Europe 20 years later, what other walls affect mankind?
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Thursday, November 5 2009 By Sevilla Babel | one comment
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The Palestinian-Israeli conflict as seen by Shlomo Ben Ami and Sami Naïr
Tuesday, March 17 2009 By Sevilla Babel | Events | no comment
This post is also available in: Spanish
In occasion of Factor Humano, the congress organized by the University of Seville, the two scholars were brought together to a room full of young people to dismember one of the most deeply-rooted conflicts in the world. In the midst of the creation of an Israeli government, none of them seem hopeful to see an end to this conflict on the horizon.
Shlomo Ben Ami: “With Netanyahu, the two-state model will never be a reality”
An Oxford graduate, this Israeli politician, diplomat, and writer, is in favour of approaching this issue from a global outlook of the zone. “Most Middle East problems are interrelated, none of them will have a solution separate from the others,” affirms this current member of the Labour Party of Israel and former Foreign Affairs Minister. He shows himself hesitant to the idea that the ‘Obama era’ will bring a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or to the war in Afghanistan, but feels confident that an agreement with Syria will soon be reached, with a direct impact on the stability in the zone. “Syria’s objective is not to reach peace with Israel, but with the US. Therefore, this issue must go through Israel first.”
Hopeless towards a twist to the right in the Israeli elections and since the UN resolution on going back to the limits established in 1967 remains unexecuted, Ben Ami believes there will not be a solution to the problem in the near future, although he affirms that the Jordan-Palestine confederation is viable. According to him, “Palestinians are lacking a united movement at a national level to act as their speaker. Abbas is a ‘good person’ in the negative sense of the expression: it is not a leader and is lying under the shadow of corruption. This is when Hamas enters the picture, as a response to the incompetence of Fatah.”
“Hamas does not support the two-state model, but they are going to have to negotiate on that basis; it is not a global jihad movement, it is not Bin Laden,” he adds, “it would be a mistake to think that Hamas is not involved in the political game, nor that shouldn’t be. The International Community made a mistake trying to put them out of the picture,” condemned the vice-president of the Toledo International Centre for Peace.
Sami Naïr: “With the victory of the radical right in Israel, Hamas has the perfect excuse”
The Algerian naturalized French citizen, politologist, philosopher, and sociologist specialized in migratory flows, is in favour of a paradigm change basing on peace for security and not the other way round. “With the Oslo Accords, the ‘peace versus territory’ concept was introduced, and then replaced by ‘security for peace’. Now we are to enter in the ‘peace for security’ era,” stated Naïr in the debate table.
“To the United States, Israel is not an issue of foreign affairs, but rather internal. Israel is the American battle horse in the Middle East. Just as Shlomo, I don’t believe that Obama will bring a solution,” he sceptically corroborates, “unless a new perspective based on the content of the Madrid Conference is brought to the picture, and the United States approach the international entities and renders the UN its pacifying role.” Sami Naïr believes on a solution based on four points: separate the belligerent groups, create a negotiation table under the control of the UN, condemn the disrespect to international laws and set off an economic development plan common to both parties. “My dream is that a UN General Conference takes place in Jerusalem and that it is stated right there that we are to put an end to this conflict for it damages the dignity of them both,” concluded Naïr.
Concha Hierro
Translation: Cristina Crosby
Shlomo Ben Ami: “With Netanyahu, the two-state model will never be a reality”An Oxford graduate, this Israeli politician, diplomat, and writer, is in favour of approaching this issue from a global outlook of the zone. “Most Middle East problems are interrelated, none of them will have a solution separate from the others,” affirms this current member of the Labour Party of Israel and former Foreign Affairs Minister. He shows himself hesitant to the idea that the ‘Obama era’ will bring a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or to the war in Afghanistan, but feels confident that an agreement with Syria will soon be reached, with a direct impact on the stability in the zone. “Syria’s objective is not to reach peace with Israel, but with the US. Therefore, this issue must go through Israel first.”
Hopeless towards a twist to the right in the Israeli elections and since the UN resolution on going back to the limits established in 1967 remains unexecuted, Ben Ami believes there will not be a solution to the problem in the near future, although he affirms that the Jordan-Palestine confederation is viable. According to him, “Palestinians are lacking a united movement at a national level to act as their speaker. Abbas is a ‘good person’ in the negative sense of the expression: it is not a leader and is lying under the shadow of corruption. This is when Hamas enters the picture, as a response to the incompetence of Fatah.”
“Hamas does not support the two-state model, but they are going to have to negotiate on that basis; it is not a global jihad movement, it is not Bin Laden,” he adds, “it would be a mistake to think that Hamas is not involved in the political game, nor that shouldn’t be. The International Community made a mistake trying to put them out of the picture,” condemned the vice-president of the Toledo International Centre for Peace.
Sami Naïr: “With the victory of the radical right in Israel, Hamas has the perfect excuse”The Algerian naturalized French citizen, politologist, philosopher, and sociologist specialized in migratory flows, is in favour of a paradigm change basing on peace for security and not the other way round. “With the Oslo Accords, the ‘peace versus territory’ concept was introduced, and then replaced by ‘security for peace’. Now we are to enter in the ‘peace for security’ era,” stated Naïr in the debate table.
“To the United States, Israel is not an issue of foreign affairs, but rather internal. Israel is the American battle horse in the Middle East. Just as Shlomo, I don’t believe that Obama will bring a solution,” he sceptically corroborates, “unless a new perspective based on the content of the Madrid Conference is brought to the picture, and the United States approach the international entities and renders the UN its pacifying role.” Sami Naïr believes on a solution based on four points: separate the belligerent groups, create a negotiation table under the control of the UN, condemn the disrespect to international laws and set off an economic development plan common to both parties. “My dream is that a UN General Conference takes place in Jerusalem and that it is stated right there that we are to put an end to this conflict for it damages the dignity of them both,” concluded Naïr.
Concha Hierro
Translation: Cristina Crosby
Federico Mayor Zaragoza: "The time has come for the emancipation of citizens"
Monday, March 16 2009 By Sevilla Babel | Ephemeris | no comment
This is the third time that the University of Seville has implemented the Human Factor Analysis academic forum. Year after year, it brings together some of the most influential intellectuals of our time. In four days, around 800 university students arrive at the auditorium in the city's Engineering School to get closer to a complex, multi-faceted reality. In this one space, they are given the opportunity to both approach and distance themselves from the current Spanish university panorama. Federico Mayor Zaragoza, ex-Director General of UNESCO and professor in Biochemistry, was one of the guests at this third forum. His conference, 'How many worlds are there?' got the cogs in people's heads turning over the course of the two hours. It also invited the question of the provision of social change, as far as citizens are concerned. "We can no longer tolerate these strong-arm tactics," he affirmed, referring to the United Nations and the sclerosis that the veto system produces in the Security Council and, therefore, in the possible efficiency of the United Nations. Mayor Zaragoza, one of the most emphatic voices in European progressivism, challenges anyone who, because of scepticism or antipathy, resists change. "A lot of things need to be changed, but there are other things that we need to conserve. Let us never change our Charter, which opens with "We the people..."
The conference was a call to action in the run up to the campaign for the European Parliament elections in June. “Democracy doesn't mean that they count us, but that they count us as citizens," asserted the ex-MEP to those present. "We have to rapidly convert ourselves into citizens, we need to know what reality is in order to change it, know what's visible and invisible," he added, warning about overinformation and disinformation. “We need to try and see the invisible; that which is outwith the media spotlight."
Approaching and distancing in order to provide a warning: "There is no greater victory than anticipation," condemned the president of the Foundation Culture of Peace on the second day of the event. “And we must speak, breaking the silence of the silent and the silenced." At the end of the talk, the students broke their own silence of an attentive crowd with a standing ovation.
Concha Hierro
Translation: Jessie L.
Gender inequality: is it just an Islamic issue?
Wednesday, March 11 2009 By Sevilla Babel | Ephemeris | 2 comments
This post is also available in: German Spanish French
“In Africa, there are discriminating laws based on ethnic beliefs that denigrate women. In countries like Sudan or Nigeria, genital mutilation is a practice that still remains unpunished, even in Christian communities. In India, the tradition constrains the wife-to-be to prepare the trousseau and the house where she and her husband will live; otherwise, her fate is to be repudiated by her family. Even in Europe and the United States, world referents of progress and individual liberties, economy and politics are still run mostly by men. Is our situation a religious issue or perhaps another example of sexism worldwide?” With this posing, Shirin Ebadi, Iranian attorney and Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2003, addresses the audience at a conference on gender equality celebrated at University of Sevilla.
Despite the big progress achieved in the field of equality all throughout the 20th century, “there is still a lot to do”, according to Ebadi. A clear example of this situation is that Finland, a model of equality, feels like it is not enough. After visiting the Scandinavian country, the Nobel Prize laureate highlights that the power of men goes “beyond the Sacred Scriptures.” Ebadi noticed that not even in one of the most developed countries, gender equality is a reality, “almost every person that attended the conference carried a sticker with one end ripped off, as a symbol of protest against the 25% margin that differentiates average salaries for women and men.”
