Save Me…… from failing to confront the ghosts of the past

In 1998 former Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested on a visit to the UK, my home country, by British authorities acting on an international warrant indicting him for human rights violations in his home country.

He was held under house arrest in London for nearly 18 months while lawyers and judges argued the case. It was a milestone as it was the first time that judges in Europe claimed universal jurisdiction over a former head of state supposedly covered by amnesty laws in his own country.

While he eventually returned to Chile, the investigation led to judges in South America to strike out amnesty laws there so that dictators like Pinochet could be put on trial in the future.

The man who brought the indictment, and whose investigation helped change those laws in Chile, was Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, the same man who opened an investigation into the deaths of thousands of people during Spain’s own Franco dictatorship.

Why do I mention this now? Well, this very week Garzon is himself in the dock in Spain, accused of abusing his powers and of overstepping his authority as a judge.

It is a cynical trial, one brought by right wing groups in Spain, angry at what they see as Garzon trying to bring the Franco regime to justice for past crimes. They claim that, just like in Chile, Spain’s own amnesty law covers crimes committed during the Franco regime. I sincerely hope this trial, opposed by international human rights groups including Amnesty International, is thrown out as soon as possible.

But, for me as a Brit living in Spain, the fact that it has come about at all, raises a more interesting point about the country, its people and its history.

I’ve always been fascinated by people’s views here in Spain on the Franco regime, how they felt, what they did, what they thought living under a dictatorship that crushed descent, murdered thousands and destroyed democracy.

But what has fascinated me more is the fact that so many people just don’t want to talk about it or say we should just forget about it. Maybe because it brings up painful memories, maybe because it split families in two, maybe because it’s an embarrassing and distressing period in Spain’s recent history for many people.

But is it good to leave it all in the past? I don’t mean people should dredge it all up again. But isn’t it at least worth addressing, analyzing and understanding so that it can finally put to rest what I am sure are deep-seated grievances, agonies, hurt, pain and loss suffered by so many people. Learning from history means the same mistakes may not happen again. Isn’t this exactly what Baltasar Garzon’s investigations have all been about?

I am aware that Spain did pass a 1977 amnesty law covering the Franco period in an attempt, perhaps, to make a fresh start, to put history firmly in the past, to give Spanish society an opportunity to move forward without recrimination. Perhaps.

But let’s not forget that it was done at a time of great instability, less than two years after the death of Franco and with the unity government still greatly sensitive to the role of right-wing hardliners in the military, the very group who had seized power so violently in the first place in the Civil War.

What I’m suggesting is that perhaps there was a certain amount of pressure to pass the law to account for those in the military who still supported and espoused the continuation of the dictatorship. I’m not saying that it was necessarily passed under duress, but history records that there were many in the military and the right-wing who bitterly resented and opposed moves toward full and open democracy in Spain after the death of Franco in 1975. Indeed, as many will know, there was another attempted military coup in 1981 which, thankfully, failed, but which had the country on a knife-edge for a short time.

So how do we reconcile history but ensure justice is served? Is it right to leave things in the past? Don’t they just fester if they are not addressed? Isn’t it better to seek justice, not necessarily retribution and revenge, but at least an admission of responsibility? It’s estimated that up to 50,000 people were murdered by the regime in the years after the end of the Civil War in 1939. 50,000 people. Imagine it. Let me put that into perspective for you. Fill the Sevilla football club stadium to capacity, not a single seat left empty. All gone. Murdered.

These were people perceived to be opponents of the regime. Each one of those people had families; mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters. Many families still don’t know to this day where the bodies of their loved ones are buried. How can Spanish society possibly put history to rest with this hanging over its head? Don’t these people deserve to know what happened to their loved ones?

I acknowledge that some significant things have been done by recent Spanish governments to apparently redress history. For example, the national anthem of Spain no longer contains the lyrics introduced by Franco, and in 2007 the government banned all public references to the Franco regime and removed statues, street names, memorials and symbols associated with it. Such actions are good, but to me, they seem only to bury history a bit deeper rather than deal with it.

