In one of yesterday’s local papers, I read there are 115,000 young Galicians between 35 and 50 still living with their parents, 40% of them even after marrying. This is 19% of those in this age group but for those between 18 and 35 the figure is 65%. To an Anglo, these numbers seem shocking, even if the reasons given are lack of job opportunities and the high cost of housing. But then I read this morning of an LSE report’s damning conclusion that “A ‘lost generation’ of unemployed young people is costing the UK economy billions of pounds a year in benefits, youth crime and educational under-achievement.” More specifically, the report highlighted that “The UK population of 'Neets' - people not in education, employment or training - is more than double that of Germany and France and is still growing”. As a result, said the report, around 20% of young people face the prospect of a lifetime on welfare and the risk of falling into crime. If I had to chose between these extremes, I’d have no difficulty in plumping for the Spanish model. Especially as it reflects stronger family ties.

A new bit of Spanglish, perhaps – El graining. This was in a report on Sunday’s Formula 1 race in Malaysia and refers to tyre deterioration. I say ‘perhaps’ because – like El paddock – it has just been lifted from English and means the same thing. Unlike, say El parking and Un lifting.

My latest 3-year compilation is on THE PRESS and I offer it to all those who feel I’m too negative. I suspect it proves my contention that, if my bog were relentlessly positive, it would be less entertaining:-

2003/4

I‘m impressed that the Spanish national press contains articles on the current depressing events in Northern Ireland [are there any other?]. It strikes me that the UK press does not accord Spain the same honour of reporting on tensions between the central government and both the Basque and Catalunian autonomous communities.


El Mundo reported on Friday that a 425 million year old fossil had been found. The headline for its article referred to the world’s oldest male creature. The Daily Telegraph chose to headline this find as the 425 million year penis. Clearly, you don’t have to reduce the size of your paper to go tabloid. First the sensationalisation and then the down-sizing, a process that Mr Murdoch started with The Times about ten years ago in the UK and, as I have said, is now taking to its logical conclusion.


Here in Spain, the national press gives every impression of being unashamedly elitist. If they have ever faced the temptation to dumb down their contents, then they have successfully resisted it. Not for them the terror of being accused of addressing a white, male, middle-class, middle-brow audience. Or, far worse, of being ‘intellectual’. Middle-brow is the minimum they aim for. In El Mundo today there is an attack on the low-brow, celebrity-obsessed ‘pink press’ in terms which I doubt would have got past the editors of the Telegraph, Times, Independent or Guardian in the UK. Too much fear of losing a huge chunk of their readership.

Personally, I very much prefer my papers this way. But then I believe the world would be a poorer place without its elites. The fact that such a statement is controversial in the UK shows just how unbalanced society there has become.


The Obituary column of El Mundo is nothing if not eclectic. I may be doing little more than revealing the depths of my ignorance here but I am frequently surprised by the obscurity of the people who feature therein. These have recently included a Blues musician from the USA and a singing star from Egypt. Today we had the chap from Philip Morris who invented the Malboro’ Man, plus one of the leading lights of WorldCom, the disgraced telecoms business. Mind you, what I guess was his picture was entitled, David Hemmings, star of the 60s cult film, ‘Blow Up’. Maybe we will get the latter tomorrow, possibly identified as someone else.


In the Spectator this week, Alistair Campbell says that the questions he recently got from Ethiopian journalists were more intelligent that those he used to get from the UK press. I dare say the same would be true if he faced Spanish reporters. The reason is simple; in neither country has the media industry been dumbed down by anything like the egregious tabloid press of the UK. And what was Mr Campbell before his elevation? Why, a tabloid reporter, of course. And what techniques did he bring to the centre of British government? Why those of the tabloid press. Bit rich, him being critical now, eh?


One of the obituaries in El Mundo yesterday was for the famous Canadian actress Suzanne Cloutier, who apparently gave us the best ever interpretation of Desdemona. Today we had the equally illustrious German baritone, Hans Hotter. The others were of people rather less well known.


The queen was reported in the Spanish press today to have ‘baptised’ the QM2. Nice thought.


We are heading for a March general election. What this means is that the always-serious press – which I enjoy – will become very heavy. I am not looking forward to this, especially as it will be followed by months of obsession with the upcoming royal wedding.


