Save Me…… from elections where politics gets in the way of personality

Let’s be honest. Politics is generally very dull and depressing. Everyone promises a lot. But no-one actually seems to deliver much.

Last November Spain voted for a change in their national government, with a move from left to right politically. In March this year, voters in Andalucía swung right too, but not far enough to stop the left and the centre parties forming a coalition to retain power in the region. Nothing much has changed. There are still no jobs.

The same is more or less true in the UK. In 2010 voters turned against the ruling socialists, but not quite enough to give the right wing Conservatives enough power to govern on their own. So they teamed up with the centre party to form another coalition. And, as if by magic, nothing much has changed there either.

But then, just when you thought it was hopeless, just when you thought nothing could drag the political process out of the dumpster, an election has come along to cheer us all up, to revive our passion and our interest, to give us something to really give a damn about.

And you know why? Because it’s got nothing to do with politics. This one is all about the personality. And in this case, two huge egos whose head-on collision has produced fantastic fireworks. It is a true heavyweight boxing contest and the winner takes all.

I talk, of course, of the London Mayoral election.

The reality is that the London Mayor doesn’t have a huge amount of power. But it doesn’t matter, because the prestige of the post brings out the best in the candidates. It goes beyond politics. This is about who’s the biggest and brightest, the most daring and challenging and, frankly, the funniest and most colourful.

Yesterday voters across the capital went to the polls to decide who they want to be Mayor for the next four years. The last two times they did it in 2004 and 2008 I was living in London and I had a ringside seat on the bitter battles between left and right. But the grappling, the punches, the holding, the jabs, the biting, the kicking, the spitting and the body slams all seemed to disappear into a confused mishmash of blanket media coverage – sort of like watching a gang of drunks who had just been kicked out of a pub, fall over each other as they lashed out in all directions.

But this time I’ve been watching the same contest avidly from a distance – 1,600km to be precise – and in many ways I’ve gained a fresh perspective on just how colourful this epic contest is. Precisely because it’s not been splashed over the newspapers, the TV and the internet here all the time, I’ve only seen the best bits; the crunching uppercuts, the left hooks to the jaw and the smashing haymakers – less drunken brawlers, more edge-of-your seat highlights of a top heavyweight boxing match.

In the blue corner is Boris Johnson, the bumbling public schoolboy with the mop of uncontrollable blonde hair and a somewhat blustery, if generally articulate, delivery. As current champion he is looking to retain his crown for a second successive time. Among his campaign highlights are calling his main rival a “fucking liar” for questioning his personal tax affairs, and referring to questions from a BBC journalist about potentially dodgy private sector sponsorship deals as “fucking bollocks”. Maybe I should rethink the “articulate” description.

In the red corner is Ken Livingstone, the George Forman of the race. Twice champion, he’s been licking his wounds from his defeat in 2008 and is hoping to wrench back the crown he won in 2000 and 2004. Among his highlights are bursting into tears at a party election broadcast and getting into a physical confrontation with his rival in a lift after a particularly hostile debate on live radio.

Both are polarizing candidates. Both inspire loyalty and loathing in equal amounts. Both are enormous personalities and both have the egos to match. Politics doesn’t even get a look-in on this title fight.

By the time you read this, it’s possible the winner will already be known. There are five other candidates in the Mayoral race, but none of them has a hope of beating Boris or Ken so who cares about them.

Someone once said that anyone who wants to be a politician should automatically be banned from being one because the attributes needed to be one – single-mindedness, ruthlessness, a craving for power and a willingness to stab anybody in the back just to get what you want – were clearly not qualities voters would want in a person expected to be a leader.

But with a show like this, who cares about that?

I was in London last week for a few days visiting friends. And when I returned to Spain on Tuesday, at first I figured I had come back too early, fearing I was missing out on all the fun. But, you know what? In hindsight, I’m glad I’m back here, because I’m getting a grandstand seat to witness the best of the carnage, without all the bluster and sideshow irrelevancies to muddy the waters. It’s brilliant.

Maybe this is what Spain needs to reinvigorate its political process and, in turn, its fortunes. Instead of the grey suits who populate the left and right here, maybe they need a prize fight on a par with the London Mayoral elections. Something to inject a bit of spontaneity, drive, motivation, colour and hope back into the political process. Seville’s got a Mayor, Andalucía has a president. Even Spain has one too. But, for the life of me, I can’t remember any of their names at the moment. And if I had to pick them out in a lineup I’m not sure I could do it.

Personality is everything when it comes to rousing the disillusioned voter. Unfettered swearing, tears and the ever-present potential for punch-ups have made for a fantastic spectacle in London. It’s just a shame it all has to end today when the new Mayor is likely to be announced. So what about taking the gloves off here too? You never know, something might actually change for once.