Why does this question of Spain’s past fascinate me so much? Well, I think perhaps because I come from a country that has had relatively stable democracy over many generations (that’s not to ignore the fact that it has also been responsible for a few chaotic experiments in democracy elsewhere in the world throughout history). I have never lived under a dictatorship where personal freedoms, the right to vote, the right to descent, were crushed with threats and violence. I suppose I consider myself lucky in that respect. Some people might suggest that, therefore, I could hardly begin to understand the perspective of people in Spain and how they view their own history.

But that doesn’t make sense to me. How can you not want to atone for the past and put it to rest, once and for all? Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Amnesties don’t repair the pain and the hurt.

In Chile, under the Pinochet regime, at least 3,000 people were murdered and more than 20,000 people detained and tortured.

I leave the last word to Garzon himself: “Will Franco’s victims now have fewer rights than Pinochet’s victims?”

Save Me…… from turning into a clown from a TV sketch show

There was a comedy show on British TV about 15 years ago called “The Fast Show”. It consisted of a series of sketches featuring the same characters all cut together quickly – hence the name – which was very popular in the UK at the time.

One of the fictitious characters featured was a Columbian footballer called “Julio Geordio” who played for Premiership team Newcastle Utd.

The sketch consisted of him being interviewed on TV after a match, where he would start out talking English in a strong Columbian accent before slipping into an equally strong Newcastle accent – known as “Geordie” - towards the end of every sentence. The joke doesn´t translate well in words - you have to see it to understand it (find it on Youtube) - but the point it was making was this foreign footballer seemed to be integrating well into local society by the way he automatically slipped into “Geordie” all the time - hence his joke name.

So what on earth has this got to do with me? Well, let me explain.

Here in Andalucia, people have quite a strong regional accent. In fact, the more south west you go in the region, the stronger the accent. The Seville accent is strong, the Jerez accent stronger, the Cadiz accent even stronger and, frankly, when you head off into the rural areas in between, it’s positively indecipherable at times. Very much like Geordie in fact.

I love the accent. But it is a target for good-natured ridicule and jokes among the rest of the Spanish population who see it as a sort-of stereotypical, uneducated, slightly backward, working class accent, in much the same way the Brits take the piss out of the Geordie accent, and, truth be told, the Birmingham and West Country accent as well.

One of Andalucia’s most famous sons is Hollywood actor Antonio Banderas, who originally comes from Malaga. It’s interesting to note that when he’s being interviewed on local TV, he tends to speak in his normal, strong, regional Malaga accent. But when he speaks on national TV or in films, he often adopts a more neutral, clearer Castillan accent – the equivalent of the English accent from south east England. It’s like someone from South Shields talking with a Kent accent!

While not wishing to go into complex phonetical explanations, it is, nevertheless, important to give you an idea of the Andaluz accent.

For a start, the letter “s” is not a big thing among local speakers. They don’t care for it much and leave it out of pretty much every word, unless it begins with an “s”, in which case they grudgingly pronounce it. Most of the time, that is. Unless you go to Jerez, where they really hate it.

For example, the phrase “lo mismo” which means “the same”, becomes “lo mi’mo”. The word “si” which everyone knows means “yes”, incredibly becomes “thi”, as does the number “seis” (“six”) which comes out as “thai”! This is particularly impressive as it achieves a double whammy against the letter “s” in one tiny four-letter word.

The phrase “Soy de Madrid” which means “I come from Madrid” disappears into a lost sea of consonants and vowels in Cadiz where it’s often pronounced “Thoy de Kai’”!

The letter “s”, a whole range of consonants, a load of syllables and most of the prepositions are just swallowed up in the Andaluz accent, never to be uttered. It’s fantastic.

But let’s be fair here. While some may ridicule it and accuse the Andaluzes of mangling words beyond all recognition, you could conceivably argue that they are, in fact, being incredibly efficient with the language. I mean, why spend time saying a lengthy exclamation like “Oh Jesus” (Spaniards pronounce the “j as though it were an “h”) when you can save at least half a second just saying “O-thoo” instead, as they do in Jerez. Now, add up all those extra seconds over the period of a year and just think how much time that leaves them for doing everything else. That’s why they always have so much time to spend at the beach. That, and the fact that there are bugger-all jobs in Andalucia as well, of course.

