Exploring Buenos Aires

I have some trips in the backlog, so I'll start with this one that I did in September/October. I was in Argentina in the Iguazu area only, so I consider this to be the first time I really visited.

This time I went to Buenos Aires, for a month, to help with the Youth Olympics.

For starters, in this trip I was working, and because there were not enough people I worked a lot. I only had 1 single free day every 4 or 5, which means that this free day you need to do a lot of things together that you could distribute better if you had a full “weekend” or 2 days in a row. Also, this meant I would only visit the city, a trip further away would be complicated. And there was one more thing, one of my best friends was working there and I was going to visit her too and do things together, which means less time overall to do touristic things.

Nevertheless, I managed to get some impressions from this city and country and to see a bit of the things that were around me.

Buenos Aires seems…European. Maybe it´s the architecture or how the streets are organised, but the centre of the city reminded me of Madrid, or Paris a bit maybe, and also some Eastern European cities. It looked very different from Rio, but then again, I did not visit any other big city in Brazil, so maybe it´s not that different. The only thing is that you do notice the poverty, in the fact that buildings and streets look dirtier, more abandoned, less maintained.

I was staying in the centre of the city, in a massive square that contained the parliament, and where there were daily protests for any topic. However, this was the norm, so I never felt the protests were a problem or disturbed me. The hotel itself was like 2 minutes from work, which was great because I had morning shifts starting at 6:30. However at this day and age, there´s a thing that any hotel that wants to be respected must have: good internet coverage while in the room, be it cable or wifi. Sadly, my room didn’t have. The wifi lost signal plenty of times or it was too weak to use, to the point of not being able to send whatsapp messages. Especially when travelling this is a big deal breaker, and even after warning about it they said they could not do anything.

Anyway, being so centric allowed me to be near several nice spots, one of them being the same square I mentioned. It was big and usually sunny and felt quite relaxing. I also was at walking distance from the Obelisk, a big monument in the centre where there was celebrations and protests, and that looked nice too.

Apart from those scenic places, I did the tourism I enjoy more, which is to just randomly walk around and get a feel of the city.

As I said the centre reminded me of certain cities in Europe, but there was a lot more poverty, and you could see clearly homeless people. However, you didn’t feel the insecurity of Rio. Later I learned that this might have been not entirely correct (I heard shootings, twice, once right next to the office while we were on the roof of the building and some coworkers saw the shooter shoot against a house and leave), but in Rio a lot of the homeless people looked like on drugs, while here they just looked homeless.

Close to this hotel there was a big street filled with theatres. A friend that also lived in the city meet with me one day and showed me this area, and it was shocking the amount of shows and actors and events that were on display. I had heard lots of Spanish actors and musicians toured south-america in general a lot more than Spain, but before seeing this I may not have understood the true scope of such things in Argentina at least. Maybe in Barcelona or Madrid there are as many theatres, but in here the way they accumulated so many in such a small area was quite surprising. A bit further there was another beautiful section, Puerto Madero, next to the sea. I saw it at night, and with the lights it had it was very nice. 

My friend lived in an area called Palermo, so when we coincided we walked around there too. This felt more similar to Ipanema actually, had amazing restaurants and bars and was less centric-looking and more relaxed, very nice. We went a couple of times to a nearby restaurant strip that had very nice food and amazing cocktails, and we could see the night atmosphere, with people ready to go out. However, with the limited time we had, we didn’t really go out while in there, or at least no to clubs: It seems most places in Argentina were just playing “cumbia” music, and after seeing some examples we agreed we both despised it, especially her considering she had spent there some months already before me. Only one night we tried to go out, and the place we tried was busy with a private event and told us anyway we had to dress up more nicely, meaning a suit and a dress (and after that we hated it and would not like to go back there).

We worked too much these days to do much more, but we did have the chance to use a bit the fact that we work for such events, and we visited several stadiums around the Sarmiento park and Tecnopolis. This area was used to hold several competitions, and it looked curious. I'm unsure how Tecnopolis is used normally, seemed to me some type of science museum/exposition area, but it had funny statues and structures. Of course we had full access and we skipped queues and restricted areas, which makes you feel a bit special and good^^. This event is smaller than a normal Olympic of course, but it was organised in a way that there were plenty of people following the different competitions and it had a very nice and friendly atmosphere.

All in all, the month passed too fast because of work, and didn't get to see much, but what I saw was nice. It did had its problems though, of bad service sometimes, bad taxi drivers, massification in the centre, poverty, some lack of general maintenance of public things and other issues, but for a visit it felt like a relaxed place and I enjoyed it (when I had free time).

Ah! I cannot finish without mentioning a couple of things: Yes, the food was...weird. The beef they have there is really really good, but the cooking style is a bit weird, a bit too well-done for my taste. And they have a lot of fat food, heavy, with butter and sauces and oil. Or sweet, that's the other thing, they eat a lot of sweet things in the morning (facturas), and the alfajores and dulce de leche are awesome but they're digestive bombs (that didn't stop me from coming back with close to 6kg of the things). And the last thing: Argentina and elevators had a weird relationship. Lots of them are old, badly maintained and fragile-looking. I was stuck in an elevator, twice, in this month. It has never happened before in my life I think and here it happened twice. One of the times we even had to get out forcing the doors open while it was stuck between two floors, which was a bit scary but also a bit funny.

It was a short and busy visit overall, but I'd be curious to see more some other time if there's another chance. 

Intolerance is the way

Lately I keep seeing posts and comments,  especially on facebook, about respecting all ideas and positions.

Fuck that.

Let me elaborate: Karl Poppe indicated that there is a paradox on tolerance. The idea is that a society that is tolerant of intolerance has the risk of becoming intolerant, since the intolerants can become majority and destroy this tolerance.

I'm not an expert on all the nuances here, but I agree with the general principle. The idea is that there are positions that are not defensible, and that if there's people that won't consider rationality at all, their positions should not be allowed as viable.

The thing here is about extremes of course, and I would say that a good indication  is any position that ask for repression, internment or death of any group of innocent people.

So,for example, in lots of areas of the world there's this growth of extreme right wing supporters. Bolsonario in Brazil, Trump and the Alt right in USA, lots of different parties in Europe, etc. (Spain doesn't count, the 2 main right wing parties are directly fascists, so extremism didn't grow, it just never left after the dictatorship. Fascists won and conquered Spain and until it is taken from their hands and they're properly defeated, we'll have this issue).

These parties and people are the type that, for example, defend that LGTBs cannot marry, makes laws that are bad for them and allows discrimination as a "right" they have of not liking them. They are also very anti-immigrant and racist, anti-women and anti-cultures that are not the state-approved ones. They´re very conservative and plenty of times religious, but only of their religion of course.