Save Me…… from a collective attempt to number my days of futile resistance

In Star Trek, the crew of the Starship Enterprise have to fight a race of half organic, half mechanical organisms known as the Borg. They are a deadly species, made up of cybernetically-enhanced humanoids organized as a collective, where decisions are made by a central hive mind. Their sole objective in existence is to forcibly assimilate into the collective any and all species they come across in the pursuit of genetic, unemotional, mechanical perfection. They take individuals, their knowledge, their technology and their thoughts and subsume them into the central core. Members of the collective are given names such as Seven of Nine or Five of Sixteen. As they say: “Resistance is futile.”

So why am I telling you this? Because there are many similarities between the Borg and the people of Spain.

Now, for the record, I am not a “trekkie”, nor have I watched very many episodes of Star Trek, its films or its spin-offs. However, for the purposes of full disclosure, I do have Star Trek The Movie on iTunes and I downloaded it because I liked it, even though I know I´m in the minority there as a lot of people say it´s dull as shit and nothing much happens, but I always liked it because it´s cerebral and mysterious in much the same way a spy or detective story is, whereas Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica were always just about blowing things up and zapping laser guns in every direction without much thought, and don´t even get me started on Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century (the TV series, not the comics) which was just plain low-budget rubbish, I mean, come on, who has a dancing robot called Twiki? Really!

But I think I´ve gone off the point a bit. The point is this. As I said, there is a strange connection between the Borg of Star Trek and the people of Spain, and more specifically Seville.

It´s not immediately recognizable. In fact, it only struck me one night this week on the Metro when a friend of mine told me about Seville’s so-called Three Stages of Integration.

It was after 10pm. I was on my way home. He was all dressed up and on his way to the Seville Feria and we were sitting there talking about the fact that both our wives are Spanish (He´s British). He said that as he´d been living here for several years it was important to be traditional and dress up to go to Feria. It wasn’t necessary, he said. But it was all part of “going native”, he said. Of becoming one with the locals, he said. And his wife would shout at him if he didn’t, he added.

He told me that this was part of something a German friend had explained to him; that there were three stages everybody goes through when they move to Spain, and in particular Seville.

Apparently the first stage is known as Love. When you first arrive, you love everything about the place; the noise, the shouting, the cars who impatiently rev their engines when you´re on the pedestrian crossing, the banks that need everything in triplicate, the cockroaches in the bath tub, the TV adverts that cut in at the most inappropriate moments and then last 15 minutes.

Then comes Stage Two. Hate. This is when you slowly begin to hate exactly the same things that you loved when you first arrived. The aggressive car drivers, the stupid TV ads, the six-legged friends in the bathroom, the inability to talk at a sensible volume.

Finally, you get to Stage Three. Assimilation. This is a crucial stage, because it´s at this point that there is no turning back once you´ve made the decision. You can choose to accept those things you have fondly grown to hate and it is at this point you begin to do them yourself. You take a conscious decision to no longer fight the tide. You dive in and let it take you. Before long, you don’t hear the shouting that passes for normal conversation, because you’re shouting yourself. You become one of the collective.

Or, you can fight it. You can resist assimilation. If you do, you pack your bags and return to the riots and lashing rain that marks a British summer.

Now I´m not suggesting people from Seville are a race of cybernetic organisms intent on forcibly assimilating visitors into their collective. But it is interesting to see how, before you know it, you’ve been sucked in. You’ve been “assimilated” as it were. You are them and they are you. And you didn’t even know it was happening until it was too late.

So it got me thinking. What stage am I at? How long does each stage last? And do they really exist or were they just invented by a German bloke who was bored because there was nothing much to watch on telly one night?

Well, I’ve been here nearly three years now and while my Spanish is much better that it used to be, it’s still a bit rubbish and not anywhere near as good as it should be for someone who’s been here nearly three years now. Look, what can I say. I’m just lazy and crap at languages, alright? So, maybe I’ve got a little way to go yet before the collective.

As for the stage order, well, for me stages one and two have sort of metamorphosed into one really big stage. If it was a stage on the Tour de France it would be that one where they have to ride for 30km up a vertical cliff. And from a practical point of view, as anyone who reads this blog regularly will know, I love and hate things here with equal passion.

But as for stage three, the assimilation, the becoming one with everything around me, then this week has been somewhat of a watershed. Because last Saturday me and the wife went to a family baptism in Jerez. Her cousin’s baby son to be precise. I was the only non-Spaniard there, but naturally I was made to feel very much part of the family. I felt quite at home, despite my lack of complex Spanish. We had the baptism then we all drank together, sat and ate together, chatted together, drank some more together and then when that ran out, we got some more and drank that as well together. And by the end, it didn’t matter what language we all spoke because we were all pissed. For all intents and purposes I was Spanish. I was one of the family.

So have I been – willingly or not – sucked into the Spanish equivalent of the Borg? Have I become number Seven of Twelve or Eight of Twenty Six or whatever? Has my resistance become futile?

