Civ 12

Catalan International View A European Review of the World

Do economists cling too tightly to their models?

Issue 12 • Spring 2012 • € 5

by Alfons Méndez

Chávezism without Chávez

by Isabel Galí

The extent of China’s relations with the BRICS countries

by Augusto Soto

Rio+20: Twenty years of talking about sustainability

by Pere Torres

The Catalan biocluster

by Montserrat Vendrell

Cover Artist: Romà Vallès

SECTIONS: Europe · Business & Economics · The Americas · Asia Africa · Green Debate · Interview · Opinions · Science & Technology A Short Story from History · The Artist · Universal Catalans · A Poem

Contents

Editor

Víctor Terradellas

vterradellas@catmon.cat Director Francesc de Dalmases

director@international-view.cat Art Director

Positive & Negative

designer@international-view.cat Head of International Relations

To Our Readers

by Víctor Terradellas Europe

Quim Milla

Marc Gafarot

marcgafarot@catmon.cat

Editorial Board

Martí Anglada Manel Balcells Enric Canela Àngel Font Anna Grau August Gil-Matamala Montserrat Guibernau Guillem López-Casasnovas Manuel Manonelles Fèlix Martí Arcadi Oliveres Eva Piquer Ricard Planas Vicent Sanchis Pere Torres Carles Vilarrubí Vicenç Villatoro

4......... Spain takes two steps back / Bosnia 20 years on 5......... A lighthouse in southern Europe to protect against disaster 8......... A new iron curtain in Europe

by Natàlia Boronat

12........ Where is European social democracy headed?

by Marc Gafarot

Business & Economics

18........ Do economists cling too tightly to their models?

by Alfons Méndez The Americas

22........ Colombia: from a social emergency to an emerging country

by Carles Hernández and Juanjo Martí

28........ Chávezism without Chávez

Asia

by Isabel Galí

34........ Room for improvement

Chief Editor

Language Advisory Service

by Augusto Soto Africa

Coordinator

by Jordi Fexas Interview

Judit Aixalà Jordi Fexas

Nigel Balfour Júlia López

Maria Novella

coordinator@international-view.cat Webmaster

Marta Calvó Cover Art

Romà Vallès

The reproduction of the artwork on the front cover is thanks to an agreement between Fundació Vila Casas and Fundació CATmón Executive Production Headquarters, Administration and Subscriptions

Fonollar, 14 08003 Barcelona Catalonia (Europe) Tel.: + 34 93 533 42 38 Fax: + 34 93 319 22 24 www. international-view.cat Legal deposit

B-26639-2008 ISSN

2013-0716

© Edicions de la Fundació CATmón. All rights reserved. Neither this publication nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, protocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Edicions de la Fundació CATmón.

Printed in Catalonia by

Vanguard gràfic

by Iris Mir

38........ The extent of China’s relations with the BRICS countries 42........ Equatorial Guinea and the West 48........ Anna Veiga

by Eva Piquer Green Debate

56........ Twenty years of talking about sustainability (1992-2012)

by Pere Torres Opinion

60....... Support for victims of traffic accidents

by Esther Puerto

64........ Railways: the sustainable alternative for freight and

passenger transport

by Enric Ticó

68........ Music is invisible

by Lluís Gendrau

72........ Interreligious dialogue: possibilities and opportunities

by Antoni Matabosch

76........ War journalism and Peace journalism

by Meritxell Martínez Science & Technology

82..........The Catalan biocluster

by Montserrat Vendrell A Short Story from History

88..........Vaulting the New World The Artist

90....... Romà Vallès Universal Catalans

92........ Antoni Tàpies

by Georg Massanés A Poem

96........ Berlin: January 1929

by Marta Pessarrodona

Published quarterly

Catalan International View

Positive & Negative

by Francesc de Dalmases

Spain takes two steps back

Spain has used the global crisis as camouflage.

In effect the global nature of the international financial upheaval has enabled the state to hide its political and economic failings, having based its economic progress on EU aid, speculation in the building sector and the perpetuation of a centralized, inefficient administrative system. Now, however, signs of recovery have become apparent in the US and certain European economies in central and northern Europe. These are economies with an industrial and R&D infrastructure capable of generating knowledge, progress and wealth. As was to be expected, the Spanish government and its administration have been excluded from this recovery and their only response is to continually reduce public spending while advocating inefficient centralization. Against this background, one can appreciate the political commitment behind the fiscal agreement that the government of Catalonia is pursuing as the first step in the so-called ‘National Transition’, the ultimate goal of which is to achieve an independent state within the European Union.

Bosnia 20 years on

Sarajevo, 6th of April 2012. The city’s main road was filled with red chairs, 11,541 in total, in memory of each of the official victims of the Siege of Sarajevo. The Bosnian capital had this simple but effective idea, which was picked up on by the media and shown all round the world, twenty years after the start of the siege. Nonetheless, it was a fleeting exception. Too many European media organisations have had and still have the feeling we have arrived late to the Balkans and that we have done our job badly. We were late during the war and practically disappeared after the war. The international news section work with certain givens, and certain preferences and phobias which allow them to follow what is happening in the Middle East. Last year we also benefited from the large amount of coverage of the changes and transformations that took place on the southern shores of the Mediterranean with what came to be known as the Arab Spring. However, we are over-obsessed by the noise of bombs and the clouds of tear gas. To the north, the Balkans are too often an invisible space despite being a unique opportunity to see how a part of Europe manages its national, political, linguistic and religious diversity.

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To Our Readers

A lighthouse in southern Europe to protect against disaster

by Víctor Terradellas

A few months ago, Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics at Harvard University and former chief economist at the IMF, stated in an interview with a Spanish financial newspaper, ‘alone, Catalonia would be one of the richest countries in the world’. In the same interview, Professor Rogoff warned of the ‘high probability’ of a European intervention in Spain. For this reason, Rogoff claimed that Spain needed, ‘a profound structural reform’ of its economy and ‘significant measures are required’, especially in the labour market.

He added that five years of economic stagnation is ‘a very realistic scenario’.

In May, the journalist David Gardner wrote an article for the Financial Times which highlighted the success of the economic agreement enjoyed by the Basque Country and endorsed calls for a fiscal agreement (pacte fiscal) coming from Catalonia. Thus, Gardner warned that an intervention in a particular region could, ‘create a real political problem’ while stating that, ‘Spain’s problems need proper diagnosis, and devolution at its best should be seen as part of the solution’. Gardner therefore rejects the Spanish government’s version of events and emphasises that, ‘devolution as such is not the problem’.

The opinions of both these experts are extremely enlightening when it comes to examining Catalonia’s current position within the European and Mediterranean context. Beyond Catalan International View

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To Our Readers

the evidence as to the advantages and economic benefits inherent in the independence process it is worth pointing out the advantages for a medium-sized state, with a solid economy and commercial potential, which is a reference for its culture, research and its democratic foundations.

Europe needs a country in southern Europe and northern Mediterranean which can balance, calm and lead on a regional level At the end of the day, Europe needs a country in southern Europe and northern Mediterranean which can balance, calm and lead on a regional level an area which in central and northern Europe is seen as a continual source of problems thanks to the ‘usual suspects’: Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece. Europe needs a space like Catalonia, which carries the culture of hard work and effort in its blood. A space with a democratic tradition and an entrepreneurial spirit, with a progressive attitude and a productive economy. A nation that had the first European parliament, in the eleventh century, which spoke of rights and duties; a nation with certain well-defined cultural and linguistic traits which form part of Europe’s cultural wealth. A nation similar to England, where the industrial revo6

Catalan International View

lution was made possible, allowing for a future welfare state incorporating the concepts of rights and duties. Indeed Catalonia’s was a unique industrial revolution in Europe, in that it took place in an area which does not produce raw materials.

When Europe listens to Catalonia’s voice calling for a new fiscal agreement, with its own treasury, or demanding it become a state within the European Community and the wider world, it would do well not to see it as a passing whim but rather to assess a unique national history and a new opportunity to rebuild southern Europe based on new political, economic and social paradigms.

Now that we know that mediumsized states are suited to Europe, now that we know that the Spanish crisis is not applicable to the rest of the European crises and requires specific ad hoc treatment, it is also time to appreciate that not only is Europe desirable for Catalonia, Catalonia is desirable for Europe.

In contrast to other nearby areas, Catalonia has implemented austerity measures for some years now, while also maintaining a commercial and industrial fabric which is uncommon at these latitudes, thanks to hard work, sacrifice and luck.

Europe already knows it. When Catalonia takes the next step, however, we also need them to acknowledge it.

Tel. +34 977 757 473 · +34 977 756 265 • Fax +34 977 771 129 Camí Pedra Estela, 34 • 43205 Reus (Baix Camp) www.demuller.es

Europe

A new iron curtain in Europe

by Natàlia Boronat*

Certain events that took place in the first quarter of 2012 point toward the beginning of a new era of isolation for Belarus with respect to the European Union. These included the toughening of sanctions as a means for Brussels to apply pressure on President Alexander Lukashenko’s repressive regime, a diplomatic crisis between European countries and Minsk and the drawing up of a blacklist of opponents who cannot enter the EU. Following these incidents, it became apparent that Minsk lacked a clear strategy as to whether it should comply with any of Brussels’ demands or not. And if it were to do so, how this could be seen as entering into dialogue and not a sign of weakness.

On the 23rd of March the EU foreign ministers approved economic sanctions against 12 individuals and 29 Belarusian companies, which included the freezing of their bank accounts in Europe and a refusal to allow them entry to EU territory. The sanctions were agreed upon once Slovenia and Latvia’s reluctance had been overcome, since they have business dealings with Yuri Shish, a powerful Belarusian businessman who figures on the European blacklist.

The European Union also condemned the execution of Dmitry Konovalov and Vladislav Kovalyov, the two youths accused of carrying out attacks on the Minsk underground in April 2011, which killed 11 people. The sentence was handed down following a trial which lacked transparency and which received numerous calls for the two not to be sentenced to death. The evidence against Konovalov in particular, who is accused of being an accomplice, is seen to be rather weak. Belarus is the only European country where the 8

Catalan International View

death penalty is carried out. According to opinion polls, some 50% of the population is in favour of it.

On the 28th of February, Belarus asked EU envoys to leave the country in protest against a round of sanctions (prior to March 23rd) that blacklisted 19 judges and two police chiefs involved in the repression of the opposition. The EU countries reacted the very same day by holding talks with their ambassadors. The outcome came a month later, following the implementation of new sanctions, when the authorities in Minsk declared that the European diplomats need not return.

The new sanctions have been added to those which were previously in place.

Currently a total of 227 people from Belarus have been forbidden entry to the EU, with the aim of pressuring Lukashenko into easing off the repression, making the political system more democratic and releasing political prisoners. According to the human rights organisation Viasna (‘spring’ in Belaru-

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sian) there were 15 political prisoners in Belarus as of March 2012.

Independent analysts believe that support for Lukashenko, who has presided over a country of 10 million people since 1994, stands at around 30% and that there is an ever-widening gap between the pro-Europeans and those who welcome the paternalism of a head of state who is in complete control and who has developed numerous social programs. Dissent is minor thanks to the repressive state apparatus and opponents believe that there is still a lot of work to be done to unite civil soci-

ety behind demands for an independent judiciary and a democratic political process.

The elections of 19th of December 2010 represented a turning point in Belarusian politics. Prior to the presidential elections, while the Western press acknowledged that Lukashenko had taken many steps to open up his country and move closer to Europe, hopes that the regime would begin to democratize itself began to fade on election night when over 1,000 people were arrested. Europe and the United States strongly criticised the aggressive Catalan International View

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police response to the protests and the subsequent trial of opponents, including a presidential candidate Nikolai Statkevich. He is currently in jail, having been sentenced to 5 years in prison and accused of organizing the riots.

Belarus is the only European country where the death penalty is carried out.

According to opinion polls, some 50% of the population is in favour of it Another presidential candidate, Vladimir Neklyayev, a poet and outspoken supporter of the Belarusian language, was beaten while leaving his party’s office, on the evening of 19th of December, 2010. The attack was carried out by a special police unit charged with the fight against terrorism. A year after these events he recalls the fear he felt: ‘I thought I would stay there, lying on the ice, and that I’d never need a coat again because I expected I’d meet the same fate as the other opponents that were assassinated’. When he regained consciousness that night in an intensive care unit, the police came and took him to a KGB prison. Neklyayev finds it unfortunate that the doctors calmly handed him over to the KGB when he regained consciousness without having carried out the necessary tests.

Belarus is highly dependent on Moscow, the stability which Lukashenko so likes to boast about is maintained thanks to Russian credit and cheap Russian energy, allowing him to develop an economy that is largely state-controlled. It is helped by earnings from the exploitation of minerals and fertilizers and also the shipment of Russian oil and gas to Europe.

Neklyayev explains that the Russian money that is injected into the economy, ‘allows Lukashenko to boast about having built a strong welfare state, but 10

Catalan International View

the problem is that we aren’t self-sufficient and are entirely dependent on subsidies from Moscow’.

In 2011, Belarus entered a serious economic crisis. Between January and October 2011 inflation stood at 101.5%, condemning many people to poverty who had until then managed to make ends meet and seriously affecting social services. Neklyayev is convinced that the high levels of repression that occurred against dissenters and certain sectors of civil society in 2011, is related to the crisis because, ‘Lukashenko tries to prevent the public’s massive discontentment from showing by frightening people into keeping quiet’.

In November 2011 everyone in Minsk agreed that the increased repression following the presidential elections and the serious economic crisis in Belarus had both benefited Moscow, which does not want to lose an ally at the gates of Europe. Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan are now members of a Customs Union and in November 2011 they signed a preliminary agreement relating to the formation of the Eurasian Union, a project designed

by Vladimir Putin to reunite the postSoviet space into a supranational entity. Shortly after the announcement, Moscow and Minsk agreed on the price of gas, settling on the price of oil a few weeks later, in agreements that Lukashenko boasted would allow his country to save around 4 billion dollars.

Moscow agreed to significantly reduce gas prices in exchange for permission to buy a 50% stake in Beltransgaz, the Belarusian state gas company.

Many Belarusian analysts agree with Neklyayev that the hardening of political repression in 2011 was related to the economic crisis. Aleksandr Lahviniec, a political scientist and advisor to the Movement for Freedom, stated in March 2012 that, ‘before the elections, Lukashenko realised he’d inflated the economy in 2010 with cheap mon-

Europe

ey and saw that the economic crisis was on its way. All the measures he adopted after election night were aimed at conserving his power by frightening the population in order that there was little by way of protests throughout the country’.

Moreover, Lukashenko’s behaviour can also be seen as, ‘a show of loyalty to Russia, since it’s to Moscow’s advantage that Belarus is isolated internationally and unable to talk directly to Europe’. According to Lahviniec, during Russian election year (parliamentary elections in December 2011 and presidential elections in March 2012), ‘it was important to show the Russians that the path chosen by Vladimir Putin, his idea of a Eurasian Union as a counterbalance to the European Union, and also Brussels’ collaborative programs with Eastern Europe were correct’.

Lahviniec believes that, ‘the EU does not possess many mechanisms by which to influence the situation in Belarus, despite the fact that they repeatedly violate democratic principles.

Brussels is forced to condemn them, being tougher on Minsk than Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, because Belarus is located in Europe and may one day be a candidate member state’. Ultimately, according to Lahviniec, ‘sanctions will lead to greater isolation, not only of the regime but the country as a whole, which could encourage a degree of integration with Russia’. Lahviniec foresees a new alignment with Russia, while not believing they will reach full integration thanks to the personal enmity between Lukashenko and Putin.

Lukashenko does not want full integration with Russia since he would

lose control and economic national sovereignty. Nevertheless, neither is he prepared to reform the economy to better collaborate with the West. Currently, according to Lahviniec, it is difficult for Belarus to collaborate with Europe since between 70% and 80% of the economy is controlled by the state.

There are no guarantees for foreign investment, while conditions are also very bad for local businesses and the legal mechanisms that could defend businesses do not function correctly.

Many experts believe that if Russia imposes its economic models on Belarus it could be positive for the economy, while the sector of society which is more oriented towards European values warns that it would impede democratization. Meanwhile, Minsk does not wish to depend entirely on Moscow. In the past it has collaborated with Iran and in recent years it has significantly increased economic cooperation with China. However, for Lahviniec, ‘Russian influence can only be counterbalanced by good relations with the EU’.

Aleksandr Milinkevich, a member of the Belarus opposition and leader of the Movement for Freedom, believes that at present the most important issue during this phase of the relations between the EU and Minsk is to see, ‘whether the country will survive or disappear, if we will become a Russian protectorate or if we will choose the European path’. Milinkevich believes that the EU lacks a clear strategy towards Minsk and the implementation of severe economic sanctions will mean, ‘Belarus freefalls towards Russia’ as it will facilitate integration processes with Moscow and the Eurasian Union. *Natàlia Boronat

She holds a degree in Information Sciences from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and in Slavic Philology from the Universitat de Barcelona. Since 2001 she has spent most of her time in Russia.

She worked in St. Petersburg as a Catalan lecturer at the State University and in the tourism industry. She now lives in Moscow, where she works as a freelance journalist for different Catalan media organisations and reports on the current situation in the post-Soviet arena.

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Europe

Where is European social democracy headed?

by Marc Gafarot*

Much has happened, especially in Germany, since Eduard Bernstein and other unorthodox Marxist theoreticians formulated the Erfurt Program. The year was 1895 and the inevitability of capitalism’s collapse, as predicted by Marx and Engels, began to be called into question by socialists of various nationalities and socioeconomic conditions. One of them was Bernstein, whose thesis was to give rise to what is nowadays called social democracy. Nevertheless, this large revisionist group also included Kautsky with Lenin himself further to the east, who was to give rise to the communist doctrine that broke proletarian unity with the advent of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent birth of the Communist International.

The development of socialist liberal ideology started in the 1920s, where it made a particular impact on the English-speaking world (Germany was another story), with figures like Cole, Tawney and Ramsay MacDonald, and in Italy, Rosselli. This made perfect sense, since England had a long established non-Marxian socialist tradition. A revision was undertaken which saw a fusion of socialist and liberal ideas to ultimately reject Marxist orthodoxy and state-led centralized socialism. In some ways they were the initiators of the renowned and currently unpopular Third Way: social democracy. In 1920s Sweden, a Nordic paradigm, and other Scandinavian states of the time, the socialists also honoured a reformist possibilism that was to accompany them and bring them many successes throughout the twentieth century. In Britain following the Second 12

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World War, Clement Atlee’s Labour government took great strides forward in the consolidation and exaltation of a Labourism capable of addressing the problems of its citizens while fully upholding the ideals of responsibility and high-mindedness which serious governments must address.

In the case of Germany, a great example of a European social democratic party which serves as a model for other European parties, the abandonment of Marxism during the Bad Godesberg Conference (1959) had practical consequences: the SPD was no longer a workers party (Arbeiterpartei) but rather a party of the masses that absorbed other social classes (Volkspartei). Initially, this measure broadened its electoral base and allowed it to politically combat the most widespread political force since the end of the war, the social Ca-

Europe

tholicism of the CDU/CSU. In the long run, however, social democratic organisations shrunk as a result of the disappearance of large units of production, their essences and institutions: schools of socialism, ideological relations and links with class-based unions, and the creation of their own counterculture.

These organisations soon became the ideal tool for the social promotion of the new middle classes which emerged in the post-war period, with a liking for civil stability rather than revolutionary ferment. A new ruling class formed within them which was (simultaneously) distanced from and disinterested in social issues and had only a superficial acquaintance with the history of the labour movement and political and economic analysis. These events were to form the backdrop to the ideological crisis which the Left is experiencing to

this day and which it appears unable to escape, even with the help of the global economic crisis, which for some represents a true systemic crisis of capitalism. In fact, since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent downfall of the communist political and economic system, it seems as if nothing has appeared which can be seen as a reasonable or attractive alternative or which can challenge the current state of affairs. The present economic crisis and the criticisms of the deregulation of markets that supposedly caused it only serve to accentuate the weakness of all these alternatives. In a comparison of social democracy and communism, therefore, we find a difference in their means, but not in their ends. It is precisely this divergence as to the means which marked the radical difference between communism and the liberal Catalan International View

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democratic world. For communism, the ends, the egalitarian common good of all humanity, justified any means. Even the most pernicious means. Here lies the great error of communist ethics. For the Western world, with its origins in Athens and Jerusalem, there are certain means which cannot be justified, however much they may ultimately elevate humanity. These and other considerations of a socioeconomic nature resulted in social democratic reformism.

It was not the working class, divided as it was, who abandoned social democracy, but rather social democracy which has abandoned, and to some extent neglected the working class. Aside from its traditional area of struggle and the union activities of the workers’ movement, social democracy has moved away from its political and ideological foundations. While the economic boom of the nineties lasted, the social democrats came to comprise eleven governments out of a possible fifteen in the European Union, including the three largest economies on the continent: Germany, France and the UK. It is worth taking a look at the figures: while Schroeder had the support of 49% of the workers in 1998, in 2009, his successor, FrankWalter Steinmeier, who did not receive the traditional support of the unions, got only 24% (less than the conservative CDU/CSU Party), having lost more than 10 million votes. In 2002 the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) obtained the worst results in its history and has still not recovered, as too did the Swedish Social Democrats (SAP) in 2006, the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) in 2008 and the British Labour Party, who in the 2010 general elections obtained their worst result since 1931, during the Great Depression (in 2009 they came behind the Eurosceptic UKIP Party in the European elections). The list goes on until we reach 2011, when the Spanish PSOE Party obtained the worst results in its history.

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Not to mention Portugal and Greece.

In some municipal elections the social democratic parties were overtaken in their historic strongholds by conservatives, liberals, greens and in the case of Stockholm, by the Pirate Party, in some instances taking third or fourth place. The populist right profited from the defeat in Austria and France, where Jean-Marie Le Pen surprisingly gave Jacques Chirac a run for his money in the presidential runoff after ousting the socialist candidate Lionel Jospin. European social democracy has seen a huge drop in its membership. Tony Blair’s Labour Party had 400,000 members in 1997 when it came to power, while Gordon Brown had just 160,000; Norwegian social democracy lost 123,000 members between 1985 and 2003; Sweden 160,000 between 1991 and 2008; Denmark 150,000 between 1960 and 2007; and the Netherlands 44,000

Europe

have to agree with the professor of political science, Rémi Lefebvre in that, ‘nobody knows what the socialist party stand for, what they want or who their enemies are’. The former French socialist culture minister, Jack Lang is even more pessimistic, openly calling the SP ‘a shrivelled tree’. Let’s not forget that Strauss Kahn was supposed to be the party’s Great White Hope.

The development of socialist liberal ideology started in the 1920s, where it made a particular impact on the English-speaking world

between 1990 and 2010. Currently the profile of a typical member is a skilled male who works in the public sector, of around 60 years of age. In other words they are a member of a bye-gone generation and a world away from the integrative pluralism and enthusiastic militancy which socialist organisations of the past were supposed to represent.

Italy is a curious, iconoclastic example of a country which has been adrift for some time where personalities as diverse as Mussolini, Craxi and Berlusconi himself have called themselves socialists. Suffice it to say that in Italy the communists were the great strength on the left from the fall of fascism to the fall of the Berlin Wall and within the Italian political system. In France, despite the fact that Hollande won the 2012 presidential elections, thanks mostly to Sarkozy discrediting himself rather than his own merits, one would

The Spanish PSOE Party and the Greek PASOK Party have passed laws that they had promised they would not pass, and when they return to the opposition, in PSOE’s case, they question and reject policies they had previously endorsed. All in all, these are actions which are plagued with absurdities and, worst of all, offer the electorate a picture of cowardice when faced with external interference and the creation of a crisis of legitimacy of their respective democratic systems and values. Indeed, nowadays nobody knows what the social democrats are in favour of, what they represent and who their enemies are.