In that regard, Shirin Ebadi is very critical towards the idealization of the Western model and emphasizes that the evolution of the career pursued by women is in a different stage in Europe and in the East, it barely accounts for 50 years. Ebadi makes a special reference to Spain during Franco in the 60’s, in which wives had to ask for their husbands’ permission to travel or even take money out of the bank. Women in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Yemen live a similar situation nowadays, where they are considered to be second-category citizens whose status depends on how many boys they give birth to. And she questions herself again, “do you think it is only a matter of theological principles or a mere justification of male power?”
Secular state practices: contradictions
Shirin Ebadi considers the possibility of enhancing the equality process through the establishment of a secular state but, at the same time, with some sort of indignation tone, accuses the Western World of simplifying a universal problem, and turning it into the prevalence of Islamic laws amongst civil populations. However, she makes reference to verses in the Quran in which Iranian law is based to make it possible for a man to marry four women and divorce them without an apparent reason, but it does not work the other way round; legislation in which the life of one man accounts for the life of two women or where it is even allowed to hit her if she disobeys him. This is the reason why she agrees with the separation of the state from religion, something necessary but not vital. In Iraq, she adds, “violence towards women has increased since Saddam Hussein was overthrown, now what?”
Since Rosa Luxemburg, in Germany in the early 1900’s, achieving universal suffrage, citizenship, gender equality at work, etc., are little goals that deserve recognition, but this is not enough. Nowadays, thirteen women work at the Iranian Parliament pressured by the fundamentalists, whilst 65% of college students are girls. In Iran, 50 years ago, universal suffrage was practiced with Islam as the official religion. Nowadays, Shirin Ebadi faces a lot of difficulties representing clients if they are not Muslim. While in China, families abandon or kill baby girls because the boy is still the ‘king’, “I insist, is it a religious issue or has too much power been given to men?”
Clara Fajardo
Translator: Cristina Crosby
Despite the big progress achieved in the field of equality all throughout the 20th century, “there is still a lot to do”, according to Ebadi. A clear example of this situation is that Finland, a model of equality, feels like it is not enough. After visiting the Scandinavian country, the Nobel Prize laureate highlights that the power of men goes “beyond the Sacred Scriptures.” Ebadi noticed that not even in one of the most developed countries, gender equality is a reality, “almost every person that attended the conference carried a sticker with one end ripped off, as a symbol of protest against the 25% margin that differentiates average salaries for women and men.”
In that regard, Shirin Ebadi is very critical towards the idealization of the Western model and emphasizes that the evolution of the career pursued by women is in a different stage in Europe and in the East, it barely accounts for 50 years. Ebadi makes a special reference to Spain during Franco in the 60’s, in which wives had to ask for their husbands’ permission to travel or even take money out of the bank. Women in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Yemen live a similar situation nowadays, where they are considered to be second-category citizens whose status depends on how many boys they give birth to. And she questions herself again, “do you think it is only a matter of theological principles or a mere justification of male power?”
Secular state practices: contradictions
Shirin Ebadi considers the possibility of enhancing the equality process through the establishment of a secular state but, at the same time, with some sort of indignation tone, accuses the Western World of simplifying a universal problem, and turning it into the prevalence of Islamic laws amongst civil populations. However, she makes reference to verses in the Quran in which Iranian law is based to make it possible for a man to marry four women and divorce them without an apparent reason, but it does not work the other way round; legislation in which the life of one man accounts for the life of two women or where it is even allowed to hit her if she disobeys him. This is the reason why she agrees with the separation of the state from religion, something necessary but not vital. In Iraq, she adds, “violence towards women has increased since Saddam Hussein was overthrown, now what?”
Since Rosa Luxemburg, in Germany in the early 1900’s, achieving universal suffrage, citizenship, gender equality at work, etc., are little goals that deserve recognition, but this is not enough. Nowadays, thirteen women work at the Iranian Parliament pressured by the fundamentalists, whilst 65% of college students are girls. In Iran, 50 years ago, universal suffrage was practiced with Islam as the official religion. Nowadays, Shirin Ebadi faces a lot of difficulties representing clients if they are not Muslim. While in China, families abandon or kill baby girls because the boy is still the ‘king’, “I insist, is it a religious issue or has too much power been given to men?”
Clara Fajardo
Translator: Cristina Crosby
Family mirrors
Friday, November 14 2008 By Sevilla Babel | SPECIAL: Sevilla Festival de Cine Europeo | no comment
This post is also available in: Spanish
Katia’s sister
In the relationship between brothers, some roles are played in which often the younger sets his/her mirror on the older. In the case of Lucía, the protagonist of the film, her love for her sister Katia is even stronger than her love for herself; in fact, along the whole story, whenever Lucía presents herself, she won’t mention her own name, but say "I'm Katia's sister".
Lucía is a girl not older than 12, good, responsible, quiet to the point of autism: the aim is not to disturb in a home where the fights are very common. The younger, far from being attended, is the one who attends her prostitute mother and her sister; despite her young age, she knows from cleaning the kitchen perfectly to preparing the coffee flavoured with whisky, that her mother likes when she comes back after her streetwalking. Dutch director Mijke de Jong uses the camera on the shoulder and the foreshortened figure-tracking of the little protagonist to wander around an Ámsterdam marked by prostitution and visionary preachers, tourists and immigrant grandmothers.
Sometimes, in its wandering foreshortened figure of the protagonist, it reminds us, esencially, of American director Gus Van Sant’s camera, in his work Elephant. The casting of the film is also outstanding, and reinforces the idea of the possible cause of mirror between brothers, since while Katia is a 17-year-old girl, blonde, voluptuous and pretty, Lucía is a 12-year-old teenager, chubby, with glasses and illegitimate; the mother doesn’t know who Lucía’s father is, but she does know Katia’s father’s name, who was the love of her life.
Maybe Lucía´s every gesture of attention, cleaning and excessively mature care she gives her family is to clear, almost unconsciously, that she is the “ugly duckling,” the non-prodigal daughter. Consequently, Director Jong discerns that we are marked by the invisible ins and outs of the family, which occurred even long before our birth. However, even though the film Katia´s Sister created an almost endless line at the Seville European Film Festival, so endless were the comments uttered after the viewing, some of them not very good. Like or not, at least it is a proposal.
Paola García Costas
Translated by Diana Irene Arancibia
In the relationship between brothers, some roles are played in which often the younger sets his/her mirror on the older. In the case of Lucía, the protagonist of the film, her love for her sister Katia is even stronger than her love for herself; in fact, along the whole story, whenever Lucía presents herself, she won’t mention her own name, but say "I'm Katia's sister".
Lucía is a girl not older than 12, good, responsible, quiet to the point of autism: the aim is not to disturb in a home where the fights are very common. The younger, far from being attended, is the one who attends her prostitute mother and her sister; despite her young age, she knows from cleaning the kitchen perfectly to preparing the coffee flavoured with whisky, that her mother likes when she comes back after her streetwalking. Dutch director Mijke de Jong uses the camera on the shoulder and the foreshortened figure-tracking of the little protagonist to wander around an Ámsterdam marked by prostitution and visionary preachers, tourists and immigrant grandmothers.
Sometimes, in its wandering foreshortened figure of the protagonist, it reminds us, esencially, of American director Gus Van Sant’s camera, in his work Elephant. The casting of the film is also outstanding, and reinforces the idea of the possible cause of mirror between brothers, since while Katia is a 17-year-old girl, blonde, voluptuous and pretty, Lucía is a 12-year-old teenager, chubby, with glasses and illegitimate; the mother doesn’t know who Lucía’s father is, but she does know Katia’s father’s name, who was the love of her life.
Maybe Lucía´s every gesture of attention, cleaning and excessively mature care she gives her family is to clear, almost unconsciously, that she is the “ugly duckling,” the non-prodigal daughter. Consequently, Director Jong discerns that we are marked by the invisible ins and outs of the family, which occurred even long before our birth. However, even though the film Katia´s Sister created an almost endless line at the Seville European Film Festival, so endless were the comments uttered after the viewing, some of them not very good. Like or not, at least it is a proposal.
Paola García Costas
Translated by Diana Irene Arancibia
Iceland is hotting up
Tuesday, November 11 2008 By Sevilla Babel | SPECIAL: Sevilla Festival de Cine Europeo | no comment
This post is also available in: Spanish
Sólveig Anspach brings to Seville his Back soon
With a style between carefree and poetic, hilarious and introspective, rotter and profound, Anspach tells us about Anna’s existential need for vital renovation. She is a weedy and energetic Icelandic poet who blurted to his admirer and student of her works, gems such as “You French people should speak less and fuck more”.
The fact is that Icelandic people aren’t content with watching screen versions of books at the cinema. Sólveig Anspach, whith an American father, and an Icelandic mother trained at Femis School, in Paris, is part of the current creative "boom" of Icelandic cinema, despite the fact that this Anspach’s film is the only Icelandic one we’ll be able to watch at this 5th edition of Seville Festival of European Cinema.
Back soon, which had already its premiere in August in Iceland and France, leaves us an aftertaste of vital joy, as Sigur Ròs’s songs do. Sigur Rös, the same who makes Anna (the leading character masterly played by Didda Jónsdóttir) put a Globe on the table and choose her destination with her two children, randomly . But the final decision of throwing caution to the wind won’t be free of a gruesome way in a sort of via crucis liberation. Anna knows that she needs a change, she’s tired of the life below zero in Reykjavik, but before making the decision of leaving, she has to get rid of her business as a dealer of marijuana in the middle of this story with much of road movie and hybrid comedy.