So, to get back to my original point; what has all this got to do with “Julio Geordio”? Well, while I don’t speak Spanish fluently, I get by reasonably well enough. The problem is that I sometimes find myself automatically sliding into Andaluz pronunciation, dropping s´s, leaving out the ends of words and generally mumbling a lot. I do it without thinking to be honest, because when it’s what you hear from everybody every day it sort of becomes second nature when you speak it.

But I know I have to be careful, because some people might think I’m taking the piss by mimicking the accent. But I’m really not. Honestly. Far from it. I’m actually, subconsciously, probably just trying to fit in. Mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.

Trouble is, maybe I am just turning into “Julio Geordie” and don’t even know it. Maybe what I really am is a cartoon character, a clown who, rather than trying to sound genuine and sincere, just ends up sounding like a complete idiot when he talks Spanish.

Or maybe I shouldn’t worry so much and just dive straight in. Ich bein ein Andaluz!

Save Me…… from f-f-f-f-freezing winters and woefully inadequate flat insulation

As you read this, you may be sitting in your armchair, on your sofa or in your office chair with the radiator burbling away happily against the wall or the roaring fire glowing in the corner, warming the room from the chilly, windy, wintry, freezing cold outside the window.

Well, if you are, spare a thought for me, because I’m freezing my arse off here in Spain.

Spanish houses and flats (well, ones in the south of the country at least as that’s where I live), are not designed for the chilly winters we get. There’s no wall-to-wall carpets, no radiators in every room and no fireplaces.

Now, to be fair, that’s because if there were, we’d all die of heat stroke during the summer.

As you’ll no doubt be aware, it does get quite hot here in the summer. In Seville, it’s regularly in the mid 40s in July and August. So a flat with concrete floors, air conditioning and windows with shutters but no curtains is perfect for keeping the heat out and the cool in. And it’s hot here more than it’s cold.

But in December and January, it gets cold. Very cold. I don’t mean -10C cold. It’s not that cold. That’s just silly. I mean +5C cold. Now, if you’re reading this in the UK or another northern outpost, you’re probably wondering what the hell I’m going on about. +5C in winter is positively roasting where you are.

But imagine what +5C feels like in a flat with bare concrete floors, no curtains and no radiators. Yes, that’s right. It feels like -10C.

As I sit here and write, I am shrouded in a thick blanket, my teeth chattering and my knees knocking together in time. Add a double bass and a trumpet to that noise and you’ve got a version of “Haitian Fight Song” by Charles Mingus right here in my flat (find it on “youtube” to see what I mean).

Now, ok, I know what you might be thinking. If you’re a regular reader, you will know that back in October I complained bitterly about the hot weather hanging around in Seville well past the summer. I said I was fed up with the sun and wasn’t it time it got cold. So, right now, you might be thinking: “Oh for God’s sake, shut your mouth, you moron. First it’s too hot, then it’s too cold, make your mind up.”

Fair point. But it’s my blog, so sod off. I’ll write what I like. If you were sitting here next to me shivering you’d feel exactly the same way. I don’t claim to be fair and balanced. I just write what I feel. And right now I feel bloody freezing.

I’ve said it before. Seville is a city of extremes when it comes to the weather. It’s loads of sun and stifling heat for months on end, then it’s loads of freezing cold for ages. At least in the UK, you get a general drizzly fuzz most of the year. You know where you stand there, to a certain extent at least.

That’s not to say that I don’t like the weather in Seville. I do. But it takes a while to get used to it. It’s certainly not boring, I’ll give it that.

For example, now it’s winter, my wife and I play the nightly game of “Who’s got most of the duvet?”. It’s a game I normally lose as she is very protective of her side of the bed and grabs hold of the duvet like a teenage girl clutching a Justin Bieber autograph. Try and take it off her and you’re a dead man.

I’ve tried to reason with her, suggesting that if I could just have a bit more of the duvet on my side I wouldn’t have such a hacking cough and the first stages of pneumonia. But she just accuses me of trying to take all the duvet for myself as she pulls yet more of it over to her side. I get my own back by snoring loudly.