If in the past socialism mistakenly underappreciated the national angle for a supposed artificial internationalism, today it turns its back on its own citizens with behaviour that exudes an excessive interest in opinion polls and little by way of decision making. Self-criticism?

So far it has been non-existent.

The financial crisis of 2008 could have led to the slow social awakening of European social democracy. So far this has not happened, even in countries like Denmark where it managed to win the elections, though with the worst results in the history of Danish socialism. The contradiction lies Catalan International View

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in the fact that when Keynesian policies return they fail to have the political consequence of an increase in support for parties such as the social democrats, who have traditionally defended them.

Perhaps Dahrendorf was right when in the early eighties he spoke of the end of the Golden Age of social democracy.

The present economic crisis and criticisms of the supposed deregulation of the markets that were its cause has only served to accentuate the weakness of all these alternatives All in all, it seems clear that the social democrats cannot continue as a classic party of the masses focused on a shrinking middle class. However, neither can they return to their traditional doctrines, as if nothing had happened.

The world has changed and so too have the relations of production and the sense of class. Therefore new recipes are called for by a left which is currently more concerned with aesthetics than ideology. At present new socialist parties to the left of the social democrats, as is the case in Germany and Holland, or new ideologies and paradigms such as the greens and rightist populists have begun to inhabit the place previously occupied by the social democrats. Several times in the twentieth century social democracy has been declared dead by certain commentators, but it has yet to die. Nevertheless, the time has come for it to change or die. Some would say it will die due to success, due to the acceptance of much of its social agenda, while others would say it will die due to its spectacular failure because of a lack of clear answers and having failed to mobilize the masses in the present time. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere between the two.

The present economic crisis and criticisms of the supposed deregulation 16

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of the markets that were its cause has only served to accentuate the weakness of all these alternatives. Since alternatives do, in fact, exist. That old favourite, totalitarianism is still very much alive in North Korea, and the dictatorships known as popular and communist in Cuba and China are also fundamentally different from the democratic capitalist system. However, does anyone really want to go down this path? Or how about the Islamic republics which are to be found in many parts of the world with a significant number of followers, which offer themselves as an alternative to the modern, capitalist, Western model of society. None of them provides a convincing response to the concerns of European citizens and liberal democracies. This was the conclusion Francis Fukuyama reached two decades ago in his book The End of History. And the truth is, right now, there is no satisfactory alternative to liberal democracy and capitalism. The first to realise it and perhaps suffer from it, are those on the left of the social democratic parties. When they mention Stiglitz or Krugman in their critiques of the capitalist system and its institutions, do they really not realise that they are referring to two prestigious economists that at worst are left-wing liberals and American? Nevertheless, it is true that the former was an economic adviser to Clinton, who abolished the Glass-Steagall Act of the Great Depression era and allowed American banks to once more enter the high-risk investment banking business. We know how Lehman Brothers ended, and so too would many others if it weren’t for a massive injection of government money. After all wasn’t Keynesianism supposed to be an economic theory which advocated increased regulation and public investment polices?

The task of social democracy is now to be what it should always have been. To start protecting the weak and

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minorities from possible abuse by the powerful and majority groups. The promotion of meritocracy and social mobility via universal, quality education which recognizes the skills of each and every individual. In other words, the concept of equality should never trump liberty. The fight against the permanent tendency of political societies to become classist societies. And last but not least the defence of Europe’s industrial base by putting a stop to relocation. Its task is not to build new worlds, nor fall into distant and sterile utopias such as communism or unconscious struggles such as the Occupy movement, but rather to concern itself with the defence of our world, reminding us of the fragility of everything we take for granted. Social democracy must remain close to the people, make politics more participatory, less opaque to the general public and avoid falling into the trap which is so common nowadays of fighting frivolous battles. The defence of women or groups such as homosexuals does not mean artificial equality or the participation in events such as Gay Pride parade. It involves much deeper actions based on solidarity and human compassion. In fact Marxism itself, the philosophical origin of the subject at hand, shares the same sources as Christianity and follows its three major existential stages (original sin, redemption and salvation, or in Marxian terminology: the appearance of private property, proletarian revolution and a classless society). The idea of social justice should be more present than ever in social democracy’s theory and prac-

tice. Within this great idea we can find meritocracy, social mobility, social inclusion policies directed at immigrants and the marginalized and the values advocated by and emanating from humanism. Ethics, incidentally, that since the start mobilized and moved many socialists and when they were put into practice turned social democratic parties into large political and ideological, and needless to say, electoral machines.

In fact it is really a return to the origins and a departure from a reductionist, absurd, relativizing and disappointing postmaterialism. *Marc Gafarot

Holds a degree in Humanities from the Universidad de Navarra, an MSc in European Studies from the London School of Economics and an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Liverpool. As a journalist and political commentator he has worked from London for Bloomberg LP, in Latin America for Summit Communications and served as a Parliamentary Adviser at the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg. Gafarot is currently Head of International Relations for Catalan International View. He has written a book on Flanders and Federalism in Belgium called ‘La mort de Bèlgica? La gradual i pacífica emancipació flamenca’ (The Death of Belgium? The Gradual and Peaceful Flemish Emancipation) and co-authored The Student’s Guide to European Integration.

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Business and Economics

Do economists cling too tightly to their models? An empirical approach to the economy

by Alfons Méndez*

For many years now, most notably in the wake of the current crisis, economic policy and economics have become highly visible in the media. In fact, the public are more concerned than ever as to how governments manage the economy. Issues that until recently were more characteristic of academic study have taken centre stage in public debate. Some economists have become used to giving advice on economic policy; they frequently publish their articles in the press and constantly make pronouncements in the media.

This increase in the presence of economic issues in the media has brought to the public’s attention the speculative spirit that the economy has always had, as an academic discipline. There’s an old adage which states that if you ask two economists a question you’ll get three different answers. This liking for the controversy, highly stimulating in an academic environment, is a source of confusion for the public (and the politicians who have to make decisions in real situations). Everyone sees that different authors propose different solutions to tackle problems with a high social impact, such as unemployment, inflation and public debt.

As a result of this trend there has long been a debate as to the fundamentals, methods and results achieved by the economy. Marginalists and Marxists, Monetarists and Keynesians, the history of our discipline is riddled with examples of disagreement as to the direction to be taken. In this sense Jesús 18

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Lizcano complained recently that the state of the economy is ‘worrying’ while also suggesting that it was necessary to consider ‘different underlying assumptions’ and to conduct ‘more realistic and socially useful research’ (El País, 20/01/2012).

It is also true that economic practice sometimes provides confusing results.

Thus, forecasts carried out by different institutions as to the future evolution of economic variables, whether GDP, inflation or the public deficit, sometimes cause great perplexity. Predictions of these variables change virtually every quarter and if we took the trouble to compare the initial forecast a year earlier with the final figure, we would realise that the margin of error is extremely high. According to an urban legend, in an investigation into GDP forecasts, several professors were asked for their estimates. The most accurate was the one who had given a random number. This idea has led some econo-

Business and Economics

mists to express their scepticism as to attempts to estimate the future value of economic variables. Xavier Sala i MartĂ­n, for example, argues that he is not a fortune-teller but rather a doctor who analyses the economy in order to find solutions to its diseases.

Nevertheless, even this minimalist approach is not without its problems, as there are a number of crucial differences between medicine and economics. First, medicine can perform laboratory experiments in which every variable can be isolated in order to find a causal relationship between a pathogen and the symptoms of a disease, and between a drug and the removal of an illness. In economics there are no laboratories and the experiments all take place in real time with human subjects, making it difficult to establish a true cause-effect relationship and conditioning our social values on the matter. Second, in medicine it is relatively common that diseases are caused by

a single agent, such as a virus, a bacterium, a genetic defect or some other pathogen. Diseases which are the result of multiple causes, such as cancer, while rare, are difficult to study and even harder to treat. However, this is commonly the situation with the economy.

An economic crisis is precipitated by the concurrence of a number of adverse elements, external or internal, which make it difficult to decide, at least initially, which is the most important agent. This circumstance does not make easy to find a remedy.

From the start economics was largely based on the methods of physics, which tries to explain the behaviour of a number of facts in the real world by using theories with an increasingly sophisticated mathematical basis. Thus the different branches of economic theory have established increasingly formal models to describe the relationship between economic variables.

However, in physics, the predictions Catalan International View

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of a theory are confronted with facts, facts that can be measured to an increasing degree of accuracy, which allows researchers to reject or accept said models. Incidentally, this second option is always a provisional conclusion, subject to what new and more accurate experiments dictate. This is not the case for economics where, despite advances made by econometrics in measuring the relationships between economic phenomena, we still lack sufficient precision to analyse many real economic events.

The presence of economic issues in the media has brought to the public’s attention the speculative spirit that the economy, as an academic discipline, has always had Perhaps this is why different theoretical views proliferate and what makes it possible at one time or another for Keynesians, Monetarists, Institutionalists and Liberalists to defend their opinions. Scholars do not always accept these or other labels and often update them with the prefix ‘neo’, which does nothing to diminish their theoretical diversity. However, this debate is not merely academic: these different streams are in eternal conflict in order to ensure the implementation of economic policy in a specific direction.

Moreover, in the design of economic policy there is a constant interplay between theory and practice, as the various economic views are accepted or rejected in the light of their results, and also in terms of the evolution of the dominant political ideology. Thus, confidence in the performance of the government of the 50s and 60s has been replaced by a faith in the market in a move that may one day be replaced by another approach.

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Perhaps we are ready to try to design a more considered basis for economic policy, in order that it is no longer under the influence of divergent theories, since they do not always respond to the complexity of the real world. In fact as the social and institutional environment changes, ideologies are in danger of becoming fossilised and they stop being an acceptable guide for action. Furthermore, some models appear to lack a sufficiently precise empirical foundation.

In fact, data could be used in a much more powerful way than it has been up to now. With the passage of time and the spread of market economy institutions to many countries, the set of illustrative examples available of how economic variables display and their response to economic policies have grown dramatically. However, this huge volume of information is used in an informal and occasionally haphazard way to support the decisions which are made. It is easy to talk about Dutch tulips when referring to speculative bubbles, but in fact since the seventeenth century there have been hundreds of speculative processes of this kind, both in financial and real estate markets and even in product markets.

We must recognize that some scenarios are more relevant than others when comparing each specific speculative process we face.

It is possible to classify these diverse cases into well-defined types (always a work in progress), thus allowing us a well-defined factual basis both for economic policy and for testing economic theories (which may thereby overcome the provisional status of ‘stylised facts’ which is sometimes invoked). In doing so, it would be necessary to develop a finer division of generic concepts such as recession, unemployment or inflation, since it is commonly accepted that there are different types of crises or growing price events, depending on the cause.

Business and Economics

If we succeed in creating a wellstaged database of economic situations, besides having a stronger foothold for academic debate, public managers would possess examples that are similar to the situations they face, and as a result they will be able to find more considered remedies to economic problems. By taking into account the effects that varying combinations of fiscal and monetary policy have had in the past and the relationship between public spending, public debt and growth, more effective economic policies could be proposed. One could also study the response of financial markets and product and service markets to different regulatory frameworks and their impact on economic growth and income distribution. This could even serve to

improve the study of causal relationships from a firmer foundation.

Several authors have made a systematic use of economic examples. One example is William Easterly, who in his book The Elusive Quest for Growth, gave as a result a very thought-provoking interpretation of development policies. He focused on the view of supranational institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and also domestic economic policies. Broadening these examples with a further collection of cases, their classification and their analysis in the light of the results obtained would be a good way to renew economics as a science in order to provide a better response to the challenges faced by modern societies. *Alfons Méndez

Auditor for the Mercadal Town Council (Minorca) and Assistant Teacher at the Universitat de les Illes Balears. Holds a PhD in Economics from the Universitat de les Illes Balears, a Masters in Economics from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and a Masters in Economics from the Universitat de Barcelona. He has published various books, including De la vinya a la ramaderia. El canvi en el model agrari menorquí (From Wine to Livestock. Changes in the Minorcan Agrarian Model) and Trenta-cinc empresaris menorquins. Èxit individual i progrés social (Thirty-five Minorcan Entrpreneurs. Individual Success and Social Progress). He regularly writes in the local press about economics and social issues.

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Colombia: from a social emergency to an emerging country

by Carles HernĂĄndez and Juanjo MartĂ­*

In recent decades, as a country Colombia has been associated with internal armed conflict, drug trafficking, structural violence, problems of governance, and a general lack of respect for human rights. Recently, however, this Andean country has offered a very different image of itself, even compared with the one it projected during the early years of the twenty-first century. Although the unfolding processes of social policies, the resolution of the armed conflict and the restoration of rights have yet to end, and rather than criticizing or praising the results or failures of the processes that govern these events, this article attempts to present certain elements that invite us to reflect on Colombia’s evolution in the coming years.

This approach is based on a perspective that accepts the dual reality of a country characterized by one of the highest rates of social inequality in the world, which also lives with the contradiction of possessing a huge potential in terms of natural resources and a highly strategic geographical position, thanks to its centrality in the Americas as a whole and its double maritime connection with the Atlantic Ocean (the Caribbean) and the Pacific. Thanks to the policies begun under the last administration, and continued by President Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia has positioned itself as an emerging country that is currently attracting huge investments to activate its socioeconomic development. In the unfolding of this process, it will require support in the transfer of knowledge and technology to organise its own model of development and growth.

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Colombia is a rich and diverse country (extremely diverse, according to biologists), with a highly complex topography thanks to the Andes mountain range that splits into three, the eastern, western and central branches, and the convergence of the Nazca, Caribbean and South American tectonic plates.

Together this produces an area with diverse climatic regions that largely dictate their habitability, interconnectivity and, in many cases, the way in which they are governed. Alongside the physical geography, there is the cultural diversity in which we can identify three major population groups: indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombians and Roma (DANE Census, 2005).

Like most countries, Colombia is facing a major change in its evolution, where trade, economic and financial trends condition the path to a market economy and towards the imminent

The Americas

predominance of widespread political axes centred on the generation of formal employment, productivity, innovation and competitiveness. All these components of public policy will have to coexist with equity and sustainability if Colombia is to develop as a country and not only at the economic level.

From the perspective of the current European scene, marked by the 2020 European strategy for a knowledge economy, the need to internationalize and revive the economy, while simultaneously facing a drastic reduction in the resources that many European agencies dedicate to cooperation for development, it is evident that in certain emerging countries there is a need to redefine the strategic alignments and the formal frameworks of cooperation in order to integrate public and private participants. This is the case with Colombia and its consideration as belong-

ing to the group of countries known as ‘CIVETS’.

Colombia has positioned itself as an emerging country that is currently attracting huge investments to activate its socioeconomic development Colombia: a land of development aid

From a strictly Colombian perspective, the map found on the Department for Social Prosperity’s (DPS, formerly the Presidential Agency for Social Action) website, allows one to view all the countries and international agencies that are currently running aid programs in Colombia (though the overall figures for international aid require an analysis to establish their area of operations, given that the major donor, the Catalan International View

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US, has provided aid which is largely aimed at strengthening the army and the police in the field of antinarcotics, as part of its ‘Colombia Plan’).

Against this backdrop of change we must take into account that the current administration’s new policy, ‘the National Strategy for International Cooperation in Colombia 2012-2014’, stresses that Colombia should not only be a recipient of aid money and technical assistance matters related to drug trafficking and armed conflict, but it should also receive science and technology, environmental management, infrastructure and social development aid. It should also devote significant resources to the prospect of consolidating its position as a key player in South-South aid for countries of the Mesoamerican and Caribbean region and international missions of the UN Security Council. Thus Colombia has a clear desire to represent itself as and actually become a country with international relevance in both the Atlantic and Pacific context. However, the fact that the new administration emphasises the importance of social cooperation as part of the National Development Plan, focused on revitalizing the economy, and legislatively promoting measures which restore rights, such as the Victims Law, and the fact that there is currently a strong possibility of peace talks between the Colombian government and FARC, one cannot forget that the international community and Colombian civil society must continue to make an enormous effort to bring about concrete, long-lived actions as reflected in the USOC’s report on the state of human rights during President Santos’ first year in office.

Indeed, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, it must be remembered that in 2011 between three and five million people who are entitled to the restitution of land and rights under the new legislation were 24

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forcibly displaced. Such a process involves a series of measures which are rather complex, since the confiscated land is in the hands of groups which are outside the law, shell companies or new owners (nominees).

From a European Union perspective, an expansion of the areas and instruments used to structure the financing of aid projects aimed at Colombia is significant. As the EuropeAid website shows, in the strategic plan for the 2007 – 2013 period, 16 million Euros (10% of the budget) will be earmarked to strengthening trade, competitiveness and productivity, while combining instruments of cooperation, stability, and now, the CI+ (technological cooperation and transfer). In this regard we must remember the commercial agreement signed between the EU and Colombia, which comes into force this year, a period in which an FTA has already been signed between Colombia and the United States and when other agreements of great importance with various Southeast Asian countries (who also make strong regional investments) are already being negotiated.

This framework, which is more oriented towards economic progress, among the new policies which are being encouraged in Colombia, is the attempt to promote the positive impact of trade on social development and human rights within the framework of Social Responsibility. It has the support of the United Nations Global Compact, which has set up its regional office for Latin America in Bogota.

Colombia as an emerging country.

The keys to optimization

The Colombian economy has benefited from various factors over the last decade, with the Uribe administration’s policy of Defence and Democratic Security being of particular note, characterized as it is by the state imposing its power on the country’s armed groups.

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Another favourable factor is the influx of capital and Venezuelan professionals to Colombia, encouraged by the controversial measures taken by Hugo Chávez’ Bolivarian government and his policies of nationalization and state intervention.

Both factors have had an enormous impact on the exploration and exploitation of new mineral and hydrocarbon resources, enabling the discovery of reserves which, in turn, provide substantial formal revenues to the state in addition to the so-called royalties. These result in increased resources being available to governors and mayors to promote the development of infrastructure, social plans and innovation, and science and technology programs in the regions.

The current Santos administration’s political focus is summarised in the 2010 – 2014 National Development Plan (NDP), which deals with the ‘engines’ that are intended to boost the country’s progress: infrastructure, housing, agribusiness, mining and innovation. Each area is expected to contribute resources and actions which enable the sustainability of the model. It is worth remembering that while the Colombian model has traditionally been centralized, the NDP emphasizes a strengthening of the regions, opening up a lot of potential for the possibility of cooperation with European regions as a whole. As part of this move towards decentralization, Regional Competitiveness Commissions have already been created with multi-year investment plans between 2011 and 2014 with the aim of ensuring that the NDP’s goals are achieved.

Currently, the departments with the greatest economic development and the best potential for investment opportunities are concentrated in Bogota and Medellin (in Cundinamarca and Antioquia departments, respectively), while the coffee-producing regions (Risaralda, Armenia and Caldas), San-

tander (Bucaramanga) and the Caribbean area cities of Barranquilla and Cartagena are gaining strength, with a consolidated economic framework and a qualified workforce, and public institutional structures which are stable and robust with quality training (SENA).

Free ports have been created in different regions in a significant attempt to stimulate finance and business sectors Free ports have been created in different regions in a significant attempt to stimulate finance and business sectors, while also being consistent with the development plan. They seek to attract foreign capital investment (on the lookout for tax benefits). This phenomenon has been made possible thanks to improvements in legal security on a nationwide scale, though it is expected that over the coming years it will also be consolidated at the regional level, where the establishment of government institutionality is still in development and taking hold in some departments. In the same vein, the digitalization of the administration means that thanks to Proexport, the Ministry of Commerce Industry and Tourism’s agency dediCatalan International View

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cated to attracting international investment, foreign companies interested in investing in Colombia can access data and figures of interest. Similarly it can provide information as to bids in strategic sectors such as tourism, which offers unique possibilities for growth.

Likewise, other ministries, such as the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications, with its ‘Live Digitally’ Plan, offer many opportunities in terms of the supply of services for the development of ICT and digital content.

These brief notes ought to make us think that the time has come to appreciate the fact that right now Colombia is undertaking a serious task, though not without room for improvement, with a commitment to sustainable economic development and integration in a framework which is increasingly respectful towards the much-vaunted ‘rule of law’. This is evident thanks to the direct cooperation that the Colombian government is developing with international and multilateral organisations and through decentralized cooperation carried out by numerous NGOs, which strengthens the relationships between different societies.

In this new context we must foster the country’s regional development and its cultural integration, especially in the context of Colombia’s relations with its regions and participants such as the EU and regional players and others which are emerging on a global, state or regional scale.

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This new model of relations should be based on the various capacities that the different societies have to offer one another, aligning the country’s policies, and strengthening trade and scientific relations in order to build business platforms directed towards the Europe – Mediterranean area, and the US – Asia region. However, it should be noted that this approach does not exclude or replace the need for development aid, from a plurality of interlocutors, to build upon the peace which has been growing in the country in recent years. Somehow, this new cooperation, scientific and academic, should also try to synchronize itself with the previous model, and in any case, it should also contribute to the country’s stability, and to the conditions of peace and respect for human rights, even though it does so in an indirect, necessary and insufficient way (generating wealth and a move from informal to formal employment, strengthening the institutions and conditions of governance and stability, favouring conditions of welfare and mutual understanding, and a series of encouraging effects that positively contribute to overcoming conflict and inequality). Colombia is in a position to become a model for all developing countries which are experiencing conflict that wish to take a clear step forward in favour of their country, peace, governance, the institutionalization of human rights in a global framework of global democracy.

*Carles Hernández

*Juanjo Martí

Holds a Sociology degree from the Universitat de Barcelona and an MA in Sociology from La Sorbonne (Paris V – René Descartes). He specializes in cooperation for development projects related to communications. Since September 2005, he has been OBREAL’s coordinator for cooperation in communications in Latin America.

Holds a doctorate in Psychology from the Universitat de València. He has worked in local public administration and in socio-economic development. Currently he is working on developing knowledge transfer programmes between the EU and Colombia.

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The Americas

Chávezism without Chávez?

by Isabel Galí*

Hugo Chávez is a man of inexhaustible energy. He never sleeps more than 4 hours a day and his hyperactivity is the cause of endless headaches for his ministers. He is liable to call them at any time of day or night to convene a meeting at the Miraflores Palace. It reached the point where the septuagenarian Jorge Giordani, having resigned as minister in 2008, refused to be reinstated for several years, claiming that he was tired of having to get out of bed in the middle of the night. He was unable to refuse the president indefinitely, however. The third time he was offered the post he accepted, once more joining the cabinet as head of Finance and Planning.

The Venezuelan president’s relentless nature, which can be considered a virtue in a public figure, may end up becoming the cause of his death. Following the operation to remove a second tumour, the Cuban and Russian doctors who are treating him have pleaded with him to follow their recommendations that he rest. They do not hesitate to point out that the probable cause of his relapse has much to do with steroids that Chávez took during the first months of the disease to maintain his energy levels and to be able to put on a healthy face in front of his people.

It looks like Chávez has partially accepted their advice. He has finally admitted he is ill, and speaks openly about it. In a small cabinet meeting held in Havana, between his fourth and fifth sessions of radiotherapy during his second period of illness, Chávez told the nation that, ‘I will win, we will win this battle, God willing’. Surprisingly, during an appearance on TV from his native Barinas where he announced that was going to need another operation he let slip a hitherto taboo phrase that opened up the possibility of a Venezuela without him: ‘regardless of my own personal fate, the revolution has such 28

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a momentum that no one and nothing can stop it’.

Since then, therefore, Chávez’ own supporters feel it is legitimate to talk about a future without Chávez. The president himself opened the door to speculation as to which government minister, which leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), or which brother or daughter might be ‘the Chosen One’.

In a Venezuela in which Hugo Chávez has governed for more than 12 years, this is not an ordinary debate by any means. The president’s followers are forced to contemplate a future without him, whether his retirement comes immediately, following the elections on the 7th October, 2012 or even if he continues to hold office for a further five years. What values should Chávezism continue to represent? To what end? Which model should it follow?