A lost-in-thought Frenchman student of general Scandinavian poetry and Anna’s poetry in particular, will be the protagonist’s companion of adventures, who will have to get around compromising situations by resorting to a cold and dry humour, and compromising situations, among them getting rid of a goose which has swallowed his mobile phone, and nobody dares to kill, a man who tries to commit suicide and is later encouraged to live by a God-believing young lady. All in all, in the same way Sigur Rós knows how to do it in music, Anspach invites us in the film to life without delay.
Concha Hierro
Translated by Diana Irene Arancibia
With a style between carefree and poetic, hilarious and introspective, rotter and profound, Anspach tells us about Anna’s existential need for vital renovation. She is a weedy and energetic Icelandic poet who blurted to his admirer and student of her works, gems such as “You French people should speak less and fuck more”.
The fact is that Icelandic people aren’t content with watching screen versions of books at the cinema. Sólveig Anspach, whith an American father, and an Icelandic mother trained at Femis School, in Paris, is part of the current creative "boom" of Icelandic cinema, despite the fact that this Anspach’s film is the only Icelandic one we’ll be able to watch at this 5th edition of Seville Festival of European Cinema.
Back soon, which had already its premiere in August in Iceland and France, leaves us an aftertaste of vital joy, as Sigur Ròs’s songs do. Sigur Rös, the same who makes Anna (the leading character masterly played by Didda Jónsdóttir) put a Globe on the table and choose her destination with her two children, randomly . But the final decision of throwing caution to the wind won’t be free of a gruesome way in a sort of via crucis liberation. Anna knows that she needs a change, she’s tired of the life below zero in Reykjavik, but before making the decision of leaving, she has to get rid of her business as a dealer of marijuana in the middle of this story with much of road movie and hybrid comedy.
A lost-in-thought Frenchman student of general Scandinavian poetry and Anna’s poetry in particular, will be the protagonist’s companion of adventures, who will have to get around compromising situations by resorting to a cold and dry humour, and compromising situations, among them getting rid of a goose which has swallowed his mobile phone, and nobody dares to kill, a man who tries to commit suicide and is later encouraged to live by a God-believing young lady. All in all, in the same way Sigur Rós knows how to do it in music, Anspach invites us in the film to life without delay.
Concha Hierro
Translated by Diana Irene Arancibia
Film Festival Kicks Off in Seville
Monday, November 10 2008 By Sevilla Babel | SPECIAL: Sevilla Festival de Cine Europeo | no comment
This post is also available in: Spanish
Lights! Camera! Action! Seville's European Film Festival is rolling! The long-awaited festival finally raises its curtain, much to the delight of cinema buffs. Headed by new manager Javier Martín Domínguez, the festival is going to start with a bang. The opening film, Gomorra, by Robert Saviano, gives a gritty account of the Italian mafia and sets the scene for a very ambicious fifth festival. Apart from film (including a series of horror films especially for the night owls), we'll also have food, photography, seminars and discussions. Tickets are soon to go on sale, and they'll be available throughout the seven-day festival, so don't miss out. See you in the cinema, fellow Europeans!
Pictured: Alfredo Sánchez Monteseirín (mayor of Seville) y Bigas Luna (Spanish cinematographer)
Concha Hierro
Translated by Jessie L.
Pictured: Alfredo Sánchez Monteseirín (mayor of Seville) y Bigas Luna (Spanish cinematographer)
Concha Hierro
Translated by Jessie L.
Age is nothing but a number where sexual biology is concerned
Friday, November 7 2008 By Sevilla Babel | SPECIAL: Sevilla Festival de Cine Europeo | no comment
This post is also available in: Spanish
In Seventh Heaven
The human body is 70% water. With age, this percentage gradually decreases - we dehydrate, we waste away, we get older. Growing old is biological. However, it seems that society wants us to believe that from a certain age, we no longer have the right to savour or be in touch with our most intimate sexual feelings and desires.
Thanks then to directors like Andreas Dresen for his ground-breaking audiovisual offerings which manage to portray sex in later life without dogmatism. In Seventh Heaven's protagonist is a woman who is over 60 and has been married for 30 years. She falls in love with a 76-year-old man and starts an illicit affair. Dresen avoids puritan sentimental celluloid while framing the naked bodies of wrinkled, ageing people, but they're sexy all the same. An awkward encounter, hindered by stiff joints, but profound and sincere nonetheless. In an era where audiovisual images are dominated by eternal adolescents, beautiful and brilliant, no more than 35 years old, the German director offers us orgasms that are nearly octogenarian as well as the odd impotent moment.
However, the controversial commentary doesn't end there. The film's eroticism makes us wonder why a woman over 60 who has been married for 30 years doesn't have the right to fall in love again and start over. Some might say it's because she doesn't have much time left. Others might say that even if she did have time, she's not silly little girl and she has to remain true to her husband, children and grandchildren. The director gets the cogs in our brain turning again by asking if it's maybe because this woman isn't seen as anything beyond a wife, mother and grandmother who isn't entitled to live outwith those labels?
This question is what sustains the film for its duration. The interesting thing is that this woman isn't acting unconsciously - she loves both her husband and her lover and doesn't want to harm anyone. Even just the title In Seventh Heaven suggests that we don't have to wait to die in order to enjoy true paradise; perhaps paradise is living here and now without time and numbers that instill such prejudice.
Paola García Costas
Translated by Jessie L
The human body is 70% water. With age, this percentage gradually decreases - we dehydrate, we waste away, we get older. Growing old is biological. However, it seems that society wants us to believe that from a certain age, we no longer have the right to savour or be in touch with our most intimate sexual feelings and desires.
Thanks then to directors like Andreas Dresen for his ground-breaking audiovisual offerings which manage to portray sex in later life without dogmatism. In Seventh Heaven's protagonist is a woman who is over 60 and has been married for 30 years. She falls in love with a 76-year-old man and starts an illicit affair. Dresen avoids puritan sentimental celluloid while framing the naked bodies of wrinkled, ageing people, but they're sexy all the same. An awkward encounter, hindered by stiff joints, but profound and sincere nonetheless. In an era where audiovisual images are dominated by eternal adolescents, beautiful and brilliant, no more than 35 years old, the German director offers us orgasms that are nearly octogenarian as well as the odd impotent moment.
However, the controversial commentary doesn't end there. The film's eroticism makes us wonder why a woman over 60 who has been married for 30 years doesn't have the right to fall in love again and start over. Some might say it's because she doesn't have much time left. Others might say that even if she did have time, she's not silly little girl and she has to remain true to her husband, children and grandchildren. The director gets the cogs in our brain turning again by asking if it's maybe because this woman isn't seen as anything beyond a wife, mother and grandmother who isn't entitled to live outwith those labels?
This question is what sustains the film for its duration. The interesting thing is that this woman isn't acting unconsciously - she loves both her husband and her lover and doesn't want to harm anyone. Even just the title In Seventh Heaven suggests that we don't have to wait to die in order to enjoy true paradise; perhaps paradise is living here and now without time and numbers that instill such prejudice.
Paola García Costas
Translated by Jessie L
SeVilnius: Let the fountains spring
Friday, September 12 2008 By Sevilla Babel | Sevilnius | no comment
This post is also available in: Spanish
How many fountains do you know in Vilnius? Does the city need fountains? What can you do near fountains and do citizens use fountains? - citizens of Vilnius were asked these questions on one not really rainy afternoon. Other, very similar ones, were asked in Seville. It is obvious, that fountains are not closely involved in life of citizens: they are not noticeable, not memorable and remain as a far dream...Answers from Vilnius
AGNÉHow many fountains are in Vilnius? I do not know, maybe four. And in Klaipėda there are eight - I know. Read about that recently.
Fountains are necessary for the city, especially during the hot summer. It is fun to flop about in them. More, there is a possibility to organize some initiatives near them or choose them as a meeting point. The more there are fountains the more beauty.
There is a lack of using fountains now, because they are not really memorable - I even can not name them.
ARUÑAS
I think, that there is one - near the parliament.There is a need of fountains, because they are interesting for the people, who come to the city. It is possible to sit near them, to drink some coffee, take your laptop and to browse the Internet.
There is a lack of using the fountains - citizens of Vilnius choose to meet in other places.
EGLÈ
There are three fountains in Vilnius.
It is very nice when there are many beautiful fountains in the city - I like them a lot. When you go to other countries, you can see many beautiful and interesting shapes fountains. And our fountains are so plain... Usually I just sit near them for a while, because they have more aesthetic function.
There is a need of more beautiful fountains in the city.
MARIUS
There are seven fountains in Vilnius.Fountains are needed really, because the city looks more sightly. Fountains are usable, but the usage is very little. Because they are not very well noticeable and there is nothing to enjoy while looking at them.
Somewhere could be mounted one really big, where many young people come together.
JONAS, UN AMIGO DE MARIUS
There are seven fountains in the city.
The city needs fountains - here, the fountain of town hole was mounted - and what? It is closed already, because it is broken.
It is possible to dip one's feet in the fountain.
KAZYS
Maybe there are four.
