Civ 4

Catalan International View A European Review of the World

Five easy pieces about the crisis

by Andreu Mas-Colell

The Catalan model of savings banks

by Francesc Cabana

The United Nations: reform or reform!

by Josep Xercavins

Dossier: The Bologna Process:

Towards the European Higher Education Area?

Issue 4 • Summer 2009 • E 5

SECTIONS: Europe · Business & Economics Opinions · Africa · Interview · Green Debate The Artist · A Poem

To Our Readers

Contents

Editor:

6......... Reflections on the European elections

vterradellas@catmon.cat Director

Europe

director@international-view.cat Art Director

Víctor Terradellas

Francesc de Dalmases Quim Milla

designer@international-view.cat Editorial Coordinator

Geni Flos

coordinator@international-view.cat

Editorial Board

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

Judit Aixalà Francesc Parés

Linguistic Advisors

by Francesc de Dalmases

8......... Europe’s borders

by Martí Anglada

12........ Victory for Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya

by Natàlia Boronat

18........ Kosovo: self-determination that never arrives

by Laia Gordi

24........ Barcelona Football Club:

the weight of history beyond a historic season

by Víctor Terradellas

Business and Economics

30........ Five easy pieces about the crisis

by Andreu Mas-Colell

34........ The Catalan model of savings banks

by Francesc Cabana

Opinions

38........ Paper vs digital?

by Vicent Sanchis

42........ Rethinking cultural policy

by Carles Duarte

46........ No spare cash? Why development cooperation

continues to be critical to overcoming today’s crisis

by Sara Ferrer

52........ The United Nations: reform or reform!

by Josep Xercavins

Nigel Balfour Júlia López Seguí

56........ Catalunya and the myth of Sepharad

Webmaster

Interview

Marta Calvó Cover Art

Enric Pladevall

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

by Teresa Calders and Esperança Valls

60....... Lluís Llach

by Eva Piquer

Africa

68........ Museveni and Kobe beef

by Nicolás Valle

Dossier: The Bologna Process

72........ Bologna: a challenge for both students and staff

Headquarters, Administration and Subcriptions

Fonollar, 14 08003 Barcelona Catalunya (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.

by Enric Canela

76........ Public universities:autonomy, liberty, equality and

participation

by Francisco Fernández Buey and Jordi Mir

80........ The European Higher Education Area: an opportunity

or a threat to Catalan public universities?

by Sergi Rubió

84........ Bologna: much ado about nothing

by Antoni Bosch-Domènech

Green Debate

86........ Energy: by hiding the problems, we won’t find the solutions

by Pere Torres

A Short Story from History

90....... The House of Lords and the ‘Case of the Catalans’

by Manuel Manonelles The Artist

92........ Enric Pladevall, the voice of l’Olivar

Printed in Catalunya by

A Poem

Imgesa

94........ Lovers

Published every three months.

by Vicent Andrés Estellés

Catalan International View

Editorial Board Martí Anglada Foreign news editor at TV3 (Catalunya Television). He has been foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Italy and Great Britain (19771984) 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 and is a member of a number of scientific societies. In his 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 de Catalunya; councillor for the Department of Universities, Research and Information Society; and consultant for the Catalan Hospital Consortium. Since the 27th of December 2006 he has been president of the board of directors of the Private BioRegion Foundation of Catalunya.

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. Lecturer at the UB since 1974, he is professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and head of the department of the same name in the Biology Faculty of the UB. He collaborates in research on intracellular communication and theoretical biochemistry. He regularly publishes in scientific journals of international renown. Between 1991 and 1995 he was vice-president of the Catalan Biology Society. He has been president of the Society for Knowledge since September 2007. Since June 2007 he has been patron of the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA) for the Spanish state.

Àngel Font i Vidal (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. 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 Catalunya Foundation 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 (Menorca, 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 Universitat de Barcelona, 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 Scool 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 Menorcan Institute of Studies, The Catalan Royal Academy of Medicine and a distinguished member of the Economists’ Society of Catalunya. President of the International Health Economics Association and since 2005 one of the Spanish Central Bank’s six independent Council members.

Manuel Manonelles i Tarragó 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 Civilisations, 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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Catalan International View

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 Catalunya (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 journalist. Works for the Avui newspaper where she coordinates the cultural supplement and the culture section. 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).

Ricard Planas (Girona, 1976). Journalist, art critic and cultural promoter. Studied Philology and the History of Art at the University of 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 i Llàcer (València, 1961). Holds a degree in Information Science 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, content director of Grup Cultura 03 and vice-president of Òmnium Cultural. Vicent is also lecturer in the Faculty of Communication Sciences at Universitat Ramon Llull de Barcelona.

Pere Torres Biologist and environmental consultant. After some time spent on research (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), he joined the Government of Catalunya 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 Cerdà Institute.

Carles Vilarrubí i Carrió (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.

Vicenç Villatoro i Lamolla (Terrassa, 1957). Writer and journalist. Holds a degree in Information Sciences. Currently the 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.

Francesc de Dalmases (Director) (Barcelona, 1970). He works as a journalist as well as being a logistician 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). He is a founder member of CAL (the Coordinator of Associations for the Catalan language). 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 patron of the Reeixida Foundation and the CATmón Foundation. President of IGMAN-Acció Solidària and director of ONGC a magazine dedicated to political thought, solidarity, aid and international relations. He is a member of the Cooperation Council of the Catalan government.

Víctor Terradellas i Maré (Editor) (Reus, 1962). Entrepreneur and political and cultural activist. President and founder of CATmón Foundation. Editor of Catalan International View and ONGC, a magazine dedicated to political thought, solidarity, aid and international relations. Victor 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.

Catalan International View

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To Our Readers

Reflections on the European elections

by Francesc de Dalmases

On June 7th, 375 million Europeans were able to decide the future of the European Union. We say ‘were able to’ because only 43.5% decided to exercise their right to vote. It is a disgracefully low figure that, beyond the results themselves, leads one to ponder the deficiencies in the process of the construction of Europe.

There is an expression in Catalan that is used to refer to a badly planned action, or a process that fails to progress adequately, which is literally ‘to put the cart before the ox’. It is probably the kind of expression one could use when referring to the European Union.

In the post-electoral period we have witnessed how the blame for low voter turnout has been passed between the political parties, the media, the parties at a local level and finally the electorate, in a never-ending chain. It makes sense, since no one is solely responsible, in the same way that no one is com6

Catalan International View

pletely innocent. We should like to outline three areas in which we ought to work both politically and socially if we wish the process of the construction of Europe to not become artificial and alien to European civil society.

In first place, there is the institutional character of the European Union. There is no sense in talking about the importance of the European Parliament for fifteen days if, for the next five years, it is hard to discern directly how its stance or decisions affect our lives.

Certainly the media and the Europarliamentarians themselves and their political background should share part of the blame. Nevertheless, the Parliament itself should have strategies for bringing European citizens closer to this common space. The fact that half the voters stayed at home during the European elections is a stark reminder of how Europeans feel disconnected and distanced from the European Parliament.

To Our Readers

The second area for discussion is at the state level. The state’s European passion on the eve of the elections makes no sense when the majority only aspire to a symbolic European Union. They show no predisposition to relinquish state sovereignty in order to enhance continental sovereignty. The blame and bad reputation lies with the governing parties of states which are clearly against the Union. However, it is a factor common to the way the vast majority of European governments act, even if it does not appear in their official discourse.

The third area for concern, the national context, is also strongly tied to the states’ incapacity to share sovereignty and outline a Europe where all nations, languages and cultures are present on an equal footing. It is difficult to mobilise a majority vote among Europeans when a large part of its population sees how their language, their culture and their traditions are not present or recognised in the European institutions.

In short, the process of building a common Europe cannot fall hostage to state power, since those same states end up being the main obstacles to achieving the objectives of the European Union.

The administrative and bureaucratic construction of Europe must give way to the political construction of the European Union The administrative and bureaucratic construction of Europe must give way to the political construction of a European Union that counts on and recognises all the elements that make up contemporary Europe and that goes far beyond the Europe of states.

Europe’s future, without doubt, is the Europe of nations.

Catalan International View

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Europe

Europe’s borders

by Martí Anglada*

Whenever a debate as to Europe’s borders begins, a frequent occurrence nowadays, two opposing positions immediately emerge: one shares the Council of Europe’s concept of Europe’s territorial limits, with its 47 member states that even include Russia. The other defends the view that the territorial limits of the European Union (EU) are relative and thereby variable according to the interests and objectives of the EU itself. While the first position is axiomatic, the second, by contrast, is evolutionary and modifiable according to the mutating perspective of interests. The European Union does not, therefore, have pre-established limits, but rather flexible limits that it sets itself. The second viewpoint is not only the most realistic, it is first and foremost the only viable option in an organisation such as the EU where additions need to be agreed unanimously. The only possible limits are those that are self-imposed by consensus.

An apparently separate debate is one which revolves around strengthening European political integration.

Generally, the European Union is faced with a choice between enlargement and consolidation. This is to say that the EU needs to choose between continuing with its expansion or strengthening its integration. It is suggested (often with some vehemence) that the enlargement and strengthening processes are incompatible. The last two attempts at expansion towards Eastern Europe (from 15 members to the current 27) are often used to support this view. It sees constant enlargements as not simply slowing down the strengthening of common institutions, but rather making such a strengthening process impossible. A more open attitude is held by those that separate 8

Catalan International View

the two processes and maintain that they are not incompatible and that they are two different paths that may, or may not, run parallel to one another.

In my view, the two paths are so interconnected that whatever steps the EU takes to strengthen itself will in turn determine any interest in its expansion.

Between these two paths, these two objectives, there is necessarily a hierarchy: strengthening should set the pace.

The expansion of the EU should not be an objective per se, but rather one of a number of tools available in order to strengthen the EU. Expansion should not imply a brake on strengthening, nor should it be stopped, but rather it should be administered in function of the needs of the EU at this historic mo-

Europe

ment in time. In fact, a strengthening of the EU’s institutions should set the pace and extent of European expansion and not the reverse.

European expansion only becomes the ideal weapon for abandoning a strengthening of the EU in the eyes of Eurosceptics. Accepting the incompatibility of the two processes is to fall into the trap of Euroscepticism. Announcing the internal logic of the two processes is not sufficient (although it is a worthwhile step), instead it is necessary to establish a hierarchy in favour of political integration. In any case, asserting that the expansion of the EU does not depend on any geographical principle, but instead solely depends on the interests of the EU at any one time is a great leap forward.

Asserting that the expansion of the EU does not depend on any geographical principle, but instead solely depends on the interests of the EU at any one time is a great leap forward What is the European interest that should govern future expansion of the EU? In a recent debate held in Barcelona by the International Association of Veteran European Union Civil Servants, the lawyer and former politician Miquel Roca proposed that it is necessary to first answer the question: What do we want the European Union for? As a prior step to deciding what our interest in Europe is. He argued that up to now, fear has been the main engine of European integration: first came the fear of a repetition of a Franco-German war and the fear of a war on European soil between the Soviet Union and the United States (as a result of the Cold War). Later, more recent expansions were driven by the Catalan International View

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twelve Eastern European states’ fear of Russia. Currently this decadent Europe has a fear of cultures from emerging areas and of Islam in particular. Roca adds that it would do the EU good to first define its values in order to define its interests. These values include the Greco-Roman tradition, the Reformation and counter-Reformation and the Enlightenment and human rights.

Europe has no other driving force than its Franco-German heart. If what is sought is a controlled expansion, then this fact should be accepted and given generous support It appears true that this forms the background as to what constitutes European interests and it often informs attitudes as to possible new member states in a decisive manner. This is the case with the attitude of a part of European public opinion when faced with Turkey’s candidacy, along with some Balkan states, and their lack of democratic consolidation and the presence of the Muslim religion. A similar phenomenon occurs with countries that are former members of the Soviet Union such as Ukraine and Georgia, with their fragile democracies. Nevertheless, what should be a determining factor in the configuration of European interests is the desire to create a nucleus of countries with a wish for political integration. Such an objective, that of strengthened cooperation of a political nature between various countries in the areas of security, defence and foreign policy, would undoubtedly set the rhythm and direction of possible enlargements. A generic strengthening of institutions would not only mark Europe’s possible borders at any one time, but also boost cooperation. In other words, the two tracks within the EU would be the 10

Catalan International View

engine behind the strengthening of its institutions. The EU’s enlargement policy would not only depend on interests based on values, but would also go hand in hand with a strategy that emphasises reinforced cooperation of a political nature.

When the French President Nicolas Sarkozy ended his term as holder of the EU rotating presidency, he stated that Europe’s greatest problem was its lack of visibility, which is to say that Europe did not have (and still does not have) a visible presence. This claim appears to be true, while we await the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon in order to choose the president of the EU, but it should be noted that a neutral presence is not enough: what the EU needs more than anything is a presence that explains and argues, which is to say a presence that indicates a particular direction. A direction towards political integration for those that want it (without excluding anyone).

With a Franco-German heart, which is unarguably the only heart possible, where would the EU be headed geographically? At present, it is moving towards establishing and strengthening its ties with neighbouring zones.

The Baltic Union already exists, as does the Mediterranean Union, the former made up of those countries bordering the Baltic Sea, nearly of which already belong to the EU, while the latter consists of those countries that border the Mediterranean, with its headquarters in Barcelona. The first is of German inspiration and influence, while the second essentially responds to French interests. Now that we are faced with the problem of Ukraine moving closer to the Union, the creation of a ‘Slavic Union’ might be possible. Perhaps even Russia itself could have some kind of presence, which would be in the interests of the Franco-German community

Europe

(and of many other members of the European Union).

by the equally historic links between Serbia and France.

In light of this shared interest it is probable that Turkey will have to wait on the margins of the EU, but without having the door slammed in its face. The seven Balkan countries would join the European Union without too many obstacles. The Balkan procession towards Brussels would therefore be led by the interests of Paris and Berlin, which would be balanced. Both promoted Kosovo’s protected independence and what Croatia has historically represented for Germany is complemented

Contrary to what might appear to be the case, this will not be an easy path to follow. In fact it will be full of unexpected potholes and obstacles. However, Europe has no other driving force than this, it has no other impulse than that provided by its Franco-German heart. If what is sought is a controlled expansion without paralysing effects on the EU’s combined institutions, then this fact should be accepted and given generous support.

*Martí Anglada Foreign news editor at TV3 (Catalunya 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).

Catalan International View

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Victory for Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya

by Natàlia Boronat i Rovira*

Just as the Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov promised, from now on the 16th of April will be a bank holiday. It commemorates the day in 2009 in which the Russian National Anti-terrorist Committee lifted the special security measures that had been in place in the Republic since autumn 1999, when Russian federal forces launched their offensive to regain control of the territory.

The special security regime was established to conduct so-called ‘anti-terrorist operations’, a euphemism used to disguise one of the bloodiest and littleknown wars of recent times. It imposed a series of restrictions with numerous curfews, police checkpoints, arrests, arbitrary searches and interrogations, roadblocks and special operations in order to wipe out the guerrillas. It was accompanied by the presence of 20,000 federal troops temporarily installed in the Republic to pacify the region.

The second Chechen war In 1999 Chechnya assumed an indeterminate status following the 1996 Khassaviurt Peace Accords, which put an end to the 1994-1996 war of separation. The war was begun by Russia with the aim of recovering the rebel territory which had declared itself independent at the end of 1991 during the process 12

Catalan International View

of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The Khassaviurt Accords, signed by presidents Boris Yeltsin and Aslan Maskhadov, established that Russia would withdraw all federal troops from Chechnya and that after five years the Republic’s status would be decided. It would either form part of Russia or gain independence.

In the autumn of that year the now former president Vladimir Putin, was prime minister (a post he holds once more). He justified the start of the second war as a response to the invasion

by Chechen radical leaders of neighbouring Dagestan and the attacks on apartment buildings in various Russian cities. Responsibility for these events was never claimed by Chechen independence groups, behind which some claim to see the shadow of the Russian secret services. One such analyst is Oussam Basayev, a Chechen historian who lived through and studied the pe-

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riod between the wars and asserts that Moscow had been planning the invasion for months.

Basayev believes that the Chechen president at the time, Aslan Maskhadov, who immediately condemned the Islamist actions in Dagestan, was caught between two stools: on one hand there was Russia’s desire to recover the republic and on the other the internal destabilisation due to problems with Islamist radicals continuing around him.

When federal troops entered Chechnya, Maskhadov’s government was forced to flee to the mountains and the president was assassinated during an anti-terrorist operation by federal forces on the 8th March 2005. In this manner Moscow shut the door on any dialogue with the separatists. From the start of the second conflict, differences between the independence group and an increasingly important Islamist fac-

tion became apparent. The latter were the perpetrators of bloody attacks, such as the taking of hostages at the Dubrovka theatre in Moscow 2002 and the Beslan school siege (North Ossetia) in 2004.

The youngest member of Kadyrov’s fan club reads a poem to his leader

From 2002, Russia began to apply a policy that has come to be known as the ‘Chechenisation’ of the conflict: the gradual transfer of power and the task of repression to a Chechen government that is loyal to Moscow In 2007, one of the Chechen leaders, Doku Umarov, currently considered president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (the name used by independence groups for their country) declared the creation of the Emirate of the Caucasus and announced the abandonment of the fight for a secular Chechnya in Catalan International View

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favour of an Islamic state including part of the North Caucasus.

From the start of the second conflict, many of those who had fought for independence in the 90s began to form around the mufti of Ichkeria, Akhmad Kadyrov (father of the current president) who in 1999 went over to the federal side. Many ‘reformed’ pro-independence figures would form the basis of the pro-Russian government imposed by the Kremlin a few years later.

The attacks of the 11th of September 2001 provided Moscow with a means to justify the second war as its own personal crusade in the fight against international terrorism. From then on, those formerly branded ‘bandits’ began to be referred to as ‘terrorists’.

The Russian federal forces stationed in Chechnya are against the lifting of anti-terrorist operations because they are unhappy with how power has been distributed in the former rebel republic The ‘Chechenisation’ of the conflict After the end of the more serious skirmishes between the federal forces and the Chechen rebels in 2002-2003, Moscow decided to apply a policy that has come to be known as the ‘Chechenisation’ of the conflict. This involves the gradual transfer of power and the task of repression to a Chechen government that is loyal to Moscow. In order to carry out this ‘Chechenisation’ plan, Putin found a close ally in the form of the Kadyrov clan.

In 2003, in a state of war, a referendum was held in which some 96% of voters recognised that Chechnya was 14

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an integral part of the Russian Federation. That same year Akhmad Kadyrov became the pro-Russian president of Chechnya. Akhmad Kadyrov was assassinated on the 9th of May 2004, during celebrations held for Victory Day, when Russia commemorates the Soviet Union’s heroic efforts to defeat Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The post of president was subsequently held by Alu Alkhanov, but real power was in the hands of Ramzan Kadyrov, son of the assassinated president, who was to become chief of the republic on turning 30 in 2007.

There is no reliable information as to the number of victims of the conflict: according to various sources the number varies between 100,000 and 200,000 between the two wars, in a country with a current population of 1.3 million inhabitants.

The federal troops have been accused of numerous violations of human rights, but the organisations that work in the republic maintain that since the ‘Chechenisation’ of the conflict the responsibility for the majority of crimes against the civilian population lies mainly with the Chechen army. Observers recognise that progress in the normalisation of the republic and the reconstruction of Chechnya in recent years is apparent, but argue that the regime is sustained by the people’s fear of it.

An end to a state of war For some time now Kadyrov has been insisting that the anti-terrorist operation should be called off because only a few dozen guerrillas survive in the mountains and taking such a step will help to normalise life in the republic and favour economic development.

An end to the anti-terrorist regime

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Malashenko, responsible for the Carnegie Centre’s ‘Religion, Society and Security’ programme in Moscow believes that ‘sooner or later the federal budget will be reduced, meaning Chechnya and subsequently Kadyrov himself, by way of compensation for a reduction in funding, can achieve his dream: the granting of international status to Grozni airport’. Malashenko predicts that Kadyrov will increasingly have more autonomy but, nevertheless he will not consider independence since ‘Ramzan is only comfortable with being independent within the framework of the Russian Federation’.

will involve some 20,000 federal troops leaving the country and Kadyrov wishes to control the economy, especially the customs posts of a future international airport and the oil industry, which is currently in the hands of the Russian state-owned oil company Rossneft.

For Kadyrov, the Kremlin’s decision to end its special security measures in Chechnya shows that ‘the Russian government has officially confirmed that the terrorist menace has been eradicated’. The Chechen president used the occasion of the celebrations on the 16th of April to once more swear allegiance to Moscow and declared that ‘the Chechens have defended Russia’s territorial integrity and from now on will continue to defend the state’s interests’.