The thing is, it’s so cold at the moment that we’ve even put three more blankets – yes, three! – on top of the duvet for extra warmth. But they too seem to edge over to her side during the night, so that I wake up each morning with icicles on my toes and frost on the end of my nose.

I remember a few years ago the comedian Billy Connolly telling a story about a time he stayed in a freezing place in Scandinavia. It was so cold, he said, that he woke up in the morning to find a small ice cube in his bed. He wondered what on earth it could be, but when he finally threw it on the fire it made a fart sound.

I know how he felt.

So, please, I ask you. No, I beg you. Search your soul to find some empathy for me. Send me your warmth and ideally make a contribution to my “buy a portable radiator” fund. All donations are gratefully received.

And tell my wife to let me have some of the bloody duvet at night as well. I need it. I’m so tall that my legs stick out the bottom of the bed anyway, so it’s only right I should have a bit more.

Save Me…… from failing at yet another New Year’s resolution

A new year always throws up a lot of different thoughts and emotions, looking back at what you’ve done, looking forward to what you want to achieve.

As is often the way, you set out with a drive and enthusiasm for new plans and new goals and then by the third week of January you think, what’s the point and forget all about it.

But this year things need to be different. I’m in my early 40s now and have found myself thinking about my health more often in recent years. Those who know me know that I’m a big lad. I’ve always been tall – the tallest in our family (so much so that I still occasionally call my younger brother “wee man” even though he’s close on six foot tall himself).

 But when I was a kid I was skinny as anything and took a lot of bullying at school as a result. It was always difficult to find clothes to fit me too. I might find a shirt or jacket the right size for my body, but the arms would be half-way up to my elbows.

Now I’m older I’m still, of course, tall, but I’m also big as well. I’m not grossly fat, but I do need to lose weight. And, as has been the case my whole life, I still have trouble finding clothes to fit me. Especially in Spain. In the UK I was an XXL and were it not for Marks and Spencer I would have been walking round in bin liners. It’s alright for most of you who are average size. The High Street is a cathedral to clothes of all designs for you. But alas, it never has been for me. And it’s worse in Spain.

Over here, people are generally shorter and smaller. So I’ve discovered that even though I’m exactly the same size as I was in the UK, I’m a 3 or 4 or even a 5XL here. They don’t have M&S here, so it has been a case of not buying many clothes at all here and just waiting until I make trips back to the UK.

That was until I found a shop in Jerez last week. It used to be a common sight on the UK High Street but for some reason it moved out of the UK a few years ago. But it’s still here in Spain and it does a section especially for big and tall men like me. It’s C&A. I didn’t know what the C and the A stood for when it was in the UK and I still don’t now. But I don’t care, because it’s got clothes that fit me. And they’re not those terrible, out-of-fashion baggy things that you usually only get in those XXXXXXXL outlet stores you find stuck in some out-of-the-way industrial estate, advertised by some crappy hand-made sign stuck in a dual-carriageway layby.

So, that’s my first New Year’s resolution out of the way already – find some decent clothes that fit me in Spain - and it’s only January 6.

The second one, and the real reason I write this today, is to get fit and lose weight. Like I said, we all say these things at the start of each year but then forget about them a few weeks in. But I figured that by putting it on the record it would give me a bit of extra motivation to achieve it.

So, for the record, this year in August me and the wife plan to walk the Camino de Santiago. Well, not all 850km of it, but probably 150km at least.

For those that don’t know, the Camino is an ancient pilgrims’ route to the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostella in Galicia, north west Spain, which is said to house the tomb of the apostle St. James. Every year, thousands of people walk part or all of the route, collecting stamps along the way in the special Camino “passport” which then entitles them to an official certificate at the end. There are many different routes you can take to Santiago, but the most common one is the inland route across northern Spain which starts in the Pyrenees at the Spanish-French border. Only the most dedicated start here as it’s more than 800km and can take over two months to complete. Many people do the last 100km as this is the minimum distance needed to quality for the passport stamps and the certificate. But we want to do a little bit further than the minimum. It’ll mean averaging about 20km a day for a week and staying in the traditional hostels known as “albergues” each night. It isn’t too bad, but harder if you’re out-of-shape as we are.