Well, I think for me the jury is still out. I think the love and hate stages still have to work themselves out yet.  And I think that any assimilation should take its natural course. I don’t want to be influenced by any thought of a process of stages. Let me do it in my own time and in my own way.

But I do know one thing. The Borg don’t do baptisms like the Spanish do.

Save Me…… from yet another big party that not everyone’s invited to

Doesn’t time fly? It seems like it was only a fortnight ago when the people of Seville took a week off work to celebrate Easter. Oh, hang on a minute. It was.

But when it comes to Seville, two weeks without a day off work is a lifetime. So, as luck would have it, another big party is just about to kick off to keep the restless, work-shy hoards in the city happy.

That’s right. It’s Feria time!

Yet another opportunity for virtually 24-hour eating, drinking, dancing, singing and drunkenly throwing up in gutters at seven o’clock in the morning. Anything not to have to go to work. In that respect it’s a bit like an average Saturday night-Sunday morning in Croydon, south London.

But I sell it short. The Seville Feria (the April Fair to non-Spaniards) is a big deal here. A very big deal. So much so that it attracts not just your average punter, but the rich and the famous too. Take a copy of any Spanish gossip magazine with you to the Feria and you can have a fantastic game of celebrity bingo with your mates.

Lots of towns and cities have ferias throughout the year. But Seville’s is the biggest and best. If you are someone, or are wanting to be someone, or are wanting to hang out with someone who wants to be someone, then Seville Feria is the place to be seen.

It’s an excuse for everybody to dress up in the type of clothes a foreigner thinks the stereotypical Spanish person wears every day. For the women, it’s the ankle-length, brightly-coloured flamenco dresses known as faralaes, often with red and black polka dots and lots of fancy bits sticking out everywhere, along with hand fans, huge loop earrings and flowers in perfectly coiffeured hair pulled back on the head so tightly it’s difficult for the women to show facial expressions. Again, at least as far as the hair goes, quite like Croydon in fact, home of the famous Croydon facelift hairdo.

But that’s pretty much where the similarities end.

For the men, it’s the tight, black waistcoats, tight black trousers, black boots, and wide-brimmed hats known as Cordobes. They might even carry a guitar around with them if they really want to be pretentious.

The mayhem kicks off officially at midnight this coming Monday – although people are so desperate for time off work again after a fortnight that they normally start the drinking, singing, eating and dancing tomorrow night instead. The official opening at the huge main gate is marked by fireworks and music and is covered live on TV.

Like I said, it’s a big thing here. On a huge showground – nearly a mile in length - in the Los Remedios part of the city, a virtual mini-city of tented casetas – brightly-coloured marquee tents -  are erected for the duration of the festivities, alongside a huge fun fair. Every other week of the year, the showground remains virtually empty. It really is that big a deal. A massive chunk of Seville city centre empty for 51 weeks a year, just so the Feria has somewhere to go when April comes around.

The Feria has been going for more than 160 years. It started out as a livestock fair, but gradually turned into the spectacle that it is today. Every caseta has a bar, live music, enough beer to sink an Italian cruise liner and truck-loads of food to serve guests who party all day and all night. In fact, on average it might only go quiet for a couple of hours each morning, just enough time to clear away the debris and start all over again at lunchtime. From then, it’ll go right on through to about 8am the next morning. It’s so busy that Seville’s only underground Metro line effectively turns into London Underground’s Northern Line at rush-hour for the duration, as thousands upon thousands of people all pour into the city centre to parade around in their fancy clothes, which would otherwise stay in the cupboard for the rest of the year gathering dust. Try to catch a metro during Feria and you’d better give yourself an extra couple of hours, because you will literally see one after another pull in to the station and pull out again without a single inch of room for anyone new to get on.

So Feria means good food? Tick. Lots of beer? Tick. Dancing and singing? Tick. Horses, processions, live music, fireworks, bright lights, fun fair? Tick. What could possibly irritate me about all that then, you ask?

Here’s what it is. You need to add something else to the list above. Security guards and signs saying private. More specifically, security guards at nearly every caseta. Because, here’s the really big deal. The vast majority of casetas are private, paid for by companies, organizations, groups of friends, political parties and prominent families in the city. They don’t want just anybody going in. Only special people, the right people, the chosen few. And the security guards are there just to remind anyone who forgets.

Now, I’ve spoken to plenty of people who say they don’t have a problem with it. If the caseta is paid for by a private party then what’s wrong with only invited guests being allowed in? Well, that’s fine if it’s a few here and there, but it’s not like that in Seville. Don’t expect to go along as an average visitor or tourist and find plenty of casteas to wander into. The security guard will wave his big stick in your direction and encourage you to keep walking.

