The role of national media

Introduction

The media system has always been one of the basic elements of a social structure, being the creator of the social reality. Media organizations are the central element in the process of symbolic mediation between the facts and the members of a society, and they have an important role in the socialisation process of people, informing them and creating public opinion.
This paper aims to explore the need of an ethnic community to feel represented by a media system, looking at this as a vehicle of cultural maintenance and promotion. We will demonstrate the importance of having ‘national’ media through the observation of the Catalan and the Basque coverage of the terrorist attacks in Madrid in 2004, realising that both territories were sometimes focusing on different kinds of information to the Spanish one, as a way of keeping the ‘nation’ united. For that, we will observe the editions between March 11 and March 14 of 2004 of Avui and Gara, two nationalistic Catalan and Basque newspapers.
To facilitate the understanding of the issue we will also provide a theoretical framework for the study of nations without states through the example of Catalonia and the Basque Country, two ‘sub-state nations’ (Guibernau, 2000:1004) inside Spain.

Nations without states; the Catalan and the Basque case

The respeced catalan professor from the Open University in the UK, Montserrat Guibernau, explains the concept ‘nation without state’ refering to “nations which … maintain a separate sense of a national identity generally based upon a common culture, history, attachment to a particular territory and the explicit wish to rule themselves” (2000:989).
Another important concept is ‘self-determination’. Nations demanding it often want to achieve the right to decide for themselves, and in some cases even seeking independence. Quebec, Scotland, Flanders, Catalonia and the Basque Country are a few nations without states that are currently demanding more autonomy and the right to decide for themselves what they want to be.
Focusing on the Spanish case, the main objective of the political decentralisation is to solve one of the major and eternal conflicts: between central (Spanish) and peripheral nationalisms (Catalan, Basque and Galician ) (Solé Tura, 1987; Pérez-Díaz, 1993; García Ferrando et al., 1994). “While the former seeks to consolidate and strengthen the state, the latter challenges its legitimacy and often, but not always, seeks to construct a new state” (Guibernau, 2000:990).
In the case of Catalonia and the Basque Country, the goal of ‘national reconstruction’ is openly declared. This means promoting daily use of Catalan and Basque languages, as well as national identification and self-governing (Martínez-Herrera, 2002:429). For instance, in Catalonia, Catalan is currently the most spoken language both in the public and private scope .

Media system as a vehicle of cultural promotion and identity

The sub-state nationalism in Spain (Guibernau, 2000) and the plurilingual journalism gives us a good reason to study the mass media’s role in the construction of national identity.
“The term identity involves four components: differentiation, continuity, awareness and recognition. Without differentiation there can be no distinction between any of them; without continuity, we cannot talk about the same person over time; self-awareness allows us to have a critical awareness and specific vision of the world around us; and the external recognition of difference comes in answer to the need to be accepted by others.” (Port Ribalta, 2008:39).
Language is the vehicle between the reality and the members of a nation, and it is part of the wealth of human experience accumulated in the course of history. But culture is not just language, although in the case of Catalonia it is the vehicle of cultural production and one of the most important features of its cultural and national personality.
Nowadays, more than always because of the current global era, the media system is the major tool of cultural promotion and identity, and its main role is the normalization of the national tongue. “Media … affect the way individuals within societies construct meaningful ways of social belongings” (Hopkins, 2009:20). Being companies, all the media organizations have a target group, an audience to work for. They produce the contents always thinking about that audience, and in the case of ‘national’ media they work for the citizens of that nation or ethnic community.
The relationship between information and nationhood has long been handled for different communication researchers (eg., Billig, 1995; Brookes, 1999; Law, 2001). For instance, Geertz (1973) argued that structures of social interaction require a cultural representation that makes them intelligible, so giving sense to behaviour. The media system is certainly that vehicle of representation, witnessing some events and putting them closer by the social reality of the members of the community.
Anderson (1983) introduced the conception of the ‘imagined community’ saying that “nations are social constructs existing in the minds of their members and that newspapers play central role in creating and sustaining an imagined community among a specific assemblage of fellow-readers” (1983:62). The ‘Banal Nationalism’ of Billing (1995) goes beyond this idea emphasizing the media’s role in advancing an ideological creation of the nation in western societies where nationalism has become embedded and naturalized. Moreover, he argues that the press reinforces nationhood through routine rhetoric, but this will be discussed later.

