Spain´s national regulatory authority for telecommunications, the
Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones (CMT) has
launched a
blog, as well as a presence on
twitter.
They say:
CMT Blog no pretende ser una simple plataforma para la réplica de contenidos de la página web de la CMT o las resoluciones del regulador, sino una herramienta para comunicarse de manera sencilla y directa con todos los públicos:
Translated:
CMT Blog does not intend to be a simple platform for the replication of content from our homepage nor for its resolutions, but rather a tool to communicate simply and directly with all of our publics:
Labels: CMT, NRA, OII, outreach, spain
On the morning of Sunday 19 October I´d posted the below blog entry. It is now the early hours of 22 October, and more-or-less daily there have been follow-up media reports. It is with this in mind, that I would like to add (some links to articles and opinion pieces that have appeared. I leave my original post below (at the bottom) intact.
Some Spanish-language sources:Some English-language sources:More particularly, I found that the following part of the Garton Ash article resonated w.r.t. the process that seems needed in Spain as regards the victims of Francoist repression:
"Let me be clear. I believe it is very important that nations, states, peoples and other groups (not to mention individuals) should face up, solemnly and publicly, to the bad things done by them or in their name. The West German leader Willy Brandt falling silently to his knees in Warsaw before a monument to the victims and heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto is, for me, one of the noblest images of postwar European history. For people to face up to these things, they have to know about them in the first place. So these subjects must be taught in schools as well as publicly commemorated. But before they are taught, they must be researched. The evidence must be uncovered, checked and sifted, and various possible interpretations tested against it."
My original posting of 19-Oct-2008:
---
This write-up is a response to the article titled <<
Zapatero: "El franquismo está ya juzgado por la historia">> (Zapatero: "Francoism has already been judged by history.")
Spanish President José Luís Rodriguez Zapatero responded in this way, when asked to opine on the
recent initiative undertaken by Judge Balthasar Garzón vis-a-vis prosecution for atrocities committed not only during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, but also those committed in the Spanish post-war (posguerra) period. (The Spanish postwar period should not be confused with the WWII postwar period. In some ways they sit quite separate.)
Zapatero´s response above suggests that since history has already exercised judgement, that this is where the buck stops. This is incorrect, and here´s why:
Garzón´s claims that what ocurred had been human rights abuses and therefore outside the scope of the 1977 amnesty seem entirely correct. Spain cannot for much longer hold itself up as the champion of human rights (e,g, the pursuit of Pinochet) without having a look in their own backyard. To continue to avoid dealing with the domestic matter is absurd. Further, the international (human rights) climate has changed in such a way that it is ripe for this kind of judicial judgment to be made/exercised/invoked. And given the timeline if we compare other atrocities the world over that have happened _after_ the Spanish Civil War and that have already been judged, Spain simply cannot afford to "look the other way" anymore. I feel that the international community is looking to Spain to clean up this blight on its human rights record. Yes, history _has_ judged. But any State that professes the virtues of the Rule of Law, cannot but make that this judgement also be a legal matter.
See also this English-language write-up of some days ago:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/victims-of-spanish-civil-war-to-be-exhumed-964423.htmlLabels: civil war, derechos humanos, guerra civil, human rights abuses, spain
the question of human migration
along with my latent interest in how cities develop, and more specifically megacities or megalopolises (i.e. any city in excess of 8 million people), and of how these will characterise many developing countries in future. alongside this rural to urban migration, i am also keenly aware of human migration patterns across (nation state) borders. i know. i re-read what i´ve just written and it seems rather clinical. probably, your basic question is one of: but is she pro or contra?. well, i think that it is natural for human beings to seek a better life, and that they will do so, if their means or opportunities allow. and further, i do think that there needs to be creative well-considered approaches to dealing with human migration. approaches that rest on humanitarian grounds; humanitarian approaches that go beyond extending a helping hand only when people are seeking asylum or refuge due to internal country conflicts. meaning, that humanitarian values should also infuse approaches to dealing with clandestine immigration. and this goes even further than just being nice to people while they await repatriation. i am not an expert on this topic, but what does strike me are two things:
1) how immigration as a political question, more particularly in political campaigns, gains much attention
2) how there has to be better ways, somehow, of dealing with human migration. "better ways" not to stem the tide, but better ways prefaced by saying "maybe repatriating people, in a way similar to trying to control the flow of an open tap, is not the best use of our economic (and other) resources"
the flow of human beings has always been in my consciousness. when growing up in South Africa, with the pass laws (people needed papers to migrate to the city). well, to be precise, if your ethnicity were black you were restricted. you needed permission. so too, the matter of requesting a visa to enter a country is a process that has always been in my consciousness. i "marvel" at how countries deal with this, with regards to, who is allowed, who exempted, etc. when living in spain, this life-long consciousness, was brought strongly to the fore.