In other words, what is the future of Chávezism without Chávez?

The president’s misfortune has added tension to a pre-election campaign that has been strengthened by primaries that have seen a consolidation of unity among the opposition parties which are united around la Mesa

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de Unidad Democrática (the Bureau of Democratic Unity, or MUD). Since February, these forces have adopted Henrique Capriles-Radonsky as their presidential candidate.

Whichever way you look at it, Hugo Chávez is the centre of the debate. The MUD exists as the ‘opposition to’, while the PSUV and the various satellite parties are ‘supporters of ’. In the succession debate, the importance of which ideas are being defended has been virtually abandoned and everything revolves round a sweepstake as to who is most likely to succeed Chávez.

Nonetheless, the polls still indicate that in spite of his illness, Chávez would still win a face to face contest with Capriles.

However, they also point out that without Chávez, the governor of Miranda would win, irrespective of which Chavista candidate he was up against.

The question remains: beyond the human tragedy of a disease with no remission, do we want to take part in this sweepstake? It may be helpful to appreciate the president’s immediate surroundings and the spheres of influence which move around him. However, such speculation may ultimately prove to be in vain, since the president has repeatedly sworn that he will stand at the next election, and he has also demonstrated that his ability to overcome adversity has not waned. At the end of every radiotherapy session in Havana he has made an appearance, with or without hair, and with exhaustion showing on his face and without.

Every time, a detail that should not be overlooked, he entrusts himself to God and the Virgin Mary.

I personally believe that the most neutral and agreeable option for Chávez would be to have his 31 yearold daughter, Maria Gabriela succeed him. She already acts like the First Lady and can increasingly be seen accompanying the president in public.

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Chávez’ older brother, Adán, also has the necessary genetic credentials to be a potential perpetuator of the project. He is governor of Barinas, where he and his siblings were born, and can count on significant popularity among certain sectors of the PSUV. Chávez is convinced that his work will survive, but so far, in his long decade in power, he has failed to provide any room for a potential successor to emerge. A quick look at the men who have served around him reveals that all those who hold an advantage over the others have all fallen from grace at one time or another.

One name that has always sounded promising is Nicolás Maduro, the minister of foreign affairs and vice-president of the cabinet. This former bus driver (as Chávez never fails to mention when they appear in public) projects an image of a faithful man, but so many years in office have allowed him to forge his own personality which at one time or another the president has considered dangerous. This explains why Chávez nominated him as candidate for the governorship of Carabobo state, one of the most hotly disputed, and only won on one occasion by Chávez’ party.

If sense prevailed, the other strong contender would be the executive vicepresident and minister of agriculture and lands, Elias Jaua. He is young, with impeccable leftwing credentials: he cut his teeth in the Red Brigades and he is the driving force behind ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. Unfortunately, however, he is completely devoid of charisma.

It is worth considering some opinions from ideologues of Chávez’ project and their views as to the president’s possible successor. Heinz Dieterich Steffan, the German sociologist, resident in Mexico, who coined and developed the term Twenty-first Century

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Socialism, said the following in an article on the website Aporrea: ‘Maduro has the shrewdness and the cunning of a scheming, social climbing, unionist (...) [Chávez’] friend Elias Jaua is, in terms of public relations, a dead loss. For this reason he is not a viable candidate. (...) Diosdado Cabello, the wizard of underworld politics, has thoroughly earned the nation’s antipathy and would never win a presidential election’.1 Diosdado Cabello, indeed, is a feared leader of the PSUV, former member of the armed services and current president of the National Assembly. He has already lost a key election for the governorship of Miranda, specifically against the current opposition candidate Capriles-Radonsky. Standing once again would mean almost certain defeat. However, what makes him even more unpopular is his reputation for being corrupt, and in particular his links to sectors to the right of Chávez, the so-called ‘Boli-bourgeoisie’ (from ‘Bolivarian’ and ‘bourgeois’), presentday Venezuela’s new economic elite.

If we go back further, to take a look at the politicians who were at Hugo Chávez’ side at the beginning of his political project, we can find potential candidates who have a big handicap to overcome in that they are older than Chávez.

José Vicente Rangel, despite being Chávez’ right hand man for many years from his position as vice president, has managed to retain his own voice, both critical of and loyal to Chávez. Nonetheless, he was born in 1929. The same is true of Alí Rodríguez Araque, the former guerrilla leader so admired by Chávez, and current minister of electric energy. He is 75 years old and not in the best of health.

One factor which is impossible to ignore is the president’s military status.

The armed forces have been and will

continue to be key to a possible transition, whether or not there is political continuity. Dieterich mentions some names: ‘Chávez’ selection could well fall on Admiral Orlando Maniglia. He is not the ideal man, but he is trusted by Chávez, belongs to the party’s centre and the military hierarchy and would be politically acceptable to the middle classes’.2

The polls indicate that in spite of his illness, Chávez would defeat Capriles.

However, they also point out that in Chávez’ absence, the governor of Miranda would win, irrespective of which Chavista candidate he was up against However, the name that has stood out this past year is the newly appointed minister of defence, Henry Rangel Silva. He was one of the military leaders who stood by Chávez’ in the 1992 attempted coup, during which both were jailed. He is not considered so much for his potential as a possible successor but more for his potential in maintaining the status quo and keeping the lid on the possible scandals of the past twelve years of Chávez’ government if he were to be absent one day. With Rangel Silva’s résumé, no one was unimpressed by his nomination.

Nevertheless, Rangel has been linked to the briefcase containing 800 thousand dollars which Argentinean customs found in the possession of a Venezuelan businessman in Buenos Aires airport in August 2007. The money was intended to be used to pay part of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s first election campaign. The scandal took place when Rangel was the director of the Venezuelan secret services.

He has also been banned from enterCatalan International View

[1] ‘Maduro tiene la astucia y rudeza del trepador golpista sindical. (...) El amigo Elias Jaua es, en términos comunicativos, un plomo. Por lo mismo, no es un prospecto viable. (...) Diosdado Cabello, mago de la política del inframundo, se ha ganado la antipatía nacional con creces y nunca ganaría una elección presidencial’.

[2] ‘La selección de Chávez bien podría recaer en el Almirante Orlando Maniglia. No es la persona idónea pero es un hombre de confianza de Chávez, pertenece a la parte centrista de la jerarquía militar y políticamente sería aceptable para la burguesía’.

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ing the United States, which accuses him of directly collaborating with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC, in order to smuggle Colombian drugs via Venezuela, in what the Americans call the Cartel of the Suns.

Chávezism may end up like Peronism, the continuation of a project with a character strong enough to unify it and an ideology that is versatile enough to adapt itself over time Beyond the names, the military’s role will be important whether a Chavista candidate wins or not. The country is deeply divided, social tension is evident, especially between the 35% who are fiercely pro-Chávez and the 30% who are rabidly anti-Chávez. So how to ensure that a victory for the opposition will not lead to the Bolivarian militias, the civilians groups who have been armed by Chávez, taking to the streets? Who will maintain order if Capriles-Radonsky wins the elections on the 7th of October? In early 2012 I had the chance to put this question to the MUD candidate himself and the answer was clear: ‘I do not foresee a scenario in which the army violates the Constitution. I am completely confident that if we win, they will respect the results’.

Capriles-Radonsky’s strategy, both before as governor and now as a presidential candidate, has always been one of not publicly questioning the legiti-

macy of the government and its policies, regardless of whether he believes that Chávez abuses his absolute control of the institutions to rid himself of awkward opponents, whether they be politicians, judges or journalists. Unlike other opposition leaders, his experience as the governor of Miranda has taught him that Chávez’ Missions are useful and are not only patronage projects: the underprivileged vote for Chávez because he is the first politician who has given them a voice. Thus the only way to defeat Chávez is to appeal to national unity and to put aside the past and the conflict between classes. He realises that this could help him win and he has begun to construct a discourse that appears entirely reasonable to the ears of many Venezuelans.

Given such a situation, Chávez has two options left as he faces the campaign: maintain the level of verbal confrontation with the escuálida (squalid), pitti-yankee (Yankee-loving), golpista (scheming) opposition, as he often refers to them, or tone down the rhetoric somewhat and use his illness to convey the messiah-like image of an indispensible politician who is prepared to sacrifice himself for a project that he considers more important than his own life.

Historians are already beginning to debate the latter scenario. Chávezism may end up like Peronism, the continuation of a project with a central character which is strong enough to unify it and an ideology that is versatile enough to adapt itself over time. Thereby perpetuating its hold on power for as many years as possible.

*Isabel Galí (Barcelona, 1973). She holds a degree in Communication Science from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a masters in International Relations from the Universitat de Barcelona. She is a journalist for the International Desk of TV3 (Catalonia Television). From October 2008 to February 2012 she was their Latin American correspondent. From her base in Bogota, she has covered the whole of Latin America and publishes the collective blog La Panamericana. Previously she was a Middle East correspondent where she lived between September 2004 and April 2007. She has travelled extensively throughout the region, from Egypt to Iran. She has also worked for Televisió d’Andorra, El Periódico de Catalunya (newspaper) and CNNPlus TV channel.

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Asia

Room for improvement

by Iris Mir*

Twenty years ago Deng Xiaoping, the father of China’s economic reform, toured the south of the country to convince the sceptical that his risky model of opening and reform would not jeopardize the widely acclaimed socialist values. Now, the new generation of political leaders that will be elected in the autumn find themselves engaged on a similar quest. However, the circumstances are not as pleasant as they were back in the nineties. With severe inflation and a population that is increasingly suffering the consequences of uneven growth, President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao will leave office in order to let the new leadership take their seats. In the world’s biggest dictatorship there is no room for surprises and it is expected that Vice-President Xi Jinping and Vice-Premier Li Keqiang will be elected to proudly fill their respective positions. The Communist party relies on control, especially when sensitive changes take place such as the once-in-a-decade power transition to be announced during the 18th Party Congress in October.

The Chinese dream is fading fast and the new leadership will face mounting pressures. The populace realises they lack reasons to trust the communist party’s road-map. Meanwhile calls for political reform are increasing within the party itself. Supporters of the current political system base their belief on the fact that Deng Xiaoping’s reforms made China the world’s second biggest economy by not being accompanied by a political reform that guaranteed liberties attached to a democratic system.

‘There is still room for improvement in my work’, stated Wen Jiabao during his last National People’s Congress news conference in March. ‘I should assume responsibility for the problems that have occurred in China’s economy and society during my term in office, for which I feel truly sorry’, he added.

Censorship, repression and propaganda 34

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are the tools the politburo relies on to deal with pressure from below. China is an expert in embarking on reforms aimed at maintaining the status quo.

It is a strategy that may be of no use in times of crisis, when mirages have a tendency to fade away. Nonetheless, now that he is leaving office, Wen fearlessly stressed that China, ‘must press ahead with both economic structural reform and political structural reform, and in particular with reform in the leadership system of our party and country’.

On the other hand, Hong Kong and Taiwan, where the quality of life and social guarantees resemble those in the West, are challenging the party’s point of view that systems like those found in Europe are not appropriate for China. Furthermore, there is the issue of national reunification. The com-

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munist party is determined to win back what they call the renegade province of Taiwan while appeasing calls for full universal suffrage in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR).

For Beijing, with its principle of One Great China, there is no room for debate: quite simply they are both Chinese territories. But leaving territorial issues aside, economic, social, cultural and political cleavages are hampering China’s fight for stability during a year of leadership elections in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

By the end of March, the Hong Kong SAR saw how the statutory electoral committee consisting of influential business and political elites close to Beijing elected the new chief executive, CY Leung. One of the conditions of the handover of Hong Kong to China when the British left the island in 1997

was that the former were to eventually be granted genuine self-government through universal suffrage. In the meantime an electoral committee was responsible for making Beijing’s preferred choice. Under the One Country, Two Systems policy (a formula initially thought of as a means to convince Taiwan to embrace Chinese sovereignty) Hong Kong was granted temporary SAR status for a period of 50 years, with the aim of accommodating two different systems within one country and allowing Hong Kong to retain its way of life and liberal economy. The Hong Kong Basic Law (or ‘mini constitution’) became a mechanism by which to achieve the impossible: the coexistence of capitalism and communism. Limited as it was to establishing the relationship between the two different political systems and the extent of their powers, Catalan International View

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the Basic Law became an instrument of protection and a means to keep two different systems apart, rather than a mechanism for reuniting the nation. It clearly established that the way of life and the freedoms enjoyed by the Hong Kong Chinese were not the same as Mainland Chinese. The fact that China agreed to and enshrined the provision of Universal Suffrage in the Basic Law was a smart move that has provided China with political leverage. China employed its characteristic ambiguous propagandistic language in promising that an ultimate aim of the Basic Law was that both the Hong Kong’s chief executive and its legislative council were to be elected by universal suffrage. Meanwhile, the selection method should be in light of the current situation, in accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress. China’s final deadline for direct elections of its Chief Executive is 2017 at the earliest; and 2020 for its Legislative Council.

Nevertheless, China is not as safe as it may think. In spite of having a faithful committee monitoring the situation, CY Leung took office surrounded by fierce, mounting pressure from prodemocratic parties and civic groups demanding to be granted the universal suffrage they were promised. The newly elected leader promised to work hard to overcome people’s negative perception of the election. He may well be unsuccessful in this task since Hong Kong’s problem is not one of a negative perception but of having a supposedly free territory ultimately ruled by an authoritarian regime.

Taiwan also held legislative and parliamentary elections in January. Ma Ying-Jeou of the conservative Kuomintang Party was re-elected for a second term in office charged with the task of maintaining the precious stability that governed cross-strait relations during his first mandate. Since Ma has been in power, six decade-old bans have been 36

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lifted, such as the one prohibiting any postal, air or maritime links between the renegade province and Mainland China. Paradoxically good relations with China means it has overtaken the United States in becoming Taiwan’s main trading partner. A love-hate relationship with the Mainland is what is currently dividing politicians and Taiwanese society. In 1992, while still under Kuomintang’s authoritarian rule, Taipei and Beijing agreed to adhere to the One China Principle envisaged by Beijing. But how can this principle be followed without sacrificing a clearly distinct Taiwanese identity? Any formula is welcome as long as it does not make China uncomfortable, largely by not favouring independence. According to the opposition Democratic People’s Party (DPP), economic links with China may be helping the economy but they are simultaneously damaging the island’s autonomy. The ruling Kuomintang Party adheres to the One China Principle under a unification formula that respects Taiwanese identity. Meanwhile, the DPP has one main goal: independence. Their respective understanding of the One China Principle is determined by their own unique definition of respect towards Taiwanese identity. It is an identity that has progressively evolved since the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of the Civil War. Nevertheless, it was not until democratization arrived on the island that the Taiwanese started to question their identity.

In this context, two different peoples were born out of history. They both have Chinese origins but they have different histories that have made them unique. The question is not whether people from Taiwan are Taiwanese or Chinese. Due to history and other circumstances they have developed a distinct identity from that of Mainland Chinese. It is an issue that goes beyond independence or unification. In

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2009 the newspaper Asia Times Online published the article ‘Taiwan plays the democracy card’. The piece spoke about how Taiwan uses democracy as a way to directly or indirectly boost its identities. The author, Chen, argued that democratization allowed Taipei to enter the global liberal democratic community in order that the so called ‘democracy card’ has become a key element in gaining an advantageous position in the international community by ensuring its de facto autonomy from Beijing. Chen notes in the article that Taiwan is, ‘intentionally downplaying the democracy card by seeking common ground with Beijing’. It is a stance that was shared by the electorate in January’s election.

In short, liberty, capitalism and democracy are part of Hong Kong and Taipei’s political identity. Furthermore, they both raise the question as to where liberty and democracy sit within the authoritarian communist regime. The issue rests on, for instance, whether Hong Kong’s autonomy and its eventual democratization have the capacity to influence the whole country and become the norm within a diverse China.

This is indeed the politburo’s greatest fear. Democracy and liberty have the power to strengthen diverse identities within a centralized China. Too much democratic upheaval in a China that is keen on appeasing demands at a time of political transition. Taiwan’s elections were eagerly followed by Internet users on the Mainland via Sina Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) and other

social media sites that created special sections during the elections. Conversely, according to The Wall Street Journal, in the run up to Hong Kong elections, China’s Central Propaganda Department encouraged media outlets to refrain from ‘reporting, hyping or discussing’ them.

In short, liberty, capitalism and democracy are part of Hong Kong and Taipei’s political identity The fifth generation of China’s leaders will eventually have to face the dilemma that is dividing public opinion and the very communist party itself: is a political model similar to that in the West appropriate for China? In his final address at the National People’s Congress, Wen Jiabao made himself very clear when he stated that, ‘the mistakes of the cultural revolution have yet to be fully eliminated’ if China is to avoid experience a similar period of instability again. China’s trend of strong growth has reached the point where a change of direction is needed. This means that the authoritarian regime will have to think about how to accommodate freedoms and other issues related to development within its borders. Maybe it is time to look across the Formosa Strait or down to the Southern island of Hong Kong to see how liberties are at some point linked to development. As Wen said, in the end there is still room for improvement.

*Iris Mir She holds a degree in Media Studies from the Universitat Ramon Llull (Blanquerna Faculty of Communication Sciences) and a Masters in Political and Social Science, specialising in contemporary democracies from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She focused her research on democracy in Southeast Asia. She has been living in Asia since 2006 working as the Asia Pacific correspondent and reporter for various media outlets such as COMRàdio, El Temps, Ara and Radio Netherlands Worldwide. She is currently working in Beijing, as the media and communications officer at the Instituto Cervantes.

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The extent of China’s relations with the BRICS countries

by Augusto Soto*

The BRICS countries are gradually developing their own character in the international arena, while simultaneously displaying very dissimilar realities and dynamics. China in particular stands out from the other members of the group due to its unique nature. Meanwhile within the BRICS the potential of the SinoBrazilian connection has perhaps been undervalued up to now.

The acronym BRIC, coined in 2001 by the investment bank Goldman Sachs, was rapidly adopted by various international analysts, especially since the first meeting between the ministers of foreign affairs of the four countries involved in 2006. With the coming of the economic crisis the countries themselves have chosen to embody the acronym by forming a group of countries.

Furthermore it has expanded since South Africa’s entry in 2011, with the BRIC countries becoming the BRICS. The main argument in favour of the real existence of the BRICS is the desire of its members to jointly move ahead in a scheme of understanding which characterizes them on the major global issues from their position as the most powerful countries with the greatest material potential of the so-called emerging economies. This tendency has been confirmed in the four high-level summits which have so far been held in Yekaterinburg (2009), Brasilia (2010), Sanya (2011) and New Delhi (March 2012).

The BRICS are a multi-polar option in the current process of the reconfiguration of global power. They are a gathering of countries which collectively share elements such as landmass, population and natural resources and are thus close to the classical definition 38

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of geostrategy. Simultaneously they are the embodiment of the possibilities of interconnection offered by globalization in bringing together distant and dissimilar countries. For their part the BRICS focus their activities on collective action since they are points of growth in the global economy at a time of crisis in the developing world. Goldman Sachs’ original prediction was that by 2050 at least four of these countries will count themselves as among the six largest economies in the world.

From a classical geostrategical point of view, two of them, China and India, account for some 40% of humanity. Also three of them, Russia, Brazil and South Africa possess extraordinary quantities of natural resources in absolute terms or in proportion to their population.

Meanwhile, the classification fits with a form of globalization that tends towards the dispersion of power and multipolarism, since for the first time it means there will be points of strong economic growth and influential political protagonism in both the northern and southern hemispheres within the same group of countries.

Whether we accept the geostrategic, globalization, or even the collective version of events, we can see just

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how different the various members of the BRICS are. Many differences exist between them, with geographical distance being the least.

In fact there are significant differences in their respective historical experiences as well as in the cultural distance between them. It is also true to say that the BRICS do not share a common political system and they all possess huge internal asymmetries.

South Africa maintains traces of postapartheid racial discrimination, India has its caste system, while Russia contains a class of enormously powerful oligarchs and third-world social inequalities, which are distinct from those found in China.

Nevertheless, Brazil, China and India have managed to rescue vast numbers of people from poverty. However, in spite of the enormous reserves held by their respective central banks one should not forget that they take seriously potential scenarios that may bring about a deceleration in global

growth, a global expansion of the crisis, or unforeseeable internal disasters that may upset the figures.

What is undoubtedly of great importance is the nature of relations between the various members once bilateral relations are closely analysed.

In the case of ties between China and India, the acronym Chindia has gained in popularity to emphasise the possibilities of a connection with a high degree of synergy. Nevertheless, in their complex contemporary history, New Delhi and Beijing do not appear to show mutual trust. Their relations are further complicated by the imponderable parallels belonging to the IndoPakistani relationship (which in turn is dependent on the relationship between India and China), in addition to Pakistan’s internal situation and the latent Afghan conflict.

Meanwhile, it is true that relations between China and Russia are the best they have been for decades, in spite of disagreements over the price of SiCatalan International View

From left to right: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, PM Manmohan Singh, Chinese President Hu Jintao and South African President Jacob Zuma at the 4th BRICS Summit in New Delhi

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berian gas. Nevertheless, the narrow range of bilateral links is still a factor (being largely limited to raw materials) when compared with both countries’ links with the USA or the EU. Other factors which could lead to future disputes are the asymmetric bilateral relations stemming from a depopulated Siberia, compared with an increasingly populated China and the imbalance of military power in the region.

The main argument in favour of the real existence of the BRICS is the desire of its members to jointly move ahead in a scheme of understanding which characterizes them on the major global issues With respect to the asymmetry between the BRICS, China is alone in having shown continuous growth, often at double digit rates for more than a generation. Like India it can also lay claim to a diaspora that can be found in many corners of the world. However, China is ubiquitous and since 1978 it has been at the forefront of globalization with all manner of innovations, including versatile engineers and small and large entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, China simultaneously has a political, economic and cultural impact on the USA, Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Muslim world to a far greater extent than the other BRICS. Currently Beijing is visited by as many official foreign delegations than Washington, if not more.

Furthermore, China unbalances the BRICS as a whole due to population size, outstripping even India. This is largely because its southern neighbour is home to numerous cultures, mentalities and ways of life. Unlike China, which is in the vanguard of capitalism, various segments of the Indian popu40

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lation do not live in the contemporary era, marked as it is by economic impulses.

Chinese import/export figures are staggering and are rooted in strategic consumption which in the case of zinc, lead, copper and nickel approach 40% of global consumption. In terms of information highways, China’s connection to the digital world and the latest developments in telephone technology offer it a virtual space that in spite of censorship displays exponential growth and is one of the most dynamic in the world. The figures show that it is one of the world leaders in terms of spending on research and development.

For its part, devoid as it is of the historical burden of Sino-Indian or Sino-Russian relations, the Sino-Brazilian relationship has opened up new horizons. In the last five years China has become the main trading partner of both Brazil and Russia. But in contrast to relations with their Eurasian partner, a more innovative cooperation space has opened up for Beijing with the largest Latin American country.

This relationship not only means there is a possibility that in the future Brasilia will owe its support for Beijing’s eventual admission to the United Nations Security Council. In fact it also means there are possibilities of mutual growth in prosperity. Indeed Brazil may have a greater capacity to influence the rest of South America, something which Russia lacks in general terms in relation to the Caucasus and Central Asiatic countries in the region.

Likewise, Beijing-Brasilia ties have a relevance to a regional potential that is lacking in relations between Pretoria and Beijing in African terms.

