Spanish life is not always likeable but it is
compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: A
Pilgrim in Spain.
Life
in Spain
- Cataluña 1: Will it now go nuclear? Will Barcelona unilaterally declare independence? Will Madrid then seize direct administration of the region under Article 155 of the Constitution? No one knows but an awful lot of people are very worried that the hitherto senseless protagonists won't suddenly see sense and row back. We'll soon know. As for the strangely-coiffed Catalan leader Carlos Puigdemont, see the profile at the end of this post. The good news is the he's said: We don't want a traumatic break... We want a new understanding with the Spanish state. And then appealed for international mediation to help solve the growing crisis.
- Cataluña 2: As we wait with bated breath, here's one caustic view: It’s difficult to draw any other conclusion than that the Madrid government desperately wants rid of Catalonia and is in cahoots with the separatists in Barcelona. How else to explain its absurdly heavy-handed attempts to frustrate the illegal independence referendum held on Sunday? . . . After the disgraceful scenes of the last couple of days, a declaration of independence is surely more likely than ever. If Catalonia is lost, it will have been lost by the Spanish government’s foolishness and violence, not by the secessionists.
- Cataluña 3: The EU has finally come out of the long grass and said – surprise, surprise – it supports President Rajoy and has confidence in his ability to manage the situation. Which says a lot about the EU. Sr Puigdemont is naïve, if he thinks Brussels is going to get involved as the mediator he's called for.
- Cataluña 4: The essence of the situation - Catalonia and Spain need a compromise, but who can deliver one?
- Cataluña 5: While it suited the secessionists to portray themselves as unique victims of the Guardia Civil, the truth is that this is how they deal with ALL Spaniards – and, indeed, foreigners – when they're deployed to do so. It's in their genes.
- Cataluña 6: For a decent overview of the situation, see the article at the end of this post from a chap who seems to know what he's talking about.
Talking of unrespected politicians . . . Does Donald Trump ever find the right words? After the appalling slaughter in Las Vegas, he tweeted : My warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families of the terrible Las Vegas shooting. God bless you! . . . ??warmest?? As if it were congratulations on an engagement. How about the traditional sincerest? And, if God couldn't 'bless' the victims, he certainly isn't going to bless their distraught relatives and friends now.
The
gunman, by the way, bought most of his 40+ weapons and many thousands
of rounds of ammunition in a store called Guns and Guitars.
Which counts as normal behaviour in the USA, it would seem.
And to further lighten the tone . . . I discovered yesterday evening that I still have on my computer a document in English on the Galician word carallo that I mentioned yesterday. I might well have previously posted it. Anyway, it's attached as the 3rd appendix to this post. Enjoy! Don't ever say you never learn anything new here . . .
Finally
. . . I recently acceded to a request from my friend and
fellow-blogger Lenox Napier to open up Comments to all, not just
registered users. It wasn't long before the first imbecilic,
insult-prone, juvenile troll came along with his woeful grasp of
politics and even poorer grasp of history to remind me why I'd
restricted comments in the first place. So, now I'm going half-way
and giving myself the task of moderation. Which is a nuisance but
better than exposing myself to the temptation to respond to cretins
who are so confident they're bright and right that they hide behind
anonymity. Apologies for any delays in posting the comments of adult
readers.
Today's Cartoon:-
The Ides of May???
1. THE PROFILE OF
PUIGDEMONT
‘Cataliban’
bloc out of step with public opinion: Charles Bremner, The Times
The son of a baker, the Catalan
leader sees himself as being on an almost holy mission to deliver
full sovereignty. He has forced through legislation in breach of
procedural safeguards, prompting a walkout by the opposition, which
accused him of hijacking parliament.
The opposition includes the local
versions of the two establishment national parties, the Popular Party
of Mariano Rajoy, the prime minister, and the Socialists (PSOE). Mr
Puigdemont, who is ideologically closer — on all but independence —
to the national conservatives than to his allies, has acted to quell
dissent in his own party from MPs opposed to full secession. In July
he dismissed a member of the Catalan government who suggested that
his referendum was illegal. Three other members of the government and
the head of the Catalan police also stepped down. They were replaced
with radicals who were prepared to defy Spanish law.
Differences continue to flare
inside Mr Puigdemont’s party and with its allies. On September 26,
Carles Campuzano, its spokesman in the Spanish parliament, said that
a unilateral declaration of independence by Catalonia was “absolutely
excluded” and that a long negotiation with Madrid would be
required. The CUP denounced him, saying that the referendum would
bring an “automatic break” from Spain.