my having lived in spain, once for a month back in july 2000, and for a year back in 2005/2006, something which was very prevalent in the papers was the rate of, illegal, ostensibly economic migration, into spain. of course, people do arrive and enter illegally at the airports, but the daily media image in spain of illegal migration is that of boat-loads of people from Africa (mostly Central-, and Northern-) arriving on southern Spanish shores. people arrive in groups of 50 to 100 or 200, per boat. to give an idea, some two weeks ago or so, nearly 1,200 persons arrived within 5 days. then (july 2000) and now (every other day, if not daily) there are newspaper reports in the spanish papers of boats full of persons arriving on the spanish southern coast. these boats, referred to as "
pateras" (which my spanish dictionary defines as "embarcación elemental de quilla plana y poco calado", that is, a small boat with a flat keel . to my mind i always think of olden-time wooden life-boats as found in the heyday of luxury cruise ships like the cunard). but to not digress too much, the word, apart from describing a boat, has metamorphosed into the umbrella term for anyone who arrives in spain illegally by boat (even if the boat is of bigger, better construction). another term frequently used in spain is "los sin papeles" or "indocumentados", literally, "those without papers" or "the undocumented".
with the above as background, i last week 30 May attended a talk by Steve Cohen given at Trinity College. His talk was titled "No One is Illegal -- issues of immigration control", and he was billed as:
Steve Cohen has been an immigration lawyer for over 25 years and is former Co-ordinator of the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit. He studied law at Oxford and Birmingham and has practised as a barrister. The author of many academic, professional and political articles, he has been actively involved in campaigns against deportation and denial of entry. He is the author of No-One is Illegal: Immigration Control and Asylum, Deportation is Freedom: The Orwellian World of Immigration Controls, Immigration Controls, the Family and the Welfare State: A Handbook of Theory, Politics and Practice, and a contributor to Social Work, Immigration and Asylum: Debates, Dilemmas and Ethical Issues for Social Work and Social Care.The above bio from
http://www.word-power.co.uk/catalogue/1843102943just an interjection: usually illegal migration can be stigmatised, but note that migration, even if legal, can be stigmatised. think for instance, notions of flows of people from newly-accessing European Union countries. one has heard concerns expressed about overflows of people upon accession of countries to the EU, for instance. the "fall guy" always changes, but there is always a "fall guy". to continue...
i will attempt to provide here a summary of the main points from Cohen´s talk:
he reflected on how the approach to immigration from the legal practice perspective, had changed during the past century, using the UK as case. and of how those changes which háve occurred reflect the convergence of law and politics. that ca. the 1970s "immigration control" was merely an administrative process and system, and was not really seen as a judicial process. that every effort was made back then, to make it (immigration) appear to be depoliticised. he noted that within the past 12 months there had been a "sanctification of the politics of immigration". in saying this, he meant to indicate that immigration as a question had reached a point where discourse went unquestioned. that people spoke about "illegals" and "aliens" (stigmatised loaded terms, much like "patera" or "sinpapel") as if it were entirely natural to be referring to people in such a manner. that the categories went as accepted and unquestioned. further, that, from a legal scholar view, immigration law was the only branch of law where a person could, by virtue of being alive, be "illegal", that in all other branches of law, only acts or behaviours could be termed to be illegal. that now, the legitimacy of your very existence, by the unquestioning adoption and use of the term "illegal" as a noun, was brought into question.
another interjection from me: well, you could say that this word usage is a philosophical question; or that it is merely a linguistic evolution, because the term is used as shorthand to refer to the illegal act of entering a country without permission, etc. if you tilted at those windmills, i would say that you are missing the point somehow. for at issue is the notion of making a person feel excluded from (a) society, and as of having no rights that nation states usually confer to its citizens. it is someone existing in the shadows, or made to feel, even if legitimately relocated, that he/she is a shadow, peripheral, or marginal and marginalised figure. you could say that the latter is part of the grander process of "
othering". the "them" and "us" syndrome. very well, it could be, but that is no justification for its acceptance.
back to Cohen: there has been a sharp increase in the number of UK laws passed in recent years, with no consolidation of these. a timeline: 1905 (first UK Immigration Act), 1914, 1919, 1962, ?, 1968, 1971, 1988, 1993, 1996, 1999, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007. he added that no other area of law has gone through this kind of evolutionary track. another change seen in recent times (post 1970s) has been the "coming into the public sphere" of immigration. that there has been an overt turn to a legalistic
approach, and an obvious politicization. that the danger of the adoption of loaded terminology was that they were used as common-sensical terms, serving then as basis for their usage not being questioned.