So in these cases, the "I don't agree with you but will defend your right to say it" does not apply. There's no "need to accept all different opinions". It´s not a matter of "subjectivity". It´s not about "agree to disagree" and leave it at that.

Nazism and fascism needs just one answer, which is brutal repression, intolerance to such ideas and no apology for hating extreme right bastards. In Germany, for example,  doing the nazi salute gets you arrested. I fully agree with this.

What some people that try to be moderate and reasonable fail to see is two main points in here. The first one is that this is a tactic from the extreme right. When establishing your position, if you know most people that consider themselves moderate will try a compromise, if you´re inflexible and extreme, the middle ground will become a lot more to the right than what should be allowed. If your standard position is "kill all gays", for example, a moderate might feel that a balanced outcome is to allow not hiring gay people at work or not providing services to gay people. The extreme right, and the right in general actually, have been moving the extreme more and more to the right for years. The result is that "moderate" ideas now are actually clearly from the right. So the right answer when someone says "kill or imprison all gays" (or something to that effect), after maybe spending a few seconds trying to reason and double-checking the mental sanity, is to ban the bastard from participating in politics and conversations, and arresting them for good measure.

The second point that "moderates" fail to see is that the two positions are not equal. When a politician says that "women should stay at home and in the kitchen", to put another example, being against this is not "subjective". You see, in this point you can agree, or don´t. The thing is agreeing to this limits the freedom of women and represses them, so if women call the person on their misogynistic bullshit, you cannot say it´s just another point of view: This will directly harm women. Therefore, it is perfectly valid to not allow this type of ideas in political discourse, any party that defends this should be just banned and be done with it. Again, it's not a matter of opinion, one side gets harmed with this position while the other does not: when this happens, the side not harmed has no right to defend this opinion. And this is in no way the same as some religious bastard saying that it "harms" their idea of religion. It´s the basic difference between victim and oppressor, between attacking a person or defending yourself. A person defending themselves does not share the same level of guilt as the person attacking, doesn't matter the outcome. And it's impossible to be moderate and reach a middle ground when one side wants to exist and the other side wants to basically kill you or deny the fact that you exist.

Related to that, being indifferent to such behaviour and ideas is also not acceptable. If someone is an abuser, an homophobe, a violent person, supporting them means that even if you're not these things actively, you think it's fine or not a big deal. So accepting an homophobe as a candidate or voting for them makes you one too,even if you would not directly do something else homophobic. Again, fascism was, and is,a problem not becasue of the minority that is directly violent, but because there was a silent majority that accepted those things and considered it the new normal. 

So, summarizing, fuck that. Fuck fascists, and fuck dictators. It is perfectly reasonable to try and not allow such options to even exists in politics,and to confront anyone defending such ideas and trying to be moderate or defending it as "just another opinion". To put it bluntly so it gets into the skull of some people , would you consider it just "another opinion" if i'd vote for the party that wants to straight-up murder your family? 

So no, not all opinions should be tolerated.

Looking at you, Brazil.

New President

Time for a bit of a political rant. Haven't commented on the latest developments in a while...

So, to sum it up, after referendum, the Catalan government didn't really have a plan and after messing with different options and waiting to see if Spain wanted to negotiate, they declared independence but were unable to actually implement it. Right afterwards, the Spanish government suspended the Catalan autonomy as per article 155 of the Constitution, but actually didn't implement it as it was written and just did as they pleased, mentioning that what was done before was unconstitutional while not following it themselves. They also started to arrest these politicians on charges of violent revolt and other such bullshit (the violence came from the Spanish police, ordered to do so). Some people went to prison, some people ran away to some other European countries.

The Spanish government sent arrest warrants for the people living in Europe, and for the moment European countries have looked at them and correctly indicated that the charge makes no sense, there's no equivalent charge on their countries and let the people go free. Spanish "patriots" have accused Europe of lack of collaboration, but basically the rest of Europe has a better grasp of what a democracy means and how powers need to be separated. Also it seems Europe made Spain control a bit more what they were doing with the article 155 and forced new Catalan elections instead of ruling Catalunya indefinitely.

Catalan parties had a lot of infighting, elections happened, pro-independence candidates still won the majority of the parliament, nothing was solved whatsoever apart from repressing conversations about independence and Spain and their fascist groups starting an escalation of repression, accusing anyone who criticised for example the behaviour of policemen during the referendum as supporting terrorism and hate speech.

In general, it was shitty. Spain did what was expected by many (but surprisingly enough, not expected by Catalan rulers) and devolved into a totalitarian cesspit regarding this matter, and Catalunya did nothing whatsoever and just complied.

The Spanish government also launched an offensive against free speech and separation of powers, accusing and condemning with jail singers, artists or people that made any criticisms to the king and so on.

Here we need to clarify again the parties involved in all this:

PP: The Spanish right-extreme right, heirs of fascism (really. Their founder was a minister during the fascist dictatorship. Most party members are sons and daughters of fascist politicians. Some current members voted and talked against the Spanish constitution), supporters of fascist behaviour and repression, very corrupt, very conservative party. When all this happened, they were the government.

PSOE: The Spanish fake left, actually moderate right/centre. Quite corrupt and old-fashioned, defends some leftist ideas (same-sex marriage, abortion, a bit less repression....) while being completely pro-capitalism and free market, and controlled by the major Spanish corporations. They supported PP without doubts regarding how to act in Catalunya and how to repress people, and didn't criticise this.

Ciudadanos: PP version 2, new party even more to the right of PP, based on hating Catalunya and Catalan culture while defending "Spain's sacred unity" and also saying PP is too nice with the workers and we should have even less rights and more privatisations. While not evidently corrupt yet, they have protected PP and PSOE in the most corrupt areas that the old parties controlled, and while having a belligerent discourse with PP, they have been their main supporters during these years of government. They're also controlled by the major corporations and most Spanish press also supports them shamelessly, since it's the major corporation's solution to clean the right of evident corruption by moving votes from PP to Ciudadanos and not losing control of Spain. Their only complaint regarding what has been done in Catalunya by PP is that repression hasn't been hard enough. They tell evident lies with a straight face and have a neo-fascist rhetoric.

Podemos/Comuns/Izquierda unida: New parties created from the Spanish protests against the corrupt system plus the old communist party. They defend good ideas and present a lot of nice initiatives to the parliament. However, they have done mistakes and judgement errors, while also not being consequent with their words sometimes, although they have a much higher moral ground than the other 3 previous parties. Regarding Catalunya, they didn't understand properly the situation nor the problem nor the origin of the independence movement. Since the independent movement includes one party from the right that is also corrupt and has done plenty of shitty things, they tend to attack independence from this angle as if it was only this party's idea and also accusing the other independence parties of joining and helping this corrupt party. Their public position is that independence parties did something as bad as the repressive forces (PP, PSOE, Ciudadanos), and even accused them of "awakening" the dormant Spanish fascism (same argument as saying the woman in a rape is at fault for dressing slutty). However, they're the only ones with a decent program that could improve things in Spain at this point. The cities ruled by them (Madrid and Barcelona for example) have managed to reduce their debt greatly, reduce the power of the bigger companies and lobbies, reduce corruption and increase the budgets dedicated to social help.