11M coverage and the ‘exceptional case’ theory

The terrorist attacks in Madrid in March 11 of 2004 are a good example of ‘exceptional case’, a theory suggested by Giorgio Grossi in 1985 after the kidnapping and subsequent assassination of the Italian politician Aldo Moro. He explained the role played by the media in situations of big conflict and social disruption.
The 11M affected all the social routines because of its magnitude, severity and degree of breakdown inside the Spanish and international society. The institutional and political legitimacy, the social control and the common identity were questioned by the citizens and by the media. The Public Opinion was witnessing a looting of the social system and the democracy and this fact caused a terrible influence on the society’s vision of the stability of the country. Regarding events like this, the media system switched on the alarm light to activate exceptional routines in order to create an exceptional coverage for an exceptional case.
All the media adopted new ways to transmit information and had to use an incredible amount of staff in order to cover the events and inform the citizens that needed, more than ever, information. The television programming was altered with special news connections, the newspapers published a special evening edition giving the details of the attacks, the radios stopped the normal programming to add news bulletins every 10 minutes and the internet media services were uploading new information every minute. The whole country was shocked, and the media were saturated.
But in these situations the effort of the media goes beyond the information task, because as creators of opinion and vehicles of social and national unification, they had to stop the chaos and contain the confusion of an agitated society.
If the first task was the tricky and unexpected adoption of new journalistic routines, the second task was the goal of recontextualization of the facts in order to make them comprehensible and compatible with the social schemes. For doing that, they had to take a specific logic based on the adoption of ‘primary facts’ and ‘secondary facts’ (Grossi, 1985a). The first one was the bomb attack in itself: the exact situation of the bombs within the city of Madrid, the meticulous description of the time when the different bombs exploded, the situation of these in each train and the amount of victims and injured people, for instance.
We can state that Catalan, Basque and Spanish media were working at more or less the same level on the coverage of ‘primary facts’. The interesting and different roles of the media of each territory begin with covering the ‘secondary facts’. These were the hypotheses about the authorship of the attack, the evolution of the number of victims, the police’s investigation and the political debate about how to manage the crisis, for instance. All that secondary information, facts that explain other facts (Grossi, 1985a: 50-51), were created on purpose and following the editorial line of each media.

The Catalan and Basque media coverage of 11M and their deixis

Studying the articles published in the Catalan newspaper Avui and the Basque Gara, we noticed that the treatment of those ‘secondary facts’ was quite different from the Spanish press. We can establish two main differences: the content and the national deixis used by those media to refer to Spain, Catalonia and the Basque Country.
To begin with, it was observed that Gara paid special attention to the methodology followed by the terrorist band in the attacks . It pointed out the notorious differences from the explosive materials used usually by ETA, for instance. The newspaper also published some other news reviewing the agreement achieved by the international community on claiming that ETA was not the author of the attacks, while blaming Alqaeda. Gara selected the information according to its nationalistic editorial line in order to invoke the Basque public opinion to think about an innocent ETA.
No less interesting is the Catalan coverage of the events. Despite the declarations of the Catalan president encouraging citizens to “feel Madridians for one day,” Avui decided to publish this opinionated article: “We are the pain, we are the solidarity, we are the blood needed to be given, but we are not Madridians … We are a decent country, with common sense. Today we Catalans should define our personal humanity and our collective dignity, avoiding being taken by the typical Spanish strident noise” (fragment of Salvador Sostres’ opinion article, 14/03/2004). This shows perfectly the editorial line taken by the newspaper three days after the attacks.
In addition, Avui pointed out the relation between 11M and the ETA’s attack of Hipercor in 1987, establishing a sentiment of empathy with Spanish people and trying to promote an exceptional peaceful environment between both nations. Furthermore, the newspaper paid special attention to Catalan organizations that condemned the attacks, such as union associations, universities and the Trade Confederation of Catalonia, for instance.