What a fantastic, all-inclusive, non-elitist, fun for all, big-time get-together, load of bollocks is that then? It’s like me having a party but then telling some of the guests they’re only allowed on the terrace and they can’t come into the house even if they’re desperate for the toilet. It’s like going into a shop but being told by the shop assistant to stay away from the more expensive things on display as “they’re only for important people, Sir. You’ll find the tat and the shite on the ground floor along with the other peasants, Sir. Off you go now.”

Yes, it’s a big event. Yes, it’s famous, yes, it’s got lots of fireworks and other things that go bang and pop and is given 24-7 coverage on the local TV channels. But it’s not quite as welcoming as it might at first seem. Why not go the whole hog and have a coupon day or a “Poor People’s Afternoon” where visitors without connections get to root through the bins and the skips to see what they can find. “Look, it’s a half-eaten sandwich that Belen Esteban threw on the floor in disgust.” Or “I’ve found a cracked wine glass with Carmen Maura’s lipstick and spit on it. Fantastic!”

My advice? Wait a couple more weeks for the Feria in Jerez. It’s only about 90km down the road, a bit smaller and not quite as famous. But 95 per cent of the casetas there are open to the public and there’s plenty of food, drink, music, dancing and singing for everybody.

I know it means another two weeks of having to go to work before you can have a holiday again. But you can watch the Seville one on the TV and you’ll achieve the same effect as if you were there in person. Look but don’t touch.

Save Me…… from shuttered shops on Sundays and public holidays

Look, I’ve been thinking. Over the past few weeks I’ve been grumbling about the banks and general strikes and unemployment and the state of the Spanish economy.

I’ve been a bit po-faced about it, I think, and to be honest, probably a bit of an armchair revolutionary. All talk and no do.

That’s not to say I’ve changed my mind. I haven’t. But while I’ve been suggesting all sorts of radical action to tackle the myriad of problems people here face, it was a news story I saw this week which got me thinking about what could perhaps be an even more radical plan. And one that could have almost immediate results too.

The news story I’m talking about is one in which the British think tank The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) suggests that scrapping all public holidays would boost the UK economy by an extra £19 billion a year.

While they don’t explicitly suggest that they should all be scrapped, they do suggest that they should be “spread out” a bit more so that businesses aren’t hit all in one go. I guess having too many holidays all together is terrible for business as it means the poor people get to have a day off and the fat cats can’t earn another million as quickly as they’d like to.

Of course, their suggestions are idiotic. As a GMB union spokesman so aptly put it “We could send kids down the mines again too and go back to working six days a week again.”

So where does Spain fit into all this?

Well, let’s put this in perspective. In an average year, the UK has eight public holidays - two at Christmas, one at New Year (or two if you’re in Scotland), two at Easter, two in May and one in August. This year, because of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, everyone gets an extra one in June too.

Wow. Nine public holidays this year. That’s a lot.

Except if you live in Spain. If you live in Spain, right now you’re saying: “Nine? Is that it?” Only nine??!”

For in Spain, there are a minimum – yes, a minimum - of 13 public holidays. Let’s count the ones in the Seville area alone (as different parts of the country have different extra days).

There’s January 1, then there’s January 6, then we wait a little bit - but not much - for January 23 when there’s a local holiday. Then we have to wait a whole four weeks for another holiday on February 28. After that, we’ve got two days at Easter, which this year was April 5 and 6.

However, Easter Week in Seville is when all the processions take place and a lot of people take extra time off work then as well. Next there’s the big Feria week in Seville at the end of April – more about that next week – with most people in the city taking several days off. After that, we have to wait a massive four days until the May 1 holiday.

I haven’t finished yet.

While the next official holiday is August 15, during July and August many businesses cut down their hours or close up as the long, hot summer kicks in. After that, we have to wait until October for the next holiday, which comes on the 12^th. Then there’s another one on November 1, then when you get close to Christmas, you have one on December 6 and another on December 8.

This, in itself, is daft, because, as happened this year, those days fell on a Tuesday and a Thursday, which meant that lots of people actually took the Wednesday off as well. Why not? I would.

Then, of course, we come to Christmas, when perhaps surprisingly, only December 25 is a holiday, not December 26.

So what’s my point? Am I suggesting that those CEBR morons are right? That maybe there are too many holidays and the poor workers have far too much time to themselves.

No, it’s far simpler than that.

When there’s a holiday in the UK, most High Street shops are open (except on Christmas Day). It makes sense, doesn’t it. If you’re on holiday, you want to go out and spend your money on stuff. Even on Sundays, the vast majority of shops are open too. Sundays are pretty much as busy as Saturdays. And with the tills ringing, the shops do well and the economy picks up.

Except, that is, if you’re in Spain.

With the exception of Madrid and a few other places, when there’s a public holiday all the shops are shut. What’s the point of that?? You’ve got all these people on holiday with cash to spend and nowhere to spend it.

Even on Sundays virtually no shops are open in Seville. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Seville is a strongly Catholic city and Sunday is a special day.

