Destiny always goes against us, Catalans, and now that a group of Catalan businessmen and the Catalan government decided to buy an airline to bring business to Catalonia and the Barcelona hub, we ended up buying an airline with the name of Spanair. We are either "botiflers" or unlucky. Now, if we change the name for the much more attractive of BCNair, they will boycott it, if we keep it, it will be a permanent reminder of our submission and "cojonesless-ism". When the Cat Air group decided to name its new airline Clickair to avoid boycotts (following the long Catalan cojonesless tradition) , I already declared myself a Clicktalan.
Therefore, since from Budapest you can fly directly to Urumuqi, but not to Barcelona, plus I was very tired and I had to work over the weekend, I decided to go to this hotel on the beach, west of Amsterdam. It is a great hotel, quiet, with great facilities and a very attractive rate. I love sauna and this one has a great sauna and spa. I spent the weekend working on my laptop while looking from time to time to the North Sea, going to the sauna, cold and hot spa, working again and walking on the beach. It was rainy and a bit windy, but the temperature was acceptable, around 3 degrees Celsius.
I called home and I talked to my daughter. I told her that I was in that hotel on the Dutch coast and she asked me: the hotel where people go naked? I said yes. She knows that she needs to switch her cultural profile when he moves from continent to continent and that in puritan New England, she has to take a shower with swimming suit, but saunas in North Europe are mixed gender and swimming suits are not allowed.
When lying in the steam room, I could not help but thinking on the Catalan politics, since they
were the reason why I ended up in that sauna, instead of having a good dinner with my university friends at the Tastavins. I was thinking about Convergencia i Unio, the party I feel closer ideologically, but totally useless due to the level of mediocrity and lack of integrity of many of its politicians, including those at the top. It is funny to see Duran i Lleida (now in the middle of a controversy about the alleged misappropriation of EU educational funds by members of his party closely related to him), criticizing Zapatero in his blog for going to bed with the Andalusian president, Manuel Chaves, and agreeing on the boundary conditions for the 2009 Catalan budget, while illustrating his comments with a picture of Zapatero hugging Chaves. A simple Google search demonstrates his level of hypocrisy.
PS: Today I watched Pink Panther 2 with my kids and I had a good laugh. Even if it uses all the typical stereotypes to create comic situations, I felt it was on the acceptable side (clearly they had the advice of a good lawyer). I even found the bullfighter and flamenco scene acceptable (hard to believe, since John Cleese was in the cast), obviously, I assumed it had nothing to do with me. I only feel touchy, if they wear "barretina".
9 comments:
The company name is not that important. Ownership and what they do with it is what really matters.
Please don't include more photos of Duran Lleida, Carod, Mas and all the like: it's disgusting.
Since the Spanish government is on a roll out-lawing Basque political parties that favor independence, do not be surprised when they start outlawing the Catalan political parties as well.
I am surprised at how many catalans (and Europeans in general) seem to be avoiding the subject, and even looking the other way. Spain is supposed to be a democracy, yet they are getting away with outlawing political parties. The Catalans, Basques, and Galicians need to come together and keep this injustice from continuing. If there is no solidarity, when they finally come to outlaw your political parties, there will be no-one left to stand up next to you.
By the way, I think it would be great if they changed the airlines name to CatalAir or some such variation. They have every right to do it and should not apologize for it.
Spain is not a real democracy, it's never been, it'll never be.
... and the same goes to Catalonia.
Simply put, the required intellectual and moral ingredients are not present in those societies. There were present in Catalonia for a short period time in the past, but I cannot see them any longer. Nowadays, they only care for the money, they sold their souls long ago.
I thought the same about Spanair, I think it's a great bloody shame. Is it conceivable that the name will be changed? Catair, Cataair, AirCat, I like the third one. If Spanair avoids flying in/out of Madrid there'll be no non-Catalans to boycott it - the population of Catalunya - and the number of people who want to fly there large enough - to sustain without relying on Madrid, nor worrying about them boycotting. Thoughts?
I can't imagine why they would want to stop flights to and from Madrid. Where did you get this bit of news?
I think they should just continue their flights as usual and without stupid stunts that don't really help anyone. Although I do think they should change their name.
Now that the Basque nationalist parties have lost control of the Basque country, and Galicia is under the control of the PP, and of course Catalunya is under the control of the Spanish Socialists, the Spanish seem to be on a roll.
The question then is, will everyone just let it happen? When people finally move to action it might already be too late. If there are any aspiring politicians out there with leadership skills and independence-minded ideals lets hope they make themselves known soon.
I couldn't agree more, it really is an important angle to study.
Name is not really important call it whatever you want, but funny thing is that catalonian politicians think they could change a ruined company into a successfull one when bussiness men haven´t gotten it and in the worst economist period of the last years. Ok, spend the money but please, don´t say latter that spanish boicot was the reason to not success. (I know it is imposible, because for nationalism brains is easier to blame others for their own mistakes.)
Hi! I noticed that my website isn't appearing well just in case you want to read what I think about social issues being an activist myself. Cheers!
Post a Comment