ENG: The Penedesfera and a Lot of Good Wine

Yesterday, Saturday February 14, we were about fifteen bloggers who met in the beautiful L’Hostal del Castell de Gimenelles, not far from where the Alt Penedès borders with Baix Penedès and Garraf, respectively. These three comarques, together with parts of Anoia, make up what historically and culturally is known as the Penedès region, which is why our blogger community is called the Penedesfera.

The agenda for the day was to outline the content of the coming jornades de la Penedesfera, a formal and physical blogger meeting, similar to the one which we held in Gelida in June 2008. After a vivid discussion I believe that we agreed that there would be four distinctive blocs in the program:

• a general point on how blogging interacts with twitter, MySpace and social networks like Facebook.
• a presentation by wine cellars who are in the forefront of Internet based marketing
• young, local music groups who use MySpace etc to spread their songs
• a round table discussion between free, digital news services

The consensus of the meeting was to keep the format as open as possible – to discuss global phenomena with examples from the Penedès, rathen than to have a regional focus. I will, of course, accept this majority decision, but would have preferred for the Penedefera to play a more active role in reinforcing the concept of the Penedès. If we do not do this, who does?

Today this region is made up by one comarca – l’Alt Penedès – where a united "Gran Penedès" region is considered the most natural thing in the world, and at least two – the Baix Penedès and Garraf – where the majority of people simply could not care less.

I cannot help seeing it as typical that I – a foreigner – was the only blogger from Vilanova i la Geltrú took part in the Penedesfera meeting while, almost simultaneously but in the Diari de Vilanova, our young, local political commentator Nacho Corredor, questioned any project which connects our town “with the countryside rather than with the city (i.e. Barcelona)”

For young vilanovins it is natural to turn the back on the Penedès and see Barcelona as the stepping stone into the big world. For me it is the other way around; I come from the outside and thanks to the popular culture of this region do I today have much stronger roots in Catalonia than anyone of my expat friends in Barcelona. However, the Penedès which I have learnt to love – the hilly landscape which meets the sea, the world’s best castellers, falcons and xató and the vineyards – will continue to exist whether or not it formally becomes united in an administrative unit (vegueria). Maybe I should care less and just lean back and observe - preferably with a glass of chilled cava in my hand.

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A big hand to Josep Guillén Viñas who organized yesterday’s meeting and to the wineries Cava Berdié, Jané Ventura and Mil∙lari for the rich sampling of their produce. By the way, I did not want to be less generous, so I did my best to hand out RFSU condoms labeled in Catalan.

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Here are the Penedesfera blogs which were represented yesterday: Daniel García Peris - bloc, El bloc d’Enric Giner, GuillemCarol.CAT, Lo meu raconeT, Pepitu.com, Per poder compartir visions, Pilarvi, Sergi Sabaté, theplateishot.com, Vegueria Pròpia.org, Viniesfera and Wirdheim in Vilanova, of course.

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Technorati tags: Barcelona, Expat, Garraf, Penedès, Penedesfera, Vilanova, Wirdheim

ENG: On “La plaça del Diamant” by a Student of Catalan

Now 70 years ago, when Franco’s troops invaded Catalonia, many people decided to go into exile. Among them was Mercè Rodoreda who later wrote La plaça del Diamant (published in English as “The Time of the Doves”) – generally considered one of the best books about the changing fortunes of a human being before, during and after the Spanish Civil War.

La plaça del Diamant takes place in Barcelona, where young Natàlia lets other people steer her life. At a dance she meets Quimet and already before she has fallen in love with him, has he persuaded her to break up with her fiancé and to marry him instead. Natàlia accepts that Quimet decides to call her Colometa, instead of using her real name, and that he turns their apartment into a pigeon shed, although she is not at all found of the birds and although he never seems to be able to make any money from selling what they breed.