Rest of the parties: Here we include independence parties, basc country parties and other more regional parties from other sections of Spain.

Now, back to the explanation....

During all this repression, PP Ciutadans and PSOE were applying the article 155 where they dissolved Catalunya's autonomy and repressed people and ideas. Because of last election, these 3 parties together control more than half of the parliament, and the other parties did not have decisive influence.

However, in other topics, it was harder to agree. PP was ruling but didn't have enough representatives to rule alone. Adding Ciutadans, they still fell short of absolute majority, and there were several topics that they had to pact with other right-wing formations from the rest of the parties, and also rely on PSOE maybe not voting with them bus abstaining to vote. I mention this to indicate that they were being maintained in a position of power by  Ciutadans and PSOE too.

While all this happened, every day new people from PP were being accused and arrested regarding corruption charges. This had not impacted PP much actually, but  one of these cases was rather big, the Gurtel case, a corruption case involving several high members of PP. PP manoeuvred from the government to move judges that were more neutral away from this case and put judges that had participated or supported PP in the past, quite like a mafia. Still it seems it was not enough, and the final verdict was taken last week. The verdict condemned several high positions inside PP, but also officially condemned PP as a whole, as a party, as a criminal organisation kind of, as having reaped the economic benefits of this corruption.

In any other country with democratic tradition, PP members would have resigned already long before this from all the corruption cases and irregular financing that were open against them. However that's not the Spanish way, and even after this verdict, nobody resigned.

Still, the scandal was too big. Ciutadans wanted to retire support and request new elections, knowing they were stealing votes form PP and they would have more representatives this time. PSOE instead directly opened a no-confidence motion, proposing to remove the current PP Spanish president and put a PSOE president and government. Ciutadans didn't agree to that and did not support it, but Podemos went with it unconditionally, because they though removing PP from power was a priority. However, even with Podemos support, the number of representatives between these two was also not enough on their own and they needed the smaller parties too.

The doubt was about the rest of the parties, which includes independence parties. They had been mistreated by PSOE too. Some people even said that PSOE was counting on not getting their support, so nothing happened while pretending to do something. However, almost everyone agreed, PP was much, much worse. So these parties voted to put the PSOE leader as the new Spanish president.

PSOE is still an old party. PSOE is still corrupt. PSOE is still in favour of how article 155 was applied. PSOE is still controlled by the big corporations. Podemos doesn't forget that, or at least some of its people do not. The independence parties do not forget that.

However, PSOE is not PP. PSOE is not Ciudadanos. PSOE is a stepping stone into a path to move to a more progressive situation.

PSOE will be forced, in order to keep votes, to agree with progressive proposals made by Podemos. PSOE will be forced, in order to pass laws, to talk with independence parties sometimes. And also very important, PP, PSOE and Ciudadanos, the parties of repressions, of the article 155, the parties against voting (not even independence, just against voting), the parties that are trying to keep the current Spanish corrupt repressive status quo, are infighting, fucking each other and disagreeing.

So, PSOE is not good. PSOE is not a beacon of hope. PSOE  will not regenerate anything or allow progress to happen.....on its own.

However, in this situation, PSOE is good news. For the moment.

100 times better than PP or Ciutadans, that's for sure.

Relaxing in Gold Coast

After Korea, I worked for a month more or less in Gold Coast, Australia, for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Gold Coast is a coastal city in east Australia, close enough to the equator that it has tropical weather and with what is basically a huge continuous beach all along the coast. I went there at the end of "Summer"/beginning of "Autumn", which means it was hot and sunny and also rainy sometimes, but like in brutally intense and short showers.

What I mean is that after a cold long Korean winter, it was paradise. It was warm, calm, beautiful, and also very much occidental. It had it's peculiarities and it was not perfect, but it felt pretty much great.

We were staying in this area of tourist apartments, that had a nice pool and sun. The apartments were quite good and we were close to the tourist going out area, Surfer's Paradise (that's how the neighbourhood is called). This area was also next to the beach, although there were nicer beach sections further away.

Work-wise, we were busy and doing things, but because of the scope of the project and the previous work done for Pyeongchang, it was a lot less tense, the workload was smaller and we didn't have to do night shifts, just afternoon shifts. This means there was a lot of time to visit, enjoy the sun and relax before and after work.

The city has a region called Surfer's paradise because the whole region is ideal for surfing. There are very strong and big waves all across the coast, and inside the water the current is crazy strong. I swam several times in the sea and it was really funny, I always kept myself in areas where I touched the ground but it was fun to let waves crash against you and push you away, or notice how the current was also almost making you fall. The only thing is that the allowed swimming areas were very small, marked between two special flags. This was to avoid surfers hitting you and have a very clear supervised area, where you could be very safe. However it felt sometimes like a waste, to have so much beach unattended just for surfers.

This area might have sharks and other dangerous animals, and we were told not to swim at dawn nor on sunset, but the reality was that it was pretty safe and most people mentioned it had been decades since last time someone had been bitten. We still didn't swim outside the morning and early afternoon, but also because it was the period when the sun was bright and nice, of course. There were jellyfish and some people that I was with got stung by them, once right next to me, but I was lucky and escaped without touching one^^.

The area had also other curious animals, like ibis, big birds with big curvy beaks, or flying foxes at night (which were quite impressive since it's basically a very very big bat). We visited a local zoo (it's called wildlife sanctuary but it felt like a zoo, which can be pitiful), where you could see kangaroos and koalas (they're from this region) and other local animals. Koalas looked really cute of course, while kangaroos where actually in some open area just sunbathing and you could get close to them and even feed them. I did not see any giant spider, but I did have a green jumping spider in my kitchen for some time (it was brightly green and I checked what could it be. The bite is supposed to be painful like a bee sting but that was it, and this spider was just on my ceiling and not bothering, so I left it there)

One thing I enjoyed very much was the possibility, finally, to have fresh orange juices in bars and cafes, while being for example next to a beach area with sun and some fresh air. I did not drink this in a long time since in Korea fruits are scarce, expensive and not juicy, and then it was not that common to have a good natural juice.

I also tried some local things, like the famous vegemite (which is weird as hell and I'm not sure I like) and I had some burgers and good meat, plus I tried kangaroo sausages (and they were really tasty and apparently rather healthy). Around the city there were some public barbecues and you could cook food in there in a park or next to the beach, which was really really nice, and I ate barbecue a couple of times, even if I'm not that fond of it.