No it’s not. While the majority of people might call themselves Catholic, the figures show that only a minority of people actually go to Church every week. The rest are all down the bars getting pissed and eating tapas, as they’re the only places that are open on a Sunday.

So, that’s it. Open the shops on public holidays and on Sundays, let the people in to spend their cash, the shops take more money, shop workers have the – voluntary – chance to earn extra wages, the businesses see their turnover go up and everyone’s happy.

Look, I know what I’m saying is all a bit new for some people. I get it. It’s a bit of a culture thing here. People have never really done it. It might be more difficult for smaller shops to do it. It would all be a bit strange and unnerving and you’d have old people saying things like: “It wasn’t like that in my day. Youngsters today, it’s all wrong, the country’s going to the dogs blah blah blah.” No doubt, some of the more religious lot would get their knickers in a twist over it too. They’d probably claim that shops opening on a Sunday or a public holiday would mark the onset of godlessness, devil worship and Satanic sacrifices across the country or something like that.

The irony is that the only time when shops do open on a Sunday in Seville is in the lead-up to Christmas! The very time when we’re supposed to be celebrating the birth of the bloke who said in the first place that Sunday was a day of rest.

Opening on a Sunday and a public holiday will not precipitate dark times. As we all know, that hasn’t happened in the UK. They’ve had Sunday trading for nearly 20 years and they’re not godless heathens worshipping at the foot of false idols (unless they’re credit cards of course). They’re doing ok, apart from the odd Summer riot here and there.

So, what about it? I know that in several parts of Spain the restrictions on Sunday shopping have been loosened in recent years. It’s just that a lot of people don’t take the opportunity offered.

If the boycott of the banks and the rolling general strikes don’t work, at least in the short term, then maybe this will.

It’s just an idea.

Save Me…… from being trapped in tiny, twisty streets by pointy-headed penitent people

Were a foreigner to stumble accidentally into Seville during this Easter Week, they might be forgiven for thinking that there was some city-wide White Power celebration going on.

Nearly everywhere they looked they might see processions made up of scores of people apparently wearing those very recognizable pointy Ku Klux Klan hoods. And if that was not confusing enough, the fact that many of the hoods were not white, but black, purple, red and other colours, might throw them even more.

But fear not, dear stranger, because you will find no cross-burning lynch mobs here in Seville or, in fact, any other part of Spain during Easter Week – or what is known here as Semana Santa.

For these people are not racists. Far from it. They are, in fact, penitent people, bound to wear the hoods to hide their identities as they parade through the streets in a traditional and very public show of penance for past misdeeds. They are often known as Nazarenos. The pointy hats they wear, which are called capirotes, have been part of Spanish Catholic tradition for hundreds of years, long before the idiots from the KKK borrowed them for their own ends. Truth be told, if brains were dynamite, the KKK wouldn’t have enough between them to blow one of these hats off their stupid, thick, inbred heads.

But back to Seville.

Semana Santa here has become somewhat of a global tourist attraction over the years with more than 70 processions going through the streets during the seven days up to Easter Sunday. With so many, the streets are filled to bursting with people and you can literally turn from one street to the next to find another procession in full swing. Each one is led by a Holy cross, followed by the Nazarenos, and then altar boys carrying incense. What they walk in front of is an amazing sight. It’s called a paso, a huge, ornately-decorated wooden float-type structure depicting lifelike characters and scenes from the Passion, including Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Incredibly, they can weigh up to five tones each and are carried, hidden underneath brightly-coloured fabrics and textiles, by groups of between 20 and 50 costaleros (literally meaning “sack men”). They, in turn, are followed by a drum and trumpet band playing hymns.

Irrelevant of your religious or non-religious beliefs, these processions are an incredible sight to see, each starting out from their own churches and making their way towards the Cathedral in the centre. They can take anywhere between four and 14 hours to make the journey and some processions start as late (or early!) as 3 o’clock in the morning. It’s these late ones which are often silent with only lone drummers keeping the march in time.

Rehearsals for these processions can begin months ahead and the schedules for each are tight because there are so many that take to the streets during the week. So tight, in fact, that when rain prevents a procession from marching, as it has done on several occasions this week, it has to be cancelled, leaving many who worked so hard on it during the year often in tears.

Such is the draw of these processions that Seville is literally swamped with tourists during the week, who fight for even the smallest spaces alongside the locals in the tiny, twisty streets, in a bid to catch the marchers close-up and even to reach out and touch the pasos as they pass.

But once you’ve seen a procession or two and you’re thinking of making your way out of the centre to escape the crush, think again. The growing number of pasos all going on at the same time results in blocked roads and massive crowds which are virtually impossible to navigate through. You can literally be trapped in the centre as the pasos slowly wind their way round and round in what feels like an ever decreasing circle.

