New Barcelona city-guide site

Hg2 is a really well put together website on visiting Barcelona.

It has plenty of good info about the great city and an international magazine that does similar for cities across the planet.

Well worth a look!

Right wing hacking of Catalan websites

A number of cyber “attacks” have been carried out over this last week.

The Catalans of the World site (run by my friend Sergi Marzábal) was first to be hacked.

On his home page Spanish flags were inserted along with a number of extreme rightist messages, and the apparent warning: “All this is just the start!” 

The site has been now temporarily deactivated and but provides an explanation about the ‘fascist attacks’ on it.

Other sites to have been sabotaged during the previous few days include the Catalan political parties CiU, ICV i ERC as well as the organisations Solidaritat Catalana per la Independència and the Federació d'Ateneus de Catalunya ('Ateneus.cat').

All of these have recently shown support for Catalan national indepenedence.

Spanish group puts 10,000 books on Melbourne's streets

 

Recently a  “Spanish art collective Luzinterruptus brought “Literature versus Traffic,” an installation of 10,000 LED-lit books, to Federation Square in Melbourne for The Light In Winter festival.

The books, recently retired from area public libraries, were given a second life as a glowing river that flowed through the square and into a nearby street. On the final day of the installation, onlookers were invited to take the books home."

See and read more here.

Stealing food for need and as a social protest

 [Photo: LaFura.cat]

An interesting new form of direct action came to town recently.

Last week in Vilafranca an unemployed woman named Marian Fernández was fined 90 Euros for unlawfully taking 241 Euros worth of “essentials” from a Maxi Dia supermarket. 

She was there as part of a group called ‘PAH’ - people affected by mortgage problems who went there to make a statement about not being able to afford life’s’ necessities.

Ms Fernández, a mother of three children and having no present income, had  apparently presented a credit card with a zero balance at the checkout.

This action follows from a similar act last month by JuanManuel Sánchez Gordillo, a mayor in Andalucia who also stole food but with the plan of passing it on to others who could not afford to buy their own.

Spain through the eyes of Robert Hughes

[Hughes at his New York City Loft, 1996 David Corio/Redferns]

A very readable article (from the The Global Mail, an excellent new website) about that extremely rare creature - an Australian intellectual, who amongst many other things wrote an excellent book on Barcelona long before it was a fashionable city to visit.

The [supposed] importance of bullfighting in Spain

I will be talking to Sarah McDonald [mainly about bullfighting (!) in Spain] on Australia’s 

ABC Radio Sydney 707 at 5.45 tomorrow morning local time.