I met with friends and other people and went out or visited different places with them, like Coolangatta (an extremely beautiful and calm beach), Snapper Rocks (natural sea pools made by rocks, quite fun to notice the waves arriving in them), Burleigh Heads (another beautiful beach), Broadbeach and Mermaid Beach, some small natural park north of Surfer's Paradise and other such places. The city had newly-installed bikes that you could get an app to unblock them and use them, like Barcelona's bicing or the Itau bikes in Rio, but available to anyone for quite a low price, and we did several small trips around with them, which was quite a good way to see around and visit nearby places.

Another place that was impressive was the SkyPoint Observation Deck, the tallest building of the city that had a floor where you could check the views from up there and had an activity where you actually went outside with a security belt that tied you to the building. It was really beautiful and I was lucky to do it during a clear day, allowing for great sunny pictures and also letting me see extremely far away all around the building, checking the huge beach and seeing the waves and the currents underneath it, hypnotically moving far below.

We also went out, mostly around Surfer's Paradise. The area has a very British approach to bars and alcohol, and places were asking for an ID where it was clear what was your date of birth, sometimes only allowing it if you had your passport since others were not in english.  The process was very uncomfortable and sometimes ridiculous, because even if you went out for a smoke and they saw you, they had to check again. Related to that, one night in particular got me really really angry: Good Friday, the Friday that is a holiday during Easter. That day, bars and restaurants were only serving alcohol if you were eating, by law, and places that did not serve food (like clubs) were directly closed until the end of the day, 12 at night. I found this to be ridiculous, to implement such a religious law for everybody instead of letting you do whatever you wanted. I knew Australia had problems regarding racism and immigration and that it was a very conservative place, but this stupid limitation forced upon everyone really pissed me off and was a big stain in my opinion of the place, which was rather good with no complaints until that point, even with the ID controls they were implementing.

Of course since it has British culture, it was normal to have dinner early, drink early and go out until rather early, so even when we went out we didn't stay until very late, and then several days we could visit things the next day or even go to work if we had an afternoon shift. There were a few exceptions to closing early though, and one of them was the Casino that we visited last day. Usually I would not go to a casino, but the locals insisted it was a known and common place to go out at night without worrying about closing times since it was always open. The day I visited I saw this was the case, but still felt a bit surreal and strange, to have like a "club" area next to betting and slot machine areas.

All in all, I really enjoyed the experience and loved the place, and it was quite a necessary relaxation after Korea's project. I didn't get to visit places a bit further away from there, like Byron bay or the great barrier reef, but I'm still very happy with the trip^^. 

Last Bit of Korea

So I'm finally out of South Korea and spending some days in Gold Coast, in Australia. The Australian experience deserves another post, but I'd like to talk about Korea a bit more before that...

When I left, I felt relieved. The last period of my stay hasn't been easy, and I've grown pretty tired of the place. I think that's because a number of things that I noticed and I just lost patience over them.

The main problem that currently South Korean society needs to overcome is its deeply racist and sexist roots. Most issues come from this core idea. Not unlike Russia, the Korean men are celebrated and considered more important than women, and you can see that everywhere. Women are not taken as seriously, are not thought as smart as men, and are though to belong taking care of the house most of the time. At the same time men are pampered and protected from birth, and thanks to its good economy a lot of parents are directly buying apartments and houses for their sons. There's also a strong patriotic undercurrent, with the clear feeling that Koreans are superior, especially to people with darker skin complexion. Added to the situation there's also the fact that Korean culture has a very hierarchical structure based on your age, where being old automatically makes you wiser and with more authority, and others needs to serve you.

All this combines into a poisonous mix where there's a lot of men with a self-inflated ego and sense of worth in middle/upper-management positions, that are actually utterly useless when performing the most basic tasks. These people are rude, sexists, discriminate against foreigners and are a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. If you're familiar with Sense8, Sun's brother would be a perfect example. They're good at misplacing blame and trying to involve others on their own faults, since it's unthinkable that they are the ones that should actually improve, being as they are the culmination of evolution on this planet. Another good example is the train company manager from Train to Busan.

The thing here is that because of the hierarchical nature of society, there's a lot of structures and attitudes that protect this behaviour and these types of people. Other societies, including the occidental one, overprotect their men, but society is more open to discuss and argument and counter comments no matter who says them, while in this society since the one saying it is an older man, he automatically is right and worthy of respect.

In this atmosphere it's not nice to work, or to live for that matter.

I have to say that this also causes that women tend to be 1000 times more competent, since they need to prove themselves time and time again to reach similar positions than men, and it's really noticeable how much better they are at pretty much everything.

Of course not everybody is like this, but enough people fulfil these patterns to be noticeable. In general, you can notice that people more open, that have travelled more, that have learned other languages, are better and don't fit these patterns. However there's a problematic number that still do.

Regarding the patriotism and racism, during the games you could notice one thing: These games were meant for Koreans. That's all good and nice, but these types of event tend to try to include all the world, and a lot of visitors mentioned they felt lost or abandoned when it comes to proper information about transport and timetables, among other things.

In general this situation made things a bit harder and you could notice everybody in this place was being drained because of these issues.

However, I also have to say that I've had really good moments in there of course. It was amazing when you met people more open, and it was really great to interact in these situations. Special mention to places like Malmi, Warehouse, Rush or Bon Voyage, restaurants/bars/clubs where you ended up almost being part of the place, where we could put music, control what happened, organise parties or just ask to cook one last meal for you even when the kitchen was closed. We survived and had fun thanks to such places and the people in there, and I'll miss that part for sure. And I hope my Korean friends forgive my previous comments, but I'd include them in this latter section as the people that made it all better :).

In this period after Japan I should also mention Busan, the second biggest city of South Korea, situated in the cost. I managed to visit it for a few days, and I have to say I really enjoyed the place. It felt more...cohesive, if that's the best way to put it, than Seoul. It felt like a more relaxed place, with beautiful beaches and parks, nice neighbourhoods with plenty of bars and restaurants, and in general a calmer attitude for being still a big city. We stayed next to a going out area purely by accident, but it was a nice addition and it was quite enjoyable overall.

Last but not least, I did manage to go back to Seoul other times, and one thing I discovered there is Hongdae, a neighbourhood close to Hongik University.