Some analysts believe that the Kremlin’s decision last April needs to be seen in the light of the economic crisis that Russia is experiencing and Moscow’s need as the centre to delegate competencies, rights and responsibilities to the regions. Alexey

Kadyrov, who employs some 7,000 former guerrillas in his army, claims there are only 70 rebels left in the Chechen mountains. According to the Russian military there are nearer 500 and they still represent a serious threat.

The displaced federal Russian forces in Chechnya are opposed to the ending of anti-terrorist operations by the regime as they are unsatisfied with how power has been distributed in the former breakaway republic. What is more, they risk losing their substantial financial remuneration and the privilege of a fast-track military career.

A young man with a Chechen flag

For Ivan Sukhov, a specialist on the North Caucasus who works for Vremia Novostei newspaper, the anti-terrorist regime ‘is an instrument employed by federal forces not only to fight against guerrillas, but also to demonstrate their presence to the population and the regional leaders, so they do not overestimate their independence’.

Four days after the National Antiterrorist Committee’s public announcement as to the end of the operation throughout the republic, the Russian military rushed to temporarily reintroduce it in three zones of Chechnya following the receipt of information that Catalan International View

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10,000 people rally in the Chechen capital Grozny to mark 100 days of Ramzan Kadyrov being the prime minister

terrorist attacks were in preparation.

Kadirov was obliged to say that there had been a misunderstanding and that the few guerrillas still in existence were under control. Nevertheless, the clash of interests between the Russian military and the government in Grozni became apparent.

Aside from the 20,000 soldiers temporarily stationed in Chechnya, who will gradually be withdrawn, a further contingent of some 20,000 personnel will remain in the republic. They consist of members of the defence and interior ministries and the border police of the Russian Federal Security Service. On the 1st of May the creation of a ‘Peacekeeping Committee’ was announced. It will be a structure that answers directly to Moscow and will serve to control the federal and Chechen forces.

The Chechen conflict has spread like an oil slick to other regions of the Caucasus, especially Dagestan and Ingushetia, where on a local level federal forces are also frequently carrying out anti-terrorist operations to neutralise guerrillas. Tatiana Lokshina, an analyst for Human Rights Watch, considers that the instability in the two republics is one of the results of the second Chechen war, since ‘it is the same movement, a clandestine insurrection that is ideologically Islamic fundamentalist and which wants to bring about the creation of an Islamic state in the North Caucasus’.

A Russian journalist specialised in conflicts in the Caucasus, Yulia Latinina, summed up the significance of the Kremlin’s lifting of the special security situation in Chechnya: ‘a complete victory for Kadirov over Russia, but not over the guerrillas’.

*Natàlia Boronat i Rovira (Salomó, 1973). 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 area.

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Kosovo: self-determination that never arrives Text and photos Laia Gordi i Vila*

More than a year after Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence, the international legal status of the Republic is still not clear or well defined. 56 countries recognise it as a state, but the territory remains under the tutelage of three international missions: UNMIK, EULEX and the ICR. Political and judicial corruption, internecine violence and high unemployment take their toll on society, while Serbia continues to retain certain privileges over the country. The people of Kosovo are not allowed to make their own way and the situation reeks of colonialism.

1 Of the UN Security Council.

2 France, Germany, Italy, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, the European Commission and NATO (Article 4.1, Annex IX). Subsequently six new members were added: Bulgaria, Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Luxemburg and Poland. Neither Russia, the European Union, the European Commission or NATO have recognised Kosovo as a state.

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On the 17th of February 2008, the Kosovo Parliament announced the unilateral independence of this Balkan republic. It was a turning point in Kosovo’s cruel, hard history. It raised eyebrows in the international arena, as many feared it would set a precedent.

Kosovo had put an end to a process that officially ran from 2005 to 2007, when the UN’s special envoy Martti Ahtisaari, proposed the new status. The Ahtisaari Plan was accepted by the Kosovan government (since it recognised its right to be an independent state), which was supported by the US and the EU, while being rejected by Serbia and Russia. The UN’s numerous attempts to renegotiate the situation left the territory’s status unresolved.

The subsequent unilateral declaration, backed by the USA, brought to a close a period of uncertainty with the historic demand by the Albano-Kosovan population. They took to the streets of Pristina in celebration, filling television screens around the world.

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Nevertheless, UNMIK and EULEX, the two missions that took over international mediation following the Kosovo war (1998-1999), did not withdraw from the republic. Both missions were established as a result of Resolution 12441, which resulted from the end of the conflict and in which Kosovan sovereignty was not recognised, working as it did from the perspective of ‘hypocritical’ neutrality with respect to the war with Serbia.

Another aspect, that of controlling and supervising the country’s development, is in the hands of the International Civil Representative (ICR) that has ensured the implementation and interpretation of the Ahtisaari Plan, since the 28th of February 2008.

This office answers to an International Steering Group made up of various countries and institutions2. However, none of these bodies is answerable to the Kosovan government or its people.

On the contrary, Kosovan institutions

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are subject to the oversight of the ICR. This is the case for both executive and legislative activities.

The EULEX3 answers to Javier Solana, EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Paradoxically, he is a member of the PSOE, the ruling party of the Spanish state, which refuses to recognise Kosovan statehood and appears to have no intention of doing so.

UNMIK4, the other participant in the show, answers to the UN’s Security Council, which has also failed to recognise Kosovo’s independence. The mission has to guarantee peace via the NATOled Kosovo Force (KFOR), supervise and train the new Kosovo Security Force (KSF)5 and facilitate dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade. It is worth noting that Serbia refuses to hear talk of a recognition of the republic’s sovereignty and has harshly criticised the KSF, which it sees as a threat to Serbian security.

Independence?

Under so many umbrellas, administrators and supervisors, what form of independence is Kosovo left with? Not much of one, according to movements such as Vetevendosje! (Self-determination!, in Albanian), established in 2005 to demand the Kosovans’ universal human right to self-determination as a people. Another group, Çohu (Organisation for Democracy, Anticorruption and Dignity), uses hard facts to highlight the difficulties brought about by the international institutions for Kosovo’s development.

Following the results of an opinion poll (2008) of 45 Kosovan judges and 28 prosecutors, Çohu argued that, ‘the good functioning of the justice system in Kosova needs the sound functioning of other Kosovar state mechanisms as well. The lack of will to fight organized crime and corruption, identified by international and local organisms, has Catalan International View

3 European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo: civil mission of the EU responsible for maintaining law and order and security.

4 United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo.

5 Body that took over, in January 2009, from the Kosovo Protection Corp (KPC) as was foreseen in the Ahtisaari Plan, despite the fact that the UN never approved the Plan. The KPC were founded in 2000, partially manned by former-combatants of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The new Kosovo Security Force (KSF) do not at present represent a fully-fledged army, but rather a lightly armed force. Initially they will not be equipped with tanks, heavy artillery or planes.

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implicated first of all the justice system’ and, ‘The completion of the legislation that would create conditions for the reforms needs to be made as soon as possible’. Çohu also points out that, ‘The merits and the responsibilities of creating and making function the justice system in Kosova goes to UNMIK and other international organizations’. They highlight the fact that, ‘The creation of the courts mixing international and local judges has been a new experience for the UN and this implies a certain impact, but after 8 years of functioning more could have been achieved in this direction’.

Nowadays, Kosovo still suffers from violence between communities, political and judicial corruption and, more recently, high unemployment Alexander Borg Olivier, legal counsel of the High Representative of the UN, stated in an interview that, ‘No state sends its best judges and prosecutors on missions, because they are required in their countries. They only send those that they don’t need. The ones we have in Kosova are the best we could get. Some of them will stay here for two or three months and most of them are not devoted to or familiar with the country they work for6’.

6 Express, 31st January 2008.

7 According to Article 2.1ª, Annex IX and Article 12.3, General Principles.

8 According to the Constitution, Article 143.

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Currently, Kosovo still suffers from violence between communities, political and judicial corruption and, more recently, massive unemployment. This in spite of ten years of mediation, support and management by EULEX and UNMIK. Those in the Vetevendosje! movement underline the fact that the ICR has ‘correctional’ executive powers in order to implement the Ahtisaari Plan. It is the ultimate authority in Kosovo, in keepCatalan International View

ing with the civil aspects of the Plan7, which is the country’s most important legal document, above the constitution8.

The ICR can even veto laws passed by parliament or parts of the constitution, although the procedure is not entirely clear. According to the Plan, EULEX also has ‘correctional’ powers.

Another aspect of the situation is the immunity enjoyed by the international representatives. Liburn Aliu, an Albano-Kosovan activist member of Vetevendosje! has first-hand experience of the problem: ‘In February 2007, we organised a large demonstration. The police brutally intervened, killing two demonstrators and injuring eighteen more. According to the investigation carried out by the international institutions, the demonstration was conducted peacefully and the police acted violently without provocation. If you take a look up the chain of command where you find the representatives of the different missions, its clear there’s no justice. Nobody has appeared before the tribunals and the blame is being laid at the door of lower ranking police officers. It’s impossible to start a dialogue in order to highlight the fact that it was obviously international commanders that ordered the attack. No one will go to prison’, Aliu claims.

Aliu’s ideas are clear, ‘they make laws even though they are un-elected; they are in control and apply those same laws. We, as an organisation, are not against the international community, we would like to have them as advisors, to help us, but we don’t want them to order us about’.

The liquid border with Serbia The Ahtisaari Plan is, for Kosovans like Aliu, a betrayal of his country’s sovereignty. Despite offering Albano-

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Kosovans the prospect of their own state, there is a high price to be paid.

The Plan gives Serbia control of some towns with a Serbian majority in what it perversely labels ‘decentralisation’.

The Serb minority in the north of the country has fortified itself in enclaves, expelling the Albanian majority and replacing nearly all of the institutional structures with Serbian ones. In these areas there are judicial and military units answerable to the Serbian Ministry of the Interior. At the same time, Kosovo does not have a genuine peace agreement with its neighbour, leading one to see the enclave policy as a reoccupation with the approval of UNMIK and ICR, who speak of ‘decentralisation’, which they defend in the name of the peaceful coexistence of the two communities. Nothing could be further from the truth. ‘Decentralisation’ divides the Kosovans into boroughs according to ethnicity. The latest report

by UNMIK9 admitted that, ‘In line with Belgrade’s official policy, many Kosovo Serbs continue to reject the authority of Kosovo institutions (…) In the north, four municipal structures in Kosovo Serb-majority areas continue

to function on the basis of Serbia’s law on local self-governance’. Liburn Aliu describes the area as a field of Serbian flags, one per house, where cars retain the number plates of the neighbouring country.

UNMIK also admits in its report that, ‘a series of incidents, some interethnic in nature, occurred in the region of Mitrovicë/Mitrovica’. It cites some examples: ‘during the month of December, 56 private and official vehicles belonging to Kosovo Albanians, Kosovo Serbs, UNMIK, UN agencies, KFOR, EULEX, and various non-governmental organizations were vandalized’, what is more, ‘two Kosovo Albanians stabbed a Kosovo Serb. In retaliation, some 200 Kosovo Serbs burned or damaged a number of Kosovo Albanian-owned shops, and stoned several vehicles with Kosovo registration plates. On 2nd January, a hand grenade exploded outside a café in northern Mitrovicë/Mitrovica, causing material damage. In response, 200 Kosovo Serbs set fire to a Kosovo Albanian-owned shop and one Kosovo Albanian-owned home’. In spite of these events, the report concludes that, Catalan International View

9 From the 1st of November, 2008 to the 9th of March, 2009.

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‘As a result, after almost ten years of service in Kosovo, UNMIK police successfully completed their operations, including in the Mitrovicë/Mitrovica region’.

Kosovo’s declaration of independence does not give it the right to be a state like any other, while Serbia maintains strong structures within Kosovo’s territory, which it has no intention of removing Another point of disagreement with the Ahtisaari Plan is where it refers to the protection of Serbian cultural heritage within Kosovo. Specifically, the document requires Kosovo to recognise monasteries and churches within their own territory as Serbian, and protect their rights, privileges and immunity in keeping with their duties and responsibilities, recognising the churches and religious sites as forming an integral part of the Serbian Orthodox Church, with its headquarters in Belgrade, guaranteeing the ownership of its property 22

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as inviolable and not subject to expropriations, among other concessions.

This led to the creation by UNMIK of special protection areas around 39 churches and monasteries. They consist of areas for the exclusive use of the Serbian minority and represent some 9% of the country’s territory. Hundreds of hectares that, to the frustration of their rightful owners, are currently intended for the enjoyment of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Albano-Kosovans are not clear as to whether these churches are indeed Serbian. Vetevendosje! possesses various documents that prove the Albanian ownership of these heritage sites. Above this, however, there exists the social harm inflicted by this de facto colonial policy.

‘By labelling these churches Serbian, we completely lose our Albanian cultural heritage. These churches were built by Albanians. My family is now Muslim, but historically we were Christians until recently. The two sides of the family were Orthodox and my mother’s side converted to Islam a long time later. In fact, they still maintain Orthodox

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customs, as is the case on my father’s side. If I were to convert to the Orthodox Church I would like to attend the same church my grandfather went to, but now it’s Serbian. This means I would have to reject my own identity to be accepted in that church. They have taken our rights. And in the reserved areas, if you want to go on a picnic, for example, you have to ask the church for permission and they ask Belgrade! The conflict between Serbia and Albania has been an anti-colonialist, anti-occupation conflict and now it’s becoming a ‘decentralised’ religious conflict where there are the settlers (with their churches and religion) and us. But if we, the Albanians, react they label us as Islamic extremists. The Ahtisaari Plan doesn’t create opportunities for people to integrate’, explains Liburn Aliu.

The right to self-determination Kosovo observes the international scene from the back row. Its declaration of independence does not give it the right to be a state like Serbia. The latter still maintains strong structures within Kosovo’s territory, which it has no intention of removing. Meanwhile, UNMIK plays an ambiguous, un-democratic role.

Self-determination is still not a universal right, at least not for Kosovo, despite being recognised as such since 1948 by the United Nations itself. It is a paradox that has taken its toll on both Albanians and Serbian Kosovans and looks set to continue to do so.

*Laia Gordi i Vila (Barcelona, 1984). Journalist, with a degree from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Universitat Hanzehogeschool of Groningen, Holland -where she completed her studies. Gordi i Vila works as editor of the weekly magazine Directa, and as coordinator of the international section. She has also worked for and collaborated with various media organisations in the Catalan context. These include the political news magazine El temps, the solidarity and international relations magazine ONGC, the history magazine Sàpiens and the political news web portal Tribuna Catalana. She has worked for the TV programmes El Medi Ambient (2005) and Campus 33 (2006) for Televisió de Catalunya.

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Barcelona Football Club: the weight of history beyond a historic season

by Víctor Terradellas i Maré *

Hans Gamper, a Barcelona-based Swiss industrialist, would never have guessed that the club he founded on the 29th of November 1899 would, a century later, go on to become the most important football club in the world, economically, socially, politically and in terms of its sporting achievements. In fact, Gamper and a group of young, enthusiastic Swiss, British and Catalans initially wanted to join an existing club, Català Futbol Club, but the refusal they received from its members led them to found their own club: Futbol Club Barcelona.

In effect, Futbol Club Barcelona’s unprecedented sporting achievement this season (achieving the Treble, by winning the UEFA Champion’s League, the King’s Cup and the League for the first time) is accompanied by an international dimension witnessed by figures which speak for themselves: more than 160,000 members and 1,888 supporters clubs spread over five continents. The club’s sporting achievements include nineteen League titles, twentyfive Spanish Cups, seven Spanish Super Cups, three European Cups, two European Super Cups, four European Cup Winner’s Cup and three Fair Cups (the precursor to the UEFA Cup). What is more, it is the only European club since 1955 to have always competed in one of the four European competitions.

In spite of the size and extent of the club’s sporting achievements, these pale 24

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into insignificance when it comes to a global understanding of the personality of a sporting institution that has connected and connects its sporting personality to a clear identification with the Catalan language, culture and nation.

A nation’s team It is difficult to separate Catalunya’s recent history from that of the football club that, for many years, had to play the part of substitute. In effect, during General Franco’s military dictatorship (which lasted from the coup in 1936 until his death in 1975), the stadium of the Futbol Club Barcelona (or Barça, as the Club is affectionately known) was the only space in Catalunya where people could publicly express their collective affection for a symbol of Catalanism without being subject to direct

repression on behalf of the regime.

Such repression was typical of the earlier years of the Club’s history.

The first wave of triumphant barcelonism arose during the twenties with the arrival of legendary players such as Samitier, Alcántara, Zamora, Sagi, Piera and Santo. During this period, a love for the Club’s colours (blue and red) spread throughout the country and allowed it to be identified for all time with Catalan sentiment.

The inauguration of the Club’s stadium took place on the 20th May 1922, in Les Corts. It was a magnificent arena with an initial capacity for 30,000 spectators, which in subsequent modifications rose to 60,000.

During Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, in 1925, in a match dedicated to

the Orfeó Català (the Catalan Choir), the crowd whistled the Spanish national anthem. In reprisal the Club was closed for six months and Gamper was forced to permanently relinquish the president’s chair of his beloved Club.

Even in the early days, the Spanish authorities viewed the growing popularity of the Catalan football club with suspicion.

Image of the Ciutat Esportiva FC Barcelona Joan Gamper, inaugurated on June 2006

The Club’s figures speak for themselves: more than 160,000 members and 1,888 supporters clubs spread over five continents The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) also took its toll on the Club. Barça’s president at the time, Josep Sunyol i Garriga, was shot by firing squad for ‘disaffection for the regime’ on the 6th of August 1936. Two years later, on the Catalan International View

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16th of March 1938, a bomb dropped by the Fascist aviation landed on the club’s headquarters, causing substantial damage. A few months later, Barcelona’s occupation by Franco’s troops brought numerous problems to a club that had become one of the great symbols of Catalunya.

Barça are the ambassadors of a Catalunya that presents itself to the world with a desire to become a free, sovereign nation, alongside the rest of the world’s nations These have been the Spanish state’s most brutal expressions of hostility towards the Catalan Club. In addition, throughout the remaining years of the dictatorship, repeated episodes of political interference occurred, in order to weaken Barça on a sporting and institutional level.

During the Franco period the organisation came to be known as the Club de Futbol Barcelona, the Spanish version of the more Anglicised Futbol Club Barcelona (an offence that was not rectified until 1973) and the four bars on its shield were reduced to two until 1949, when it regained its original format.

The most blatant example of vindictive manipulation of the sport were the efforts on behalf of Franco’s government to obstruct the signing of Di Stéfano by the Club. They had already obtained the rights to the player, but the Argentinean ended up at Real Madrid. These crude but effective actions were to change the course of the history of the Spanish leagues and, in turn, the early years of the European Cup. Moves by influential members of the Franco regime to force Barcelona to give up their right to Di Stéfano have been amply documented: The decisive, 26

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intimidatory role of Barcelona’s civil governor, Acedo Colunga, the surprise visit by the president of the Spanish Football Federation to La Coruña, where a meeting was being held by the Cabinet, in order for him to receive his instructions and the pressure applied by the Instituto Español de la Moneda Extranjera (Spanish Institute of Foreign Currency) on the then-president of Barça, Martí Carreto.

A Barcelonist renaissance occurred during the dictatorship following the arrival of a star player Ladislau Kubala, in June 1950, making FC Barcelona an unstoppable team and ensuring the Les Corts stadium was too small to accommodate all the fans. Between 1951 and 1953, Barça won all the competitions in which they took part. The 1951-52 season in particular is historic in that the team won the five competitions in which they competed.

Change of stadium, change of an era This magnificent sporting moment facilitated the building of a new stadium: Camp Nou. The project was much more ambitious, both from an architectural standpoint as well as for the economic commitment on behalf of the Club.

Initially, however, Camp Nou was not only to be the scene of these great triumphs, it also experienced a grey period in the sixties, in which it failed to win any trophies.

The sporting triumphs returned with Johan Cruyff ’s arrival at the Club on the 28th of October 1973. His signing led to a great reversal in the Club’s fortunes and led to them winning the 1973-1974 league. Barça were to win the final by beating Real Madrid 5-0.

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The end of the dictatorship also led to the democratisation of sporting institutions and in the first elections in which all the Club’s members were eligible to vote, Lluís Núñez became president. Thus began the longest presidency in the Club’s history (1978-2000).

