ENGAÑOL

EV editorials Sept 09 - Feb 10

2010-05-04T22:59:00.004+01:00

One of the most fun things to do for EV when I was editor in chief was the editorial. I'm pleased that when the magazine changed to A5 size and my role to just the technical editing the last one turned out to be about love and how I came to Madrid. Was a nice note to finish on.

I thought it might be fun to see how they read as a chronological thread. Here's a wee look at Madrid from September 2009 to February 2010:

September

Start the dance

¡Bienvenidos! Welcome! And to our cover boys, Kaká and Cristiano Ronaldo, Bem-vindos, rapazes! Whether you’re new to or just getting back into the swing of the capital, you’ll be facing all Madrid can throw at you as it accelerates out of summer. And that’s where we come in – to help you get the most out of the experience. One of the more curious things you’ll come across, along with useless can-openers, old people who don’t like to queue and the unique Spanish talent for standing in your way, is what I call the ‘madrileño dance’. The ‘madrileño dance’ happens for the first three minutes after buying a copa. Alcoholic spirits are served in generous free-poured measures in tubular glasses, appropriately named tubos, filled with ice and accompanied by mixers in small glass bottles. Everything is perfect, except for the small catch that it’s not possible to fit the contents of your mixer bottle in your glass of liquor and ice. The ensuing three minutes after receiving your drink in a busy central Madrid bar consist of sipping barely diluted whisky, rum, gin or vodka, wincing, pouring some more coca cola or lemon into the glass and repeating from step one until the bottle is empty. Spilling drink over you as people lurch past you is par for the course at first, but soon you will have the dance down to a tee and be able to avoid spillage, have a conversation and, if you’re really good, smoke a cigarette at the same time. Only the true professional will learn to do the ‘dance’, have a conversation, smoke a cigarette and send a text message at the same time. For the rest of us, the most we can aspire to is the sip-wince-pour routine without ending up wearing our drink on our top. You’ll soon get the hang of it and you’ll find it’s as important a part of the night as the real dancing.
¡Salud!

October

Scary Madrid

Madrid isn’t a particularly spooky place, but here are five strange phenomena which seem to appear around the month of October.

The metro is taken over by ugly people, especially on line 5
This month, the filmstar looks and pearly-white smiles of the tanned Adonises and Aphrodites so prominent in the metro during the summer months begin to vanish. From mid-October to mid-May, you will notice your fellow metro passengers have an ever-increasing resemblance to Quasimodo. Their numbers are greatest before 9am (it is believed that some fear daylight), so those of us with the ill fortune of having to ride the early morning metro will be rubbing shoulders and hunchbacks with them on a daily basis. The cause is a mystery, but console yourself that there are worse horrors on the Cercanias trains.

Being infected with Swine Flu this winter is a nigh inevitability
Aside from the general displeasure of coming into close contact with the afore-mentioned Esmeralda-chasing ex-inhabitants of Notre Dame, the dirty old Swine Flu has gone pandemic and is as contagious as the viruses in all the zombie movies of recent times. However, avoiding the metro won’t spare you – Spanish notions of personal space will see to that. And even though Spanish Health Minister Trini Jiménez has ordered us all to sneeze into our armpits and to forgo greeting kisses, the Spanish habit of standing very close to people (compared to the distance most foreigners are accustomed to) will ensure transmission of the bug.
To demonstrate this, a study has shown that a group of eight Spanish friends who enter an empty bar of 100m2 will quickly arrange themselves so as to occupy a total surface area of less than 2m2. If you’re close enough to feel someone’s breath, you’re close enough to eat their germs.

All women over 50 have short hair
The sight of a middle-aged to elderly woman is not frightening in itself, granted. But when you come to realize that all the country’s women beyond a certain age have short hair, there must be something going on. Rumours abound of a machine in the back room of every hairdresser’s which processes every one of them. And a mind-controlling chip in their necks compels them to return each time their hair grows beyond a certain length.

You can’t say no to a night out
You begin to find it impossible to decline an invitation for drinks and dancing, regardless of the overdue assignments you have for university or tomorrow’s early start at work. This suppression of your willpower usually continues until after Christmas, though for some guiris, it becomes a terminal state.

You wake up at the other end of your metro line
Maybe this is just me, but you mysteriously slip into unconsciousness as you travel home on the first metro of the morning after having left a nightclub some time before six. You awaken, feeling sub-human and as if there were some strange hunching beginning to affect your back, only when a short-haired old woman sneezes in your face. A shower and a change of clothes doesn’t appear to rectify your dishevelled appearance, but you shuffle back onto the metro in the direction of your work.
Oh, what’s that? A sneeze? Must be an allergy or something.

Don’t have nightmares!

November

Don’t stay in

The clocks have gone back, the nights are getting darker and colder, but you can’t take refuge in bars and clubs every single night, can you? Some time you’re going to have to stay in, bite the bullet and watch some spectacularly bad Spanish TV.
Here are some of the horrors that await you:
Frustrating comedy/drama series invariably let down by either woeful script writing or embarrassingly poor acting (Or at least unable to maintain a good level in both script and acting for more than half a season)
Reality shows whose weekly gala programmes last about five hours (The good old reality show is a worldwide phenomenon, but following one here means committing one entire night out of your week)
Heavily politicized news broadcasts (When people trust newspapers more than TV news, there’s a problem)
Dreadful dubbing into Spanish of English-language films (In which it seems all children are voiced by the same woman doing a ‘Bart Simpson voice’)
Loud interminable commercial breaks with ads made by people who think we’re incredibly stupid (You can’t remember what you were watching anymore, but you can still hear, “Quiero hacer caca en el baño de Pablito” as you make a sandwich)
Gossip shows (My pick of the month)
The last time I visited my Spanish mother-in-law, she went to buy bread and came back after 50 minutes. The bakery is at the end of her street. “What a queue!” she said upon her return. “What a lie” we thought. We had had watched her intermittently through the kitchen window as she stopped each time she met someone she knew. She spent seven to ten minutes talking to each one. “What does she have to talk about for so long?” I asked my wife. It was gossip.
As gossiping is officially Spain’s national sport (dwarfing the number of those who follow football), it’s only right that it should have a significant presence on television. The number of these has snowballed since the emergence of private TV channels at the start of the ‘90s, taking over the morning programming, swallowing the old children’s TV afternoon/early evening slots and incredibly landing Saturday night prime time. Even Spanish Big Brother has it’s own spin-off gossip show.

These programmes do have some good things –

• they give gossip junkies a constant source of their drug
• they make gossiping a ‘victimless crime’ because celebrities aren’t real people with feelings who only exist for our amusement
• as there are only 153 people who still regularly follow bullfighting, top bullfighters wouldn’t get recognized walking down the street if it weren’t for these shows
• hairdressers, supermarket checkout assistants and not-so-successful models who sleep with bullfighters, footballers or actresses can get to be ‘celebrities’, go on these programmes and give other hairdressers, supermarket checkout assistants and not-so-successful models something to aspire to and give everyone else something to condescend
• the ultimate Spanish class – if you can understand everything as three panelists scream each other down simultaneously, you have surpassed many native speakers

What’s wrong with them then? If you have to ask…
You can vote for your own ‘favourite’ worst thing about Spanish TV on our new website. I’ll have to go now – Sálvame is on in a minute.

December

George of the concrete jungle

I’m convinced there are many and varied things each of us who lives here loves about Madrid. But since the cold and dark of winter set in, there are less reminders of the good and a tendency to slip into Bah Humbug mode about the negative. This isn’t altogether bad and I think it’s important to recognize that not all is perfect – to vent that pent up ire so we can purify and get into the Christmas spirit. I want you to think of the thing you hate most about Madrid and tell someone about it without holding back. Like a remake of A Christmas Carol where Ebenezer Scrooge lets out a long, primal scream and sobs into Bob Cratchett’s shoulder in the first week of December, before becoming reformed and jovial character, thus saving a protracted storyline of cruelty, recriminations and ghostly hallucinations to achieve redemption.

Think about it hard, though. Put on the spot, I’ll nearly always give a different answer. Asked a few months ago in a European Vibe video about Madrid loves and hates, I picked sharp-elbowed sardineras, unpleasant, squat, middle-aged women with an utter disrespect for politeness and accepted rules about queuing.
But after much thought, my number one hate is: obstacles that hurt.
Entrance turnstiles and exit gates that don’t open when they’re supposed to in the metro are a rare offender, but they’re worth a dead leg for a week when you take a femur-crunching blow, to the sniggers of other passengers and bored security guards. A far more constant threat are the iron bollards sprinkled liberally around the narrower streets in the centre of Madrid to separate where cars drive and people walk. The high concentration of these knee-high metal posts in areas like Huertas and Malasaña account for me picking up around 50 dents on each shin. One minute you’re walking along talking to your friends, the next you’re wincing in pain that drinking alcohol has done nothing to dull.

What takes the biscuit, however, are the skinny trees in troughs which blight pavements around the city. As if negotiating your way past the painfully slow walkers weren’t enough, the presence of these perpetually rubbish and dogshit-filled troughs adds the risk of falling in and doing yourself a mischief to your Madrid pedestrian experience. I’m speaking as someone who knows. Two Christmasses ago I was out for a meal and a night out. On a lengthy walk between the restaurant and our next bar of choice, I lost my friends after a foiled attempt to illegally urinate in a (quiet, I thought) corner of a garage. As I looked around for them near the Glorieta de San Bernando, a sudden wave of agony went through the right side of my body.
I thought I’d had a stroke.
As I peeled myself off the tree, I realized I’d stepped in a trough. Nobody seemed to see, but my friends had a good laugh while I mopped my bloody head in the bar.

Watch out for the trees. Merry Christmas!

January

Walk like a madrileño

Welcome back to Madrid, the Mighty Bear, La Sagrada Hostia de la madre que le parió (Luc’s resolution #1 – swear more in Spanish). I must say, you’re looking nice and fat – overdo it on the turkey, did we? (Luc’s resolution #2 – offend more people). But you also looked pleased to be back here, and, let’s face it, Madrid is much better than wherever you’re from despite its faults (Luc’s resolution #3 – adopt a more Madrid-centric view of the world).
We’re all about the resolutions this year. For most people, they’re a couple of half-arsed attempts to quit smoking or join a gym (Luc’s resolution #4 – quit smoking definitively). Others apply reverse psychology in light of repeated failed attempts to achieve their goals, promising to drink more and do no exercise (Luc’s resolution #5 – drink more). But, to help you with some more effective and original New Year’s resolutions, we’ve got a series of articles with suggestions for reaching your goals in 2010 (Luc’s resolution #6 – Give EV writers more licence to boss the readership around).
Adam Ciotkowski’s profile of Arctic Monkeys (page 8) reminds us not to miss one of the biggest nights of the year for indie fans in Madrid (Luc’s resolution #7 – buy tickets for concerts before they sell out). Susana López gives us ten tips for improving our Spanish (page 10) and sends us for a hot, warm and cold bath in Spain’s best hammams, while Ryan Craggs brings us ten of the best places to visit (page 12) within easy reach of Madrid. Garreth Nunn sets us on the track of finding a Spanish football club to support (page 20) and explains how he ended up becoming an Atlético Madrid fan (Luc’s resolution #8 – take more advantage of having two great football clubs on your doorstep, though watching them in a bar reinforces resolution #5). Matt Johnson offers up his comprehensive list of resolutions for 2010 (page 25), including some kamikaze skating in Madrid (Luc’s resolution #9 – know your limits, remember humiliation at roller-disco in 1991).
There’s a whole lot more in here, so get stuck in. I’m off to re-enact the video for The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony in the centre of Madrid. Could be messy (Luc’s resolution #10 – the pavement is yours, take no prisoners).

February

Como la trucha al trucho

This issue of EV being a Valentine’s special and also marking two years for me as editor got me thinking – in all this time, I’ve never explained how I came to live in Madrid.
If you ask people and make a point of counting, a surprisingly high proportion of English speakers in Madrid came to live here because of love.
I hold my hand up, too.

It was June 2005. At the time home for me was the east of France and the company I worked for had sent me to Madrid on a project for a month. In Madrid, Shakira and Alejandro Sanz singing La Tortura were on the radio, thousands of volunteering madrileños were carrying the largest flag ever constructed through the streets for the city’s 2012 Olympic bid candidacy celebration, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was filling the cinemas and a packet of Lucky Strike was 2.20€.
It’s funny what things jump out at you when you arrive in a new place – here, the mass of greasy chicken bones and serviettes you wade through in bar where the tapas are good, the shock of city centre prostitution-in-your-face the first time you see the girls of Montera, the extreme dryness of the air which turns bread to toast in 15 seconds and leaves you with dried blood in your nostrils in the morning.

My room, above the Bajos de Argüelles, was too hot to sleep in with the window closed and too noisy (from the student nightclubs below) to sleep in with it open. Joining in and going out was the only option for self-preservation. Despite trying to keep my mind on cold beer rather than hot women, I did meet the girl and the rest of my stay was as curly as her hair. We parted promising only to meet up for a short holiday in Scotland (take the, ehm, heat out of the situation). But three months later, I was on a plane from Geneva to Madrid, and this time I didn’t have a return ticket.

Love steamrollered all – even an ideological feud over whether it’s acceptable to leave the toilet seat up (which went on for a couple of months before I finally ceded in a trade off for an end to excessive numbers of mousse/face cream/perfume/girl stuff bottles around the bathroom basin area).

Madrid is a great place to be in love and to fall in love. But if you’re not into that kind of thing, the rugby’s on page 20.

Countdown to South Africa

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Group A

South Africa

South Africa appear a strong bet to become the first World Cup hosts not to qualify from the group stage and the task which lies before coach Carlos Alberto Parreira is an altogether different one from the

ultimately glorious World Cup campaign he guided Brazil through in the USA 16 years ago. Bafana Bafana (the South African national side’s nickname meaning ‘The Boys, The Boys’) went into the draw as the lowest ranked team in the competition (although they since leapfrogged North Korea

in December’s FIFA World Rankings) crossing their fingers, toes and anything else they could in hope of a kind draw. They didn’t get one, however, and their hopes may hinge on intimidating the little Mexicans with their physical strength and Uruguay and France with the noise of the home crowd. They unluckily missed out on qualifying from the group stage in

South Korea eight years ago based on goals scored records, but the current crop of players

measure up unfavourably to the class of ’02 and South African fans will rely more on hope than belief.