Same way that I said in previous posts that Seoul felt just like any other city, this region felt special. Maybe it was just the moment when I visited it, but it's true that this area is more "artsy", more underground/alternative, and I really liked it. I spent only 2 weekends/nights in there in this year and a half that I've been in Korea, but they were almost perfect stays and nights. In both cases all the restaurants, all the bars, all the food and drinks and people and music and atmosphere were pretty much perfect. I even found an extremely nice club (Club FF) with live rock music first and then a nice mixture of songs that allowed for a great environment to spend a night out, while at the same time being a place that is not very crowded and leaves you room enough to enjoy it while not feeling you're alone in there. I really loved Hongdae, and it may be extreme to go back to Seoul for just this area, but I would not mind that at all and would consider it.

I also have to say that after the train from Gangneung to Seoul opened, this city felt much closer. For my goodbye, I took advantage of that and escaped to Hongdae for just one night, one of the two I mentioned. I'm really happy that my Seoul goodbye was in there, almost perfect again, making me feel I was leaving a great place and countering some of the issues this stay inflicted on all of us.

Summer in Japan

It´s been some time since then, but this summer we spent 2 weeks in Japan, taking advantage that it was close to South Korea, and before I can get back on track to writing sometimes (work and schedules have been crazy for a very long time now) I wanted to explain a bit about that.

We've never been to Japan before, but it always has been an attractive destination for us, of course. As anime/Manga fans, technology fans and just travel enthusiasts, there's a lot of things that make Japan interesting for us. However, it's an expensive place and quite far, so until now we had not really organised anything to visit it. 

So this summer there was a break between two intense work periods and we booked a flight, and some places to stay. We decided to visit Osaka and Kyoto first, and then decide from there but finish in Tokyo. For Tokyo, when we talked with our friend Sara who lives there, she offered her house (for which we're really grateful, plus it was nice to know we'd see her).

The flight to Osaka had issues becasue of typhoons, and we had to reroute to Tokyo at the last minute. That was annoying, but we managed to grab the Shinkansen (High speed train) to Osaka right after the flight and we were ok. 

The first impressions we got from this arrival was that Japan is a lot more prepared for tourists/non-japanese speakers than China or Korea. It was really easy to get all the necessary information, and at any time there were plenty of indications. That is not to say that it was very very easy, since Tokyo, even just form the airport, seemed to have quite a complex railway map....

The shinkansen is like any other speed train, but it is amazing how often they pass, the one going to Osaka takes 3 hours but there was one every 5-10 minutes. We arrived to Osaka and it was raining,  of course,  but the typhoon felt mild,not sure if it was but it felt just like rain. 

After arriving to the station we had to get to our apartment, but Osaka also had a very well defined subway line and it was easy to get there. The place we got was close to the center and it was quite nice, it had all we needed, plus some touches that are very Japanese, like the sliding doors. We arrived quite late and destroyed from the trip, and we just went to sleep.

Next day we started visiting Osaka and our impressions were good. The city felt very curious, with shopping streets covered with glass/plastic roofs connecting the buildings, protecting us from possible bad weather. There were lots of people of course, and lots of flashy thingies lile giant king crab figures,including movement, in front of restaurants and other shops. The streets were narrow, and not many cars were moving around. Cars in japan are really curious, since there's a surprising amount of very square,box like cars. They looked very strange for us, but they seemed popular. Also there was a lot of people just using bikes or walking.

In this city we visited the aquarium, which was really impressive. Without considering the morality of it, it had whale sharks and other really big types of sharks and rays, and it was quite amazing to see at such close distances. We also visited an owl café,  which was pitiful but the diferent animals that were there were very cute. We also visited some playgrounds for Elay, and some small attractions, and in general he loved it.

We also went for dinner one night to a shabushabu restaurant,and we had special beef. I don't think it was kobe beef,but I have to say it was incredibly delicious. The beef seemed to melt in the mouth, and it had an amazing taste, very noticeable without being too strong,and it was also very tender. In general we also tried different places to eat, it was not always easy but we tried very good Japanese food in there. We didn't eat sushi though,that was harder to find (apart from places that seemed too expensive or touristic).

We really liked our stay in Osaka,and next we would visit Kyoto. It was around this time that,when planning what to do next,we saw that we were visiting things in a vacational period for Japan and it was hard to book places, so we decided to go to Tokyo sooner than we thought and move around from there. Sara had no problem with that, which was perfect for us,plus there is a lot of things to do in and around Tokyo anyway. We also decided to buy aa special train ticket that woild allow us to travel with no limit using most trains,including shinkansen, for a week. After deciding that, we checked what to visit in Kyoto.

Kyoto is pretty close to Osaka,and it had a more traditional feeling to it,being also famous for temple areas and some old streets. We spent only 2 days in there,but we also liked it very much. We went to one of the temples, we're not fans of them but what we visited was nice and had curious details. We also managed to walk around the bamboo forest,that we loved, and through some old districts with very traditional -looking small wooden houses all around. Kyoto felt somehow older than Osaka, with more traditional places,but we enjoyed it. 

All these days we were warned it would rain,and in the end it was sunny and hot and we kept finishing the day totally exhausted, but we kept liking what we were seeing^^.

On our last Kyoto day, that we needed to move to Tokyo at night, we decided to visit the famous deer Park in Nara, also close by. We went by train, and it was again easily indicated since lots of tourists wanted to visit it. I thought we may see some deer or need to walk a bit for them,but quite soon we started seeing grass areas full of them. They were quite calm and quite used to tourist, also clearly asking for food since you could buy special crackers for them. Of course, we bought crackers,and it was quite a funny experience. The deer when they see you have some surround you and try to eat and nibble at your clothes and have no shame whatsoever. It's even scary because they keep surprising you when you don't expect them touching your rear pocket and similar,but it was a funny moment in general. We spent a very nice and calm day feeding the deer and visiting a bit of the park, but we were mostly focused on the deer^^.

After this,we went to Tokyo. Well,actually Sara's house was in Chiba, but Chiba is part of the big metropolitan area that Tokyo is part of. This area is monstrous, full of people and with a big train and subway network that is sometimes hard to navigate. In Tokyo we spent the rest of the days, but travelling around.

On the next days we did several activities. One of the first ones was to visit the Hitachi Seaside Flower Park, which was not in a very colourful season but was really nice and calm, easy to move around with a rental bike, and quite beautiful nevertheless. There were some very funny-looking round plants, for example, that seemed to bounce with the wind. The area had also attractions, and in general we spent a nice day in there. The only problem was to get back, since there was no information in English and in general people didn't speak much of it, so we were not sure exactly about the time we could take the bus, and we used one that took forever to reach the station, since it went all around the place. It was much cheaper than the first one we used to get there though.

Another day we visited a bit of Yokohama, another city in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. Well, Yokohama alone is huge, so we visited just a small coastal area with some shopping malls and other attractions. We used again the Shinkansen to get there, and we had the luck to reach a station where only a few types of them stopped. Because of that, you could see the ones that pass every few minutes going through the central tracks, without stopping, at full speed, and it was hypnotic how fast they went. Yokohama itself looked pretty modern, and we visited the Mitsubishi museum, which had interesting machines and games, like a flight simulator where you needed to take off and land.