So we have already started preparing. Last week, we walked a tricky river gorge stretch in the Sierra de Grazalema, south east of Seville. It was only 10km but the need to clamber up and down rocky outcrops and negotiate very slippery paths made the route a “media” in the guidebook instead of the easiest “baja”.

On January 1 we went for a 4km walk along the beach at El Puerto, near Jerez – very straightforward if you’re walking along the flatter, more compact sand close to the water’s edge, but harder if you’re walking through the deeper stuff we deliberately chose further up the beach. Ok, neither route was very long. But it was a start for us. So we’re pushing ourselves a bit further each time.

The Camino is an important route for so many people, particularly for pilgrimage. For me, it’s about getting fit. The religious thing used to be important to me, but not anymore. I’ve toyed with it – religion, not the Camino - a couple of times in my life, but have always come to the same conclusion, that it’s not for me. That’s not to say I don’t respect others’ beliefs – I do. But it does nothing for me I’m afraid.

So that’s it. The Camino in August. We’ve got no choice now. I’ve said it for the record. Wish us luck, won’t you.

Save Me…… from the wheeling out of “tradition” as a defence for the indefensible

Imagine a boxing match between two equally matched heavyweight opponents – let’s say Lennox Lewis and Muhammad Ali (they don’t have to be from the same era).

But before the bell goes for round one, let’s put Lewis in the ring with Ali and George Foreman at the same time, just to get him warmed up and to test him out, take a few hits here and there, maybe a few hard ones to the jaw too. A couple of rounds like this and Lewis should be well and truly warmed up, if not a little light headed. Ok then, let the fight begin!

No, hang on a minute. Let’s now put Lewis up against Mike Tyson. Just a couple more rounds before the big fight kicks off. A few more rock hard punches to the ribs and jaw, maybe a bit of blood showing on Lewis’ face by now as one of his eyes starts to close up a bit, because of the swelling.

Ding, ding, Round one! No, wait, we need to loosen him up a bit more before the big one-on-one starts. Let’s get Wladimir Klitschko in to knock a few shades out of him for a couple more rounds. Lewis is looking a bit tired now, a bit beaten down, a bit light on his feet, a bit bloodied. Oh well.

Now the big face-off can finally start. One against one. Titan against titan. Legend against legend. This is sure to be the fight of the century. After all, Ali and Lewis are equally matched. It’s a fair fight between two of the ring’s true legends!

Oh dear. Ali, wearing the red trunks and for some reason carrying a red cape too, finishes off a weary, tired, bloodied Lewis in less than three minutes. The bell doesn’t even ring in time to save him.

This, dear reader, is the honourable, classical, traditional and fair sport of bull fighting.

But something is happening in two days that might just begin to re-balance the odds. In two days it´ll be January 1, 2012. A big day in the history of bull fighting. For in two days’ time, bull fighting becomes illegal in Cataluña, the first region in Spain to ban it outright.

It is my sincere wish that the rest of Spain will follow this example quickly so that we can banish this “sport” to the dustbin of history forever.

Some people say it’s tradition and so it should be protected.

Some other people say that while they don’t support bullfighting, banning it will only encourage those that do support it to fight for its survival even harder, and that we should let it disappear naturally and gradually.

Yet more say that, well, it brings the tourists in and that’s good news for the economy and you can’t argue with that.

Others even suggest that the decision by Cataluña to ban it is no more than a political two-fingers to the rest of Spain designed to push the region’s growing independence movement that little but further. These people, while actively opposing bull fighting, are opposed to the ban on political grounds alone.

Well, let me be absolutely clear where I stand on this subject, so that there’s no suggestion I’m sitting on the fence.

Bull fighting is barbaric, disgusting, cowardly and inhuman. There is no bravery associated with it. I might have an ounce of admiration for the matador if he were to get in the ring with the bull by himself from the start without anyone else’s help, instead of letting the banderilleros, picadors and the horses all loose on the stricken animal as well. Cowards, the lot of them. And I’d say it to their faces as well. I bet they don’t even ask the horse if he feels like going in the ring or not.