Mexico

Mexico recovered from Sven-Goran Eriksson’s disastrous spell in charge of the national team to qualify with relative comfort and they will feel more than capable of reaching the second round for the fifth consecutive World Cup after seeing their group on paper. One of the most skilful teams in the tournament, Mexico should provide plenty of entertainment, although they aren’t the same proposition as four years ago (when it took a Maxi Rodríguez wonder goal to eliminate them) and look susceptible to being bullied out of their attractive football by more physical sides.

Uruguay

Having blown the opportunity to secure automatic qualification on home soil and make things difficult for Argentina (allowing Maradona to keep his job and order his critics to “Suck it”), Uruguay got to the World Cup the hard way by squeezing past Costa Rica. Last season’s La Liga

Pichichi (top goalscorer), Diego Forlán, commands worldwide respect, but a lack of true

quality throughout the squad will leave few expecting the South Americans to progress. The ‘Orientals’ will be happy to be underestimated and will hope to exploit the weaknesses of their first-round rivals.

France

The fortune of the draw for the French adds insult to injury for many an aggrieved Ireland fan. Domenech might as well have changed his first name to Under-fire-France-coach-Raymond a few years ago, but he found it hard to hide his glee at being handed such an easy group (and an easy passage to the quarter finals should they avoid Argentina in the next round) despite his insistence that meeting the tournament hosts would be an almighty test. The French media have labelled it an “open group”, which could be interpreted to mean France will top the pool without breaking sweat if they can somehow play as a coherent unit. Those who are dismissive

of Les Bleus should beware, they’ve always played best when the expectations are low – the fans on their back and a heavily-criticized manager was what they had in 1998.

Group B

Argentina

A group of great players, who somehow constitute a whole weaker than the sum of its parts, led by a manager whose job hangs by a thread – Argentina enter the World Cup with the same problem as France. There is a dose of déjà vu for Maradona, who faced both Greece and Nigeria in the group stage of USA ’94; his final World Cup as a player, which ended prematurely in disgrace when he tested positive for a banned substance. His maniacal goal celebration against the Greeks sparked the suspicions that were confirmed days later. I’ll always remember that the pharmacy where I was doing work experience at the time let me print myself out a novelty prescription saying, “Ephedrine, take one capsule twice a day” with the patient made out as “Diego Armando Maradona”. The Argentines should most definitely

not need drugs to progress this time against below-par opposition and Ballon d’Or winner Leo Messi is likely to have the chance to shine against the big guns.

Nigeria

Nigeria crept into the World Cup at the expense of Tunisia on the last day of qualifying. After an injury time winner in their penultimate match kept them in contention, they had to win in Kenya and hope Tunisia didn’t in Mozambique. They got their wish as their Maghrebi rivals crashed, while Nigerian captain (for the night) Obafemi Martins’ goal nine minutes from time sealed the great escape to this summer’s party in South Africa. They have a good enough squad to reach the second round, but not much more than that.

South Korea

South Korea’s (or Korea Republic’s) expectations in their eighth World Cup Finals are firmly on the ground and there can surely be no repeat of their Guus Hiddink-inspired fourth place at home in 2002. Under the captaincy of Manchester United’s Park Ji-Sung, the South Koreans might be able to spoil either Nigeria or Greece’s tournament, but to upset them both would be a big ask.

Greece

The glory of winning Euro 2004 ebbs ever further away for the Hellenics and only three or four players from that squad are likely to make the cut for Otto Rehhagel’s 23 in South Africa. Nevertheless, they remain a nuisance to play against and are dangerous from set pieces and crosses. They have three effective, if not glamorous, forwards in Fanis Gekas (European qualifying’s top scorer), Angelos Charisteas (match winner in the Euro 2004 final) and Georgios Samaras (of Celtic fame). Greece could get out of this group, but those of us looking for attractive football probably don’t want them to.

Group C

England

Fabio Capello has whipped his England squad into fine shape. The team’s play is virtually unrecognizable from the side that crashed out of European Championship qualifying two and a half years ago and much of that is owed to the confidence and discipline the Italian has instilled. England are favourites at odds of 7-1, top scorers in UEFA qualification despite not quite emulating Holland and

Spain’s 100% records. The traditional problems of the left side and how to accommodate their best players have been solved, but there are worries in areas where the English are usually strong. They lack real class in goal and there are question marks over who is good enough to partner John Terry in defence and Wayne Rooney upfront. Rio Ferdinand is favourite for the second centre back berth, but his form and fitness this season have been far from encouraging. There’s no doubt that Rooney is central to England’s hopes of winning the tournament – Capello must already be crossing his fingers for the Man Utd striker’s continuing fitness.

USA

Americans have every right to be more excited than ever before going into this World Cup. Should they emulate their exploits of 2002 and reach the quarter finals, it would be no shock this time. Their astounding performance in last summer’s Confederations Cup won them considerable respect and admiration around the world when they ended Spain’s 35- match world record unbeaten run and took a 2-0 lead into the interval against Brazil (although finally succumbing 3-2 to O Canarinho). Their incredible collective physical fitness makes up for their technical shortcomings on most occasions. Only England look like beating them in this group, but they will approach the opener in Rustenburg with no fear. Donovan for Golden Shoe?

Algeria

The team that deprived us of seeing the silky skills of the Egyptians have plenty of passion and their fans will be proud to watch them in their first World Cup for 24 years. Can they spring another upset like they did against the Pharaohs? In a word, no.

They have some decent players, like Wolfsburg’s Karim Ziani and Bochum’s Antar Yahia (matchwinner with that stunner in Sudan that sank Egypt), but not enough quality in their

squad to make a big impact, their only chance of points is if they play their very best and catch their opponents on an off day.

Slovenia

Russia didn’t heed the warnings to beware the Slovenes and the late away goal scored by Pecnik in Moscow came back to bite them after Slovenia won 1-0 in Maribor to level the aggregate score. They’ve left several decent sides by the wayside on their road to South Africa, but it’s hard to imagine them overcoming England or the USA. They just might get four points and that just might be enough to go through, but they’ve stretched their ‘just mights’ pretty far already.

Group D

Germany

Jogi Löw’s team, despite Russia keeping the pressure on until last September, qualified unbeaten and in convincing style. At 9-1, the bookmakers have placed the Nationalmannschaft at longer odds than England to win the tournament and, for me, they could be well worth a flutter. Miroslav Klose can still poke, head and bang them in and has always stepped up his game at major finals. Michael Ballack’s class and influence will be important, though he will have to exert that without his regular partner in crime – Torsten Frings, a mainstay of the German centre midfield for years, has already been told by Löw that he won’t be going to South Africa. The coach’s tactical nous has been hard to question over the last four years, but he will need his big players to be switched on right from the start after drawing one of the World Cup’s two ‘groups of death’.

Australia

The Socceroos can feel understandably aggrieved at their ill luck in landing such a difficult group, especially after their impressive maiden qualification from the Asian Football Confederation. Guus Hiddink’s reign as manager was a watershed moment for Australia and now, under another Dutch coach in Pim Verbeek, they’re a confident and respected outfit in international football. There are plenty of players who will be familiar to fans of the English Premier League, although with age creeping up on them it could be the last time we see the likes of Schwarzer, Neill, Cahill, Emerton, Kewell and Grella at a World Cup. They can qualify from this group, but they will have to treat each game like a final to do it.

Serbia

Serbia have put a long period of underachievement behind them and finally look as dangerous as they did at the 1998 World Cup. I fancy they could go as far as the semi finals after thumping their way through their group and dumping France into that infamous playoff. Radi Antic is vastly experienced, having managed Real Madrid, Barcelona and taken Atlético Madrid to a Spanish league title and Copa del Rey double (he still spends a lot of the year living in Madrid) and his guidance has been key in making Serbia a solid, consistent unit. They need Deki Stankovic fit to boss the midfield and create things if they’re going to do well.

Ghana

Like fellow West Africans Ivory Coast, Ghana pulled a short straw in terms of opposition for the first round and I don’t expect them to repeat the success of 2006. Nevertheless, plenty of people are backing them to progress and it must be based on the excellent midfield partnership of Muntari and Essien. It was a strong statement of intention for the World Cup that they excused many first team players from last month’s African Cup of Nations in a bid to keep them fresh for the summer. They’re a very good side, I just don’t think they have enough class upfront to take them past their group rivals.

The second half of the World Cup group previews were continued by Garreth Nunn and you can find them here.

Film First: Invictus

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If the South African football team watch this movie on the team
bus before their group matches at this summer’s FIFA World Cup, Mexico, Uruguay and France will have something to worry about.

So, has Clint Eastwood made South Africa’s
own sporting equivalent of Braveheart?

After the disappointment of Nelson Mandela not turning up to save the day and unite humans and ‘prawns’ in District 9, it should be a delight to see the real-life miracles achieved by the greatest African leader in reconciliation of the seemingly irreconcilable. Should be…
Mandela is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable characters of the twentieth century. Imprisoned for treason as a terrorist for 27 years by the white Afrikaner-dominated Apartheid regime, he was finally released in 1990 and the ban on his African National Congress party lifted after a long worldwide campaign and international pressure. What had been unthinkable just a few years previously came into being when Mandela was elected president after the first multi-racial elections in South Africa’s history. From 1994 to 1999, he led his country through its transition to full democracy, dismantled the apparatus of racial segregation without the bloodshed thought by most to be inevitable and became influential as an international mediator for peace.

A shining moment of Mandela’s new ‘Rainbow Nation’ was when he handed the World Cup trophy to the white-skinned Afrikaner captain of South Africa’s rugby team, François Pienaar. An unprecedented wave of unity swept through the country joining South Africans in jubilation at the Springboks’ triumph.

The journey was almost as fairy tale-like in sporting terms, too. The South African national rugby union side, known as the Springboks after the rapid little antelope indigenous to south-western Africa, had experienced their own period of isolation since the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement had established the Commonwealth nations’ boycott of sporting contact with South Africa under Apartheid. Apart from four heavily protested-against tours, the Springboks were frozen out of international rugby and excluded from the first two World Cups in 1987 and 1991. Despite having home advantage, South Africa were seeded ninth from a total of 16 teams and their chances were written off by most, the South African sports media being particularly critical of the team’s prospects. The story of triumph in the face of adversity and the uniting of the South African people in support and celebration of their team (considering the Springboks had always been a symbol of hate for black South Africans) would have appeared too ‘comic-book’ were it fiction, but it really happened and Clint Eastwood accepted the challenge of bringing the inspirational story to the big screen.

Eastwood’s dramatization begins with well-kitted up white school kids playing rugby on a lush turf pitch separated from a rabble of barefoot black children engaged in a chaotic game of football on waste ground by fences and a road. Both games are interrupted by the passing of the police escorted Nelson Mandela being released from prison. Some short exposition takes us into Mandela’s presidency and an international rugby match where the new president laments that black South Africans are supporting England against the Springboks.

When the Springbok name, emblem and colours are abolished by the National Sports Council for their connection to the Apartheid era, it’s only Mandela’s personal intervention and appeal to members that attains a reversal of the decision. “Our enemy is no longer the Afrikaner: they are our fellow South Africans … This is no time to celebrate petty revenge. This is the time to build our nation using every single brick available to us, even if that brick comes wrapped in green and gold.”
President Mandela invites Springboks captain François Pienaar to tea, where he talks to the rugby player about leadership. Pienaar later comes to realize the president believes success in the World Cup could be a unique opportunity to unite the peoples of South Africa.

So far unsubstantiated internet claims have been doing the rounds for the last few months that the poem Invictus was never passed to Pienaar by Mandela and that it was in fact an extract from the Theodore Roosevelt speech, The Man In The Arena, which the president gave to the rugby captain. Whether it was the Henley poem, the President Teddy speech or simply Mandela’s or Pienaar’s own words that gave the Springboks an edge of inspiration, one seems appropriate for the great man and the other applies rather well to Clint Eastwood’s efforts.

Invictus fits Mandela’s personal struggle:

“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate: 
I am the captain of my soul.”

While The Man In The Arena corresponds better to Eastwood on this occasion:

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming…”

The director who won Oscars for Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby certainly has a good crack at this one, but the result is a good film, not a great film. Maybe some of the pacing and development of supporting characters and sub-plots are sacrificed to showcase Mandela as interpreted by Morgan Freeman. And, if this is the case, maybe it was worth it – Freeman is magnificent as Nelson Mandela. It’s almost as if he’s possessed by the soul of Mandela; I went into the film thinking each man is too well-known and too instantly-recognisable to suspend disbelief, yet later in the showing caught myself thinking, “Doesn’t Mandela look a lot like Morgan Freeman?”

Matt Damon is workmanlike as François Pienaar, doing everything asked of him, including the accent, very proficiently. Some will complain about a lack of a journey for the character, but how much more would there be to tell from Pienaar’s perspective without inventing a different story? No, what would have enriched the film for me would have been to see more of the character arc of the South African black and white communities, beyond that of Mandela’s security staff.

The other, perhaps more trivial-seeming yet important nevertheless, failure of the film to reach epic status is its score. An epic movie needs an epic soundtrack, but as far as music goes, Eastwood didn’t just drop the ball, he knocked it on and collapsed the resulting scrum (it’s shite).

Making a movie with action from a team sport is a minefield and there are many examples of films whose sporting action scenes detract credibility from them. However, and while they are not quite spectacular, the rugby scenes in Invictus are solid, exciting and are faithful to the laws of the game (maybe with one slight lapse when it appears that François Pienaar/Matt Damon [playing flanker] illegally handles the ball in the scrum). If we look at it as simply a sports movie, it is the best one for years… It just seems to me that the ingredients were there for something even more special.

Film First: Nine, Sherlock Holmes & The Men Who Stare At Goats

2010-05-04T08:44:00.003+01:00

Nine

Rob Marshall, who brought Chicago to the big screen, directs this adaptation of the 1982 musical with an illustrious cast of Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Sophia Loren and Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas.
Guido Contini is a famous Italian film director tumbling into a mid-life crisis that plays havoc with his personal life and career. There are 10 days left until the shooting of his new movie begins and he has still not written the script. His wife (Cotillard), his mistress (Cruz), his starlet (Kidman), a fashion journalist (Hudson), his mother (Loren) and the prostitute who awakened his sexuality (Fergie) all pull him in different directions, while his costume designer (Dench) patches him together.