Cohen elaborated: the term "illegal" had come to denote criminalization of a human being, without an explicit charge, trial, nor conviction. he drew the parallel to the use of the term "unperson" in Orwell´s 1984, and that detention centres were, in effect, centres filled with "unpersons", and that many people were not ready to question such thinking.
some interesting "asides" from Cohen: apparently, the development of "judicial review" as a legal process, had developed on deportation issues. that
William Morris (he of the Arts & Crafts movement) had been involved in anti-immigration campaigns as part of his participation in the UK
Socialist League.
Cohen cautioned against the "sanctification of law"; that sanctification happens through making something appear normal; where people start to think that obeying orders is a natural thing to do. Cohen mentioned the
Wannsee Conference where the extermination of Jews had been discussed in a very civilised manner over cocktails, as if this were an entirely "natural" thing to do, and to discuss.
Cohen´s Wannsee reference made me think again of
Hannah Arendt, and her writings on the banality of evil. from the linked-to wikipedia entry on Arendt, I quote:
In her reporting of the Eichmann trial for The New Yorker, which evolved into the book Eichmann in Jerusalem, she coined the phrase "the banality of evil." She raised the question whether evil is radical or simply a function of banality - the tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without critically thinking about the results of their action or inaction. This work created a great deal of controversy and animosity toward Arendt in the Jewish community.
to conclude the summary of Steve Cohen´s talk, his Oxonian take-home message was that people had to question day-to-day uses of terms, and to also question their education on an almost daily basis; to not take things as "given", or "natural" or "common-sensical".
before i go, for interest, here´s also a link to Oxford´s Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (
COMPAS).
Labels: human migration, spain, UK
some quotes re research methods (funny)
i have a healthy scepticism ( i guess, what else to call it) when it comes to all things "research methodology". well, i remember when in SA my experiences there were such that once in a while you would bump into someone who would swear (very high and very low) by research method x, and that other methods were, by implication, inferior. that always annoyed me somehow because the person did not seem to recognise the limits of their own thinking in this regard. the method used is the one that is the best tool at getting you to the/some answers to your research questions, no? so, quantitative, qualitative. you choose. obviously, i think often/usually people have a preference, or a natural bent with one method or approach, or the other.
but thinking about these things. and having attended the seminar of a DPhil colleague this morning, I thought some light humour (what I regard as humorous at least) would bring some general mirth, and remind folks that in the end, it´s got to be a fun thing, the research that you do.
ok. some quotes:
"Methodological discussions, it has been said, are a good cure for insomnia." (Vernon Valentine Palmer. 53 AJCL 261)
so, i guess all my friends are forewarned re what kinds of mails to expect from me when the next bout of insomnia strikes ;-)
"...sciences which have to busy themselves with their own methodology are sick sciences... (
Ralf Michaels quoting Zweigert, Kötz, and further:
"Usually, the scholars who deal with issues of methodology are not the most productive ones."
these are the funny recent ones. if you were expecting more, sorry :-)
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hhhmmm. quisiera decirles algo. hoy conocí a una chica de Mallorca en una cafetería a la que suelo ir. no sé su nombre, pero hablábamos por un rato y me dí cuenta después: no sé cuándo voy a viajar a Madrid de nuevo. de veras, ahora no me apetece viajar a ningún lado. ah. me acuerdo de una cosa: yesterday´s posting re the movie pan´s labyrinth. it was a story well told, not forgetting that it was set in rather horrid times, near the end of the civil war in Spain. so, not an easy story to tell, nor watch.
Labels: humour, methodology, spain
the things people say
¡hola guapa! --- that is what people might say to you when you´re in spain. like many things, it´s not said gratuitously. well, to phrase it differently: it´s said less often than expletives. and contrary to what an outsider (i.e someone outside of spain) might think, this is not some form of common garden variety harassment either. friends might say it to one another when meeting up on the street, for instance. but i remember the first time someone had said it to me. i had moved to a new flat, and new neighbourhood. and lived in an apartment complex where there were four blocks overlooking the same small plaza. one morning as i exited my apartment block this little old lady of maybe 80-something hollered to me, at a volume which seemed entirely disproportionate to her physical size and frail appearance: "¡hola guapa!" (hello beautiful)
i smiled, and blushed, and said meekly "buenos días señora". that was the first time, but it also wasn´t the last. also, you will find that others who are sufficiently familiar with you, might also start to use this epithet. but, no. familiarity is not the thing. since you might be in a bar or cafeteria and the person serving might say "guapa, dime qué te ponga" or some such. from time to time friends write and start their mails in that way. and though i might resort to using this kind of salutation once in a while, it never feels right for me when doing so.
well, the reason i mention this is that today here in oxf, much to my surprise, this kind of thing happened. i had gone to a store to have some passport photos taken, and upon my return to collect the pics some 15 minutes later, as i entered the store the assistant (who was not british) said "hello beautiful." despite my experiences of this in spain, i was still rather surprised at this greeting here. but then i went to buy coffee at my usual place and there the guy was also on about "how beautiful you are". i told him he was just trying to ensure that i would buy my coffee from him for the duration of my dphil, while i chuckled and stood there feeling like that awkward teenager whose relative has just arrived at the annual family reunion, and he/she is pinching your cheeks as if you were still that toddler of years gone by...
aye.