In 1979 Barça regained its role in Europe by winning its first European Cup Winner’s Cup, in the Swiss city of Basle. It was a triumph that also demonstrated the Club’s social strength as witnessed by more than 30,000 supporters who travelled to watch the final in person. The victory in Europe warranted a never before seen celebration on the streets of Barcelona and other Catalan cities. In 1982 and 1989, Barça once more won the European Cup Winner’s Cup. Great disappointment came after winning the Spanish League Championship in 1985, with Barça losing the European Cup final in Seville. This led to the start of a period of sporting and institutional difficulties for the Club, that was not to end until Johan Cruyff ’s arrival on the trainer’s bench in 1988.

Thanks to Johan Cruyff, Barça regained their winning-streak and were dubbed the Dream Team, with four consecutive League titles (1991-1994) and their first European Cup, which they won in London on the 20th May 1992.

The resignation of Núñez in July 2000 led to an election which was won

by Joan Gaspart, who had been vice president for the previous 22 years.

During Gaspart’s term as president the Club did not go on to win more trophies, which exacerbated the Club’s crisis. In February 2003 he resigned, giving way to a period of uncertainty that continued until July when more elections were held.

From national role models to universal role models The early years of the twenty-first century have marked an important turning point in the history of this centenarian club. On the 9th November 2006, a lawyer, Joan Laporta i Estruch, became the new president of FC Barcelona, after obtaining more than half the votes cast. This made him the most voted for president in the history of the Club. Once elected, the new president invited all the fans to begin a new journey, when he stated that with the elections, ‘the members have voted for change’ and that the new Barça ‘takes to the air tonight’.

Carles Puyol, the ‘great captain’ , provided one of the memorable images of his team’s 6-2 win over Real Madrid when he kissed the Catalan flag

Thus a new era was to begin, with the hope a new project brings and with the signing of world-class players such as Ronaldinho, Deco and Eto’o. The new team did not take long in achieving results, winning the 2004-2005 League, and repeating its victory the following year. These sporting successes, culminating in the second UEFA Cup, were combined with a strong desire to relaunch and update Barça’s social commitment. Alongside the sporting campaign, the new leadership launched Catalan International View

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‘the Great Challenge’ and in 2006 the Club’s members exceeded 150,000.

2006 was also a splendid year in the sporting arena, with the Club winning its second UEFA Cup in Paris, facing Arsenal in the final.

At an institutional level, Futbol Club Barcelona took on a completely new challenge for a football club. Laporta and his management team wanted to consolidate the Club on an international scale by participating in initiatives that reaffirmed the ethical and civic values the organisation wishes to represent. This was accompanied by a desire to project the national dimension of Catalunya in the international arena.

Futbol Club Barcelona has amply demonstrated their combination of social, political and sporting achievements that are almost unheard of anywhere else on the continent The outcome was an agreement, in 2005, between Barça’s president and the president of the Fundació CATmón (and the writer of this article), Víctor Terradellas. It enabled one of the first actions of its kind to take place in the Balkans and in Bosnia Herzegovina with the visit of a committee to the area. The committee was made up of the heads of the two organisations, and counted on the collaboration of David Minoves, director of the ACCD (the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation).

This trip is significant in that, beyond the establishment of a Barça supporters club in Sarajevo canton, the committee visited aid projects run by IGMAN-Acció Solidària on behalf of the Fundació CATmón and the ACCD. Catalan aid organisations have been present in Bosnia since the start of the 28

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war and this manifests itself in the Catalan delegation being given the status of a state by the Bosnian authorities.

Laporta’s speeches symbolised Barça as the ambassadors of a Catalunya that showed itself to the world with a desire to become a free, sovereign nation, alongside the rest of the world’s nations.

As part of this plan, in December 2006, the Futbol Club Barcelona signed an agreement in the headquarters of the United Nations in New York that was to make them the first football team ever to wear the Unicef emblem on their shirts. After their 107-year history, the Barça strip was to be sponsored, but in a reversal of convention, it was based on aid sponsorship. The Fundació del Barça was to pay one and a half million euros a year to Unicef for five seasons.

From crisis to ecstasy Paradoxically, this new, triumphant period for barcelonism was accompanied by mediocre results during the 20072008 season. The change in fortunes was seized upon by those most critical of the Club’s management, leading to a vote of no confidence in the president and his board which, ultimately, was proved unsuccessful.

As a result, as president, Laporta and his management team were conscious of the fact that their credibility was at stake in the 2008-2009 season. Laporta took personal responsibility for the risk of naming a young Catalan coach manager of the A team. The person he chose above coaches with an international reputation was Josep Guardiola, who had moved up Barça’s ranks.

Guardiola had formed part of the Dream Team as a player, and had worked as a coach with the Club’s other

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teams. In spite of his complete lack of experience in first division teams, Guardiola became the protagonist behind the best team in the history of Barça and achieved something unheard of in the history of the Club by winning the UEFA Champion’s League, the King’s Cup and the League for the first time.

It is a historic achievement that was made possible thanks to a combination of teamwork (with seven players in the A team who had moved up the ranks, in particular, Puyol, Xavi, Piqué and Iniesta) and the sheer working capacity, far from the media spotlight, of stars such as Eto’o and Messi. It led to an unprecedented sporting success that included winning away to Real Madrid, 6-2.

The need for a league for the top European teams This great social and sporting moment for the blue and red team again brings to the fore the need for Europe’s top teams (Manchester, Paris Saint Germain, Bayern, Milan, Ajax and so on) to go beyond intra-state competitions and establish the continent itself as their natural playing field.

The economic strength and the sporting dimension of these clubs calls for new competitions that make every game a sporting occasion of extraordinary dimensions. As is the case in the American basketball league, the NBA, there could be a closed competition between a certain number of teams that represent the continent’s best.

This is the future of European football and in this future the Catalan team, Futbol Club Barcelona will fully participate, having demonstrated their combination of social, political and sporting achievements that are almost unheard of in the rest of the continent.

Josep Guardiola’s sporting philosophy was key to his team’s success last season

If what we Catalans say is true, that ‘Barça is more than a club’ it is also necessary to realise that behind them there is much more than a compact group of supporters that have only a sporting passion for a football team. Behind Barça there is a sporting sentiment that is strongly linked to signs of a national identity that also overcame the social, political and economic barriers that the twentieth century placed before it. Now, in the twenty-first century, it wishes to join the rest of the European nations with its own voice.

*Víctor Terradellas i Maré (Reus, 1962). Entrepreneur and political and cultural activist. President and founder of CATmón Foundation. Editor of Catalan International View and ONGC, a magazine dedicated to political thought, solidarity, aid and international relations. Victor 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.

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Five easy pieces about the crisis

by Andreu Mas-Colell*

I would like to take the opportunity offered to me in this article to express a few, in fact five, ideas about the current crisis in the world economy. They will be somewhat disconnected and not particularly deep or technical, as I cannot claim to be a specialist on financial or monetary matters.

1. The first observation is that when facing an economic crisis, policy reactions are bound to be strongly influenced by history. Over the last year a dark fear has taken hold of the world’s conscience: the fear that 1929 could be repeated. The current crisis has many unexpected features but some of its characteristics take us back to 1929. As a consequence we have reacted (which is to say the world economic leader, the US, has reacted) and I daresay we will continue to react, by doing what we feel worked then and by avoiding what did not work then. More explicitly: with a fiscal expansion, an extremely expansive monetary policy (that was not implemented after 1929) and, up until now (and I would be optimistic in this respect), by avoiding the protectionist temptation. In addition, of course, there has been an understanding that, in some respects, we are moving in uncharted territory, especially in that which concerns the financial sector.

However, for now I’m referring to the real impact of the crisis.

Over the last year a dark fear has taken hold of the world’s conscience: the fear that 1929 could be repeated The avoidance of protectionism is not controversial by any means.

No sensible economist would recommend it. Maybe I should say no sensi30

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ble economist taking into account the general interest. There may be some economists inclined to recommend to their national governments measures bordering on protectionism, but they are rare. The disaster brought about by an escalation in protectionism in the 30s was of such magnitude that its avoidance has become almost a moral principle among economists.

The expansive monetary policy and, more pointedly, the expansive fiscal policy have raised some eyebrows, although not with sufficient force to make a serious dent on policy, especially in the USA. The concerns are two-fold: Concerns as to what these measures may hold in store for tomorrow and doubts as to whether they will work.

As for monetary policy it is argued, for example, that the creation of liquidity may have inflationary consequences in the future. Also, there have been experiences where an exclusive reliance on easy monetary policy has failed. As for fiscal policy history should make us, in principle, more optimistic, but the present situation is quite unique. Expectations have received a tremendous jolt and it is possible that people realise that current deficits will need to be absorbed in the future (this is known as the Ricardian equivalence argument), leading to a shift towards placing more probability weight on the anticipation of higher taxes in the future (perhaps because people are sceptical about fu-

ture growth). The consequence is an increasing propensity to save, thus nullifying the effects of increased expenses.

These are legitimate worries and they are having an effect, more in Europe than in the US. Nevertheless, I believe we are duty bound to try the expansionary policies. If the world comes out of recession in a relatively short time, central banks and economic authorities have the means to control in-

flationary dangers (for example, expect quick increases in interest rates, driven by the European Central Bank, as soon as we get out of recession. Not good news for those European countries with a slower recovery). If the recession persists it is certainly true that we will have added difficulties (some countries more than others) with public debt.

However, and this is a key question, can we really afford not to try? Can we really contemplate a situation where no Catalan International View

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fiscal expansion is attempted and there is no recovery? Maybe the recovery is unrelated to these policies. Nevertheless, how can we be sure? Economists make educated judgments but they are always probabilistic. You would be wise not to trust an economist (or any social scientist, for that matter) who is full of certainties. On this point, my own opinion is that it would have been irresponsible not to have tried. As of this date (May 09) I remain optimistic about its effects.

Banks which are not perceived to have the taxpayers of a country that is strong enough behind them, as a savior of last resort, will not be sufficiently trusted 2. Let me now move to my second observation, which relates to expectations. After the so-called ‘great moderation’ (a very long period of growth in the advanced, and many non-advanced, countries) the current crisis has come as a shock. It would constitute an extreme form of naïveté to believe that it should not affect how we think about the future. To me it reasserts a lesson that we should never have forgotten: every period of expansion is followed (but not deterministically with respect to the moment) by a recession, at least.

This applies to all countries, advanced and non-advanced. I wish that this lesson did not apply to the less advanced countries because they are in sore need of growth, but it does. It is to be desired, therefore, that the economic leaders of these countries do not operate under institutional systems that require sustained and permanent growth, because if so, the unavoidable crisis may be much worse, in itself and in its social and political impact. It is imperative that the institutional environment be adaptable, ideally self-adaptable (auto32

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matic). To be more explicit: currently I’m more optimistic about India than about China.

3. The third observation has as a starting point the remark made above as to the extent to which economists, and other social scientists, can make educated judgments. In fact, very educated judgments. Nevertheless, if the situation is new, one cannot be sure, as I have also indicated, how things will work out exactly, or perhaps if they will work out at all. This means that one should be willing to experiment.

To try measures (I am referring here to the famous structural measures so often mentioned, among others) and to abandon them if they do not have the desired effect. Of course, this should be done with care because we are dealing with real people. However, in matters such as the average, long-term unemployment rate it could be sad if there was a measure out there that would reduce it and we did not give it an opportunity.

4. In fourth place let me ask to what extent the current crisis has a technological nature (as was the case, for example, with the dot-com crisis or with many others associated with major innovations in the past). A major characteristic of this type of crisis is that overoptimistic expectations built around the possibilities opened up by a new technology fuel a bubble that eventually bursts, as every bubble is bound to do. With it go extravagant claims about the technology, but typically the technology itself, and the new industries that support it or are supported by it, remain. After the party they are valued for their true worth and incorporated into the natural flow of the economy, so to speak. At first sight the current crisis is not like this, but in a sense it is: the new technologies have been the new financial instruments.

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The derivatives, in other words. These are useful tools for the diversification of risks and they are here to stay but, as happens in the script of technological crises, there has been too much of a belief that they could work miracles, leading to the development of credit with very little collateralization and to excessive leveraging.

5. My final remark takes as its starting point the observation that, in some respects, the current crisis has enhanced the significance of the State.

It has underlined a role whose importance had lain dormant, unappreciated and perhaps forgotten: the State, and not just the Central Bank, as guarantor of the stability and viability of the financial system, including the banks.

Indeed, it has been the institution of the State that in the present crisis has saved the financial system from collapse. This has an immediate and farreaching consequence: the increased role of states. The fact is that history has delivered us a world that, while highly interconnected, does not constitute a single state. The increased relevance of individual states in the regulation and sustenance of the structure of guarantees of the financial and, more specifically, the banking system, will condition, perhaps dramatically,

the shape of the international financial system. The concept of an international bank loses strength: banks will need to be supervised by a state. What is more: banks which are not perceived to have the taxpayers of a country that is strong enough behind them as a savior of last resort will not be sufficiently trusted (incidentally, this is a reason why international cooperation and organisations will be of help, but not decisively). In partial contrast with the past, banks will seek a solid home base and therefore the size of the country will matter a great deal in terms of the size of the banks it can support. Indeed, we have already witnessed in the current crisis several instances of the lack of congruence between the size of some countries and of their banks.

*Andreu Mas-Colell Professor of Economics at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and president of the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. He was a lecturer in Economics at Harvard University (1981-96) and Professor of Economics and Mathematics at the University of California (Berkeley) (1972-80).

He has been a Sloan Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow. He has been editor of the Journal of Mathematical Economics (1985-88), and Econometrica (1988-92). Professor Mas-Colell is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and was its president in 1993. In 1997 he was elected Foreign Associate of the American National Academy of Sciences and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Economic Association. He has been a member of the Executive of the International Economic Association and President of the Spanish Economic Association (2006). From 2000 to 2003 he was Minister for Innovation, Universities and Enterprise for the Generalitat of Catalunya. He has been named future secretary general of the European Research Council (ERC) for the period ( July) 2009-2011. In 2005 he was chosen to be a member of the Institute of Catalan Studies and of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, in 2008. He has been a member of the Advisory Council of the Research Department of La Caixa and president of Telefonica’s Research and Development Scientific Advisory Council. Currently he is a member of the Board of Directors of the Cercle d’Economia. Mas-Colell has written more than 100 studies on topics that range from the abstract theory of general equilibrium and structure of financial markets, to pricing policies for public companies and game theory.

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The Catalan model of savings banks

by Francesc Cabana i Vancells*

The Catalan system of savings banks is quite unique on the international financial scene, while possessing qualitative differences in relation to the rest of Spain’s savings banks. Currently the system is made up of ten institutions, the first of which (La Caixa d’Estalvis i Pensions de Barcelona) is the third largest financial institution in the country after two large banks, Santander and BBVA, making it the largest savings bank in Europe. It is followed by a mid-sized savings bank (Caixa de Catalunya) and eight smaller savings banks. While the first two on the list are based in Barcelona, the others are located in various Catalan cities: Sabadell, Terrassa, Vilafranca, Mataró, Girona, Tarragona and Manlleu. They all have their origins in industry, with the exception of the Caixa Penedès (a region with Vilafranca as its capital), which is more agricultural.

The Catalan model of savings banks, which spread to the other savings banks in the state during the second half of the twentieth century, had as a protagonist the Caixa de Pensions per a la Vellesa i d’Estalvi, created in 1905, which was to become the largest in Spain by 1920. The major driving force behind the idea and the bank’s director general was Francesc Moragas, a lawyer known for his social sensitivity and loyalty to the Catalan cause. The other savings banks that were in existence had until then maintained the model that had arrived in Spain in the mid-nineteenth century from France: they were local bodies of a non-commercial nature, created by the bourgeoisie with a paternalistic mentality. They were meant to provide a return on the savings of an oppressed working class. Any profits were destined for social work. Moragas was to broaden the social objectives of his bank, and the rest of the Catalan savings banks followed suit. The basic 34

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points of his system, which is still alive today, are the following: In first place, there is an opening up of the potential client base, until then restricted to the working class, to include all members of the public without distinction. In such a way, the savings collected are considerably widened.

In second place, the collection of savings is done via a network of branches distributed throughout the area. The other savings banks had until then limited themselves to working within the municipal area in which they were created. From the end of the last century, savings banks have been able to open offices throughout the state, while still maintaining strong links with the population in the region where they originated.

In third place, Moragas saw it as necessary to keep the working class in

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mind, anticipating the role subsequently taken by the welfare state. Social work that initially included schools, hospitals and libraries, is now centred on support for the disabled, marginalized groups, cultural work, research and social services in sectors not adequately covered by public funds.

In fourth place, as a reaction to the housing problem, the savings banks operate a system of credits for mortgages that work in favour of buyers for properties for their own use. They also collaborate in the construction and sale of homes and buildings with a social function: schools, hospitals and so on.

Throughout the whole of the twentieth century, individual and collective savings by Catalan families were mostly deposited in savings banks, while banks had businesses as their clients A proximity to the clients, via numerous branches, credit for buying an apartment, the reward for saving and, above all else, social work, have created a popular culture in Catalunya that is highly favourable for savings banks, ensuring their growth. Throughout the whole of the twentieth century, indiCatalan International View

The headquarters of La Caixa d’Estalvis i Pensions in Barcelona

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vidual and collective savings by Catalan families were mostly deposited in savings banks, while banks had businesses as their clients. The savings book issued by the savings bank and the current account operated by ordinary banks were two basic elements of the Catalan financial system. During the second half of the twentieth century, the number of savings books in Catalunya outnumbered its inhabitants. In other words, there was more than one savings book per inhabitant, clear evidence of social integration by the savings banks.

Savings banks have been more affected than in early economic and housing crises and more so than the banks. however, serious problems are not expected to occur in Catalunya

Up until 1962, Spanish legislation considered savings banks to be bodies of a social-welfare nature. New regulations were to recognise their financial character, while maintaining their legal status as a foundation. Banks and savings banks could carry out the same activities and compete with one another, but in Catalunya the predominance of the Catalan banks was maintained.

This may have been due to the scarcity of Catalan banks, or the fact that they were closer to their clients. Perhaps both factors played a part.

Seven of the eight Catalan savings banks were created by private initiatives, including La Caixa d’Estalvis i Pensions de Barcelona. Three of them (Caixa de Catalunya, Caixa de Girona and Caixa de Tarragona) were created by Diputacions provincials, public organisations that provide services in each province.

The governing bodies of the savings banks consist of the Board of Direc36

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tors, the Control Committee and the General Assembly. The latter elects members to the Committee and Board of Directors. The General Assembly is made up of representatives of depositors, the bank’s staff, founding bodies, in some cases, and representatives of public corporations from the areas in which they operate. The result is a public presence, in a minor way in the three banks created by the Diputacions provincials and less so in the others. One of the characteristics that distinguishes Catalan savings banks from others in the rest of the state is the minimal political interference in the running of the former. This is not the case in savings banks in Madrid, Andalusia, País Valencià and Castile la Mancha, for example.

Catalunya’s autonomous Statute provides it with what is ostensibly the exclusive jurisdiction over its savings banks. In reality, however, the jurisdiction is shared with the Bank of Spain which, as a central bank, has the function of monitoring and observing the Spanish financial system and by definition its banks and savings banks.

The savings banks’ characteristic of being a foundation, with the absence of shareholders and dividends, means that they are unable to access the capital market to strengthen their own resources. They need to maintain a balance between the investments made and the deposits they receive (as do banks). Above all they count on funds resulting from social benefits. These are destined to strengthen their own resources in the first instance and, secondly, the social work of each savings bank.

Periodically the legal future of Spanish savings banks is subject to debate. Savings banks exist in the majority of countries, going by names such

Business and Economics

as banque di risparmio, caisses d’epargne, sparkasse, and so on. In many countries they have been turned into limited companies that are quoted on the stock exchange or are controlled by foundations. In Catalunya, the consensus among the autonomous government, the political parties, the banks themselves and of majority public opinion, is that any change in their status would be a mistake since the existing model has proven to be efficient and effective.

It is not a matter of privatising them as is often said, since they are already in private hands, but rather to make it possible for diverse financial actors to control them by sharing in their management. The creation of the so-called quotes participatives, certificates that allow for participation in the bank’s profits without any decision-making power, was interpreted as opening the door to private control. Until now, however, none of the Catalan savings banks, and few of the non-Catalan ones, have taken advantage of the right to issue these certificates. Nonetheless, they offer an advantage in that they can be accounted for as part of the bank’s own resources.

Until now the Catalan savings banks have stood up well to economic crises. During the 1977-1993 bank-

ing crisis, which led to government intervention in 62 Spanish banks, only a dozen of the smaller ones (none of them Catalan) needed to receive public money, in a process that led to the absorption of the smallest by the biggest.