Here’s a shocker. I truly believe that the more matadors are gored and injured the better, frankly. It might seem a shocking thing to say, but I don’t care. If it means that people who support it now generally start to question its safety then fine with me. I don´t want to see anyone hurt or injured – but that includes the bull too. I always cheer for the bull whenever it’s shown on TV here – and thankfully that’s not much anymore, although they still show it on Andalucia’s regional channel CanalSur on Sunday afternoons during the season.

The sooner we banish this pathetic excuse for a “sport” to the history books the better. And if a few matadors getting hospitalized along the way helps speed up that process, then the sooner the people who defend this disgusting spectacle might actually realise what a bunch of shameless idiots they’ve been all this time.

There are not many things I feel strongly about. But this is one of them. And I’d be quite happy to defend my position with a few punches of my own if anybody felt particularly strongly about confronting me over my “insults” to one of Spain´s “finest traditions”.

As to tradition? Bollocks. It was tradition in the 19^th century to shove kids up chimneys to clean them, it was tradition in the 15^th, 16^th ands 17^th centuries to burn witches, and it was tradition in the Middle Ages for estate lords to have “first night” with any virgin bride.

If it’s just a case of politics, that’s surely the lamest reason to oppose a ban. Come off it! And, as for letting it die a natural death, well that could take generations.

Opposition from Spaniards to bull fighting is growing every day. Yet of course, it’s always the minority in these cases who shout the loudest. It was the case with fox hunting in the UK, but thankfully, good sense won out in that case a couple of years ago when they banned it too.

So, I’m very much looking forward to January 1. May Cataluña be the first of the bull fighting dominoes to fall in Spain.

And if you feel particularly opposed to what I’ve said, I’m more than happy to have a fight with you. Only, unlike with the bulls, it’ll be a fair fight. I’ll get in the ring with you all by myself.

Happy New Year!

Save Me…… from the withdrawal symptoms of a very competitive Christmas

Christmas in Spain is very different to Christmas in the UK, at least as far as our family goes. It’s a lot less dangerous.

For a start, it begins one day earlier in Spain. Tomorrow, the 24^th December, is a big day here, with presents and a big meal. Christmas Eve in the UK isn’t really anything specific, apart from an excuse to open the jumbo tin of Quality Street sweets you’ve been desperate to break into ever since you picked them up in the supermarket a week before (or in my case, pick up two tins, chomp through the entire contents of one before Christmas, and then pretended I only ever bought one in the first place).

In Spain, the presents aren’t that big at Christmas. Little to average ones are handed out on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. That’s because the biggies are saved for January 6, the “Dia de Reyes” (Day of the Kings). Just when you thought everything was over and it was time to get back to work for another year, the Spanish pull this one out of the bag just to stretch the joy, celebration, over-eating and credit card limits a little bit further.

While everyone in the UK has already been miserably back at work for five days (or four if you’re in Scotland – they get January 2^nd as an extra day to recover from the excessive boozing one on January 1^st), the Spanish are parading through the streets in a series of floats celebrating the Three Kings, chucking sack-loads of tiny sweets at kids of all ages standing on the pavements as they go past (tip – using an upturned umbrella is a surefire way of catching a lot more sweets as they’re hurled with gay abandon from the passing floats. The drawback is that you tend to barge out the smaller and real kids who are standing under your umbrella trying desperately to catch whatever’s left. But the guilt wears off quickly when the sugar rush from the sweets kicks in.

Anyway, this year, we’re spending Christmas in Spain. Last year, we were in the UK, in six foot snow drifts and temperatures of minus 10. This year, it’s temperatures of plus 10 and a bit of drizzle if we’re lucky. I’m very much looking forward to it. But I will miss one thing from Christmas in the UK – the excitement and the danger.

What I mean by that is the annual festive playing of Monopoly and/or poker.  

In my dad’s house these are not so much games as open warfare. Warfare indeed, but in a strangely controlled, yet thrillingly high risk atmosphere. For in this house, Monopoly and poker are not known by their given brand names – they are known as “Kill Or Be Killed.”

It’s a ritual, literally. Some families go to Midnight Mass. Some sing carols around the roaring fire, some sip hot mulled wine and toast the good fortune of friends and family.