Interesting Headlines

- A judge in a grave situation after hitting his head against a wall – Found wandering in the street, apparently
- Man accused of trying to crucify his wife and children – It seems he thought this would rid them of the devil
- Man of 85 accused of killing his 82 year old bride of only two weeks – In a jealous rage, allegedly

These, by the way, are all from the serious, not the pink, press.


The serious press here finally gave in to the pressure and printed today a summary of the reports in the British tabloids of David Beckham’s alleged love life. Up to this point they had studiously ignored this subject, in contrast with the UK media where the stories had featured high in the priorities of even the ‘quality’ press.


In case you missed it, the Bulgarian tight rope walker famous for not using a safety net sadly paid the price in a Minnesota circus ring recently, when one of her silk ribbons snapped. This information comes care of an obituary in El Mundo today. Quite why she rated one of the two daily spots, I cannot guess. Unless it is because she had along the way changed her name from Dessi Kehayova to Dessi España.


You may have missed the pictures of the beheaded American hostage, showing his detached head lying on his back. We didn’t, of course.


Thanks to the Spanish press, I am now aware of what Faria Alam looks like. Although she has been a constant in Sky News headlines for the past few days, we have yet to be shown even her face. Perhaps because of some sort of injunction. For my 3 readers in the USA – and for Brits living in a cave – this is the woman who is said to have slept not just with the Chief Executive of the English Football Association but also with the England Coach.


Both El Mundo and El Pais had obituaries of Bernard Levin last week. It’s hard to imagine even the heavy British newspapers being remotely familiar with his Spanish media equivalents, let alone according one of them the honour of an elegy.


There was a comment in the Sunday Telegraph that self-imposed silence on matters Islamic meant that little would be reported in the UK on the hanging of a 15 year old girl in Iran. So it was good to see that this was fully covered in El Mundo on Monday


Nice to see obituaries in all the Spanish papers today for the third [but almost unknown] member of the team which discovered the DNA helix, Maurice Wilkins. A New Zealander in fact but, like me [and at least one of my American readers], an alumnus of King’s College, London.


A commentator in the Spanish press has suggested that British foxes will have greeted the recent Labour anti-hunting bill with applause. Only if they prefer being gassed, poisoned or shot, I imagine.


The hunting season started last weekend. As did the gun accident season. And yet there is no tabloid press screaming for action and no politicians insisting that ‘something’ must and will be done. Nor, I suppose, packs of lawyers scouring the country for someone to sue. Life in the UK used to be like this, as I recall.


I see that, while I plunder the Spanish press for ideas for blog entries that no one reads, the papers here are doing the same in reverse. Today we had an article about David Beckham anointing rosary beads with fashionability that had been lifted straight from yesterday’s Daily Telegraph. What goes round, comes round, it seems. But at least one person is reading the Spanish versions.


In El Mundo yesterday we had examples of the photos that will adorn packets of cigarettes sold in the EU. These are really quite gruesome. In the same edition, the paper featured only the top half of a picture taken from a web site closed down by the government for showing the mangled bodies of victims of the Madrid bomb atrocity. The paper said, piously, that the bottom half of the picture was just too dreadful to print. There were two ironies here. Firstly, even the top half of the picture would never have made it into any newspaper in the UK. And, secondly, I recall El Mundo opining only a few months ago that the proposed cigarette packet photos were excessive, as they were likely to offend peoples’ sensibilities.


In case you haven’t noticed from the screaming headlines in the UK media, John Peel died yesterday. No, he wasn’t a war hero or a global statesman but just a disk jockey. Excessive as this reaction is, it was nonetheless impressive to see El Pais carrying an article about him today.


There is enormous coverage of the US elections in the Spanish papers. This reflects the fact that all national journals here are still very heavyweight. Very middle-class oriented, it has been said. As a result, journalism in Spain ranks amongst the top professions, something which would be greeted with incredulity [and envy] by both British and, I suspect, American hacks. I seem to recall that, in the UK, journalists now rank just ahead of estate agents. Or was it just behind?