In the current economic and property crisis, the savings banks have seen themselves more affected than before, thanks to the significant quantity of mortgages they hold in their portfolios due to their particular role of providing housing. However, Catalunya is not expected to experience serious problems beyond a decrease in the savings banks’ annual results and a possible reduction in their social work while conditions remain as they are.

Catalan savings banks are the backbone of the Catalan financial system. La Caixa d’Estalvis i Pensions de Barcelona is the largest company in Catalunya and, via Criteria SA, it controls a series of investments in service industries of great significance for the Catalan economy: Agbar (who provide water services among other activities), Abertis (who operate toll roads and other administrative concessions), Gas Natural (an energy supplier), Repsol (an oil company) and so on. The other savings banks also have a vital role to play in the region or regions in which they are based.

*Francesc Cabana i Vancells (1934, Barcelona). Holds a degree in law and is a member of the Barcelona Bar Association. He worked on the Barcelona stock exchange (1957-1959), for Banca Catalana (1959-1982), worked as a World Bank financial consultant for Third World countries (1984-1992). He was also associate professor of the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (1997-2005).

Cabana i Vancells is the author of some forty books on Catalan economic history, among which two deserve a special mention: Fàbriques i Empresaris. Els protagonistes de la Revolució Industrial a Catalunya (Factories and Business People. The Protagonists of the Industrial Revolution in Catalunya), for which he was awarded the ‘Estudis’ Prize of the IV Bonaplata Award for Cultural Heritage, bestowed by the Science, Technology and Industrial Archaeology Museum of Catalunya, and Caixes i Bancs de Catalunya (Banks and Savings Banks in Catalunya), for which he was awarded the Joan Sardà Dexeus Prize, bestowed by the Economist’s Society of Catalunya.

He is a regular contributor to the Avui newspaper and an honorary member of the Catalunya Society of Journalists (2003) and the Economist’s Society of Catalunya (2006). In 1998 he was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi.

Currently he is second vice-president of the Ateneu Barcelonès.

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Paper vs digital?

by Vicent Sanchis i LlĂ cer*

Almost a decade ago, before the dot-com crisis, when the Internet exploded onto the scene, some commentators in the United States known for their snobbishness and proprietors who saw themselves as fortunetellers foretold the death of print media. From that moment on the debate has been as stupid as it has been sterile.

Many theorists involved in communication have fallen flat. Rivers of ink, or kilowatts of electricity, have been spent on trying to gauge precisely when the apocalyptic moment will arrive: the substitution of paper for digital media. It is blindingly obvious that this is not the right question. The question is another, double one. In first place, how have conventional communication and information structures changed as a consequence of the digital revolution? The profession of journalist had remained essentially unchanged since the arrival of modern journalism in the nineteenth century. The technical means changed, but the basic concepts of the job in relation to the readers remained. Now everything has changed. Increasingly each day, those that receive information are, at one and the same time, broadcasters. The old frameworks have burst at the seams that appeared closed forever. Communication in the twenty-first century is a different kind of communication in which the main agent (the traditional consumer) no longer accepts the customary role assigned by the system.

How will all these changes influence the conception and structure of information businesses in the coming years?

Those who are capable of understanding the reach of this revolution can as38

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pire to survive it, at least with different definitions and structures from those they have maintained until now.

The second question is precisely the following. The latest news from the world of information (the increasingly prevalent automated news) show superficial but emblematic signs of the crisis in the United States, the homeland of modern journalism. A few weeks ago the proprietors of the historic Boston Globe announced the closure of its print edition. Only after negotiations that saw drastic cutbacks in spending and wages does it appear as if the paper has seen off the threat, for now. Another paper in the same group, the New York Times, has sharply increased its cover price in the kiosks and for subscriptions in order to confront intolerable losses. A tight control on spending, now income is down, appears to have assured its immediate future, but it is evident that the solution is a very limited one. The structural causes that have led to this first shockwave will continue to be the cause of the next to arrive, which may be the definitive one. This will happen unless the media companies in the United States, Catalunya and the rest of the world change their strategies and structures.

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The liberal economic system in the United States allows drastic measures to be taken with a speed that is not possible in other economies, such as that found in Catalunya, which provide more protection for workers. A proprietor of the US press can decide to make staff cuts that, in Catalunya, would entail an excessive cost. In spite of this, or perhaps due to the character behind it, companies from the United States have been the first in this part of the world to have taken such drastic steps as the closure of publications.

This might happen in Catalunya, but it might take longer. Can it be avoided?

Perhaps, yes. The West’s economy has witnessed some years of euphoria, even while in some sectors the crisis could be seen coming as the result of a suicidal strategy. In Catalunya, too much construction work was carried out. In the United States the banks asked for worthless guarantees in order to grant mortgages. The construction boom has had a very sad ending while the American finance companies were uncovered by the smartest (or perhaps the least dishonest) financial analysts. This all took place in the housing sector, one of the two sectors that has most felt the effects of the crisis that was unleashed.

The other has been the communication sector, due to some specific causes, that are nevertheless fundamentally similar:

businesses either took excessive risks, or were excessively conformist. Excessive risks, in the case of new businesses. New investments were seen to be essential, no matter how risky they appeared to be, as a means of guaranteeing a ‘space’ in the network or in any new area, such as the free press.

Excessive conformism, because in the years when businesses were still enjoying strong profits resulting from steadily rising advertising revenues, no one took the steps necessary to ensure a less dramatic fall.

Those who state that the large European newspapers must change or close in the coming years are not mistaken. However, it is not the Internet that has brought about this situation The proprietors of the media businesses knew that the emergence of the new phenomena that were beginning to alter the world would end up affecting them too, sooner or later. Sales did not stop declining and advertising, while it remained steady or even increased, had to diversify in order to more effectively cover Internet, the free newspapers, new radio stations and new digital TV channels. In spite of this, the only deciCatalan International View

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sion taken anywhere, in Spain in particular, was one of maintaining circulation in an artificial manner. Mistakenly, they continued to equate circulation with influence. There was an obsession with multiplying promotions and false sales: these include bulk sales and collective subscriptions. The Spanish-based Oficina de Justificación de la Difusión (OJD, similar to the Audit Bureau of Circulation) accepts in its calculations any issue that supposes for the publisher an income of 50% of its retail price, even if the reader receives the newspaper for free. On this basis publishers have given away hundreds of thousands of copies every day that have been financed by public administrations or big business.

Newspaper journalism has not died, nor will it die in the coming years. It simply needs to change a great deal According to the data of the Association of Spanish Newspaper Publishers, El País, for example, has added some 40

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60,000 copies in recent years thanks to the concepts of block sales and collective subscriptions. This means that the publishers spend 35,000 euros every day on giving away free copies. This is financed by businesses and government administrations and with the consent of the OJD. This also means that every year, El País invests more than 12 million euros on simply maintaining its lead in circulation with respect to the number two newspaper, El Mundo.

However, El Mundo spends even more money in this way, as the copies it produces each day for block sales and collective subscriptions stand at 90,000.

This is all without counting the millions that have been spent in recent years on promotions, special collectors editions, gifts and so on.

Taking this strategy into account, it is no surprise that the publishers’ balance sheets (often part of multi-media groups) have not been too healthy during years that brought large profits for nearly everyone (until the crisis struck).

When advertising began to fall, in the

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last quarter of 2008 and the first two quarters of this year, the drop in turnover of Spanish newspapers with a circulation of more than 100,000 copies has hovered around 30 and 40%. The health of the larger companies has suffered drastically. The economic results of Prisa (the publisher of El País and owner of many other titles) are so serious that a rumour that it will shortly suspend payments has done the rounds several times. In Catalunya, for example, Grupo Zeta, one of the biggest media giants in the whole state was on sale the whole of last year without finding a buyer. It has had to face up to an Expedient de Regulació d’Ocupació (a labour force adjustment plan) which has affected more than 400 workers out of a workforce of some 2,000. Cuts in spending and the workforce will be much more drastic.

Those who state that the large European newspapers must change or close in the coming years are not mistaken.

However, it is not the Internet that has brought about this situation. These companies are also owners of digital newspapers and they realise that one day in the future their flagship papers will cease to be printed on paper. Bad management has been the cause of the current woes, by not taking advantage of the good times over the last decade to face up to the structural reforms needed by the companies.

All business owners that work in the communication sector, anywhere

in the world, know that twenty-first century journalism is different. That they must change the way in which old newspapers deliver the news and that they need to profoundly remodel business structures that can no longer support the enormous traditional workforces. There are still a large number of aspects that await discovery, but digital journalism has to move quickly to assimilate all the technological changes that are occurring. These are developments that also bring major changes in the habits of readers and the roles that had reified traditional communication practices. Business people and media professionals also know that newspaper journalism has not died, nor will it die in the coming years. It will simply have to seriously change. The old and new newspapers will have to relinquish the large circulations that defined them for a century and concentrate their efforts on maintaining their influence. Twenty-first century newspapers should not be afraid of the Internet. They need to live with it. Instead, newspapers should be afraid of their owners. The great majority have been incapable of taking the right decisions required by their businesses over the last decade. Now many of them believe that to overcome this difficult period they need only cut back on their workforce. No matter how much they reduce it they will not be successful unless they are able to understand that the changes needed are far more complex.

*Vicent Sanchis i Llàcer (València, 1961). Holds a degree in Information Science 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, content director of Grup Cultura 03 and vice-president of Òmnium Cultural. Vicent is also lecturer in the Faculty of Communication Sciences at Universitat Ramon Llull de Barcelona.

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Rethinking cultural policy

by Carles Duarte i Montserrat*

When it comes to defining itself and presenting itself to the world, Catalunya prioritises culture as a fundamental aspect of its identity. This option rejects the temptation to call on religion, ethnicity or jingoism to justify an affirmation of its collective personality.

It is true that language plays a key role in our cultural reality. It is important to remember that while Catalan was an independent language from Vulgar Latin by the eighth century, the first texts to be found solely in Catalan originate from the eleventh century.

By the Middle Ages, Catalan literature had such noteworthy, internationally famous figures as Ramon Llull and Ausiàs Marc. The prestigious literary critic Joan Triadú refers to the twentieth century as a veritable Golden Age of Catalan literature.

Nevertheless, when we speak of culture we must go far beyond language and literature. It is important to highlight painting, sculpture, architecture, music, theatre, dance and manifestations of culture that are more linked to traditional culture. In other words, focusing on culture is, on one hand, a celebration of creativity, while on the other it is a conscious awareness of a precious legacy of artistic expression 42

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inherited and enriched by successive generations.

Under Franco, the survival of Catalan culture experienced great difficulties. When the Civil War ended in 1939, for example, publishers were obliged to destroy all books published in Catalan and desist from publishing new ones. Nevertheless, the regime was unable to repress the resurgence of the desire for rebuilding that swept the country in a land that saw the bulk of its intellectuals forced into exile. Shortly afterward, therefore, publishers such as Selecta (1943) and Aymà (1944) were founded. Josep Palau i Fabre launched the magazine Poesia (1944), and shortly thereafter Ariel (1946), with Joan Triadú i Josep Romeu i Figueras. Theatres in Barcelona have also put on the works of Pitarra and de Sagarra since 1946.

Once the earlier, suffocating years had been overcome, the end of the 50s and the start of the 60s saw a period

of a cultural reawakening. This was the result of both private initiatives and the help of some Catholic institutions.

One example is the publication of the article Ens calen cançons d’ara (We Need Songs About Now) by Lluís Serrahima in Germinàbit magazine. It was to form the beginnings of the Els Setze Jutges (The Seven Judges) and the Nova Cançó (New Songs) movements.

Another key event was when, in 1959, Serra d’Or (Golden Saw) ceased to be an internal publication of the Montserrat Monastery to become a cultural magazine available to the general public. We should also make mention of the creation of the publishers Club Editor in the 1950s, thanks to the work of Joan Sales i Núria Folch, which went on to publish La plaça del Diamant (Diamond Square) by Mercè Rodoreda, in 1962. The Catalan revival was increasingly evident and in 1961 Fèlix Millet, Pau Riera, Joan Vallvé, Joan B. Cendrós and Lluís Carulla cre-

ated Òmnium Cultural. The same year also saw the creation of Cavall Fort magazine, with Edicions 62 and the Obra Cultural Balear joining them the following year.

The Catalan stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair, 2007

Focusing on culture is, on one hand, a celebration of creativity, while on the other it is a conscious awareness of a precious legacy of artistic expression inherited and enriched by successive generations The Franco regime maintained its desire to annihilate Catalan national identity, but the growing reality of an increasingly uninhibited cultural and political Catalanism with swelling popular support was incontrovertible proof that it was too difficult to control.

What some had considered a victim of the Civil War and subsequent persecutions, not only refused to lie down and die, but also continued to flourish. FolCatalan International View

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lowing the death of Franco in 1975, the period known as the Transition began, leading to the restoration of the Generalitat de Catalunya (the Catalan autonomous government) in 1977 with Josep Tarradellas as president of an institution that was initially founded in 1359 and later revived during the Second Republic.

The Franco regime maintained its desire to annihilate Catalan national identity, but the growing reality of an increasingly uninhibited cultural and political Catalanism with swelling popular support was incontrovertible proof that it was too difficult to control The restoration of the Generalitat signalled the beginning of institutional policies in favour of Catalan culture that went beyond civil initiatives of a private nature. One such step was the nomination of Pere Pi i Sunyer as the first Minister of Education and Culture. In this first period of restored selfgovernment it was necessary for the Generalitat to consolidate its role and authority in the country’s cultural life.

The Generalitat’s cultural policies began from the start to reinforce the existing initiatives while establishing new cultural infrastructures that would allow the country to take a great leap forward in terms of quality and ambition. Some prime examples, exclusively promoted by the Generalitat or in collaboration with Barcelona council and the Spanish government are: the National Theatre, the Auditorium, the National Archive, and the reopening of the National Museum of Catalan Art (MNAC).

Following this initial period of normalisation and recovery, and while keeping in mind the decisive nature of culture for our model of a nation, it was 44

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worth rethinking the role of institutions and creators in cultural activities conducted by official bodies. In doing so, one should consider the evidence of other countries, such as Great Britain.

The consequence of this reflection and wide, inclusive debate has been the creation of the Consell Nacional de la Cultura i de les Arts (National Culture and Arts Council). Democratic systems are based upon the participation of the citizens in the election of the representatives to councils, parliaments and so on. Once elected, governments need to carry out their responsibilities in accord with the programmes which have received majority support from the voters and with respect for opposing viewpoints.

It is necessary, therefore, to start with an understanding of the legitimacy of the councillors, ministers and MPs charged with overseeing cultural matters by the various public administrations. Of course, this is not to say that their decisions are not to be disagreed with as openly as ones wishes, while not meaning to question their authority. It is worth emphasising this point, as otherwise it is possible to fall into the temptation of substituting the principles that characterise a democratic society, with posts that are elected every four years, for a unionised model where teachers have the last word in education policies, or business people have the last word in institutional decisions related to business. This is by no means to say that teachers and business people do not have the right to be consulted by the government in their respective specialities when they are defining their main lines of approach. The creation of the National Culture and Arts Council was, as I have mentioned, preceded by a long, laborious, complex debate as to its structure and functions. Indeed, some people referred to the white paper leading to the creation of the Council as if a coup were being planned to steal power that

is illegally exercised by political figures in order to return it to representatives of the professional associations of the various sectors. According to this view, they were seen as the only group with any legitimacy to carry out cultural policies.

A viewpoint that is commonly espoused is that in spite of the strenuous efforts made since the restoration of the Generalitat, insufficient public resources have been assigned to culture. This is especially so if one takes into consideration the significant influence of the cultural component in Catalunya’s creative dynamism, in its intellectual maturity and the aesthetic sense to which we aspire, as well as culture’s role in economic activity. It is also true, however, that our national cultural institutions have received a significant boost. In any case it is necessary to celebrate the creation of the National Culture and Arts Council in 2008 because it signifies the clear expression of the Catalan Parliament’s desire to recognise culture’s key role in our country.

Furthermore, it involves key individuals from various sectors and the concession of public support to the promotion, creation and diffusion of artistic endeavours, as well as the awarding of the National Culture Prizes. The diversity found among the members elected to the Council and the way their profiles unarguably complement each other, guarantee that it will be a useful tool and that its actions will not suffer at the hands of party politics or sectarianism.

Behind this decision is a desire to reaffirm the central position of culture in Catalunya’s self image. It is to be hoped that the Council will act with freedom and independence, but we must also ask that it does not try to act as a substitute for the Culture Department or weaken its authority. We need to build a framework that combines generosity in its institutional vision, with rigor, ambition and honesty in its way of working.

*Carles Duarte i Montserrat (Barcelona, 1959). A poet whose works have been translated into various languages. As a linguist he has collaborated with professors Antoni M. Badia i Margarit, former rector of the Universitat de Barcelona, and Joan Coromines, who he helped between 1979 and 1989 with his Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, in ten volumes. Duarte has published works on historical linguistics and language for special purposes. Between 1981 and 1995 he was in charge of linguistic and educational responsibilities for the Generalitat de Catalunya, where he was Secretary General of the Presidential Department between 1999 and 2003. He directs the Fundació Lluís Carulla, is president of the Culture Commission of the Barcelona Economic Society of friends of the Country and is secretary of the Circle of the Barcelona History Museum. He is a lecturer in legal transcription in the Faculty of Law at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, member of the Arts and Sciences Legion of Honour of the French Republic and has been awarded the Saint George’s Cross by the Generalitat de Catalunya.

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No spare cash?

Why development cooperation continues to be critical to overcoming today’s crisis

by Sara Ferrer Olivella*

You might have heard that Ms. Perez, originally from Peru (who may as well come from Albania, the Philippines or Bangladesh), who labours in Queens, New York (but she could also be in Spain, the United Kingdom or Germany) has lost her job. She unfortunately has no other skills to apply in other trades. She is lucky if she can seek support from an unemployment agency. Although she has contributed for a number of years, in many instances this contribution has been through the informal economy. In turning to friends, the community and neighbourhood institutions it appears that there are no safety nets to catch her as she falls into despair. At this point, her family in Peru, who rely on her remittances for survival, remain hopeful she will find a new job and continue to send money. The prospects are bleak and next month, if she has not been able to secure a new job, she will have to confront reality and take the difficult decision of returning to her beloved motherland. A motherland that offers scarce opportunities for creating businesses and that faces growing unemployment.

You may have also heard the other story of Sharifa, a farmer from Bangladesh who struggles to increase her yield while having limited access to skills and farming techniques and unequal access to markets. She also pockets small returns for working long hours farming her fields. Her family and surrounding community have been hard hit by the shortage of local produce, leading to hunger, as food prices continued to soar only a few months ago. She may not be aware that farmers in developed countries benefit from agricultural sub46

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sidies and tariff protection, and this has partly made it impossible to compete in the global market. A trend towards protectionist behaviour seems to be on the rise as rich countries are focusing on re-energizing their economies.

Despite these stories, it must be recognized that a lot of progress has been made in recent decades, lifting millions of people out of extreme poverty. Over the past 10 years, productivity has risen by at least 4 percent annually in Southern Asia, Eastern Asia and the Com-

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monwealth of Independent States. As a result, there were fewer working poor in all three regions. Primary school enrolment and completion rates have soared in many countries, due to the elimination of school fees in countries such as Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania, to name a few. There have been great advances in fighting malaria and tuberculosis and the fight against HIV/ AIDS has helped prevent over 1 million AIDS related deaths in Africa alone.

Development aid has played an important role in this equation. It was in the early seventies that the Canadian Prime Minister of the time, Lester Pearson, proposed the 0.7% foreign aid target, which was subsequently endorsed by UN member states. Rich countries have progressively devoted more resources from the national income to finance development, and the 0.7% commitment was renewed at the 2002 Monterrey Summit. Nevertheless, many countries are still struggling to honour this promise.

Rich countries have progressively devoted more resources from the national income to finance development, yet many countries are still struggling to honour this promise The gaps in development and in particular the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals are still many and may in fact be widening.

The rise in oil prices, natural disasters and their recurrence in certain locations, the increases in food prices and food insecurity, the contracted financial market, the surge in conflict are just a few of the multiple crises that combined or independently severely affect many of the countries that are still poor. However, today’s crises have multiple dimensions and reach further than ever before. Economies in rich and poor countries alike have slowed down and this has taken a toll on their citizens. It has more dramatically affected poor citizens from developing countries, who have seen opportunities disappear. Within these countries Catalan International View

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industry is thinning, garment demand in the US and Europe has fallen and the agro-processing industry is struggling to get a return on recent investments.