We wanted to see mount Fuji, so we used another day to do this very long round trip that used a lot of different trains and transports. However we were unlucky, and all the trip that day there was an intense fog covering everything. We did use plenty of different vehicles and what little we could see looked really nice. It was also eerie sometimes, how little you could see, making this nice effect for example with cable cars, where the cables disappear and it seems you´re floating in the middle of nowhere...

The rest of the days we stayed in Tokyo per se, and visited a bit of the city, although it's such a huge place it's hard to cover much. We visited Akihabara twice, and it was quite an experience. Akihabara is the "geekiest" neighbourhood, with lots of electronic shops plus also lots of anime/manga shops, weird bars (like maid bars, or gundam bars, or such other things), old arcades, some erotic shops and just a mixture of geeky things and toys of all kinds. The place is frankly overwhelming and full of people, and there's just so many things that are curious or nice that I basically got blocked and didn't really buy anything almost,just a couple of presents for other people and a few practical things. I really enjoyed the retro video-game shops, but again, I ended up not buying anything anywhere, which is a shame but oh well...I was really just blocked from too much choice and things.

We also visited a theme park area in the centre, which was a lot of fun and Elay loved it. It was very nice to go up to rides with him, and the whole day was tiring but nice. It was also good that there were not many people, and we didn't have to queue much (we still had to queue, but considering how many people live in there, it was not much).

We had some nice evenings with Sara, tried good sake (still not a big fan but well, it was definitely different), and ate quite well (although there's not as much sushi as one would thing). Finally during the last day we saw a very old friend, Lisa, one of the first persons I met when I was in the Erasmus in Sweden and that we had not seen in years. It was very nice to have the chance to talk a bit again and spend an afternoon with her.

All in all, it was quite an experience, and we really liked the trip and our stay there. Definitely not ruling out going back some other time^^.

Loud and Clear

I want to make a very short post about the famous referendum.

The results were from 43% of the voting population. However, 770.000 votes where stolen by spanish police. This means 57% of people actually voted (even with the repression).

Being very conservative and using the percentages found in Barcelona, which is the less pro-independence region, of those 770.000 votes we can assume 89.93% of those are "yes" votes. Adding those to the total gives around 2.736.000 votes for "yes", which represents 51.5% of the total population. If we do same calculation assuming the percentage of the most independentist region, we get 96% of "yes" from those 770.000 votes, which means the total gets to 52.38%.

For comparison, the "sacred" spanish constitution was approved by a 61% of the total voting population that lived at that time (and by the way, most of the current population never voted on it).

Anyone doubting this result or considering it not legitimate enough, i'd be happy to do another one without the repression and the police beating voters and scaring people away.

Meanwhile, goodbye.

Argumenting

Things are getting tense in Catalunya.

The Government has approved a law to organise a referendum on Independence on 1st of October which proclaims Spanish legislation cannot touch it. Spanish government and tribunals have reacted by indicating that anything referendum-related is forbidden and that the law is suspended.

There's more details, but well, the most probable outcome at this point seems a vote happening on 1st of October nevertheless, where "yes" wins.

The Catalan laws were approved with questionable procedures that limited the possibility to debate them....but then again it was done like this because Spain was indicating that even debating such things was illegal, and therefore there were no other options.

In all this mess, several newspapers have started a misinformation and lying war against independence, while several people have made articles or comments where they attacked the referendum.

And in all that, what I have not ever seen are arguments about why we should not vote, or vote "No", that could stand on their own. So I want to comment on some of the arguments said and why they're bullshit....but I also want to point out that there are arguments, valid ones, and it's just mind-boggling that people that I though were smart are not mentioning them....

1-Because it's illegal:

-This one is the first thing that lots of people mention that are against the referendum, and it's really really stupid. For starters, its legality is a matter of interpretation. However, let's say it was clearly and without doubt illegal. So fucking what? As lots of people mentioned, legality is not an indication of morality or ethics. People say that one should respect the law in a democratic country, but I disagree on mindless obeying. First question to ask regarding anything illegal, is to ask why is it illegal. Is it morally or ethically wrong? Is it harmful? Is it plain stupid? If you check this, it's rather evident that some laws make perfect sense. You cannot rob, kill and/or rape because it's ethically terrible. You are not allowed to do drugs because it's a danger for your well-being. Of course there's already shades of gray, and for example maybe rather than forbid drugs for that last one it is better to control and regulate them..this could be debated, and that's why some laws are a must, but others can be debated. Why is a referendum illegal? Because it would leave the integrity of Spain int he hands of Catalan people. And why is this bad? Well, here is where it fails. The only reason this is bad is if you believe in frontiers, in countries, if you feel patriotism for Spain without any other reasons than being Spanish and feel personally insulted by the though of Spain not having some piece of land that was theirs before. I consider patriotism idiotic, since where you are born is a rather random thing to be proud of, it's the same as being proud of having 5 fingers, as if you are personally responsible for them. A referendum is also illegal if you believe people should not decide things, which is antidemocratic as hell. And there's plenty of things that were illegal and should not have been, like women voting. Legality cannot limit ethical causes, and if that's your main reason, what should change is the law.

2-Because it's nationalistic propaganda/patriotism, which as you said it's rather stupid.

-First of all, Spanish nationalism is SO much worse than Catalan one. Second, while there may be some people that really want to be independent because they don't feel Spanish at all and are really really proud of being Catalan, this is also patriotism, which is stupid. However, if you check the general opinion among independentists, the nationalism aspect is not that important compared with the chance of self-governance. Currently, Spain's government and institutions are a cesspit of incompetence and corruption, unable to do much apart of behaving like a corrupt dictator, with the novelty that they do so in group. This is fairly evident for anyone not suffering from brain damage, and that includes a big chunk of the Catalan people, who want to get rid of that and be able to promote a better management and better laws. Lately a lot of progressive laws that could have improved life in Catalunya have been suspended or nullified by creating another law that supersedes them. The problem is that in Spain at the moment we do have a lot of brain-damaged people apparently, and the main parties that are corrupt, dictatorial and useless keep getting votes, so there's no clear solution for Spain. A clean break from that sure would solve the issue for Catalunya.

3-Because in the context of the European Union it makes not sense to put more frontiers, and in general frontiers are stupid.

-Indeed, frontiers are stupid. For example, the Spanish frontiers are not allowing refugees and are also kicking them out back to the sea on the heat of the moment, something that has been declared as illegal by international right. Controlling such frontiers in Catalunya would not be to close the region to the world, but to open it a lot more than what Spain is allowing.