Vilnius needs fountains, but exploitation of them is really expensive, this is why it is a big problem from the antiquity. For the city like Vilnius seven or ten fountains is not enough, this is the same as nothing.
But if instead of those small ones they construct one very pretty one, so what? How many people can enjoy it? It has to be more pleasant for all in the city.
What are possible things to do near them? Being near the water - like near the lake - you have to enjoy. It is more healthy, not so dry near fountains. Less of dust, particles of heavy metals. For instance, after the rain in Peking during Olympic games, the air became more clean at one dash.
NIJOLÈ
Five fountains. They are needed, because it is more nice with them, more pleasure, they are decorations.
Fountains in Vilnius
There are 10 operating and 7 not operating fountains in Vilnius. In Seville about 10 fountains were constructed while preparing for the EXPO, which took place in 1992. This Spanish city is very similar to the capital of Lithuania by it's size, but it has approximately 5 times more of fountains.
Seville questions:
Are the fountains in a good state? Would you like to have more fountains in the city? Do you visit fountains often? Do you meet near a fountain often?
SANDRA, ITALY, 18
I t depends, some fountais are ok, but others are not in such a good state. I think one of them smells really bad.
One more fountain could be a good idea.
Near where I live there is one, however, I don't spend my time there. Still, my friends usually wait for me at that fountain when we arrange to meet.
ALEX, SPAIN, 32
There is a must to take care about the fountains more, most of them are in a bad condition.
There are not so many fountains, could be more - one in every district. When I walk with my dog I often pass one fountain.
ALBERTO, SPAIN, 28
Most known fountains, though not all of them, could be in a better condition.
Always better when there are more fountains, because with them is more fresh.
I do not spend time near fountains, I review them by passing by.
FABIOLA, SPAIN, 28
Actually I never payed the attention to this, but of course, of some of them should be more cared.
Sure, the more fountains the better, because they give some refresh, reduces the heat.
The most known fountain for me is near the Cathedral and together with our friends we often spend time near it.
Fountains in Seville
Special thanks to José Alberto Suárez López
Photos made by Erika Lastovskytè and J.A. Suárez López
Two Words for Europe - An Account of an Event
Monday, May 12 2008 By Sevilla Babel | Events | no comment
This post is also available in: Spanish
Europe Day on May 9th is a day of celebration for all Babelians. In its honour, Cafébabel's Seville team decided to organise some activities that citizens could take part in.
Fifty-eight years after the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Robert Schuman, read Jean Monnet's declaration proposing the creation of a supranational European institution to administer coal and steel, we took to the streets to ask passers-by to write "two words for Europe" on the blank panels we had put on the walls of Seville's town hall. Some people were taken aback by our request, as they had always thought of the old continent as
being something distant and unrelated to their lives. Others, however, approached the task with curiosity and were interested in our cause.
Tens of people from every background and of every age took the time to leave a brief testimony encompassing their idea of Europe. Things were brought to a standstill as various school groups were encouraged to participate under the watchful eyes of their teachers. "Come on, Europe! That sounds familiar, doesn't it? From the exam yesterday. Do you think you can write something worthwhile?" they asked some students who were frantically passing the pen around among themselves.
Many university students joined in, associating Europe with freedom, peace, identity, multiculturalism and books, among other things. Some adorned the panels with Spanish witticisms and puns, adding authenticity and a hint of humour to the event. We still haven't managed to decipher one of the messages, which is written in Finnish... but we're working on it. After all, it wasn't just Spanish that made an appearance on that sunny sevillano morning.
Two-hundred flyers announcing the afternoon debate on "How much more can the EU expand?" were handed out to those who approached us. The mayor of Seville himself, Alfredo Sánchez Monteseirín, was given a flyer by our coordinator, Concha Hierro, who told him about our Babelian initiative. After two hours in Plaza Nueva, we moved on to San Fernando Street outside the Rector's Office - the hub of the city's university. There we came across a small orchestra playing the European Anthem, as well as an information desk offering a variety of material about the formation of the EU and its issues. We took part in hoisting the European flag and continued to spread the word about Cafébabel. The arrival of lunchtime marked the end of a fruitful morning in which we played our part in taking Europe to the streets. Many definitions and words were written about Europe, but none of them were quite illustrative as those left by a German-Spanish couple: "We love each other."Maybe that's what Europe is about.
Concha Hierro
Photos: Sara Domínguez Martín
Translation by Jessie L. (miralaluna)
Fifty-eight years after the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Robert Schuman, read Jean Monnet's declaration proposing the creation of a supranational European institution to administer coal and steel, we took to the streets to ask passers-by to write "two words for Europe" on the blank panels we had put on the walls of Seville's town hall. Some people were taken aback by our request, as they had always thought of the old continent as
being something distant and unrelated to their lives. Others, however, approached the task with curiosity and were interested in our cause. Tens of people from every background and of every age took the time to leave a brief testimony encompassing their idea of Europe. Things were brought to a standstill as various school groups were encouraged to participate under the watchful eyes of their teachers. "Come on, Europe! That sounds familiar, doesn't it? From the exam yesterday. Do you think you can write something worthwhile?" they asked some students who were frantically passing the pen around among themselves.
Many university students joined in, associating Europe with freedom, peace, identity, multiculturalism and books, among other things. Some adorned the panels with Spanish witticisms and puns, adding authenticity and a hint of humour to the event. We still haven't managed to decipher one of the messages, which is written in Finnish... but we're working on it. After all, it wasn't just Spanish that made an appearance on that sunny sevillano morning.
Two-hundred flyers announcing the afternoon debate on "How much more can the EU expand?" were handed out to those who approached us. The mayor of Seville himself, Alfredo Sánchez Monteseirín, was given a flyer by our coordinator, Concha Hierro, who told him about our Babelian initiative. After two hours in Plaza Nueva, we moved on to San Fernando Street outside the Rector's Office - the hub of the city's university. There we came across a small orchestra playing the European Anthem, as well as an information desk offering a variety of material about the formation of the EU and its issues. We took part in hoisting the European flag and continued to spread the word about Cafébabel. The arrival of lunchtime marked the end of a fruitful morning in which we played our part in taking Europe to the streets. Many definitions and words were written about Europe, but none of them were quite illustrative as those left by a German-Spanish couple: "We love each other."Maybe that's what Europe is about.Concha Hierro
Photos: Sara Domínguez Martín
Translation by Jessie L. (miralaluna)
Sevilnius: Eurchasing power
Friday, May 9 2008 By Sevilla Babel | Sevilnius | no comment
This post is also available in: Spanish
From north east to south west 3870 kilometers separate two European cities Seville and Vilnius. Keeping in mind that both of them are still creating their European identity (as well as, Europe is) one can believe that such distance looses it’s meaning. We are saying that technologies, historical and demographical data enables us to give to the distance a new sense. New European values are created, while eliminating it using legal, political and economical measures. At the same time Sevilnius is intended to create the discussion on how such distance can help.
Before looking for something in common it is important to grasp the differences between prices and purchasing power in Seville and Vilnius. The material value of identity should not be confined to trade marks, however. The survey of goods and services offered for European citizens is only basic information, which will be necessary when unfolding their financial situation and its’ influence to their perception of Europe.
CITY LABOR MARKET
Both cities joined Europe with the similar number of citizens. Today the population of Vilnius city is 550 000, and slightly more 700 000 are living in Seville. Vilnius district has 850 000 registered citizens of Lithuanian, Polish and Russian nationality and Seville metro covers the area, which is home for 1,5 million Andalusians and immigrants from South America.
Sevillians emphasize that most of the people who do not get even the minimum wage are working under temporal contracts or illegally. According to the data of Eurobarometer, 5 % of the Spanish population gets the illegal payment at least once a year. Although, there are twice of such people in Lithuania - 10%, legal wage even for students here is rearly more than a minimum. In Spain, where students get less only because they are studying, those who earn 1000 EUR in their first job have a new name MILEURISTAS. While in Lithuania students and many school children start their career with a half of the minimum 115 EUR.
PLEASURE OF PURCHASING
For those who get the minimum wage 600 EUR in Seville:
• 100 EUR left after buying the stove and the washing machine.
• 200 EUR left after paying the rent for 1 room apartment not in the city center.
Those who get the minimum wage 230 EUR in Vilnius:
• Should borrow 190 EUR before buying the stove and the washing machine.
• 100 EUR left after paying the rent for 1 room apartment not in the city center.
NEED CHARITY?
For 200 EUR Sevillian can have a dinner in the café the whole month. In Vilnius, 100 EUR is enough for a month to pay the everyday hot dish. While Sevillian, who gets the minimum 600 EUR, pays 1/12 of his wage for a monthly ticket, in Vilnius the same ticket makes 1/12 of the minimum 230 EUR. If Sevillian would like to help poor people he could by 1000 loafs of bread, and the most generous Vilnius worker could only buy 500 of such bread loafs for a minimum wage.
Today the big part of city residents lack of social, and moral incentives to create the common Europe. Thus, the next task of Sevilnius is to compare the role of material values in their life. Does the bigger purchasing power in Seville means, that material values are becoming more and more important in Europe?
Vilnius and Seville teams
Before looking for something in common it is important to grasp the differences between prices and purchasing power in Seville and Vilnius. The material value of identity should not be confined to trade marks, however. The survey of goods and services offered for European citizens is only basic information, which will be necessary when unfolding their financial situation and its’ influence to their perception of Europe.