In my dad’s house, we set out to utterly and completely destroy our gaming rivals as they sit round the table in wonky Christmas cracker paper hats, burping and farting furiously from all the beer, coke, little tiny sausages, roast potatoes, turkey and pistachio nuts they’ve consumed.

It’s the same adrenalin rush you get from sticking your finger in a live plug socket or slamming your younger brother’s head in the fridge door when he was six and warning him not to tell your dad or you’ll set fire to his favourite Scalextric racing car. You know it’s wrong, but you just have to do it again.

Quite why it generates such competitiveness is, now I sit here and think about it, a mystery. But it’s always been that way. While I don’t visit my dad’s every Christmas, when I do the games are the highlight of the festive week. And while it may result in angry slamming down of cards, the chucking of tiny red hotels across the table in tantrums and barely veiled threats of comic violence when you load the deck while others are getting a beer from the fridge or going for a pee, it remains tightly controlled around the table – as if there were some invisible boxing ring ropes surrounding it.

The vanquished may storm off to the next room to watch the telly and angrily stuff fistfuls of chocolates and peanuts down their gob so there won’t be any left for the others, while vociferously claiming an unspoken conspiracy by the remaining players to drive them out of the game and that “you’re all a lot of cheating bastards and I’m not playing with you again”. But you can bet they’ll be right back at the table the next time to do it all over again. 

We should invite a psychiatrist around one year to observe. He’d probably suffer a breakdown watching it and have to call another psychiatrist just to take over from him.

Meanwhile, in Spain, the family are sitting round a big table full of top quality prawns, calamares, jamon Serrano and fish, quaffing champagne and sparkling wine and laughing loudly at others’ jokes, before falling asleep in front of the TV. It’s quite a culture-shift.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t find Spanish Christmases boring. Far from it, I love them. But they’re different. If Christmases were like films, then Spanish Christmases in my wife’s family would be like watching James Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life”. They leave you filled with warmth, cheer and happiness and a comforting after-glow.

Christmases in my dad’s house are like being in The Bourne Identity and Casino Royale at the same time, while being strapped to the front of the world’s fastest rollercoaster as a pack of angry Rottweilers snap and strain on metal chains just inches from your balls. Scary, shocking and nerve-wracking. But a hell of a lot of fun.

Save Me…… from the profession I once loved

A storm is brewing. The dark clouds of corruption, criminality and cover-up are growing day by day. It is a story of huge magnitude, a thriller that is sure to have seismic repercussions for years to come. The spotlight is focusing, and those with something to hide are deeply, deeply worried. It’s a story that the British tabloid media could splash on its front page week after week.

Except, this time, they are the ones who are at the centre of the shit storm.

Let me explain.

For 17 years, before moving to Spain, I worked both in and with newspapers, radio and television and gained a perspective of it from both sides of the fence – ten years as a journalist and seven years as a PR spokesman for a company with a very, very public face.

Since moving to Spain, I’ve taken a different direction. But the industry that I spent so many years in, still fascinates me. Which is why I have been so glued to the growing storm that has been engulfing the British tabloid media in recent months. It’s a storm which, in this writer’s humble opinion, is long, long overdue.

It’s complicated. But in a nutshell, in 2007 a reporter for the News of the World newspaper was jailed for illegally intercepting phone messages involving members of the British Royal family. He was portrayed at the time as a “rogue” reporter, a one-off who shamed the newspaper. But since then it has emerged that this was far from the truth. Arrests, sackings and resignations have followed at parent company News International. The News of the World – the biggest selling paper in the UK - has been shut down, a parliamentary inquiry, a public inquiry overseen by a judge and a police investigation are all ongoing. A spotlight has well and truly been turned on not just News International – which also owns The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times and which is part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, which also owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal – but on the whole British tabloid media and its ethos. Bombshell after bombshell – the hacking of a murdered schoolgirl’s mobile phone, illegal payments to police for information, the use of private detectives to follow Members of Parliament and others – has exploded into the public domain in recent months. And it is far from over.

It is the UK’s very own Watergate. The shit, as it were, has finally hit the fan.