The story is told in the form a long monologue, with the advantage that we can always follow Natàlia’s reactions to what happens and is being said around her. However, at least for non-native speakers, Rodoreda’s long sentences - often broken up with several sub-clauses and inserted quotations – can be quite a challenge. In the passage below Natàlia’s mother-in-law comes to look at the doves, which her son and grand son have been talking so much about:

“La mare d’en Quimet, que la veia molt poc perquè s’anava fent vella de pressa i venir a veure’ns era un viatge massa llarg i jo no tenia temps d’anar-la a veure els diumenges, un dia es va presentar perquè va dir que volia veure els coloms, que en Quimet i els nens quan l’anaven a veure, no pas massa sovint va dir queixant-se, només li parlaven dels coloms i que aviat es farien rics i el nen li deia que els coloms el seguien i que ell i la Rita els parlaven com si fossin els seus germanets.”

I must admit that I did not feel comfortable with this style at the beginning of the book and only when the plot captured me did I finally start to appreciate it. At least for non-Spanish students of Catalan do I recommend that you wait with this book until you have passed the Generalitat’s B-level exam. This is far from easy reading.

Having said that, this is a touching story taking place in a war which still haunts Spanish society, so anyone interested in Catalonia or Spain should pick up one of the many translations available. Rarely have I come so close to understanding when a parent can in fact kill his or her own children as when I read the chapters where Natàlia - on the brink of starvation - contemplates doing so. And, so typical for her, it is not her own actions or decisions, but a mere coincidence which stops her from proceeding with her plans.

ENG: The Xató Comes from Vilanova

Today, Sunday February 8, it felt as if the whole town had decided to enjoy the sunny but far from warm weather and celebrate the fact that the pan-penedesenc sallad called xató has its origin here. Well, we have at least some historic records to fall back on in case you want to question this statement, and that is more than can be said for some of the other contestants.

And, yes, I bought a portion this year as well although - as a Swede - I am just too aware of how overfished the cod population is. Am I turning Catalan?



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Technorati tags: Catalonia, Festa, Penedès, Vilanova

ENG: Vilanova Roller Hockey Proudly Beating Sitges

The sitgetans are richer, their town is more picturesque and they attract loads of affluent tourists. We are just a lot bigger and that is about it. Or, that is at least the typical inferiority complex which some of us Vilanovins work hard to suppress.

So, no wonder we love roller hockey (hoquei sobre patins) where our team Club Patí Vilanova l’Ull Blau yesterday beat visiting Club Patí Sitges with 4 to 1. What a great local derby – all Vilanova fans could leave the home stadion at the Plaça de les Casernes content and proud. But there is a little but. Sitges’ loss underlined how frail they are in the Spanish top division, the OK lliga. They way things look now there will not be any derbies next season.

OK lliga was, by the way, a strange name to me until I reminded myself that the letter h of hoquei is mute in Catalan. Well, that h is mute in Spanish as well, but I leave that to the side since this sport is so heavily dominated teams from Catalonia: of the 16 teams in the OK Lliga, only 3 come from other autonomous communities and out of these it is only Hockey Club Liceo de la Coruña which, at least relatively recently, has managed to challenge the best teams from Reus and Barcelona for the title.

Vilanova will remain in the OK lliga next season, Sitges will not. To me that is sad. If we do not play against them, how can we ever beat them again?


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Technorati tags: Barcelona, Catalonia, Penedès, Sitges, Spain, Vilanova

ENG: The Official Carnival Poster 2009 – Sitges

Would you have believed it? It turned out that also our neighbours from Sitges had selected La Sala in Vilanova as the location to present the poster of their Rio inspired carnival.

Be it a carnival with hoards of thinly dressed boys and girls or a New York exhibition to the honour of Martin Luther King - for all its fame, Sitges never stops actively selling itself.

And here in Vilanova we just to laugh about it. In fact a quite common defence mechanism among people who want to be something more, but does not have the energy to go all the way.

