SPANISH LIFE/CULTURE
Bullfighting: In the UK it would be rejected as 'not cricket' but I'm not sure there's an equivalent expression in Spanish. 'Bullfighting' from a 4x4 vehicle. Click here for more evidence of how low some men can sink. And possibly a woman or three. P. S. This excellent site suggests the relevant Spanish phrase is: Es una juega sucia. Dirty play.
Teachers in Spain: I was surprised to read yesterday that they're among the highest paid in the world. Click here for more on this.
SPANISH POLITICS
The PSOE Party: More trouble for this stalwart of the post-Franco democracy, as both the Catalan section and the majority of membership at large reject the proposal of the rebels who've taken over the party that President Rajoy and his right-wing PP party be allowed to stay in power. So, it remains anyone's guess as to whether current negotiations will lead to a minority government and avoid a third general election in December. We should know relatively soon, though, as there's an October deadline.
THE EU
Politics & Economics: I thought it was Bismarck but it turns out to be have
been Lenin who said Politics is a concentrated form of
economics. Anyway, I recalled the quote when reading this article by
one of the major figures in the history of the EU. The euro,
he says, has been betrayed by politics. He means
politicians, of course, who've ensured that the experiment went
wrong from the beginning and has since has degenerated into a fiscal
free-for-all that masks the festering pathologies. Realistically,
he adds, it will be a case of muddling through, struggling from
one crisis to the next. Which cannot go on endlessly. It all makes the Brexit look like a side show.
THE UK
Brexit: I tend towards optimism - assuming the EU survives - as I don't see it in anyone's economic interests to punish the UK. The writer of this article takes the same stance. He asks whether the EU is really in a position to 'face down' the UK and concludes: Politicians in many countries appear to have become detached from the realities on the ground. Wherever one looks the hard facts tend to show that it is in everybody’s interest to ensure that Brexit is carried out in an orderly fashion and in a spirit of continuing cooperation. But vamos a ver.
GALICIAN STUFF
Francis Drake: Not a popular chap here in Galicia, which he raided several times. So, I was surprised to hear from my neighbour, Toni, yesterday that his surname is not uncommon in Spain. It's pronounced Draké, of course, and there are 250 folk here with Drake as their first surname, 84 with it as their second surname and 6 with it as both of their surnames. I can't find any data on Galicia, though, and have yet to come across it here. In case you're interested, here's the top 100 surnames in the Pontevedra province.
FINALLY
Art: Watching a BBC program on the Goths yesterday, I was interested to hear of a 7th century Visigoth chapel in Palencia, the oldest church in Spain. The presenter was a chap I like a lot - Waldemar Januszczak - and, by pure coincidence, later in the day I read a heartfelt article by him on the place of art in the school curriculum. See the end of this post for this.
THE GALLERY
And here's a Finnish smile . . .
And, finally, the identity of the cartoonist and her lovely book, to which we now bid Goodbye . . .
CURRENT CORRUPTION CASES
And, finally, the identity of the cartoonist and her lovely book, to which we now bid Goodbye . . .
CURRENT CORRUPTION CASES
I've added the top one. Note the various links:-
The case
|
Who
|
Position
|
Allegation
|
Status
|
Another surprise?
|
Princess Cristina
|
Sister of the king
|
|
|
A surprise?
|
|
Ex-king
|
Tried to bribe the
authorities not to proceed with the corruption case against his
daughter.
|
No prospect of a trial.
|
Gürtel/
Correa
|
37 politicians and businessmen
|
Senior position holders
|
Illegal party financing
|
|
Bankía/Black Cards
|
Numerous
ex-politicos and businessmen
|
Senior position holders
|
Use of 'black credit
cards' to avoid taxation on income of more that €12m.
|
|
Bog standard case
|
Ventura Sierra Vázquez
|
The mayor of Vilareño de Conso, Galicia.
|
Falsification of
docs and corrupt practices.
|
Trial just started
|
Bog standard case
|
José Ramón [Nené] Barral
|
The ex-mayor of Ribadumia, Galicia
|
Money laundering and
drug smuggling
|
Under investigation
|
Bog standard case
|
María Antonia Munar
|
Ex-president of the Balearics parliament
|
€4m
bribes for changing property
classifications
|
Awaiting sentence. 4 years demanded.
|
ARTICLE
A prayer for art history: Waldemar Januszczak
A prayer for art history: Waldemar Januszczak
Inane decisions have
come at us like a water cannon this year, so none of us ought really
to be surprised by any announcement. But the news that art history is
to be dropped from the A-level syllabus after 2018 had me clutching
for an armrest. Is it Halloween already? Are the National Socialists
back?