A little-known figure who landed
unexpectedly in power last year, Mr Puigdemont is a lifelong
separatist who faces a tough challenge holding together a bloc that
includes his conservative CEDP, the small Europhobic, anti-capitalist
Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) and the centre-left Catalan Republican
Left (ERC).
Mr Puigdemont, 54, a journalist
who served as mayor of Girona, reached power under a deal in which
the radical left CUP sided with the alliance of the other two
parties, called Together For Yes, to form a narrow pro-independence
majority in the Catalan parliament. This followed a September 2015
election — regarded as a proxy vote on independence — in which
the three-party bloc captured just under 48 per cent of the votes.
2. THE ARTICLE
Spanish
government crushes Catalan independence dreams – at a high price:
Andrew Dowling, Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, Cardiff
University
Europe has had a
rocky ride with referendums in recent years: think of Greece’s
anti-austerity vote in 2015, or the Brexit shock and Italy’s failed
constitutional referendum in December 2016. As the UK found with the
2014 Scottish independence vote, even holding a referendum at all can
be highly destabilising to the traditional political order and
political party systems.
But something
different happened in Catalonia on October 1st 2017: a referendum
that in practice wasn’t a referendum at all. It was considered a
referendum by the supporters of Catalan independence, but not their
opponents – the Spanish government – who called it “illegal”
– for the EU, or any known government in the world.
The reported 42.3 percent turnout and
near-90 percent vote for independence do not carry any meaningful
legitimacy. Even for those who did turn out, anything approaching
normal voting was prevented by a heavy and at times violent Spanish
police presence.
Still,
this doesn’t mean the vote isn’t destabilising. The events of
October 1st mark a turning point in the ever-growing – but
containable – dispute between the government in Madrid, led by the
conservative Popular Party, and the pro-independence coalition of
parties in Catalonia’s regional government. Since mass
pro-independence protests of 2012, the dispute between Madrid and
Barcelona has simmered along as a low-intensity political conflict.
The Catalan
elections of September 2015 gave an ambiguous result, and
the referendum on independence was launched as the mechanism to break
the deadlock.
But Madrid refused
to accept the legitimacy of any such vote, and promised to block it
by all legal means. Even as tensions rose to their highest level yet
in September 2017, the Madrid stock market seemed impervious to the
apparent turbulence in the weeks leading up to the referendum. This
was because nobody seriously believed Spain really was about to lose
a fifth of its economy, which is what Catalonian independence would
really mean.
Yet still, the
independence side made a serious noise, and Madrid was rattled enough
to send thousands of police officers to Catalonia with the express
intention of stopping the vote.
In
the days leading up to the referendum, police confiscated millions of
ballot papers, blocked websites related to the referendum, and warned
a range of public officials of the danger of breaking the law. The
day of the vote itself saw a very heavy police presence, with high
drama and tension giving way to outright violence: police forced
polling stations to close, charged into crowds of protesters, and
even fired rubber bullets.
But for all the
Catalan government’s promises, the vote failed to be a true
reflection of opinion, and its legitimacy is highly questionable.
The referendum
legislation setting October 1st as the date was only formally
passed by the Catalan parliament on September 6 2017, barely
four weeks before the vote was due. There was no referendum campaign
in any real sense. Opponents of independence simply did not campaign,
instead boycotting the referendum or simply ignoring it. There was no
serious public discussion or debate over the merits of “yes” or
“no”, and the pro-independence side was always guaranteed a
victory: pro-independence voters are not only the most committed to
turning out, but they are the only ones committed to the legitimacy
of a referendum. That means there’s a very high correlation between
simply turning up to vote and voting “yes”.
Ballot papers were
distributed widely in the week leading up to the vote and the
Assemblea Nacional Catalana (Catalan National Assembly), the major
pro-independence organisation, issued over 1m to its supporters. The
Catalan government’s parliamentary spokesman, Jordi Turrull, even
called on voters to download their own ballot papers from a
government website. These actions gravely undermined the seriousness
and credibility of the vote in the days leading up to it.
By the time of the
vote itself, the Catalan government seemed to accept that a
meaningful referendum was no longer possible, and as the day
unfolded, it instead became a show of the civic strength of Catalan
independence. The Spanish government, meanwhile, demonstrated that it
retains full legal and political control of Catalonia. Crudely
speaking, Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, got his wish: he
promised a referendum would not occur, and his government
successfully ensured that what transpired on the day was too
incoherent and chaotic to be legitimate.