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Technorati tags: Catalonia, Festa, Penedès, Sitges, Vilanova

ENG: The Official Carnival Poster 2009 – Vilanova

Images from a kaleidoscope – that is the motif of the official poster promoting the carnival of Vilanova i la Geltrú of 2009, made by Judith Antolín. Today, Saturday February 7, this poster was presented to the public together wih the carnival program. Possibly it had to do with the nice setting at La Sala (the local centre of contemporary art) and possibly with the selection of Pere Tàpias to be the one to invite us all to this annual festa – this year’s ceremony had a clearly professional touch to it.

Like last year, I will do my best to picture our carnival as it unfolds. The Carnaval de Vilanova is a genuinenly Catalan carnival and therefore the only one recommended by the Generalitat as a Festa Popular of national interest. The celebrations date back at least 800 years and still enjoy an unbelievably strong support from the town’s inhabitants. Having said that, while a typical Festa Major is an event where everyone is invited to party together, many carnival activities are restricted to those who have signed up with any of the many comparses.

However, the main event on carnival Sunday (February 22, this year) - when the comparses challenge each others in fierce candy wars – is truly original and very visitor and picture friendly. Visit Vilanova on this day and you will discover the spirit of the town in its finest distilled version.

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Technorati tags: Catalonia, Festa, Penedès, Vilanova

ENG: Let's Build This City

Saturday January 31, I went to Casa Ramona – the beautiful headquarters of the political party CDC (Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya) here in Vilanova. In order to open up the political discussion to more people, they organised four separate debates under the slogan “Fem Ciutat, Fem País!” (‘Let’s build the city, let’s build the country’).

There were quite a few celebrities among the participants: Oriol Pujol, a top CiU member of the Catalan parliament and son of the former Catalan president Jordi Pujol, took part in “Prescriptions for how to overcome the crisis” (Receptes per superar la crisi). At the same time, Eric Bertran, a well-known Internet activist campaigning for products to be labelled in Catalan, joined the discussions on whether it is “compatible to be young and a CDC party member? (És compatible ser jove i de CDC?).

The two topics which I had short listed was if Vilanova should strive to have 100.000 inhabitants (Vilanova ha de tenir 100.000 inhabitants?) and the rather intriguing 'Does the independent republic of Vilanova have a role in Catalonia?' (la república independent de VNG compta per a Catalunya?). After some thinking, I decided for the softer, more cultural one of the two.

Not surprisingly was the title questioned from the very beginning. Apparently, there are a some die hard vilanovins who consider that people from here are different from those from the rest of Catalonia, hence the ‘independent republic’. But debate leader Neus Lloveras explained that the title was an intended provocation and it did ignite an exchange of opinions about the spirit of Vilanova between Carles Campuzano (one of my favourites among Catalan politicians), Montserrat Comas (Director of the Victor Balaguer Museum) and – when he finally arrived – Francesc Escribano (writer and journalist).

Although everybody was proud of the cultural life of our town, the conclusion of the discussion was highly self-critical: Compared with its neighbours (notably Vilafranca and Sitges), Vilanova does not create projects which unite its inhabitants, we lack perserverence (constància) and we do not have the leaders who can help us to challenge ourselves. All this is clearly a problem for the future of the town, but also for the Vegueria del Penedès; an adminstrative unit where Vilanova – by force of the size of its population - would be expected to take the lead.

As I see it, Vilanova must under no circumstances dwell on negative feelings. We have an especially benign climate, nice beaches, a relatively well-preserved historic centre and a spacious Rambla with an active commercial life. And we are ‘festa’ and the only genuinely Catalan ‘carnaval’. However, it is true that we are poor at selling ourselves (“falten comerciants”). Now, to explain to the outside world what a wonderful new home I have found for my family was in fact among the reasons to why I started this blog. It remains so still today. Visca Vilanova!

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Technorati tags: Catalonia, CiU, Convergència, Festa, Penedès, Sitges, Vilanova

ENG: A Catalan Student on “Mirant al cel”

I have wanted to see the movie Mirant al cel, by Jesús Garay, for quite some time, but have not been able to find out where to do so. Therefore, I was happy to discover that the Institut d’Estudis Penedesencs were to show it here in Vilanova, as a part of their lecture series on the franquista bombardment during the Civil War.

