COVID-19 in Spain
When it comes to COVID-19, Spain is the country in worst position after Italy. Nowadays, it seems they are just two weeks ahead of us, but that we will end up suffering the same than them.
Right now, Spain is in a lockdonw. All the stores, cinemas and shopping centers shall remain closed. Only some basic business like gorceries or pharmacies can open.
People shall remain at home and only can leave to buy food, work or assits a family member that needs help. For the first three days, the police was just warning people, but right now they started to fine those that were outside without a good reason.
The situation is very different depending on the region. Madrid is the worst place to be right now. Hospitals are overwhelmed and they cannot assume all the people that needs caring. It seems the will need to use some hotels as a support infraestructure for patients.
Now everybody is scare and very concious.
I have to admit that at the beginning, when news came from China, I did not thought that we were going to be so badly affected. HOwever, when I saw the situation in Italy, I assume we would. In the end Spain and Italy have a very similar culture, and if they suffer it is likely that we too.
I dont think any leader of the worl expected this evolution. However, I still think some economical interests have been weighted too much.
In few days (about three or four I do not remember), the government of Spain was encouraging people to go to a massive protest in favour of womens right, to ask us not to leave home for amost anything.
Don't they really knew how serious this was going to be looking at what happened in China and Italy? Maybe.
If you ask me, it seems that they have been waiting so the people was afraid enough to push the lockdown. They did not dare to tell the people stay at home becaus eof course that is very unpopular and you need a good reason, so it seems they waited, not until they knew there was a good reason, but until most of the population knew.
Is it government fault that Spain is the second worst country in the world?
I really do not like our politicians. Nor the goverment, nor the ones in the opposition, but I think the population has its own share of responsibility.
When the government of Madrid pushed companies to make their workers work from home and close their public stores, the people went to their summer homes as if it was holidays. As a result, the virus spread more quickly through the country.
It also has shown the lack of unity in the humanity. The people form Madrid claimed against the Chinese and Asians, the people form Spain against the people from Madrid.
Racism always appears when people is afraid. We are like that, we always prefer to find someone to claim against than searching for a solution.
People from other cities claiming against the people from Madrid, forgot that many of that people leaving Madrid, was their friends and sons that are not really from Madrid, they just work there.
Funnily enough, with the country in a lockdown, we still were receiving hundreds of British people that have summer homes here. Honestly, you watch on the TV that the country is in a lockdown and the hospitals rejecting people and you still come?
This crisis tells us a lot about the culture of each place where it happens, and other common issues that arises in everyplace alike.
Netflix, taxes and the European Union
There are a lot of people that do not understand why so many Europeans are unhappy with the European Union.
As you likely know, the European Union is based on the concept of international unity. This means that once you are in Europe, you can move from one country to another without even showing your id card, if you travel by car. This same logic applies to goods and money.
In general, I like the idea of the European Union and I think if well implemented it should be positive for the economy, but there are several issues that seem very unfair to the average citizen.
For example, if I tell you that Netflix pays 3,146 € in Spain, you may ask if I mean millions? However I don't. Netflix pays slightly more than 3 000 € in taxes. This means that Netflix pays less than a doctor or a lawyer with a average-high income. I am not talking about an expensive professional, just someone that is doing relatively well with a normal life.
The reason for this nonsense is that Netflix has its main company in Europe in Amsterdam. I dont know how much they pay there, but the truth is that since the main services in Europe are at national level: healthcare, infrastructure, education, etc... the amount they pay in The Netherlands does not affect my well-being as a Spaniard.
This strategy used by companies make people vote for politicians like Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and so on.
People are tired of being cheated by the rich and it directly affects people's trust in institutions like justice and democracy.
Are Donations for Good Causes Something to Criticize?
Amancio Ortega is one of the most important business men in Spain. He is the owner of Inditex company that runs clothes shops like: Zara, Pull&Bear, Bershka and Stradivarius among others.
I think Zara is the best known of them, since it has shops on Fith Avenue of New York and other very famous commercial streets in cities like Los Angeles, London, Paris, Tokyo and, of course, Madrid.