Day-Lewis is reliably excellent as the falling-apart director and Marion Cotillard is being touted for a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the upcoming Oscars. But while these two and Judi Dench excel as one would expect, it’s Penélope Cruz who makes a spectacular impact in her role, nailing funny, sexy and heartbroken. If there are any critics of her acting ability still out there, this performance must surely sweep their last leg from under them. Anyone says she’s not beautiful – please pay attention to her musical number. Fergie, with bigger humps and curves than we’re used to and looking great for it, puts a great shift in as a séductrice and with her vocal work.
Musicals normally make me want to kill myself and I enjoyed Marshall’s movie, so this is either not much like other musicals or it’s something quite special.

Sherlock Holmes

The mummy-daddy of all detective story franchises directed by Guy Ritchie with a six-packed and action-packed Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes? If you’re already thinking ‘no’, then leave this one well alone.

But if you think a Victorian-era James Bond mixed with Batman and Robin sounds ok, give it a whirl. In this interpretation, Holmes must prevent satanic cult leader Lord Blackwood as he rises from the dead from executing his devilish plan to take over the world. Downey’s Holmes is not only rougher around the edges but rougher right through, as happy skelping ruffians with his bare knuckles as solving mysteries. The edge is taken of this by camping up his relationship with Dr Watson with bags of bromantic banter. The casting of Jude Law as Holmes’ sidekick also raises eyebrows, but it was Ritchie’s intention to sex up the character. “I wanted a good-looking Watson. I didn’t want him to be subservient or inferior, but rather a bit of a hero with an equal partnership with Holmes. I believe that’s to a degree what Conan Doyle was really after” the director states. Personally, I thought Watson was meant to be an everyman who acted as a foil to Sherlock Holmes’ genius; a device for Conan Doyle to narrate and show off Holmes’ intellectual superiority as well as a companion. Still, Law brings a little more substance to the character than Watsons have had in previous screen adaptations.

There’s a nice and dirty Victorian London, a good soundtrack and plenty of action for those who like it, but it’s not for fans of Conan Doyle’s work.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

Journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) goes to Iraq after his wife runs off with his one-armed editor. There he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), who claims to be a psychic soldier for the US military, in a unit called the New Earth Army. He describes his group as “Jedi Warriors”, able to walk through walls and read minds, and later disclosing he can even stop a goat’s heart by simply staring at the animal. When Wilton learns that Cassady is to start a mission to find his missing ex-commander, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), he asks to follow the eccentric soldier. Wilton and Cassady find the now alcoholic ex-officer working for ‘evil genius’ Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), another former New Earth Army soldier, at a private research camp and Wilton’s adventure becomes weirder than he could ever have imagined.
Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and George Clooney (taking a break from his full time job selling coffee) are a promising cast for any movie. However, the film has garnered a mixture of positive and critical reviews, with some accusing fingers pointing at the directing and scriptwriting. Some of the criticism towards Grant Heslov’s directing seems a frustration due to expecting a more ‘Coen Brothers’ style. Heslov’s production company partner Clooney does perhaps come close in the hamming-up stakes to his role as Everett in the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? and his performance is undeniably excellent. I was happy with the other three co-stars, but if you expect Jeff Bridges to be The Dude from The Big Lebowski, Kevin Spacey to produce some American Beauty or Ewan McGregor to be anything but the straight man, you’ll be disappointed.
There are two ways of enjoying it: realize it actually isn’t all true and isn’t especially clever, or light up a spliff. If you want to learn something about psychic warfare, watch a documentary.

Film First: Bad Lieutenant & Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

2010-05-04T08:28:00.003+01:00

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Nicolas Cage is an actor who divides people, but his latest incarnation as the more and more unhinged title role in Bad Lieutenant is more likely to reconcile those who enjoyed Cage Face/Off with fans of Cage Adaptation than anything else in his filmography. Despite taking its name and general premise from 1992’s Bad Lieutenant with Harvey Keitel as the wickedly immoral cop, Port of Call New Orleans’ director Werner Herzog maintains his film, “has nothing to do with it” and could never be considered a remake of its New York-based namesake.

Terrence McDonagh (Cage) starts as a good cop who is awarded for bravery during Hurricane Katrina and promoted to the rank of lieutenant. The spinal injury he sustains at this time, however, leaves him suffering from chronic back pain and he develops an addiction to his prescription painkillers. He abandons all sense of morality and plunges ever further into trouble as he starts ingesting any illegal drugs he can swipe or confiscate, claiming sexual favours, pulling his gun out at old dears, working up debts with dangerous people and mixing with gangsters. McDonagh’s visions of non-existent reptiles confirm our suspicions that we’re descending into a bad trip. But this bad trip is also a great journey for our antihero and watching McDonagh’s sins is so compelling that you’ll find it hard not to forgive Cage for some of his past cinematographic transgressions.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Animated kids’ movies have been all but been replaced in the 21st Century with animated kids’ movies that have enough adult references to make them fun for the accompanying adult. Inevitably, however, the rouse is shattered upon purchase of the DVD through the tendency of children to want to revisit their favourite movies at least twice every weekend. Nevertheless, this one has enough laughs, craziness and lampooning of disaster movies to have me braving a cinema full of Attention Deficit Disorder-suffering ten-year-olds (they’re all like that nowadays).

The hero of the story is Flint Lockwood, an inventor since childhood from a small island off the Atlantic Coast of the USA called Swallow Falls. His flawed inventions include spray-on shoes (good, but you can’t get them off), ratbirds (why?) and a monkey thought translator for his monkey, Steve (most of the time he thinks, “Steve!” and sometimes, “Gummy Bears!” – perhaps gives us an insight into what it would be like if we understood Chewbacca).

Flint’s breakthrough invention is a machine which turns water into food and, once it gets lodged in the clouds, it turns the island’s rain into cheeseburgers. Flint is immediately a celebrity and receives all manner of requests for different types of food, but he overloads the machine and things go wrong.

For me, the film was on for five stars until around 55 minutes when what could have been a fantasy adventure with real-world applicability turned into imposed, moralizing allegory for environmental destruction and climate change. Surreal that it was the voice of Mr T (as bouncy cop Officer Earl) who should speak the words, “It was all of our fault”. Where have we heard that before? Climate change? Credit crunch? Worldwide recession? Everyone’s fault, we’re all to blame. Yeah, am I watching CNN?
But it’s pointless to pick – if we did, the whole thing would come apart. I mean, the world-changing invention turns rain into food. So where it rains a lot, people get obese and where it doesn’t, Africa for example, people have nothing to eat. Revolutionary.

If I had kids, I’d turn it off after 55 minutes and tell them everyone died in the “Aporkalypse”. But I don’t, so I’ll happily watch the gorgeous animation and laugh at the funny bits, because there are plenty of them.

Film First: Looking For Eric, Away We Go & 2012

2010-05-04T08:19:00.003+01:00

Looking For Eric

All that Middle-aged Manchester postman Eric Bishop has to show from two failed marriages are two teenage stepsons under his care and a grown-up daughter with her own baby. When childminding duties for his grandchild force Eric to see his first wife, Lily, the already depressed postman suffers a nervous breakdown and ends up in hospital after driving the wrong way around a roundabout.
A do-it-yourself group therapy session with his concerned postie mates prompts each man to visualize being in the skin of someone he admires and would like to emulate. In Eric’s case, he imagines looking through the eyes of his namesake and Manchester United hero ‘King’ Eric Cantona. Later indulgence with his stepson’s marijuana stash leads Eric to start having visions of the French football legend, who quickly becomes a life coach and confidant to the beleaguered Mancunian. Just as we begin to think the film is an uplifting (albeit lifting slowly from the gutter), slightly schizophrenic buddy movie, events take an ugly turn for the worse and in our guts we can feel a Ken Loach misery-fest in full working order coming on. Three years ago, that’s maybe how it would have ended, but in the midst of a worldwide recession, the cinema-going public need hope as much as anyone else. Loach eventually rescues us from despair, but he has to abandon the realism previously built up to deliver us from evil. But if we can suspend belief for Eric Cantona life coaching a Manchester postman, we can buy into the film’s finale also.
We come out a lot happier from this than we have from any Ken Loach film for a long time. This director’s films should really be compulsory viewing in Spanish schools; it would soon put an end to misconceptions of Britain being all about reserved ladies and gentlemen and five-o’clock tea.

Away We Go

This quirkily comedic coming of age road movie is something rather unexpected from American Beauty director Sam Mendes. Its main characters are Verona, an illustrator of medical textbooks, and her boyfriend, Burt, who sells insurance futures to insurers by telephone. The film opens with Burt performing what turns out to be an unconventional pregnancy test on Verona.
We rejoin the couple, in their early thirties, six months into the pregnancy when Burt’s parents break the news that they are leaving to fulfil their long-held ambition of living in Antwerp, Belgium. Burt and Verona, who had moved from Chicago to be near their family, are left feeling unanchored and directionless, as well as hopelessly unprepared for parenthood. While they aren’t necessarily poor, they seem not to have moved on from the lifestyle of their long-gone

student days; they live in a ramshackle prefab without proper heating and cardboard covering a broken window. Amidst their self-doubt, Verona asks Burt, (interestingly, the mantra of almost every thirty-something expatriate in Madrid if you go to the right/wrong bars) “Are we fuck-ups?” It seems she is asking the audience too. With no sense of belonging and no ties apart from to each other, the pair decide to find a new home for themselves and their unborn child.

Their journey takes them to Phoenix, Tucson, Madison (Wisconsin), Montreal and Miami, presented as a series of vignettes, before they finally find their home. The film does dander along without great pace, but it gets where it sets out to. Burt and Verona are refreshingly and unwaveringly, truly in love. The flawed parenting and relationships they encounter on their

travels convince them they are, after all, much less fucked up and much more fortunate than they thought.
Watch it, especially with someone you love. But, if you’re single and have suffered heartbreak in the past, you might feel they’re rubbing your nose in it. In which case, give it a miss. You’ll spend money on your ticket, and three times as much on drowning your sorrows afterwards.

2012

On 21 December 2012, the world will end as we know it. The Ancient Mayans calculated the end of time long ago with their sophisticated calendar system, while New Agers predict a profound transition and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius Naranja. That’s the premise given to Roland Emmerich, director of Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, to do what he most enjoys and what he does best – to make a movie in the disaster and apocalyptic genre with stunning visual effects. Mr Dependable John Cusack heads an ensemble cast, which also includes Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Oliver Platt.
The Northern Hemisphere’s winter solstice arrives in 2012 and, sure enough, the Earth’s crust begins to collapse and the planet is devastated as the oceans swallow entire continents. The only hope of survival is a series of Noah’s Ark-style super ships made by the… guess… American ‘Institute for Human Continuity’. The promotional hoardings and trailers boldly claim, “The end is just the beginning”. It’s not though, is it? The end is really the main event. That’s not to take anything away from 2012, but precisely what a film like this is offering is to see how the people in charge behave in the situation, how normal people like us behave in the situation, and jaw-dropping effects to show us what the end of the world looks like. It’s going to be good, but it’s not going to be amazing, unless you only care about special effects.

Film First: Horror Show Special

2010-05-04T07:48:00.008+01:00

Saw VI

Halloween wouldn’t be the same without the annual dose of Saw, apparently. Rumours abound that we will finally discover Jigsaw’s grand scheme for killing this time around. One theory is there will continue to be a Saw film each year until even the most hardcore fans will have lost the will to live.
Only then will Jonathan Kramer stop killing from beyond the cancerous colon. If you’re going to see, er, saw, this one, this is how it goes: the Jigsaw Killer sets life-threatening traps he calls ‘tests’ or ‘games’ for people he thinks do not appreciate their lives. Failure means death.
When will we see, er, saw, the end of it? Let’s be honest, only pornography can justify more than this many films in a series. Even Star Wars stopped at six.
2 stars

Zombieland

Some very silly comedy horror fun. Woody Harrelson hasn’t been this funny since Kingpin and Jesse Eisenberg isn’t just a comical face. Oscar-nominated Abigail Breslin from Little Miss Sunshine is in there too, as a handful of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world journey across America. Should be a fun evening’s escapism. The only danger is having to resist the urge to ‘take some zombies out’ with car doors, baseball bats, etc. when you spill back out onto the busy streets of Madrid...

3 stars

[•REC]2

[•REC] was handheld horror in the Blair Witch Project tradition meets a 28 Days Later infected/zombie flick, and burst out to become a worldwide cult movie. The Hollywood remake, Quarantine, served to further ignite interest in this Spanish film, reminiscent of the way The Ring gained more admirers for its Japanese original than it did for itself.
The danger for this kind of sequel is always that the bigger budget can mean the directors buy more fake blood, go for bigger frights and add all the effects they wanted but couldn’t afford in the original, to the detriment of the writing and tension that set the first film apart.

We rejoin the quarantined apartment block minutes after contact has been lost with those inside. An unsuspecting GEO team (Spanish equivalent of SWAT) is dispatched into the now bloodstained rabbit warren throbbing with the infected. It was terrifying the first time and it’s terrifying now. There won’t be a dry seat in the house.

2 stars

Twilight II: New Moon

If pop culture hates a void, teen pop culture more so. As the pre-teen and teen-fiction fans’ appetites grew ever more voracious and anxious with the Harry Potter series reaching its climax, Stephanie Mayer’s mix of high school romantic drama and vampires became a new, and bloody, feast for readers. The 13-year-old girls came, the 13-year-old boys came, then the whole teen horde devoured it. Since Twilight’s release in 2005, Meyer has gone on to spin the yarn into a four-tome series and sell over 70 million copies. The love story between the human Bella Swan and the vampire Edward Cullen in the series’ first book was turned into a movie that grossed almost $70 million in its first weekend alone in the US and Canada.

Like with the Harry Potter films, the books are already written and there will be no plot surprises for those who are already fans, just the satisfaction of seeing the live action depiction. For the rest of us – The movie begins with Edward breaking up with Bella and leaving town to protect and keep her away from vampires. The distraught Bella achieves visions of her lost love through dangerous pursuits and begins to forge a close friendship with Jacob, who is revealed to be a werewolf. Some girls have all the luck, you might say. But it does turn out to be fortuitous when Jacob and his pack of werewolves are able to save her from vampires (seeking revenge on Bella for the death of their companion in Twilight).