Military strategists should pay close attention to Seville at Semana Santa. The way the pasos manage to trap several thousand people into the centre in a discrete and carefully stage-managed, yet scarily effective, fashion is a brilliant tactic. If only the Russians had done the same thing with the Nazis in Stalingrad in 1942, the Second World War would have been over a year earlier.

Such has been the popularity of Semana Santa in recent years in particular, that the areas around the Cathedral itself have been cordoned off, making the crush outside these VIP sections even tighter. High-sided boards are erected to block views and special seating behind them is only for those willing to pay the high fees for a ticket available from the burly security guards and police who patrol the entrances and exits. The poor people stay outside if they know what’s good for them.

My question is this. If Jesus were miraculously to turn up here in Seville one day and see all this elitist behaviour going on, stopping average people from getting a glimpse of the pasos as they descend on the Cathedral, I think he might have a few harsh words for those that block.

It is particularly ridiculous now as Spain is going through a tough recession and many people who don’t have jobs can ill afford the cost of getting a front row seat. The evidence for this is clear, with row upon row of empty seats inside the VIP areas, seen on the local TV stations and from special vantage points out in the areas marked for us peasants.

 But if the organizers are trying to make a bit of extra cash off the back of the processions, I have a better idea.

With so many processions going on at the same time, it is inevitable that some will occasionally cross paths. On Wednesday, two processions came into Plaza del Duque, in the centre, at the same time during the afternoon. One on the east of the square, one on the west. Both were heading south and wanted the same exit.

The bands from each procession tried to outdo each other by playing their different tunes louder and louder. For a few minutes it felt like it was all going to kick off as the two processions squared up. But then, like true Christians, they forgave each other went the separate ways out of the square. Nevertheless, I have to say that the combination of fervent worshipping zeal and the threat of simmering confrontation made for an electric atmosphere! It was like a scene out of “Gangs of New York”.

 There’s nothing like a bunch of Christians kicking ten shades of shit out of each other in a square, with capirotes, candles and crosses being hurled left, right and centre as fists fly. Throw in some tigers and chariots and you’ve got a 21^st century recreation of the Coliseum in Rome. If you get all the processions to meet up simultaneously in Plaza Nueva, the biggest square in the city centre, you could have one massive punch-up as each group vies for superiority and the sacred right to march on the Cathedral itself.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d definitely pay to see that.

Save Me…… from symbolic gestures which divert focus from effective action

Today the Spanish government is set to unveil a predicted 40 billion euros in public spending cuts as part of ongoing austerity measures aimed at tackling soaring unemployment, budget deficits and recession. It comes just a couple of months after the same government announced 15 billion euros in cuts aimed at doing exactly the same thing.

Apparently these cuts will create jobs, boost the economy and generally improve everyone’s well-being and happiness.

How did we get here? The irresponsible actions of the banks, the money markets, the big corporations and the insurance companies. How are they being affected by these cutbacks? By taking taxpayers’ money to bail themselves out and by only giving themselves millions in bonuses this year instead of tens of millions.

How is the average worker/taxpayer (the ones who had their pockets rifled for the bailouts) being affected by the cutbacks? Well, the majority of public sector workers have had to take a compulsory five per cent pay cut, changes to labour laws now make it easier for companies to fire people, severance pay is being cut by a third and both health and education are bearing the brunt of the cutbacks.

Not surprisingly, a great many people in Spain are somewhat angry at this. And that’s why yesterday hundreds of thousands of people across the country took part in a general strike. The second, in fact, to be held in Spain since September 2010.

Flights were severely hit, factories closed, public transport cut back to a bare minimum and thousands of businesses and many schools shut for the day.

Let’s be clear here. We are in this mess because of greed, deregulation and irresponsibility by the banks and the big institutions. The reforms being forced upon us will only serve to make the rich richer by taking more money out of the pockets of those who have already lost a lot. All that these reforms are doing is repairing the damage caused by bailing out these people so that we can be in a position to bail them out again next time.

But I’ll be honest. I’m not sure what the general strike will have achieved yesterday. A one-day general strike in September 2010 didn’t change much. A one-day general strike in March 2012 probably won’t change much either.

There is no doubt that striking is the working person’s strongest and, ultimately, only real weapon. Withdrawal of labour. But one-off strikes will not, I believe, achieve much apart from symbolic gestures of resistance.

When the banks want to go on strike they withdraw their money by denying credit to businesses and individuals and by repossessing houses after having put up mortgage rates to unaffordable levels. They do it all the time. With impunity and without care for anyone or anything except their balance sheets. If taxes go up, they go on strike by taking their money elsewhere or by finding ever more creative ways to avoid and evade tax. They are ruthless and they are consistent. This is the way it has been for so long.

And this exactly where the average working person, small and average sized business has been going wrong all this time. We should be learning a lesson from the banks. We should be following their lead. We should be acting in the same way they act. With ruthlessness and consistency.