CITY LABOR MARKET
Both cities joined Europe with the similar number of citizens. Today the population of Vilnius city is 550 000, and slightly more 700 000 are living in Seville. Vilnius district has 850 000 registered citizens of Lithuanian, Polish and Russian nationality and Seville metro covers the area, which is home for 1,5 million Andalusians and immigrants from South America.
Sevillians emphasize that most of the people who do not get even the minimum wage are working under temporal contracts or illegally. According to the data of Eurobarometer, 5 % of the Spanish population gets the illegal payment at least once a year. Although, there are twice of such people in Lithuania - 10%, legal wage even for students here is rearly more than a minimum. In Spain, where students get less only because they are studying, those who earn 1000 EUR in their first job have a new name MILEURISTAS. While in Lithuania students and many school children start their career with a half of the minimum 115 EUR.
PLEASURE OF PURCHASING
For those who get the minimum wage 600 EUR in Seville:• 100 EUR left after buying the stove and the washing machine.
• 200 EUR left after paying the rent for 1 room apartment not in the city center.
Those who get the minimum wage 230 EUR in Vilnius:
• Should borrow 190 EUR before buying the stove and the washing machine.
• 100 EUR left after paying the rent for 1 room apartment not in the city center.
NEED CHARITY?
For 200 EUR Sevillian can have a dinner in the café the whole month. In Vilnius, 100 EUR is enough for a month to pay the everyday hot dish. While Sevillian, who gets the minimum 600 EUR, pays 1/12 of his wage for a monthly ticket, in Vilnius the same ticket makes 1/12 of the minimum 230 EUR. If Sevillian would like to help poor people he could by 1000 loafs of bread, and the most generous Vilnius worker could only buy 500 of such bread loafs for a minimum wage.
Today the big part of city residents lack of social, and moral incentives to create the common Europe. Thus, the next task of Sevilnius is to compare the role of material values in their life. Does the bigger purchasing power in Seville means, that material values are becoming more and more important in Europe?
Vilnius and Seville teams
Video surveillance: Freedom vs. Security?
Sunday, May 4 2008 By Sevilla Babel | Events | no comment
This post is also available in: Spanish
On April 26th, the Cafebabel local team in Seville organized a coffee-debate within the framework of the project 'Seville on the ground', in which five European journalists travel to a city and report about it. The chosen topic was the video surveillance in downtown Seville and the Zemos 98 Association was the special guest. The debate was moderated by Concha Hierro, and lasted approximately two hours.
There were a lot of opinions and the positions were very different. Some came in with a mind and got out with another, others kept their opinions (which got even stronger), and others started to think harder about the issue. A lot of issues were proposed, a lot of arguments were launched and a lot of opinions were confronted.
On the one hand, the issue of privacy was assessed: would cameras take freedom away from us? Many people maintain that life in the street wouldn’t be the same; people would be more repressed, they would feel watched over and stalked and wouldn’t do certain things because of embarrassment or for fear of their image being used for different purposes (as an example, it was cited: who would go into a sex shop, knowing that is being watched over?). Those who share this opinion believe that life in the areas under vigilance would be more monotonous: people would stop doing foolish things in the street, the couples wouldn’t kiss so much and laughter would be controlled. Daily things would become worries, although playing the fool kissing and laughing are not a crime at all.
On the other hand, some people believe that cameras can really provide more safety. They maintain that, although they are not “the” solution, cameras are an important starting point for, at least, reducing street crime. The case of the girl assaulted in the subway was cited to justify the importance of cameras in an event like this. If it weren’t for the images recorded, how would the aggressor be identified? Besides, those who share this view firmly believe that after a while, people would forget that they are being recorded and it wouldn’t affect their daily life. In their opinion, cameras are another means to try and protect people, and those who don’t behave badly don’t have to fear the introduction of video surveillance.
Another argument presented by those who are against this practice, is the fact that often the cameras are there, but there isn’t anybody behind them really watching what happens in the street. Besides that, the reluctance has to do with who is watching. Who will guarantee that this person is reliable and that the images won’t be used for a different purpose? Defenders of this cause say that to spend money on something without a guarantee isn’t worth it: they prefer to invest in education.
On the contrary, those in favor of the cameras maintain that spending money in education is always good, but it’s not going to solve the problem. In their opinion, this is a much deeper issue because it would be to change the system; it’s one of the solutions, but in the long run. We must invest in education and improve the basis but, meanwhile, we must resort to quicker support. There are places in which video surveillance helped to send criminals to jail in real time; there were people behind the cameras in permanent contact with the police in the street. It didn’t do away with crime, but managed to reduce it. The question was shot: why not give it a try?
A controversial issue was launched by one of the participants: Why to put cameras in the noble areas of Seville, like the C/ Sierpes and Nervion and not to put then in the 3,000 housing, where crime is really alarming? According to their reasons, if we don’t put the cameras where they are truly needed, there’s no need to put them in any other place. Those who agree with the setting of the monitoring system also maintain that those places need cameras more than other places, but in no way it prevents the installation from starting in the area where tourists concentrate and where it is easier to spot and catch a thief.
We finished the debate without reaching an agreement. The interactivity, the discussion, very well-argued interventions and the encouragement in the production of ideas were, no doubt, the strong points of the meeting; points which made all the participants think about a very important issue, not so emphasized as it should be.
Gabriela Azevedo Forlin
Photography: Bénédicte Salzes
Translated by Diana Irene Arancibia
There were a lot of opinions and the positions were very different. Some came in with a mind and got out with another, others kept their opinions (which got even stronger), and others started to think harder about the issue. A lot of issues were proposed, a lot of arguments were launched and a lot of opinions were confronted. On the one hand, the issue of privacy was assessed: would cameras take freedom away from us? Many people maintain that life in the street wouldn’t be the same; people would be more repressed, they would feel watched over and stalked and wouldn’t do certain things because of embarrassment or for fear of their image being used for different purposes (as an example, it was cited: who would go into a sex shop, knowing that is being watched over?). Those who share this opinion believe that life in the areas under vigilance would be more monotonous: people would stop doing foolish things in the street, the couples wouldn’t kiss so much and laughter would be controlled. Daily things would become worries, although playing the fool kissing and laughing are not a crime at all.
On the other hand, some people believe that cameras can really provide more safety. They maintain that, although they are not “the” solution, cameras are an important starting point for, at least, reducing street crime. The case of the girl assaulted in the subway was cited to justify the importance of cameras in an event like this. If it weren’t for the images recorded, how would the aggressor be identified? Besides, those who share this view firmly believe that after a while, people would forget that they are being recorded and it wouldn’t affect their daily life. In their opinion, cameras are another means to try and protect people, and those who don’t behave badly don’t have to fear the introduction of video surveillance.
Another argument presented by those who are against this practice, is the fact that often the cameras are there, but there isn’t anybody behind them really watching what happens in the street. Besides that, the reluctance has to do with who is watching. Who will guarantee that this person is reliable and that the images won’t be used for a different purpose? Defenders of this cause say that to spend money on something without a guarantee isn’t worth it: they prefer to invest in education. On the contrary, those in favor of the cameras maintain that spending money in education is always good, but it’s not going to solve the problem. In their opinion, this is a much deeper issue because it would be to change the system; it’s one of the solutions, but in the long run. We must invest in education and improve the basis but, meanwhile, we must resort to quicker support. There are places in which video surveillance helped to send criminals to jail in real time; there were people behind the cameras in permanent contact with the police in the street. It didn’t do away with crime, but managed to reduce it. The question was shot: why not give it a try?
A controversial issue was launched by one of the participants: Why to put cameras in the noble areas of Seville, like the C/ Sierpes and Nervion and not to put then in the 3,000 housing, where crime is really alarming? According to their reasons, if we don’t put the cameras where they are truly needed, there’s no need to put them in any other place. Those who agree with the setting of the monitoring system also maintain that those places need cameras more than other places, but in no way it prevents the installation from starting in the area where tourists concentrate and where it is easier to spot and catch a thief.
We finished the debate without reaching an agreement. The interactivity, the discussion, very well-argued interventions and the encouragement in the production of ideas were, no doubt, the strong points of the meeting; points which made all the participants think about a very important issue, not so emphasized as it should be.
Gabriela Azevedo Forlin
Photography: Bénédicte Salzes
Translated by Diana Irene Arancibia
Who converts, doesn’t have fun!
Thursday, April 24 2008 By Sevilla Babel | Lost pieces | no comment
This post is also available in: German Spanish
Living in Europe is not an easy task for those who earn their money in currencies which are very weak compared to Euro and, besides, for those who live in countries where the cost of living is (very) cheap compared to that of European countries. Who most suffer this problem are Latin American students, as is my case (I’m Brazilian) and that of thousands of persons more. For those who don’t know, Brazilian currency is the “Real”, which is approximately equivalent to 0.38 Euros. Or, in other words, to buy 1 euro, we need 2,57 “reais”.