It is worth mentioning that aside from Brazil half a dozen South American countries count China as their main trading partner and that this is a growing tendency among most coun-

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tries of the region, including Central America, whose main trading partner continues to be the USA. China is implementing a new geostrategic integration that strengthens East-West connections in Latin America thanks to infrastructure projects known as bi-oceanic corridors and a series of infrastructure projects which are aimed more at interconnection and have the Asia Pacific macro-region in mind, with China as both the main source and receiver. These involve the enlargement of tunnels through the Andes and improvements in road and river transportation networks in the Amazon region towards the South American Pacific coast in order to increase MERCOSUR exports towards Asia, mainly, though not exclusively, Brazilian. More recently there has been talk of the construction of a railway in order to connect Colombia’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts. China is interested due to the increased potential for the distribution of local and regional exports and imports.

As for Brazil and Latin America as a whole, China represents a multidimensional challenge. In the short term, satisfying China’s demand for hydrocarbons, minerals and food is the most spectacular external factor to have sustained regional growth. Simultaneously, this opportunity also carries with it the possibility of the perpetuation of Latin American dependence on its traditional pattern of mining and agroexport.

Meanwhile, in the context of the economic crisis the downturn in the demand for Chinese exports in the

USA and Europe has led China to flood various southern hemisphere rising economies with its products, Brazil in particular. Therefore, the likelihood of growing protectionism and trade disputes are also a matter for the BRICS to resolve.

When faced with the complexity of ties with China, a growing number of analysts and Brazilian and Latin American diplomats agree that one cannot continue without a strategy for dealing with China, among other things, because China has its own strategy for every continent and country in the world.

It is surprising at this stage that certain public figures keep reminding us of the lack of understanding between the parties involved arising from their cultural distance. It is as if there were no Confucius Institutes throughout the Brazilian and Latin American region and as if the numerous bilateral friendship associations did not exist, not to mention the university departments and think tanks in every capital city dedicated to studying relations with China. Nevertheless, this is what occurs practically the world over.

In the case of Brazil and Latin America it is highly likely that there is a lack of communication between the experts in each country and their business sector, political class and diplomatic apparatus. It is equally plausible that there are simply not enough suitably qualified personnel to deal with the volume of issues raised by China’s runaway pace of development, which is simply unparalleled in contemporary history.

*Augusto Soto Consultant and lecturer at ESADE and academic collaborator at ESADEgeo, Barcelona. He regularly publishes analyses on China and the Asia-Pacific region for the Real Instituto Elcano and is a consultant for the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. He is a member of of the United Nations’ Global Experts. He is a Former reporter for the Efe Agency in Beijing. From Barcelona he works to promote the Dialogue with China Project.

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Equatorial Guinea and the West: from indifference to kindness, and from kindness to police investigation

by Jordi Fexas*

Not so long ago, Equatorial Guinea was a hermetically sealed state. Little was known of this small Central African country that was once a Spanish colony. Very occasionally news emerged of an attempted coup, or an execution or yet another attempt by the opposition to unite against the dictator. The lack of information was intentional: obtaining a visa to visit Malabo was quite a feat. In fact, few tried.

The discovery in 1994 of huge oil deposits radically changed all that. Companies from all round the world set up shop in the country. They were not only there to extract the oil and build infrastructure projects, they were also there to offer the country’s small class of nouveau-riche spectacular four-wheel drive trucks, huge plasma TVs and boxes and boxes of very expensive Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey.

Everyone’s friend

The comings and goings of VIPs at Malabo airport never stops: if it’s not Swaziland’s Energy Minister or the President of the Philippines, it’s a delegation of Spanish, Chinese or North Korean parliamentarians. The poorest come to ask for financial assistance; the wealthi42

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est come to do business. The tables have turned: before the Guinean economy depended on aid for everything; now official delegations queue up to beg for alms from the discredited local dictator.

It seems as if Obiang Nguema Mbasogo can be generous in some instances: when Robert Mugabe arrested the organisers of a potential coup who wanted to carry out a putsch in Malabo, illegally extraditing the ringleader, in exchange he received large amounts of oil for his impoverished country.

Moreover, Malabo’s autocrat is prone to onerous partnerships whenever there is a natural disaster: while his subjects have no light or electricity, he supports the reconstruction of other countries, in order to display his ‘generosity’ both locally and internationally.

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The most recent example of his extravagance was the African Cup of Nations (CAN 2012) jointly hosted

by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. The dictator spared no expense: he initiated numerous, costly infrastructure projects, even though many of them were disastrous investments (in Bata, for example he built a small tower topped by a revolving restaurant).

Lobbying firms hired by the Guinean regime are rumoured to handsomely reward those who collaborate with Obiang. They have made numerous politicians and journalists around the world apologists for his regime.

There are politicians from certain countries who make regular visits to Guinea, presumably in order to benefit from the regime’s largess: they are all

very sympathetic to the regime. Gustavo de Arístegui, an MP for the Spanish Partido Popular, frequently flies to Malabo on ‘private business’ which he has never spoken about (Miguel Ángel Moratinos, the former socialist Minister of Foreign Affairs, has also been seen recently in Bata). On one occasion, in 2007, Arístegui did not go to Malabo on ‘private business’ but instead travelled with a Spanish parliamentary committee tasked with promoting ‘bilateral relations’. He was accompanied by a Convergència i Unió politician, Duran i Lleida, who in a meeting with Spanish residents said that the Spanish government had never given the Guinean government ‘what they deserved’ and that a new period of HispanoGuinean cooperation would begin in Catalan International View

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which the Spanish government would ensure that Equatorial Guinea becomes effectively democratized. Soon after, Obiang won the election with over 95% of the votes. The Catalan company Gas Natural became a shareholder in the second biggest liquefied petroleum gas plant in Equatorial Guinea.

The comings and goings of VIPs at Malabo airport never stop: the poorest come to ask for financial assistance; the wealthiest come to do business In 2010, the socialist politician Jose Bono visited Guinea, in his role as president of the Spanish parliament.

In this instance, in a speech before the Spanish community, Bono ran through a list of the more despicable Hispanic stereotypes, praising the heroic efforts of Spanish missionaries and claiming that, ‘the world would be significantly poorer if it weren’t for its 450 million Spanish speakers’. He also made it clear that in addition to cultural neocolonialism, he aspired to a form of economic neo-colonialism; he wanted Spanish companies to ‘take their place’ in Guinea’s oil industry. He did not specify which companies he was referring to. Some commentators suggested that Bono had travelled at the personal behest of Pocero de Seseña, a construction magnate with a murky past who became rich thanks to Spain’s real estate bubble and who is now looking for new markets in Equatorial Guinea (where there are plenty of outrageous multi-million dollar projects, such as the construction of a new capital, an international airport in the middle of the jungle and an ‘international’ university with 24 faculties).

In fact, with his characteristic arrogance Bono expressed precisely what 44

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successive Spanish governments have always believed: that Spain, as a former colonial power, is ‘entitled’ to privileges within Equatorial Guinea’s economy.

Obiang has never denied it, but neither has he taken any notice. Nevertheless, Spanish politicians continue to accompany trade delegations to Malabo.

UNESCO called into question

The latest show of generosity on behalf of the Guinean dictator has left a bittersweet aftertaste. He suggested to UNESCO that he should fund a prize for medical research that would carry his name. Thanks to the controversy surrounding the award, many people around the world learnt that Obiang Nguema Mbasogo is a dictator who pockets enormous amounts of money from oil while his population lives in misery. UNESCO had to stop giving out the award, despite pressure from many African delegates who tried to ingratiate themselves with their Guinean ‘godfather’.

The Guinean government brought its entire diplomatic might to bear on ensuring the award was given out. It was not to prove easy: the award had to be renamed the ‘Equatorial Guinea Prize’. Finally the award was approved thanks to votes from African and Asian delegations, and one or two unexpected delegates such as Brazil. The Guinean government rushed to announce to its citizens that the approval of the award was the international community’s gesture of support for its president.

An eventful career

It is no wonder that Equatorial Guinea’s regime finds allies within UNESCO. In fact, in his 33 year rule, Obiang Nguema has never been short of allies. In 1989, Equatorial Guinea stunned the world by asking for membership of the International Francophone Organisation, while patently not

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a francophone country. Nevertheless, France enthusiastically accepted Equatorial Guinea. It appeared at the time as if the French had consolidated a new pawn in Central Africa at Spain’s expense. French became one of Equatorial Guinea’s official languages, alongside Spanish. However, it did little to please the French: when handing out oil concessions, the Guinean government chose the Americans.

Even more surprising was Guinea’s recent request to join the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP). In reality, no one in Equatorial Guinea speaks Portuguese (except for the ‘Second Lady’, the dictator’s second wife, originally from São Tomé). Nevertheless, since Guinea has recently improved its relations with various Portuguese speaking countries such as Angola and Brazil, it requested admission to the organisation as a full member. Obiang had no problem in declaring Portuguese the official language. Everything seems to indicate that Equatorial Guinea will soon be a full member of the CPLP. Obiang’s political flirtations cover almost the entire planet. He has flattered Obama, while not hesitating to praise Chávez or collaborate with North Korea. He has hired Israeli mercenaries to train an elite corps of soldiers, while also employing numerous Arab bodyguards. Sometimes he presents himself as the representative of the ‘downtrodden’ and makes potent Africanist demands, all the while being on excellent terms with US oil companies such as Mobil. He also presents himself as a champion of regional integration and spends millions on Equatorial Guinea’s presidency of the African Union, while introducing harsh xenophobic policies against immigrants from Cameroon and other African countries.

For an uninformed outside observer, Obiang Nguema Mbasogo’s

policies might well seem erratic. This is partially true: it is clear that Equatorial Guinea’s foreign policy is not oriented towards a long-term strategic goal. But if Equatorial Guinea fails to have a coherent state policy it is simply because the matter is of secondary importance.

Foreign policy is used solely to keep the elite in power.

Teodoro senior’s succession is getting complicated. The West probably doesn’t care very much that Equatorial Guinea is a dictatorship, it is more concerned with Teodorín himself, and his reputation as being quirky, unstable, impulsive, irascible and profligate Obiang Nguema has no other priority aside from maintaining his job and preserving the influence of his family circle. For this reason he negotiates with certain countries because he decided to send his nephews to study there (South Africa for example), maintains ties with oil companies that offer bribes (such as the Americans) and signs every international treaty, without the slightest intention of respecting them (such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, EITI). Guinea’s foreign policy has short-term goals which are purely incidental, but it has done what it was meant to do: to consolidate Obiang’s power for the last 33 years.

Often, the genuine significance of Obiang’s foreign policies needs to be decoded. His trips abroad basically serve to show his people that he is a great leader of international standing.

Obiang could not tolerate the fact that UNESCO refused to grant ‘his’ prize, as it meant that the population would have known that he did not enjoy the international community’s approval.

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International persecution; judgement on the succession

Everyone knows that Obiang and his family divert most of the state’s funds to their own private bank accounts.

Furthermore, it is suspected that every company in Equatorial Guinea whether public, private or a hybrid is merely a front for the dictator’s family business.

From the cement factory to the airline companies, from the huge construction companies to the oil companies: everything in Equatorial Guinea belongs to the president or his people.

Obiang’s political flirtations cover almost the entire planet. He has flattered Obama, while not hesitating to praise Chávez or collaborate with North Korea

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Nonetheless, in 2004, following a complaint from the NGO Transparency International, the United States Senate decided to investigate accounts held by Equatorial Guinea’s regime at the Riggs Bank. It was confirmed that the funds came from the oil industry, which finance the Guinean dictator and his family in an unorthodox manner. A large portion of the money ended up in the Spanish Banco Santander.

The authorities in Madrid, however, refused to investigate Spanish accounts held by Obiang’s family, and he withdrew his money from the Riggs Bank without problems.

Recently, the legal persecution of the Nguema family has been revived.

The Spanish justice system has begun to investigate the dictator’s assets in the Canary Islands. American judges have begun to look into the property of the dictator’s favourite son, Teodoro Obiang Nguema (‘Teodorín’ or ‘el Patrón’), who is emerging as a possible successor to his father (his father has paved the way for the transfer of power with a recent amendment to the constitution).

However, where investigations have gone furthest is in France. In September 2011 a French judge seized a dozen luxury vehicles owned by Teodorín in Paris. The dictator tried to shield his son by giving him diplomatic immunity by appointing him the country’s permanent ambassador to UNESCO. In addition, he faked the sale of Teodorín’s luxury Parisian residence to the Guinean state, in order to prevent it from being expropriated. Nevertheless, the French courts seized the mansion, and the riches it housed. In spite of the outrage in Malabo, the court case is continuing and it is likely that Teodorín, the heir to the throne, will end up being pursued by Interpol.

Teodoro senior’s succession is getting complicated. The West probably doesn’t care very much that Equato-

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rial Guinea is a dictatorship, it is more concerned with Teodorín himself, and his reputation as being quirky, unstable, impulsive, irascible and profligate.

Though far from being leftwing, Teodoro junior could represent a danger to Western interests. China, meanwhile, continues to invest in Equatorial Guinea, steadily playing a more important role in the country’s economy. It appears to be completely unconcerned as to who will be Obiang’s successor and seems willing to accept the decision come what may. It is clear that African oil is increasingly necessary for this new superpower.

Obiang owns this $35 million mansion on the Malibu coast, which he paid for in cash. It was the most expensive home sold in California in 2006, and has a tennis court, swimming pool and 4-hole golf course.

*Jordi Fexas (Barcelona, 1966). He holds a degree in Contemporary History from the Universitat de Barcelona, specialising in Anthropology and African History and conducted doctoral studies at the Institut d’Història JVV(UPF). He has a wide range of experience in the private sector. He has also worked as an anthropologist, conducting fieldwork in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As a journalist he has contributed articles in numerous magazines dealing with contemporary issues. He is currently Igman-Acció Solidària’s Head of Projects in the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa.

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47

Interview

Anna Veiga ‘If we don’t protect biomedical research from the economic crisis we’ll miss out on the future’ Interviewed by Eva Piquer* Photos by Manu Lozano

Anna Veiga (Barcelona, 1956) is a pioneering biologist who specialises in assisted reproduction and stem cell research. She chairs the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology and is director of the Stem Cell Bank at the Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona. She is known as the ‘scientific mother’ of the first person in the Spanish state to be born thanks to IVF, in July 1984. Some thirty years have passed, thousands of test tube babies have been born and a lot has been acheived.

Will our children live to see an end to degenerative diseases?

It’s highly likely. Some degenerative diseases will be cured later than we would like, but nevertheless sooner than we imagine. It’ll either be thanks to cell therapy or because we understand disease mechanisms. Regenerative medicine is advancing at an amazing velocity. Stem cells open up tremendous possibilities for expanding our knowledge. We’ll be able to cure most illnesses thanks to what we learn rather than by directly implanting stem cells.

Did you start to get interested in stem cell research because assisted reproduction has ceased to be a challenge and has become a reality?

I’ve been working in reproduction for thirty years.

We helped lay the foundations of therapies for couples with fertility problems. It’s not that we can’t go any further, but in reproduction we’re now talking about clinical applications of a methodology, while with stem cells we’re still talking about basic re-

search. They’re two different areas, but many colleagues have taken the same path as I have, because the issue of stem cells began with embryonic stem cells. We had to learn how to grow an embryo.

Has in vitro reproduction achieved more than you imagined?

Yes, for sure. When you start you never think about what might happen in several years time. The field has changed a great deal: we get much better results, everything is much more standardized, the treatment is more tailored to an individual... The methodology has spread to public and private centres throughout the developed world. We’re talking about medicine that’s used in developed countries; in Africa they’re just starting to use it. The European Society of Reproduction has initiated a project that aims to put the possibility of treating couples with fertility problems within reach of developing countries. They have to be treated differently from Europe or the United States, where IVF is provid-

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ed by the health services. Here it’s become routine from a technical point of view and it’s also become routine in the public’s imagination.

And new questions have emerged.

Whereas before we spoke about sex selection, wombs for rent, reproduction for same-sex couples, and we wondered whether it was acceptable to examine an embryo to see if it is chromosomally normal, nowadays we’re debating whether women should freeze their eggs in order to have children later in life instead of doing so at an age which is physiologically favourable. Every age has its questions; society gradually accepts certain issues that initially seemed unthinkable.

You must have thought about such ethical dilemmas throughout your career...

Obviously, you think about each situation as it arises. And if you’re lucky enough to be at the forefront, then you have more information and you can talk about it with people who are more knowledgeable on the subject than you are. You learn, and you take the decisions that you see as appropriate. But what I think about sex selection or freezing eggs is of little importance. I have to do my job in a professional manner and that’s that.

I’d like to see an embryonic stem cell therapy which is an effective cure for degenerative diseases

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tain people to have a child. Luckily we have very clear laws which outline exactly what we can and can’t do, and these leave little room for personal prejudices.

If someone tells me they want a boy and not a girl because they already have four girls or because they prefer boys, unfortunately, or fortunately, I can’t do anything to help the couple choose the sex of their offspring. The law forbids it. If a young woman has had her uterus removed and wants to have a baby, I can’t help directly, because here we aren’t allowed to rent a womb. The most I could do would be to tell her about countries where this is possible.

What are the current ethical limits to biomedical research?

In terms of reproduction, the line which should never be crossed is in doing something that puts the health of the unborn child at risk. Whatever we do, we can’t compromise the health of the unborn child. If there’s ever any doubt, we err on the side of caution. In biomedical research in general, rather than there being a red line that can’t be crossed, it’s more about the ultimate goal we have to aim for: improving people’s quality of life. If we can mitigate the effects of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, or cure them even, then that’s great. They’re diseases that have always existed, but in the past we saw them at a relatively low frequency since people didn’t live so long. We’ve only heard about Alzheimer’s very recently because people are living much longer. Many degenerative diseases are age-related.

Who should take ethical decisions?

Society as a whole. Whether we allow gender selection or not should be the result of a debate as to the pros and cons, of considering whether there will be any adverse consequences for the children concerned. Technically many things are possible, but we need to ask society whether we should make them possible. It’s not the scientists who have to take these decisions. My conscience is no more important than anyone else’s, I could be very liberal or very reactionary, it’s not important.

Will our children’s children live a lot longer than we do?

If we manage to solve certain problems, then probably yes. But life expectancy has not only risen because we’ve found a cure for most diseases but because of better nutrition and so on. Problems such as pollution or climate change may end up affecting people’s health, causing life expectancy to stagnate.

And maybe that’s a good thing, because living for so long is somewhat worrying. We need to ensure that people live in the best possible conditions.

There’s no point in living for a hundred years if you have to be in a wheelchair for the last thirty and you’re severely incapacitated.

Have you ever encountered a contradiction between what you believe and what you have had to do?

Yes, it happens to everyone who works in this field.

We ask ourselves whether we’re right in helping cer-

What would you say to people who are opposed to stem cell research for ethical reasons?

I would say: when it really works and we find a cure for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, will you refuse to

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use these methods because an embryo has been destroyed? Let’s see how many people refuse to treat their father or their child with stem cells simply because the cells come from embryos. People like myself who have worked in assisted reproduction have more respect for embryos than anyone, but I disagree with taking it further and considering that an embryo is a person. An embryo is a potential person, and therefore doesn’t deserve more consideration than a person. There are countries in Europe such as Italy, which allow abortion but which forbid embryonic research. A two day old embryo has more legal protection than a ten week old embryo. There must be something wrong there.

As our scientific knowledge of pregnancy progresses, don’t terminations become more questionable?

What we mustn’t do is trivialize the situation; every case is unique and needs to be viewed in a different light. A three day old fertilised egg can be the most wonderful thing in the world for a couple, while for a teenager a nine week old pregnancy could be a nightmare that will make her life hell. The more advanced the pregnancy is, the more likely it is that the potential person that the embryo repre-

sents will actually emerge. A pregnancy which lasts twelve weeks is much more likely to become a child than a three day old in vitro embryo. Is it more of a person? I’d call it a person when it’s born.

What would you like to see before you retire?

I’d like to see an embryonic stem cell therapy which is an effective cure for degenerative diseases. It looks like the first therapies will be for diseases which affect the retina. It’s a very accessible organ, and it’s not very aggressive in terms of immunological rejection. Scientists are attempting to convert embryonic stem cells into retinal cells and subsequently inject them into sick patients. This would make me really excited; I’d be able to see the therapeutic fruits of our research.

Is there a good level of research in Catalonia?

Yes, there is a good level. Money has been spent on research, we’ve understood that you have to invest money in biomedicine in order to put us on a par with Europe and the world. It’s never enough, and we have to ensure that the economic crisis doesn’t make us take a step back now that we’ve made some progress.

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Is there a real danger of us going backwards?

Yes, because the economic situation is very serious and we might find that certain funding is stopped.

If we don’t protect biomedical research from the crisis we’ll miss out on the future. It’s very hard to move forward, but if we went backwards we would lose out on a lot. We’ve suffered cuts in terms of government funding, but so far the politicians and society itself have shown sensitivity by understanding that while we have to tighten our belts in certain areas, cutting down on research could have terrible consequences.

If we want to be a world leader in biomedical research... ... then the only way is to invest money in it and ensure that the scientists have the means to conduct research, and that excellent researchers want to come and work here.

Is this still happening, do people still come from abroad?

This has happened, but now it’s more a case of ‘should I or shouldn’t I?’ Are there good Catalan researchers who go abroad due to the lack of resources?

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Not yet, or at least not in a major way. But there’s a danger that this will happen in the future if we fail to consolidate projects or we stop funding them.

Has the economic crisis also affected biomedical research on a global scale?

Countries which are very clear that the only way to advance is via R&D, research and development, implement spending cuts on all sides except in this area.

Which countries are the leaders in research?

The United States, of course. In Asia research is growing dramatically. We don’t know much about what happens in China, but it’s highly likely that they’re conducting a lot of research.

Does a country need to have a model that guarantees scientific research?

Absolutely. They need to be very clear on this, and research and development has to form part of the country’s model. Increasingly, science and research and development are part of the ministry of finance, because either they’re given adequate finance or they’ll be in trouble. Often research doesn’t lead to immediate results, there are no financial returns.

The gains’ are in the long term and in another area.

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Society understands this: Catalans rushed to contribute to the TV3 Marathon, which donates money to medical research.

In a country where there are cutbacks all round, with a severe economic crisis and soaring unemployment, the TV3 Marathon managed to collect even more money than in previous years, when everything was going well. This means that people really understand what’s going on.

jects which have a supply of available embryos, so we have to regulate it.

Is the fact that we don’t have our own state a further obstacle to medical research?

The fact that we don’t have a state is an obstacle to many things, and obviously this is reflected in every area. If we have a funding problem, it also has implications for research.

Do you advise parents to store their children’s umbilical cord blood?

Umbilical cord blood has some regenerative properties for the haematological system that are very similar to bone marrow. This blood can be used to cure diseases such as leukaemia and certain types of anaemia. It’s one of the few cell therapies that works, there are umbilical cord banks all over the world. Private banks have increased in number because they claim that blood from umbilical cords can be used to cure many other forms of diseases. This is not currently true, it can only cure diseases of the blood, and anyway, when one has to be treated for a haematological disease it’s better not to use your own blood. I think umbilical cords should be given to public banks so that they’re available to anyone who needs them.

We have to keep our healthcare system in mind, the solidarity between people and the access to treatment for all. If we keep the banks private only the people with money to store their umbilical cords will have access to them, and that doesn’t seem fair to me.

Do business interests often come before medical opinion?

Clearly there are commercial interests, and this does happen sometimes. I’ve been very lucky to work in a place like the Dexeus Institute, where the guidelines have always been very clear: honesty and patient welfare have always come before any other consideration.

Has medicine become too dehumanized with so much specialisation? Do we need to bring back the traditional role of the GP? It would be great, but the one isn’t necessarily incompatible with the other. A top notch specialist can be a great humanist, if they take the time to speak to their patients and empathize with them.

There are oncologists who have a very good connection with their patients. Something that goes against the humanization of medicine is having to conduct fifteen consultations in an hour.

Apart from your obvious successes, have you had any failures during your long career?