There shouldn’t be one-off general strikes. General strikes on a more consistent basis should be seriously considered. The more who join them, the more effective they will be. But not only that. We should, through the people we elect to government, be passing tighter and more ruthless regulation of banking system, the financial markets and more ruthless with the regulation of tax laws and the closing of loopholes which allow big corporations to get out of paying the tax they should be paying. We should also crack down on the growing number of repossessions the banks carry out. After all, it’s our money they’ve got. So the houses belong to us. And if people in every country started doing the same, the big money would run out of places to go.

This is not about damaging the small and average sized businesses that treat their staff with respect and decency. And there are many of them out there. This is about redressing the balance of democracy so that everyone has fair and equal rights.

Now I know what you’re thinking. I’ve got my head in the clouds. I’m talking out of my backside. The average working person can’t afford to go on strike all the time. And even if they did, all that would happen is that the banks and the big corporations would just take their money back out on strike again and find somewhere else to put it.

Not so fast. Because we’ve already seen the seeds being sowed of just the kind of action which will make people sit up and think. It’s called the Occupy movement and what it does is mobilize one of the working people’s biggest untapped resources. The unemployed, the retired and the students. It’s already happening and it needs to continue. If we want fundamental change in our society, if we want to see a rebalance of power away from the big institutions and back to the people, back to true democracy, then this is what we need to keep doing.

The power of striking is more effective than you might think. And if you need specific examples, let me give you two from the UK.

The RMT union, which represents many transport workers and has over 80,000 members, has had long-running battles with London Underground bosses over pay and conditions. It’s because of their actions that London tube drivers and staff have decent pay, decent working conditions, decent holidays and job protection. It’s no secret that they may piss a lot of people off when they go on strike in the capital. But they get results.

Then there’s the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) which represents more than 200,000 people in the UK. It’s through their coordinated action and unity over many years that many postal workers have very good pay and conditions.

“Union” and “strike” are not dirty words, as much as the establishment has worked hard to have us believe, particularly over the last 30 years. Let’s not forget that it was the unions who fought for people to have a decent working week, decent protection and decent conditions to work in. It’s union agreements in Spain that give working people decent rights and conditions but much of which is now being eroded by the very public spending cuts that are being forced on us directly and indirectly as a result of the bailouts.

You might think I’m some extremist lunatic spouting revolution. But if you do, you couldn’t be more wrong. All I’m doing is expressing what a growing number of normal, sane, reasonable people are saying and doing. The evidence is there to see. On the contrary, I’m not suggesting anything extreme or unreasonable. I’m simply suggesting a re-evaluation of our perspective and a realization that we do, in fact, have more power than we think we do. Change is long overdue. So stop feeling guilty and start getting your rights back.

Save Me…… from the fake fruitcakes who prey on the vulnerable on late-night TV

There was one thing that did surprise me a little about the Spanish when I moved here a few years ago. I was always under the impression that Spain, and Andalucia in particular, was strongly Catholic and that many people went to mass every Sunday and sometimes even several times throughout the week.

But the reality is quite different. While three quarters of the Spanish population identify themselves as Catholic, less than a fifth actually attend mass regularly. And among younger people, the figures are even smaller.

Now, where I live in Seville, it is the place to be in Spain if you want to see the Holy Week (Semana Santa) processions every April. They attract thousands of visitors and pilgrims from around the world. But it seems too that while for some people the processions have a deep, sincere and spiritual meaning, for the majority they are simply a tourist attraction.

The reason I mention all this is not because I want to sound off about religion – I’ll save that to another occasion - but because of the way Catholic imagery and iconography has been hijacked here by what is a completely different and ever-growing spiritual industry.

It can be found on a disturbingly high number of TV channels in Spain late at night and it amazes me that it attracts so many followers.

I speak, of course, of tarot card readers, mediums and spiritualists. While Catholicism appears to be on the wane in the Spain – you’ll pardon my alliteration there – it seems a disproportionately large minority of the population can’t get enough of the crap churned out by these charlatans who purport to be in touch with the dead, spirit guides, celestial beings and in some cases God himself (as if he isn’t busy enough answering calls from the Pope).

I’m not saying that you can’t find these nutcases in any other countries in Europe, but I know for a fact in the UK that they aren’t anywhere near as common, especially on the TV.

But here in Spain, if you flip to nearly any channel late at night you can find some idiot holding their hands up to form a cross, sprinkling powder on to an incense burner, lighting and blowing out candles, and gurning and eye-rolling as they tune into the “other side” for the myriad of even bigger idiots who actually call in to their premium rate hotlines because they believe all that shit. 

And as if they’re hoping to mop up the wandering, lost masses who no longer go to church, more often than not they surround themselves with pictures of Jesus, small statues of the Virgin Mary, crosses, pictures of planets and comets, and in at least one case, the Jewish candle holder known as the Menorah. I guess the bloke who has that is hedging his bets by trying to cash in on all the religions out there.