The World Bank estimates that 53 million people in developing countries were pushed back into poverty last year.

Another 46 million could join them in 2009. An additional 51 million have lost jobs that only last year were servicing the biggest world economies in providing garments, raw materials and agri-business, supported by a massive shipping industry. Remittances have shrunk globally. A report released last month showed remittance flows possibly declining by between 5 and 8 per cent from an estimated US$305 billion in 2008 to US$290 billion in 2009. In some of the developing countries, remittances account for over 10% of GDP, as is the case for the US$18 billion remittances to the Philippines which account for 13% of GDP. are the poorest of the poor who suffer most.

With already meagre resources to fund national development plans, these many-facetted situations pose additional restraints to developing countries as they try to pursue their plans and the international agreements to reduce poverty encapsulated in the Millennium Development Agenda. Developing countries find themselves unable to pursue their country’s priorities while having to deal with reversing trends of development affecting people’s daily lives. The progresses made in development achieved in recent years are being threatened. Economies thriving on the volume of remittances, the two-digit growth in garment demand, the swift expansion in the agro-processing industry are now retreating as the flow of payments has sharply declined, the shipping 48

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As we have seen time and again in situations of crisis, the poor suffer the most. As a matter of fact, this is true regardless of whether they come from developed or developing economies. The international community cannot afford to simply stand by while the fruits of years of development and important development resources vanish. With all our knowledge, skills and technology: We cannot continue to allow the number of people subsisting on less than a dollar a day to increase. We cannot continue to allow 30,000 children to die each day of preventable diseases, with one in a hundred mothers dying in childbirth in developing countries, children unable to pursue primary education or having to drop out of school early because they need to contribute to the family’s economy.

Cooperation pledges made in recent years need to be fulfilled. In this last year

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alone, we have seen how major donors have difficulties adhering to their aid commitments. Governments in donor countries have faced increasing accountability demands by national parliaments and national public opinion. The parliaments and public opinion are playing a critical role in keeping governments’ true to their development commitments and the use of aid and development results, while at home the economy is rapidly deteriorating and domestic political agendas come into play.

At this critical juncture, some of the important steps that need to be taken include sustaining development commitments of donor countries; delivering aid more effectively, moving from the rhetoric of Paris and the Accra Declarations to the putting into practice of their principles; mobilising a broader range of stakeholders using inclusive and participatory approaches, and including stronger engagement of the private sector; and supporting the design and implementation of public policies that promote economic and social justice.

In various forums, such as the 2000 Millennium Development Conference, the 2002 Financing for Development Conference among others, the international community has made explicit commitments to increase Official Development Aid (ODA) to US$25 billion per year by 2010, to adopt debt relief strategies for all African countries with a heavy debt burden and, for example, more favourable export terms for raw materials coming from Africa. However, it is worrying to see that time goes by and these promises are not met, as the voice of the G-77 declared at the last (63rd) session of the UN General Assembly. Who should be accountable? To whom should they be accountable? Most importantly, how can they be held accountable?

More predictable aid flows are a fraction of those required to deliver aid more effectively. Ensuring that national leadership and ownership of the country’s development interventions is equally important and is often overlooked. National ownership is often misconceived and called government ownership. Citizens must have a decision-making role and need to be actively involved in the design and implementation of development interventions whether they are funded by national governments or development partners. National development is an issue concerning all citizens and demands the active involvement and commitment of all stakeholders including national governments and opposition parties, development partners, civil society associations, academia, private enterprise and so on. Evidence has shown that even the partial involveCatalan International View

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ment of national actors, including the affected communities and citizens, is fundamental for the impact of development results and their sustainability over time.

The poorest of the poor, who already had few choices, see the few existing opportunities for development fade away, in addition to the lack of safety nets they can turn to As we have seen, multinational corporations in the global economy have had an important impact on the financial crisis and its effect on people’s lives, causing an increase in unemployment and a decrease in the availability of services and products for low-income markets. The potential of the private sector to contribute to development in emerging economies is enormous and often untapped, as national governments and the international community fear their profit interests. The mobilisation of citizens and entire communities is a key ingredient for the success of development interventions.

It is more and more clear that the development agenda must be a shared agenda, not only of donor governments and national government who are recipients of ODA, but of all actors in society in the developed and developing countries. The money exists, as we have seen how governments are rush-

ing to put together US$3.1 trillion to bail out big corporations and allocate fiscal stimulus packages.

The design and implementation of inclusive public policies that pursue economic and social justice is not a luxury or something that can be put on the back burner. There may not be an isolated solution or magic potion to solve the problem, but accumulated positive experiences can be shared and built upon, stemming from those societies that are more egalitarian and respect human rights.

The poorest of the poor, who already had few choices, see the few existing opportunities for development fade away, in addition to the lack of safety nets they can turn to. Ms. Perez’s family is once again facing difficulties, this time it is not about a loved one migrating to a developed country to feed their family, instead they are welcoming her back home with scarce opportunities to make a living and support the eldest and the children in the traditional family. Meanwhile, Sharifa strives to keep abreast and improve her harvest in the face of rising energy prices and unfavourable international trade agreements.

The human family knows no boundaries or distinctions between developed and developing countries. Today more than ever, the world and its people are interconnected and solutions need to be found together.

*Sara Ferrer Olivella Development practitioner with a political science background. Sara has over nine years of professional experience working with organisations such as the European Commission and the United Nations. Sara has vast field experience mostly in Asia, including Cambodia and East Timor. She now lives in New York and oversees the implementation of a US$700 MDG Achievement fund, a United Nations facility that finances and supports over 50 countries in their efforts to accelerate progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) funded by the Government of Spain. She holds a European Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Democratization managed by the Inter-European University Center for Human Rights and Democratization in Italy.

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The United Nations: reform or reform!

by Josep Xercavins i Valls*

It is said that the very day after the United Nations was created there was talk of the need for its reform.

Aside from almost certainly being true, it is vital that such reform should take place and not simply be talk!

The United Nations could be the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the global society. However, since it is a jewel built by humanity, it will undoubtedly take a long time to be finished.

Without being too abstract we should remember how 2nd April last, the final communiqué of the G-20 stated, almost in its opening lines, ‘a global crisis demands a global solution’. If it is so clear that there are global crises that require global solutions, then these must entail global answers.

Answers that come from everyone.

These global answers from all need a global system of democratic governance. Something that resembles this in a miniscule, but vital way, is the United Nations. We are really lucky to have the UN; even though, at present, not even the G-20 appear to remember its existence.

In the famous, oft-quoted preamble to the United Nations Charter one can read, ‘We the people of the United Nations determined... to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom’… ‘and for these ends... to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples’, we ‘have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims… have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an in52

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ternational organisation to be known as the United Nations’.

If we are still so far off achieving such ends we must in effect need a profound change in the organisation. Once it takes place, it should be able to solve the main questions and challenges of the present day. By being able to analyse the recent past and, as a consequence, imagine the future in the mid-term, humanity must be braver than ever. It needs, in a political sense to confront the challenges presented by the crisis of civilisation that hides within the irreversible dynamic of globalisation. In order to do so we must transform the United Nations in order that it can achieve its original aims.

Reforming the United Nations: the construction of Global Democratic Governance (GDG) The world has come a long way since 1945. It is somewhat curious therefore, that during the current globalisation crisis we are experiencing, we have begun to look around and re-examine the events of those years.

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From the original 51 states that founded the United Nations, the organisation has grown to include 192.

An example of the contradictions in the current arrangements is the fact that China and Andorra carry the same voting weight when choosing, say, a member of the Human Rights Council.

Aside from such oddities, from 1945 to the present day the world has undergone more changes than in practically the entire history of humanity.

The changes have taken place in all areas: population size, knowledge, technological capacity and so on. However, the changes have occurred with such speed, everything is so complex and complicated, everything is so uncertain, that political inertia (which is more than ever of a conservative nature) hamper attempts to put politics, and more importantly democratic politics, above the problems that present themselves.

The United Nations was created when nation states were still key political actors on the world stage. That was back in 1945, however. In 2009, many international corporations have a great

deal more power than any present day nation state. The United States, the ‘empire state’, is in serious decline. More importantly, the majority of problems facing humanity are on a global scale.

The G-20 itself acknowledged this fact in the above quote. All our problems are without doubt global problems, whether they are related to food, energy, the environment, economics, finance or other factors.

Knotted Gun sculpture,

by Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, given to the UN by the Luxembourg government in 1988

The sovereignty of states cannot be maintained as the fundamental principle of an international organisation

For all these reasons, when the UN Charter states, ‘the organisation is founded on the principle of the equal sovereignty of all its members’, something that had meaning in 1945, nowadays does not stand up. When the world is in its current state, the sovereignty of states cannot be maintained as the fundamental principle of an international organisation whose founding Charter has such a preamble and, therefore, the objectives it claims to possess.

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Such considerations can be summed up by clearly stating that the muchneeded reform of the United Nations needs to be essentially a move towards transforming it into a system of Global Democratic Governance. Governance, not a euphemism for government, since its role in the world needs to be much wider and important than that held by the government of a state at present.

Democratic, because only with the legitimacy granted by a system of representative democracy of the sovereignty of the world’s citizens can this system operate with any strength, speed and effectiveness at the present time.

Those of us that believe in and defend the United Nations nevertheless do not fail to see its current great weaknesses A decisive move in this direction can probably only occur by opting for a two-chamber system: the current General Assembly as a peoples’ assembly and a new World Parliament as a chamber for citizens. The advantage of creating a World Parliament is that it is a process that can only happen through the undertaking of a global citizens’ movement of broad dimensions.

Reforming the United Nations: constructing a system of GDG that functions effectively

1 The creation of the WTO: one more ‘enigma’ to add on the road to the construction of ‘the jewel in the crown’ that lies outside the crown!

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Those of us that believe in and defend the United Nations nevertheless do not fail to see its current great weaknesses. In fact we need to admit and understand them well, better than anyone, so that any reform to the system does not fail to function perfectly.

In reality, to a large extent the UN fails to function for the same fundamental reasons we have already examCatalan International View

ined. However, from the point of view of effectiveness, for the solving of problems and the defining and elaboration of improvements, it is also necessary to see what other inherent aspects in the characteristics of great (at least the largest) organisations are, poorly thought through, in the UN’s case. Such characteristics will also need to be included in the profound reform process.

In the dimensions of this contribution I would like to mention two of those I consider to be the most important. One is a strictly organisational problem and the other is a financial one.

The historical development of the executive branches of the United Nations in the form of a variety of agencies, programmes and funds (each containing a multiplicity of individual characteristics resulting from specific events and processes arising from a particular moment in time) fails to function. A Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), like a form of United Nations for food and agriculture (with the status of a historical agency with its own general assembly of states), a World Food Programme that answers to the General Assembly and the Secretariat and the World Trade Organisation (WTO1) that tries to define the ‘rules’ of global agricultural commerce. As is apparent to anyone with common sense, this situation produces a large number of contradictions and overlaps that in turn induce more inefficiencies and errors than humanity in the twenty-first century can possibly allow to continue.

What is more, only a reform that moves towards a new system of governability that truly works will achieve the prestige required by any human organisation in order that it can generate the required confidence and hope among

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the citizens of the world. Without such reforms it would be impossible for any system to function with any effectiveness.

The result of this profound reform process also needs to lead to a radical change in the mode of financing the new system of GDG. One of the main problems of the United Nations is the failure to implement the measures it approves: something that has come to be known as the ‘implementation gap’, since the summits of the 90s. To a significant extent this is due to the organisational factors already mentioned.

Nevertheless, in this case its financial model is also behind the problem.

An organisation of states in which budgetary matters are essentially resolved with contributions of its member states in proportion to their wealth, necessarily has virtually two sovereignties. There is that of the General Assembly (1 state, 1 vote) and that of those countries which make a major contribution to the organisation’s budget (the USA, Japan, Germany, Great Britain and France, whose combined contributions have provided some 61% of the UN’s ordinary budget in recent years).

Obviously, although it ought not to be the case, it is not difficult to understand why, when an action plan is approved by the United Nations that is of little

interest to these nations, it is difficult to get it implemented.

Fortunately, new problems also often have new solutions. Globalisation, principally in its financial aspect in this case, means that financial capital has lost its ‘national’ character, to become clearly global. This means, among other things, that the majority of capital is not at present paying taxes anywhere. This is totally unjust. A new global fiscal system needed to resolve this injustice while, at the same time, contributing to seriously reducing the purely speculative nature of this financial world, would provide more than enough money to operate, almost without problems, a new system of GDG. It would not only be able to provide for its ordinary budget, but also to fund the budgets of many of its programmes as well.

Sculpture by Arnaldo Pomodoro, gift from Italy to the UN

*Josep Xercavins i Valls (Rubí, 1956) Holds a doctorate in Sciences from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC, 1999) and a degree in Physics from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB, 1979). He is Professor at the UPC. He was director of the EUETIT (Escola Universitària d’Enginyeria Tècnica Industrial de Terrassa) of the UPC between 1992 and 1995. From 1995 to 1998 he was the Rector’s Delegate on the UPC’s Terrassa Campus. He was the first director of the UNESCO Chair on Sustainability, at the UPC, from 1996 to 2002. In 2000, he became the principal organiser (as coordinator of the Ad Hoc Secretariat) and founder and moderator of the Reunions Founding Meetings (Barcelona 2001 and 2002) of the UBUNTU – World Forum of Civil Society Networks initiative, led by Federico Mayor Zaragoza. In particular, he led the forum’s main project: the ‘World Campaign for in-depth Reform of the System of International Institutions’. He relinquished this post in February 2009. Xercavins i Valls has made many contributions to magazines, books and has made numerous appearances in the media. Two books are worthy of special mention in the current context: ‘Governabilitat Democràtica Mundial (Global Democratic Governability)’, published

by Editorial Mediterrània, April 2004 and ‘Desarrollo Sostenible’ (Sustainable Development)’, Edicions UPC, in 2005.

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Catalunya and the myth of Sepharad

by Teresa Calders and Esperanรงa Valls*

It is well known that the concepts of state and nation do not always coincide: there are nations without a state and states that endeavour to demonstrate that they are a nation. This last group develop all kinds of mechanisms to prove their status, with purportedly historical events that took place back in the mists of time.

In order to show that Spain as a state corresponds to a unique nation, Spanish historians have had to distort history. Once the myth is created and assimilated in the collective imagination, it is difficult to uncover the falsehoods and correct the situation.

An example of this practice is the use to which the term Sepharad has been put. In Israeli Hebrew, the current Spanish state is called Sepharad; but Sepharad never corresponded to what is nowadays known as Spain, either in antiquity or in the Middle Ages. The first appearance of the term Sepharad is in the Bible in the Book of Obadiah, verse 20. In this fragment, Sepharad refers to a place in Asia Minor. For unknown reasons, from about the time of the Gaonim of Babylon, this name began to be employed to refer to land on the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim rule. Later its use was extended to include the whole of Castile. However, it was never used to refer to the land of 56

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the Catalan-speakers. The territory that in the present day is known as Spain was not known by this name until well into the sixteenth century. From then on the word Sephardim has been used to refer to all descendants of the Jews that were expelled from the Peninsula.

For a long time, researchers from abroad (Kauffman, Benedikt, Septimus, Schwarzfuchs, Toaff, Dinour, Assis, Touati-Wachsstock and so on) and from Catalunya (Feliu, Riera, Maravall...) have demonstrated, published and otherwise spread the idea that Sepharad is the term the Jews used in mediaeval times to refer to Muslim lands on the Iberian Peninsula. Among

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The Jewish Quarter, Girona

other sources, these writers based their assertion on numerous testimonies of mediaeval Jewish authors that perfectly distinguished between Catalunya and Sepharad. Rabbi Yitshaq Sheshet Perfet, Isaac Lattes de Montpellier, Avraham ibn Daud and Maimonides himself are some examples. The failure to accept that the Jews of the Catalanspeaking territories of mediaeval times were not part of Sepharad is to falsify history. Such an act leads to a series of errors that are hard to justify.

If the Catalan Jews had lived in Sepharad they would be Sephardites and would have spoken Sephardi.

Nothing could be further from the

truth: the Jews, in this respect, were no different from the Christians. The differences between the Jews that lived in areas of the peninsula ruled by Muslims and those that lived in areas ruled

by Christians are remarkable and are amply documented.

A failure to accept that the Jews of the Catalan-speaking territories of mediaeval times were not part of Sepharad is to falsify history Another aspect we must not forget is that mediaeval Catalan Judaism is unique since it is the fruit of the Catalan International View

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The Jewish Quarter, Girona

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confluence of three different currents: the troubadour poetry and the Kabbalah originating in Provence; Tosafist thought from Central Europe; and Arab poetry and the interest in the linguistic and grammatical studies imported by the Jews that fled the Almohad Dynasty. These tendencies came into harmony, developed and gave rise to figures of a unique nature who undertook outstanding work in the fields of science, exegesis, medicine, poetry, prose, law, linguistics, cartography and so on. Figures such as Nachmanides, Shlomo ben Aderet and Meshullam of Piera, to name but a few.

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The mediaeval Jews that lived under Christian rule on the Iberian Peninsula, which they referred to collectively as the ‘Land of Edom’, or specifically with the name of each kingdom, possessed characteristics that included their vernacular, social customs, political organisation, liturgical rituals and so on that were not Sephardi but rather Catalan.

In the same way that a Christian from Castile showed special traits that distinguished them from a Christian from Catalunya or Galicia, so did the Jews.

The supposed unity of the Jews at the time of their definitive expulsion in 1492, seeing them as a well-defined,

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compact collective known as Sephardite, is mere fantasy. It makes no sense to allow it to continue to exist. What is more, this myth does not help us to label the Catalan Jews that fled around the time of the events of 1391. Neither does it help to answer why the Jewish communities installed in Africa and various points around the Mediterranean before 1492 also came to be known as Sephardis once their fellow Jews from the Peninsula joined them.

The Jews, like the Christians living under the Catalan monarchy, developed their own activities in an independent territory that was neither Tsarfat (contemporary France), nor Sepharad (modern-day Spain). These were the lands where Catalan is spoken: Catalunya, Mallorca, València and Roussillon (as well as a part of Occitania), Provence itself and the Languedoc. It consisted of a Jewish Occitan-Catalan cultural area of a highly homogenous

nature, giving rise to a uniquely Catalan variety of Judaism. An awareness of a Catalan identity (which, as we have seen is by no means solely political) is well-documented in Hebrew texts of the period. We see how they are maintained throughout the early period of the Diaspora, until a point is reached where, while never ceasing to be Jews, those in exile lost the memory of their Catalan past at an unknown period of time. A subsequent distortion of history led them to believe that they and the rest of the Jews expelled from the Peninsula were Sephardis. The intention of this falsehood was to consolidate a supposed political, cultural and linguistic unity that never actually existed. If we wish to be faithful to history, therefore, when we wish to refer to mediaeval Jews that lived in Catalanspeaking lands, we must be precise and speak strictly of Catalan Jews.

*Teresa Calders and Espaerança Valls Joint heads of the Institut d’Estudis Món Juïc, a body dedicated to research and awareness-raising on Judaism in the Catalan Countries info@institutmontjuic.cat www.institutmonjuic.cat

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Interview

Lluís Llach ‘Belonging to a minority is very educational: if you are lucky enough to survive’ Interviewed by Eva Piquer* Photos by Carmen Esteve Juan Miquel Morales

In another country, in another historical context, perhaps Lluís Llach (1948) would simply have been a committed musician. However, he had the luck to have the misfortune to start singing at the end of the twentieth century, in the closing days of the Franco era. He joined the Setze Jutges (Seven Judges), a group of singers that fought for Catalan language and culture during the dictatorship. A victim of prohibitions and censorship, the young man from the Empordà region wrote songs that the public turned into hymns. A left-wing nationalist, Llach carried on fighting for his ideas following Franco’s death, while continuing to grow artistically. In 1985 he played a memorable concert in front of 100,000 people in the FC Barcelona stadium. Llach abandoned the limelight in March 2007, having been a vital figurehead in the musical and intellectual worlds for three or four generations.

We are in the middle of a world economic crisis.

Can you see a way out?

I guess there is one, but it won’t be easy. It’s a predictable, unfortunate crisis; it’s the failure of the Chicago economic school that preached the most savage form of neoliberal capitalism. I’ve always been anti-capitalist, but of all forms of capitalism, they’ve chosen the worst. Some much more socially sensitive economic schools foresaw a disaster just like this one. We are witnessing both an economic failure and an ethical one.

So is it also a moral crisis?