4-Because it's right-wing propaganda and it will become a dictatorship/neo-liberalist hell worse than Spain (so what you say about making progressive laws or opening frontiers won't apply).

-The independence moment is really transversal, and if you check any demonstration or statistic you will see that people of all ideologies are supporting it. What's more, this movement has forced the traditional right-wing party of Catalunya (which disgusts me) to move toward the centre and become much more progressive (but I don't trust them at all still and I know they have corruption, but not as bad as the Spanish one). Also, the parties that have always been more supportive of a referendum and independence have always been more on the left side of the spectrum.

5-Because it's left-wing propaganda and it will become a lawless/communist hell like Venezuela

-Again, the movement is transversal and you can see that a lot of ideologies are involved. It is true the left has more supporters in Catalunya and inside the independentist movement, but the left parties involved have been very calm and rational in the last years while ruling, promoting more social justice and never advocating for pure anarchy, trying to follow a model more north-European if anything.

6-Because the law of the referendum and its conditions have not been agreed with Spain.

-This one is the most used by people more in the middle/undecided, or against the referendum as it is but not against the idea of voting/doing something political to solve the issue instead of just illegalizing it. The problem here is that this depends on Spain. Spain has a tradition of being authoritative and is not used to negotiate much. Let's be clear: The left lost the civil war against fascism because there is a lot of fascists tendencies in Spain, a lot of patriotism for the wrong reasons, and there's only one accepted way to be Spanish, and since then things have not improved greatly about this topic. For a big group of people, Catalunya is not Spanish enough, instead of thinking that Catalunya is another interpretation of Spain, as valid as any other. The current government has the support of such people and any negotiations would be considered as weaknesses. That's why in the last years the Spanish Government has never even considered any negotiations, and has just said Catalunya should shut up and behave, basically. The Catalan government has offered to negotiate until the last minute, but Spain has never offered or proposed anything. So, how can this be negotiated if one of the parts negotiate by saying "no, end of discussion"? Some of the people defending this argument say that this is now, but that we should work to change this dynamic, and vote to put into power people more open to negotiations. The reality however is that with the latest election results we are very far from having a big majority of parties open to that. One of the parties currently not ruling that is defending this argument or proposing other solutions ruled for 8 years and did nothing of the sort, so their promises feel pretty much empty. Asking to pact is asking for people to wait maybe 40 years while renovating the parties, to reach an unknown situation where maybe things improve...or maybe they don't. People defending this option are way too optimistic about it, I think, based on previous experiences. However, I can understand to a certain point people defending this.

7-Because independentism excludes and divides people.

-This one I've heard it from several newspapers that I thought were better than this. This argument, similar to the patriotism or frontier argument, assumes or tries to tell that independentism is about Catalunya being isolated and defending "proper Catalans". However, this is easily disproven by the fact that there's a lot of independentist that are immigrants and children of immigrants. This movement has always been inclusive, and you can see that people in Catalunya just love it when newcomers integrate. One of the best things that Catalan government has promoted since Franco's dead is the fact that, to be Catalan, you just need to live and/or work on the region, and this attitude is clear in all the movement. Most of the divisions come from the unionist side's attitude, where statistics show that the emotional component of feeling Spanish is the most common reason to want to avoid independence, and therefore tend to act in more emotional and extreme ways (although lately it is true there has been some extremism on each side)

8-Because Catalunya will be kicked out of EU.

-First of all, as long as people remain Spanish (which is an option available), they will be part of the EU. As for the theoretical new country, you don't need to be in the EU to have some of the benefits of the EU, as Switzerland or Norway show, but also it's unlikely that EU will not manage things to include a rich region that would be in the top tiers of GDP compared with the rest of European countries.

9-Becasue Catalunya will become poorer.

-Of course if Catalunya becomes poorer, EU may not want to accept it. However, the general consensus is that industry and business in Catalunya is strong enough that there are 2 likely outcomes: If Spain negotiates with Catalunya, Catalunya's economy will rapidly grow from the start. If Spain penalises Catalunya, Catalunya's economy will have problems for a short-term period until it regulates the situation and then it can grow at medium-term.

I could list more reasons that I heard these days, but most of those are over-simplifications of the situation or just plain wrong. The only one that might kind of work is number 6, but it ignores reality too much....which brings me to one reason I have not heard yet, but it is actually good, and I'm surprised no one has mentioned loudly yet, that I know.....

10-For solidarity towards the poor Spanish people that will be left with the brain dead, conservative and corrupt Spanish traditional parties.

Now this is a reason I can get behind to defend not separating. Catalunya is a very progressive area compared with the rest of Spain. The current vote estimation for Catalan elections indicates that  around 60% of the people would vote a party on the left spectrum. Checking the results of the last Spanish elections, Catalunya gave around 2.100.000 votes to parties from the left-centre. In Spain in total, there were around 11.700.000 votes to parties from left-centre. Almost 18% of the total votes for the left came from Catalunya, while the region represents only 14% of the total votes in Spain. Losing those votes, even if you also lose the votes of the Catalan right, means it's much harder to implement changes on Spain, especially since the party that seems to really want to change things in Spain (they're not perfect but so far they're at least trying) was the most voted party during these same general elections in Catalunya.

Basically, separating from Spain is a bit like abandoning any hopes of changing it. It's admitting that the system is too corrupt, too biased, to change it from inside. It's a bit like admitting defeat. And it's leaving all this great nice Spanish people more at the mercy of a group of bastard.

However, there's an alternative approach to this. Spanish politics are stuck in a bad place, for too many years. Breaking from that would be traumatic yes, and would leave the progressive side weaker in Spain. Nevertheless, maybe that's what is needed to make people in Spain react, and see the old parties for what they really are: A bunch of useless corrupt assholes.

Maybe a shock therapy like this can put some life into this old and outdated system....

Finally Seoul

In theory part of this blog was to talk about trips, but in the end I keep making rants^^'. Oh well...

I wanted to explain that, finally, after a long time living in South Korea, I have visited Seoul.

Seoul is not that far from Gangneung, but it is at an annoying distance: 3 hours by bus, more or less. 3 hours is enough that going there and back during the same day seems a waste, and therefore it's something to do during a weekend. Thanks to a different number of activities at work, for a long time we didn't have weekends free, and also there was people we knew around here and we didn't feel like organising a trip to Seoul during those moments.

The end result is that my first trip to Seoul happened on May 2017, 7 months after arriving to Korea.

The trip and organisation itself was not as dramatic as it seemed, and it's rather easy. It is a bit expensive, being a big city, but after the initial trauma was over, I´ve been there 2 more times and plan to go back from time to time.

The city itself is huge, and visiting every corner is impossible, but I did manage to see a couple of different neighbourhoods and places. There is a quite wide river that divides it into two sections, connected by bridges but pretty far away form each other. Apart from that, there's lots of hills and little mountains in this terrain. The combined effect is that it feels as if Seoul is just  a combination of little towns linked between themselves with roads and subway.