What can be done with 2,57 reais in Brazil? Or, better yet, with 1 euro? Well, to begin with, the canteen at the public university in my area (Santa Catarina) costs 1,50 reais ( 0,58 euros). You have still got 1,07 reais left( or 0,42 euros) with which you can have an ice-cream cone for dessert, or have 20 pages photocopied at the university photocopier’s. Looks like a dream, doesn’t it? And if you can spend a little more, there is the possibility to eat at the seaside, at one of the best restaurants on the most famous and hectic beaches in Southern Brazil ( Balneario Camborjú) for 30 reais (at the most!) or, approximately 11,70 euros.
Seems cheap? Well, it doesn’t seem, it really is. However, for people working there and getting their salaries in “reais” eating at the seaside is a real privilege (unless you work a lot during the year, to save money for the holidays…), but for those who arrive with their powerful euros, it’s like being in paradise. Now, imagine what happens with a student who comes from Brazil and has to pay 6,50 euros for a drink at some disco in Seville. He or she simply goes nuts when imagining all the things he could do in Brazil with these 16,70 reais. Well, the same student could go 4 times to the cinema (using the student’s card) and he/she still would have 2,70 reais left to buy two small packets of popcorn.
Well, I want to be fair. Not all the discos in Seville charge 6,50 euros a drink, do they? There are some which charge 8,50 euros a drink, too! And that really hurts a foreigner’s pocket! These 21,84 reais pay for 3 of my meals at the restaurant I usually eat in Brazil ( dessert and soft drink/juice/beer included!). Look at that! Let’s move on from meals to something wider. Let’s talk about housing.
I’ve already been told that housing in Seville isn’t expensive compared to Madrid, Barcelona, Milan o Rome, for example. Let’s see, sharing an apartment near the Cathedral with 3 more people, costs approximately 300 euros (771 reais). With the same 300 euros, on the same beach I mentioned before, I could rent a two- bedroom apartment (or even three bedrooms!), furnished, with a land line phone, broadband Internet, with community included and another detail: everything just for me! As nobody rents something that big just for themselves, it is usually shared. Let’s suppose that two people share an apartment like this, they’ve got 385,5 reais (150 euros) still left to spend during the month. Well, you can eat 64 times at the “daily” restaurant I mentioned before (or three times at the seaside), or buy two new jeans, or two pairs of new trainers (and good ones!), or three new imported perfumes, or pay the transport to university during seven months, or simply do the monthly shopping at the supermarket and there would be approximately 150 reais still left for next month shopping. There are a lot of options…
It is for these and other reasons that when I spend six euros on tickets for the cinema, 6,50 euros on a drink, 300 euros on the rent, 30 euros monthly on transport, almost 40 euros on the weekly shopping, 35 euros monthly on Internet and some other “fixed” expenses, I don’t calculate how much this would be in reais. Who is in Europe has to make the most of it and besides, he/she knew from the arrival that they were going to spend more money. So, I prefer to think in euros, because if I convert…I don’t have fun!
Gabriela Azevedo Forlin
Translated by Diana Irene Arancibia
What can be done with 2,57 reais in Brazil? Or, better yet, with 1 euro? Well, to begin with, the canteen at the public university in my area (Santa Catarina) costs 1,50 reais ( 0,58 euros). You have still got 1,07 reais left( or 0,42 euros) with which you can have an ice-cream cone for dessert, or have 20 pages photocopied at the university photocopier’s. Looks like a dream, doesn’t it? And if you can spend a little more, there is the possibility to eat at the seaside, at one of the best restaurants on the most famous and hectic beaches in Southern Brazil ( Balneario Camborjú) for 30 reais (at the most!) or, approximately 11,70 euros.Seems cheap? Well, it doesn’t seem, it really is. However, for people working there and getting their salaries in “reais” eating at the seaside is a real privilege (unless you work a lot during the year, to save money for the holidays…), but for those who arrive with their powerful euros, it’s like being in paradise. Now, imagine what happens with a student who comes from Brazil and has to pay 6,50 euros for a drink at some disco in Seville. He or she simply goes nuts when imagining all the things he could do in Brazil with these 16,70 reais. Well, the same student could go 4 times to the cinema (using the student’s card) and he/she still would have 2,70 reais left to buy two small packets of popcorn.
Well, I want to be fair. Not all the discos in Seville charge 6,50 euros a drink, do they? There are some which charge 8,50 euros a drink, too! And that really hurts a foreigner’s pocket! These 21,84 reais pay for 3 of my meals at the restaurant I usually eat in Brazil ( dessert and soft drink/juice/beer included!). Look at that! Let’s move on from meals to something wider. Let’s talk about housing.
I’ve already been told that housing in Seville isn’t expensive compared to Madrid, Barcelona, Milan o Rome, for example. Let’s see, sharing an apartment near the Cathedral with 3 more people, costs approximately 300 euros (771 reais). With the same 300 euros, on the same beach I mentioned before, I could rent a two- bedroom apartment (or even three bedrooms!), furnished, with a land line phone, broadband Internet, with community included and another detail: everything just for me! As nobody rents something that big just for themselves, it is usually shared. Let’s suppose that two people share an apartment like this, they’ve got 385,5 reais (150 euros) still left to spend during the month. Well, you can eat 64 times at the “daily” restaurant I mentioned before (or three times at the seaside), or buy two new jeans, or two pairs of new trainers (and good ones!), or three new imported perfumes, or pay the transport to university during seven months, or simply do the monthly shopping at the supermarket and there would be approximately 150 reais still left for next month shopping. There are a lot of options…
It is for these and other reasons that when I spend six euros on tickets for the cinema, 6,50 euros on a drink, 300 euros on the rent, 30 euros monthly on transport, almost 40 euros on the weekly shopping, 35 euros monthly on Internet and some other “fixed” expenses, I don’t calculate how much this would be in reais. Who is in Europe has to make the most of it and besides, he/she knew from the arrival that they were going to spend more money. So, I prefer to think in euros, because if I convert…I don’t have fun!
Gabriela Azevedo Forlin
Translated by Diana Irene Arancibia
Intellectuals as correspondents in fratricide Spain
Monday, April 14 2008 By Sevilla Babel | Events | no comment
This post is also available in: German Spanish
As the English Hispanist Hugh Thomas claimed, “ as back in the 1850’s was the great time of ambassadors, the 30’s were the golden age of foreign correspondents”. They were years of redefinition of European and worldwide politics.
“From the end of July 1936, and for two years and a half, it was usual to find the greatest world reporters to the South of the Pyrenees”, Thomas continued. The French author of El Principito, Saint-Exupéry; the American photographer Robert Capa, pseudonym under which worked Andrés Friedmann,his girlfriend Gerda Taro y Chim Seymour; the British social democrat George Orwell; the irreverent Italian Indro Montanelli; the American John Dos Passos; y Ernest Hemingway or his wife and pioneer Martha Gellhorn, among others, got together in one of the fratricide wars that set the course for European and world politics: the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).
The Centre for Andalusian Studies, in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes and the Fundación socialista Pablo Iglesias, chaired by Alfonso Guerra, brings to Sevilla the exhibition “Correspondents in the Spain War”, inaugurated in New York in 2006. A collection of articles and interviews which show how these intellectuals, mostly staying at Florida Hotel, lived and wrote. A job on the edge of events, which would mark the history of journalism.
The poor walls of the Florida, on Callao Square in Madrid, were the faithful witness of intimate conversations between Hemingway and his third wife, Martha Gellhorn, of the development of thinking in many of those who wrote on their tables and the many sleepless nights after what their eyes had seen during the day. It was the harsh Spain of passions that was killing itself.
Jay Allen, one of the last to interview José Antonio Primo de Rivera before his execution in 1936, reproduces the following dialogue with Franco in one of his articles published in the Chicago Daily Tribune on 28 July 1936:
Allen: “Isn’t there any possibility of a truce, or a compromise?”
Franco: “No. No, definitely not. We fight for Spain.. They fight against Spain. We are determined to go ahead at any cost”.
Allen: “You will have to kill half of Spain”, I said.
He turned his head, smiled and looking at me, he firmly said:
Franco: “I said at any cost”.
The Civil War had started in a remote country to the South of Europe. Stalin’s eyes would be in every step taken by his Soviet spy, Harold Philby, who wrote chronicles in favour of Franco, to win his trust. The ideologies were arm-wrestling for the hegemony over Europe in a ruthlessly crazy Spain.
THE ROLE OF WOMEN
At the exhibition we can also appreciate that not only the men reflected through their cameras and articles the details of the Civil War. Women journalists appeared with the same courage as their male peers. That desire to be present at decisive stages of the conflict would take German photographer Gerda Taro’s life.
Exiled in Paris after the arrival to power of Natzis, due to her Jewish origin and her socialist militancy, Taro would learn the tricks of the trade of photography through Hungarian Andre Friedman, also of Jewish origin, who later would be her partner. Together with him she would create the fictitious character of Robert Capa, a so-called famous photographer from the USA. Through that strategy they intended to get more jobs, and it really worked. Soon after that, a conflict would break out which would mobilize the whole Europe: the Spanish Civil War. The couple didn’t hesitate and moved to Spain, where they worked for French magazines like Vu or Regards.
She also carried out interviews by herself, and in one of them she would lose her life a summer day in 1937. After a national bombing over republican positions in the battle of Brunete, the confusion caused a republican tank to crush her, leaving her badly hurt, and she finally died in a hospital of El Escorial. Gerda was only 27 years old. A few days later she would be buried in Paris with all the honours.
