What happened to Barcelona?

I have never been a great fan of Barcelona. To me, the city seemed always a bit too much to stomach, too lively, too much 'in your face'. However, it clearly has its charms and during a recent conference I had the chance to re-visit my original judgement.

When I visited the first time in the 1990s, the city had just hosted the Olympics and was in full throttle tourist mode. The transport infrastructure had gotten a facelift and there was a vibrancy about the place that was hard to deny. Almost 25 years on, and the city has not weathered with time all too well. The Rambla has more or less deteriorated into a somewhat tacky and over-crowded tourist avenue and the metro is creaking at the seams. So what happened?

The centre piece of tourist attraction - the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona

Part of the story of Barcelona is its port. It remains one of the biggest ports in the country but the rejuvenation of the city in the 1990s deliberately tried to eradicate this important part of the city's existence. Banished to the outer fringes, it is only visible from Montjuic. As part of the Olympics, the city elders tried to frame it with an artificial beach, but that never felt quite like a real one, and whilst popular with tourists, you see precious few locals there.

The other dimension Barcelona's tourist and city planners were keen to stress is her architectural history, with the Sagrada Familia as the crown jewel. However, it always appeared to me that they emphasised Gaudi at the expense of the 'other' architectural history of Barcelona, which is more ordinary, yet just as fascinating, though chaotic and resisting simple narratives. The official story however, with Gaudi's cathedral appears hollow.

Gaudi's cathedral, as important as it may be, is not easily 'domesticated' within architectural history. It did not emerge organically from any homegrown style or architectural school. It stands alone and represents, to an extent, a dead end in architectural style. Little in or around Barcelona (or anywhere else in fact) carries echoes of Gaudi's work. True, that speaks of the uniqueness of his style. But it also makes it look quite alien in the city scape.

In fighting mode - Barcelona's mayor Ada Colau

It does not help that Barcelona appears now on the path of a slow but frightening path to political polarisation paralysing the normal functioning of the city. Where the infrastructure urgently needs investment and modernisation, the mayor appears to exhaust her administration in endless cultural confrontations, embarking on en masse renaming of 'francoist' streets with the names of her heroes of the communist revolution. As rubbish collections need to be improved and green spaces need to be created, the new mayor prefers to demonstrate her 'solidarity' with house occupants and their 'fight against the repressive classes', by castigating the police who tried to implement court orders. The ensuing street battles do not help the city's image.

However, who looks long and hard can find the charms of Barcelona, far away from the crowded Rambla and overpriced restaurants. But I could not help to notice that the old vibrancy has turned into a staleness, that the makeup has somehow smeared and lost its freshness. The next time Barcelona launches itself it should perhaps make less of the things that are temporarily borrowed, and make more of the things that have always been there, a city of dockworkers and labourers, artisans and fishermen. Pretence tends to backfire.

Jose Saramago's Portuguese Journey

The Nobel laureate Jose Saramago may not be widely known in the English speaking world, but his prominence on the Iberian peninsula is certainly a given. His works are noted for their almost austere style and his political interventions are celebrated by the left for their insistence on social and political equality.

Saramago was born in Portugal but left his home country to live most of this life in Spain. When I first read his book 'Blindness' I was struck by the sparse language. At times, his writing reminded me of somebody who writes in a language not his own. Some phrasing was awkward or struck you as poor translation and dialogues were artificial and wooden. His prose possesses an element of artifice that goes well beyond the crafted nature of literature in general. His commitment to equality and freedom however shines through every page and so I was curious to see what he had to say about his home country in his travelogue, The Portuguese Journey.

Saramago appears to have undertaken the journey over the course of several years and the book is written from the perspective of a visitor who is simultaneously familiar and alien to Portugal. He uses the third person singular to create an impression of distance, yet the vignettes of Portuguese life are real and clearly resonated with him as a son of this land. The most curious aspect of Saramago's travel writing is however the absence of those things that were clearly close to his heart, and the abundance of those that he (professedly) hated.