The plot is about a old Italian expert on the Divine Comedy by Dante, who returns to Barcelona - a city where he considers that he has never been. After all, the young pilot who flew in over the city to drop bombs was not him – it was another person, in another time. And as he was so high up in the air, he never actually saw the city, let alone had to hear the screams of horror and pain by the damage he caused.

However, a Catalan journalist who is collecting eye witness reports by survivors who were in the streets of Barcelona when bombs fell over them, has decided to force him to talk about history. To her, the Italian is one of the few living witnesses of what happened, and she wants him to ask for forgiveness to her grandfather, who fought on the Republican side, defending the city.

Mirant al cel is built up as a fiction movie but incorporates a lot of archive material. I would not have wanted to see it with a lower level of Catalan than what I have today (B) and admit that I sometimes had difficulties to understand the accents, or even more the pronunciation of some of the veterans interviewed in the movie.

In Mirant al cel, the old Italian man wants to see himself and everyone else who lived those terrible moments as victims of a war. The journalist protests that he as a pilot did not lose anything, while her grandfather did not only lose his house, but also his nation and the democracy which he fought for. Today, exactly 70 years have passed since republican Barcelona surrendered to the franquistes but these two perspectives still confront each other in discussions about the memòria històrica. Is it better to forgive and move on, or investigate what actually happened?

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Technorati tags: Barcelona, Catalonia, Penedès, Spain, Wirdheim

ENG: The Civil War Bombings of Vilanova

Today, February 19, exactly 70 years have passed since the last bombardment Vilanova i la Geltrú suffered during the Spanish Civil War. That day, in turn, marked the end of one year of occasional raids carried out by Franco’s air force. This part of the Catalan coast never constituted a front line, so there were relatively few casualties, but the railway station as well as all major factories (among them the old Pirelli plant) were partly blown up.

With the title “Franquista Bombings in the Penedès Region”, the Institut d’Estudis Penedesencs (IEP) has organised a cycle of lectures in different towns. Tonight, the last one was held here and it centred on the new book “La Guerra Civil a Vilanova i la Geltrú (1936-1939) Aspectes Militars”, written and presented by the young historian Adrián Cabezas Sánchez, and put into a broader context of the Civil War in Catalonia by Francesc Xavier Puig Rovira.

Military aspects, above all coastal defence, is what Cabezas is writing his doctor’s thesis about and IEP President Ramon Arnabat rounded of by concluding that that is an unusual perspective. Historical research tends to focus on social aspects like politics and repression during and after this time period, but neglects to study the war as such.

“How typical”, my wife said when she learnt that I had bought the book. Now I will have to force myself through detailed descriptions of bunker technicalities. I will be able to muster some interest – I did after all do my Swedish military service as an interpreter and interrogation leader. But I do hope that, along the way, I will also learn more about the people of Vilanova. The famous social aspects.

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Technorati tags: Catalonia, Penedès, Spain, Vilanova

ENG: Vilanova i la Geltrú Honours Sant Antoni

On January 17, Vilanova honours Sant Antoni – the patron saint of animals. Some inhabitants of the town take their pets out for a walk on the Rambla (except for innumerable dogs, today we also saw one parrot and one polecat) but the big event is a the parade of horses, carriages, some donkeys and a couple of pigs. This year, this date fell on a Saturday with a fantastic weather and that, in combination, attracted so many participants that my wife and my children wanted to go home long before they had all passed by.


The 'tres tombs' parade requires a lot of organisation and it is, indeed, a big happening in itself. But is it enough for a festa major d’hivern in a town like Vilanova? My children certainly did not miss the “tres tombs de foc” - the evening parade of dancing devils and fire spitting dragons which had been removed from the program for cost saving reasons - but I did. I think that we can do better.

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Link to my 2008 post on the tres tombs.
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Technorati tags: Catalonia, Festa Major, Penedès, Tres Tombs, Vilanova, Wirdheim