long, before they come back at you in a similarly brutal fashion. 

While the order of the day in Spain continues to be great sacrifice by the masses in order to right the wrongs brought about by the controlling elite, expect the people to answer hard line tactics in kind. Expect a bite increasingly more ferocious than the bark. 

For the CEO's, presidents, and chairmen still anxious to make the trip, I offer words of calm. I walk everywhere here in Barcelona, it's a fantastic city to experience on foot. However, if you powerful heads of the techno-empires aren't so keen on that idea, might I suggest picking up a Bicing card for the weekend? 

Guiri Like Me

I am not, nor shall I likely ever be, an obvious tourist. When I arrive in a new city for the first time, I don't come well prepared with an arsenal of maps, water bottles, velcroed utility pouches, wallet chains or multi-zippered back packs. There's never been a pair of overly pocketed shorts in my travel bag. In reality I come horrifically under prepared, usually with only the names of a few areas of town that sound enticing banging about in my head, and an excessive amount of curiosity. Getting lost in a new city can prove dangerous, but it's also usually how you wind up with a true feel for the place.

Not having to frequently dive into the confines of a stuffed to bursting bag to fetch out a ridiculously large map in the middle of an area like Las Ramblas in Barcelona leaves you looking, and feeling, a bit like you belong. It also increases the odds of avoiding the attention of pickpockets and muggers, but then so does not stumbling about in the faintly lit narrow streets of Raval in a drunken stupor while singing away in a cockney accent. 

This adherence to getting about incognito means I've yet to be the victim of petty theft after ten months in my new home, which is something even the most entrenched expat usually experiences at least once; a sort of right of passage. However, it's not completely problem free. Presenting the façade of being a local in a city with two common languages, neither of which you're any bloody good at speaking, can leave you looking like a fool when a true local falls for the ruse and speaks to you in rapid fire Catalan, or Castellano, exposing you for the guiri you are. 

Guiri is a local word to describe a tourist, primarily of British or German origin, though now it could be applied to myriad other European or North American sun seekers across Spain, not to mention the growing throngs of Japanese visitors as well. You won't find it in a standard dictionary. I hadn't heard the word until eight months in, and when I finally did it came from the mouth of another guiri, discussing the sort of jobs expats usually fall into in Spain; our guiri jobs. The word became common as a way for locals to poke a bit of fun at tourists without them knowing. As more and more expats became permanent residents in the city, they caught on to what it meant, and now use it themselves, often accompanied with a wry little grin. 

For the most part, the long term guiris are in on the joke. 

The jobs we take, the guiri jobs, tend to fall into the mind numbing, soul crushing realm of customer service. We make calls or take calls for companies taking advantage of the low cost of doing business in Barcelona. They range in degrees of horror, but they are all generally awful jobs. We are the punching bags for multi-nationals. We work them because most of us arrive without really knowing much Spanish, beyond the crucial "una cerveza, por favor." These jobs afford us the chance to work and live in a city we quickly fall in love with, and to do so in our native tongue, be it English, German, Dutch or Italian. 

This sort of work, though, is a bit like making a deal with the devil. 

We make the deal as it's the easiest way to stay, and start living in the city like a local, rather than sampling it as a tourist, but it also makes the process of learning Spanish more difficult, particularly for native English speakers. It becomes an ordeal to put off after speaking solely in your native tongue for eight hours a day, to go home and diligently work on improving your fluency in Spanish, or Catalan. You can suddenly find yourself not really learning at all, stuck in a rut, repeating the same words in the same situations. 

You stall out, or you remove the need to learn altogether. 

Barcelona truly is a cosmopolitan city. People from all over the world now call it home. There is a thriving British expat community here. English and Irish pubs are littered throughout Barcelona's many barrios. The temptation to immerse yourself in this familiar, comfortable world, with a language you already understand, and customs that you've trafficked in for years, is palpable. The more exotic, authentic world, the real Barcelona, falls back into the distance, and many expats don't notice because they're still having a damned fantastic time. 

So far, I've avoided that particular trap. Early on I managed to meet a group of true locals, great people who happily invited me into their world. They keep me immersed in the language, the culture, the life. When I arrived in Barcelona I had planned to learn Catalan first; it was this group of new friends, all Catalans, who suggested tackling Spanish beforehand. For my part, I do what I can to help them improve their English, though most of them have a lengthy head start. I have taught them quite a lot of creative slang, though.


Attempting to learn a new language through immersion in the country, the culture and the community is a longer road to take. The rewards are less immediate, the frustrations constant. The truth is, you have to accept the reality that you will feel like an idiot more often than you won't, at least initially. After a series of mild embarrassments, the occasional breakthrough will occur; a moment of triumph. This tougher journey still seems the best for a full on adult with so much bad wiring in the skull, so much junk information clogging up the memory.


It is the difference between learning to speak, and learning to communicate.


Still, I can't help but think that all this could have been avoided; that it could be easier for the guiri's who want to make a life in Spain, or elsewhere. When I was in school, Spanish, along with German, finally popped up as an option for study midway through secondary school. French, the second official language in Canada, is mandatory when students are eight years old, but becomes a course one can drop by the time they are fifteen; many kids in English Canada do just that. The chance to learn other languages comes too late. As toddlers, when our minds are like sponges, hungry for knowledge, we will devour another language as eagerly as we would a slice of chocolate cake. For good or ill, we live in a world far smaller than it was just 30 years ago, yet we haven't really caught on to the idea that we should be learning to communicate with strangers half a world away at the same time as we do strangers around the corner.


As the months have passed here, I've become friends with quite a few guiri's as well. Most have made some attempt to learn Spanish, and some have added Catalan. Their knowledge of these languages vary; some have been here a few years and are nearly fluent, some have been here for a decade and are just getting by. The ease with which they adapt to the language is random, though English natives generally have a rougher time of it than their French, Italian, and German counterparts. Still, I have met more than a spattering of expats who've fallen into the trap of not bothering, or giving up.


In mid May, I was out with my wife and two friends visiting from London for the weekend to catch a Barça match at Camp Nou. We found ourselves in a little expat bar on Sant Joan just below Carrer Aragó, near where we were living at the time. A fairly intoxicated local fellow chose to strike up a very friendly conversation with me using a rapid fire mixture of Castellano and his native Catalan. At the time I understood very little of either, so the conversation amounted to me repeatedly saying "Lo siento, hablo poco español." A younger couple from Ireland were sitting near enough to catch the mildly absurd conversation. It gave them a good chuckle. Later into the night when the bar closed, I had the chance to speak with them while we all had a last cigarette before moving on. The man was younger than myself, but had been here for over ten years. He freely admitted that he understood the affable drunk less than I did, revealing that even after such a long time here, he didn't know much more than a few basics, and at this point, probably never would.


The other side of the coin is that, whatever struggles these lifer guiri's have in their attempts to learn the language, their children reap the benefits. A couple I know, the husband from England, the wife from France, have a young son who has spent his short life living in Barcelona. At barely six years old, he already speaks fluent English, French, Catalan and Spanish, and he is learning Mandarin, basically because he can. His father joked to me that, whatever happens, he knows his son will always be able to find work at the airport. As far as I'm concerned, the kid is a genius, and is likely to take over the world. I'm just glad I've made friends with our future potential leader.


Perhaps he'll give me a job as the cleaner someday.