I have commented occasionally on the bizarre obituaries that make it into the pages of the major newspapers here. Today it was the turn of Vaughan Meader, who shot to fame in the sixties because of his ability to impersonate the voices of both Jack and Robert Kennedy. Fascinating. Actually, I might have misspelled both his first and last names. But who would know?


Nice to see a eulogy to Emlyn Hughes in one of the papers yesterday. Though I was a bit confused by the by-line of Walter Oppenheimer. I thought he was a US political columnist, not a soccer commentator.


While largely ignoring what goes on amongst the supporters, the Spanish media can sometimes come across as rather arrogant about the superiority of their football over that of, say, British teams. But who can blame them, some would say, after the performance last week of the English side? Anyway, one report today compared the ‘primitive’ football of Glasgow Celtic last night with the ‘modern’ football of Barcelona. It falls to me to say that the match was tied. And it’s a very long time since the Spanish national team did well in an international competition. Even if they are pretty to watch.


Astonishingly, I read today that Galicia boasts 10 local daily newspapers. God knows how any of them stays in business but I suspect that taxpayer contributions – in one form or another – play a part. There seems to be an awful lot of news about local political developments and new roundabouts. And I rather suspect none of the papers would print a letter about, say, the postprandial state of the chief of police.


2005

As for the referendum on the EU constitution, the government has announced the star team that will promote a Yes vote in all the media. This consists of reporters, footballers, actors and just one ‘intellectual’. Yes, it’s true – in Spain reporters have a status even higher than that of footballers and actors. This is because there’s no real tabloid press here.


Talking of newspapers and politics, at least Spain doesn’t suffer from the curse of an unholy alliance between the government, a press baron and the tabloid press. This, I suspect, will be the lasting heritage of Blairism and I have thought about coining the word Politoids to describe it. If it catches on, you heard it here first. But it probably won’t as it sounds rather like a lot of haemorrhoids. A pile of piles. I’d better stop now.

Topical Quote of the Day - I’m with you for a free press. It’s the newspapers I can’t stand. Tom Stoppard


I may have hit upon the reason why the Spanish local press flourishes to an extent not true of the UK at least. The national papers here are undeniably heavy and carry little by way of ‘human interest’ stories, which are left to their local brethren. Happily these acquit their responsibility without stooping to tabloid levels of reportage. Long may this continue.


I’m sad to say The Spectator hasn’t seen fit to print a letter from me about ‘politoids’ in the UK but I see that their Political Editor has a column on this theme this week. Just a coincidence, I suppose.


The Spanish press certainly couldn’t be accused of under-covering the Papal election in Rome. El Pais yesterday devoted its first 12 pages to the story, followed by its Leader and Opinion pages in their entirety. I couldn’t bear to check El Mundo. Let’s hope that this Pope defies his age and ill health and lives long enough to allow us all to recover from the hysteria of the last few weeks. It would certainly help if he could refrain from making himself as much a celebrity as the last one. And spend more time praying, would be the suggestion of this lost soul.


Two things Spain is blessedly free of are a tabloid press and a greetings card industry. But I suspect it’s only a matter of time before the latter, at least, blights our lives. That said, most Spanish families still live cheek by jowl so there’s not a great deal of incentive to send a card to someone you see at least once a day.


Time for my regular plaudit for the Spanish press. Their coverage of the UK elections has been impressive and way beyond anything that might appear in the UK on matters Spanish. Mind you, I took exception to a hagiographic article today suggesting Tony Blair was a political genius in his prime. As opposed, I guess, to a busted flush who’ll be handing over to the real leader of the Labour party very soon.


I’ve said before how impressive it is to see international obituaries in the Spanish press. One of today’s in El Pais was for Frank Rogers, VP of the Daily Telegraph in the UK. I doubt he got this treatment even in the UK itself. Which reminds me, if anyone wants to see the pernicious effect of the egregious British tabloid press, they should take a look at the history of the said Daily Telegraph over the last 10 to 20 years, as it has moved relentlessly downmarket. The UK satirical magazine, Private Eye, regards it as now so indistinguishable from the tabloid Daily Mail that it refers to it as the Maily Telegraph. And to its celebrity-obsessed Sunday sister paper as the Sunday Hellograph.