It is, no doubt, the most dramatic case, but she wasn’t the only woman who ventured in the, at that time, dangerous Spanish land. The American Marta Gellhorn, also connected to another man of internacional entity like Ernest Hemingway when she became his third wife, was a correspondent for Collier’s magazine during the conflict. She would also continue her work during World War II. In 1969, Hemingway would abandon her and join his fourth wife, the correspondent of magazine Times, Mary Welsh. Despite the dangers her life went through, she wouldn’t die until ten years ago, when she was 89 years old and, the same as her ex-husband, she put an end to her life voluntarily. Sick with cancer, a pill did to her what hundreds of bombings couldn’t.
The New York Times entrusted the journalist Virginia Cowles with the chronicles from the republican side. She perceived from there the worry caused by the air raids. “The people’s state of mind has weakened under the atrocious destruction coming from heaven..”
From Northern Europe arrived Barbro Alving, Swedish journalist who in 1936 moved to Spain to report on the war. Her newspaper, the Dagens Nyheter, financed her activity as a journalist in Spain, but declined responsibilities for the mission risks. Her chronicles from the front gave her international recognition. Later, she would cover relevant events like the interview between Hitler and Mussolini, the war in Finland and the devastation caused by the bomb thrown over Hiroshima.
In those days the war was mainly “men stuff ” but, these women left their countries to try and prevent the rule which says “in the war the first victim is the truth” from becoming true. Her chronicles travelled around a convulsed world in which the boundary between information and propaganda, was just a diffuse line.
Journalism is indebted to them.
Concha Hierro and Álvaro Sánchez
Translated by Diana Irene Arancibia
*In the first photograph Mijail Koltsov, de ‘Pravda’, with photographer Roman Karmen in a trench. In the second, the Florida hotel.. In the last one, Gerda Taro and Robert Capa.
“From the end of July 1936, and for two years and a half, it was usual to find the greatest world reporters to the South of the Pyrenees”, Thomas continued. The French author of El Principito, Saint-Exupéry; the American photographer Robert Capa, pseudonym under which worked Andrés Friedmann,his girlfriend Gerda Taro y Chim Seymour; the British social democrat George Orwell; the irreverent Italian Indro Montanelli; the American John Dos Passos; y Ernest Hemingway or his wife and pioneer Martha Gellhorn, among others, got together in one of the fratricide wars that set the course for European and world politics: the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).
The Centre for Andalusian Studies, in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes and the Fundación socialista Pablo Iglesias, chaired by Alfonso Guerra, brings to Sevilla the exhibition “Correspondents in the Spain War”, inaugurated in New York in 2006. A collection of articles and interviews which show how these intellectuals, mostly staying at Florida Hotel, lived and wrote. A job on the edge of events, which would mark the history of journalism. The poor walls of the Florida, on Callao Square in Madrid, were the faithful witness of intimate conversations between Hemingway and his third wife, Martha Gellhorn, of the development of thinking in many of those who wrote on their tables and the many sleepless nights after what their eyes had seen during the day. It was the harsh Spain of passions that was killing itself.
Jay Allen, one of the last to interview José Antonio Primo de Rivera before his execution in 1936, reproduces the following dialogue with Franco in one of his articles published in the Chicago Daily Tribune on 28 July 1936:
Allen: “Isn’t there any possibility of a truce, or a compromise?”
Franco: “No. No, definitely not. We fight for Spain.. They fight against Spain. We are determined to go ahead at any cost”.
Allen: “You will have to kill half of Spain”, I said.
He turned his head, smiled and looking at me, he firmly said:
Franco: “I said at any cost”.
The Civil War had started in a remote country to the South of Europe. Stalin’s eyes would be in every step taken by his Soviet spy, Harold Philby, who wrote chronicles in favour of Franco, to win his trust. The ideologies were arm-wrestling for the hegemony over Europe in a ruthlessly crazy Spain.
THE ROLE OF WOMEN
At the exhibition we can also appreciate that not only the men reflected through their cameras and articles the details of the Civil War. Women journalists appeared with the same courage as their male peers. That desire to be present at decisive stages of the conflict would take German photographer Gerda Taro’s life.
Exiled in Paris after the arrival to power of Natzis, due to her Jewish origin and her socialist militancy, Taro would learn the tricks of the trade of photography through Hungarian Andre Friedman, also of Jewish origin, who later would be her partner. Together with him she would create the fictitious character of Robert Capa, a so-called famous photographer from the USA. Through that strategy they intended to get more jobs, and it really worked. Soon after that, a conflict would break out which would mobilize the whole Europe: the Spanish Civil War. The couple didn’t hesitate and moved to Spain, where they worked for French magazines like Vu or Regards.She also carried out interviews by herself, and in one of them she would lose her life a summer day in 1937. After a national bombing over republican positions in the battle of Brunete, the confusion caused a republican tank to crush her, leaving her badly hurt, and she finally died in a hospital of El Escorial. Gerda was only 27 years old. A few days later she would be buried in Paris with all the honours.
It is, no doubt, the most dramatic case, but she wasn’t the only woman who ventured in the, at that time, dangerous Spanish land. The American Marta Gellhorn, also connected to another man of internacional entity like Ernest Hemingway when she became his third wife, was a correspondent for Collier’s magazine during the conflict. She would also continue her work during World War II. In 1969, Hemingway would abandon her and join his fourth wife, the correspondent of magazine Times, Mary Welsh. Despite the dangers her life went through, she wouldn’t die until ten years ago, when she was 89 years old and, the same as her ex-husband, she put an end to her life voluntarily. Sick with cancer, a pill did to her what hundreds of bombings couldn’t.
The New York Times entrusted the journalist Virginia Cowles with the chronicles from the republican side. She perceived from there the worry caused by the air raids. “The people’s state of mind has weakened under the atrocious destruction coming from heaven..”
From Northern Europe arrived Barbro Alving, Swedish journalist who in 1936 moved to Spain to report on the war. Her newspaper, the Dagens Nyheter, financed her activity as a journalist in Spain, but declined responsibilities for the mission risks. Her chronicles from the front gave her international recognition. Later, she would cover relevant events like the interview between Hitler and Mussolini, the war in Finland and the devastation caused by the bomb thrown over Hiroshima.
In those days the war was mainly “men stuff ” but, these women left their countries to try and prevent the rule which says “in the war the first victim is the truth” from becoming true. Her chronicles travelled around a convulsed world in which the boundary between information and propaganda, was just a diffuse line.
Journalism is indebted to them.
Concha Hierro and Álvaro Sánchez
Translated by Diana Irene Arancibia
*In the first photograph Mijail Koltsov, de ‘Pravda’, with photographer Roman Karmen in a trench. In the second, the Florida hotel.. In the last one, Gerda Taro and Robert Capa.
HUMAN FACTOR 2008: García Moliner, a humanist scientific
Tuesday, March 11 2008 By Sevilla Babel | Society: University | no comment
This post is also available in: German Spanish
Federico García Moliner was awarded the prize “Príncipe de Asturias” for Technical and Scientific Investigation, due to his excellent work in the field of Physics. He is one of the great Spanish scientists of our time; however, when listening to him, nothing would make you think he’s such an illustrious personality.Dressed up in a quite colourful bow tie and a broad smile, Moliner showed up not only to give his lecture, but also to listen to the rest of them, in which he participated with great interest, asking questions in the round of questions and not hesitating to hand over the students his turn of speaking, although the organizers had given him primacy over the rest. Telling this is not trivial, since it’s a sign of his humane character, and that was the central topic of the conference.
Just the beginning of his lecture drew strong applause: “You may wonder how science is made…Well, I’ll read Ana Maria Matute for you to understand it” And, he read for us Ana Maria Matute’s description of the writing process. For those who haven’t come close to sciences except in high school, listening to such an exquisite comparison between science and writing was an absolute joy. ”There´s a lot of beauty in science”, he told us and, no doubt, he could transmit the idea well.
His defence of culture is based on its importance, since it determines the way in which we use the brain”. Our limited concept of it, impairs a greater intellectual and personal development, since we insist on “radically differentiate culture and material world, even though they are the same thing or, in other words, they are co-existent and inter-related realities”.
“The artist and the scientist are so similar…” he told us, “both seek to find an explanation of the world and transmit it”. It’s a lovely way of understanding science and art, beauty and ideas. Perhaps Moliner was thinking about the Gernika or the structure of fractals when he declared: “Not only is there beauty in art, but also profound ideas; not only are there profound ideas in science, but there’s room for beauty too”.
Sara Domínguez Martín
Translated by Diana Irene Arancibia
HUMAN FACTOR 2008: Nicolás Sartorius Álvarez and the European model
Monday, March 3 2008 By Sevilla Babel | Society: University | no comment
This post is also available in: Spanish
Nicolás Sartorius is a lawyer as well as a professional journalist. Yet, something he is very well-known for is his fight for freedom during Franco’s dictatorship. He founded the Workers Commissions Union (affiliated with the Communist Party), but he is no longer dedicated to Politics, although he continues participating, but from a different position, in the defense of social reforms. “Dear friends” is the beginning of his speech, which clearly reflects what one of the principles of his ideology is: equity, in every level. Therefore, his discourse could not lack an explicit reference to poverty. “You can ask me if humans live well. I can say that 3,400 million people live with 1 or 2 dollars a day whilst 800 million do so with 75 dollars… What do you think about that?” While his speech is interesting, it is easy to get lost in figures about wealth, life expectancy, and immigration which precede the known conclusion about “the growing gap between the rich and the poor.” We were all expecting different contributions on the subject; we agree on the fact that we are “richer and older”, but were asking ourselves about the topic of his speech: “What can we expect and what choices do we have?”
