15 May 2011.....

Do keep up

....was a Sunday, just one of fifty two scheduled to take place this year. It was also the one hundred and thirty fifth day of 2011 and for those of a female persuasion looking to make an early start on the shopping, there were two hundred and twenty three days to Christmas. Family birthday's aside, anything else spring to mind? Thought not, so put the news on!!

Last December, Mohamed Bouazizi,  a Tunisian fruit and vegetable street seller set himself alight in protest at the dictatorial Government regime which denied him, and many others of his impoverished ilk, the opportunity to scratch a meagre living. Long before his death, he was the first of hundreds, the protests had spread far and wide as downtrodden citizens found their voices. Other nations, Algeria, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Syria to name but a few, soon followed and for the same reasons as countless pro-democracy rebellions took hold and a popular uprising, the Arab Spring, very quickly grew a pair.

The Cathedral or great Mosque of Córdoba

Even though they both begin with the letter C, Cairo isn't Cordoba and even the giant Mezquita, (pronounced meth-kee-ter), once a great mosque in the beautiful Andalusian city, provides little more than a tenuous connection between the two. Sentiment clearly crosses continents though because, inspired by the manner in which mass resentment forced historic change throughout the Middle East and North Africa and fearful for their own future, Spanish students, youth groups, unemployed folk and a great many employees; the self styled "Indignados" (The indignant), embarked upon their own campaign of protest in the very heart of their nations capital Madrid. Tahrir Square anyone?

Left - Mr Bean   Right - The Spanish PM 

The Spanish economy is massive, the fourth largest in the eurozone and amongst the top twelve in the world, it's also in deep, deep trouble. Soaring unemployment, presently well in excess of 20 per cent of the workforce, is only matched  by the rate at which Spain is accumulating debt, a burden becoming harder and harder to service with plummeting tax revenues. Beleaguered Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, unkindly likened to Mr Bean, appears to have few answers and a year ago introduced massively unpopular austerity measures in an attempt to tame the spiraling deficit.  Spaniards aren't stupid though and on Sunday May 15th hundreds gathered in Madrid's iconic Puerta del Sol square to vent their anger and frustration. Many simply stayed on at the end of the day and so began the first tented city with more and more of the disenchanted and jobless joining the completely peaceful protest every day.

The movement known as 15-M after the day on which Puerta del Sol was first occupied soon spread to other Spanish towns and cities, and, at the last count more than 160 locations nationwide, mainly town squares and plaza's, housed protesters demanding economic and political reform. While the world watched, just as it did as events unfolded elsewhere, Mr Bean, (does anyone actually know his first name?), was dealt another humiliating blow by the Madrid group on the eve of the countrywide local elections scheduled for May 22nd. The Spanish Electoral Board ordered a "day of reflection" free of campaigning, mass gatherings and political messages for the Saturday before the poll. This order was upheld by the Supreme Court who also decreed protesters should vacate their encampment by midnight on Friday the 20th. The deadline came and went; unlike the "squatters in the square" who studiously ignored the instruction and mockingly painted one placard with the words, "leave us alone we're reflecting" A day later the ruling Socialist party were stuffed out of sight in all four corners of the country.

Finally, the authorities in Barcelona, the scene of another massive protest camp, lost patience and began to forcefully remove people from the the site at the city's Plaza de Catalunya on the flimsy pretext of clearing the area to allow Barcelona football fans to celebrate their teams victory, or otherwise, in that weekend's Champions League final. Predictably, heavy handed police action resulted in injuries and outrage. 
Spain is a Constitutional Monarchy and has been so with a democratic Government, albeit a largely successful one, for less than forty years. The politicians at the top of the tree mistakenly believe that they control the reins of power, an error they'll need to put right pretty quickly because the people who elected them to high office in the first place have never been more disgruntled. A salutary lesson.

Any flimsy excuse

Friday May 20th

None of their countrymen live in Elche

It started at about eleven o'clock on Wednesday night, completely unannounced, just like always and must have gone on for a good half an hour. Each time I thought it had finished, even more bangs, in rapid succession and increasing in volume, rent the air until it stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Living in Spain, these things are commonplace and are rarely publicised beforehand, at first I thought Real Madrid or Barcelona had just won something important, that's often the start of most of the impromptu ones. But no, Barca had had the whole day off and earlier in the evening Madrid had taken part in a pretty docile friendly in Murcia for the Lorca earthquake victims. FC Porto had just won the Europa League but to the very best of my knowledge not many, if any, Portuguese live in Elche, so unless a few American pilots had inadvertently bombed my home town instead of Tripoli, which is perfectly feasible for the US military, I was well and truly stumped.