The second main aspect that needs to be handled when talking about the national coverage of 11M is the deixis that both Catalan and Basque media used. Riggins (1997:8) suggests that inclusive and exclusive pronouns are “most revealing of the boundaries separating Self and Other”. Indeed, the difference between Catalan/Basque and Spanish people is always present in the national press. There is a standardized use of ‘we’ and ‘they’ in the daily production of Catalan and Basque news in order to establish a distinction between members and non-members of the nation. For instance, we can observe that both Gara and Avui used expressions like ‘Spanish government’, ‘Spanish state’, ‘Spanish capital’, ‘Spanish geography’ and ‘Spanish president’ every time they want to refer to these concepts. In addition, and particularly on the coverage of 11M, both newspapers were using the third person while reviewing the facts, suggesting that the attacks were overseas, outside their boundaries. We cannot but highlight expressions used in some articles written on Avui’s opinion section such as “who will protect us from Aznar’s Spain?,” “we are against those countries that participate in this unfair war, and in particular against the UK, Spain, Australia (…),” or, published in Gara: “the participation of his army on Iraq’s invasion put the Spanish state in the islamic terrorism’s spotlight”.

Conclusions

The daily use in national media of expressions such as ‘we’ and ‘here’ in oppostition to ‘they’ and ‘there’ gives us indisputable evidence about the role they are playing within a community.
The media system is both the creator and the guardian of national identity. We have studied the case of Avui and Gara, two examples of national newspapers with nationalistic editorial line. They take Catalan and Basque nations and their citizens as the landmark and as the centre of their discourse by using the personal pronoun ‘we’ and by focusing on those news events that are of exclusive national interest. The readers (or the audience in broadcast media) unconsciously pick up the ‘national’ references hidden behind those ‘small crucial words’ (Petersoo, 2007:424) and become part of a nationalised system, consuming information in their own language, about their own national matters and building an own opinion about the reality. The sentiment of national belonging is automatically inherent in the media discourse, being this at the end one of the most important vehicles of cultural transmission.
The Catalan and the Basque nations are openly demanding more autonomy and self-administration, and this can be observed in every day national and state news. Bilinguism is the biggest threat to both territories, manifesting itself in the international and Spanish immigration in Catalonia and in the decresing daily use of Euskera in the Basque contry. This is why the media work in these languages and why citizens want to keep consuming them. Although language is not the only component of culture, we can assert that it is at least one of the most important as a definite symbol of identity.

As we have observed, the media are the reference point of a community and are responsable for taking care of it. Actually, this is the perfect symbiosis, because media organisations need to focus on a target group, and citizens need knowledge to build an own opinion of the social reality, and at the same time somebody reminding them why they are there.

NOTES
1. We will use the term ‘nation’ as a synonym of ‘ethnic group or community’, taking the premise that Catalonia and the Basque Country are nations.
2. Galicia is considered one of the 4 nations coexisting within Spain. We consider as Spanish nations: Spanish, Catalan, Basque and Galician.
3. A Catalan Bill of Linguistic Normalisation was promulgated in 1983, and a second in 1998.
4. We understand ‘national’ media as those media working within a national territory, not state territory.
5. This is the shorthand taken by the media around the world for the bomb attacks in Madrid on March 11 of 2004
6. ETA has a particular methodology. We can assert that ETA always notifies some minutes before attacking and always uses the same explosives. In the case of 11M, the explosives found on the scene were different, and there was no warning.
7. It was on June 19th 1987 in a Shopping Centre located in the middle of Barcelona. 21 people died and 40 were injured.

REFERENCES

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Close, Paul; Askew, David & Xin, Xu (2007): Olympism, Individualism and Nationalism. The Beijing Olympiad. (39-60) London: Routledge.

Encarnación, Omar G. (2002): Managing Ethnic Conflict in Spain. FPRI’s InterUniversity Study Group on Religion and Ethinicity in International Affairs. February, 89-105).