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speaking of "aye". there are few things as amusing as overhearing the average spanish-speaking toddler say "aye". they sound so world-weary that it sounds rather absurd. when you hear it you stop in your tracks and can´t help but laugh since even the old folks don´t say it in the same way. really peculiar.
Labels: spain, voces
well I´ll be...
in my
personal homepage to date i´ve mentioned that my learning Spanish goes back to when i had received and read the English version of
Christopher Unborn by
Carlos Fuentes (
Cristóbal Nonato in Spanish). but thinking further, i recalled that the subtle Spanish influences go back further than this, but admittedly Fuentes´s "influence" was the proverbial "tipping point".
i copy the pic since the doll looks a lot like the one i had. she too wore an ochre/yellow dress, though her headpiece was yellow and not black like in the photo. and i had a male doll (this was before SA markets were open, so no Barbie and Ken, thankfully!!). i don´t know what became of those flamenco dolls, now that i think about it.
and then, another thing is that i saw a
Don Quixote television series when I was about the same age (six), on South African television. the way memory fades, i´d somehow always thought that it had been a British animated version, but scouting around on the Net now, i see that in fact it was a Spanish production. See
YouTube clip.
and more than that, that the voice of Don Quixote was none other than that of
Fernando Fernán Gómez, highly acclaimed Spanish actor (though, truth be told, probably i watched a version dubbed to Afrikaans. but it is funny/amusing seeing the YouTube clip since i see that the series intro song was kept intact. jejejeje).
and more still, when visiting Madrid i make a point of going to the cinema to see Spanish films. in late-December i went for my graduation ceremony, and so took myself along to see the documentary about ...Fernando Fernán Gómez, called "
La Silla de Fernando", recently (Sept. 2006) screened at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
okay, all of this does start to sound a bit creepy ;)
but well...
Labels: growing up, influences, spain
Aye, debería estar en España ahora mismo, disfrutando de la cabalgata... me encanta tantísimo el desfile del 5 de enero. Cuando la vida laboral ya ha empezado en el mundo anglosajón, el día 2 (o día 3, depende), las personas hispanoparlantes todavía están de vacaciones. Es más, se trata, a mi ver, de estar junto a
buen@s amig@s, charlando y tomando una buena comida durante horas, etcétera. Pero, no puedo (aunque quiero, sin duda alguna) viajar más ahora (ya que estuve en Madrid durante algunos días en diciembre para asistir al Acto de Entrega de Titulos por la UC3M). Pero, así es.
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An explanation of (part of) the Spanish Xmas copied below, click-thru to the URL for more,:
http://www.spanish-fiestas.com/spanish-festivals/christmas-in-spain.htm31st December - New Year's Eve is known as NocheVieja. It is a big celebration all over the country with street parties and special nights in hotels and clubs everywhere. Until midnight people tend to stay at home and on the stroke of midnight it is traditional to eat 12 grapes, one on each stroke of the clock to bring good luck for the new year. In Madrid and other main cities revellers congregate in the main square (Puerta del Sol in Madrid) and eat the grapes along with a celebratory bottle of cava then head out into the night until after sunrise.
1st January - A low key public holiday with plenty people sleeping off their excesses.
5th January - There are processions all over Spain this evening where sweets are thrown from the floats to all the people who come out to watch. Every town has its own variation such as in the Sierra Nevada where the Three Kings can be seen to ski down to the village.
6th January - This is the Feast of the Epiphany when the Three Kings arrived in Bethlehem. For Spanish children this is the most important day of the year when they wake up to find that Los Reyes Magos (the Three Kings) have left gifts for them in their house. Santa may leave them a token gift on 25th but the Three Kings are their favourites, especially Baltasar who rides a donkey and is the one believed to leave the gifts. During the day of 6th the Three Kings continue their good work and are seen distributing gifts to children in hospitals all over Spain.
7th January - The day after receiving their gifts children return to school, their parents go back to work and Christmas in Spain is all over for another year.
Labels: christmas, spain