The subway lines, by the way, are quite good and extensive, and make it easy to move around (which is a great difference from Rio, of course). We didn't use them on our first trip, but we moved around with them on the others.

The city itself has plenty of big streets and buildings, in areas that seem a bit cold, financial-district style....but then you turn a corner a find a small grid of little streets and houses full of bars and restaurants. The result just increases this "island" effect of each city section, the sensation that there are lots of small independent areas interconnected.

One of the most famous places we visited is Itaewon, which is the "tourist" neighbourhood. In there for the first time in South Korea we saw plenty of other foreigners on the streets, and of course lots of clubs and bars. It's a pretty small area for the concentration of locals it has, and since it's on a hill its streets are narrow and very steep. It has a great selection of foods, and after Gangneung we took the chance and ate some occidental things, which were pretty good. Korean food can be nice, but well....

The city also has plenty of shopping malls and shopping streets, and it's populated enough that it does get a bit stressful and crowded in those areas. Still, it is curious to see that between these malls there is still a lot of small food carts and street shops, with very traditional things that seem to clash with the occidental brand shops.

As part of my second visit, I went to a festival called Ultra. It's an electronic music festival, which is not my thing really, but once I was there I loved the atmosphere, and it also allowed me to visit the Olympic Stadium (for 1988 Olympics of course).

It doesn't matter the location, festivals always have this nice feeling around them, of having a big party with lots of people and enjoying the experience. Here it was no different, just with more Koreans and their peculiarities^^. I did see that there is a lot of USA military people around, both in the festival and in Seoul itself, something that is surprising to me (even if it's a known fact). And I can see that USA has a big influence in lots of details, in Seoul and South Korea in general....

All in all, though, Seoul left me with conflicted feelings....

On one side, I feel it lacks a bit of...soul. Identity. I felt it has nothing special to offer, that it's just a city...it's a feeling hard to express, but well, that's my impression. It's not bad at all, it's just...unoriginal? I know, that's too much to ask for to a city, probably. Maybe it's just that it seemed to me, more than a cohesive city, a collection of small towns in a very big area. I'm sorry to my Korean friends for saying that, but that's the impression I got.

On the other side, it is a big international city. After (happily) living in Gangneung for a while, to go back to such a place, full of movement and life and things to do, is refreshing and interesting and exciting. I enjoyed my visits there and I definitely want to go back often while in this project.

Time To Go

Things in Catalunya's politics are reaching a nice boiling point.

I realise now that I did not explain in my last political posts that in Catalan elections, the independentists won but not by a big margin enough to be comfortable declaring independence, and that after some in-fighting and decision-making, they decided to defend again a referendum. However, this time they want it more concise, more serious, and the important part: Binding.

So, if "Yes" wins, they will apply it.

This is not that easy to do, as anyone can figure out. Forming part of a bigger country means that you have a lot of laws and regulations and public spaces, contracts, public workers, etc, that are actually controlled by the bigger government. Leaving that cannot mean that you don't have all these things from one day to the other.

Therefore, in order for a referendum to be binding, you need to think about these things, and if they're achievable. And so far we're told that these things are being prepared, yes, to make sure a theoretically new country would continue functioning after independence.

In order to perform the referendum, the Catalan government has tried to negotiate with the Spanish government. However, Spain has big democratic problems, which translates to the fact that they're really REALLY scared of letting people vote. I'm not talking even scared of "Yes" winning, I mean that they think voting is the problem here.

The ruling party's official twitter posted that the Catalan government should stop the referendum and instead listen to the people.  That's not a joke or an edit, they said that, publicly, and didn't realise how mind-numbingly stupid this was.

Anyway, the Catalan government has been quite clear in this: Spain can negotiate conditions regarding the referendum,, but the referendum will happen. If they don't negotiate , the next step will directly be to negotiate terms of independence. And that's the other thing, as I mentioned before in other posts, with the current numbers it seems pretty clear the "Yes" would win in the referendum.

Of course the Spanish government has refused to negotiate and is just suing everybody they can in the Catalan government for trying to defend illegal ideas, basically. That's the smart argument they're using. They also have a number of police agents and politicians actively trying to find dirt, or invent dirt, on Catalanist parties and the Catalan government.  Again, this is not a conspiracy theory or a joke, several reporters and investigators have discovered such a plot to try to condemn Catalan politicians that defended independence, and they have conversations and audio files that show precisely that, with police and politicians saying the local Prosecutors will fine-tune the case so they can have one.

The whole thing is such a clear abuse of power, lack of judicial independence and lack of democracy in Spain that it's amazing Europe is shutting up about it mostly and, at max, just mentioning they're "concerned" about Spanish authoritarian tendencies.

And the root problem is that, in Spain, the fascists won the war. They won it long ago, they grabbed power, and never released it. The transition to a "democratic" state was done to soften the regime, and indeed Spain is more democratic now...but the people in power are still pretty much of the same ideology, especially in the ruling party.

How can you explain otherwise that this ruling party protests when a city wants to change street names that references and honours the dictator and his friends?

How can you explain otherwise that this ruling party funded for years the organisation named after the dictator, which existence is based on defending his ideas and legacy?

How can you explain that there is a memorial to the dictator where he's buried, and time and time again when somebody says to move his body and, in this way, not make it in his honour, this same ruling party doesn't allow it?

How can you explain that when a teenager makes a joke about a prime minister of the dictator that was killed in a terrorist attack, she gets condemned for ridiculing the victim? The "victim", that imprisoned and executed people for purely political reasons.

If that was not enough, this same party has, every day, every single day, some member accused and/or condemned for corruption. Every. Day. This party has been formally accused, as a party, as a whole, for illegal funding.

And they still win elections. Not by a lot maybe, but there's a core group of people that always vote them, and I'm talking about around 8 million people, close to 33% of the total voters.

That's unacceptable.

And let's not mention the rest of the Spanish parties, because the situation is not much better especially regarding corruption....but the current ruling party, that's the worst. By far. In all fields.

Do you know why in Spain we don't have a new, far-right, emergent party, like in so many European countries? Well, in case it was not evident, because we are the first ones. We had the far-right party since the dictatorship and afterwards, and it's our current ruling party.

We cannot tolerate that.

And for once, it seems the Catalan government agrees. They may have their ulterior motives for it, but the reality is that there's now a group of politicians and rulers in Catalunya that want to go all the way until the referendum, even if it means they get condemned by Spain in the way there.

If everything goes well, on September/October, the Catalan region (where this ruling party has its worst results) will vote to decide if we want to be independent. And you know, independence from that? Yes, I want it, very VERY much.