So why should what I think be of any interest? Well, during my 10 years as a journalist, I briefly did shifts at News International and during my time in PR I dealt with all the tabloid media at both regional and national level. I found the tabloids to be aggressive, arrogant, fearless, bullying and not always that interested in getting the facts right.

That arrogance naturally seeped through to regional journalism, where, in the decade I was in it, there was a general attitude that somehow we were the crushers of corruption, the gladiators of truth, the juggernauts of morality and anyone who got in our way had something to hide.

But most of the time it was bullshit. Stories were often “flammed” up – written so that they were more exciting, bigger, better, than the reality really was. And all because we felt we had a right to, we had a duty to, a need to beat the opposition, to go one better. The more I saw of it, the more disillusioned I got with it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, regional dailies, where I spent the majority of my career, were not in the same league as the nationals when it came to “bigging up” stories. But the attitude was the same. We almost felt like we were untouchable.

I can say for a fact that when mistakes were made, the last thing the paper wanted to do was to offer an apology. Normally, a “right of reply” would be suggested first – this would be along the lines of “Do you want to write a letter and we’ll carry it in the letters’ page?”. I always thought this was a cheap get-out. Even if that wasn’t sufficient and an article was required to correct the facts, it wasn’t written as a correction, it was written as a “follow-up”, as though new information had just come to light. Again, it was bullshit. And all because the general attitude was that it was bad or weak to admit a mistake had been made. If a correction or apology was finally needed it was virtually never given the same prominence as the original offending story. More often than not it was tucked away far back in the paper in a corner.

I experienced the full force of the national tabloids when, after ten years, I took the job in public relations. It was for a very large company, which employed a lot of people and was never far from the headlines. I talk in past tense, but it’s still there, of course. I’ve just moved on to pastures new having spent seven years there.

The aggression, the arrogance, the spin, the ignoring of facts that didn’t fit a given agenda, were all regular fare when it came to some in the tabloid media. The irony was that PR was seen as something seedy by the journalists. But the fact was that those with the biggest agenda, the most aggressive spin, were the tabloids themselves.

And the thing I found hardest to accept - as my former boss would no doubt attest to - was that there was little point in challenging them. The feeling was that to do so would cause more trouble than it was worth. The beast was too big to battle.  

In recent weeks in the public inquiry, we’ve seen the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler talk about how they felt when the News of the World hacked into the voicemail of their daughter, giving them false hope she was still alive, and the parents of missing little girl Madeline McCann reveal their horror at the bullying and downright lies of several tabloids.

We’ve even seen some defend these actions – one former News of the World reporter told the inquiry “privacy is for peadoes” and said that he didn’t see anything wrong in hacking phones. What sort of scumbag is this man that he actually thinks like that? Is his sense of decency so warped that he doesn’t know right from wrong anymore?

It’s not as if people haven’t been complaining about this sort of thing for years. Of course they have. But it’s just that society has reluctantly accepted it as the sacrifice for a “free press”. Any voices of descent have been quickly stamped on by the bully boys of the tabloid press as a direct attack on freedom of expression. And people have been intimidated.

But in the quest for ever-increasing sales, ever more shocking headlines, the tabloids have long since crossed the line of morality, fairness, decency, compassion and, in many cases, legality.

I became a journalist because I wanted to expose the bad guys, to write about important things, things that mattered, things that people cared about. Somewhere along the line, the tabloids have lost perspective, they’ve forgotten what’s right and wrong, they’ve become morally bankrupt. They’ve forgotten how important the job of a journalist should be. Instead, they pump out truck-loads of “pap” – just look at the average tabloid to see how many stories are based on celebrities, TV shows and which sports star is shagging which glamour model – and they have been prepared to stomp over anybody just to get that bigger scoop.

There are still great papers and great journalists out there, uncovering corruption and wrong-doing. But the industry has been tainted – no, smeared more like – by the deeds of those under focus now.

I’ve gone from being a fervent supporter of a free and self-regulated press to someone who is now very much in favour of statutory – and strict - regulation of the press. But I fear the true journalists will lose out because of that.

I sincerely hope certain people end up behind bars when this is all finished. That’s exactly where they deserve to be. This industry has needed a serious clean-up for a long time. I´m glad it finally appears to be happening.