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Ethnic conflicts in Spain: the Basque and the Catalan case by Laura Alvarez Soler

Ethnic conflicts have an important and central role in contemporary world politics. We just need to remember, for example, the Arabic-Israeli conflict, the situation in Darfur, the Chinese invasion of Tibet, the civil war in Lebanon, Rwanda and Sri Lanka… But only these kind of conflicts, those with a violent nature, survive in the heart of the international public opinion, above some other current controversies, no less important. The nationalism and the term “identity” usually have an important role in these kind of conflicts; even if there is no war or violence, confrontations between national powers often cause important conflicts that affect the dailys life of societies. In Spain there are two examples of each type: the fight between the Basque and Spanish nations, where we see violence through the terrorist band ETA and “diplomatic conflict” between autonomous and central government, and the political conflict between the Catalan and Spanish nations.

Omar G. Encarnación and John MacInnes reported the Spanish ethnic conflict from different perspectives. One has a historical and political approach to handle the Spanish case, putting the Basque terrorist band ETA at the centre of his discourse and taking the Spanish example as a model of democracy. On the other side, through a sociological point of view, MacInnes strongly criticizes Manuel Castells’ analysis of the rise of a global network society and information age, accusing him of underpinning the theory by a nationalist vision.

Encarnación goes deep inside the history of Spain and claims that it is “the site of an ethnic conflict miracle”. To a certain extent, he takes the concept of violence to measure the level of a country’s welfare, comparing it with Burundi, Northern Ireland, Chiapas, East Timor, Balcans and Chechnya. Encarnación asserts that Spain has successfully managed the ethnic conflict since the beginning of the transition from authoritarian rule to political democracy. Furthermore, the author refers to some anonymous scholars to claim that the central government recognizes the right to regional self-rule, and he also uses this argument to justify the statement that “Spain is a miracle”. Going straight to the point, Encarnación’s limited contribution to our understanding of the ethnic conflict in Spain claims that the decentralization of the state and the successful democratization have managed the complexities of the terrorist problem and guarantee respect for cultural difference.
At this point, we must clarify the meaning of the term “decentralization of the state”, either from a theoretical and practical point of view, to understand that Spain is not a complete decentralised state. “Decentralise: to remove from the centre or point of concentration and distribute among smaller areas; to expense of central authority” (Collins English Dictionary). Then, in that frame, a decentralised state should give all the autonomies the right to decide about their own issues, and they should be able to take own decisions. In practice neither the Basque Country nor the other autonomies have got this right at all. Each autonomy has a Statute of Autonomy that limit the power of the territory depending on the matter. (For example, the Spanish government has the exclusive right about immigration and foreign matters, international relationships, defense and army, justice administration, commercial and penal law, labor law… (art. 149, Spanish Constitution of 1978)). This is a considerable evidence to show that in Spain there is not a whole decentralisation, although it is true that the central government respects the cultural differences. Then, at this point, we can establish that Zapatero’s Spanish government considers the multicultural condition of the country but does not have a complete decentralized system, and this matter affects the daily political routine of the country.

Another issue to focus on is the contradiction that Encarnación highlights, when he then asserts that Spain keeps the united structure of the dictatorship. Is he referring to a decentralised power in a unified country? He does not clarify this idea, but looking at the reality of social life in Spain, we can point out that Spain has a partial centralised power to control and keep the unification of the country, against the will of some territories that appeal for more freedom. This is the “miraculous Spain” of Encarnación, the Spain in which some territories fight day by day to achieve the power to decide for themselves (we cannot forget that “Self-Determination” is a fundamental principle of human rights law).
Another controversial and daring suggestion of the author is the claim that all basque nationalists want the independence of the Basque Country. From my point of view, this is a simplistic argument, because it is neither academic nor realistic to group together nationalists and independentists. Actually, the Basque Country (and Catalonia) has different political parties to represent each movement, and the nationalistic conservative party (PNV) is in the government since 1980.

Taking all these considerations and being aware of the real Spanish social conjecture, we can establish that the coexistence of different nations in Spain is not easy, and this matter is in the news daily. Encarnación based his arguments on Zapatero’s apparent good management of ethnic diversity, but if we observe the issue from the inside it is easy to realise about the constant political fighting between some territories/nations and the central government.