Yes, of course, and it’s been coming from a long way off. One of its starting points was that awful

triumvirate made up of Thatcher, Reagan and John Paul II. Each of them set about destroying social sensitivities from their own particular sphere of influence. Thatcher took on the unions, who had a long tradition in England and had power. The European Left’s arrival in power didn’t help the situation at all: those that should have been the alternative ended up leading Europe’s major political scandals. Felipe González saw his ministers go to prison. Those that should have maintained democracy’s ethical values left society without the tools it needed. The Left sunk its own values. Aznar, Berlusconi, Sarkozy et al are the sons of that failure. It was really difficult to imagine during the eighties that Europe would end up having characters like Berlusconi or Sarkozy (even though the French Republic is a different matter). If we are

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able to do so now, it’s because first there needed to be a dismantling of a whole system of economic, moral and social principles. If you speak about equality and fraternity nowadays, people burst out laughing.

There are still some idealists around...

But you don’t hear them. In the sixties and seventies we could believe that the media was a tool for spreading information and even for consciousness-raising, but suddenly it simply became the means of transmission of the ideas of the powerful and the major lobbies. The people that stood up to the economic system and its values lost their microphones. We were led to believe there was no alternative to vicious capitalism that condemned human beings to animosity against other human beings. Any alternative has been wiped off the list of possibilities. So, see how we are now… The current economic turmoil has once more left the middle and lower classes in a situation of complete defencelessness. It’s very difficult for someone to have the courage to admit that the more controlled capitalism is, the better. Zapatero, in spite of being so ‘socially committed’, is the first to say ‘no’ to nationalisation. Sarkozy is more protectionist than Zapatero.

From micro-history it’s clear that twenty years ago we were better off.

Inequalities are on the rise and the marginalized continents are more so than ever

Do you think Obama will sort the world out?

Compared with Bush, Obama is a marvel...

Nevertheless, what can this man do against the economic structures that are in place, the vested interests, the lobbies...? How can you undo all that?

Humanity makes progress, despite all the ‘despites’?

In macro-history, yes. If we are capable of seeing macro-history as doing away with present-day 62

reality we can see that the world progresses more in some aspects than others. In micro-history it’s clear that twenty years ago we were better off.

Inequalities are on the rise and the marginalized continents are more so than ever. And in terms of the value system, we are suffering from an unheard of setback. How can Berlusconi call on China to respect human rights? A whole set of social values have been destroyed; they formed a network that had gradually conquered small spaces. They employ petulant, vicious language: anyone who opposes what we have is ‘anti-system’.

Let’s take a look at micro-history, yours to be specific. You stopped singing in 2007, when you were still in good shape. Why? For various reasons. I’ve maintained a special dialogue with the public for forty years. This is the only thing that has kept me going. It’s obvious with my ideological and cultural leanings, that without public support I’d have been wiped off the map. I didn’t want this special relationship to end up being cheapened, as it got older. Another reason: I’ve had the privilege of being very sincere with myself.

I’ve worked how I like and when I like specifically because the public has acted without obeying the laws of the market. But for fifteen years I was scared of losing the capacity to reinvent myself. I

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went through an aesthetic renaissance thanks to knowing the poet Miquel Martí i Pol. But Miquel died, I grew old and chose to retire rather than ending up repeating myself like an automaton. A third reason for my retirement is that I felt I had lived in a very one-dimensional way and I wanted to find another way of living once more. In this respect the challenge is very open. I’ve always been very conscious of the privilege my work has been.

But I can now publicly announce it was a fantastic job. As much as it might keep me busy, everything I had while I was singing in public is very difficult to replace.

For many years you refused to sing such a symbolic song as L’estaca (the Stake). Were you scared that the symbol would eclipse the musician, that the commitment would end up killing the artist?

In Catalunya there were times when what I did artistically, including my commitment, and the significance it had for the public, was out of all proportion. I was a boy who had been educated in the scholastic tradition and I arrived in Barcelona when I was sixteen. Thanks to a series of coincidences I fell in with a very active group and after a short time I started to become a reference point, not only for the anti-Franco movement, but the Catalan movement too. I had to live through all this during a period of transition in which we made up for what the country was lacking and it gave me an enormous amount of power. For years I was really frightened by the amount of power I held. It got to the point where I asked myself whether I should keep singing or not. But since I liked it a lot, I looked at things from another angle: if I could play this part (and I tried to do it well) and it was down to me thanks to a historical accident, then so be it. Once Francoism died out, in the eighties and nineties, people abandoned their socially and politically critical posture at an alarming rate. I believe this posture needs to be retained.

And without realising it I go back for more. It’s an addiction of mine. In fact, what has kept me going all these years on so many stages is the side of me that likes to protest.

When you lend your support to a cause you create a certain point of view among the public. It’s an enormous responsibility…

This responsibility has blocked me many times.

But I have also tried to use it to the extent that I have supported causes I haven’t believed in, but which I thought were positive in terms of social discourse. Maybe I didn’t fully believe in them, perhaps there was some kind of feeling, but I defended them passionately in order to spark a debate. If not, it would’ve been taken for granted that all the intellectuals were in agreement. Since I retired I have tried to keep my public appearances to a minimum. You see, it also gave me something: if at the end of a concert people come up to you to explain their struggle, then they’re keeping you up to date as to leading social concerns. When you retire, you stay at home and your means of gathering information return to being the usual ones. It’s more difficult for you to find out what’s going on.

Have you always been clear as to what side to identify yourself with? For example, you’ve always been supportive of the Palestinian cause, but it’s not so easy to take sides...

Taking sides means getting involved. Someone who works in the field of communication and culture, who is called an intellectual, I think they should get involved. The good thing about being 60 years old is that you have been able to watch history ‘live’ for 40 years. As a Catalan I defend the Palestinian cause. With all the sacrifices that a lot of people have made in order that we can have our own identity, I’d be really ashamed if we ended up thinking that the only way to exist was thanks to the massacre of others, whether collectives or individuals. That’s why the situation in Palestine is so disturbing. I’m not saying there aren’t many arguments on both sides. But what horrifies me the most is that a people that have experienced so many human catastrophes at first hand can end up inflicting those same catastrophes in the name of its own existence. I would even question whether it’s worth existing under such circumstances.

Have you ever regretted supporting or opposing a particular cause?

Being innocent, I thought that instead of writing a song for Nelson Mandela, I could dedicate one to the woman who had been at his side, Winnie. A few months after recording it I was horrified

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was built on a truly democratic basis. Assassinations and genocide have been the norm in the construction of the current states and powers. The years have gone by and now there are those that want democracy to be used to legitimise the situations of injustice that it originally created. Some people are surprised when marginalized or oppressed groups express their desire to exist. We Catalans understand why because we look at the situation from inside. Belonging to a small culture, in a world in which small cultures are destined to disappear, puts you in a state of awareness. Those on the outside see you as small, provincial and closed. In terms of my humanity, belonging to minority groups has made me live life a different way, including in my personal relationships. If I had been a man in the way society wanted me to be, I wouldn’t have had to rethink thousands of things, or to face up to them.

You made me think of that poem by MariaMercè Marçal where she gives thanks to chance for having been born a woman, working class and from an oppressed nation.

to find out that she had carried out many barbaric acts. Yes, I have regretted some of the things I have defended. But let me tell you something. When you are part of the media yourself, when they manipulate you, you shouldn’t be offended, it’s part of the job. People with very different ideas can use a song as a personal or collective tool. And it’s wonderful that this happens. But there are limits. You need to know how to set some limits so that only a certain set of people can manipulate you.

You were born in a small country with a particular national reality. How has this affected you?

Belonging to a minority is very educational, if you are lucky enough to survive. And when I say ‘survive’, I mean to make something of yourself, however minimally. Being part of cultural, political and sexual minorities has made me question many things. Being born in this country has made me understand that the creation of states in the way that we know it has been done through the annihilation of entire identities and collectives. No state, not the Spanish, the French or the British can say that it 64

I’m not a woman or from the working class (I come from the rural upper class), but I was born in the same oppressed nation. The meagre nature of suggestions by some well-known intellectuals never fails to surprise me. The people from ATTAC [Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens], for example, well-prepared people like Ignacio Ramonet et al, talk about the Catalans as if we were cultural racists. The fact that people with so much information, with so much culture, with so much political sensitivity say such things…, but because they have seen the other side of the fence, they don’t understand that if they turn the mirror round they’ll see their own reflection. This doesn’t make you feel more powerful, on the contrary, it makes you much more conscious of your own limitations and miseries, while at the same time it gives you a more interesting viewpoint.

Is being Catalan and singing in Catalan a handicap in terms of reaching an international audience?

Sure, sure, sure. Sorry, but the question makes me laugh. In a world where empires have used

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language for their own ends... I was partial to using French, thanks to my liking for how it sounds.

When I was little I used to listen to French singer-songwriters and I’d have loved to have sung in French. But when you are the means of transmission, you need to know what service you are offering. Modern music has been one of the most powerful machines of alienation for penetrating the values of adolescents and preparing them for being what the system wants them to be. When you’re conscious of this fact and are aware of the record companies’ policies, you realise that you form part of a world that has an unequalled degree of penetration. Nowadays, with video games, it may well be the first time that modern music is losing its role. Up till now, we musicians were almost exclusively responsible for the annihilation of childhood and adolescent thought.

Do you still believe in the Catalan Countries?

Yes, yes. I firmly believe in them as a future project. The economy will do the work that we haven’t been able to do politically or culturally. The Catalan Countries are, to start with, an economic necessity. A section of the Valencian upper classes are beginning to realise this fact. Then there are the obvious cultural and historic realities. When I say the Catalan Countries I don’t mean a single community, but rather a form of confederation of countries.

Does national freedom require having one’s own state?

I am from an anarchist background and I find the idea of states difficult to swallow. I don’t see the state as solving problems; I see it as a problem in itself. But after 60 years of observing how we live with Spain, I would say that independence is the only solution. As Xavier Rubert de Ventós says, we are mistaken when we think that if we educate them, one day they will understand us. They understood us some time ago, but its no use. I believe that the Spanish state, as a project with a promising future, where peoples can form part of a state from a position of liberty and tolerance, has its days numbered. The fact that it can still be said nowadays that Euskadi isn’t a political problem makes me mad. The anti-terrorist policy is the Spanish state’s

most glaring mistake in the last 50 years. It’s outrageous that they still invent laws that bend or totally break human rights in order to stop ten percent of the population from voting. And let’s not talk about Catalunya, where they kill projects that have been approved by 80 percent of the Catalan parliament.

These are actions that are very difficult to explain to Europeans.

I believe that the Spanish state, as a project with a promising future, where peoples can form part of a state from a position of liberty and tolerance, has its days numbered Do you believe the Catalan language has a future?

Yes. I don’t see the language as being endangered, it won’t be in danger as long as we don’t want it to be. We learnt how to maintain and defend our language in adverse conditions. It would be a blow to history if we don’t take advantage of the fact now we are able to maintain and defend our cultural situation. Language defines us as a group, it allows us to identify ourselves, but it doesn’t make us a nation. If one day a majority of our people decide that our language is no longer necessary, I wouldn’t call that a loss of national identity. In any case, the problem doesn’t come from the immigrants. In Catalunya, waves of immigration have been a constant, many centuries ago, almost 40% of the Occitanes came here. For you and me Spain is a point of reference. But in twenty years time, many children of current immigrants won’t have the Spanish framework as their point of reference.

You have stood up for many causes, but you’ve never particularly represented homosexuality. Why is that?

I come from a world that didn’t put homosexual freedom before sexual freedom. For the first few years of my artistic life I fought in favour of homosexuality via sexuality. Later, in the 80s, some famous people started to come out of the closet.

More than anything this caused me indignation,

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because I don’t believe they did much good and they were people that I didn’t like ideologically. I’ve always been in the front line of militancy in terms of showing solidarity with all movements in favour of gay rights. And I’ve never kept my sexuality a secret, if I’ve been asked the question directly. But I’m upset by ghetto-type attitudes. I understand homosexual freedom through sexual freedom a lot more, as it includes concepts that no one talks about, such as the sexual freedom of old people: they have more injustices committed against them than against homosexuals.

I come from a world that didn’t put homosexual freedom before sexual freedom

You had cancer without the public finding out.

They told me I had a year and a half to live and I decided that I didn’t want to create a national drama. But I think it’s fine that people like Joan Manuel Serrat or Cristina Hoyos have declared that they were suffering from cancer, and I understand that their gesture has helped to give hope to a lot of sick people.

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Your integrity throughout all these years is admirable.

If I have shown integrity it’s because people have allowed me to have it. I have had a certain protection that has allowed me to be sincere with myself and to act in line with my beliefs.

Is it difficult to maintain ideological integrity when you have too much money to be left-wing?

This is a great incoherence that I treat with normality. I had the luck to become popular at a very young age, when my capacity to fight and my nonconformism was so great that I wouldn’t sell out for any price. The system tries to buy you in successive phases: when you’re an adolescent and they instil certain values in you, when you start to work, when you get married, when you have children, when you suffer from a mid-life crisis, when you get old and you realise you haven’t been able to change almost anything... if you overcome all these phases without selling out, you can’t be bought. The fact you belong to social and sentimental groups of a certain marginalisation also helps, because you are never afraid to be seen in a bad light. Neofatxes globals (Global Neofascists) is one of the worst songs I have ever written, but I hit the nail on the head. When I

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wrote it they told me I was too old now for protest songs. I don’t care; I need my people’s support.

Have you always known how to find your people?

Well, you know I was about to lose them. A long time ago I had a lot of commercial success, with three or four number one records in the Spanish state. I carried on doing what I wanted to do with total freedom. But with success, without me realising it, there came a kind of absorption on behalf of the system: that personality to whom we apportion all the blame. One day I said to my manager: something’s going on here, I want to sing for my people, and in the last thirty concerts I’ve done, my people have been nowhere to be seen. Success put me on a professional footing where my people weren’t to be found. So I said ‘enough’, the stadiums are finished, let’s go back to the original concerts, and let’s go back to the villages, the theatres. I knew I was giving up who knows how many million every year, but you can’t put a price on it. It’s not so much admirable integrity as a need. It’s also a question of self-interest. If I move away from my people, what do I talk about in my life? Of the advantages of being famous? I’d rather take Felipe González to court for having broken his electoral promise on NATO, even knowing I’d lose out on lots of concerts, but that my people would lend me their support.

What causes do you think are worth campaigning for in the twenty-first century?

There are a lot more that there were forty years ago. The current situation could end in a revival of para-fascism, this is an obvious danger. There are also the same old words as ever: hunger, inequality, injustice, the exploitation of the Third World... the Western world is annoyed by the fact that it gets bombed, but the fact is that there are more than three billion people who are angry, humiliated and

exploited. On the other hand, we have social questions here, with old people waiting for the ‘dependency law’ for which there are insufficient funds.

It would be a blow to history if we didn’t take advantage of the fact that we are now able to maintain and defend our cultural situation

Have you done everything you wanted to do?

I’ve done a lot more than I wanted to do. I didn’t even intend to have a career as a musician. I was a naive kid with no goals or aims and in a sense, I still feel that way. It’s all been a complete surprise.

When I finished the concert in the FC Barcelona stadium in 1985, in front of 100,000 people, while the people around me were celebrating (we won I don’t know how many daft Guinness records), I had to go and watch how they took down the stage.

I didn’t leave until it was all taken down. It did me good. For someone in such a privileged position like mine it’s sometimes difficult not to lose sight of things. They say that I behave with false modesty. Well, even if it’s false, I always feel compelled to deny that I’m a great singer or whatever.

For forty years I have had to force myself every day not to believe it ever, and not to believe it sincerely, in spite of public recognition. I don’t deny that I’ve been capable of making a melody or composing some lyrics with sentiment, but from that to being what the people make you feel about yourself when they express their admiration... every time they turned on the lights in a theatre, I saw the public watching me with adoration... When the concert was over it was worth getting in the car and going home alone, sleepy, hungry, feeling alone, without any support to cling onto. It was a valuable lesson so I didn’t believe I was some kind of a God.

*Eva Piquer (Barcelona, 1969). Writer and journalist. Works for the Avui newspaper where she coordinates the cultural supplement and the culture section. 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).

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Africa

Museveni and Kobe Beef

by Nicolás Valle*

Yoweri Museveni had never heard of Kobe beef. They told him about it during the Third International Conference on African Development in Tokyo1. Someone decided to regale the Ugandan president with details of one of the most exquisite secrets of Japanese cuisine. Kobe beef comes from a herd that is only bred in the south of Honshu Island. The cows are fed a strict diet that includes select herbs, and several litres of beer every day. The animals are reared with special attention and excessive care: classical music in the cowshed, sponged down with sake and daily massages to improve their muscle tone. The aim is to ensure the fat and muscle fibre are perfectly blended in order to produce soft, tasty meat, containing pure protein. Museveni2 comes from a farming family and undoubtedly will have enjoyed the explanations as to the peculiarities of Japanese livestock production. However, what most impressed him was the price of Kobe beef: 170 euros a kilo.

1 An international forum founded in 1993 under a Japanese government initiative. It includes various international cooperation bodies, the United Nations and the World Bank. Its objective is to promote economic growth and security on the African continent. The third Conference was held in November 2004. The fifth was held in June of this year in Kampala.

2 Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, Ntungamo (Uganda), 1944.

President of Uganda since 1986, when he took power following the toppling of Milton Obote. He was leader of the guerrilla group National Resistance Army. Museveni is considered fortunate for contemporary Uganda’s political stability, while being a destabilising influence on the conflicts surrounding the Great Lakes.

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It was to be a revelation for the Ugandan leader. The impact was of such magnitude that he decided to change the contents of his speech to the conference. Museveni admitted that until that moment he had believed that the West only cheated the Third World. After discovering the price of a Japanese steak he had discovered that the developed countries in fact, cheated everyone, ‘the Western world is cheating its own people by charging these inflated prices, and it cheats us, the Africans, denying us economic growth, denying us access to international mar-kets to sell our goods’. The former guerrilla leader temporarily abandoned his role as head of state and spoke to the audience as he still sees himself, ‘I am, among other things, a farmer’, he declared. The sums did not add up and he had to say it loud and clear, ‘I sell my beef for 80 cents and the intermediaries sell it in the markets and butcher’s for 1.70 euros. That same kilo of beef costs 17 euros in London and 170 euros in Japan. If the British bought my beef for 4 euros and sold Catalan International View

it for 8, we’d all win: the Europeans and myself ’. These are not the figures an expert in economics would use and things are not so simple in international trade, but Museveni used the price of Kobe beef to expose the brutally asymmetrical economic relationship the developed countries maintain with Africa.

People often speak of the continent’s scars, always producing similar ideas: tribalism, meningitis outbreaks, wars, malnutrition and so on. They never speak of the fact that European Union, Japanese and American protectionism has done more to devastate the cotton plantations in Burkina Faso than the yearly plagues of locusts.

What is the difference between a banana from the Canary Islands and one from Mozambique? Absolutely none.

The colour, taste and potassium levels are the same, but the first enjoys preferential treatment simply because it was planted on land belonging to the European Union. Subsidies from Brussels for agriculture and livestock

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rearing in the EU are the highest in the world. It is estimated that two out of every three euros from the cost of production come directly from official EU aid. It is impossible for an African meat or dairy producer to compete with butter subsidised by France or with beef from Extremaduran mutton, protected from when the animal is in the field to the supermarket shelf.

Western subsidies have had, in some instances, disastrous consequences. A prime example are those approved by the Bush administration to protect the nation’s cotton farmers. The White House’s decision led to thousands of tonnes of this product being left to rot in the warehouses of Chad, Mali and Benin, where cotton represents some 70% of income from international agricultural commerce. It is not a problem of trade balance: exports are the main strategic weapon in these countries’ fight against poverty. It is a weapon that is systematically denied them by government offices and the headquarters of large industrial corporations.

The ‘black continent’ exercises a form of forced altruism that helps to maintain job stability in Holland, Ireland and Germany, among others Western commercial protectionism also simultaneously causes a negative effect. Economic subsidises encourage European farmers and livestock producers to produce the goods that receive the highest subsidies. The result is surplus production of certain goods (linen, sugar and bananas, for example) at low prices. These surpluses soon flood the markets in Africa thanks to bilateral agreements with EU member states. This disloyal competition means that in any market in the Ivory Coast it is cheaper to purchase a kilo of rice from the Valencian Country than a kilo that is grown locally. It is impossible to compete against products that are sold for less than the cost of production and preparation. The result is more misery and a greater threat of social unrest in Sub-Saharan countries. The fields Catalan International View

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are abandoned and rural communities become depopulated, young farmers head towards the cities and many end up living on the streets selling German biscuits and batteries for transistor radios. Crime rates increase alongside prostitution and the black market.