In his own words, “the solution is globalizing wellbeing in the world through the four virtues: Democracy, Social Cohesion, Sustainable Development, and Free Circulation of people and goods,” that is, “the European model.” Sartorius believes in the big success of the model of Europe. “We have gone from constant wars to democracies, liberty… it is possible to live well in Europe nowadays,” he argues, “and this model should be exported to other regions of the world.” According to his idea, exporting the model would benefit the poorest countries, but also the richest, for “development of least-favored economies will turn them into new markets.”
“Europe has the responsibility of leading the process of change, which has already begun, because today multilateralism is defeating the hegemony of the United States,” he tells us convincingly. “We must teach the world what we have learned, for the solution is not bombing but supporting peoples to end with tyranny.”
Sara Domínguez Martín
Translated by Cristina Crosby
HUMAN FACTOR 2008: Emilio Lledó on words
Saturday, February 23 2008 By Sevilla Babel | Society: University | no comment
This post is also available in: Spanish French
Emilio Lledó Iñigo was born in Sevilla 81 years ago, but he stays young. This philosopher is, above all, a fan of language. He weighs and tastes every word and manages to deliver a discourse that feels like savoring the best of meals. And not because he uses complex or poetic words, but because of the opposite: the precision and naturalness with which he conveys the most abstract ideas. He is one of those cases that exemplify well that one’s wisdom is not necessarily reflected in the use of elaborate words. More than optimistic, Emilio Lledó starts his speech with a warning: “Do not let them convince you that life is worse than it was back in the day… no, no, no… I have lived enough and I can assure you that this saying has been going on for years and that life as we know it is much better than before. Despite the brutality, violence, and barbarity of humankind, we do not have the right to stop fighting for life, love, words… we do not have the right to lose hope, because it is not so true that as long as there is life, there is hope, but rather as long as there is hope, there is life.”
But, what is the key to progress? to life? Words. According to him, “being able to use words is what makes us human”. His message flows around words, language as the connecting thread of life. “The world is full of mother tongues, but it is not them that define us, root languages do.” Those root languages, beyond the frontiers marked by mother tongues, are “the fingerprint of our soul, everyone has its own.” This variety of root languages is what enriches the World, according to Lledó.
“Writing allows us to communicate with root languages, with Kant, Descartes… and talking allows us to do so with the root languages that surround us.” Therefore, diversity is not an obstacle to understand the attitude some have towards the Tower of Babel, but more like a way of enriching ourselves, sharing opinions that allow us to understand the Other to, starting from there, engage in dialogue with each individual, using other root languages, with other people.
Europe - although Lledó did not mention it - is a clear example of the search for union, not in unification but rather in the enrichment that can be reached through diversity when there is understanding. It is, or at least it could be.
Sara Domínguez Martín
Translated by Cristina Crosby
Tell me about your Erasmus experience: participate to the survey!
Friday, February 22 2008 By Sevilla Babel | no comment
What's to be Erasmus in...Warsaw? ...Budapest? ...Paris? ...Istanbul?
‘Eurogeneration’ wants to start a practical series of articles 100% fed by people spending or having spent their Erasmus period in any European city.
This person would be credited and would be asked to send a picture of him/her illustrating his/her experience (not mandatory).
Information I need:
• Finding a place to stay: where to find the best offers both online and offline; what you should knwo to rent a place; universitary campus; prices etc.
• University: are there classes in English? is local language teaching well provided? how does the university system work? what are the tips to live in the university
• Places: tell me 3 places you absolutely recommend to see/visit in your city that are really special and not touristic
• Partying: where to party with other Erasmus, best tips, cultural thinigs to take into account in clubs, pubs or whenever (about alcohol, things to do/not to do)
• Your feeling about your experience in that city: would you recommend it to someone else?
Your picture if you agree :)
Send your contribution to farano[at]cafebabel.com
‘Eurogeneration’ wants to start a practical series of articles 100% fed by people spending or having spent their Erasmus period in any European city.
This person would be credited and would be asked to send a picture of him/her illustrating his/her experience (not mandatory).
Information I need:
• Finding a place to stay: where to find the best offers both online and offline; what you should knwo to rent a place; universitary campus; prices etc.
• University: are there classes in English? is local language teaching well provided? how does the university system work? what are the tips to live in the university
• Places: tell me 3 places you absolutely recommend to see/visit in your city that are really special and not touristic
• Partying: where to party with other Erasmus, best tips, cultural thinigs to take into account in clubs, pubs or whenever (about alcohol, things to do/not to do)
• Your feeling about your experience in that city: would you recommend it to someone else?
Your picture if you agree :)
Send your contribution to farano[at]cafebabel.com
HUMAN FACTOR 2008: Pérez-Reverte, the hard-hearted hero
Tuesday, February 19 2008 By Sevilla Babel | Society: University | no comment
This post is also available in: Spanish French
If the world were divided in “lambs and fighters”, Arturo Pérez-Reverte would be, according to his own words, a fighter. This Spanish writer, born in Cartagena in 1951, is known above all in this aspect, because of his saga of Captain Alatriste. But, what molded the tough personality this author takes pride on today, was his work as a journalist, his profile of adventurous young man.
“Everything started at a library” he tells us; and that awoke his imagination. At 20, his rucksack on his shoulder, he decided to visit places and know the characters in the books. “At that age I was young and cruel, the world was my scenario”, perhaps that’s why he chose territories at war. Because of that, also, he became a reporter, because he felt like a hunter, an image hunter. “When one goes to war with a return ticket in one’s pocket, the war looks like a fascinating world”.
His duty at Human Factor was to teach a lesson to the 800 young people who listened to him, but in this case, far from Ana María Matute’s warmth, his message was rather more cynical. “I’ve got a bad opinion on the human being, the human being’s drive is evil, the human being is a son of a bitch, although later culture and society may turn him even good”. Perhaps Reverte also read in his youth some book by Hobbes and learnt that “man is a wolf to men”, or perhaps, and more likely, the war taught him the dark side of men.
Pérez-Reverte, may be in Spain today, but with his heart still at any of the wars, speaks of distrust, of dignity, of esteem (but not of love), of battles and victories. He spoke to us about the Ulysses of the world, “about those heroes that survive, when Achilles turns into Ulysses, then only one hard-hearted hero can remain”. Is he perhaps a hero in his own way?
“What’s the use of fighting, Arturo?”, he is asked, “To feel worthy, not to feel defeated”.
Sara Domínguez Martín
Translated by Diana Irene Arancibia
HUMAN FACTOR 2008: Ana María Matute’s “multiple realities”
Sunday, February 17 2008 By Sevilla Babel | Society: University | no comment
This post is also available in: Spanish French
In the middle of a shower of applause, a good-looking, neat and little elderly woman goes up onto the stage. She is Ana Maria Matute, the well-known Spanish writer, author of books for children and adults and Member of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language. She comes to answer to our question: “Who will imagine us?” Pleasant and close, just after sitting down, she warns us with a sweet smile: “I’m not hard of hearing, I’m deaf, and an absolute disaster as well, I’ve forgotten my hearing-aid again”.This writer is not, and neither does she pretend to be, a scholar; she is, according to her own words, a writer. She tells us that she started to write because the world didn’t understand her, “I thought, if the world rejects me, then I´ll invent a world of my own; I’m the second type of writers, those who are writers against their will”. In a slow, smooth voice, she speaks about the multiple realities that surround us and how, as we get older, we start losing our ability to move among them, how we lose the magic. That’s why she’s often written for children, “Not because I like them, in fact I don’t, but because I’m interested in them, in their world, which is a round world; when you write for children, you don’t have to worry about their understanding you, because they always understand you, unlike the adults”. In spite of this, she says she’s grown tired of writing for children, now she looks for different things, she looks for the adult, who “is nothing else than what remains of the child, for good or for evil”.
She reads for us one of her stories about silly children “El niño que era amigo del Diablo (The child who was the devil’s friend)” and tells us something about her childhood of paper. Today, at 82, she continues to have two lives, a real one and another life of words, “one doesn’t exclude the other- she tells us while laughing-, having a life of paper doesn’t prevent you from entering the other life, which has such wonderful things as making love on a river of stones”. Being a person who fears nothing, she opens her heart, “sometimes I live in words, but when I leave them, I become again the little hooligan I am”. A “little hooligan” who hates getting up early, who takes naps and loves having a drink in the afternoon, surrounded by friends, a woman who “understands better an elf than a bank manager”.
After making it clear that she’s not going to answer difficult questions about the future, “How should I know, son, how should I know what’s going to happen… people think that because you are a writer you have to know everything”, she leaves us a teaching: “I love life, I love it a lot, because we only have one life …or at least, so they say”.
Sara Domínguez Martín
Translated by Diana Irene Arancibia
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