The article made by John MacInnes about Manuel Castells’ theory about the global network society goes in a different direction. While the first article was talking about the nationalities inside Spain and the successful management of Zapatero’s government about the terrorist problem, recovering historical information, this other article focuses on the sociological point of view. The difference is that the second does not only talk about nationalism and history but criticizes Castells’ nationalist way of handling a sociological matter, which is how information technology has transformed society and capitalism. To sum up, MacInnes states that Castells’ “attempt to portray the nation as the antimony to network society and its power of flows invites us to become apologists of nationalism”. This is a simple suggestion of an expert who disregards the need for people to feel members of a community or of a common project.

In his influential trilogy (1996;1997;1998) Castells argues that information technology has transformed capitalism by creating global network organizations which depend on communication. Through the Catalan example, he states that global development has created a cultural structure based on identities which are key elements in the creation of social meaning. Castells pointed out that identities are fundamental, and that these exist only when social actors internalize them. He went further and established that language provides self-recognition in a world submitted to cultural homogenization, and defined language as “the direct expression of culture, a trench of cultural resistance, the last bastion of self-control, the refuge of identifiable meaning” (1997: 52). The approach taken by MacInnes claims directly that the Catalan sociologist has a weak argument, saying that Castells’ over-socialised conception of the individual is based on a simple theory of identity. The author asserts that identity “is not an empirical and measurable characteristic that individuals poses, like a passport”. He also say that “identity is not a proper object of sociological analysis”.

From my own point of view, the weak argument is that of MacInnes, and not Castells. Richard Jenkins, the Head of Department and Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociological Studies of the University of Sheffield (UK), unambiguously established in his book Social Identity that “without social identity there is no human world; without frameworks of similarity and difference, people would be unable to relate to each other in a consistent and meaningful fashion”. The author develops the argument that identity is both individual and collective, and should therefore be considered within one analytical framework to study how the current society is evolving. Identities and nationalisms have been and still are the driving force behind innumerable conflicts around the world, and we must consider the social identity as a powerful tool to observe and analyse world population and the newly born information society.
Robert McKenzie’s Comparing Media From Around The World also reinforces the proposition that cultural characteristics (like identity) are the roots of a media system, and consequently, of a society.

We have seen two different perspectives about the nationalistic issues inside Spain. On the one hand we have handled the Basque Country case and the difficulty, although Encarnación’s point of view, to manage with the autonomous policy and how hard it is for a democratic government to face with diplomacy the terrorist issue. In the second article we delved into the sociological meaning of identity, and we substantially confirmed that each community or nation has and needs an identity, and that this is its driving shaft. We have reinforced Castells’ theory about the importance of having an individual or collective identity as the main source of meaning in a network society.

References:

- Omar G. Encarnación. Managing Ethnic Conflict in Spain (FPRI’S InterUniversity Study Group on Religion and Ethnicity in International Affairs; February 28, 2002)
- John MacInnes. Castells’ Catalan routes: nationalism and the sociology od identity (The British Journal of Sociology, 2006 Volume 57, Issue 4)
- Social Identity, Richard Jenkins
- McKenzie chapter 3 (elements of a media system)
- Estatuto de Gernika (The Basque Country’s Statute of Autonomy)
- Spanish Constitution of 1978
- Oxford Dictionary

Mardi Gras 2009

Per a moltíssima gent era el dia més esperat de l’any. El Mardi Gras és un festival homosexual que se celebra arreu del món en diferents dates, i que, per tant, aglutina gent de diversos punts del planeta. Va començar el 28 de febrer amb una festa diurna al Victoria’s park (al campus de la uni) i es va tancar ahir dissabte, dia en què la ciutat es va vestir de gala per acollir la Sidney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade, una desfilada de dues hores i mitja on tots els col·lectius interessats hi poden participar (és una molt bona oportunitat pels col·lectius homosexuals d’arreu del món de donar-se a conèixer, així com també suposa la plataforma ideal per reivindicar els drets dels homosexuals en la societat… pero no oblidem que, com a acte multitudinari que és, també és ideal per aquelles empreses que utilitzen el festival com una eina de màrketing. Ex./ Virgin Records, FOX…).