Ring-fenced

If you haven't already guessed, I'm writing about the mightily impressive firework displays Spain, and the Costa Blanca in particular, do so well, seemingly on a whim. I guarantee you that whatever the size of the national debt, however many jobs or services get chopped as part of cost cutting exercises, the Spanish obsession with  pyromania will continue unabated and the budget for sending hundreds of thousands of euros up into the night sky amid colourful and noisy plumes of smoke will be ring fenced. Forever! It isn't just town councils spanking all that dosh either, I'll get to that in a bit, but whatever the rights and wrongs of whether or not it's money well spent, the end result is, well, pick an adjective; spectacular, amazing, brilliant, incredible. They're all appropriate.

Doh

In the United Kingdom, there's probably only November the fifth and New Year's Eve where, to any great degree, fireworks are that popular. This is just as well because on "Bonfire Night" the fire service is at full stretch and casualty departments have to bring in extra staff as people set fire to themselves, lose fingers, eyes and generally do themselves all kinds of avoidable damage. Even innocent animals aren't immune to the mayhem either, some people, delinquent teenagers in the main, think it's a bit of a spoof tying a Catherine Wheel to a dog's tail or sticking a rocket in a cat's bottom and then videoing the ensuing terror on their mobile phone once the blue touch paper has been lit. Even the "organised" displays are dismal, because from behind the safety perimeter, which is usually about three thousand yards away, you can see still a team of blokes in silhouette scurrying around lighting the fireworks individually by torchlight. Britain needs to get with the programme!

Fire Brigade not required

For a start, in Spanish towns and cities whole blocks are closed  to traffic and off limits to pedestrians the day before a big show and miles and miles of cabling criss crosses the streets. Sure, it never starts at the time the organisers advertise, (nothing, not a single thing ever does here), but it is always, without fail, worth the wait. Having been weaned on a diet of asthmatic ten minute shows in England which you can just about see let alone hear, the first proper event I witnessed since moving to Spain took my breath away for a variety of reasons; the ear popping sounds, the length of the thing, the carefully choreographed timetable and the sheer spectacle. Even the vast amount of smoke generated during and after was thoughtfully blown out to sea. For the record too, this, (and loads more of comparable brilliance since), took place in a small town - Santa Pola - that has no permanent Bomberos (Fire Brigade) presence.

Briefly because there's a little more I'd like to say, every August in Elche, the thirteenth actually, the mother and father of all firework shows takes place. I've covered it before so read my words here and then check this out on You Tube which is just one view of a city of 200,00 people celebrating the most amazing event, an occasion that makes the national news the morning after. It's called the nit de l'alba, the evening when all four corners of the city lob monumental quantities of explosive ordnance into the sky for almost an hour. You have to see it to believe it, if only once.

Never under-estimate the element of surprise

Weddings seem to be quite a favourite amongst the unofficial or private "do's" at which fireworks feature quite prominently, not at the church obviously but I bet someone has tried in the past. I once had the misfortune to be walking past an apartment building when a bride in her pretty frock emerged. A split second later a string of fire crackers fifty metres long erupted into life just the width of a road away on the opposite pavement. To say I was startled would be slightly understating things. I wasn't sure what to do first;  gather my scrambled senses, attend to my badly ringing ears or double check I hadn't just filled my nappy. Spain just seems to be the kind of country that knows how to celebrate properly; where the Brits get blind drunk and then fight, (New Years Eve is a case in point), natives here import shed loads of Chinese fireworks with the stated aim of setting fire to the bleedin' lot of them. The football season has just ended and because it's only ever one of two teams that win anything, both sets of fans stockpile ammo ready for the middle of May. It's great. On Sunday, as I've described before, it's the Municipal elections here so no doubt in the early hours of Monday morning one or other of the warring factions will be getting the matches out.

Getting back to Wednesday night, apparently this was the tenth anniversary of the city of Elche being conferred with the title Patrimonio de la Humanidad.  The designation is assigned by UNESCO to signify cultural magnificence or something like that. I think the bods down the town hall were a bit pleased to get the award a decade ago, so as I said, any flimsy excuse!!