I learn from an article in one of the national papers that the opposing models for the Spanish state are centripetal and centrifugal. Now I’ll have to find out what these mean. But I suspect in one the power gravitates to the centre, and in the other, to the periphery. Too bloody elitist, the Spanish press. Unlike Sky TV, of course.


It struck me - when reading shortly thereafter the latest report of a wife murdered by her husband - that, if a neighbour captured such an atrocity on film, we’d be sure to see it in the Spanish media. Nothing seems to be bad enough here to fall under the heading of tasteless. Certainly not the lines of burned corpses from Beslan in one Sunday paper.


Slipper of the Yard and Gerry Fitt were both given fulsome obits in the Spanish press today. As I’ve said before, it’s impossible to imagine British newspapers according this honour to foreigners.


2006

The major Spanish papers can sometimes seem a bit heavy but, in truth, it’s a pleasure lost to UK readers to pick up a serious paper whose front page isn’t dedicated to bloody whales or to pathetic politicians who’ve either just been kicked off Celebrity Big Brother or who are vainly trying to explain their sexual life to a bemused public. If Spain ever gets a tabloid press, I’ll have to move on. ‘Thoughts from Kurdistan’ should at least allow me to brush up my Persian.


More details have emerged of Sunday’s chaos at the new Madrid airport terminal. The event, it seems, had actually been postponed a few times, possibly because the construction companies were working on several airports at the same time. But one positive aspect is the force with which the media – well the press, at least – have condemned this blow to Spain’s international image. It would be nice to know this will hit home.


The new 1 item on the national news yesterday morning was the health of a famous female singer. The number 2 item was the death of 4,000 people in the Indonesian earthquake. Hmm. Spain doesn’t, thank God, have a tabloid press but this is getting close.


I’ve said several times that one of Spain’s big pluses is that it doesn’t have the equivalent of the scabrous UK tabloid press. But what the media here does have is a sort of insensitivity which I suspect even The Sun in the UK would eschew. On the front page of one of Spain’s heavies today, there’s a picture of a blood-soaked woman dying in one of Madrid’s central squares, having been stabbed several times in broad daylight. Inside the paper there are more pictures and an article in which the paper expresses its anger at attempts made to stop their photographer getting his pictures. If this isn’t enough for you, on another page there’s a photo of the bullet-holed corpse of a Swedish journalist in Afghanistan. I very much doubt these pictures are shown for sensationalist, circulation-oriented reasons. Which makes it all the more odd, to me at least, that they’re not regarded as offensive. Ironically, I think it was the same paper which opined that pictures of blackened lungs on cigarette packets was taking things too far as it might upset people.


In the current edition of the Spanish magazine Interviu, the first witness on the scene of Princess Diana’s fatal crash relates that, on opening the door, he saw incontrovertible evidence that the couple had been, shall we say, enjoying themselves. At least, this is what the ad in the national press suggests. Funny, but I don’t recall the scabrous British tabloids even hinting at this salacious nugget. And given the sums of money they pay for this sort of thing, it’s hard to believe the story wasn’t offered to them in preference to a much-smaller-circulation rag in Spain. If it’s true, of course.


‘Biopolitical’ has written to say he/she doesn’t actually believe there’s a conspiracy to fool the public around the activities of Galician farmers, just a lack of political will and a tame press. I must say the latter factor chimes with a view I’ve long had, viz. that 5 local newspapers couldn’t possibly survive without direct or indirect finance from political parties. Which means an unhealthy relationship, a reluctance to do much investigative journalism and a lack of interest in rocking boats. An insidious form of corruption.


I alluded yesterday to the corruption that pervades local politics here. Then there is the more-universal pork barrel politics. The Minister of Culture in one region recently decided to remove 500,000 euros from the budget for a theatre in one town and reallocate to the one in which she was born. Again. It’s impressive the press no longer lets this sort of thing go unnoticed, even if most Spaniards still regard it as not worth worrying about.


These UK developments [around multiculturalism] get full coverage in the Spanish press. It’s hard to see this happening if it were the other way round. This is another area where British society has raced backwards over the last 30 years - in the direction of tabloid levels of parochialism, superficiality and sensationalism. I wonder how much it would cost to put a contract out on Rupert Murdoch.