La desfilada va ocupar tot Oxford St., el carrer dels gais per excel·lència, i va començar a les 7′45 de la tarda. A les 4 de la tarda, però, ja es podia veure gent guardant lloc davant les tanques de seguretat per presenciar la desfilada en primera fila! Carrosses, motos, cotxes, formacions de gent, músics i disfresses, moltes disfresses, i tot plegat per reivindicar els drets dels homosexuals dins la societat. Però a pesar de l’essència i l’origent històric reivindicatiu de la Mardi Gras, l’ambient era divertidíssim! El públic entusiasmat amb el festival de colors, música i dinamisme de la desfilada, i els membres d’aquesta, eufòrics per l’admiració que despertaven en el públic i per la germanor que tots sentien en un dia com aquest.

Sydney és una de les capitals gays del món, una de les ciutats on més es respecta la diversitat i la llibertat sexual.El Mardi Gras de Sydney és, des de fa més de 30 anys, l’expressió amb més color i diversitat d’una tradició carnavalesca que té l’origen als Estats Units, i més en concret a Nova Orleans a principis del segle XVIII. A Australia, però, la cosa va anar de la següent manera: El juny de 1978 la policia va detenir més de 50 persones que es manifestaven per commemorar els disturbis de Stonewall (col·lectius de gays i lesbianes de Nova York es van enfrontar a finals l’any 690 amb la policia de Nova York, protestant contra una redada en un bar de la ciutat; aquesta va ser la primera vegada a la història que aquest col·lectiu es va efrontar a un sistema que atemptava contra els drets dels homosexuals). Després de les detencions de Sydney l’any 78, un dels diaris més importants de la ciutat va publicar les dades completes dels detinguts, identificant-lso públicament com a homosexuals i, per tant, fent que haguessin de sortir de l’armari. Aixo va provocar que molts d’aquests perdessin la feina. Aquí va ser quan la Mardi Gras va cobrar força, i va esdevenir un autèntic icone de la reivindicació i la lluita pels drets del col·lectiu.

Total… Que la desfilada va durar dues hores i mitja! Encara avui em fan mal els peus…

P.D: he penjat alguns vídeos del festival al facebook!

Començar amb bon peu una nova vida a l’altra punta del món és fàcil si saps com fer-ho

Haig de dir que sóc molt afortunada. Sóc amateur, és la meva primera vegada a l’estranger i no sé si és normal que, en només 6 dies, hagi trobat una casa al bell mig de Sydney bonica, barata i just davant del campus de la Universitat. Després de passar 4 dies terribles, ara començo a sentir que formo part de la ciutat. Comenó a conèixer els barris, els carrers, les botigues… i sobretot, a la gent. És gratificant, també, veure que les coses semblen molt més difícils des de fora. Em refereixo a que sem feia un món pensar que havia de trobar casa, feina i entendre’m en una llengua desconeguda en un temps record… Però ho he aconseguit! En només 6 dies ja vaig aconseguir una casa molt bonica (tot i que amb escarabats de tots tamanys i per tots els racons, inclòs el meu llit) i una nova família”.

El tema de l’idioma, sincerament, pensava que seria més complicat. Potser és el mateix instint de supervivència el que ens porta a extrems inimaginables, però ara puc dir que entenc pràcticament tot el que em diuen en anglès i en “aussie” i que em em se fer entendre… i prou millor del que em pensava! El meu anglès està millorant a marxes forçades… i més em val que aquest cap de setmana sigui profitós perquè dilluns ja començo la universitat. De fet, en tinc moltes ganes…

Si hi ha alguna cosa de Sydney que m’ha enamorat, i que de fet cada dia m’enamora més, és l’ambient, el caliu. És difícil de descriure. Em refereixo a la gent, als cafès, a les llibreries, als restaurants, a les botigues… Hi ha dos barris que són realment bonics, ben allunyats del que serien les clàssiques zones turístiques i comercials. Estic parlant de Newtown i Glebe. Es tracta de dos barris molt propers al centre de Sydney, i a 5 minuts de casa meva en direccions contràries, que tenen un caliu especial. Bohemi, romàntic, càlid, avantguardista i retro a la vegada… una convinació explosiva de totes aquestes característiques que es fa únics i especials, i que fa que caminar pels seus carrers sigui tota una aventura plena de nous descobriments. Des de llibreries antigues plenes de relíquies a preu de saldo, amb aquella olor intensa de llibre antic ple de pols, fins a bars moderns amb leds i música electrònica… passant per botigues exclussives i bars-llibreries amb una àmplia oferta de tès, cafès i sucs de tot tipus. Caminar per Sydney, però, també et porta a l’admiració i al consum. I és que tota la ciutat està plena de botigues amb roba i mobles de segona mà, sobretot pensat per estudiants, on es pot trobar des d’un escriptori de fusta massissa per 30 euros fins a una maleta de viatge de pell dels anys 70 per 40 euros…

