I saw a great film on Saturday. It wasn’t Lions for Lambs. No. While Robert Redford’s War on Terror film touched some interesting ideas – political discourse, the role of the media, and where your average Joe America fits into the big picture – it treated them in an insultingly facile manner.
If you’re interested in these themes, you will have thought about them beyond what this film shows you. Flick on the news and you can see that politicians are smarmy and calculating, that big television networks consider that reading out government press releases constitutes broadcasting news, and that despite its billions spent on defence the US ain’t making much progress in Afghanistan.
And if you’re not interested in these ideas… well then you’re probably not about to run out and see the film, are you?

In compensation for Redford’s film being so disappointingly weak, we headed for FNAC in search of Michael Mann’s The Insider. It took a while to track it down – over here they call it El Dilema – but it was worth the wait. I recommend you hire the DVD, and leave Lions for Lambs till it comes out on free-to-air TV and you can be bothered taking the time to set the video.

Things got a little out of hand at one of my occasional haunts over the long weekend. Police and drunk, bored kids generally make a recipe for trouble, and trouble it was: the news has been filled with great (by which I mean “highly newsworthy”) pictures of flaming piles of rubbish and cops charging around in fluorescent jackets. Thankfully I’m telling this second-hand. I was busy dodging my students at a club in another part of the city and stayed well away from the action. Read the rest of this article »

The first thing I saw was the crowd surging forward towards me, everyone sprinting in a panic away from Sol. Was there an errant car careering down the pedestrian street? Or, god forbid, a bomb? (Unfortunately it’s a possibility in the back of many people’s minds as local elections approach in this country with an active local terrorist organisation.)

Then I realised that it wasn’t the whole crowd that was fleeing for its life, just young black men carrying white sacks. They’d had pirated DVDs, imitation designer handbags, belts, wallets and sunglasses spread out for sale on a white sheet, had yoinked up the corners to make a sack and were running with their wares as fast as they could at the first sign of the authorities.

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You can’t miss the electric billboard on the highway out of Madrid: “110 PEOPLE DIED LAST EASTER”, it says in big yellow letters. The New Zealand Land Transport Safety Authority’s road safety campaigns are pretty hard hitting, on the whole. But the Spanish versions go straight to the point. None of these carefully directed TV ads showing horrific injuries, or catchy slogans about bloody idiots; just the big numbers for all drivers to see as they flee the city before one of the country’s biggest holidays.  Certainly got my attention.

The “11-M” hearing kicked off today: the trial for 29 people accused of involvement in Spain’s worst terrorist attack ever. On the 11^th of March 2004 a series of bombs went off in rush-hour commuter trains in different parts of Madrid, killing nearly 200 people and wounding ten times that many. The worst carnage occurred disconcertingly close to where I live; there is a placard outside my local swimming pool to remember the use of the complex as a makeshift emergency hospital on the morning of the attacks.

In the media excitement leading up to the trial the focus has centred on the logistics of the hearing and the veracity of a conspiracy theory linking local terrorists ETA with the bombings. Personally, I’m more concerned with the fairness of the trial itself. I know, I know: how much more pinko-bleeding-heart-liberal can you get than worrying about a bunch of terrorists getting a fair trial?

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I thought Spain was out of the Fascist era, but I do wonder sometimes. My eyes fell upon a short news article over the shoulder of a fellow metro passenger the other day. I had to read it three times before I was sure I really had the meaning clear. The news was that a court had allowed a couple to name their daughter Julieta. That shouldn’t really be news, right? But it is, because last year a judge had deemed such a name inappropriate for a child.

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I finally had a tenuous grip on my Friday afternoon class. Okay, to be completely honest, I’d given up on telling the slackers to stop talking, and was making the whole class copy questions off the board and answer them in their own words. Then another teacher comes in – the Head, or Deputy Head, or someone else with an inflated sense of self importance. No sooner had she opened the door than she starts tearing strips off a kid at the back of the room. Read the rest of this article »

Three young Ecuadorians unfurl a hand painted yellow banner on Madrid’s metro. “The Ecuadorian people support the victims of ETA,” one reads aloud as the whistle sounds and the train pulls out of the station. Next to the slogan the banner carries photos of Ecuadorians Diego Armando Estacio and Carlos Alonso Palate, the latest victims of Spanish terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). Along with 200,000 other residents of Madrid, these three are on their way to march against ETA’s violence.

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Everyone was looking for trouble in Alcorcón last night. The ironically named “Parque de la Paz” (Park of Peace) was overrun with journalists waiting for chaos to break out; with a large deployment of police officers with batons at the ready; with residents of the neighbourhood holding placards against racism; and with neo-nazis sniffing for violence.

They were all waiting for a fight, a big fight, like the one that broke out last Saturday night in this south-western district of Madrid. Read the rest of this article »

Official tape blocked the main exit from the arrivals hall when I got back to Madrid, sending jet-lagged arrivers like myself into confusion as we wheeled our trolleys around looking for an alternative way out. The tape was due to ETA’s New Year’s Eve Eve fireworks: the dormant terrorist group set off a car bomb in the airport carpark on the 30^th of December which killed two people and the shaky ceasefire-based peace negotiations. Read the rest of this article »