In the meantime, a Romeo & Juliet-style twist leads Edward to think Bella has killed herself and he decides he doesn’t want to exist without her. He travels to Italy to seek out and provoke the wrath of the Volturi, the world’s vampire royalty who ar

e capable of destroying him. Edward’s sister tells Bella and the pair set off to save him. Guess what happens next?
Revamp of the vamp romp.

2 stars

Final Destination 4

If you don’t know the formula here by now, here it goes: someone has a premonition of a horrific death, he and some other people spectacularly avoid their end as the vision becomes reality, the Grim Reaper doesn’t like it, one-by-one the group die increasingly unfortunate and grisly deaths. Unless you love 3D and are addicted to special effects, enjoy your Halloween
parties instead and get the first Final Destination on DVD afterwards.

1 star

Kaká and Cristiano Ronaldo

2009-09-28T01:04:00.005+01:00

We all know what Real Madrid did last summer. I chart the lives of their two big Lusophone signings up until the return of Presidente Pérez.

1982
22 April – Teacher Simone Cristina Santos Leite gives birth to a boy in the Brazilian capital, Brasília. She and her civil-engineer husband, Bosco Izecson Pereira Leite, name the baby Ricardo.

1985
5 February – Maria Dolores dos Santos Aveiro has her fourth child to José Dinis Aveiro in Funchal, capital of the Portuguese island of Madeira. They call him Cristiano Ronaldo; the second name after Dinis’ favourite actor and current American president Ronald Reagan.

14 October – three-year-old Ricardo Izecson Pereira Leite gets a little brother, Rodrigo. Later, as Rodrigo grows into a toddler and learns to speak, his inability to pronounce ‘Ricardo’ will lead to the creation of his brother’s nickname, Kaká. Rodrigo will also become a professional footballer and be known by a nickname like his brother. Digão (Big Dig, for being 1.94m tall), as he will become known, will join his brother at AC Milan in 2005 but spend much of his time on loan.

1989
Kaká moves to São Paulo with his family and a year later begins training with São Paulo football club each day after school.

1993
Cristiano Ronaldo starts at his first club, Andorinha, where it becomes clear he has a special talent. Streets ahead of the other players, he regularly gets frustrated and cries when he passes to his teammates and they fail to score. This earns him the cruel nickname chorão, crybaby.

1994
Kaká begins to take a special interest in religion as an Evangelical Christian. Ronaldo signs for one of Madeira's big professional clubs, Nacional.

1996
The highly recommended 11-year-old Ronaldo travels to Lisbon for Sporting Clube de Portugal’s annual trials. He impresses so much that Sporting write off a debt Nacional owe them for the equivalent in old escudos of 22,500€ in exchange for transferring the youngster. The family make the sacrifice of letting him move to Lisbon, where settling in is difficult; the skinny, curly-haired kid is teased for his islander accent and it is said that his best friend is a football.

2000
15-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo is diagnosed with a racing heart. Sporting fly his mother, Dolores, to Lisbon to sign permission forms to perform laser surgery on Cristiano. Surgeons cauterize the part of his heart causing the problem and declare the operation a success. Kaká dives into a swimming pool while on holiday, misjudging its depth, and cracks his head against the bottom. Though initial examinations show nothing serious, the 18-year-old breaks down in agony when he returns to training a few days later. Doctors find he has a fractured cervical vertebra, that is, a broken neck, and he should be paralyzed from the neck down. His football career is seriously threatened and the two months he spends in a treatment jacket are crucial. Miraculously, he makes a full recovery and attributes this to Divine Intervention. He pledges to tithe his salary to the Evangelical Church and vows to dedicate his career and life to God.

2001
Kaká makes his senior debut for São Paulo and scores 27 goals in 27 appearances. Ronaldo is the first player ever to represent Sporting at the five levels from the Under-16s to the senior team in the same season. His performances at the UEFA Under-17 Championship catch Liverpool manager Gérard Houillier’s eye. The Frenchman decides to hold off signing him and see how he develops as a young player.

2002
Kaká makes his debut for the Brazil national team in January against Bolivia and, later, Felipão Scolari selects him in the squad for the World Cup in South Korea and Japan. He comes on midway through the second half in the first round match against Costa Rica, but it will be his only on-field action in the tournament. The Rivaldo-Ronaldo-inspired Brazil go on to win a record fifth World Cup and Kaká is a world champion.

2003
Several European clubs come knocking on São Paulo’s door to enquire about their playmaker and AC Milan finally sign Kaká for 8.5 million euros. David Beckham leaves Manchester United for Real Madrid. United fill the vacant number seven shirt by paying 17.35 million euros for Sporting’s star teenager. Days later, he makes his international debut in a 1-0 win over Kazakhstan. Ronaldo’s first goal for Man Utd is a free kick against Portsmouth in November.

2004
Kaká finishes his first season with 10 goals and wins the Italian league, Serie A Footballer of the Year and UEFA Super Cup. Ronaldo is called up by ex-Brazil coach Felipão Scolari to represent the Portuguese side of Euro 2004. He helps the host nation to their first major final, contributing two goals, only to suffer a shock defeat by the unfancied Greece side. He is selected in the Team of the Tournament.

2005
Kaká is in the Milan team that lose the Champions League final on penalties to Liverpool, but is awarded UEFA Midfielder of the Year. The same summer, he wins the Confederations Cup with Brazil, scoring a goal in the final. In September, hours before a World Cup qualifier, Portugal coach Scolari breaks the news to Ronaldo that his father, Dinis, has died at the age of 52. The emotional 20-yearold plays the match and will, from now on, end his goal celebrations with a dedication to his dad. In December, Kaká marries Caroline Celico, his childhood sweetheart, in São Paulo.

2006
Kaká’s influence grows and he his once again Serie A Foreign Footballer of the Year and in the UEFA Team of the Year, but can’t prevent Brazil crashing out of the World Cup against France. Ronaldo’s protests to the referee before England striker Wayne Rooney is sent off in the World Cup quarter final, his subsequent wink caught on camera and scoring the winning penalty in the shootout, all make returning to England look difficult. Real Madrid come knocking for the first time, but United resist.

2007
AC Milan win the UEFA Champions League and their star and driving force is Kaká, who wins a long list of awards. Finally at the top, the football’s governing body pays him homage with the FIFA World Player of Year. Cristiano Ronaldo receives third place for the same award, having won the Premier League for the first time with Man Utd.

2008
Ronaldo retains the Premier League and emulates Kaká’s feat of the previous year by winning the Champions League and FIFA World Player of the Year award. El Madrid chase the Portuguese with more perseverance, but Alex Ferguson insists he, “Wouldn’t sell Real Madrid a virus”. Kaká becomes a father of a baby boy he and Caroline call Luca. He signs a contract extension until 2013.

2009
1 June – Florentino Pérez returns unrivalled to the presidency of Real Madrid. But you already know the rest, don't you?

Trips you don't want to miss

2009-09-28T00:32:00.010+01:00

You want to see it all, but where do you start? I offer some help in prioritizing the trips you will kick yourself if you miss out on. European Vibe pledges to organize group travel to these chosen destinations and more during the course of the 2009/2010 season.

Lisbon

The Portuguese capital will feel strange yet familiar to those who know Madrid. It’s true that walking up and down in a place nicknamed ‘The City of Seven Hills’ might take a little effort,

but the sights of its vastly differing neighbourhoods (swathes of the city were rebuilt after a major earthquake in 1755) are ample reward. There’s so much to see and do, but Lisbon’s contagious chilled out atmosphere will keep you from rushing. The proximity to the picturesque town of Sintra and the seaside at Estoril and Cascais also give Lisbon much more potential than the average city break.

Sevilla

The Romans’ Hispalis, the Moors’ Isbiliya and the Spanish Empire’s trading post with the Americas. Today’s capital of Andalusia is one of the places you must have visited to be able to say you know Spain with any kind of credibility. Some highlights are the Plaza de España (which you might recognize as the royal courtyard of Naboo if you’re a Star Wars fan), the Torre del Oro, the city’s cathedral, the third biggest church in the world, and its Renaissance bell tower, the Giralda, converted from a 12th century Moorish minaret. The other cathedral, the ‘Cathedral of Bullfighting’ as the Plaza de toros de Sevilla is known, is a must-see in itself, but is at its most spectacular during the bullfights of La Feria de Abril. La Feria de Abril and Easter’s Holy Week are the biggest festivals in the city and the best time to visit, though any time in spring and autumn is pleasant.

Granada

The beautiful city of Granada’s Moorish Alhambra just missed out on becoming one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, but strolls into our list of unmissable visits. Aside from the jaw-dropping magnificence of the Alhambra and the Generalife gardens, Granada’s nightlife is pound-for-pound the best in Spain (if they were prize fighters of the same size, Granada would give Madrid brain damage in the first round). This, the prestige of its university and relatively low cost of living make it a student paradise, and, when there are 65,000 of them on top of a city of 250,000, it can’t help but make the party atmosphere special. You’ll find the most generously portioned free tapas in Spain here if you avoid the most obvious tourist traps. For clubbing, remember these two: Granada Diez and El Camborio.

Córdoba

Yes, that’s CORdoba; no one calls it ‘Cordova’ in English anymore. The Andalusian city is synonymous with its Mezquita, the Great Mosque, which remains the greatest piece of Islamic architecture in the Western World despite being converted into a cathedral after the Reconquest. The contrast of chapels and the cathedral nave grafted into the gigantic mosque should really be more offensive to the eye, but it just adds to its mystique. The old Jewish quarter, its synagogue and old town plazas are also great to explore, but you don’t need more than a short trip to see everything. The divine cordobés starter salmorejo is a difficult act to follow for any main dish and it’s what you have to taste while you’re there.

Salamanca

The area known as the cradle of the Castilian language, Salamanca is, along with Granada and Santiago de Compostela, one of the most sought after student party cities and a top destination for foreign students learning Spanish. It’s an easy city to get around and possibly the most Spanish-feeling place you will visit. The golden dustiness of the old town’s sandstone buildings just enhances the city’s stateliness. Spend some time looking for the skull and the frog among the stone shells on the wall of La Casa de las Conchas.

Morocco

13 kilometres from Spain, that’s all, it’s almost like having two continents for the price of one. And when it’s so cheap, it would be rude not to give Morocco a visit. Whether you choose decadent Tangier, exotic Marrakech, bustling Casablanca or the cleaner but dirt-cheap coastal resorts, you’ll start to discover a country that’s rich but poor, near yet far, and nothing if not fascinating.

Lagos, The Algarve

Our pick is Lagos, but several candidates stood out along the warmest and best stretch of coast in Europe, Portugal’s Algarve. The Algarve is Portugal’s premier tourist destination because of its dependable weather and its beaches – basically. you can start working on your tan earlier in the year and finish later than anywhere else on the Iberian Peninsula. Lagos combines the tranquil look of a cobblestoned old town with small streets and whitewashed houses surrounded by medieval walls, beaches and almost hidden coves with the most hedonistic nightlife in the region. Lounges, bars and clubs attract the most up-for-it crowd on the Algarve, with a little more class than some Spanish resorts.

São Miguel - Azores

2009-08-15T23:53:00.003+01:00

In search of Atlantis

Possibly the most exotic location in Europe – the land of dolphins, whales, hot rivers and volcanoes turned into lakes.

Greens you didn’t know existed outside Photoshop are painted onto a landscape of dwarfed mountains rather than hills, the tops of which often cratered as if scooped out by a giant spoon and filled with glistening lakes. All of this is surrounded by an ocean of warm liquid sapphire and roofed by an azure sky where clouds cat-and-mouse each other around as I’ve only seen in a video on fast-forward.
There are many flowery descriptions of pretty places, but that’s usually just what they are. In this case, though, I’m reaching to do justice to the island of São Miguel rather than to sound poetic.

But hang on for a moment, I’m sure many of you frowned on reading the name of this Utopia locked in an eternal late spring. São Miguel, the Green Island, is the largest of the nine islands which make up the archipelago of the Azores. Now, the Azores you have definitely heard of, even if just as the place that is responsible for bad weather in Western Europe or where President Bush and Prime Ministers Blair and Aznar agreed on the invasion of Iraq. Could you pick the Azores out straight away on a globe, though? When I told people I was going to the Azores, misconceptions ranged from the Mediterranean, the Carribean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. They are in fact in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the westernmost outpost of Europe as an autonomous region of Portugal. They stretch for over 600km from southeast to northwest and are split into eastern, central and western groups. The western group consists of Corvo and Flores, which actually lie on the North American plate just under 2000km from Canada. The central group consists of Terceira, Faial, Pico, São Jorge and Graciosa. Finally, the eastern group is made up of São Miguel and little Santa Maria.

The dramatic landing at São Miguel’s airport, just two kilometres from the capital, Ponta Delgada, with its runway right at the water’s edge, is exactly that for the impression the side windows give that you are about to land in the sea. The humid climate makes the almost constant summer temperatures of 21-25ºC feel considerably warmer without ever becoming unpleasantly hot, and the just-in-case jacket never left my suitcase. The island is essentially a huge lump of volcanic rock wrapped in blankets of many greens. The juxtaposed familiarity and otherness created by imported flora and fauna in this landscape uninhabited until less than 600 years ago creates an atmosphere you could easily imagine as home to the creations of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. While the Micaelenses are not at all hobbit-like, their appearance, understandably for a relatively isolated island community, is distinctive. To give you an idea of what ethnic Azoreans look like, think of singer Nelly Furtado (her Azorean parents moved, like many others from these islands, to Canada in the 70s) and Portugal national football team’s all-time top goalscorer, Pedro Pauleta. By character, the Azoreans have all the warmth and unassuming kindness of the continental Portuguese, without the melancholy of their mainland cousins. The first one I met was a cheery taxi driver, probably so upbeat from the knowledge that he lives in the world’s least stressful place to drive a taxi, on our way to the hotel in Ponta Delgada.

Ponta Delgada has a successful mix of traditional and modern, with its gigantic brand new marina capable of receiving cruise ships, a big shopping mall that wouldn’t look out of place in Madrid and late nineteenth/early twentieth century houses and shops that overlook cobbled streets. The majority of tourists are Portuguese and Scandinavian, but, while the latter are easy to pick out against the darker haired Azoreans, there are never so many as to suggest an Iberian seaside resort.
You can find average food at dirt-cheap prices in café-bars and excellent food at average prices in restaurants. Grilled fish is a speciality and my personal recommendation, swordfish. Grilled limpets, or lapas, are another local favourite, but what surprised me for an island was the importance of meat; beef in particular. The unlikely mix of pineapple and morcilla blood pudding is one to try.