So you can have an idea, according to Wikipedia he has wealth of 77.6 billion euros.
Today I am writing about him because there was a big polemic in Spain about his donations to the Spanish Health Public Service. The numbers are amazing. He has donated 310 million euros to fight against cancer.
Not everyone is happy though. Pablo Iglesias the leader of the left wing party called Podemos, said that any serious state wouldn't have accepted charity from a rich fellow.
The theory of this political leader is that everyone should pay enough taxes so that this charity is not needed. This theory has its logic, however I am not sure if it is really honest to say something like that.
Pablo Iglesias has also been criticized because since he started to be involved in politics, he bought a modest house by 600,000 euros. When he was asked about it, he just said it was the result of his honest work. And that is why the left wing parties says that work dignifies!
What Do Spaniards Drink?
Drinking is an important aspect of socialising and although most of the countries have the same offer of drinks, there may be some cultural differences. What and when do Spaniards drink?
In the morning
Spanish children most typical drink is a cocoa powder mixed with milk called Cola Cao. It is a very traditional drink that most children have had for breakfast in the recent history of the country. The taste is not very strong chocolate and it tends to be more sweet than unsweetened.
For workers, the most typical drink is coffe. It can be served with or without milk depeding one each on taste. I have to say that coffe is traditionally very bad in Spain, because people like the high roasted taste. Nowadays, it is changing and you can have better quality in many places.
When returning from party, the tradition is to drink chocolate. The difference with Cola Cao is that this chocolate is just a square of chocolate melted in milk.
Midday
At lunch the stars are water and wine, though more and more people is drinking beer now. In most regions people like red wine more than white.
The water is usually without sparks. If you want them, you have to specify it.
Afternoon and night
This is the time when bear comes into the scenery. Wine is also important and it depends on the region of Spain you are which one is the most popular. For example, where I live, people usually drink more wine than bear because it is of high quality and cheap, while bears are usually very regular, but is hard to find a really good one.
What about sodas?
When ti comes to sodas, Coke is the big star. Pepsi and other drinks have their own public, but I dont think they can be comparated with Coke.
Spanish TV - What We Watch on The TV Nowadays?
Looking at what people watch on TV may say a lot of about a culture. What do Spaniards watch on the TV?
If you look at the audience results of TV programs there is something that will win for sure: football. Specially when Real Madrid or Barcelona are one of the teams playing, football will be the topic in next day's break at work.
If there is not football, the news are usually the winner. The news in Spain usually informs about the same everyday (I sometimes wonder why we call them the news instead of the everyday stories): The Catalan independence fight, some accidents or natural disasters, a politician saying something stupid and sports... I mean football. Yes, in Spanish news it is very unlikely that you will see a single news about any sport that is not football.
Another succesful program is talk show called El Hormiguero (Ant's nest). However, it seems Spaniards weren't willing to listen to the interviews and now it has develope into a kind of show with a guest doing different games. It also has a section with science experiments. I have to say the program is engaging, and is the only TV show in which you can see international stars as guests, like Will Smith, from time to time.
Then we have the Quizzes. These programs with questions and answers that have different formats but in the end they are all the same. As curiosity, Spain has some kind of professional contestants and you are likely to see the same person in one contest and then in other winning prizes.The audience likes to watch a known face and the performance of this people is usually so great that they always beat their opposition.
For example, now there is a program called Boom in which two teams of four people play against each other. One of the teams has four contestants that already played individually in another classic contest. They are very good and this next morning they will be playing and likely winning for their 400th program in a row, having won prizes for more than 2 millions euros. If one day these guys loose or win the jackpot in which case they would need to leave the show, I am sure the audience of the show would go down.
Between TV series, the ones with most followers are The Simpsons and Big Bang Theory. You have them almost all the time in one of the many channels available and they always have good audience results.
Taxis, Uber and Cabify - Regulation and Liberalism
The success of companies like Uber and Cabify are one of the clearest examples of the goodnes that liberalism can bring. The trip that in a taxi costs 20 € in Uber costs 18, 16 or even less. The benefits to customers are very clear.