The book is in effect a series of visits to churches, cathedrals and castles, with little snapshots of ordinary lives sprinkled into the (at times somewhat tiring) portrayal of elitist cultural artifacts. For somebody with socialist leanings his obsession with churches and religious paintings is confusing at best and renders the narrative stale. Even where real people push into the picture, they are usually only the pastors or cleaners opening the front doors of churches or chapels for Saramago to visit. The absence of anything apart from churches and castles belies a strange understanding of Portuguese history, where Saramago appears to discount anything that has not been made or founded by a small political or social elite. His writing almost appears to reveal an obsession with the works of those parts of society he fought all his life.

More importantly, however, it's his skewed sense of history that is puzzling. Nothing seems to warrant description that is less than several hundred years old. At times, the Renaissance appears to be the last period of worthy cultural production. This is disturbing given that Saramago's political ideals were forged in the great struggles of the 19th century and 20th century. In fact, Portugal's path through the upheavals of (failed) democratisation is probably one of the most fascinating in Europe, as she first established herself as a republic and slid into a authoritarian regime between the wars. Yet, none of this enters Saramago's travel narrative. He concentrates on a, at times painfully tedious, description of altars, paintings of saints in churches and castles. For somebody who professed a singular disrespect for religion, this absence of anything but church life is bordering on negligence and obsession.

Yet, there is something else that confuses the reader. His main narrating impetus appears to be a deeply felt belief in the need for order and preservation. Saramago's main leanings are certainly not iconoclast yet deeply reverent of high brow culture.

About the courage of Spanish politicians (and the timidity of Welsh ones)

I previously wrote nice things about the tram network in Valencia and I had the opportunity to visit the southern part of the region a couple of weeks ago. Alicante is a sea side town with a lovely old city centre and sprawling modern outskirts. If Spain is in a recession, the more touristic cities along the coast  do not show it, which does not mean that the people there don't hurt.

However, coming from Wales, it was interesting to me how the region solved its public transport problem. The coast line has long been connected via an old diesel train all the way to Valencia. The track was narrow gauge and single file. In a sense this was all that is needed and the region decided in 2003 to update the network. What they did was smart and on the cheaper side of the usually grandiose transport investments in Spain that contributed so much to ruining the Spanish regions' finances.

In effect, they kept the single file tracks, electrified the network and replaced the rolling stock with trams. No guessing where those trams come from: only the finest from Bombardier (Canada). The result is a reliable regional transport network that connects Alicante with Benidorm, and two underground city stops in Alicante itself which allow future lines to be built.

A product of political courage - Alicante tram

Now for the politics of it. The investment in public transport in Spain was made mainly by the regions and it crippled many of them. Some even had to mothball their rolling stock or lease it to other countries. Yet, some regions have maintained their new transport networks and the improvements will give them an additional advantage once Spain's economy recovers. In a sense, it took guts to make those investment decisions, and you may say that it ruined a few political careers of regional politicians along the way.

Yet, then again, look at the dithering of the Welsh politicians when it comes to the modernisation of the valley lines. There is nothing they could not do what Spanish regional politicians did. But Carwin Jones and his bumbling cabinet will always lack the guts to spend political capital on large transport infrastructure projects. Instead, they look to London whilst accusing London at the same time for meddling in Welsh affairs.

I guess a country gets the politicians it deserves. And sometimes it takes a politician to put his political career on the line for a project he believes in. We know political courage is not Carwin Jones' strength. But if not for improving the lives of the people in Wales, what was his political life for?

Why Wales is so far behind

I am in Spain at the moment, in Valencia, to be precise. Spain consists of largely autonomous regions and Valencia is the capital of one of those. This makes Valencia roughly comparable to Cardiff in Wales. It has a regional government with a parliament, and decides most of its own affairs, from health to local government.

Taking the train here in Valencia to a nearby city however reminded me once again what's wrong with Wales. Leaving the main central station here in Valencia, the train quickly gathered speed, and arrived at the next stop without any hitch. You think this would be how it is in Wales as well, but far from it. Regional trains in Spain are electrified, whilst Welsh trains run on diesel engines, most of them built in the 1980s. Take the train from Cardiff to Holyhead and you know why most Welsh politicians (who can afford it since they claim it on their expenses) prefer to take the plane if they want to get from South Wales to North Wales.