Un altre qüestió curiosa és que no hi ha gent gran! On s’amaguen quan surto al carrer? Potser és que la zona centre on jo visc i els barris on he anat són més per estudiants i gent jove… però no sóc agosarada si dic que podria contar amb els dits de les dues mans la gent gran que he vist (considerant gent gran els majors de 60 anys). Aquest és un altre element que dota a la ciutat d’un encant cosmopolita, modern i dinàmic que no tenen altres ciutats…

Ben al contrari del que molta gent pensa a Barcelona, no estic morena i no vaig a la platja! Aquí el temps és molt variable, i et pots llebar en un dia brillant i assolellat i que al cap d’una hora estigui ennuvolat i plovent. Només he anat un dia a la platja, i he estat a Bondi Beach (la platja principal de Sydney, una de les més conegudes i concorregudes). És bonica perquè es pot veure la convinació de sorra i gespa en un mateix espai, i a més, les onades són bones i es respira un ambient càlid i familiar. S’ha de dir, però, que no n’hi ha per tant. De fet, no deixa de ser una platja de ciutat! Amb tot, però, la diferència és abismal si la comparem amb la Barceloneta o la Marvella…

Demà, si el temps m’ho permet, és clar, passaré el dia a Manly Beach, una altra platja clàssica de Sydney situada al nord de la ciutat, ja a les afores. I a la nit hi ha prevista la festa d’inauguració del pis de dos dels meus amics, de dos dels membre de la meva “nova família”.

What’s Aussie?

Fent el guiri per Sydney… Just darrera nostre: el Harbour Bridge

Què és “aussie” i què no ho és? Vull dir… Aquí a Austràlia tothom és aussie? O només ho són els qui hi han nascut? O potser es refereix més als que tenen família i antecedents anglesos? Potser aussie és alguna manera burlesca de referir-se als colons australians… Bé, tant és! El cas és que de moment això no és “aussie”!

La setmana que vaig marxar va ser freda a Barcelona, 8-9 graus al vespre… Feia fred, i portava jaqueta, botes i sempre un paraigües per si de cas… I pensava: “Hauré d’aprofitar les 25 hores d’avió per posar-me les xancletes, el bikini i untarme de crema protectora…”. Sort que no ho vaig fer! No he hagut de treure els pantalons curts ni les xancles de la maleta… Perquè ha estat plovent des que vaig arribar, a totes hores, i no he vist el sol! I això no és aussie!

El que sí és aussie, però, és l’amabilitat, el bon rotllo, i el caliu que es respira en aquesta ciutat… Sembla que estiguis caminant per algun dels decorats de “90210 Sensación de Vivir”!!! Tot està ple d’estudiants, de gent jove, de gent de tot arreu del planeta! Hi ha turistes, com a tot arreu, però es nota que tota aquesta gent no ve per estar-s’hi una setmana… Molta gent buscant habitació, molts gent caminant amunt i avall amb mapes i, sobretot, moltíssima gent als cafès-internet!

Si ve els primers dies vaig pensar que la vida “aussie” no era per mi (em sentia terriblement sola, anyorada, perduda i desprotegida) ara crec que puc arribar a ser una bona “aussie”.

El temps ho dirà!

Pre-departure

No ha estat fins fa 4 dies que he començat a estar nerviosa. Ara tot són angoixes i pors; però no es tracta de la clàssica “por a allò desconegut” (això a mi mai m’ha atemorit) sinó de la por a perdre allò que fins ara has tingut a l’abast. Por a què passarà en la teva absència. Però això és la crònica d’una mort anunciada.

Aquest és l’útim cap de setmana a casa. Tot just d’aquí 2 dies comença una nova etapa, i amb ella noves pors que se sumen a les que ja arrossego…