But
this victory comes at a very high price. Rajoy’s government hoped
to prevent the vote without police sequestering ballot boxes using
violent tactics on ordinary people; instead, the spectacle of police
preventing people from voting and firing rubber bullets at
protesters, by some reports injuring up to 900, has done deep
damage to Spain’s international credibility, and helped poison
relations between Catalonia and Madrid even further.
The
referendum-that-wasn’t may be over, but the stakes remain high. In
the weeks and months to come, the crisis could lead to the fall of
the Spanish government, and the Catalonian one at that.
The dream of an
imminent independent Catalan state has been shattered for now, but
those Catalans who support independence are now more alienated from
Spain than ever.
3. CARALLO
Castellano (Spanish) is
famous for the ruggedness (and frequency) of its swearwords. But in
respect of one word, it can't hold a candle to Gallego (Galician).
In Spanish, the word is
Carajo and in Galician it's Carallo. Here's how it's described in the
document I have in front of me:-
CARALLO: Pronounced
smoothly and clearly, without emphasis or stress, it means the male
member.
!!!CARALLO!!!: As an
exclamation, it can indicate astonishment, admiration, and,
especially, assent.
An on-line dictionary
gives this for Carajo: Fuck! Damn it! (Very informal).
And Google Translate is
very specific with Carallo:- Cock.
These are the examples
of common (!) usage among Gallego speakers given by said document:-
Carallazo - Blow.
Annoyance.
Carallada - Drinking
spree. Binge.
Carallán - Joker
Caralludo - Denotes
quality
Escarallado - Broken.
Dislocated.
Escarallación -Peak,
height.
Escarallar - To damage.
Dying with laughter.
But the variety and
richness of the meanings of Carallo are almost limitless, given that
it's used to both praise and denigrate. To say something is good and
to say quite the opposite. It can also express tiredness,
resignation, amusement and an infinity of states of mind, depending
on the context. Here's some examples[all in Gallego]:-
Resignation: Ay que
carallo!
Joke: Bueno, carallo
bueno!
Rudeness - Vai o
carallo!
Enquiry - Que carallo e
iso!
Contrariness - Tócache
o carallo! [Touch your cock]
Offence - Iste carallo
é parvo! [Your prick is a fool!]
Temperance - Cámate .
. . carallo! [Calm down, prick]
Threatening - Ven . . .
C . . . Ven! [Come on, prick. Come on!]
Denial - Non carallo.
Non!
Rotund denial - Nin
carallo nin nada![Neither prick nor nothing!]
Oath making - Me cago
no carallo! [I shit on my prick]
Anger - Me cago no
carallo . . . carallo
Praise - É un home de
carallo [He's a man of prick]
Doubt - O carallo
vintenove! [The 29th prick]
Strangeness - Pero . .
. Que carallo pasa? [But . . . What the prick is happening?]
Contempt - Pásame por
debaixo do carallo! [It passes me below the prick! (?)]
Animation - Dalle,
carallo. Dalle. [Go for it, prick. Go for it!]
Whimsy - Salíume de
carallo! [????]
Evaluation - Non vale
un carallo! [It's not worth a prick]
Fatality - Ten carallo
a cousa! [Have prick the thing! (???)]
Frustration - Xa estou
o carallo! [Now I've had it up to my prick]
Meteorology
- Fai un tempo de carallo! [It's prick weather!]
Distance . No quinto
carallo [In the 5th prick]
On many occasions, it's
used as a conversational catchphrase or as a wildcard in a long
phrase or in difficult situations:-
Entón, chegou Pepiño
e un servidor díxolle: carallo, Pepiño. Que carallo fas aquí?
Then Pepiño arrived
and a waiter said to him: carallo, Pepiño, what the carallo are you
doing here?
To finish, and as a
concession to the rich and flourishing literature of South America,
here's a fine phrase: MANDA CARALLO NA HABANA!!, which was apparently
uttered by Christopher Columbus himself, when the the Catholic Kings:
LO MANDARON AL CARALLO! [Sent him to prick]
Finally . . . Here's a
few phrase from a Spanish dictionary:-
Me importa un carajo -
I couldn't give a shit
Irse al carajo - To go
down the tubes
¡Vete al carajo! - Go
to hell!
No comments:
Post a Comment