Failure is very present in my work: 60% of couples who try in vitro fertilization don’t get pregnant the first time. We have to accept that there are things which we can fight against and other things which we can’t. Sometimes you want to achieve a pregnancy because you have an emotional bond with the couple, but it doesn’t work out, and it’s very hard.

What happens to the frozen embryos which couples don’t want?

Many are used for research and some are donated to other couples. But there aren’t many research pro-

In terms of reproduction, the line which should never be crossed is in doing something that puts the health of the unborn child at risk

Do you think the Catalan public health system will be harmed by the economic crisis, or do you think it will be protected in the same way as they’re trying to protect research?

We have an excellent healthcare system, which obtains excellent results in treating the entire population, but it is stretched to the limit and we need to make some adjustments. Things like co-payment should be one of the possibilities, because the system we have at the moment can’t take any more.

If we all have to benefit, we need to make an effort in order that it’s sustainable. Any kind of public healthcare system is better than having a system like they’ve got in the United States.

Is it true we have a first-rate health system?

Yes, but other European countries like France, Belgium and Sweden have a similar healthcare sys-

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tem to ours, or better. The difference is that we’ve reached a good level very quickly, because our democracy is relatively young.

In the past when someone had a serious illness, they went to the States.

Yes, but not now, because here we have exactly the same treatment as they do. This is also thanks to the free flow of knowledge.

Technological progress must have done a lot to improve the flow of scientific knowledge.

Indeed. All the information is circulating on the Internet. If you want someone’s opinion you send them the MRI scan or test results by email, the scientific literature all fits inside a large file... Internet has changed everything completely. The patients 54

also have access to information. They come and say to you: ‘I want an in vitro fertilization, a preimplantation diagnosis and the medication I want to take is such-and-such’. They know everything. And we’re not talking about a supermarket, but a medical procedure. It’s good that the patient has a lot of information, but if it’s not properly managed, it can be worse for them. For example, in terms of cell therapy: if you have MS, you can find thousands of websites that explain how you can cure it using cells from your own bone marrow. Most of these sites are fraudulent, nothing has ever been proven, they take advantage of people in vulnerable situations.

Is the conversion of reproductive medicine into a business a threat?

Yes, but when such a technique becomes routine,

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then it’s only natural that it happens. We have to adapt to change, although sometimes it’s difficult to accept it. Assisted reproduction helps people who have problems having children to have them.

At first we were just talking about fertility problems, of couples who weren’t getting pregnant. This still accounts for 90 percent of cases. But there are other related cases, like the woman in her twenties who wants to freeze her eggs so she can use them when she’s in her forties, assuming that by then she’ll be professionally stable, have found a stable partner and emotionally will be in a better position to be a mother. If there’s a technique that allows her to store the eggs she’s producing now, the good ones, in order to use them later, who are we to stop her? In any case, it’s a social problem that should be addressed by other means. I get forty-five year old women who come to see me who want to have children and we provide them with donated eggs.

Surely it would be better if they had had their own eggs frozen just in case. My initial gut reaction to women storing their eggs to have children later is that I don’t like it. I’d prefer it if they had children when they’re supposed to have them. But the alternative of egg donors is worse. If a woman has a life expectancy of eighty years, is it so bad if she has children when she’s forty...? It’s just a shame that women’s reproductive life comes to an end.

Finding the right moment to be a mother isn’t easy.

Women still have to give up too many things in order to have children. We’ve made a lot of progress, but we’re not quite there yet. Pregnancy and childbirth are one thing; it’s afterwards when things get complicated. And during that period, men could have exactly the same role as us, but parenting still depends far more on women. Why do we women have to make sure children have their trainers for gym class, or have to do the shopping...? Let the men take care of it! Childcare duties could be shared perfectly equally.

Is it still rare for a woman to excel in scientific research?

Not at all. There are many excellent professionals in all fields.

Have they renounced motherhood or do they consider postponing it?

Yes, but there are also those who try to combine everything. It’s true that in research you can’t stay away from the profession for a time in order to be a mother, or slow down for a few years with the intention of taking it up again later: you have to always be there. There’s tremendous competition and you can’t afford to rest.

If we have a funding problem, it also has implications for research What have you given up in order to come so far?

I’ve had to make sacrifices, but I don’t have any regrets, I’d do the same all over again. Even though I only have one child, I still often don’t have time for myself. The feeling of guilt, thinking that I ought to be at home when I’m at work and that I ought to be at work when I’m at home, I’ve definitely experienced it a lot. The feeling of guilt is terrible, and we women have it a lot more. My younger colleagues who have children make the same comments that I made 25 years ago, and I feel like we haven’t advanced one step. I don’t know any men who feel guilty for not coming home in time to bathe the children.

Have you had to prove yourself twice thanks to being a woman?

The truth is that I have suffered more prejudice for the fact that I work in a medical environment without being a doctor. Yes, I’ve been handicapped for not being a doctor and for not being a man, but in that order.

*Eva Piquer Writer and cultural journalist. Works for several newspapers and magazines. Has been a lecturer at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a New York news correspondent. Won the 2002 Josep Pla prize for her novel Una victòria diferent (A Different Victory). Also author of several books, including La noia del temps (The Weather Girl), Alícia al país de la televisió (Alice in Television Land) and No sóc obsessiva, no sóc obsessiva, no sóc obsessiva (I’m Not Obsessive, I’m Not Obsessive, I’m Not Obsessive). Her latest book is called La feina o la vida (Life or work).

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Green Debate

Twenty years of talking about sustainability (1992-2012)

by Pere Torres*

The Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit was held in June 1992. Virtually every state in the world was present, most of them represented by their head of state. Also present were hundreds of NGOs and thousands of environmental activists. There was a general feeling that it was to be a landmark event, marking a before and an after in the history of human civilization.

With hindsight, the summit had a positive outcome in two substantial aspects.

First, the socio-political. Thanks to the Earth Summit, sustainability gained its place in the political and social agenda.

Since then, every public debate or issue makes some form of an explicit reference to this collection of ideas which include sustainability, sustainable development, environmental quality, environmental equity, Agenda 21, and so on. One may criticize it, for being mere rhetoric, just words. Nevertheless, our acts always end up being a prisoner of words. Therefore, the prolific use of this new vocabulary, which has gained momentum these past twenty years, is a good thing. It is worth remembering that in spite of some noteworthy predecessors, the real turning point took place in Rio in 1992.

The second legacy of the Rio Summit formed the basis of two major global challenges that are facing humanity: climate change and biodiversity loss.

An agreement on both of these issues led to the foundation of the Conference of the Parties (COP), which have been held regularly ever since in order 56

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to put the principles of the agreement reached in Rio into action. Undoubtedly, the COP on climate change has had the greatest impact in the media.

The meeting held in 1997 in Kyoto ( Japan) gave rise to a protocol with commitments by industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. In the European Union, the commitment was made with determination, backed by directives which gave the Kyoto Protocol real teeth. In other parts of the world, such as the US or Australia, the protocol has received much less respect or it has sparked controversy. As a result, in more recent meetings in Copenhagen and Durban, there has been a sense of failure due to widespread resistance from developing countries to the idea that they should assume their responsibilities as new world powers. In any case, it all began in Rio, twenty years ago.

With somewhat less media attention, the Convention on Biological Diversity has also run its course. In fact, the 2011-2020 decade has been proclaimed the Decade of Biodiversity with the intention of implement-

Green Debate

ing a strategy with five main objectives, known as the Aichi Targets. There is no room here to go into details, but it is worth recalling that this ambitious line of work also has its roots in Rio ‘92.

In short, the direct results of the Earth Summit deserve to be seen in a very positive light. The same cannot be said for the degree to which the agreements that were made have been respected. Obstacles and lack of commitment have multiplied and real progress has fallen far short of the original expectations. It is a case of good ideas, but poor management.

In June 2012 the same participants who took part in the original meeting twenty years ago will return to Rio for the intergovernmental conference known as Rio+20. The countries, for the most part represented by their head of state, the NGOs and activists of all kinds will all meet once again. It will be another chance to reverse the unsustainable trends that are part of our economic and social models. There are some elements that are clearly different from those that formed the basis of the 1992 meeting.

As I mentioned earlier, sustainability took its place on political agendas right from the start. I also referred to the growing importance of developing nations, which currently have a notoriety they did not have twenty years ago.

Thanks to the Earth Summit, sustainability gained its place on the political and social agenda Similarly, one can say that the focus of the debates has evolved: they have gone from ‘what’ to ‘how’. The current goal is not to convince us of the existence of climate change or the threat of biodiversity loss: now the goal is how to mitigate both phenomena with mechanisms and policies that are satisfactory to the various actors who must intervene in their resolution. As a result, the negotiations are longer and the postures adopted more irreconcilable. Reaching agreement on a statement of general principles is relatively easy; reaching agreement on issues that affect a country’s energy, industrial or agricultural policies is another matter.

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Green Debate

However, the fundamental change compared to the first summit is the widespread, profound crisis that is affecting the world. The financial and economic crisis in Europe, which appears not to be affecting other regions of the planet from a macroeconomic point of view, manifests itself via other symptoms: food and energy insecurity, growing inequality, the scarcity and rising price of raw materials and so on. In reality, we are experiencing problems originating from the unsustainability of the development model, problems which were noticed at the 1992 Summit and from which we are clearly suffering at the 2012 Summit.

For this reason, it is logical that the preparatory documents for Rio+20 reclaim the original principles, which still remain valid, focusing attention on a new economic model which shakes off the current one, with its burden of unsustainability, and which helps to eradicate poverty. We have to make a clear commitment to the green economy.

The final outcome of these summits is unpredictable because agreements are reached in extremis and key negotiations take place away from the public arena It is worth highlighting some of these early documents, especially the one entitled The Future We Want, which was made public in January 2012. It contains powerful ideas, based on the principle that there are shared, yet distinct responsibilities.

- The green economy means the protection of our natural resources, increasing the efficient use of those resources, promoting guidelines for sustainable production and consumption and the transition to lowcarbon development.

- The green economy should not be seen as a rigid set of rules to be 58

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followed, but rather as a framework for decisions that lead us to consider the pillars of sustainability in its three dimensions (the environmental, social and economic), in both public and private decisions.

- The green economy requires structural adjustments in developing countries that cannot be achieved without the help of the international community.

- The introduction of the green economy must not lead to the creation of new trade barriers, an exacerbation of the dependency of certain countries on technology with respect to others or development aid being offered on new terms.

How can this position be put into practice? The ‘official’ proposals now circulating are relatively timid. For example, it suggests that the Secretary General of the United Nations should promote the setting up of an international platform to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge on a worldwide basis. Specifically, it is intended that the platform should bring together policies, good practices at various levels, instruments for measuring progress and a directory of technical services and sources of funding.

Also included are some guidelines to encourage the promotion of such changes in poor countries. Thus, for example, it calls for new funding in addition to that which already exists, the phasing out of subsidies which are harmful to the environment, and international cooperation in research into green technologies, the results of which should remain in the public domain.

This, therefore, is the situation before the summit. Nevertheless, as has been recently observed, the final outcome of these summits is unpredictable because agreements are reached in extremis and key negotiations take place away from the public arena. In any case,

Green Debate

there is one principle that appears to hold true: the broader the consensus, the more diluted the contents agreed upon and the less tangible the commitments made.

Moreover, such summits suffer from an original sin: they are intergovernmental, that is, the decisions are made by the governments of participating states. Certainly, the dialogue with civil society and economic sectors is steadily growing, but these other actors are not involved in making the major decisions. Neither do non-state governments participate. In a large part of the world, the governments which are more closely connected to the problem of unsustainability are not to be found at state level, but rather at a level with no direct representation in these summits: thus, the governments of California, Quebec, Scotland, Bavaria,

Catalonia, Eastern Bengal, Gauteng or the state of Rio de Janeiro itself are not present at the negotiations, while they are ultimately the governments which hold the key to whether the green economy or indeed any sustainability strategy may prove successful.

This is further proof that the path to sustainability is long and plagued with obstacles. Many of the conventions of the past will have to be overcome and we need to adopt innovative, groundbreaking approaches. However, these steps can only be achieved through dialogue, debate and by holding meetings. The Rio+20 summit is extremely necessary, therefore. Perhaps it won’t give rise to spectacular results, but if it helps to shift, even slightly, some of the obstacles that impede the transition to a sustainable world, it will have been worth it. *Pere Torres

Biologist and environmental consultant. After some time spent on research (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), he joined the Government of Catalonia in 1991. He was in turn secretary of the Catalan Inter-university Council (1991-1993), head of the Environment Minister’s staff (1993-1995), general director of Environmental Planning (1995-2000) and secretary for Regional Planning (2000-2003). Since 2004 he has carried out consultancy work in public management, sustainability and land use planning and has been a regular contributor to the International Institute for Governability and the Institut Cerdà.

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Opinion

Support for victims of traffic accidents: a pioneering initiative in Europe

by Esther Puerto*

A serious traffic accident is something unpredictable, unsettling and tragic. Nobody is prepared for such a negative experience. Victims and families members alike find themselves in a situation of great vulnerability and confusion.

When a traffic accident occurs, those who are affected find themselves in a difficult situation where they feel vulnerable and above all helpless, when faced by the long and complicated series of actions that need to be taken.

Therefore, the aim of this Catalan initiative, the first of its kind in Europe, is to offer help, information and objective, specialised guidance to victims of road traffic accidents.

The service is designed to help them complete the necessary procedures, inform them of the resources available and receive the support and psychological care they need. This new service, called the Servei d’Informació i Atenció a Víctimes de Trànsit (Information and Care for Traffic Victims Service, or SIAVT) is not an emergency or first-aid service following an accident, but rather a comprehensive orientation, management 60

Catalan International View

and information service for those affected by an accident, whether directly (those who have suffered an accident), or indirectly (the family and friends of those who have been injured). Developed by the Servei Català de Trànsit (the Catalan Traffic Service, SCT), it began operating on the 26th of March.

Numerous victims’ associations have expressed their desire that the new initiative will serve to smooth the often-tortuous path an accident victim has to follow. As Mireia, the victim of a traffic accident that left her confined to a wheelchair explains, ‘my family and I were completely adrift for months, lost in a sea of endless paperwork’. Her wish is that the professionals working for the SIAVT will put themselves in the place of the victims and have the ability to understand and empathise with their situation.

Opinion

A multidisciplinary team that makes everything possible

The SIAVT’s team of professionals is composed of seventeen telephone advisors, a social worker, four psychologists and a coordinator. Aside from psychological support, the type of guidance these professionals give ranges from legal and medical issues, to administrative and social.

In the words of Joan Aregio, the director of the SCT, ‘every situation is unique, but we will have the capacity to adapt ourselves to the victims and not them to us, as has happened up to now’.

The idea is that the service becomes enriched by the demands of the users themselves and above all returns the victim and those affected to something approaching social normality as soon as possible.

Aregio also points out that accidents have increased by 25% compared

with last year, making the first quarter of this year particularly bad. It is therefore necessary that we call on drivers to be careful on the road, since most accidents are due to people being distracted, which is something that could easily be avoided.

Traffic accidents and the casualties they cause are a global challenge to be faced with local projects such as the Information and Care for Traffic Victims Service How the service operates

The new service is organised in order that it helps the person affected according to the proximity they desire.

Victims can access the SIAVT’s services in three ways.

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Opinion

Firstly, those affected can call a free number where they will receive the necessary advice and the relevant resources will be assigned to each case.

They can also gain access via the victimestransit.gencat.cat website, which

When a traffic accident occurs, those who are affected find themselves in a difficult situation where they feel vulnerable and above all helpless, when faced by the long and complicated series of actions that need to be taken can also be accessed via the SCT website or through major search engines.

The website is designed for people who wish to access the resources most appropriate to their needs. In addition, help can be sought either face-to-face or via telephone.

Another option is for someone to request a personal interview. A psychologist can meet the victim in person at one of the SCT’s regional offices, any of the offices of the Reial Automòbil Club de Catalunya (the company which holds the concession), and when necessary, the victim’s home.

A pioneering service with a human face

Thus, the SIAVT, a pioneering initiative in Europe, was launched as a vital tool for meeting the victims’ needs and for promoting policies which combat road accidents in Catalan society.

The service is also intended to be inclusive rather than exclusive. As a

result it was begun with the involvement of every agency and institution concerned with road safety whether directly or indirectly. This includes Catalan associations for the victims of road traffic accidents.

For his part, the Interior Minister of the Government of Catalonia, Felip Puig, has highlighted the fact that the new service is a ‘unique, flagship project’, that was begun to fulfil the government’s commitment to building a new safety model, based not only on prevention and action but also on ‘restitution whenever possible’ in traumatic situations such as road traffic accidents. The minister also stated that the project, ‘originates out of a desire to become a service that will grow less necessary over time’ and to this end has appealed to ‘collective responsibility’ in the fight against road traffic accidents.

Felip Puig went on to point out that the unique aspect of the SIAVT is the human face that it will be given. ‘We always talk about prevention and action, and reacting quickly, but it is also vital we restore, repair and minimize the damage’, declared Puig, highlighting the mental, emotional and psychological aspect of the service. ‘We could have simply been a portal for information, but we wanted to include the bonus of emotional intelligence’.

Traffic accidents and the casualties they cause are undoubtedly a global pandemic that does not distinguish between countries in the North or the South. It is, therefore, a global challenge to be faced with local projects such as the Information and Care for Traffic Victims Service.

*Esther Puerto A Journalist with twelve years’ experience as a writer and scriptwriter for various media organisations, especially TV production companies, such as Gestmusic and El Terrat. She has also worked for written media, publishers, communication departments and online media organisations.

For more information: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=104598467&trk=tab_pro

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Opinion

Railways: the sustainable alternative for freight and passenger transport

by Enric Ticó*

The current economic crisis affecting the whole of Europe means that all organisations, public administrations, companies, businesses, and even family units, have to rethink their operations and their means of production. The crisis within the prevailing financial and economic model in recent decades means that now is the time to seek new opportunities, to grow again, to be resourceful and to find the loopholes that will allow us to continue growing.

As a socially responsible public company, Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC, the Catalan Government’s Railway) also finds itself in such a situation. Future challenges for the company include preserving a sustainable model for public transportation, maintaining quality and increasing its market share in order to decrease government subsidies.

The challenge is to maintain the excellent level of service the FGC currently provides, while opening up new areas of business that will allow the company to grow and contribute to the increasing the competitiveness of the Catalan economy, making possible new innovations related to the productive economy.

FGC is a company with a long history, next year we will see the 150th anniversary of the start of its Sarria train service, the Barcelona underground system which connects the city centre with the suburbs, while managing a variety of services and facilities and reaching a high level of excellence. In terms of ski resorts, FGC is a leading resorts manager in the Pyrenees, operating a total of four. It sold over 600,000 ski passes last season. The range of facilities and services the FGC currently manages includes resorts such as Núria, ca64

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ble cars, funiculars, regional and tourist trains services, freight train services and the Barcelona underground. All operate with a very high level of quality.

Nonetheless, in order to move forward we must take on new activities.

To this end the FGC has identified two business opportunities for the near future. Firstly, the FGC aims to share its diverse business know-how with other authorities and transportation systems and services managers. As a result we are promoting the activity of FGC Internacional. Secondly, we are taking advantage of the opportunities arising from the liberalization of rail freight services in order to become a logistics operator at the European level.

To achieve this we are promoting the activity of FGC Cargo.

Some aspects of our immediate environment mean we have good prospects and expectations for this new activity that will involve operating freight trains throughout Europe. The first is that the use of rail freight has not developed as much in Catalonia and the Iberian Peninsula as it has in the rest of Europe, with an insignificant market share that is falling. Second, the much-needed expansion of markets for products produced in Catalonia will re-

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quire efficient logistical organisations in order for it to compete in a globalized world. Third, there is the fact that Catalonia’s ports (Barcelona and Tarragona) have to transform their role in world trade.

The East-Europe route has become the second biggest in terms of the volume of goods moved (18.4 million TEUs per year), just behind the Pacific route (20 million TEUs per year) and well above the Atlantic (4.4 million TEUs per year). Currently, the northern European ports capture 75% of this Europe-East trade, with the Mediterranean ports receiving just 25%. This is in spite of the fact that the transit time for shipping is 3-4 days less in Europe’s southern ports. Changing the status quo is possible thanks to the investments the ports of Barcelona and Tarragona have made in their terminals. However, we need efficient rail connections with the European Core Network for change to take place. This is where FGC Cargo wishes to play a leading role as a logistics operator that will open new railway lines connected to the ports.

It is worth noting that the EU’s decision to back the Mediterranean Corridor further enhances the FGC’s

long-term strategy. Now is the time to expand boundaries and exploit rail transport to its full potential, as a form of travel that respects the environment, is sustainable and efficient, while being cheaper than other options. To achieve this, we must undertake the major task of educating people in order that the Corridor Project can become a reality as soon as possible and begin operations.

Thanks to the fact that the FGC has been granted a security certificate which enables it to operate in every rail network in Europe, it can expand its freight transport business without the need to rely on other companies.

To this end, it has already begun talks with Catalan companies which see the export of goods as a new solution to their problems. The positive response of these companies is encouraging when it comes to planning new routes and new services beyond the Pyrenees.

The business model designed for FGC Cargo is different from those proposed by other railway companies up to now, whether public or private.

The traditional approach sees railways as a competitor in the transportation of goods by road and involves trying to win control over part of the logistics market. FGC Cargo’s model, howCatalan International View

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ever, attempts to cooperate with freight forwarders, shippers and logistics operators in providing rail services as an added option when transporting goods to more distant destinations at a lower cost. The objective is to ‘make a bigger pie’ out of the logistics market, rather than dividing it differently. This business model, presented in different business areas, has been well received and hopefully in the near future we will be able to evaluate its worth when operations begin.

FGC should be a major player in the new context that is opening up in Europe. It is worth pointing out that we are already one of the leading freight operators in the Port of Barcelona and that with the FGC Cargo division (responsible for freight transport) we can ensure that 25% of FGC’s revenues come from freight. We believe in setting ambitious goals.

At present, the internationalization of the company is taking place thanks to the recent creation of the company’s international division (FGC Internacional). FGC has 30 years’ experience of running trains, funiculars, trams and rack railways, with world-class professionals who can export their expertise in building and managing all of these infrastructures. Recently, FGC successfully won a bid as an independent checker on the first underground line in Hanoi, which will be 12 km long.

It was also chosen to carry out a study into improved universal accessibility on rolling stock on the Lima underground, as well as the design and organisation of their workshops. We are also working with great success in projects such as the underground systems in New Delhi (India) and Lima (Peru), and the tram network in Jaen (Spain). We wish to export our knowledge and our experience in design, project development and maintenance. To this end, the high standards achieved by FGC 66

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in the management of infrastructure and services are a good introduction when wishing to collaborate with other authorities and railway companies, or other areas of the FGC’s activities, such as the management of ski resorts.

As part of our diversification we also aim to strengthen mountain tourism. FGC is the only rail operator which, apart from moving passengers and freight, also manages ski resorts in the winter and sports and leisure activities in the summer. With the renowned resorts of La Molina and Vall de Núria, now added to Espot and Port-Ainé, from this season onwards, FGC will be providing an important contribution to the revitalization of economic activity in the Pyrenees. These types of activities are fundamental to these regions and help to promote regional balance in our country, where within a few kilometres we find very varied geography and where the metropolitan area is home to 50% of the population and economic activity.

FGC is a company which has brought excellence to public transport throughout its 33-year history, with a unanimous appreciation of its work.

Annually more than 80 million passengers use FGC services, mostly in the Barcelona metropolitan area. FGC operates an urban railway tunnel through which 32 trains per hour pass at peak times in both directions. This makes it one of the busiest tunnels in Europe, reaching a level of punctuality of over 99%. These figures are extraordinary, and are only possible with a highly efficient organisation.