AQA, the only exam
board to offer art history as an A-level, has taken the grim decision
to axe this marvellous subject for bleak reasons. The first of them,
the one that had me choking on my carpaccio, is that it says it
cannot find “sufficient experienced examiners” to mark the papers
for the new syllabus. Ha! There are enough experienced art historians
living within a couple of miles of me in north London to mark the
nation’s art history papers 10 times over! I probably have enough
on speed dial. If AQA cannot find enough in the whole of Britain, it
needs to go on a Duke of Edinburgh weekend to learn some basic search
skills.
No. Let’s deal here
with the second and real reason for the axeing, which is that in the
ghastly post-Govian mindset of our education overlords art history is
viewed as a distraction. It doesn’t lead directly to a job. It
won’t put a roof over your head. Only toffs are interested in
studying it. In the especially irritating nomenclature currently
employed for these things, it’s a “soft” subject. Grrr.
What’s really
happening is that a collapse in educational values is taking place on
our watch. And during this collapse in values, the understanding of
our history through art — the best and truest understanding there
is — is being viewed as a luxury. This new mindset has taken an axe
not just to art history, but to humanity’s mirror.
Here is an example.
What does Henry VIII look like? Go on — everybody loves a Tudor, so
what does Henry VIII look like? Well, he’s fat and jowly and looks
a bit like Arthur Mullard. How do we know this? Because his court
painter, Holbein, a German genius brought over from Basel, has left
us an unforgettable image of him. If Holbein had not painted Henry
VIII as fabulously as he did, none of us would ever have been able to
visualise Bad King Hal as tangibly as we do. A crucial slab of
British history would have remained faceless.
Let’s go back even
further. What is the earliest display there is of human civilisation?
What proof survives from our ancient past of the cultural sentience
of Homo sapiens? It isn’t a book. It isn’t a play. It isn’t an
accounting ledger or a syllabus. And it most certainly isn’t a
display of politics. Long, long before we humans got round to doing
any of that, we were descending deep into the bowels of the earth, as
far as the cave system would take us, and drawing things on the
walls. Animals, mostly. But also our own evocative handprints, which
would touch our ancestors across the ages.
When we wanted babies,
we carved fertility statuettes. When we needed success in the hunt,
we imagined it on the walls of our caves. When we wanted water, we
drew it. When we needed to know what we were worshipping, we asked
art to describe the gods. “Soft” subject? Art history is the most
revealing window we can open onto the human condition.
And let’s kick this
“privileged” thing into touch as well. I was not a toff. My
father was a cleaner on the railways in Basingstoke. My mother was a
milkmaid. Neither of them had got past the third year of school. The
war saw to that. No one in my family had ever gone to university
before. But I did. Because of art history.
It saved my life, if
you must know. Art history lifted me out of a dark immigrant’s
existence, where people washed their dogs in our communal bath, and
turned me into a graduate. I was eight months old when my father was
run over by a train in Basingstoke. I never knew him. I couldn’t
speak any English till I was six. But I could look at paintings, at
sculpture, at books full of pictures of beautiful things, at all the
glorious art-historical evidence that survives from the story of
humanity, and I could enjoy it and learn from it.
It soothed me. It
educated me. Not just about my own world, but about all the other
worlds out there. It filled my head with hopes and dreams. If it
weren’t for art history . . . well, I dread to think how that
sentence should end. One day I even found out that Picasso’s
astoundingly intimate image of two enraptured blobs going at it like
the clappers on a sandy beach was painted on my birthday — January
12. Who needs family photos when you have art history?
Of course, I am making
this too personal. But that’s art for you. It communicates stuff
deep inside you to stuff deep inside other people. It’s a vital
tool of human interaction, and always has been. Before there was
language as we know it, before there was history as we know it,
before there was anything as useless as party politics or Govian
education reforms, there was art. Understanding its story is a
crucial human qualification.
So go out there, AQA,
and find some examiners. Trust me: they exist. You call yourself an
educational board? Well, start educating.
No comments:
Post a Comment