The new immigration law related to illegal aliens in the European Union (EU) started on June 18. The new policy, called “Return Directive”, allows the different member states of EU to confine any illegal immigrant for up to 18 months before expelling them.

These new policies against “illegal immigrants” obey a new policy in EU to stop the massive immigration especially from East Europe, Africa and Latin America.

However, for a long time a lot of right wing and nationalist political parties from all Europe have been criticising the EU leaders’ “slack” policy about immigration.
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A while ago in Spanish class we got chatting with the teacher about Spanish attitudes towards the Royal Family. Some students remarked on the overwhelmingly positive coverage of the monarchs in gossip rags: the press gushes over them in a way completely foreign to the snarky tabloids in Britain, for example. Our teacher explained that it was in line with Spanish attitudes: that the public loves the royals and just wouldn’t tolerate criticism of them.

More specifically, as it turns out, it’s the police who won’t tolerate criticism – or even mickey-taking – of them. Recently a judge ordered all copies of the weekly satirical magazine El Jueves to be seized by police. The issue featured a tasteful cartoon of the Prince and Princess engaging in an act generally glossed over in fairy tales, with the Prince remarking that, due to a new initiative to pay couples to have children, if the Princess got pregnant, then this would be the closest he’d ever come to actually doing work. Read the rest of this article »

I’m seeing London through new eyes since I’ve been back. The thing that has struck me the most is the omnipresent environmental awareness: it almost makes me feel a little out-hippied at times.

Carbon footprints and organics are not topics left for soap-dodging Marxist vegetarians to rant about – environmental affairs are so mainstream that huge companies like Marks and Spencers or Sky Television advertise their commitment to ecological principles. Seeing the packaging-heavy programme for the recent Diana tribute concert, a genuinely concerned Prince Harry leaned over to an aide and asked: “What happened to saving the planet?”

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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 »

Easter in the south is a curious event. Visiting the small town of Priego I was caught up in elaborate traditions involving spectacular processions, excessive conglomerations of people, and some surprising peculiarities.

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So I tried chorizo the other day. As a vegetarian for the past seven years, this was, shall we say, quite a strange experience. The occasion was my Spanish teacher’s birthday: she brought some chorizo to share with the class, in line with the custom here of giving, rather than receiving, on your birthday. Initially I abstained, but as she told us about the origins of the food I started thinking. And as the rest of the class tried not to spit out their mouthfuls at the teacher’s description of collecting the blood shooting from the pig’s neck, I sadistically reached for a taste.

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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.

An eager student brought to school the textbook he uses in private classes to show me a section on New Zealand it contains. I was stoked to see some attention being given to our little country, but most of all, I was intrigued to learn about the Maori. The Maori used to hunt a huge, flightless bird called the Mao (which is now extinct), and it’s from this bird that they got their name. The things you learn, eh.
Hey, it would make perfect sense if the Moa was indeed called the Mao, but sadly I think the authors got a little carried away with the wrong end of the taiaha on this one.

If a terrorist tries to kill himself, should you stop him? A mass murderer of the ETA variety came close to comatose recently, after spending months on a hunger strike in protest against his latest conviction. Yesterday the government agreed to let him serve the rest of his sentence under house arrest in order to make him eat. “The difference between us democrats and those terrorists is that we care about life,” says the Minister of Internal Affairs, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba.

This is a complicated case, “a lotta ins, a lotta outs”. But at the crux of it is the use of violence as a negotiating tool, in this case violence against oneself. And it worked. Read the rest of this article »

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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