MUST-SEE

Furnas
My wife told me that my trip to Furnas was the second best day of my life after our wedding, based on my permanent ear-to-ear smile and childlike excitement. The geysers and boiling pools of water and mud bubble away near to the sandy banks of Lake Furnas, and a sulphurous smell hits the back of your throat. The heat of the ground beneath your feet is enough to quell any urge to test exactly how hot these boiling springs are. The whole scene is unlike anything I have ever seen before.
Locals use the thermal soils of Furnas as natural ovens by lowering huge stewing pots into dug-out pits in the earth, covering them with soil and leaving them to slow-cook for eight hours. Tourists are often invited to help lift the pots out of the ground, on their way to being taken to nearby restaurants for serving. The delicious ‘cozido’ is a stew of recognisable lumps rather than the mushy Spanish equivalent and it picks up a special flavour from the ‘boiling holes’ in the hot soil.
If the bubbling springs were a first for my eyes, bathing in the hot (40º) iron-coloured river was another discovery for the senses that I can only liken to a natural outdoor Jacuzzi.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

Sete Cidades – The breathtaking caldera which holds Sete Cidades’ twin-lakes, the Green Lake and the Blue Lake, can be seen in all its glory from a viewpoint also overlooking the town of the same name.

Lagoa do Fogo – The Lake of Fire, while not living up to its name, couldn’t impress more even if were filled by fire. The magical crater surrounded by lush vegetation also contains the Caldeira Velha (the old caldera) – another

Ilheu de Vila Franca do Campo – Vila Franca do Campo was the original capital of the island until an earthquake and its resulting mudslide in 1522 devastated the town. Just offshore sits an islet with an enclosed semicircle with beaches that has created a natural swimming pool and a perfect place for water sports in the warm Gulf Stream-heated Atlantic.

Swimming with dolphins and whale watching – Off the São Miguel coast is one of the world’s best places for whale watching. Several different species of whale and dolphin are found in these waters, it just depends on the day how many different types you see. Also, if the dolphins are feeling playful and inquisitive enough, you might get to experience the incredible sensation of swimming with dolphins.

HOW TO GET THERE

SATA and TAP are your airlines for flying to São Miguel. There are daily flights if you go via Lisbon and weekly flights from Madrid in the summer.

European Vibe International 5-a-side Tournament

2009-08-15T23:30:00.004+01:00

Such a perfect day, I’m glad I spent it with you.” - Lou Reed’s words echoed by every one of over 150 players and spectators at June’s inaugural European Vibe Cup. The five-a-side tournament brought together Spaniards and nationalities spanning the entirety of Madrid’s vibrant international community as only football can, on a sweltering Spanish afternoon for a great-spirited yet ultra-competitive competition.
European Vibe was delighted to sponsor the event and congratulations go to the deserved winners of the cup, Bwin, who became the first team to lift the trophy. Though an envious eye was cast at Los Incas, who scooped the consolation Whisky Cup and with it a luxury bottle of whisky. 2008/2009 EFL league and cup double winners Finbars Celtic were also presented their trophies after consistently maintaining the form they had shown flashes of in recent seasons.

A special mention goes to EFL organizer Lewis Carroll for his coordinating skills and from all of us at European Vibe to him and his wife Cheryl – they became proud parents of their baby girl Robyn just a matter of hours after the competition.

Whatever happens in South Africa 2010, madrileño football fans will have a big day to look forward to next year.

RESULTS

RED The E.V.E. 1 0 Inter Menan
BLUE Finbars Celtic 0 1 Atletico Retiro
GREEN La Trinchera 3 2 All Blacks
GREY CETROLI 2 0 Headless Chickens

RED Madrid Reds 0 0 AC Resaca
BLUE Los Incas 4 1 Finbars 67
GREEN EV Spartans 1 5 Triskel-Audrey

GREY La Parada 0 2 BWIN

RED AC Resaca 0 0 The E.V.E.
BLUE Finbars 67 1 5 Finbars Celtic
GREEN Triskel-Audrey 1 2 La Trinchera
GREY BWIN 4 3 CETROLI

RED Madrid Reds 2 5 Inter Menan
BLUE Los Incas 0 3 Atletico Retiro
GREEN EV Spartans 1 4 All Blacks
GREY La Parada 1 3 Headless Chickens

RED The E.V.E. 1 4 Madrid Reds

BLUE Finbars Celtic 5 4 Los Incas
GREEN La Trinchera 4 1 EV Spartans
GREY CETROLI 3 0 La Parada

RED AC Resaca 3 1 Inter Menan
BLUE Finbars 67 0 0 Atletico Retiro
GREEN Triskel-Audrey 3 1 All Blacks
GREY BWIN 3 0 Headless Chickens

RED GROUP W D L GF GA PTS
AC Resaca 1 2 0 3 1 5
Madrid Reds 1 1 1 6 6 4
The E.V.E. 1 1 1 2 4 4
Inter Menan 1 0 2 6 5 3

BLUE GROUP W D L GF GA PTS
Atlético Retiro 2 1 0 4 0 7
Finbars Celtic 2 0 1 10 6 6
Los Incas 1 0 2 8 9 3
Finbars 67 0 1 2 2 9 1

GREEN GROUP W D L GF GA PTS
La Trinchera 3 0 0 9 4 9
Triskels Audrey 2 0 1 9 4 6
All-Blacks 1 0 2 7 7 3
EV Spartans 0 0 3 3 13 0

GREY GROUP W D L GF GA PTS
Bwin 3 0 0 9 3 9
CETROLI 2 0 1 8 4 6
Headless Chns 1 0 2 3 6 3
La Parada 0 0 3 1 8 0

Whisky Cup Quarter Finals

The E.V.E. 2 4 Finbars 67
Los Incas 4 0 EV Spartans
All Blacks (retired) 0 3 La Parada (default win)
Headless Chickens 4 5 Inter Menan

European Vibe Cup Quarter Finals

AC Resaca 2 1 Finbars Celtic
Atletico Retiro 0 6 Triskel-Audrey
La Trinchera 0 2 CETROLI
BWIN 4 1 Madrid Reds

Whisky Cup Semi Finals

Finbars 67 2 6 Los Incas
La Parada 1 2 Inter Menan

European Vibe Cup Semi Finals

AC Resaca 1 1 Triskel-Audrey
Triskel-Audrey win penalty shootout 2-1
CETROLI 1 4 BWIN

Whisky Cup Final

Los Incas 4 3 Inter Menan

European Vibe Cup Final

Triskel-Audrey 1 3 BWIN

Los Incas win Whisky Cup

BWIN are European Vibe Cup 2009 Champions

What's On June 09

2009-05-28T22:37:00.003+01:00

Tennis

Wimbledon

22 June – 5 July

Nadal, Federer and Centre Court’s brand new retractable roof: these are the stars everyone is waiting to see at The All England Lawn Tennis and Crocquet Club this year. As well as an end to rain delays on Wimbledon’s main stage, floodlights have been fitted. Play will continue until 10pm (local time), though they could technically go all night if officials saw fit. Last year’s men’s final has been touted as the greatest of all time; something that won’t be repeated any time soon. Or will it? Federer managed to break Nadal’s stranglehold on clay last month here in Madrid, but the Majorcan still went into Roland Garros as the overwhelming favourite. Grass is another matter of course, and Federer will be very much out to show his surrender of the Wimbledon title to the Spaniard was a one-time thing. Whatever happens, both titans will have to be at their best to withstand the challenge of Djokovic and Murray. The home crowd will be right behind the Scotsman, but the expectation could be as much a hindrance as a help to young Andy.

Several betting companies place the Williams sisters as joint favourites for the women’s championship. Reigning and five-times champion Venus is going for a third consecutive title, and twice winner Venus looks the best-placed to stop her if her early season injury doesn’t come back. Sharapova is another coming back from injury who might be in with a shout. The young Dane with the Polish name, Caroline Wozniacki, is the one I’ll be looking out for to make a big impact after her foray to the final of the Madrid Masters last month. Of course, not to mention the woman who vanquished her and current world number one, Dinara Safina, would be folly. But, this is Wimbledon.
“I’ll treat you like a queen, I’ll feed you strawberries and cream…”

Football

FIFA Confederations Cup

14 – 28 June

What was originally seen as a bit of a joke competition (with wodges of Saudi money tempting the FAs of several big footballing nations into spoiling their superstars’ summer holidays and forcing them to half-heartedly knock a few goals past some oil-rich, football-poor countries) has turned into something worth forsaking the bar terrace for the TV screen in the dark pub you now usually only see after midnight. The first reason to turn on Telecinco since about two years ago is the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup. It promises to be an interesting two weeks as both a dry run for 2010’s World Cup in South Africa and as an intercontinental test for Spain’s irresistible European champions.
The tournament features the six current continental federation champions alongside the World Cup holders and next year’s World Cup hosts. Spain will play Oceania’s New Zealand, Asian champions Iraq and hosts South Africa in Group A. The top two teams from that group will go on to meet the best two from Group B’s Brazil, Italy, Egypt and United States. The dream final of Iraq against United States might be a little too much to hope for, but there is still the rather sexy prospect of Spain playing Brazil, and/or a confidence test against bogey team Italy.
It’s a great reminder, too, that we’re just one year away from the World Cup finally taking place on African soil. Safety and security issues have plagued South Africa’s bid to stage football’s big event; I don’t know about you, but if the Iraqi fans start complaining, I think I’ll watch next year’s tournament on TV.

What's On in Madrid EV June 09

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Interview with Aura Dione

2009-05-28T22:09:00.003+01:00

“I’m Pocahontas meets hardcore Flashdance”,
is how this year’s double Danish Grammy-winning artist Aura Dione describes herself. I caught up with her before her Spanish mini-tour to taste this unconventional cocktail.

Her voice and style first reminds me of Tracy Chapman and Dido before swinging faster than a Spanish summer thunderstorm into something positively pop princessy. This hamstring-ripping reach, coupled with a sultry femininity that makes Jessica Alba look like the girl next door, can’t be far away from being devoured by MTV and global radio. A Song For Sophie is among the tastiest of tracks from her palatable debut album, Columbine. The chorus from her song I Will Love You Monday sounds like the good bit from Ram Jam’s Black Betty reincarnated as a sex kitten and injected with sugar. I hope Whigfield will forgive me, but I’ll take Aura any day of the week, even Saturday night.

You don’t look quite like the stereotype most of us have of Danish people, what’s your genetic make-up? Is it true you have some Spanish blood?
My father has some Spanish blood running in his veins. My mother is half French half from the Faroe Islands.

You were over here in Madrid a while ago playing at Madrid Fashion Week: Have you had time to see Madrid? What do you make of it?
I really feel at home in Madrid. I like the Spanish temperament and the lifestyle. I like how the women are not afraid of wearing colours, and the men are still being men, some might say macho - and I know that roles between men and women are somewhat changing in Spain - but I love when a man can make me feel like I am a lady.

Tell us a little about your life growing up. What was it like having hippy parents and living on the Danish island of Bornholm?
My parents have always lived a very free life; they are very open and curious people. When I was a child, we would be on the sea for months. I would bring my red Sony Walkman and listen to ABBA, The Beatles or Michael Jackson. I would ask them about all the big questions of life. Such as, where do the mermaids cook their food? Or who shoots the stars?! Sometimes it would take days for my parents to answer, but we were on a boat with nothing else to do, other than look and learn and talk.

How did you come to travel Australia? How have your experiences there influenced your music?
I was only 17 when I travelled by myself to Australia. I was fearless and had a strong belief in myself. I wrote some of my favourite songs in that period of time. It seems to me that I always get rewarded, when I challenge life’s settings.

Do you think you could get used to the lifestyle here in Spain, or is it too hot and life too disorganized?
Disorganized? I have only met really cool Spanish people. One time I was on my way to do an interview at Kiss FM TV in Madrid, and I forgot my guitar, left it in the taxi. As you know, there are thousands of taxis around Madrid, and I had absolutely no way of getting it back. But the next morning I got a call from the reception at my hotel, saying that a taxi driver had just returned my guitar! Lucky me! He had heard me talk and play on the radio, and somehow found out where I was staying! Now that''s what I call organization!

You recently won the Best Female Artist and Best Pop Album at the Danish Music Awards. What was that like?
It was of course a big dream coming true. I have been writing and playing music for so many years. I have always followed my heart and believed that I could make it happen. I am so grateful and thankful for each moment, and I can''t wait to see what the future has in mind for me :-)

Is your music style pop with folk or folk with pop?
I have almost written all the songs on my guitar. When I produce them, I use influences that come from electronic music and I try to remix the traditional folk song.

Which song of yours would you recommend to people who haven’t heard your music, to bring them in?
Song For Sophie or Something From Nothing… Or, or, or!

I’ve been loving the video for I Will Love You Monday on Vimeo and YouTube with all the shoes that come out for a walk with you. Where exactly did you film it?
The I Will Love You Monday video was filmed in Copenhagen, Denmark. We drove around all day to different locations to get the perfect shots. I especially like the scene where I am dancing in the street with all the shoes.

Can you teach us to say something in Danish and tell us what it means, please?
Elske mens du gør det, lev mens du tør det. It means, “Love like you have never been hurt, live as if there were no tomorrow.”

What is your favourite Spanish word?
My favourite word is comer. I love spicy Spanish food and one of the most valued moments of the day, for me, is when I’m with my family or some close friends after a long day and we gather around the table to share a beautifully prepared dinner.

Aura’s June tour of Spain
2 June - Madrid (Sala La Boite)
4 June - Valencia (Sala Wah-Wah)
6 June - Vigo (Sala Mondo)
9 June - Barcelona (Sala Sidecar)

Get pre-sale tickets at
www.ticketmaster.es
(10€ pre-sale 13€
on the door)
http://www.myspace.com/auradione

Aura - Song for Sophie from Music for Dreams on Vimeo.

Aura - I will love you Monday from Music for Dreams on Vimeo.