But it gets worse. Arriva Wales Trains which won the contract for Wales also runs the regional connections to the valleys. I am not sure if you have ever experienced any of the valley trains but if you have you know what I am talking about. The trains are filthy, slow and break down frequently. Not that Arriva Trains would care about the dire service. Their investment in the rolling stock and train stations (in an abysmal state, up and down the country) has been practically zero since they won the franchise in 2003.

Arriva Wales Train in the Welsh valleys

This contrasts starkly with Spain. There are some gaps in the high speed railway network yet overall the trains here are fast, reliable and clean.

This is what you would get if you took a train in Valencia

So why is Wales so far behind? People cite usually two reasons. First, transport policy is not a prerogative of the Welsh Government but decided in London. Second, the geographical terrain in Wales makes fast trains difficult.

Both reasons border on feeble excuses. Transport policy does not differ in Spain from the UK. Most decisions are taken by the centre, that is in London or Madrid respectively. Yet, nothing prevents Carwin Jones and his Welsh Government to build a strong regional alliance of local councils to make a case in London for electrification and investment in Welsh trains. So far, his only response to the dire state of the Welsh railways has been: silence.

The second reason is even more spurious. It seems to me Swiss engineers may face even more difficult challenges in terms of terrain yet the Swiss railways are electrified at 100%. Yes, all of the Swiss railways are electrified which makes them one of the most reliable train networks in the world.

You may say this is all about to change since the Welsh Government has just announced that it will take a more robust stance in transport policy. But not so fast. After almost 15 years of silence on the issue, what did Carwin Jones decide to focus on? Cardiff Airport.

He wants to spend more than £20 million of the Welsh budget to buy (yes you are reading right: 'buy') the moribund Cardiff Airport. This is just the purchase price for an Airport that is practically dead in the water. Why? Since many of the ministers in his government have a constituency in the north of Wales it is essential that they can fly from Holyhead to Cardiff Airport. If Cardiff Airport would shut (which it is about to do) they would have to take the train. God forbid!

So, there we go again. The Welsh Government will spend £20 million on a dead airport with no transport links while we can hop on and off filthy trains in the valleys. That's transport priorities of Labour for you.

When the money runs out for Germany

The credit rating agency Moody's has put Germany on a watch list. The agency is concerned that Germany may not be able to fulfill its credit obligations in the long term because of the continuing crisis in Greece and Spain.

As the German Finance Minister pointed out, Greece and Spain are quite different cases. Greece is simply refusing to cut its expenditure despite receiving billions of pounds from German taxpayers to pay exorbitant wages to its civil servants in a bloated government sector.

Spain however faces a different crisis. The Spanish government has introduced significant reforms and is on its way to join Portugal and Ireland as the poster boys of reform. However, the legacy that drags Spain into the morass is located in the banking sector and rooted in an unprecedented property boom that lasted almost a decade. Now, Spanish banks are sitting on unsustainable debt with people unable to service their mortgage payments.

So far, most observers have thought that Germany can deal with Greece whose economy represents only about 2 percent of the Eurozone economy as a whole. However, Spain is a different case. The Spanish economy is the fourth largest in Europe and there is no chance that German taxpayers can rescue the Spanish banks without facing significant credit downgrading themselves. So Germany is in a tricky situation. What to do?

It seems that no one would benefit if Germany's credit rating deteriorated. In fact, with German borrowing potentially costs going up, the ability of Germany to help others would be impaired significantly and the whole edifice of Eurozone stability would crumble within weeks.

That's why the German chancellor now needs to show that she can be strong in the face of adversity. She needs to insist that the Greek government either introduce significant wage cuts in the public sector to bring their expenditure under control or she has to insist that Greece leaves the Euro. Likewise there needs to be more fiscal discipline amongst other Eurozone countries and the French president Hollande has to be made understood that this is no time for economic stimuli in his country for which the German taxpayers would need to pick up the bill.

The most important step Chancellor Merkel can do however is to remain firm in refusing to allow the European Central Bank to directly issue so called Eurobonds, which would be another way of providing money to France without the responsibility strings attached. Only if these conditions are met will Germany be able to play the role of main creditor in the Eurozone rescue operation. And no one is served if Germany goes the way of France or Greece.