On the other hand, for the taxi drivers, the appearance of these companies means a direct downgrade of their labour conditions.
What benefits us as a clients, harm us as a workers.
A few days ago, Spanish goverment has transfered the responsibility to give the Uber -kind services licenses to the regional goverments. Until now, the licenses were national and now they are regional.
The national goverment has to look for the general good, and nowadays the philosohpy of the main parties in Spain are more linked to liberalism than to regulations. However, when you apply liberalism, you create personal dramas everywhere. The high competition makes prices go down, but also worker conditions, and while you as a customer can easily change the company that provides you with goods and services, as a worker the change is not so easy.
The regional government needs the local voters to vote for them. In other words, the regional goverment will always be the good guys, in opposition with the national one.
It is a matter of balance between freedom and regulation. For the general public, low prices are good, for isolated individuals, work conditions are more important. We all want freedom, cheap products and to be able to buy a t-shirt made in China for a few euros, but none of us want unemployment.
What we don't see is that the two things are correlated. In my opinion, the fault here is not in the chinese workers producing cheap, but in us, as customers, buying things from companies that maybe don't respect our social beliefs. Ask any worker in China, and I am sure he would be very happy to have better security conditions and higher salary. But if they have that, their company won't be able to produce cheap products, and you will have to pay more for your shopping. Do you want health care and pensions? THen buy an expensive t-shirt from a company that pay taxes in your own country.
I think this explains very well the strength of independency ideas in Cataluña and the euro eskeptics in the EU. They always see the central government like the bad guys and the regional like the good ones.
ANd the same happens in the European Union. The local politicians always say that they dont like the liberal regulations (or the lack of them), but they are obliged to implement them because of European government forces them to. If you think about it, it is like saying the bad guys are that foreigners in Europe, not us. We are like you, vote for us.
The weirdest thing of everything, is that the politicians that don't achieve to win an ellection, are usually placed in the European Parliament. They change from the good guys to the bad guys just in a day. Actually, it could seems that the bad guys and the good guys are exactly the same people, working for the same party, just with a different objective in terms of votes...
Europe has become an excuse to implement politics that people don't support. As a result, Europe is in a great political crisis.
Languages and public jobs
A few days ago I was talking with a friend who lives in Barcelona. Nowadays, talking with someone from Cataluña means talking about independence and related topics. That day the agenda involved the feeling of my friend that in Cataluña they are almost banishing Spanish language and pushing Catalan hardly.
At some point, we started to discuss if it would be fair if so that have a public job in Cataluña you were required to speak Catalan. Nowadays, if you want to work for Cataluña regional government you need to speak Catalan, but if you work for the Spanish government you don't need to.
My friend says that it would be very unfair that the Spanish government would require Catalan knowledge to work in Cataluña, because those born in Cataluña would have an advantage to get that job. He added that the jobs should go to the ones that are better prepared to do the tasks involved.
I said that maybe, if you want to work for the public in Cataluña, you are better qualified if you speak Catalan, so you should be asked to speak it. I agree Catalans would have an advantage, but Catalan language is not something limited to Catalans. You can be Japanese and learn to speak Catalan, and the same happens if you are Spaniard.
If you are born poor, you have less chances to get a public job too. Even when the system doesn't admit it, when you are poor, you have worse education than if you are rich, and when the time to study for the public contest that will get you a public job comes, being poor is a disadvantage. Should be make it easier to get public jobs for poor people? I really do not know in any of the two cases.
However, I think this controversy about the Catalan is much more related with the hatred that people have against the Catalan language or against the Spanish language than with a real concern about what is fair or better for the general public.
Actually, as our education system is now, that many university students have issues to understand what they read, I’m sure that if they would require a Catalan exam to both Catalan and no-Catalan applicants, many of the Catalan ones would fail.
The violence generated with this topic on the both sides of the controversy is very high. Each side feels like the others are attacking them and, in the meantime, corruption goes on in both regions.
How convenient is to have a common enemy for politicians.