Aura Dione interview in European Vibe

Aura Dione interview in European Vibe enganol “I’m Pocahontas meets hardcore Flashdance”,

Film First: Star Trek & Obsessed

2009-05-28T21:55:00.002+01:00

Star Trek

Spanish title: Star Trek XI Release Date (Spain): 8 May 2009
Director: J.J. Abrams Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Eric Bana & Winona Ryder

If Star Trek can say, “To boldly go” and fly in the face of centuries of anal grammarians who have extrapolated Latin onto English and say you can’t split an infinitive (oh yes you can, look), then it can go back in time, change the destinies of the characters and contradict the canon of the Star Trek universe. And that’s what has happened, through a Romulan named Nero.

JJ Abrams of Lost fame brings the franchise, which had been looking tired of late, back to something mainstream movie-goers can appreciate for the first time since Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The “live long and prosper” brigade finally have something they can go to see with their real friends and not just other slightly (to extremely) geeky Star Trek convention attendees. The casts of the spin offs after the original series, however much the big fans grew fond of them, just didn’t have the collective charisma of the first, but Abrams’ selection of younger actors have helped him to inject the film with a vitality that everyone can get excited about.

James T. Kirk’s (Chris Pine) journey from tearaway to captain of the S.S. Enterprise, Spock’s (Zachary Quinto) internal battle with his human side and the chemistry of the Enterprise’s young crew make for a bubbling and compelling movie. Leave your hang ups about geeky sci-fi at the door and boldy go in.
VIBE STARS ****

Obsessed

Spanish title: Obsesionada Release Date (Spain): 19 June 2009
Director: Steve Shill Cast: Idris Elba, Beyoncé Knowles, Ali Larter & Jerry O’Connell

The term ‘bunny boiler’ is a reasonably well known one in 2009, but do you all remember where it came from? It was of course the 1987 thriller Fatal Attraction, in which crazy biscuits Glen Close kills Michael Douglas’ (the object of her obsession) daughter’s rabbit and boils it in a pot for Douglas to find. Though the film was criticised for closely copying the 1971 film Play Misty for Me, it was the second biggest movie of the year (after Three Men and a Baby, don’t you just love the eighties?) and spawned several other memorable crazy biscuits ‘she-devil’ movies. The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, Single White Female and Basic Instinct are the ones that most readily spring to mind, with Swim Fan being the reprise of the formula for the noughties.

The set up goes: Derek Charles is a successful asset manager. He has a great career and has just received a dream promotion and has a blissfully happy marriage. But when a temp, the gorgeous Lisa, starts stalking him, it all looks like going up in smoke.

So, why are they bothering with a rehash of what even TV moviemakers have got bored of? No doubt director Steve Shill’s belief is that he can sex up, excite us and multiply the ‘bunny boiler’ moments enough to wash away our memories of the movies it copies. And with Idris Elba as Derek, Beyoncé Knowles as his wife and Ali Larter (out of Heroes) as the crazy biscuits stalking temp, there might just be enough to make a compelling watch, albeit with a strong sense of déjà vu.
VIBE STARS **

Ev May09 Films Ev May09 Films enganol

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Señoritas: About Spanish Girls

2009-05-28T21:42:00.005+01:00

I assembled a six-strong team of girls vs. boys writers charged with the prickly task of describing Spanish girls in little more than 400 words. This is my contribution.

I’ll begin with the purely physical and the first thing I have to mention is the north/south divide. I noticed it years ago when I was studying (interpreting and translating, not Spanish women) in Granada. Madrid being the capital and also in the centre of the country makes it more difficult to spot here, but I think there is a clear tendency for bigger breasts and smaller bums in the north and smaller breasts and bigger bums in the south. Couple that with the reputation of northern Spanish girls to be more sexually liberated than their southern counterparts (which may just be right in the most general sweep), and you have got the basis of a headlining article worthy of the free daily newspapers Qué!, 20 Minutos or ADN. Just add some manipulated stats and they’d be off.

I’m surprised dying their hair blond is still quite popular. Even if lots of girls were brought up on Barbie or Nancy dolls, and classist attitudes that perceive lighter, straighter hair as more classy than curlier, darker ‘common’ or, God forbid, ‘gypsy’ hair still seep into some Spanish families. I’ve always thought that so many of the Spanish girls who go rubia de bote end up looking a bit dirty (in the unwholesomely sexy sense of the word). I don’t know if it’s to do with skin tone, eyes, bone structure or what, but there’s something not right about it.

They’re far more independent than their male opposite numbers, but the molly-coddling they tend to get from their mothers makes them as domestically useless as the boys. I can imagine a Spanish couple, just moved into their new house (after marrying, first time properly living outside the parental home) asking each other how to use the iron/switch the washing machine on. Sadly, my intuition tells me it’s more likely to be her than him who finally assumes the mantle in this arena.

At work, they’re easily as hard or harder-working than the guys, but come up against glass ceilings to their professional development all over the place. They’re nothing like their mothers, and yet few can survive an entire day without reporting back to the mothership, no matter where she may be or how little there is to report.

There always is something to report, however, because talking is a Spanish girl’s favourite thing.
Never mind Venus and Mars: Spanish girls are from planet talk, and Spanish guys shout over the top of them. No wonder over 80% of Spaniards have irreparable ear damage by the age of 30. (Although, I might have read that in Qué!)

girlsvsboys About Spanish girls

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Feeling good to be Spanish? part 3

2009-03-31T02:52:00.006+01:00

Here is the conclusion of my three-part series, which looks at how Spain has viewed itself through history on the way to finding out if recent sporting triumphs have had a uniting effect on the Spanish.

One, Great and Free.” This motto was adopted by Franco and used to round off most formal speeches in Spain from the end of the Civil War in 1939 until after the death of Franco in 1975. The speaker would call out, “¡España!” three times to the audience’s interposing replies of “¡UNA!” “¡GRANDE!” and after the third España, “¡LIBRE!” before the speaker’s final rally of, “¡Arriba España!” and their public’s counter, “¡ARRIBA!”
Despite the often forced repetition of the “Una, Grande y Libre” rhetoric for the duration of the dictatorship, even before the transition to democracy was complete, it was clear that the message had only reached those who wanted to hear it. Now that the people truly were libre, or free, some began to raise long-suppressed objections about the country being una, one indivisible whole, and few except the self-delusional could help but realise that the ‘great’ Spain was in fact the most backward (after Portugal, also emerging from a dictatorship) country in Western Europe. As much as many might have felt optimistic about the future, an inferiority complex was beginning to bubble in the Spanish psyche. ‘Como en España, ningún sitio’ (there’s no place like Spain) suddenly seemed rather empty without the filter of the Francoist censorship and propaganda machine; it was easy to see the rest of the world didn’t necessarily think much of their country. It could be likened to the painful, “Well, I think I look cool” of arriving at work with a new hairstyle to the sniggering and derision of colleagues, or the initial pride followed by inevitable ridicule of a 15-year-old boy sporting a sparse, downy moustache.

Spain and its symbols had been expropriated by the right wing since the war. The Rojigualda (Spain’s red and yellow flag) had been officially adopted in the democratic constitution of 1978, but this represented for many the old monarchy and the Franco regime. Caídos por Dios y por España (Fallen for God and Spain) was the inscription on all war memorials and was unambiguously referring to those who had fallen on Franco’s side. While it was transparent who Spain was being defined by, anyone who didn’t want to be defined by Spain had an escape: the pueblo.

This concept of pueblo goes further than the simple translation of village or town; it can be applied to an area as small as a neighbourhood, as large as a county or even to a city like Madrid. As well as in the soil, it’s in the bones of its people, its traditions and fiestas, and also its sports clubs. When two Spaniards meet for the first time, the answer to the question, “Where are you from?” yields about half of all the information they think they need to judge the other’s character. The diverse customs of each pueblo make for easily recognisable ‘identities’, and, whether close to the mark or not, every Spaniard carries around a little book of stereotypes in their head – them from Valencia are like this, them from Leon are like that, in Cadiz they think like this, in Santiago de Compostela they do the other, etc, etc… Competitive sports in Spain have always tended to reinforce regional rivalries as a way to express how one’s pueblo is better than another whether we’re talking about two tiny neighbouring villages or Barcelona and Madrid. Sporting victories could make the Spanish feel good about being from their pueblo, but anything achieved by Spanish sportsmen and women representing the country as a whole would not automatically provoke the same sensation of well being.

The first big chance sport had to help the Spanish feel good about their newly democratised country was at the hosting of football’s 1982 World Cup. Despite home advantage and high expectations, the national team, La Selección, suffered a disastrous draw against World Cup debutants Honduras and a humiliating defeat against a Northern Ireland side who played almost half the match with ten men. Only victory against Yugoslavia scraped them past the first round and tempered their misery, but it had become clear that Spain wouldn’t win the tournament. A defeat and a draw against West Germany and England respectively sealed what Spanish football fans called the gran fracaso (great failure) and the Naranjito (the tournament’s official mascot) t-shirts were folded up and put away.
Two years later, an unfancied Spanish team got to the final of the European Championship, where they gave hosts France an almighty scare, but succumbed after a spectacular and uncharacteristic blunder by their usually impressive goalkeeper Luis Arconada.

1992 was a special year for Spain – it was celebrating the 500-year anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas, and it was doing it in style. Seville hosted Expo ’92, Madrid was the European Capital of Culture and Barcelona held the XXV Summer Olympics. The Games were a huge success; first and foremost a success for Barcelona, especially in the opinion of green-eyed madrileños, but the whole of Spain could share the buzz. One of the great highlights that helped it to be seen as Spain’s as well as Barcelona’s Olympics was the football team’s gold medal. Kiko scored the last-minute winning goal to beat Poland in front of 95,000 fans, among them an ecstatic King Juan Carlos.

Cycling superhuman Miguel Indurain’s five consecutive Tour de France titles from 1991 to 1995 set Spanish hearts racing probably more than his own (‘Big Mig’ had a resting heartbeat of 28 beats per minute, one of the lowest recorded in a human). Really, though, it was after the millennium that Spanish sport was turning into a rich source of pride for its followers. The 2000 UEFA Champions League final was contested by two Spanish clubs, Real Madrid and Valencia; the first time any country had provided both of the finalists. By the time of Madrid’s third Champions League title in five years, they had become the richest sports club in the world. Pau Gasol was NBA Rookie of the Year in 2002 and would later go on to be Spanish basketball’s first NBA All-Star. With the Spanish national team he won the silver medal in the European Championships in 2003. In the FIBA World Championship three years later, Spain beat Greece to become basketball world champions for the first time and at last year’s Olympics, a powerful United States team had to pull out all the stops to beat them to the gold.
Formula One had never enjoyed much attention in Spain until Fernando Alonso was on the road to winning two consecutive Drivers’ Championships in 2005.
Also in 2005, a 19-year-old from Majorca by the name of Rafael Nadal came to be the youngest men’s tennis Grand Slam champion since Pete Sampras. Since then, Rafa has won six Grand Slam titles, he won the gold medal at the Beijing Olympics, he is the current world number one and his rivalry with Roger Federer since that year has been dubbed the greatest in history. Back in cycling, since Lance Armstrong’s domination of the sport (which surpassed even Indurain’s achievements), the Tour de France has been won exclusively by Spanish cyclists, Pereiro, Contador and Sastre being the three winners.
This impressive list of achievements surely gave Spanish sport fans a glow of pride in their chests, but realistically, only football could truly transcend into the wider public consciousness.

The examples of 1982 and 1984 have characterised the national team’s exploits ever since, i.e. either a great team that disappoints miserably or one that loses in unfortunate circumstances. Last year’s European Championship started similarly to previous tournaments with plenty of foreign pundits tipping Spain to win but La Selección’s long-suffering supporters making rather more cautious predictions.
Spain matches were televised by the channel Cuatro, and they picked podemos (‘Yes, we can’ in English - interestingly the same as successful American presidential candidate Barack Obama used later in the year) as the slogan to accompany their coverage. One impressive win and two shakier ones saw Spain through as winner of their group. Nevertheless, the podemos mantra felt more like an interrogation than an affirmation until La Marea Roja (The Red Tide) dispatched Italy in the quarter final. I watched the game in a Madrid bar packed to the rafters, and much about the atmosphere reminded me of the World Cup 2006 second round match which Spain lost to France. I recognised the cloud of self-doubt that rises from Spanish football fans when they are faced with a more illustrious rival, and it didn’t help that the Italians were reigning world champions. Different this time was that the Spanish team was considerably better and more balanced than the one that went to Germany in 2006. I also noticed a lot more Rojigualda flags and replica Spain shirts than I had ever noticed before while watching a match in a bar – it seemed the crown on the Spanish kit’s coat of arms hadn’t proven as much of a turn off as it had in the past.
The match went to a penalty shootout and nerves mounted up as much the sunflower seed shells and chewed-off fingernails until Cesc Fàbregas fired the ball into the net and the fans into elation.

That was the turning point in my opinion. Not so much that Spain had been a better team against the world champions, but that they had got the bit of luck necessary to win on penalties, and against a giant of world football. Everyone had adopted the podemos buzzword now, and everyone believed it.

I went to Plaza Colón to drown in the Red Sea like a Moses-chasing Egyptian for the semi final against Russia. Here I found more Spain shirts and more Rojigualda flags than I could have imagined. A lot of the t-shirts were unofficial without the Spanish royal coat of arms, and many of the flags featured the Osborne Sherry bull instead of the shield and crown. The reasons might have been practical (vendors getting fast deliveries from a Costa del Sol souvenir warehouse?) or ideological (the fans believed in less monarchy and more alcohol, or bulls?), but they were wearing and waving the colours. I saw one girl I guessed was a student wearing a red Che Guevara t-shirt, Spain flag tied around her neck and a little Spain flag painted on each cheek. I didn’t have any time to think about it though – Spain were busy beating Russia 2-0.

I was back in the bar for the final, where I was getting slightly carried away and started off several Fernando Torres chants. It was a predominantly Real Madrid supporters’ bar, but that didn’t matter to anyone: Torres had scored for Spain in the 33rd minute and they never really let Germany have the ball after that. Being a Scotland fan and knowing this kind of moment will always be out of reach for my team, I shamelessly joined in the wild celebrations. A man who’d been waving an España 82 t-shirt with Naranjito on it (he looked a bit like a human Naranjito, with glasses) embraced me and sobbed with joy into my shoulder, said something indistinguishable, and moved onto the next person to repeat the routine. I didn’t make it to Plaza Colón after, but one hell of a party got going in that barrio bar I was in, one that I imagine and like to think was being repeated in similar bars up and down the country.