From an economic point of view, FGC is one of the European railway companies with the highest coverage ratio (income/costs), which is constantly growing. In 2011 it reached 85%, and we are aiming to exceed 90% by 2016. This means that the government will be able to reduce the amount

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of money they contribute to FGC’s funding. These coverage rates are achieved thanks to an ongoing effort to streamline costs, without the quality of service being affected and by increasing revenues by attracting a growing number of customers.

Taking an overview of FGC’s activity from its foundation to the present day, it is noteworthy how, from inheriting a deficient, precarious infrastructure in 1979, the service has become a benchmark, with underground frequencies in the metropolitan area at the European level and with a multidisciplinary range that makes it unique among rail operators.

In 2011 FGC Cargo increased its turnover by more than 20%. FGC’s traditional business, the transportation of potash and salt from the mines in Bages, has been complemented by the transportation of cars between SEAT’s factory in Martorell and the Port of Barcelona, with car parts making the return journey. In spite of the tradition-

al belief that railways are only competitive in transporting freight over long distances, FGC (with its public and private partners) has been able to operate at a distance of less than 35 km while maintaining competitive costs and total customer satisfaction. FGC Cargo transported more than 80,000 cars in 2011 with Autometro (in partnership with RENFE and COMSA Rail Transport) and almost 800,000 tons of salt and potash from the mines in Sallent and Súria.

In short, FGC has set itself three main challenges for the future. Firstly, to consolidate the operation of an excellent company by improving the quality of the service offered and the economic results; secondly, to export its expertise in a wide range of activities; and, finally, to diversify its activities in order to become a railway logistics operator at the European level and ensure that Catalonia performs its role as the ‘gateway to Europe’ for international trade. *Enric Ticó

Degree in Law from the Universitat de Barcelona (1976-1981) and Graduate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in International Trade and of the European Union (1984).

He is currently Chairman of Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya, and of the companies Autometro, SA; Cargometro Rail Transport and FGC Mobilitat, SA. He also chairs the Federación Española de Transitarios, FETEIA (Freight Forwarders – Transport and Customs Representatives Logistics Organisation), and is a member of the Board of Directors of the CEOE (Spanish Confederation of Business Organisations) and professor on several Masters’ courses in Logistics and Transport.

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Opinion

Music is invisible

by LluĂ­s Gendrau*

Is music invisible? Have you ever thought about it?: Write some lyrics. Put some music to them with a guitar and a few chords and make a song. Put it in a drawer or show it to some friends. Put on a small concert. Send a copy to a radio station. Start a small group. Make a record... Nothing has changed as much as music in the last hundred years. The nineteenth century was the century of the Cultural Revolution, the twentieth was that of communication and the twenty-first has been called the century of new technologies. How have these changes affected musical creation and culture in modern societies? Radically!

Nowadays music has become invisible.

For the younger generations, records are disappearing, they are considered collectors items or only suitable for marketing purposes. The access to and use of music has changed completely. It has undergone an evolution in a process similar to that experienced by traditional media (newspapers, magazines, television and so on). Soon we will be asking ourselves whether journalism is invisible. The access to information is changing and so are its social uses, its creation and the hardware employed.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

A hurricane will have passed, changing the landscape.

In the twenty-first century most decisions related to music are made at the individual level on the Internet, with its unique capacity to bring people together via social networks The twentieth century served to create civil networks that developed particular forms of culture, both in consumption and creation. Our grandparents listened to music in athenaeums; institutions that were established by civil society in different 68

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parts of the country. These organisations, each ideologically aligned with its members, booked and hired musicians, selecting a suitable programme according to a framework that allowed them to spread the concept of culture and nation via their mechanisms. Following the Greeks, athenaeums served as cultural, scientific and literary collectives to elevate the intellectual level of their associates via talks, conferences, courses, lectures and also concerts and recitals.

During the second half of the twentieth century, young people and some 80% of the general population, consumed music via the cultural and entertainment industry. Big business decided what, how and with which apparatus music could be listened to. The natural space for music was the radio, where one could get to know new artists, new ideas and the public’s taste was discovered, alongside the future audience and creators. It was an enormous shop window for music, opening one’s ears. Later the access to music was enjoyed via records, initially with 78s, followed by vinyl LPs and later still CDs. The industry decided what one needed to discard and what one needed to buy in order to follow cultural and societal

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trends and to keep up with fashion.

The latter was characterised by each social revolution. Each period has had its own soundtrack. From the hippies in the 60s, rock in the 70s, the glamorous 80s and indie pop of the 90s.

Concerts no longer required a progressive or cultural institution but rather an increasingly well-prepared cultural industry that decided for the people which artists to put on and which concerts were attended by the masses.

In a few short years, music went from being a ‘shared culture’ in the athenaeum of the nineteenth century, to becoming a ‘culture of the masses’, controlled by the corporations of the cultural industry and with public institutions having a large decision-making capacity. The public institutions have become the most important and virtually the only agent for the employment of artists along with the support for creativity. In the twenty-first century this process has culminated in a ‘domestic culture’ of individual creation and access. The transformation is such that the uses and access to culture and music have radically changed, as has occurred with the access to information. The channels have changed, but so have the form and content.

It is the culture of channel-hopping.

In the twenty-first century, music is no

longer filtered by civil society which, in the past, acted as a creator of synergies and cultural, creative processes, of processes of collective access to culture. The bulk of the

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decision is made at the individual level over the Internet, with the only collective sharing being via online social networks. Music has become invisible.

There are no longer records or radio presenters with quality recommendations providing an analysis of content and quality. Music has become intangible, without a physical presence, both for the creators and the industry and therefore it becomes invisible in everyone’s eyes. Decisions are made in front of a computer, perhaps influenced by anonymous people who upload and download songs in cyberspace. The songs are pills for rapid consumption, for massive downloading, incontinence in the form of beats that are altogether impossible to digest. The small independent industry and some creators saw the Internet and the Long Tail Theory as the necessary solution to their cultural liberation. They would no longer depend on the ties of cultural slavery to the huge multinationals. The new technologies allowed them to literally record a song at home on their computer. The middlemen were abolished; indeed the musicians virtually assassinated the impertinent critics that took pleasure in questioning their work. Finally, the creator-consumer relationship could be direct and without interference.

There is more music than ever, of a good quality and a great diversity. The seeds have been sown and are about to germinate. Will we be able to make tangible something which is invisible?

Many musicians believed they could find thousands of followers in the Internet communities, with users who would avidly follow their ramblings in the form of blogs. They saw 70

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how hundreds or thousands of ‘friends’ signed up in Facebook, rewarding them with thousands of downloads from free platforms like Myspace or the music on demand of Spotify. Many Catalan groups, sidelined from the main commercial world, saw in this an opportunity to take centre stage. Nevertheless, the reality is very different and somewhat cruel.

The Long Tail that is spoken about on the Internet ended up being so long and infinite that it cannot even be seen and the possibility of thousands of virtual fans transforming themselves into something real remains to be seen. The musical home recordings are cultural productions for egomaniacs. The only ones that survive are those that already had some support from before the cultural industry became impoverished.

They now sell songs in the form of guitars to be played in front of a television that has lost its original meaning and has been transformed into a screen that prostitutes itself for the dozens of gadgets that give it life.

In the contemporary cultural world, only exceptional works triumph, something that can be turned into an event. Some groups have achieved this on the web, giving away their music to their most eager fans, or playing concerts exclusively for the select few. In this sense the cultural structures have also changed. 2010 saw the fiftieth anniversary of the jazz section of Friends of the Arts of Terrassa. It was the result of a group of artists and fans who were committed to defending, promoting and spreading jazz music and culture in all its forms. They set up the Jazz Cava ( Jazz Cave), in order to programme and see live jazz groups, until it reached a stage where they were obliged to create the International Jazz Festival. It is an event that has made the city into the Catalan capital of this Afro-American music. The event is

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visible because it manages to be above the average and is now politically seen as a strategic festival.

Now let us examine the Catalan situation a little more closely. The historian Joan Triadú sees the twentieth century as the golden age of Catalan culture, thanks to its capacity to develop on the margins of state structures and to construct its own cultural spaces in its own civil society. The main players and the aesthetics have changed.

Technological developments have also transformed the processes from an economic and political point of view.

This evolution has been fatal for the process of European cultural identity, and catastrophic in the case of minority cultures such as found in Catalonia.

In the nineteenth century a strong culture could depend on a strong civil society, whereas in the twentieth century a strong culture needed the support of a strong cultural industry. According to the writer and journalist Joaquim Molas, Catalan culture is like a tadpole; with a big head and a small body. It is an analysis that the writer and journalist Vicenç Villatoro completes, reminding us that while the new Spanish cultural industry was born out of the large communication groups, in Catalonia the process has only occurred because Televisió de Catalunya is (thankfully) an engine that drives the Catalan cultural industry and fabric. Choosing a culture of excellence is interesting and guarantees the existence of certain elites, but it does not favour the spreading or projection of new artistic or musical trends that are mostly rooted in urban culture.

If music is invisible and virtual, what are we left with? The globalization of the cultural market, both in terms of creation and for the industry, has to be understood as having two directions. On one hand, internally, with the creation of cultural infrastructures around the country and on the other, by starting social networks that have a cultural identity as a solid nucleus.

It is precisely this local specialisation that will be able to make it universal: an oft-repeated phrase from the mouth of Francesc Pujols, a philosopher from the Empordà region, or his disciple Salvador Dalí, continues to be listened to or is not considered a fallacy.

In these spaces, language, culture and the ‘new technological and social industry’ will need to join hands. The rest can be summed up as a tetralogy to guarantee a cultural exception: the support for creation and its promotion, the ‘incentivation’ and consolidation of the autonomous, independent cultural industry, the connection with news media to multimedia, interactive communication that is specialised and above all that have rigorous quality control and the application of political, cultural and musical measures that favour this new ecosystem, guaranteeing cultural consumption and the development of our own cultural systems. Luckily, meanwhile there is more music than ever, of a good quality and a great diversity. The seeds have been sown and are about to germinate. Will we be able to make tangible something which is invisible?

*Lluís Gendrau (Malgrat de Mar, 1966) Journalist and Editorial Director of Grup Enderrock, which publishes Enderrock (National Culture Award 2004 and the Association of Periodical Publications in Catalan (APPEC) Prize for the Best Publication), Jaç (APPEC Prize for the Best New Publication), Folc, L’Espectacle and Rockcol·lecció magazines. Holds a degree in Information Sciences from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Producer of various programmes for Catalunya Ràdio and iCat fm. President of APPEC and member of the National Council for Language. He has been a founding member and promoter of various local and regional media initiatives for radio, TV and the press.

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Interreligious dialogue: possibilities and opportunities

by Antoni Matabosch*

1. From monolithism to religious pluralism

Religious pluralism has grown remarkably in Catalonia in recent decades.

Forty years ago our society was extremely uniform in terms of thought and values. Virtually the entire population was Catholic, with non-Catholics being a great exception. Little was known about Protestant or Orthodox Christians, while the existence of other religions was only known thanks to certain books and foreign travel. Nowadays, diversity has greatly increased.

In the first instance the proportion of believers and nonbelievers has shifted, with the percentage of the latter having grown dramatically. Society has taken notice of and witnessed close at hand the diversity among Christians.

Large numbers of Protestants from Latin America and Eastern Europe live among us, and Orthodox communities have multiplied. Other religions are also present here and inhabit many of our neighbourhoods. If we wish for a better future, the current diversity requires us to intensify dialogue at all levels.

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2. Dialogue and identity

Dialogue is understood in the broadest sense as any form of communication between individuals, groups or communities, in an atmosphere of sincerity, mutual trust, respect and freedom, in which the interlocutors aim to help one another in a better understanding of the truth, with an openness to the opinions and positions of others, originating from their own criteria or identity.

Dialogue, therefore, implies that all parties begin with their own identities (since without one’s own point of view, there is nothing to discuss), and calls for a mutual recognition of equal dignity and everyone’s right to believe whatever they think is best, and an acceptance that the other may possess elements that could enrich one. Fundamentalist attitudes, therefore, are directly opposed to dialogue.

To have an adequate idea of dialogue, one must also set its limits or conditions. Recognize, listen and be willing to receive does not mean or imply that I think the other’s beliefs have the same value as my own. There should be

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a joint search for truth. It is not simply about giving and receiving, or believing that everything is of equal worth. One begins with one’s own identity, which one truly believes, and goes in search of perfecting it. Objective truth exists; the truth is not merely relative. True dialogue exists when there is a balance between one’s own identity, mutual help and the joint search for the truth.

Considering that one is closer to the truth or that there are non-negotiable elements does not preclude dialogue, and nor can it be considered arrogance or superiority. The truth will always be something bigger than us, it will always elude us, but we can imagine we possess the basic elements of this truth in a path that is always open to learning.

Dialogue is based on the convictions of the interlocutors. These convictions can always be further improved, however. Also true religious beliefs are never static because they can always be enriched, perfected, related to life differently; sacred texts must always be interpreted and this prevents extremism or religious fundamentalism.

Dialogue is based on the convictions of those involved, because if they are not convinced of anything they have nothing to present to each other to discuss. Aside from the way of seeing the world and life, it is possible to open up to other people and ways of thinking.

Dialogue always involves trying to discover the truth that the other may possess that can be used to complete what I believe.

3. The Christian principles of interreligious dialogue

The first aspect to be established are the different levels of relationships in this field: - At the first level are the personal relationships between believers of different religions.

Saint Augustine rightly said that

whoever does not love does not know God well enough; love helps one to know better.

- A second level is to remove the historical prejudices that over the centuries have been added to the collective memory of certain religions with respect to others and that seriously affect mutual understanding.

- Another step is collaboration in social, humanitarian issues, in the service of people.

- A fourth level is to understand the teachings of others, in keeping with St. Augustine’s teachings that, ‘those who do not know God cannot love.

- A deeper level is that of enriching dialogue.

- Finally there is joint prayer, which for many religions is a serious problem because the object of this prayer often varies from religion to religion. Praying to the God of Abraham, the Hindu gods or the Buddhist void, for example, are not the same thing.

The Magisterium of the Catholic Church published the ‘Declaration on Other Religions’ during the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) and later five other documents of extensive educational value. These are the encyclicals ‘Evangelii Nuntiandi’ of Paul VI (1975) and ‘Redemptoris Missio’ of John Paul II (1991) and three documents: ‘Dialogue and Notice’ (1984) and ‘Dialogue and Mission’ (1991) of the Secretariat for Interreligious Dialogue, and ‘Dominus Iesus’ (2000) of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Such a large quantity of books and articles have been published on the subject, that one could say it is truly fashionable.

The possibility of dialogue between the Catholic Church and other religions depends largely on how it perCatalan International View

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ceives them, where it places them in its own thinking, how it considers them.

Ultimately it depends on a Catholic theology of other religions. This theology always tries to expand on what Paul stated in his First Letter to Timothy, 2: 3-6: ‘God, our Saviour, wants all men to be saved and to come to know truth’.

With this phrase Paul affirms God’s universal desire to save. We are all called, no one is excluded. He goes on to say, however: ‘There is but one God, there is also but one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom to save all men; this is the testimony that God has given at the proper time’.

Here he states that the path to God is Jesus Christ. We therefore need to combine the universal call with the necessary and particular mediation of Christ in God’s work of salvation.

Depending on the emphasis which is placed on one or the other different theories emerge as to other religions. a) Ecclesiocentric exclusivism This is an extreme position that states that only members of the Church have the possibility of salvation. It is summed up in the well-known phrase ‘extra ecclesiam nulla salus’ or its variants, which is especially aimed at heretics and those who are guilty of wilfully straying from God. The Council of Florence (1452) formulated it thus: ‘The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and practices, that none of who shall live outside the Church, not only the pagans but also the Jews, the heretics, or the schismatics, can have a part in eternal life, but will depart into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before the end of their life they have entered the Church’.

It is rather difficult to reconcile this position with God’s universal salvific will as affirmed by Paul. It is clear that exclusiveness precludes dialogue with 74

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other religions. This position towards other people became more defined over time and no one has defended it for many years. In terms of other religions, Vatican II acknowledged that there are elements or paths to salvation for the members of other religions. b) Theocentric pluralism This position is at the other end of exclusiveness. It argues that all religions are equally valid paths to God; all are equal paths to salvation. Jesus Christ is simply another saviour and not the only universal saviour. God himself wants and has established the diversity of the world’s religions as equal paths to Him. To understand this concept visually we have the Hindu story of the elephants and the wise men. Some wise men were blindfolded and brought before an elephant and asked to describe what they felt. Their answers depended on where they stood, with one describing an ear, a second the trunk, a third a leg and so on. This is God: we think of him and follow him in different ways, but there is only one God. Currently pluralism is fairly widespread among experts on religions (Hick, Knitter, etc.). The various forms of pluralism facilitate dialogue by putting all religions on an equal footing.

Nevertheless, they have the major drawback of dispensing with the need for Christ’s mediation (the Way, the Truth and the Life) as asserted many times in the New Testament. c) Christocentric inclusivism The Second Vatican Council recognizes other religions as paths of salvation, but retains its essential theme of the unity, oneness and universality of Christ’s salvation, the only mediator between God and men.

Thus, no.2 of the Nostra aetate Declaration on relations between the Church and non-Christian religions, speaks of the rites and doctrines that

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can be truly effective for the salvation of his followers, and that religions, ‘frequently bring ... a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men’. The Gaudium et Spes on the Church in the modern world, states that, ‘the Holy Spirit offers everyone, in a way that God knows, the possibility of being associated with the Paschal Mystery’ (22, 5).

The Encyclical Redemptoris hominis, no.

11, says that other religions contain the ‘seeds of the Word’.

The Council sees this appreciation of other religions as places of God’s presence as compatible with the fact that, ‘the Church proclaims and has the duty to constantly proclaim and announce that Christ is “the Way, the Truth and the Life”’ ( John 14: 6). ‘In him men find the fullness of religious life, in him God has reconciled all things’ (no. 2).

The Council, therefore, faithfully preserves the two proclamations Paul made to Timothy and both are considered necessary, but does not enter into any detail as to how they can be reconciled.

Theology has made many attempts to enter more deeply into a reasoned, Christocentric inclusivism, the Catholic position. There are two major ways of understanding it. One is the theory of compliance, which argues that other religions naturally have positive values which are fully realised in Christianity. There is a form of divine pedagogy which places them as a preparation for the Gospel. The ‘Evangelii Nuntiandi’ takes this position in arguing there is an ordinary path and an extraordinary path towards God. This theory has been defended by Danielou, de Lubac and von Balthasar, among others.

The theory of the presence of Christ in other religions, gives several explanations as to how Christ is present.

Rahner calls it a ‘supernatural existential’ (a ‘christic existential’ as Alfaro called it), which means God is present in the history and life of every person through Christ, who is already present in them. Others speak of how God intervenes in history, the history of salvation and in other religions too, making them an ‘evangelical preparation’ towards Christ. Other religions have supernatural elements towards Christ.

John Paul II in ‘Redemptoris Missio’ and ‘Dominum et Vivificantem’ seems to propose this theory when he says that there is the presence of the Spirit operating in other religions.

Every religion has its own way of being, but it is also true that we can all learn from each other. Without it being either necessary or appropriate to reach a religious unification In interreligious dialogue one must avoid relativism, which implies that everything is equally true, which is synonymous with the assertion that nothing is ultimately true. We must also move away from syncretism, which advocates the indiscriminate mixture of elements from all religions. As mentioned earlier, any dialogue must be based on the identity of its parts, without sacrificing what it deems essential. Every religion has its own way of being. Nevertheless, it is also true that we can all learn from each other. Without it being either necessary or appropriate to reach a religious unification. *Antoni Matabosch

Catholic representative of the Stable Working Group on Religions (GTER) and Director of the Higher Institute of Religious Sciences of Barcelona (ISCREB).

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War journalism & Peace journalism

(or where the borders of good journalism lie when covering conflicts)

by Meritxell Martínez*

The media coverage of armed conflicts was a source of controversy during the last two thirds of the twentieth century, due to its ability to mobilise audiences either in favour of or against wars and the tempting power this implies. Journalistic ethics and ideology are unique, remaining unchanged whatever the story being covered. Nevertheless, applying them to the context of a war is problematic. In addition to the practical difficulties associated with checking military sources, guaranteeing the safety of reporters, obtaining access to the civilian population and the avoidance of spreading propaganda from one of the two sides, there is a specific factor which arises: the media’s role in increasing or decreasing tension.

Over the last twenty years we have seen examples of the media’s role both in inciting violence and in aiding in its prevention, reduction and reconciliation. A striking example is the Rwandan radio station Radio-Télévision Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM), better known by the nickname Radio Machete with its daily dose of programmes inciting genocide.

Another opposing example, is Facing the Truth, the BBC series presented by the Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He brought together victims and executioners from the Northern Ireland conflict to sit down at the same table with the objective of mutual forgiveness, dialogue and providing an impetus to reconciliation in Ulster.

In Catalonia, international affairs have formed part of the agenda for both the public and private media in Catalan since they began at the end of the seventies. Recent wars and conflicts 76

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have therefore had Catalan reporters and foreign correspondents to report on them in person. As a result, a score of journalists have gained in expertise over the years, leading to a reflection in academic circles in the country’s faculties of communication and the Catalan Council of Information, the self-regulating body in charge of ethics in professional journalism.

The Observatory for the Coverage of Conflicts of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (OCC-UAB) began a new line of investigation in 2008 when it brought together Catalan experts in mediation and peace journalism, reporters and academics in order to jointly define the framework of good reporting in order to promote peace and responsibly use the inherent influence the mass media possesses. The main fruit of this research were the Guidelines for Journalistic Practice in the Treatment of Violent and Armed Conflicts.

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Summary of Guidelines for Journalistic Practice in the Treatment of Violent and Armed Conflicts: 1. Give a voice to and promote understanding and dialogue between the parties involved.

2. Do not dehumanize either side, whether victims or perpetrators.

3. Avoid using the language employed by the parties involved.

4. Show the grassroots groups which work for peace and the efforts made by civil society.

5. Explore conflicts in all their complexity.

6. Avoid sensationalism and the broadcasting of pro-violence, xenophobic, racist or sexist messages.

7. Report on conflicts before violence breaks out.

8. After a ceasefire deal, report on the resolution, reconstruction and reconciliation.

9. Take advantage of the similarities between conflicts to seek paths to resolution.

10. Always acknowledge sources of information and specify whether there was any censorship or impositions.

‘The Guidelines originated from the observation that, although there are many positive practices, there is still room for improvement in the coverage provided by journalists and the media’, explains the director of the Observatory, Xavier Giró. The starting point for this work were the workshops ‘Challenges Facing Journalism in Conflict Situations’, held in Barcelona in October 2008. ‘They were two very productive days, with interesting contributions and a rich debate, but it’s a bit early to draw hasty conclusions’, recalls the professor. In order to summarise the conclusions drawn in the form of Catalan International View

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guidelines a smaller commission was created with a dozen experts and representatives: veteran correspondents, academics, members of NGOs and the Catalan International Peace Institute, the Office for the Promotion of Peace and Human Rights, the Commission of Solidarity Journalism of the Journalism College of Catalonia, a representative of the dean of the latter and the president of the Information Council of Catalonia. Moreover, the resulting document has been adopted by the College of Journalists as the Fifth Amendment of its Declaration of Principles and Code of Ethics of the journalistic profession in Catalonia.

The group’s leader, Xavier Giró, also advocates the demystification of journalistic objectivity: ‘the first thing journalists can do for peace is to become aware of the fact that when we cover a conflict we not only explain, we act’.

‘Although the extent to which we do so varies widely, we always intervene in some form or another, since to explain is to influence what ends up being known and decided’, he points out. ‘If we practice journalism with a concern for reducing the suffering of those who experience conflicts, we will necessarily look at places, people and what is happening in a different way compared to if we simply want to explain who said what’, he says, adding, ‘we always have concerns when we go to places, even if they are implicit, and I am convinced that if we make them explicit we can work more coherently’.