Shantytowns spring up in the outskirts of Nairobi, Lagos and Dar es-Salaam, where sickness and sadness take hold.

A new breed of rootless Africans have emerged throughout the continent as a result of Western protectionist practices. The subusrbs are filled with farmers that have abandoned their homes in the countryside in order to live in a tin and corrugated iron shacks. Tribal chiefs without authority, medicine men that have lost their influence, broken families. In short, the disintegration of the traditional social fabric.

The solutions go beyond the axiom ‘more cooperation and more trade’. There is a need to simply rethink all our relations with Africa

3 A sack contains 60 kilos of coffee

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The steps taken against foreign products reach extremes when it comes to processed goods, the authentic bête noire of European local industry.

This was the case with cashew nuts from Mozambique. It turned out that Maputo’s government discovered they could earn 150 euros more per tonne of processed cashews for export. To encourage local producers the ministry of agriculture imposed a tax on raw nuts destined for export. The European nut companies were up in arms and the World Bank forced Mozambique to withdraw its contentious tax by threatening to review development aid. The decision led to the total collapse of the processing industry: with the loss of more than 7,000 jobs in Mozambique, most of them held by women.

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It is also the story of Ugandan coffee. Its beans, of the Robusta variety, are considered to be particularly exquisite and aromatic. For decades, its export represented more than half of the country’s GDP. That is until the European Union decided to impose buying conditions on all coffee originating in Africa, which essentially meant banning the use of chemical fertilizers.

Coincidentally, the decision coincided with an increase in demand for quality coffee by European and North American consumers. Uganda got to work to assuage the bureaucrats in Brussels and by the end of the 90s it was producing nearly two million sacks3 of organic coffee. This did not mean its trials were over, however. The European Union periodically sends inspectors to confirm the requisites are being carried out, which is a complete waste of time, since the Ugandan farmers are forced to use local manure anyway, due to the extremely high price of chemical fertilizers. It is simply a delaying tactic to obstruct the arrival of coffee at a decent price in the markets in London and Paris.

Uganda is the continent’s second largest coffee producer after Ethiopia, but it is only allowed to export raw beans. The policy counts on the connivance of the great international food corporations. ‘I spoke to people from Nestle’, says Museveni, ‘and I demanded they come to Uganda to open a factory, but they refused, saying that we should stick to sending them the beans’. The fact is, a kilo of African coffee exports for less than a euro, but once roasted it retails for around 15 euros. The profits for the processing companies are massive, as are the lost profits of added value for the producers at the point of origin. With sales of unprocessed natural resources, Ugandans and Ethiopians give away to the Europeans the profits they could obtain for themselves if they

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were to roast their own coffee or sell instant coffee. Too often we speak of how Western governments help Africa’s development, when in fact the truth is the complete opposite: Africa is Europe’s main donor. The ‘black continent’ is right now an enormous, generous aid agency dedicated to protecting the industrial fabric of the United Kingdom and Germany. It is a forced altruism that helps to maintain job stability in Holland, Ireland and Germany, among others. It is hard to admit that the profits given away by Africa are those that allow the EU to go ahead with expensive educational plans, or finance the agricultural subsidies enjoyed by farmers in France and Castille. In short, it allows the European Union to maintain the social order it has enjoyed since its foundation.

The EU has declared its commitment to help the development of the Third World for fifty years. So many years later, it has been demonstrated that its will is purely symbolic, just words that do not translate into real policies to tackle the factors that perpetuate the situation. Countries belonging to the EU conduct liberal economic policies with the economic giants of North America and Asia, but they do the reverse with Africa with their tariffs and trade restrictions, of a purely punitive nature. All the money which Brussels or Washington disburses in terms of development aid comes back in the form of profits from exports. Too often we say that Africa is poor to the extent that we have au-

tomatically internalised this viewpoint.

Nevertheless, the truth is otherwise.

The richest continents maintain SubSaharan Africa in an economic situation prior to the industrial revolution, confined to mono-cultures, obliged to export cheap, unprocessed, raw materials: bananas, fish, wood, tea and so on.

The economic formulas are without doubt more complicated. The solutions go beyond the axiom ‘more cooperation and more trade’. There is a need to simply re-think all our relations with Africa and deal with its countries in a more horizontal way, as we do with China and Malaysia. They should be treated as equals, in a just, honest way, with an end to treating them as subordinates in both the economic and political sense.

There is much more at stake than at first sight. Universal concepts such as equality and justice. A persistence of the ‘donor’ and ‘receiver’ relationship signifies perpetuating the connection between dominant regions and dominated regions.

Postscript: Yoweri Museveni ended his speech before the International Conference on African Development with a culinary recommendation for his Japanese hosts, ‘we Africans have reared livestock for some 7,000 years and we know how to produce beef that is the same quality as yours, if not better. What is more, our cows have yellow fat, which is low in cholesterol.

The Western protectionist regime is stopping different peoples of the world from enjoying mutual benefit’.

*Nicolás Valle (Acehúche, 1964). Journalist for the foreign news desk of TV3 (Catalunya Television). Author of ‘Ubuntu. Estimada Terra Africana’ (Ubuntu. Beloved African Land. Published by Proa, 2008). He carries out a range of academic tasks at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He previously worked on the foreign desk of the Avui newspaper. He specialises in African current affairs, a continent in where he has travelled extensively.

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Dossier The Bologna Process

Bologna: a challenge for both students and academic staff

by Enric I. Canela*

The 19th of June sees the second anniversary of the signing of the Bologna Declaration by 29 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Holland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom). The Declaration was the embryo of what was to subsequently define the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The objective, in line with other European Union initiatives, was to make Europe the most competitive region in the world in terms of higher education.

The Declaration was born out of an earlier one, the Sorbonne Declaration, signed by Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, that aimed to promote the harmonisation of European higher education systems. European universities had previously signed a Magna Carta in Bologna in 1988.

Currently there are 46 European countries that are signatories of the EHEA convergence process.

In these last ten years there has been a strengthening of the process of the construction of the EHEA, with periodical meetings (Prague, 2001; Bergen, 2005; Berlin, 2003; London, 2007 and Leuven, 2009) of the ministers responsible for education of the signatory countries. Various aspects of the process have taken shape since the original objectives which can be summarised as the following: the adoption of a 72

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system of qualifications that are easily understood and compatible, based on a system of two fundamental levels, the graduate and post-graduate; this is accompanied by the adoption of a system of credits, ECTS, to promote greater mobility in the student population, with the elimination of obstacles to the effective exercise of free exchange.

In spite of the convergence that has occurred between higher education systems in many countries in order to make them compatible, some differences still exist in terms of the duration of courses and the heterogeneity of their education systems.

The majority of states have adopted a model of three years of study in order to gain a degree, with two for a post-graduate award. Meanwhile, some states have ensured flexibility in the

Towards the European Higher Education Area?

system by allowing three year and fouryear degrees to coexist, depending on the specific circumstances.

Only Armenia, Bulgaria, Spain, Greece, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Cyprus have opted for homogenous four-year degrees. This is an error, in my opinion, as they move away from the most competitive countries and a situation that could prove more attractive to students and graduates. Students who complete a three-year degree would not be interested in completing a masters in a country where a post-graduate course only takes one year, which leads to such courses losing their capacity to attract students. Theses countries will remain somewhat isolated from the other countries in terms of student mobility.

Unfortunately, however, with the 20102011 academic year about to start, the

reform process has not finished in many countries. Catalunya is still in an initial adaptation phase. In all probability, in the 2009-2010 academic year, the great majority of courses will be run in accordance with the new graduate and post-graduate model, but many remain for the coming year.

The Chemistry and Physics Faculties of the Universitat de Barcelona

A minority of politically vocal students have been strongly opposing the change and a poor policy of informing people as to the reforms has meant demonstrations have been popular among the majority of students The situation in Catalunya is complicated. The lack of political independence it suffers keeps it tied to an inflexible, homogenising Spanish law that forces it to remain isolated from Catalan International View

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Dossier The Bologna Process

Map of the countries participating in the Bologna Process

Sorbonne (1998) Bologna (1999) Prague (2001) Berlin (2003)

the more competitive countries. The government of Catalunya decided on three-year degrees, with two-year postgraduate courses, in keeping with all its neighbouring countries and the majority of European countries. Nevertheless, the Spanish government did not settle on this option. The decisive step was the decision to give priority to a convergence with Latin American rather than European Union countries.

These are very difficult reasons for Catalunya to understand, with its decidedly 74

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European outlook, without wishing to belittle Latin American relations.

On the other hand, a minority of politically vocal students have been strongly opposing the change and a poor policy of informing people as to the reforms has meant demonstrations have been popular among the majority of students. The messages of commercialisation, privatisation, the coming of business to the university and the adherence to similar slogans have centred

Towards the European Higher Education Area?

the debate on issues that are removed from the real problems.

The problems that have arisen in Catalunya as a result of the introduction of the new system are different.

One is the lack of compatibility with our neighbouring countries. Another is both the students and academic staff lack an adequate culture. The system is centred on what has been termed the transmission method, where students are used to taking notes, studying and sitting exams. There is no tradition of following the student’s progress and discussing their work. The lecturer-student relationship is poor. What is more, the students carry out little individual work, something which allows them to combine work and studies, which often demand half a day’s work each.

This brings us to the third fundamental problem.

In Catalan universities, the students remain longer at university than is necessary, either because they work parttime, or due to a lack of dedication.

What is more, a higher proportion of them abandon their studies. The tuition fees are relatively low, while the grant system is not in line with real needs.

They are approximately a quarter of the OECD average. As is well known, low tuition fees may not appear to be a barrier to university studies, but students from low-income families are unable to dedicate themselves to study, since they have to find the resources necessary to

maintain themselves or contribute to their upkeep.

I welcome the reform, in spite of the fact that without a grant and aid system for families, discrimination will exist against certain students for economic reasons The new system, the reform, that requires the students to dedicate more time to university, will make it difficult for students to combine work and study, at least as they do at present. It is evident that it will be a difficulty for those less economically well off. Without a good system of grants the reform will be a failure.

To conclude. I welcome the reform, in spite of the fact that Catalunya cannot fully integrate itself into the European Higher Education Area until its universities become independent from the Spanish university system. I welcome the reform, in spite of the fact that without a culture change it will prove difficult for it to truly happen.

I welcome the reform, in spite of the fact that without a grant and aid system for families, discrimination will exist against certain students for economic reasons.

It is still not too late to deal with many of these issues.

*Enric Canela (Barcelona, 1949). Holds a Chemistry degree from the and a PhD in Chemistry with Biochemistry as his specialisation. Lecturer at the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) since 1974, he is professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and head of the department of the same name in the Biology Faculty of the UB. He collaborates in research on intracellular communication and theoretical biochemistry. He regularly publishes in scientific journals of international renown. Between 1991 and 1995 he was vice-president of the Catalan Biology Society. He has been president of the Society for Knowledge since September 2007. Since June 2007 he has been patron of the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA) for the Spanish state.

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Dossier The Bologna Process

Public Universities: autonomy, liberty, equality and participation

by Francisco Fernández Buey and Jordi Mir Garcia*

The Conference of European Ministers’ Responsible for Higher Education was held on the 28th and 29th of April in Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve. The result was a communiqué which attempts to clarify the direction which the so-called ‘2020 Bologna Process’ should take, the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) of the next decade. The preamble to the text contains phrases that try to express what they were trying to achieve. The objective of the EHEA is, ‘to ensure that higher education institutions have the necessary resources to continue to fulfil their full range of purposes such as preparing students for life as active citizens in a democratic society; preparing students for their future careers and enabling their personal development; creating and maintaining a broad, advanced knowledge base and stimulating research and innovation’.

It would not be easy to argue with this declaration of intent. It can be seen as the initial step in a process that generates great expectations. It would be positive if we all recognized that the process is not one that can be applied immediately, with haste and without the participation of the entire university community. Nevertheless, declarations are one thing and the actual transformation of the university system is another. The use of grand words hide some more worrying realities that accompany the process: ‘The necessary ongoing reform of higher education systems and policies will continue to be firmly embedded in the European values of institutional autonomy, academic freedom and 76

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social equity and will require full participation of students and staff ’.

The defence of the universities’ autonomy does not appear very believable when, in reality, a situation of dependency on commercial links with business is being strengthened, without any debate as to what such a development will bring with it. This dependency is proposed for reasons of its social function, but it entails other obligations.

Autonomy is at risk when ones sees that the financing of universities themselves will depend on the private sector.

Now that we are in the middle of an economic crisis, the word ‘competition’, so favoured by neoliberal ideologues,

Towards the European Higher Education Area?

should cease to have the fascination it once had. What is now presented to us as a market is not able to decide which departments receive the necessary financing. Academic autonomy and liberty cannot end up in their hands.

Autonomy is also in doubt when it comes to changing the management of the university system. In the latest report the Fundación Conocimiento y Desarrollo (Foundation for Knowledge and Development) recently presented in Barcelona to the country’s political, academic and economic authorities, it was suggested there is a need for reform in the management of universities, alongside a supposed strengthening of

The defence of the universities’ autonomy does not appear very believable when links with business are being strengthened, without any debate as to what such a development will bring their autonomy. The report concluded with a call for the need to provide governing boards or councils with a growing presence of members from outside the university. Among the most relevant functions of these governing boards or councils would be to elect the rector, either directly or by choosing between names proposed by bodies reCatalan International View

The UAB campus has been the home to an emblematic work of art since 1999: The Four Columns by the Valencian sculptor Andreu Alfaro

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The Universitat de Barcelona’s main building was the scene of demonstrations against the Bologna Process

78

lated to the university. Their job would also include the dismissal of the rector, when necessary. A strengthening of the power of the executive bodies was also proposed. These would consist of the rector and their board, generally elected by the rectors themselves. As far as the rest of the academic positions are concerned, the rector’s team assigns the deans of faculty and these in turn elect the department and research centre heads directly or via the corresponding associated bodies, such as faculties or departments. As the report explicitly acknowledges, this implies a modification of the role of the associated bodCatalan International View

ies that represent the academic community, which is to say the university board. It also reminds us that in some countries, such as Denmark, they have disappeared altogether.

Let us examine one of the other grand phrases: social equity. Despite the fact that it can be considered a wellestablished European value, it is worth remembering what it truly means, and what it means in the university context.

While the sons and daughters of the working class call at the doors of the university and manage to enter, the initial years of degrees have almost become

Towards the European Higher Education Area?

a prolongation of secondary school study. This means that real university education has been gradually moved to masters and doctorate courses, in which the new elites are consolidating themselves. One need look no further than at what currently figures on the curriculum vitae of the elite and the cost of the majority of these masters, whether here or abroad, and then compare this with the professional options available to university graduates (whether on completion of a reformed course or not).

This all has to do with social equality, as the formulas 4+1 and 3+2 are imposed on all degree + post-graduate courses. It also has to do with leadership, with the configuration of the hegemony, one of the universities’ traditional functions.

ticipation of students and staff ’. When faced with the protests that the process has originated among students and the teaching staff, the political and academic authorities have repeated time and again, in a form of self-criticism, that they have explained the reforms badly. More information was needed, swiftly giving rise to the appearance of publicity campaigns.

As the Leuven Conference communiqué recognises, participation is fundamental for any process. However, the Bologna Process, as it is known, has not counted on a sufficiently high degree of participation by those implicated in the matter. It is right, therefore, that the ministers responsible for higher education call for ‘the full par-

However, there is a great deal of confusion between information and propaganda, and also by what we mean when we say participation. The vast majority of students and lecturers have not taken part in the process up to now, although many of them are prepared to do so. We should make the most of the opportunity.

Real university education has been gradually moved to masters and doctorate courses, in which the new elites are consolidating themselves

*Francisco Fernández Buey (Palencia, 1943). Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona. He is coordinator of the UNESCO Chair in Intercultural Studies at the UPF and director of the Social Movements Study Centre of the UPF. He was a founder member of SDEUB (Democratic Students Union of the Universitat de Barcelona, 1965-1966) standing up to the university and the Franco regime. In recent years he has published Poliética (‘Poly-Ethics’, published by Editorial Losada, 2003), Guía para una globalización alternativa (Guide to an Alternative Globalisation, Ediciones B, 2004), Albert Einstein. Ciencia y conciencia, (Albert Einstein. Science and Conscience, Ediciones de Intervención Cultural, 2005) and Utopías e ilusiones naturales (Utopias and Natural Illusions, Ediciones de Intervención Cultural, 2008)

*Jordi Mir Garcia (Barcelona, 1976). Associate Professor of the Department of Humanities of the UPF and investigator at the Social Movements Study Centre. His research focuses on the history of ideas in the contemporary world and migratory processes experienced by Catalunya since the mid-twentieth century. He is currently working on a doctoral thesis dedicated to proposals as to social, cultural and political rupture experienced by Spain during the Franco period and the Transition.

He has edited a volume dedicated to the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of the El Viejo Topo magazine, El Viejo Topo. Treinta años después. Cuando la participación es la fuerza (The Old Mole, Thirty Years On. When Participation is Strength).

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Dossier The Bologna Process

The European Higher Education Area: an opportunity or a threat to Catalan public universities?

by Sergi RubiĂł i Pinyol*

In general terms, the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), also known as the Bologna Process or Bologna Plan, is a framework for European convergence which attempts to establish a coherent system of university qualifications among the participating nations. The intention is clearly one of making European universities more internationally competitive and attractive, promoting the mobility of both students and academics and ensuring that quality and excellence are distinctive hallmarks of our universities.

The application of this plan implies a large change in both the model of teaching and of learning which are used. This will necessarily entail changing the model of university we have known until now. The objective of Bologna is to guarantee improvements in the quality of higher education by installing a structure of cycles (graduate, masters, post-graduate and doctorate) instead of the diplomas and degrees we are more familiar with. A new credit system will be implemented, thus enabling the efforts and results of all European university students to be measured and compared. This will be known as the European Credit Transfer System (ETCS).

Having briefly outlined the intended purpose of the Bologna Process, it must be recognised that, in theory, it appears like a good idea for universities in our country that have become fossilised with a university system from the 80

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1960s. It is logical, therefore, to see the EHEA as a much-needed opportunity to renovate and modernise our centres of higher education.

In order to evaluate whether the application of the EHEA is positive, it is first necessary to evaluate the universities’ current situation and how the development of this new framework has progressed.

Public universities in Catalunya suffer from a precarious, endemic situation of debt. In some instances they have run up debts of more than 120 million euros. The reasons behind this situation are complex. On one hand, since self-criticism is necessary, we should admit that some teams of university administrators have managed their resources poorly. However, the major cause of the current situation is, without doubt, the lack of public finance provided for Catalan universi-

Towards the European Higher Education Area?

ties by consecutive governments of the Spanish state. The universities receive financing that is well below the European average.

Another aspect is that the EHEA generates new needs for universities.

Assuming that the possibility of converging with the rest of the European universities could be achieved at no expense is hypocritical, taking into account our starting point and the pedagogical model in force up to now. The new model needs to go hand in hand with an increase in the hiring of academic staff (to provide a personalised review of each student, with continuous assessment of smaller sized groups), a pedagogical renewal in order for both students and staff to adapt to the new model, increased investment in new technologies, the renovation of lecture theatres and the building of new ones, the public provision of language institutes, an increase in grants, both to cov-

er tuition fees and as an aid to mobility, and so on.

Doubts surrounding the Bologna Process have generated uneasiness among students all over Europe

The government of the Spanish state has promised on numerous occasions a share of the budget will be made available to confront the changes that have been undertaken due to the adoption of the EHEA. In reality, this has not taken place. Catalan universities are putting the Bologna Process into action without having received the additional financing they were promised.

Assuming that the possibility of converging with the rest of the European universities could be achieved at no expense is hypocritical The problems generated by the application of the EHEA are not exclusively economic or related to its financCatalan International View

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Dossier The Bologna Process

ing. The way in which the process has been put into action has also had many shortcomings.

It is worth stating clearly that every state has full responsibility for organising its own education system and, therefore, the manner in which it chooses to adopt the new model. The European Union has merely limited itself to issuing some directives as to what the EHEA should be, without them being legally binding.

A solid system of public finance would guarantee education and research is offered on purely humanistic, social and scientific grounds In the case of the Spanish state, the manner in which it has gone about adapting university qualifications to the EHEA has been deplorable right from the outset. The reform process was begun late, hurriedly and conducted exclusively from ministerial offices that issued their corresponding Royal Decrees. The process has been conducted with secrecy and without consulting or counting on the participation of the university community who are the principal object of the changes.