Everyone was in a good mood over the next few days. There were some sobering things I heard in the aftermath, however. A friend of a friend, who lives in Barcelona, said how excited she had been to watch the team’s return to Spain and their presentation of the trophy to the crowd in Madrid’s Plaza Colón. She thought how great it would be if they could do that in Barcelona, especially with so many Catalans in the team, but that it would never be allowed to happen. The other story I heard was much worse. A good friend of mine, from Vitoria in the Basque Country, was punched in the face twice by a colleague at the factory where he works for celebrating Spain’s victory. My friend wasn’t born in the Basque Country, but has lived there almost all his life and thought being both Basque and Spanish were compatible. His colleague obviously didn’t. My friend decided against making an official complaint.

Since last summer, I’ve been to concerts where people in the crowd have taken to chanting, “Yo soy español, español, español” before the performances started. I don’t presume to know exactly what that says about Spanish identity, but I had never heard it before in the four years I have lived here.

The conclusion I draw, for my own understanding, is that there are those in Spain who feel Spanish and those who don’t. Over the last few months, the economic crisis has given people plenty to feel down about. What I would suggest though, for those who at least feel vaguely Spanish and have an interest in sport, if they think back to some of the recent Spanish sporting achievements, they will feel pretty good about being Spanish, even if it’s only for a moment.

Feeling good to be Spanish part 3 Feeling good to be Spanish part 3 enganol Luc Ciotkowski concludes his three part series, which looks at how Spain has viewed itself through history on the way to finding out if recent sporting triumphs have had a uniting effect on the Spanish.

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Interview with Eva María Prieto

2009-03-31T02:11:00.002+01:00

We bring you another Lingo Star special as winner of last year’s Supermodelo TV show Eva María Prieto teams up with European Vibe to front Model Search.

Those of you who were in Spain for last year’s Supermodelo on Spanish television channel Cuatro will be familiar with 22 year-old Eva María Prieto from Barcelona. Eva was the female winner and less than a year later is coordinating EV’s Model Search to help other aspiring young models get their break.
The competition taking place at Fabulous, in Madrid’s legendary venue Joy Eslava, gives participants the chance to mix a night out with modelling auditions for some exciting opportunities. Eva talks to Luc Ciotkowski about Model Search, being the winner of Supermodelo and where she stands on the Madrid versus Barcelona debate.

Actualmente estás colaborando con la fiesta Fabulous de European Vibe en la famosa Joy Eslava como coordinadora de Model Search. Explícanos un poco en qué consiste.
Esta fiesta consiste en intentar que la gente se lo pase bien y se divierta ya que es un concepto diferente de la noche, quien se anima a participar, les hacemos fotos, y después tienen la posibilidad de participar en el casting final, en el cual se puede ganar un contrato con una agencia de modelos. En definitiva consiste en dos cosas: intentar que la gente se lo pase bien y vea algo distinto y además hacer un trabajo de scout en busca de nuevas caras para la moda.

¿Cómo te sientes coordinando un concurso de modelos después de haber empezado tu trayectoria como modelo en uno?
Bueno mi trayectoria empezó mucho antes de Supermodelo, aunque el programa fue algo positivo. Me siento contenta de participar en algo así, porque me parece creativo, y novedoso.

Supongo que han pasado muchas cosas desde que ganaste Supermodelo 2008. ¿Qué hacías antes de salir en el programa y cómo te ha cambiado la vida desde entonces?
La verdad es que han pasado cosas, pero mi vida no ha cambiado tanto, sigo estudiando y sigo trabajando igual que antes, la diferencia es que ahora vivo en Madrid y antes en Barcelona con mi familia. He venido a Madrid porque al estudiar periodismo Madrid la considero mejor opción que Barcelona para trabajar de esto. Mucha gente cree que el salir en un programa de televisión te cambia la vida, pero eso no es así, lo que si te llevas es una experiencia.
Yo sigo siendo la misma persona y sigo teniendo las mismas amistades, mi vida me gustaba antes de entrar en el programa y me sigue gustando ahora. Si que es cierto, que claro que hay gente que me reconoce por el programa, pero la popularidad dura dos días, y tampoco es algo que me interese.

Has dicho que siempre te había gustado la moda desde pequeña, ¿pero qué te llevó a presentarte a Supermodelo el año pasado?
Como hago periodismo y trabajo de modelo, era un programa interesante al que presentarme por la combinación de los dos factores. Por una parte está enfocado en la moda y, por otro lado, estás delante de las cámaras que es una buena experiencia para un periodista.

¿Cuál ha sido el momento más emocionante para ti hasta ahora trabajando como modelo?
Desfilar para Nicolas Vaudelet, soy gran admiradora de sus creaciones y fue un placer para mí desfilar para él.

Por supuesto, tú eres de Barcelona y vas conociendo cada vez más Madrid. ¿Cómo comparas tú las dos ciudades? ¿Hay algo de Madrid que te haya sorprendido?
Por ahora veo una gran diferencia entre estas dos ciudades, los catalanes somos gente más seria y menos abierta, y los madrileños suelen ser gente más abierta y esto me ha llamado la atención, porque después de haber estado en muchas ciudades es cierto que los catalanes, somos gente más cerrada.
Como ciudad me gusta más Barcelona porque estoy acostumbrada y porque me gusta como está distribuida, de todas maneras Madrid está muy bien para vivir, y estoy feliz aquí.

¿Hasta dónde quieres llegar como modelo y que consejos darías a alguien que quiere ser modelo?
Bueno no tengo una meta concreta porque el mundo de la moda es tan relativo y cambia tanto, que a veces en esta profesión no te puedes hacer muchas ilusiones. De todas maneras, es un trabajo agradecido y bonito. Por otra parte a una persona que quiera ser modelo, le diría que intente empezar a una edad temprana, y que intente cuidarse lo máximo posible siempre, porque es muy importante.

european vibe interview eva maria prieto

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Interview with Aarón Martínez

2009-03-25T00:46:00.005+01:00

This month we have mixed the Inspirational Madrid and Lingo Star Advanced sections to bring you a special interview with Spanish TV’s Supermodelo finalist and European Vibe party regular since the beginning, Aarón Martínez Díaz-Iglesias. Beyond the interest Aarón attracted in last year’s programme and his romance with fellow contestant Belén, we find out what happens when a normal university student becomes a Supermodelo.

Tenemos el gusto de entrevistar a Aarón, concursante el año pasado del reality show de Cuatro, Supermodelo. Muchos de nosotros ya lo conocíamos hace tiempo pues es uno de los habituales de nuestras fiestas EV. Aarón nos habla sobre su experiencia en el concurso, sus planes de futuro y mucho más.

Aarón, vas a las fiestas de European Vibe desde que empezaron y también eres miembro de nuestra comunidad online. ¿Qué es lo que más te gusta de las fiestas de EV?
Sí, la verdad es que tengo la suerte de ser de los precursores de las fiestas EV. Su ambiente selecto, moderno y cuidado me llamó siempre la atención. Las fiestas están muy bien organizadas con un amplio equipo a disposición de cualquiera. ¡Me lo paso genial!

En general ¿es cada vez más fácil encontrar el tipo de música y ambiente que te gusta en Madrid o hay que saber donde ir?
En los últimos años digamos que la mente de las discotecas se ha abierto a nuevas experiencias. Es el caso del funky y street dance que tanto se han puesto de moda. Yo creo que variedad se encuentra en muchos sitios pero también hay que saber buscar la calidad, pese a todo, y eso tal vez, si sea más complicado.

Llegaste a la final de Supermodelo 2008. ¿Cómo fue la experiencia? ¿Qué fue diferente sobre la experiencia que viviste respecto a como habías pensado que sería?
Nunca estuve a favor de los reality shows, tal vez en parte, porque la gente suele quedarse mas con lo personal que con lo profesional .Por suerte , puedo decir que fui uno de los pocos que paso por Supermodelo 2008 destacando lo profesional. Fue toda una experiencia única e irrepetible .Lo mejor de todo ha sido las puertas que se me han abierto.

¿A qué te dedicabas antes de participar en Supermodelo? ¿A qué te dedicas en la actualidad?
Estudiaba y por supuesto sigo con ello, ingeniería agronómica.
Ahora puede decirse que estoy compaginando mi sueño de ser modelo con mis estudios. “Mente sana en cuerpo sano.”

¿Participar en el concurso te ha cambiado mucho la vida? Si es así ¿de qué manera?
Si que cambia la vida, es inevitable que te cambie, y sobre todo los primeros meses. Empezando por el hecho más simple de que la gente te reconozca por la calle y terminando por tener un contacto más cercano con el mundo de la moda como profesional.
La experiencia te cambia también, en parte, a nivel interior: siempre habrá un antes y un después en la vida de cada uno de nosotros, es una experiencia muy fuerte como para que no te marque. Aunque, pese a ello, al cabo del tiempo, las aguas vuelven a su cauce y todo se normaliza, no sé si retomando la vida que tenias antes o empezando otra con matices nuevos a la cual te acostumbras y la estableces como tu nueva rutina, tu nueva normalidad.

Eres madrileño pero tienes un toque más exótico, con sangre brasileña y dominicana además de española, ¿verdad? Tu aspecto es una parte de tu éxito en tu vida adulta, ¿pero siempre ha sido una ventaja no parecer un español típico? Es decir, ¿te hacían sentir o te trataban diferente en el colegio?
Hasta el momento siempre ha sido un pro más que un contra. Tal vez por mi carácter y personalidad pude superar siempre cualquier problema racial ya fuera aquí o en otro lugar, en la infancia o ahora en la madurez. Soy consciente de que en el mundo de la moda ya es difícil llegar a ser alguien siendo un chico(pues la moda es mayoritariamente femenina) ,aún más con mis rasgos, pero todo ello no hace más que motivarme para demostrar lo que valgo, seguir trabajando muy duro y de forma muy humilde.

¿Te trata la gente de forma diferente desde que saliste en Supermodelo?
En general no, aunque como en todo hay excepciones, y la gente, sobre todo la que te conocía de antes, siempre va a hablar del tema, ya sea para bien o para mal. Pero es algo a lo que me expuse antes de entrar. Pero vuelvo a repetir que no me puedo quejar, mis amigos de verdad son igual que siempre conmigo, al igual que yo con ellos, y mi familia lo mismo .Pienso que debemos aprender a separar lo q es el glamour de las fiestas de moda, grandes eventos y desfiles con una buena sesión de cine con tu pareja o unas cervezas con tus amigos de toda la vida.

¿Qué te llevó a presentarte al concurso?
La verdad lo vi como una vía para darme a conocer a nivel nacional .Después de todo es un programa de moda que siguen muchas personas relacionadas con ese mundillo. Aunque tengo q decir que fue mi hermana quien me convenció finalmente para presentarme pues, como he dicho, los realities no son mi fuerte.

¿Tenías tus reservas sobre participar en un reality show? ¿Lo recomendarías a cualquiera?
Pienso que hay que definirse antes de participar en un reality .Nosotros teníamos nuestra parte de talent show; de hecho, gracias a esa mitad me decidí a entrar en supermodelo .Hay personas que buscan la fama y el dinero fácil. Yo solo quiero ganarme el respeto y reconocimiento a base de trabajo duro.
Pero como experiencia se la recomiendo a todo el mundo, a todo el mundo que sea capaz de llevarlo con cabeza. No olvidemos que la TV es un mundo infinito de mentiras, jajaja.

¿Has podido conocer a personas interesantes o a gente que admirabas antes por tu éxito en el programa?
Inevitablemente cuando pasas a ser una persona pública, vas a fiestas ,eventos, etc. y tienes muchas veces el placer de coincidir con otros artistas ,modelos, etc.
Conocimos a muchos diseñadores como por ejemplo Custo Dalmau, Adolfo Domínguez o Rosa Clará, con los cuales supongo que no hubiera podido tener un contacto tan directo a no ser por el programa, o al menos hasta la fecha. También he tenido el placer de compartir mi tiempo con bailarines de fama, actores de series muy conocidas ,cantantes..
Es muy divertido y te das cuenta de que son personas de lo más normal ,como lo fuiste y eres tú!
Pero lo más importante es que he tenido la gran suerte de conocer a otro tipo de personas interesantes como son muchos compañeros del programa, con algunos de los cuales espero mantener amistad por mucho tiempo. Y sobre todo, tuve la suerte de encontrar el amor dentro del programa (Belén), y eso ya merece, como mínimo, sentirse orgulloso de la gente a la que has conocido.

¿Qué proyectos tienes para el futuro?
Espero poder acabar mis estudios ante todo: primero porque es lo que me pide el cuerpo, y segundo por tener una seguridad laboral para el día de mañana. El mundo de la moda es precioso y, si la suerte se pone de mi parte, me gustaría en un futuro cercano poder dedicarme a ello, incluso probar suerte con la interpretación. Si no siempre quedará mi título de ingeniero y mis proyectos en el extranjero.

European Vibe entrevista Aaron Martinez

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All about Cadiz

2009-03-24T23:20:00.005+01:00

Tired, tipsy and bad tempered is the best way to describe an ex-girlfriend and me after spending an hour and a half walking in crooked circles around the old town of Cádiz trying to find our way back to our hostel. My orientation skills disappear when the sun goes down and everything looks different to me, and the beer that had gone down so well after a long day of sightseeing and sunbathing had rubbed away any last hint of a memory of how to get to our accommodation. It was pure luck that finally brought us gratefully to where we were staying. If I had to take the blame for getting lost, then my ex had to shoulder the responsibility for the schoolgirl error of leaving both the window and insect screen open for mosquitoes while we were out. I recognise the high probability that it was a fatigue-induced hallucination, but I’m sure I had to ask some of them to move so that I could get into bed.

Despite that June Saturday night’s internal GPS malfunction a few years ago, I returned from the weekend in Cádiz with the conviction that I’d discovered an absolute gem. The oldest continuously lived-in city in Western Europe, to wheel out the trivia. Cádiz was founded by the Phoenicians around 1100BC and has passed through the hands of the Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths, Moors and finally the Castilian Spanish claimed the city in the thirteenth century. Its strategic location and suitability as a port ensured its importance as a trading post from the start. Its unique geography in almost being an island, it is actually a peninsula joined to the continent by a very thin strip of land (or isthmus), made it very difficult to attack by land. Christopher Columbus set sail from the port on his second and fourth voyages to the Americas and, from that point, Cádiz began to command an important role as a main hub of transatlantic traffic.