From theory to practice: Catalan coverage of the Iraq conflict (2003-2010)

Almost all of the general public and private media organisations sent journalists to cover the Western invasion and the first year following the invasion of Iraq on the ground. None of them established fixed foreign correspondents, however. The declining security 78

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situation, mainly due to the insurgency and the kidnapping of journalists, prompted the majority of media organisations to rule out returning until the last general election on 7th March 2010. As a result, there was a combination of long periods with information largely coming from agencies issuing reports from ‘war correspondents’ who had spent between a week and a month in Baghdad, Latifiya, Kurdistan and Kirkuk, among others.

Cases of journalists being embedded with military units (as the Pentagon dubbed them) were rare, with the majority of coverage coming from unilateral journalists. The debate as to the existence of intrinsic bias in embedded coverage is fierce, not only in international academic journals, but also among reporters themselves. ‘I am totally against it; you have to sign a twelve or thirteen-page discalimer where you agree to abide by military censorship and to be under the orders of the commander of the unit. It’s too restrictive’, argues Joan Roura, TV3’s Middle East correspondent. ‘What’s more, what interests me about a conflict is what the civilian population are going through. I find that reporting on military tactics and weaponry is of little or no interest as you can get that from the news agencies’, he adds.

Marc Marginedes, who covers the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus for El Periódico newspaper of Catalonia, thinks precisely the opposite, that being embedded allows you access to privileged, valuable information: ‘the first report on extrajudicial killings

by US troops was filed by an embedded photo-journalist’. ‘They filmed an American soldier shooting a wounded Iraqi lying on the ground; without this journalist we’d never have known’. For Marginedes, the conditions imposed by the military (Spain is one of the few European nations not to allow embedded reporters) are not unreasonable:

Opinion

‘there is no direct censorship, but neither can you cite anonymous sources: everything has to be on the record’. He adds: ‘This means, however, that the journalist has to be mature enough, if necessary, to report on unlawful behaviour by soldiers they are living with and with whom they may even have developed a friendship.

Guidelines 7 and 8 (to report before violence breaks out and to continue after a ceasefire) do not create much controversy among journalists. Nevertheless, they are seen as economically unviable for media organisations. There are exceptions, however. The situation in Iraq had some unique political connotations for the Spanish media market, which encouraged the media to devote human and financial resources to cover the months leading up to the conflict, when the Spanish government considered sending troops as part of the search for weapons of mass destruction.

Such cases are very infrequent because the media is preoccupied by multiple sources of world tension, prioritising those which have already broken out and those of national interest. ‘It’s not only due to the scarcity of resources, it’s because the scriptwriters for the news can’t handle it, they have only half an hour to explain what’s going on in the world!’, points out Maria Alba Gilabert, editor of Catalunya Ràdio’s international section for over 25 years. ‘Until blood’s been shed, no one’s interested’, she adds ruefully.

Tomàs Alcoverro, a veteran correspondent for La Vanguardia (who has lived in Beirut since 1971) argues that the information industry, ‘misinterprets the current state of affairs’, which leads to ‘the public being anaesthetised’ and ‘enormous frustration’ among diplomats and Western journalists working in the region. ‘All you hear about the Middle East is car bombs, genocide and people being killed. The day-to-day reality and the spaces for culture and entertain-

ment, and there are a lot of them here in Beirut, hardly ever appear’.

Guidelines 2, 4 and 5 (not to dehumanise, to cover the grassroots pacifists and to explore complexities) is in fine print. They concern ‘fixers’, a group which has received little attention from the academic world , being hidden from the audience, while essential nonetheless. A fixer is someone who was both born in and resident of a country being covered. They function as both a producer and translator. ‘They’re indispensable, they’re your passport to a world that is closed to you, that you can’t access on your own’, explains Marginedes, of El Periódico. ‘For this reason I always mention their name in my articles or file them under both our names if an interview has been particularly good’, he adds. According to Marginedes, ‘it’s not a problem if your English isn’t so good as long as you have contacts with everyone and you can talk to both sides; but if you’re a language major and you’re shy, if you find it hard to speak to people, then it’s hopeless’.

The debate as to the existence of intrinsic bias in embedded coverage is fierce, not only in international academic journals, but also among reporters themselves Gilabert, the Catalunya Ràdio reporter, emphasises the importance of the selection process: ‘You have to know how to instantly detect whether someone is Sunni or Shia, if they’re of one political hue or another, both for the reliability of the information they give you and your own security, because if you don’t you won’t be able to enter certain neighbourhoods or regions’.

Most of the time fixers are chosen on the strength of a colleague’s personal recommendation, but often contacts are made through embassies or media Catalan International View

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organisations and NGOs based in the country. ‘Often they’re local journalists who have an extensive list of contacts, know people, the place, the political class and they earn extra money’, explains Joan Roura. ‘Sometimes they’re people from local organisations, with the interest and the enthusiasm to explain their country to the foreign press’, he adds. According to this TV3 reporter, they do much more than make the journalist’s job easier. In 2004, on a highway between Karbala and Baghdad, the fixer saved their lives by changing to an alternative route: ‘He was questioning people all along the route and he found out there was a bogus check-point; a few days later we found out that they had kidnapped an American TV crew right there’.

The degree to which a reporter should be involved in the suffering they witness is typically the other major point of disagreement ‘Good news is not news’, as the journalistic motto goes. In Iraq, portraying the efforts of the civilian population to reconstruct the country carries an additional cost. The American embassy in Baghdad publicly announced that gathering the media for opening ceremonies was counterproductive and often irresponsible as they turned into veritable magnets for attacks by insurgents. In the same way, reporting on a citizen or group of residents’ modest struggle to return their neighbourhood to normality or explain to the foreign media what is really going on in the country could put them in the extremists’ sights. Should journalists cover these stories, therefore? ‘With a camera the line is very clear’, according to Roura, the TV3 reporter, ‘if people agree to be filmed and explain their story it’s 80

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their choice. What you can never do is trick them with hidden cameras or reveal their identity if they’ve chosen to be remain anonymous’. For the Catalunya Ràdio reporter, Gilabert, what puts their lives in danger is not the risk of appearing in the media as such, but the job itself: ‘In Iraq they can kill you simply for going down the street, or because you’re Shia, or because you have running water and I don’t; so imagine if you’re ‘asking for it’ by making political statements in the neighbourhood, being well known, making enemies...’.

The quality of reporting is usually related to the reporter’s training. One cannot explore the complexities of conflicts or look for paths to peace in previous cases if the journalist does not have a solid understanding of the country they are visiting. Nevertheless, the veteran reporter Alcoverro warns that the prejudices and ‘the perceptions’ one may have of the Islamic world further complicate the work of documenting what is happening: ‘Conflicts in this area are very complicated, there’s a lot of wild speculation and all viewpoints quickly get labelled as Pro-Palestinian or Pro-Israeli’. Roura and Gilabert agree that the media has to encourage training and aprenticeships, to prevent inexperienced correspondents going into an area. ‘It’s not just about whether they’ll report well or not, it’s if you send someone to a dangerous place and they don’t know how to get around they might get themselves killed!’, warns Gilabert. For this reason he is in favour of specialisation, something which happens less and less: ‘Having someone with good contacts and lots of experience is a good investment for a media organisation, they can make a lot of money out of it’. What is more, according to Roura, if they are inexperienced, ‘they end up saying nonsense and throwing petrol on the fire, only talking about shooting and bombs, without explaining the background or

Opinion

the vested interests that are behind the whole conflict’.

All four journalists agree that following the guidelines leads to higher quality journalism, but that it does not necessarily contribute to bringing peace. Their main point of disagreement is the media’s ability to influence political and military decisions. Tomàs Alcoverro is the most pessimistic in this regard: ‘I don’t believe that we can ever influence the course of a conflict, I don’t see anything changing in the Middle East after so many years of reporting’, he argues. Roura and Marginedes see it differently. ‘If there’s a camera crew, or reporters in general, less barbarities are committed because there is less of a feeling of impunity’, Roura believes. ‘And even more so if it is the media from a country that is actively participating in the conflict, because they portray the suffering that war creates, the public are shocked and they apply pressure on their government’, he adds.

The degree to which a reporter should be involved in the suffering they witness is typically the other major point of disagreement. It is a decisive component of emotional resistance during a reporter’s stay in the country and forms part of their risk of suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome once they return home. Marginedes and Gilabert hold two widely opposing views on the issue. ‘If you become too involved, you cease to become effective as a journalist and become more

of a campaigner, you end up behaving strangely and taking risks that should be avoided’, says the reporter for El Periódico, who recommends that empathy is limited to, ‘only when you’re actually speaking with your source’. Gilabert, on the other hand, considers that there are, ‘small gestures that don’t put you in danger’ and that furthermore allow you to put up with the tough conditions of being in a war: ‘By helping someone you get some comfort, when you hug a victim in order to console them, she is also hugging you, and this makes you feel less alone, less frightened and it refreshes you in some way.

You’re a person, not a machine; you have to do your work professionally, of course, hide your emotions when you’re on camera; but on the ground, if at any time you can help someone, I believe you have to do it’, he argues.

Although there are disagreements and a whole host of nuances, the Catalan journalistic community has favourably received the Guidelines for Journalistic Practice in the Treatment of Violent and Armed Conflicts. ‘They won’t be followed just because they’re written down, and journalists didn’t fail to respect them because weren’t there before’, concludes Xavier Giró, ‘but it is a good way to change what isn’t being done well while also being a reference point for journalists who are sent to cover a conflict for the first time or those who haven’t examined their role in depth’.

*Meritxell Martínez (Esplugues de Llobregat, 1985). She is a catalan journalist who specialises in local news related to the Barcelona area, communication, education and youth issues. Holds a degree in Journalism from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and is a member of the Col·legi de Periodistes de Catalunya and l’Observatori de la Cobertura Informativa dels Conflictes (OCC-UAB). Since July 2010 she has contributed to the online version of La Vanguardia newspaper, where she heads the Barcelona section and coordinates the other local news sections. She has been a journalist since the age of 15 and has worked for various magazines and online newspapers in Barcelona and Berlin.

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Science and Technology

The Catalan biocluster, meeting the social challenges of the 21st century

by Montserrat Vendrell*

The enormous scientific breakthroughs achieved in the second half of the 20th century in the fields of genetics, molecular biology and biochemistry led to the spectacular development of biotechnology and, along with it, the growth of a global sector that is capable of providing innovative solutions to the great challenges facing humanity in the areas of health, food, environmental sustainability and energy production.

Biotechnology is, according to the OECD definition, the application of science and technology to living organisms or parts thereof to alter living or non-living materials for the production of knowledge, goods or services. The use of yeast and fermentation processes to produce traditional foods (yogurt, bread, beer, etc.) is, in fact, biotechnology, as are vaccines (which began to be developed at the end of the 19th century), which are created from pathogens that provoke the illness the patient is to be immunized against. The radical change that has come about since the turn of the century is the exponential growth in our capacity to intervene on a cellular level, to synthesize biologically-based products, and to identify factors linked to the genesis of a disease thanks to the ample knowledge we have acquired as to the genetic bases of living organisms.

As we have delved deeper into the operational mechanisms of DNA and RNA, the chemical building blocks 82

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of life, which make up the genome of living beings, so technology has also moved forward in fields such as bioinformatics and genome sequencing.

The first ‘draft’ of the human genome (identifying 3,000 million nucleotides) obtained in 2000 was the completion of a process that began in 1990. What initially took 10 years and cost nearly $3,000 million, with current technology can be done in one day for just over $1,000. The impact of this change in speed and cost on research and on the ability to create new biotechnology products has been spectacular. Today we can identify the genes that characterize a specific disease or predispose patients to it and, using these biomarkers, we can design new diagnostic tools that allow us to identify and segment at risk groups for preventative treatment (improving health and lowering care costs) or we can produce new medicines that attack only the diseased cells, limiting negative collateral effects on the rest of the organism.

Science and Technology

The impact biotechnology has on medicine and healthcare management is clearly demonstrated in these two examples; however its potential goes much further. Biotechnology products are essential to producing the food we eat, starting with selection and improvement techniques for plant and animal species, and continuing with techniques and products to combat plagues or environmental stress (drought, contamination) and, finally, the production of enzymes and other biotechnology components used in industries that produce or conserve food.

Furthermore, thanks to biotechnology, in recent years we have seen a convergence of food production and medicine, through functional foods or nutraceutics.

These, in short, are products to which components have been added or removed in order to provide health benefits. These foods are the foundation of a preventative, personalized medicine that is key to meeting the needs of a quickly growing popula-

tion (the UN calculates that there will be 8,300 million people in the world by 2025), which is simultaneously living longer and ageing (average life expectancy in the OECD is 79, but two thirds of the group’s members already exceed this average). This process increases the percentage of chronic diseases and, as a result, puts enormous pressure on healthcare systems, regarding both management complexity and costs. Reducing the prevalence of certain diseases through foods adapted to this end has thus become a necessity, and an opportunity for new companies and entrepreneurs that can develop these new products that the market requires.

Biomedicine and biotechnology applied to agriculture and livestock production are, respectively, what the sector calls red biotechnology and green biotechnology. However biotechnology also has important applications in the industrial arena (white biotechnology), above all in energy production using Catalan International View

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biofuel but also in reducing energy use and the contaminant load of industrial activity, through the application of bioprocesses to substitute traditional techniques in sectors like papermaking, textiles, chemicals, etc. and in bioremediation, which uses microorganisms, fungi or enzymes to recover contaminated natural spaces.

The work of organisations like ours is to facilitate dialogue and interaction between the various public and private stakeholders that make up the system The significance of these applications lies both in their social impact and in their economic potential. In the energy arena, for example, the OECD expects that the demand for energy will have increased 50% by 2025. According to experts, wind energy (electricity) and biomass (biofuels) are the only clean power sources capable of making a significant contribution to meeting these energy demands, with production the US Energy Agency estimates could reach 175,000 million and 110,000 million kilowatt-hours, respectively, by 2025. The World Economic Forum calculates that the value chain that goes from biomass to biorefineries could generate more than $224,000 million by 2020. This figure is significant, although still relatively small if compared to the $880,000 million per year in sales currently seen in the global biopharmaceutical market.

Internal challenges

Nevertheless, the sector’s development is facing various challenges on a global level. First of all, naturally, is the economic crisis we are experiencing that is taking a toll on both public and private investment, which is key to maintain84

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ing competitiveness in the research arena and in a knowledge-based market.

In this area, countries that have clearly defined their priorities and are sticking to them, or even increasing economic support for research, have a clear advantage. In Europe, the strongest economies (Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, France) are above the EU average for R&D investment, which for 2010 was 2% of GDP. However it is worth noting that in countries like Denmark and Germany private companies have contributed more than 60% of R&D investment.

Spain invested 1.38% of its GDP in R&D in 2009 and 2010, and it was the public administration, with 47% of the total (43% from private industry) that carried most of the burden of investment for research. Catalonia, with 1.62% of its GDP going to research, is above the national average in this sense.

Public investment is fundamental for basic and clinical research, but to bring products to market private investment is also essential and, often, the key is creating the appropriate regulatory and fiscal frameworks to drive this investment. Developing a new drug, for example, requires between 10 and 15 years of research and can require several hundred million euros in investment.

In order to tackle such a long, complex and costly process, in a context of accelerated scientific progress, various companies and organisations of varying sizes must intervene. Public research centres and small biotech firms mainly focus on the stages of discovery and initial clinical studies. The participation of venture capital in these projects allows for companies to grow and take on the next phases (clinical trials with progressively larger groups of patients) and to take products to market, either producing a new drug or licensing it to a larger company. In any case, at the top of the chain we once again see that

Science and Technology

the government is both the body that establishes the regulatory framework and the main client for these products, through the public health system.

In short, it is a large, complex ecosystem, which in recent years has organised itself around the concept of a biocluster and in many regions has created organisations to dynamize and drive them, such as Biocat in Catalonia. The work of organisations like ours is to facilitate dialogue and interaction between the various public and private stakeholders that make up the system; to promote technology transfer and companies’ access to resources that are essential to their activity and growth (funding, technology, premises, etc.); to attract and develop talent in both the scientific arena and in the management of key areas of the biotechnology business; to connect the administration and policy makers with the strategic needs of the sector in order to bring about the most appropriate regulatory, fiscal and political framework; and to project local assets on an international level in order to facilitate cross-border collaborations, which are key to achieving positive results in a sector that is, by definition, global.

Biotechnology in Catalonia

According to the 2011 Biocat Report, the BioRegion of Catalonia has 80 research centres, 20 science and technology parks, 15 hospitals and 12 universities, which account for 435 research groups devoted to biosciences. This research environment employs 7,981 people, 90% of which are devoted to research tasks (scientists and technicians). Catalonia has three large-scale research facilities: the Mare Nostrum supercomputer (Barcelona Supercomputing Center, BSC), the Alba-Cells synchrotron, and the National Genome Analysis Center, plus more than one hundred technology platforms.

Additionally, there are 480 companies, including biotechnology (91), pharmaceutical (71), innovative medical technology (106) and sector-services firms. These companies employ some 22,000 people, more than half of which carry out research tasks. The sector as a whole (public bodies with third-party services and companies) has an estimated turnover of â‚Ź15,600 million per year, 29% of the economic volume the sectorial association Asebio calculates for the sector as a whole in Spain. Catalonia is home to 21% of all biotechnology companies in Spain, ahead of Madrid (19%), Andalusia (12%), Valencia (11%) and the Basque Country (10%) and is one of the most dynamic bioregions in Europe, with collaboration projects with clusters in France (Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Montpellier, Bordeaux), Germany (Munich, Berlin), Great Britain (Oxford, Cambridge, London), Italy (Turin), the Netherlands, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland and Sweden, in Europe, and organisations like the Massachusetts Life Science Center, the MassBio association and the Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer Center, in the United States.

Supporting the internationalization of Catalan biotech companies has been one of Biocat’s priorities since it was created in 2006. As a result, nearly one hundred companies from our sector have ongoing international activity, which includes marketing products and services as well as joint R&D projects with partners from various countries in Europe, America and Asia. Right now there are a dozen Catalan companies that have just arrived or are about to open a subsidiary in the United States and the Catalan delegation to the Biotechnology Industry Organisation (BIO) convention, the most important international forum for the sector, has made up more than 50% of the SpanCatalan International View

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ish pavilion for the past five years, with more than 40 companies and twenty organisations at the last two events.

New diagnostic tools to detect cancer or a predisposition to cardiovascular disease, genetic tests to determine a patient’s sensitivity to specific medicines, a new vaccine for tuberculosis and another for malaria in the final clinical phases, new probiotic foods, agrifood pathogen detectors, surgical biomaterials, new biological or nanotechnological methods for drug encapsulation and delivery, new components for the cosmetics industry… These are just some examples of the products Catalan biotechnology firms have already put on the market or are developing at the moment. They are also an example of the sector’s potential, which is the result of the ongoing effort Catalonia has made over the past 15 years to drive

forward research and a knowledgebased economy.

In order to consolidate this effort and these results, we are now facing the challenge of growing, together as a sector but also individually, so that our research centres and companies have the necessary critical mass to compete in the tough international arena. We must be able to access the funding needed to drive this process, and this in times of crisis makes it more important than ever to know how to value and support excellence. Here at Biocat we work towards this goal every day, convinced that the future of Catalonia, and of the whole world, depends on the development of sectors such as biotechnology, that bring together innovation and a vocation to serve society.

*Montserrat Vendrell (Barcelona, 1964) Dr. Vendrell holds a PhD in Biology (Universitat de Barcelona) and has more than ten years’ experience in biomedicine and biotechnology research in various international research institutions. She holds a Masters in science communication (UPF, 1997) and a Degree in business administration (IESE, PDG-2007).

She has been BIOCAT’s CEO since April 2007. BIOCAT is an organisation that promotes biotechnology, biomedicine and medical technologies in Catalonia. It is supported by the government of Catalonia and the Barcelona city council and includes companies and research institutions.

As a cluster organisation, BIOCAT’s goals include promoting the development of biotechnology companies and research institutions through implementation of specific programs, facilitating access to financing and talent, and internationalization. Vendrell has been the Chairwoman of CEBR (the Council of European Bioregions) since 2012.

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A Short Story from History Curated by Manuel Manonelles

Vaulting the New World

The Grand Central Oyster Bar, New York

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The Catalan Vault is a traditional construction technique which can trace its origins back to Roman times, as can be appreciated to this day in the ruins of the Caracalla Baths [or Terme di Caracalla] in Rome It is a simple, light and elegant structure, consisting of a low arch or vault made of plain bricks which is often used to make a structural floor surface.

During the Middle Ages and the Modern Era, this technique- that could be found all over the Mediterraneanwas extensively used and particularly improved by Catalan craftsmen and therefore, since the 18th century, it started to be knwon as the Catalan Vault.

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However, it was not until the end of the 19th century that ‘our’ vault was to reach its highest levels of performance.

Catalan Art Nouveau (Modernist) architects such as Gaudí, Domènech i Montaner and Puig i Cadafalch were among those who made use of it on an unprecedented technical and ornamental scale.

Nonetheless, it was a Valencian architect, Rafael Guastavino, who successfully exported the vault to the United States. Born in 1842, he studied architecture in Barcelona with Elias Rogent and Joan Torras. Before departing for the Americas he was responsible for several buildings around Catalonia,

including the Fàbrica Batlló in Barcelona and Teatre La Massa in Mataró.

Guastavino moved to the United States in 1881 where he was going to develop an enormous amount of activity. After the traumatic experiences of the Great Fires of Chicago and Boston of 1871 and 1872 respectively, the States were eager to experiment with some form of fireproof architectural techniques. In 1883 Guastavino bought a piece of land in Connecticut, built two houses using the Catalan Vault technique, put them on fire and documented and photographed the entire process.

In 1889 his participation in the construction of the Boston Public Library prompted his popularity among the East Coast architectural milieu.

This was the same year he set up the Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company with his son, also named Rafael. The company was to be responsible for over a thousand architectural projects and also 24 patents, until its dissolution seven decades later.

The bulk of the Guastavino Company’s buildings were located in the United States, particularly on the East Coast and centred in New York, although they undertook projects all over the world, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Cuba and India.

The Catalan Vault, which also began to be known as the Guastavino Vault, became an icon of the BeauxArts movement that was to give rise to many landmark buildings in the Big Apple, such as the legendary Grand Central Oyster Bar, the Ellis Island Registry Hall, the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art), the American Museum of Natural History, the City Hall Metro Station, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Grant’s Tomb, the Frick Collection and the Bridge Mar-

ket, among many others. In Washington it can be found in the Supreme Court building and at the National Museum of Natural History on the Mall. The Nebraska Capitol and Union Station in Pittsburgh are other fine examples.

The Rotunda, Union Station, Pittsburgh

The Catalan Vault, which also began to be known as the Guastavino Vault, became an icon of the Beaux-Arts movement Fortunately, the archives of the Guastavino Company are preserved at the Columbia University’s Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library. Indeed such impressive heritage also captured the attention of the renowned MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) that some years ago set up the Guastavino Project and is even planning an exhibition for the near future.

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The Artist

Cover Art: Homenatge a Man Ray (Homage to Man Ray) 2010 146 x 114 cm Mixed media on canvas

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Mundo roto (Broken World) 1965-66 164 x 114 cm Mixed media on wood

The Artist

Romà Vallès:

visual autobiography of an absence

by Glòria Bosch*

‘All solutions are temporary, (...) they’re as relative as the problem itself ’.

J. E. Cirlot, 1966 The absence of a written biography creates the need within him to consider certain circumstances related to the flow of existence, a kind of collage of life and memory, the transformation of memories into an emotional intensity that strengthens his later work. In fact, we can find this visual autobiography in all his works: interior landscapes that clearly identify an emphasis on certain aspects, fragments of series which we encounter over the years, passion for the values of paper and organic matter, coloured textures, black and white, the thickness of material…, while not failing to explore new techniques to implement linked to the recovery of old drawings and the incorporation of new materials.