In a comparison with the rest of the countries that are carrying out the reform, Spain appears at the bottom of the league table when considering indicators such as the date on which the scheme was adopted, its adherence to proposed deadlines, student participation in the process, changes in the credit system, compatibility and accepting agreements between the old and new systems, modifications in the grant system and so on. Moreover, the Spanish state has opted for the 4+1 model, 82

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whereas the vast majority of European states have opted for the 3+2 (3 years for a graduate course and two for a post-graduate). This option is particularly negative, negating as it does one of the main attractions of the Bologna model, the increased potential for student mobility derived from the standardisation of courses.

Meanwhile the universities have continued to respect the Royal Decrees and orders they receive from the Ministry of Science and Innovation on how they are to prepare the ground for the new university context. None of them have shown any disagreement with the lack of transparency in the process.

The universities, via their governing bodies (chancellor’s office, boards of faculties and study councils) attempted to explain what Bologna would mean and attempted to initiate a consultative process and debate within the universities themselves. However, these proved to be completely sterile as none of the contributions by students or academic staff had any impact on the way in which the EHEA was applied.

All of these deficiencies have led to numerous student protests against the Bologna Process, under the slogan ‘NO to Bologna’. This call on behalf of part of the student body is entirely legitimate since the process has been carried out very badly. Our opinions have not been taken into account. Nevertheless, such protests no longer make any sense, as the implantation of the EHEA is now a reality. At this stage it is too late for a moratorium on the process. The process cannot be halted because the universities are already carrying out the transition. Now we can only take advantage of the few channels that are still open to us, the students, in order to make ourselves heard.

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The ‘NO to Bologna’ slogan has been the banner under which have gathered those who are generally dissatisfied with the situation in the universities. The slogan has not, however, identified the root of the problems and has not managed to apportion the blame due to the principal actors in the process: the state, the Generalitat and the universities. Assuming that blame for all of the universities’ problems can be laid at the door of Bologna is naive.

The ‘NO to Bologna’ campaign also encapsulated other problems that had previously existed for some time.

The threat of privatisation of the universities, the introduction of market principles and the elitisation of higher education, along with the loss of autonomy, as outlined by the ‘anti-Bologna’ lobby, are threats that also existed before the EHEA. As a result, we must be meticulous when it comes to apportioning advantages and disadvantages to the new model.

The EHEA, as it applies to Catalunya in particular, generates a degree of reticence in some of us. The internationalisation of Catalan universities could put at risk the Catalan language, when it is faced with a possible cultural and linguistic homogeneity as part of the convergence process. If this is the case, the Generalitat de Catalunya and the universities themselves should be charged with protecting and guaranteeing Catalan’s standardisation within this new European framework.

The Bologna Process should be seen as a golden opportunity for Cata-

lan universities. To say ‘no’ to Bologna would be a ‘no’ to European convergence and therefore, a mistake. Nevertheless, the adoption of the EHEA could turn out to be a disaster if universities do not have the necessary resources at hand to put it into practice. The lack of financing of Catalan public universities is due to a lack of political will and social priority by central government in Madrid.

The situation is aggravated by the fiscal expropriation to which the Catalan Countries are subject on behalf of the Spanish state. The lack of financing is the greatest menace for Catalan universities and the EHEA could further worsen the situation.

A solid system of public finance would allow the employment of more academic staff, the undertaking of the necessary investment for the correct application of the EHEA, the preservation of the autonomy of the university system, while guaranteeing that education and research is offered on purely humanistic, social and scientific grounds.

The transfer to the Generalitat’s hands of a good system of grants that are fair and egalitarian for Catalunya, would guarantee equality of opportunity, the absence of discrimination against students for economic reasons and access to quality, public higher education for all.

If Catalan universities do not have the necessary funding then we indeed should agree with the ‘NO to Bologna’ campaign and its stance on the ghosts of privatisation, the introduction of market principles and the elitisation of the university system.

*Sergi Rubió i Pinyol Student at the Universitat de Barcelona and president of the FNEC (National Student Federation of Catalunya).

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Dossier The Bologna Process

Bologna, much ado about nothing

by Antoni Bosch-Domènech*

Let me begin with a prediction: the Bologna Process will end up mostly unnoticed. Everything of any importance in the Spanish university system will continue as ever, while some make up will be applied to the sideshows. This is an easy prediction to make because the Spanish/Catalan university system possesses such inertia that changing course requires a strong political will that is not on the radar screen. If you are somewhat nervous about the reform, just imagine the university system as if it were a fully-laden oil tanker. The storm that goes by the name of Bologna will pass and HMS University will continue on its course.

Having said this, let me now elaborate on some important details. In the first instance, the Bologna proposal was an attempt to standardise European university programmes in terms of the duration of study, with the aim of facilitating the mobility of both students and faculty among countries. Unfortunately, since the aim had its merits, the Spanish Ministry of Education decided Spain should be different. While the majority of European countries agreed that the first university degree would represent three years of study, in Spain it was set at four years. An explanation as to why the Ministry of Education decided to put our students at a distinct disadvantage is by the by. Nevertheless, one can imagine that the usual suspects were behind such a decision.

If Bologna had focussed on facilitating the international mobility of students and faculty, it would have been a great step forward A second observation: the pedagogues soon got on the reform bandwagon. We could have done without them, but in our country such experts 84

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seem to have a direct line to the politicians’ ear. You only have to look at the plethora of educational reforms in the last twenty years, at all levels and with the results we can see around us.

Bologna did not require changing the teaching methodology but in Spain when they do something they do it thoroughly. It is true, and we don’t have to hide it, that university education, broadly speaking, has traditionally been a disaster, the result of a tacit agreement between teachers and students: if you don’t demand much from me, I won’t demand much from you. Obviously, such a strongly rooted culture does not disappear overnight with the enforcement of new teaching methodologies.

New methods barely disguise old habits, especially when these methods are more expensive (much more time is required to apply them and therefore more lecturers are needed) and no extra money is available.

Finally, some groups, from young radicals to nostalgic elders, have joined the brawl. The resulting demonstrations would be of little significance were it not for the fact that they have brought to light how the authorities, whether academic or political (with

Towards the European Higher Education Area?

some exceptions), fail to carry out their responsibilities and permit some forms of behaviour that are unacceptable in a civilised society. This has been especially so in Catalunya.

If Bologna had focussed on facilitating the international mobility of students and faculty, it would have been a great step forward. With a university system that is generally mediocre, it is crucial that students go abroad to study. With a rigid labour market that provides little on-the-job training, it is important that professionals leave and work abroad (many after all end up returning, and they do so better-trained).

However, the Bologna reform in Spain wanted to achieve more and has ended up doing less, while showing that the Catalan/Spanish university culture allows little cause for celebration.

Whenever the reform of the Catalan/Spanish university system occurs, it will be the result of a change in incen-

tives, both for faculty and students. As long as the core group of faculty consists of civil servants chosen by a system that is often incestuous and offers a homogenous career structure that fails to distinguish between good researchers/ lecturers and bad ones, as long as students receive a significant grant to cover tuition costs, whether they are good or bad students, whether they are able to pay or not (some 90% of the cost of each student is paid directly by the public via taxes), as long as society fails to distinguish between a good faculty/ department and a bad one and parents continue to send their offspring to the nearest university rather than to the best, as long as a Ministry of Universities exists that ensures the uniformity of the system, and as long as ignoring the public-private dichotomy continues to be anathema, as long as all these continue unchanged, the reform which goes by the name of Bologna will be nothing more than a shrewd invention to make us waste our time. *Antoni Bosch-Domènech

PhD from the University of Minnesota, Professor of Economics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and barcelona Graduate School of Economics. His field of research is experimental and behavioural Economics. He has written articles for American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, among others.

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85

Green Debate

Energy: by hiding the problems, we won’t find the solutions

by Pere Torres*

It is only natural that when we are experiencing an intense crisis, priorities shift. The poverty of many families and the vulnerable position businesses find themselves in become the centre of political and social attention. As a result, some questions of extreme relevance take second place, as if they were no longer of such importance. This has been the case with the debate surrounding oil. Panicked by its astronomical price, Western leaders have done everything possible to drum up votes to decrease their countries’ dependency, increase the efficiency of their economies and promote alternative energy sources. Now that oil prices have fallen substantially (historically speaking, it would not be correct to say the price is low, but compared with the situation of a few months ago the difference is staggering), such preoccupations seem less pressing.

While the reaction has been understandable, it is worth keeping in mind that the underlying context remains unchanged. We continue to have an economy that is overly dependent on oil. Although the price of this fossil fuel has decreased due to a drop in demand, it is because the economy has weakened, not because we have lost our addiction.

Consequently, when the economy once more picks up, consumption will once again increase and, presumably, so too will the price of oil. In this respect, therefore, the proposals made before the crisis are still valid during the crisis. What is more, we should take advantage of this time to give them extra impetus, at least in the basic decisions related to the energy model.

Energy consumption has always increased throughout the history of 86

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humanity. Economic crises have represented a break with this tendency, even to the point of producing temporary decreases, but they have not altered the underlying trend. Population growth, accompanied by an increase in people’s purchasing power are the two most powerful factors. As long as this double expansion does not cease, increased energy demand is guaranteed.

For this reason, it is worth insisting on the need to reformulate the energy model in order not to repeat the errors made 35 years ago. At the time of the oil crisis, many countries saw what was happening and initiated projects and studies in order to increase energy efficiency and to find alternatives to oil. The first investigations into the production of biofuels from seaweed date from this time, for example. When oil prices fell

Green Debate

once more and fears of its scarcity declined, the funds dedicated to research also dissipated. This pattern seems to be repeating itself: Laurence Caramel, writing in Le Monde on the 19th March of this year, reported that in the last six months the funding for biofuel had decreased six-fold. The Spanish government, on the other hand, has changed the regulatory framework relating to renewable energy: almost everyone agrees that the new situation makes the expansion of wind and solar power incredibly difficult. Whereas before there was help, now there is only hindrance.

Why is this? It is because political decisions are more influenced by attempts to halt increases in electricity tariffs and they accept the erroneous premise that electricity production from renewable sources is more expensive (in comparison to conventional production).

We need to reformulate the energy model in order not to repeat the errors made 35 years ago during the oil crisis As I stated earlier, the recession has led to a reinterpretation of all prior decisions relating to energy production.

Simultaneously, the majority of political world leaders proclaim that we need to construct a more sustainable economy.

Undoubtedly, an unavoidable condition for a sustainable economy is having an energy model that is radically different from the one that accompanied us throughout the twentieth century and that helped to generate so much prosperity. It does not mean we need to declare undying love for renewable energy and stimulating certain lines of investment. Neither does it mean saying Catalan International View

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Green Debate

that one day all vehicles will be electric or hybrid and applauding the use of bicycles in cities. Nor does it mean expressing confidence in hydrogen fuel cells as being a brilliant solution at an uncertain time in the future. On the contrary, it requires the realisation that oil must give up its prime position as an energy source to others that do not create the same problems. Essentially the problems are its non-renewable nature, high levels of price instability due to market fluctuations and its contribution to the emission of greenhouse gases and atmospheric pollutants. At the same time it is clear that we want alternative energy sources to offer us the same advantages: being low-cost and accessible, with easy power generation and distribution.

This rethinking of the energy model requires a broad debate, one in which civil society should be involved, and a broad political consensus in order to ensure continuity Faced with this situation, devotees of one option or another emerge. There are essentially three alternatives: those in favour of nuclear energy, those who prefer a combination of wind and solar and supporters of biofuels. The last two often go hand in hand, the former accounting for electrical generation and the latter for energy for transport. It is logical that each sector promotes the virtues it has to offer. Nevertheless, this rethinking of the energy model requires a broad debate, one in which civil society should be involved. Political parties also need to express a desire for consensus, thus ensuring energy policies are maintained in spite of changes in leadership.

We need to keep in mind that the model will only be adopted slowly (due 88

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to the nature of the process) and we need to ensure that it gives a satisfactory answer to energy demand over a long period. To this end we need to proceed with caution, avoiding the temptation to be seduced by false promises and evaluating the pros and cons of the various candidates in order that they fulfil the optimum role. It is vital that we recognise that every option has its advantages and disadvantages.

Nuclear power offers continuous production, without the emission of greenhouse gases or significant levels of atmospheric pollution, but it represents a risk to its surroundings, demands very rigorous management and, as yet, does not have an acceptable means of dealing with its waste products. If it were to become widespread, raw materials, specialised technicians and private investors would probably all be in short supply. This is without mentioning its rejection by society and spurious uses to which the technology may be put.

Wind and solar power are renewable, do not contribute to climate change or pollute when they are in use, they decrease dependence on external supplies and offer the possibility of individual units or large energy farms.

On the other hand, they do not provide uninterrupted energy; their energy efficiency is still very low (especially photovoltaic power) and can occupy a lot of land, a shortcoming that has led to opposition movements.

Biofuels allow for the replacement of fossil fuels (partially or totally) and would therefore leave the existing distribution system intact. What is more, they come from renewable crops or organic waste that are better distributed on a global scale. Potential problems are that excessive haste might favour biofuels from crops that compete with those destined for consumption, that

Green Debate

their balance of greenhouse gas emissions versus energy efficiency is not good enough, and that they fail to free us from the ills of atmospheric contamination.

What is more, it also makes little sense to think that oil is finished and that coal and gas will disappear along with it.

In short, there is no panacea to the problem, which is why we are experiencing this situation of general uncertainty. This brings us to the need to open up an intensive, extensive, sociopolitical debate that might help build a consensus based on widely shared premises. These principles would indicate how much we are prepared to pay to achieve certain benefits.

Nevertheless, the debate cannot solely be limited to evaluating the energy alternatives themselves. It must also include other pertinent questions: the quality and extent of transport networks, the structure of electricity generation (more macro and centralised, or more micro and distributed), energy pricing policies, the cost of externalities, the redistribution of decisionmaking power at different levels of the

administration, the redefining of public and private roles and the development of technology.

In short, there are a plethora of elements and we need to choose well when it comes to deciding on the different possible combinations. There is so much at stake (the workings of the economy and our quality of life), that it must not be a technocratic decision, divorced from its social implications.

It is not easy, in other words. While there is still oil available at a relatively low price, we feel more comfortable ignoring a debate that could prove to be awkward, in which some interests stand to lose out. The viewpoint of each group needs to be redrawn without the usual jockeying for position.

Optimists say that an economic downturn can bring benefits if it serves to force people to take measures that, under other circumstances, would be difficult to swallow. The opposite might occur in this case, however: that the crisis serves as an excuse for delaying decisions that by their nature must not be delayed. If this were the case, instead of working to get out of the crisis, we would essentially be working to prepare the next one. *Pere Torres

Biologist and environmental consultant. After some time spent on research (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), he joined the Government of Catalunya 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 Cerdà Institute.

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A Short Story from History

The House of Lords and the ‘Case of the Catalans’

by Manuel Manonelles i Tarragó

In April 1714, the House of Lords devoted several of their plenary sessions to what became to be known as the ‘Case of the Catalans’.

In the context of the Spanish Succession War (1701-1713), that indeed became a fully European war, Catalunya had taken the side of the House of Habsburg over the

Eight years later many things had changed. The ‘Balance of Power’ in Europe had dramatically changed, the Bourbon successor –Philip Vwas safely installed on the Spanish throne in Madrid and the Catalans were betrayed by the English ministers in the peace negotiations at Utrecht (1713). Against all expectations, and faced with a vastly superior army, the Catalan institutions decided to stand against King Philip, and defend their constitutional system and freedoms at the highest price.

Lord Halifax, one of the Catalans’ stronger supporters during the debates in the House of Lords

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House of Bourbon for several reasons, a central one being the Treaty of Genoa, signed in this Italian republic in 1705 between the Catalan delegates and the plenipotentiary agent of Queen Anne of England.

In the treaty, Catalunya’s entry into the war was agreed on condition that it received logistical support from England, with a special emphasis on England ensuring the defence of the Catalan historical Constitutional system, whatever the outcome of the war.

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Detail of the House of Lords in the early 18th century from a painting by Peter Tillemans

and debates: The Case of the Catalans Considered, and The Deplorable History of the Catalans.

Moreover, that the Catalans counted on the sympathy of a relevant part of the British society is clear from these contemporary verses by Ambrose Philips:

To this end, the Catalans sent ambassadors to the main courts of Europe, in particular to London, to call on the Queen and her government to make effective the relevant articles of the Genoa Treaty. Given the reluctance of the ministers to effectively honour their promises and pacts, the issue ended in the House of Lords, which resulted in a series of strong, heated debates that surprised the Tory government, which was obliged to manoeuvre in order not to lose its majority in the House.

Indeed, in those early days of British political journalism, two anonymous pamphlets devoted to the case appeared in London and warmed up the political intrigues

“Catalans, who for your freedom strive, And in your shatter’d bulwarks yet survive, For you alone, worthy a better fate, O, may this happy change not come too late!”

Nevertheless, this was not enough, and as the English historian Tindal wrote in 1745: “The Catalans, thus abandoned and given up to their enemies, contrary to faith and honour, were not however, wanting to their own defence; but appealing to Heaven, and hanging up at the High Altar the Queen’s solemn declaration to protect them, underwent the utmost miseries of a siege; during which multitudes perished by famine and the sword, many were afterwards executed, and many persons of figure were dispersed about the Spanish Dominions and dungeons.”

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The Artist

Enric Pladevall The Voice of L’Olivar

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The Artist

Pladevall regards many of his pieces as landmarks or signposts, creating spaces around them, which command and focus our attention. With these pieces we establish an almost territorial relationship. To a certain extent, for Pladevall, sculpture is a game; a meaningful game, both imaginary and real which, since it requires our presence and our participation, becomes the setting for experience.

Together with the intuited space and object, in which is situated the conscious subject, is another essential dimension: time, which for Pladevall is deeply personal. It comes as no surprise that for him the spindle, an elongated shape fattening in the middle, is a type of archetypal form. While it may at times make us think of an eye, with connotations of sight and knowledge, in a more di-

rect way it reminds us of Velázquez’s spinners and harks back to the mythological fates spinning the threads of human destiny.

His most recent works amply demonstrate his repertoire of artistic skills derived from his masterly technique – from the refinement of the patinas and colours he uses, to the violence of sawcuts. The apertures and shadowy fissures in his pieces often fascinate with organic and corporeal resonances. At times they are hollows containing a type of seed. Pladevall’s sculptures hold something inside. Their physicality is not dark material; it lets us intuit a living and breathing interior. Àlex Mitrani

Ausiàs Marc, 22 08010 Barcelona Tel. +34 93 481 79 85 www.fundaciovilacasas.com

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

LOVERS Never were there in València two lovers like us.

We loved ferociously, from morn ‘til night.

I recall everything, as you hang out the clothes.

Years have passed, many years: many things have happened.

Suddenly that wind, or love, seizes me still And we roll on the ground amidst embraces and kisses.

We do not know love as a loving custom, As a quiet custom of politeness and finery (and may the chaste López-Picó pardon us).

Love, It awakens suddenly, like an old hurricane, It throws us to the ground, it joins us together, Squeezing us tightly.

Sometimes I desired a courteous love, With the gramophone on, kissing you idly, Now a shoulder, next an ear lobe.

Our love is a brusque and savage love And we feel a bitter yearning for the earth, Of rolling upside down amidst kisses and clutches.

I’ll say it clear. Primal, ... I know it.

We ignore Petrarch’s work, we ignore many things.

The stanzas of Riba, the rhymes of Bécquer.

Afterwards, lying somehow on the ground, We realise that we are barbarous, that this may not be, We are not in the right age, and this and that.

Never were there in València two lovers like us, Lovers like us are just not born!

(Translation by Jack H. Smith, Professor Emeritus at the University at Albany, NY )

Vicent Andrés Estellés (Burjassot, l’Horta, 1924 – València, 1993) was a poet and journalist. A prolific writer, his poetry deals with everyday life in a vital, impassioned way. In Joan Fuster’s sharp depiction, ‘The subjects of Vicent Andrés Estellés, when reduced to their very essence, have the elemental nakedness of everyday life: hunger, sex and death’. Among his vast poetical output Les pedres de l’àmfora (Stones from the Amphora) stands out, the second volume of his Obra Completa, which won two awards, Lletra d’Or (1974) and Crítica Serra d’Or (1975). Also noteworthy are two works devoted to València: Llibre de meravelles (Book of Marvels) and Coral romput (Broken Chorus). He was awarded the Premi d’Honor de les Lletres Catalanes (1978) and the Premi de les Lletres Valencianes (1984).

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