There’s another woman who stands in front of a picture of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian Man, the drawing of a male figure in two standing positions with his legs and arms apart. What’s the message? That if you ring for a reading you too could have the wisdom and talent of da Vinci?

There’s a bloke who wears scores of beads, necklaces and chains around his neck, making him look a little bit like some Indian holy man. Then there’s a woman who regularly burns leaves in a candle and hold her arms up in a V-shape while closing her eyes and sighing as the spirits, no doubt, are summoned to her presence. Yet another reader sports a long, black pony tail and waves his tarot cards in a fan-shape in front of him, as if he’s trying to hypnotise you with the power of the cards.

There’s even a woman who drips hot candle wax on to a paper with a five-pointed star on it which she then puts under a small, hollow, metal pyramid structure on the desk in front of her. I don’t know, maybe this somehow helps her to conjure up the spirits more. She also wears a red cape, which looks like it came out of a fancy dress shop and which makes her look like a crap druid. In the background she’s got a scrolling series of pictures of planets, stars, comets and other celestial images going on. 

But that’s not all.

If all the religious imagery, hocus pocus and general shite spoken by these people isn’t enough to reel you in, some of the mediums have non-celestial sidekicks who sit next to them and who chip in when the phones go quiet. The role of these people is to “big up” the star of the show and tell viewers how wonderful they are, how many people they’ve helped and how they could solve your problems, worries and fears. They say stuff like: “Call now. Change your life. Find out the secrets that have been waiting for you all this time. Discover the things you thought you knew but didn’t know because they were hidden from you. Just one call could change everything in your life, your love, your work and your money,” as they grin sincerely and point to the premium rate hotline number at the bottom of the screen.

It’s like having a bloke stop you in the street and go through your pockets looking for your wallet, credits cards and watch while his mate stands next to him telling you how lucky you are he’s doing it.

Some of the spiritualists also have a gaggle of sunglass-wearing, polo-neck-sweatered musicians sitting behind them playing guitars and keyboards that you can only just make out if you listen really intently. They must be so proud of themselves. Hey mum, look what I do. I play soulless muzak that no-one can hear behind a fake fortune teller on late night TV. I’ve made it. I’m in the big time!

It’s not even as if these mediums always give particularly insightful advice from the “other side”. One of them this week took a call from a woman who said she was always arguing with her husband. The medium, in all seriousness, asked “Are you tense when you have these arguments?” (No, I’m laughing in hysterics because I’m so happy) “Yes, I am,” came the sad reply from the caller. “Well then try to relax and things will be better,” said the medium. And that was it. That was it!!!

I could have told her that for a fraction of the price if she’d called me. In fact, come to think of it, the stupid cow could have told herself it for free!

And herein lies the secret to all this crap.

You see, the people who believe this stuff are often, not always, but often in quite desperate situations, and are as a result, already quite open and inclined to be sucked in by the vague rubbish they’re told. They are willing, even if unconsciously, to read much more into the general comments they’re given than actually exists. So they may often come away with a perception that the reading they were given was incredibly accurate when in fact it was total bollocks. People are more inclined to find meaning and fulfillment in certain statements if they are actively looking for or demanding that link in the first place.

This propensity of the human mind to play tricks on itself, to allow itself to be manipulated and to perceive altered realities is at the heart of the success of fortune telling. What it comes down to is unscrupulous people taking advantage of the vulnerable.

In the 1940s, American psychologist Bertram Forer carried out a famous experiment where he gave each of his students an individual personality analysis, asking them to give it a score out of 5 for accuracy. The average score was 4.26, but in fact, he gave every student exactly the same general, vague description. What he revealed was that people were inclined to accept vague or general descriptions of themselves and their personalities simply because they wanted to believe the results were true. It was particularly true if the subject thought the description only applied to them, if it provided generally positive points and if the person giving it was considered to be in a position of authority. You can read more about it online by typing “Barnum Statements” into Google.

No-one has the power to tell you your future, no matter how much eye-rolling they do, how many leaves they burn, how much wax they drip on to paper or how many spirit guides they claim to be in touch with. No-one has the ability to speak to the dead. Why? That’s because they’re dead. They can’t talk.

But the more that silly, vulnerable, desperate, willing, easily-manipulated people ring in to these crap shows and believe the rubbish they’re being told, the more these people will take advantage of them. Well, if it’s what people want, what’s the problem, you might say? Because it’s fake, it’s unreal, it’s screwing people out of money they can probably ill afford and it plays on the minds of the weakest.

If I encountered one of these fortune tellers face-to-face in the street I might be inclined to do something to them that I shouldn’t (and of course I wouldn’t do as it would be totally illegal). But let’s say, hypothetically, that I did. Then I could say to them “Didn’t see that coming did you, you bastard?! Some fortune teller you are!”