Thereby he brings us to a multiple vision of reality, with concerns which link with time and stretch the arch of experience, because the self-portrait is not physical but internal, as it should be in order to find authenticity, in the same way as action and thought inhabit gesture and matter.

Speaking of the 50s and 60s reminds us of his role as an innovator both in the field of art and of pedagogy. Throughout his career one can recall more than a hundred solo exhibitions in Europe and America. One of them in particular was held at the Suzanne de Coninck Gallery, Paris, 1969.Today, aged 88, he

feels like a romantic who justifies the need to paint, but he also questions to what extent it was worth the expenditure of so much energy (weary perhaps from the often sterile work of putting his finger in the wound), and he intelligently places us on other paths in which communication becomes profound thanks to the effect of adequately perforating the gesture with contained emotion through an essential backdrop which, without chronology, continues to be in force. It is these rereadings which, when added to the reflective, intimate process of his own path through life, are introduced into his present-day homage to painting.

The collage of two periods provides us with a reflection of a journey where the difference lies in the negative criticism replaced by a way to restore experience: one that seeks the essence of time and memory. The first reading may make us think of a bridge between his collages of the 60s and those of today, but if we come closer we can see how the attitude has changed, as if a 180º turn had steered the protest towards a positive rescue, as if he had shifted his gaze to obtain the opposite view which not only empties the very trace of an artistic heritage but also the emotional autobiography.

Espai Volart Carrer Ausiàs Marc, 22 08010 Barcelona Tel. 93 481 79 85 Fax. 93 481 79 84 espaivolart@fundaciovilacasas.com Catalan International View

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Universal Catalans

Antoni Tàpies:

the universal language of a Catalan artist

by Georg Massanés*

On the 6th of February 2012, Antoni Tàpies the painter, sculptor and theorist of Catalan art died at his home in Barcelona. He was Europe’s last remaining representative of Art Informel. He was born on the 13th of December 1923. His father was a lawyer and Catalan nationalist who briefly served in the Republican government and his mother was the daughter of a family of booksellers with strong links to Catalan society. Tàpies showed early artistic leanings which were to be consolidated thanks to a prolonged convalescence between 1941 and 1943 following a bout of tuberculosis. This led him to further his interest in art, music and literature. He studied law for three years at the Universitat de Barcelona, but in 1946 decided to abandon his studies in order to devote himself exclusively to art. He studied painting for only a short time at the Nolasc Valls Academy.

Antoni Tàpies was virtually a selftaught artist whom I had an opportunity to meet during the inauguration of an exhibition of visual poetry and installations by Joan Brossa at the Joan Prats Gallery in 1989. By then he had long since become an artist who enjoyed an undeniable international prestige. His presence at the gallery was no accident, since in 1948 he, Joan Brossa, Modest Cuixart, Joan Josep Tharrats, Arnau Puig and Joan Ponç founded the magazine and the artistic movement Dau al Set, associated with Surrealism and Dadaism. The magazine was published until 1956.

Following a stay in Paris in 1950 thanks to a grant from the French Institute of Barcelona in order to escape the poverty and narrow mindedness of the political and cultural universe of the Franco dictatorship in Spain, Antoni Tàpies embarked on an international career that was to move away from the Dau al Set movement, although he did subsequently undertake some sporadic 92

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collaborations. In Paris he came into contact with the avant-garde artistic movements of the time and his painting, after a period of geometric abstraction, evolved toward Art Informel, particularly pintura matèrica or art brut, of which Tàpies became one of the main proponents, alongside Jean Fautrier, Dubuffet and Manolo Millares. From the 1960s he put on a series of solo exhibitions and retrospectives at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York, the Gres Gallery in Washington, the Galerie Stadler in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Kunsthaus in Zurich, among many others, catapulting him to the position of an essential figure among the international avant-garde, and thereby consolidating his career.

During the 1980s Tàpies produced large format prints created in Joan Barbarà’s intaglio workshops in Barcelona.

It was here that I learned to admire his work. Although Tàpies’ paintings were not unknown to me, since I had already

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seen and questioned them, whether exhibited in museums and galleries or reproduced in books and catalogues, being able to witness the entire process of the production of his engravings and the ability to view, review and comment on the prints with my companions in the workshop opened my eyes to the wealth of nuances, to the complexity, the technical excellence and completeness of the works that were to fascinate me. There are a number of paintings produced during this period, in which Tàpies works with oil glazes on raw or white canvases, for which I feel a special attraction. They are light, bright works which lead to figurative elements that had been more veiled in previous paintings.

It seems paradoxical that the creations of an artist who has chosen humble materials and themes that relate to the human condition, such as death, illness, loneliness, pain and sex to build their artistic speech, should never have come to enjoy great popularity. Outside the circle of a specialised audience of

collectors and amateurs, the work of Antoni Tàpies, like many other contemporary artists, faces a lack of comprehension by a large part of the Catalan public. This was made apparent during the controversy surrounding the sculpture of a large sock that was to be installed in the Oval Room of the Palau Nacional de Montjuïc, the headquarters of the MNAC (National Museum of Contemporary Art) in Barcelona. The absence of a narrative in his paintings, a very austere palette, consisting of ochre, black, red and dark earthy colours, the rejection of academic conventions and the use of old or waste materials makes it difficult for the uninformed to approach him. Tàpies’ interest in Eastern culture, and Zen Buddhism in particular, permeates his artistic production of aesthetic concepts that are defined by the beauty of imperfect, ephemeral, incomplete things, based on the aesthetic principles of asymmetry, the irregularity and the simplicity that avoids the obvious and conventional. The strokes Catalan International View

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with which he painted signs, numbers and letters have the power and elegance of the precise and thoughtful gestures with which Japanese Buddhist monks create their paintings. His first association with Surrealism and Dadaism may serve to explain the display of numbers and letters, of isolated words, written, engraved or painted that inhabit his works while giving us no clue as to their interpretation, since they are the result of an exploration of the products of the subconscious or of chance.

Apart from his occasional visits to Paris and the trips he was obliged to make for his exhibitions, Antoni Tàpies always lived in Barcelona

1 Fragment of a text published in 1967 by Antoni Tàpies entitled El juego de saber mirar (The Game of Knowing How to Look) In black and white Galaxia Guttenberg- Círculo de lectores

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Tàpies suggested possible arguments through an array of signs, gestures and surfaces of dense materials and colours, often dark, which refuse to articulate themselves in a clearly understandable message. As if it were a poem, the artist moved the use of the synecdoche to the plastic. An old pair of trousers, straw, wardrobes, beds, urinals, chairs, skulls, bodies, hands and feet, letters and numbers and crosses are some of the elements that make up his language. Tàpies composes images and objects that allude to something that is still open, unsaid, as if deliberately trying to empty of meaning what he has presented us with in order that the excerpts of the speech perceived as absent produce in those who observe the works a gradual renunciation of textual explanations and interpretations thus allowing them to access the state of contemplation and silence needed to connect with the aesthetic experience.

The contained energy in the painter’s gestures, the power and density of the surfaces of material of his work, perCatalan International View

mit those who allow themselves to be transported, to perceive the forces and tensions, both psychical and of the soul that have been fixed as if they were a transfer of experience.

Tàpies wrote in 1967: ‘Watch, watch the background!

And allow yourself to fully take in everything that resonates within you that offers you its gaze as one who attends a concert with a new suit and an open heart with the excitement of listening, to simply listen to all its purity, without wishing, whatever the cost, for the piano or the orchestra to sound like they must represent a particular landscape or the portrait of a general or a scene from history. Often we wish to reduce painting to this mere representation.

Let us learn, then, to look like someone who is attending a concert.

In music there are sound shapes, composed in a fragment of time. In painting, visual forms are composed in a piece of space’.1 The presence of works by Antoni Tàpies in the collections of the world’s contemporary art museums and the long list of awards and honours he received demonstrate the universal interest shown for this Catalan artist’s creations. He worked in the studio located on the ground floor of his home in the Sant Gervasi neighbourhood of Barcelona and the country house he owned in the Montseny. Apart from his occasional visits to Paris and the trips he was obliged to make for his exhibitions, Antoni Tàpies always lived in Barcelona. He actively participated in the country’s cultural and political life.

In the 1970’s his work took on a greater political significance, for Catalan independence and opposition to Franco’s regime, usually with words and signs on his paintings, such as the four bars

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of the Catalan flag (L’esperit català, The Catalan Spirit, 1971). This activism led him to contribute to actions such as the sit-in at the Capuchin convent in Sarrià, the formation of a democratic students’ union (1966) and to take part in the march to Montserrat to protest the Burgos Trial (1970). The latter resulted in a short spell in prison. Once democratic normality was restored, Tàpies did not stop making constant contributions to Catalonia’s cultural life through the creation of posters for its most emblematic festivals, the donation of paintings, installations and

sculptures to its political and cultural institutions and the creation of the foundation that bears his name.

I should like to conclude these lines with a comment by Joan Miró that testifies to the true dimension of the work of Antoni Tàpies: ‘The work of Antoni Tàpies is in the tradition of those explosions that from time to time occur in our country that touch so many dead things. He is truly a Barcelonian with universal appeal. For this reason he deserves my admiration’.

*Georg Massanés (Marl, Federal Republic of Germany, 1962). Resident of Catalonia (satrapy of the Kingdom of Spain) since 1975. He studied painting at Barcelona’s Massana School of Art and Art History at the Universitat de Barcelona. As a painter he is known both nationally and internationally. He has lived and worked in Montoliu de Segarra for a number of years.

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A Poem Curated by Enric Bou Chair in Hispanic Studies, Brown University (Providence)

Berlin: January 1929

Berlín: gener 1929

Marta Pessarrodona

Marta Pessarrodona

Vita set aside Her translations of Rilke.

The telephone was Moabit 37-94, And Friedrichstrasse station, journey’s end.

Vita va interrompre les seves versions de Rilke.

El telèfon era Moabit 37-94, i Friedrichstrasse l’estació d’arribada.

One afternoon, at the Funkturm, Alone on their first and last brief escape, Vita made her understand How short-lived human passions are.

A la Funkturm, una tarda, en escapada solitària i breu, Vita va fer-li entendre la poca durada de les passions humanes.

The rather spirited conversation And the pulse of such high-tension souls Managed to silence The lethal human tide.

(The future bombs Didn’t cast a gloom over the afternoon at all.)

La conversa, prou animada, el pols anímic de tant de voltatge, van aconseguir silenciar la letal marea humana.

(Les bombes futures no van enterbolir gens la tarda.)

24 Brüken Allee, an address, Today a companion to ghosts From old-time embassies: The city hadn’t been split.

24 Brücken Allee, una adreça, avui companya dels fantasmes d’antigues ambaixades: la ciutat no havia estat esberlada.

Virginia returned to London A week later, ill.

Vita began to feel that Leidenschaft was a very strange Compound noun.

Virginia va retornar a Londres al cap d’una setmana, malalta.

Vita va començar a creure que “Leidenschaft” era una paraula de formació ben estranya.

Actually, neither of the two Had the least inkling Of disaster’s rhetoric.

De fet, ni l’una ni l’altra van pressentir gens la retòrica del desastre.

Translated by D. Sam Abrams Marta Pessarrodona (Terrassa, 1941) is a well-know poet and translator. She has translated Susan Sontag, Doris Lessing, Erica Jong, Marguerite Duras. In her poetry there is an unmistakable connection to remembrance and meditation, with often an ironic tone, always with a feminist commitment. A digressive, in some instances cursive voice, encapsulates readings and many cultural references. Gabriel Ferrater wrote in the prologue to her first book her poetry was ‘judicious’ and that she excelled in the craft of ‘sincerity, in an apposite and moderately modulated tone of voice’. She once declared: ‘Poetry isn’t always a balsam; sometimes it’s disturbing’. Pessarrodona masterfully links personal experiences to the collective fate.

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Editorial Board Martí Anglada Former foreign news editor at TV3 (Catalonia television). He has been foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Italy and Great Britain (1977-1984) for the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia and United States correspondent for TV3 (1987-1990). He has also been an international political commentator. His latest book is Afers no tan estrangers (Not So Foreign Affairs) published by Editorial Mina (part of Grup 62).

Manel Balcells (Ripoll, 1958). Doctor specialising in Orthopaedics, Traumatology and Sports Medicine. Holds a degree in Health Management from EADA, as well as a degree in PADE from IESE. He is a member of a number of scientific societies. In his long, distinguished career in the health sector he has been Medical Director of Granollers General Hospital (Barcelona); both director and secretary of Coordination and Strategy for the Department of Health of the Generalitat of Catalonia; councillor for the Department of Universities, Research and Information Society; consultant for the Catalan Hospitals Consortium. From the 27th of December 2006 to February 2011 he was president of the board of directors of the Private BioRegion Foundation of Catalonia. At present he is the Director of the Area of Knowledge at Consorci Sanitari de Terrassa (Catalonia), as well as Consultant on Strategic Planning.

Enric Canela (Barcelona, 1949). Holds a Chemistry degree from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB, 1972) and a PhD in Chemistry with Biochemistry as his specialisation (UB, 1976). Lecturer at the UB since 1974, he is Full Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the department of the same name in the Biology Faculty of the UB. He collaborates in research on intracellular communication and biochemical theory. He regularly publishes books and contributes to scientific journals of international renown. Between September 2007 and April 2009 he was president of the Society for Knowledge. Between June 2007 and June 2011 he was patron of the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA) for the Spanish state.

Àngel Font (Lleida, 1965). Holds a degree in Chemical Sciences from the Universitat de Barcelona and a diploma in Business Management from EADA Business School. Began his career in an environmental engineering company and subsequently joined Intermón Oxfam where he held the post of coordinator on projects in Latin America, fund-raising and public relations and assistant to the director general. Since 2000 he has been director of the Un Sol Món (One World) Foundation financed by the Caixa de Catalunya (savings bank) where he runs projects for social housing and employment for disadvantaged groups as well as the development of microfinance in Spain, Latin America and Africa. Àngel Font is a member of the Cooperation Council of the Generalitat de Catalunya and was the first vice-president of the European Microfinance Network. He carries out teaching duties related to the management of non-profit organisations at a number of business schools.

Anna Grau Journalist and writer. From 1991 to 2005 she worked as a political journalist in Barcelona and Madrid, where she was the correspondent for the Avui newspaper and numerous programmes for TV3, Catalunya Ràdio, Ràdio4 and COM ràdio. In 2005 she left for New York, where she currently works. Author of El dia que va morir el president (the Day the President Died), Dones contra dones (Women Against Women), Endarrere aquesta gent (Reject These People) and the essay Per què parir (Why have a baby?).

August Gil-Matamala Has been a practising lawyer since 1960, specialising in the fields of criminal and labour law. He has taken part in numerous cases in defence of people on trial for their demands in favour of people’s rights, as well as hearings before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Gil-Matamala fought the first successful case against the Spanish state for the violation of basic rights. He is a founder member of the Commission for the Defence of Individual Rights of the Col·legi d’Advocats de Barcelona (the Barcelona Bar Association) and the Catalan Association for the Defence of Human Rights, which he presided over from its foundation in 1985 to 2001. Gil-Matamala has also been president of both the Fundació Catalunya and the European Democratic Lawyers organisation. In 2007, coinciding with his retirement, he received the Creu de Sant Jordi (St. George’s Cross, the highest honour awarded by the Catalan government).

Montserrat Guibernau Professor of Politics at Queen Mary College, University of London. Holds a PhD and an MA in Social and Political Theory from the University of Cambridge and a degree in Philosophy from the Universitat de Barcelona. She has taught at the universities of Warwick, Cambridge, Barcelona, the London School of Economics and the Open University. Guibernau has held visiting professorhips at the universities of Edinburgh, Tampere, Pompeu Fabra, the UQAM (Quebec) and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Currently she holds a visiting fellowship at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics. Montserrat Guibernau is the author of numerous books and articles on nationalism, the nation-state, national identity, and national and ethnic minorities in the West from the perspective of global governance.

Guillem López-Casasnovas (Minorca, 1955). Holds a degree in Economics (distinction, 1978) and Law (1979) from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB). He obtained his PhD in Public Economics from the University of York (UK, 1984). He has been a lecturer at the UB, visiting scholar at the Institute of Social and Economic Research (UK), University of Sussex and at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Stanford (USA). Since June 1992 has been full professor of economics at Barcelona’s Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), where he has been vice-rector of Economics and International Relations and dean of the School of Economics and Business Science. In 1998 he created the Economics and Health Research Centre (CRES- UPF), which he directed until recently. Co-director of the Master’s in Public Management (UPF-UAB-EAPC). In 2000 he received the Catalan Economics Society Award and in 2001 the Joan Sardà Dexeus Award. He is also a member of the Minorcan Institute of Studies, The Catalan Royal Academy of Medicine and a distinguished member of the Economists’ Society of Catalonia. President of the International Health Economics Association and since 2005 one of the Spanish Central Bank’s six independent Council members.

Manuel Manonelles Political commentator specialising in international relations, human rights and democratisation processes. Currently director of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace, Barcelona. He has been special advisor to the Co-chair of the UN High Level Group for the Alliance of Civilizations, as well as advisor to the coordinator of the Secretariat of the World Forum of Civil Society Networks (Ubuntu Forum), which is a member of the International Council of the World Social Forum. He has been an international electoral observer and supervisor for the OSCE and the EU on many occasions, and has participated in several international intergovernmental and non-governmental processes.

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Fèlix Martí Former president of the International Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (Pax Romana), from 1975 to 1984; director of Catalonia magazine (1987-2002), a publication printed in four different languages, aimed at disseminating Catalan culture; director of the UNESCO centre of Catalonia (1984 to 2002) and later its honorary president (from 2003). From 1994 to 2002 he was editor of the Catalan editions of the yearly reports of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute, L’Estat del món (The State of the World) and Signes vitals (Vital Signs). He promotes the Declaration on Contributions by Religions to a Culture of Peace, signed by leaders of the great religious traditions in 1994. President of the Linguapax International Institute from 2001 to 2004 and honorary president thereafter. Wrote his memoirs Diplomàtic sense estat (Diplomat Without a State), published by Edicions Proa in 2006. Was awarded the UNESCO Human Rights Medal in 1995 and the Generalitat de Catalunya’s Creu de Sant Jordi (St. George’s Cross) in 2002.

Arcadi Oliveres (Barcelona, 1945). PhD in Economic Science, lecturer in the Department of Applied Economics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and president of the organisation Justícia i Pau ( Justice and Peace). He is also president of the Catalan Council for the Promotion of Peace, the International Peace University Foundation of Sant Cugat del Vallès, the Federation of Internationally Recognised Catalan Organisations (FOCIR) and the Easy to Read Association. He is an expert on North-South relations, international trade, external debt and defence economics and also lectures on aid and development for a number of master’s and PhD programmes.

Eva Piquer (Barcelona, 1969).Writer and cultural journalist. Works for several newspapers and magazines. Has been a lecturer at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a New York news correspondent. Won the 2002 Josep Pla prize for her novel Una victòria diferent (A Different Victory). Also author of several books, including La noia del temps (The Weather Girl), Alícia al país de la televisió (Alice in Television Land) and No sóc obsessiva, no sóc obsessiva, no sóc obsessiva (I’m Not Obsessive, I’m Not Obsessive, I’m Not Obsessive). Her latest book is called La feina o la vida (Life or work).

Ricard Planas (Girona, 1976). Journalist, art critic and cultural promoter. Studied Philology and the History of Art at the Universitat de Girona. In 1999 he founded the magazine Bonart, dedicated to the contemporary art scene in the Catalan Countries. More recently he created and directed the Catalan art fair INART in 2005 and 2006. Has worked as the curator for exhibitions by important artists such as Arranz-Bravo, Lamazares, Formiguera, Cuixart, Ansesa and Grau-Garriga. Ricard has collaborated with Ona Catalana, Catalunya Ràdio, iCatfm and Onda Rambla radio stations. Has also worked for the Diari de Girona, El Punt and El Mundo newspapers, among others.

Vicent Sanchis (Valencia, 1961). Holds a degree in Information Sciences from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. In his career as a journalist it is worth highlighting that he has worked and collaborated on many publications and with numerous publishers; he has been editor and director of El Temps magazine, director of Setze magazine, the Catalan supplement of Cambio 16, and director of the newspapers El Observador and Avui. He has also excelled as a scriptwriter and director on different TV programmes. At present he is president of the editorial board of Avui, and vicepresident of Òmnium Cultural. Vicent is also a lecturer in the Faculty of Communication Sciences at Universitat Ramon Llull in Barcelona.

Pere Torres Biologist and environmental consultant. After some time spent on research (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), he joined the Government of Catalonia in 1991. He was in turn secretary of the Catalan Inter-university Council (1991-1993), Head of the Environment Minister’s staff (1993-1995), general director of Environmental Planning (1995-2000) and secretary for Regional Planning (2000-2003). Since 2004 he has done consultancy work in public management, sustainability and land use planning and has been a regular contributor to the International Institute for Governability and the Institut Cerdà.

Carles Vilarrubí (Barcelona, 1954). Businessman. He is currently Executive Vice-President of Rothschild Spain Investment Bank, specialising in key mergers and takeovers in the financial sector on an international scale. President of CVC Grupo Consejero, an equity and investment advisory firm, with a portfolio of shares in consulting and service companies from the world of communications, the media, marketing, technology and telecommunications. President of Doxa Consulting Group, independent consultants on technology, media and telecommunications, leaders in the sector and with a presence in Spain and Portugal. He is a member of the advisory board of the Catalan confederation Foment del Treball Nacional (National Employment Promotion) and patron of the Fundació Orfeó Català - Palau de la Música. He has also been a member of the governing council of ADENA WWF (World Wild Fund for Nature), and sat on the boards of the Fundación Arte y Tecnología, Fundesco and Fundación Entorno. He is also member of the F.C Barcelona.

Vicenç Villatoro (Terrassa, 1957). Writer and journalist. Holds a degree in Information Sciences. Former president of the Ramon Trias Fargas Foundation.

As a journalist he has worked for numerous organisations. He was the editor of the Avui newspaper from 1993 to 1996 and head of the culture section of TV3. Between 2002 and 2004 was director general of the Catalan Radio and Television Corporation. He has contributed to a range of media companies, such as Avui, El Periódico, El País, El Temps, Catalunya Ràdio and COM ràdio. As a writer he has written a dozen novels. Currently he is the president of the Institut Ramon Llull.

Francesc de Dalmases (Director) (Barcelona, 1970). Journalist and consultant in humanitarian aid and cooperation and development. Has been president (1999-2006) of the Association of Periodicals in Catalan (APPEC); coordinator for the delegation to the Spanish state of European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages (1995-1999); coordinator for the third conference of the CONSEU (Conference of European Stateless Nations) (1999); and coordinator for the publication Europa de les Nacions (1993-1999). Has acted as a foreign expert in aid projects in such diverse locations as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mongolia, Kosovo, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mexico, Guatemala and Morocco.

He is a member of the Cooperation Council of the Catalan government. He recently (2011) joined Barcelona’s Council’s Aid Commitee and is a board member of the Federation of Internationally Recognized Catalan Organisations.

Víctor Terradellas (Editor) (Reus, 1962). Entrepreneur and political and cultural activist. President and founder of Fundació CATmón. Editor of Catalan International View and ONGC, a magazine dedicated to political thought, solidarity, aid and international relations. Víctor has always been involved in political and social activism, both nationally and internationally. The driving force behind the Plataforma per la Sobirania (The Platform for Self-Determination) as well as being responsible for significant Catalan aid operations and international relations in such diverse locations as Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Pakistan and Kurdistan. Currently he is General Secretary of International Relations for the Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya party.

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