The city was one of the first in the world to suffer from state-sponsored terrorism: Ottoman privateers tried several raids on Cádiz in the sixteenth century and the English pirate/naval hero Sir Francis Drake managed to capture the harbour and six ships, sink 31 other ships and decimate the port’s stores in 1587. The beginning of the eighteenth century, however, was when Cádiz really hit the jackpot. The increasing size of galleons and the formation of sandbars along the River Guadalquivir made it no longer viable to continue Seville’s monopoly on New World trade, so Cádiz stepped up to become the home of the Spanish Treasure Fleet and therefore become one of the richest cities in the world.

Both Carnival and most of Cádiz’s interesting buildings come from the golden age of the city. Their Carnival was meant to emulate and rival the world famous celebrations of the time in Venice; the investment in serious partying is what set the tradition that carries on today. The cathedral is my favourite in Spain (sorry to all the rest), probably because the 116 years it took to build and the subsequent mix of styles make it so unique (and I love the giant trees brought back from the Americas which stand next to it).

The plazas in the old town are attractive and give the breathing space the tightly-packed area needs. The old Customs House and the Admiral House buildings you have to see to understand the kind of wealth that Spain squeezed from its colonies. Another landmark, more for its significance than its beauty this time, is the monument to the Spanish Constitution of 1812- one of the first modern liberal constitutions in the world, written by the Free Spanish Parliament in Cádiz as the port was one of the few Spanish cities not to fall to the Bonapartes’ forces and was a main centre of resistance to the French as the Spanish fought for their independence. The cámara oscura in the Tavira Tower is a worthwhile visit to understand Cádiz today. Just a few storeys high, the tower’s pinhole camera-style telescope and convex lens command views of the whole city and the Bay of Cádiz. That in itself is cool to see, but the listed-building status of most of the old town, strict construction limits and no more space to build is what has kept the place from turning into another Andalusian beach resort. It has two fantastic beaches and there is regular Spanish tourism (The Costa de la Luz has remained a mainly Spanish destination in comparison to the Mediterranean coastline), but Cádiz will never become a Marbella, Torremolinos or Benidorm. In fact, this lack of possibility for development is what limits the city’s economy and causes many young Gaditanos to try their luck elsewhere. In selfish terms for the visitor, this is what keeps Cádiz a wonderful destination for a weekend or short holiday. Just remember how to get back to your hotel.

cadiz cadiz enganol

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Star Wars: The Exhibition - Madrid

2009-01-17T15:08:00.003+01:00

At the Centro de exposiciones Arte Canal, they’ve been polishing Vader’s helmet, washing Yoda behind the ears and they’ve also had a certain Han Solo comb his Wookie. We sent Luc Ciotkowski to Star Wars: The Exhibition and Jedi School that is in Plaza Castilla until March. “I’ll try”, he said. But as all Jedi know, we told him, “Do, or do not. There is no try”.

My Star Wars experience

“Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away…” was how George Lucas began the films. What he was trying to do, as he has often stated, was make a fairy tale in space.
This simplicity is what he puts the films’ appeal down to and what I think has made it the most significant series of films, in the fantasy genre, in cinematic history. While Harry Potter has made more money, the continuing impact over 30 years has made Star Wars a cultural phenomenon. The proof of this is in Madrid right now at the Centro de exposiciones Arte Canal in Plaza Castilla. I went on the opening day of the exhibition thinking, “How popular can it be in Spain?” I hadn’t bargained on a queue that seemed to extend half way down the Castellana. It appears almost everyone born since about 1965 has been touched by Star Wars in some way.

Being called Luc and being born in 1980 condemned me from birth to the childhood nickname ‘Luke Skywalker’. Come to think of it, there are plenty of people who meet me to this day who still exclaim, “Use the force, Luke!” “Skywalker!” or “I am your father” with delight in the wildly mistaken belief that they are the first person the connection has occurred to. It was lucky then that I was a child obsessed with Star Wars. I would watch the films from the original trilogy almost every weekend once the early morning cartoons had finished. After my Mr. Men books phase had finished, all my pocket money went towards new Star Wars figures and every birthday and Christmas had at least something Star Wars related.

It was never Luke Skywalker, though, who I wanted to be. My mother often reminds me now that at the age of six I declared that I wanted to be a hermit when I grew up- a little different from the more conventional dreams of youngsters to be footballers, astronauts, vets or princesses. The reason was Obi-Wan Kenobi first appearing as a hermit in Star Wars and, well, I thought it would be cool to be like him. I soon abandoned the ambition, however, when I realised that being a hermit would mean I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to or play with. The other character that most captured my imagination was the heroic little droid R2D2. I spent hours shuffling around the floor inside cardboard boxes, with coloured on control panels and eyeholes covered by transparent plastic, speaking only in whistles and beeps and unfortunate gurgling noises which sounded more like post-curry bowel movements than robot language (I was nearly eight before my brother was born- I had to be imaginative).

Age and football eventually did for my love of Star Wars and led to me foolishly selling off my considerable collection of toys related to the movies, all in good condition, at second-hand markets. But the revival of the series, starting with the remastered special editions showing in cinemas and followed by the new prequel trilogy, captured my imagination again and got me in the queue at the box office (if perhaps not quite back into cardboard boxes).

The exhibition

Two weeks after the opening day, I was in the queue for the exhibition with an English friend celebrating his thirtieth-and-a-bit birthday. He told me that he and his friends had all the toys and admitted to using the figures to play Subbuteo football matches with. I apologise to those this means nothing to, but I couldn’t help but be amused when my friend, a supporter of Newcastle United, said that his star player was Chewbacca.
Looking around the queue at the many parents and children, it was difficult to work out if the adults were accompanying their kids or vice versa, but Star Wars’ spread across three decades and its cross-generational appeal part of what makes it so unique.

On entering, you find a zone featuring the Star Wars galaxy that leads in to the main hall of the exhibition, which is decorated in the style of the interior of a Star Wars ship with two life-size craft and models of C3PO and R2D2 (with all kinds of artwork on the walls, timelines, etc. From here, nine rooms lead off to feature different planets of the galaxy: Geonosis; Tatooine; Kashykk/Utapau; Coruscant/Kamino; Death Star (not a planet, I know); Hoth; Mustafar; Naboo and Endor. Through the Mustafar room, you access a projection room where you can see a documentary by ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) on how they produced certain special effects for the movies. ILM is the company George Lucas created to make all the effects for Star Wars and sometimes invent new technologies to make them possible. As this is the singular most important company in the development special effects over the last 30 years, the documentary is certainly worth sitting through.

Within the planet rooms, you find all types of vehicles, models, miniatures, costumes, props, photos and conceptual drawings with explanations (all in English and Spanish) and video screens which allow you to see exactly how they were used in the final films. There are around 250 original items in total. Some of the highlights for me were: Darth Vader’s suit; Darth Vader’s face piece prop, which is taken off in Return of the Jedi to reveal Anakin Skywalker; the life-size models of the Wookies, Ewoks and a Weequay skiff guard (ugly bad guy with dreadlocks from the first bit of ROTJ); Padmé Amidala’s elaborate costumes; all the stormtroopers; Boba and Jango Fett; Lando Calrissian’s disguise from ROTJ; Wampa ice monster miniature.
The only disappointment was Princess Leia’s gold metal slave bikini, which, without a 25-year-old Carrie Fisher inside, just looks rubbish.

Coming out of the main exhibition there is a games room full of free-to-play video consoles with Star Wars games on them. Beyond that is the official shop, in case you didn’t get that bust of Yoda that you wanted for Christmas, or if you’d like to read some follow-up literature through a stormtrooper helmet. Out into the courtyard there’s a life-size Naboo fighter and a couple of greenscreen mini-studios, so that you can appear with characters from the films. Don’t forget your camera for the photo opportunity. You can use it inside the exhibition as much as you like, too (a few people have already stuck up videos and photos on youtube).

As my friend and I discovered when we realised we were the only adults the without children, the Jedi School show is really just for kids. What we thought was going to be a good lightsaber choreography was really a chance for the kids to have a go at fighting Darth Vader. Unfortunately, the most impressive part was Darth Vader managing to descend the theatre steps with his convincing yet cumbersome and vision-impairing costume.
Still, this bit was free, and the rest was most definitely worth the 10€ entry fee. That’s the same price as two (Alec) Guinness.

The exhibition continues in Madrid until 15 March 2009.

Feeling good to be Spanish? part 2

2009-01-17T14:38:00.003+01:00

My series, extended to three parts, looks at how Spain has viewed itself through history on the way to finding out if today’s sport is having a uniting effect on the Spanish.

1898 will forever be remembered in Spanish history for the definitive end of Spain’s once global empire and the most disastrous year since the French invasion and occupation almost a century before. The ‘Disaster of ‘98’, as it came to be known, refers to Spain’s unmitigated humiliation at the hands of the US in the Spanish-American War stripped her of her last three notable colonies, Cuba, Puerto Rico and The Philippines. As well as marking the US’ step up to becoming a world power (significantly today, also the event which allowed them to force Cuba to sign away Guantánamo Bay), it marked the end of Spain as an imperial power and provoked a period of profound introspection and soul searching in the Peninsula. The so-called ‘Generation of ‘98’ were a number of philosophers, writers and poets whose work embodied Spain’s existential crisis. One of the generation’s leading poets, Antonio Machado (now reviled by several generations of Spanish schoolchildren who have had to study his poems), famously spoke of “The Two Spains” – “…one that dies and the other that yawns.” This idea of a divided Spain was becoming ever more apparent, but nobody would be yawning for much longer.

As Spaniards had to redefine their identity, they also had to reassess their loyalties. The revival of regionalism was, in no small part, heightened by this loss of empire. It had suited everyone to belong to an Imperial Spain: being Spanish meant access to trade and riches from the colonies. With these financial incentives taken away, what was the point? Pride in being Spanish? There wasn’t much pride to go around, as was the case with democracy. The turno pacífico system of rigged elections, where one government’s function was to undo the reforms of the previous, was losing its appeasing effect and divided opinion on what should be the political solution. Not all was negative however, the return of capital from the colonies injected vitality into the economy and Spain’s industrial centres forged into the twentieth century. Neutrality in the First World War allowed more time for Spain to catch up economically and the country’s workforce was spared the decimation suffered by the rest of Europe, until the outbreak of Spanish ‘Flu in 1918 (rather unfairly named as it had broken out earlier in France; it killed 25 million people worldwide in the first six months).

In 1923, Captain General Miguel Primo de Rivera, with the backing of the army and the endorsement of King Alfonso XIII (gaining him enemies among the parliamentary class), pronounced the dissolution of the parliamentary system and installed a military dictatorship with himself as its leader. Known as ‘the benevolent dictatorship’, the general’s six-year rule saw an enormous investment in public works and infrastructure, not just the predictable repression of regionalism, political freedom and freedom of speech. The surge in employment resulting from the new public works kept the working class docile initially. Improving economic conditions and censorship temporarily papered the widening cracks between different groups in Spain. However, a new fissure had appeared: Alfonso XIII’s approval of the dictatorship had alienated much of the growing urban middle class, who expected their voice to be heard, all regionalist groups and the former parliamentary class which the dictatorship displaced. The ‘benevolent dictator’s rule might have continued for longer, but the cost of all those public works, along with the fallout from the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and a woeful harvest in the same year, finally brought his government to a state of near bankruptcy; Primo de Rivera resigned in January 1930.

When pro-republican parties won an overwhelming victory a year later and the army said it would no longer protect him, the king fled the country and the Second Republic was proclaimed. The new democratic constitution was a feel good moment for many Spaniards and filled them with optimism for the future. The Republic’s constitution made Spain semi-federal, giving the right to autonomy to all Spain’s regions. Universal suffrage was granted immediately to men and in 1933 extended to women. Freedom of speech and freedom of association, even the right to divorce, were written into the charter and the church was separated from the state. These were all very important things, which could give Spain a claim to one of the world’s most modern-thinking, liberal constitutions at that time.
However, if our focus is feeling good to be Spanish, I’m going to pick something that you may think quite trivial as the most significant aspect: the new flag. Of course, I’m not talking about the visual change from the red and yellow Monarchist flag to the red, yellow and indigo tricolour of the Republic. What I’m talking about are the different Spains behind those flags, and there were many more visions of what Spain was and where it was going than the two outward representations. Every political group in Spain went on to make and fly its own flag, but it’s analogous of what happened over the next few years that it came back down to a straight fight between the Tricolor and the Rojigualda.

The initial optimism of the Republic turned sour quickly as it became apparent that consensus on how and what to reform was very difficult to secure. The 1933 election victory for the right wing CEDA and Radical parties meant the repeal or stifling of the reforms made in the previous two years. It sealed the terminal polarisation of Spanish politics and this is the moment where I think the years of edging in its direction became a plummet towards conflict.

Both the Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War were times filled with important events to write about, but I think there is very little to talk about for our purposes here. Fighting in the Civil War became simplified as left wing against right wing. One event that is very important to us was what happened behind the front lines in April 1937. Franco, who had become head of state and military leader of the Nationalist side, issued the Decree of Unification forcing all its political parties to unite. The trickiest part of this was the incompatibility of ideologies between the deeply traditionalist Carlists and the fascist Falange. The resulting mouthful of Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalistas (FET y de las JONS) became known as the Movimiento Nacional by the end of the war in 1939 and survived as the only legal political party until after the death of Franco in 1975.
Again, I’m going to focus on a flag, this time the one that Franco chose to represent the Nationalists. The Monarchist Rojigualda flag officially adopted by Franco’s ‘Spanish State’ in 1938 had a customised coat of arms to feature elements of the major forces on his side and the slogan Una Grande Libre (One, Great, Free) harnessed them all together.

The final victory of Franco’s Nationalists in April 1939 came after the war had cost over 400,000 Spanish lives. Another 400,000 Republicans fled the country and, in the reprisals in the aftermath of the war, another 200,000 were executed and around 2,000,000 were imprisoned. There were Nationalists who could feel proud of a Spain that they believed had won a crusade against godless Communism, while all surviving former Republicans were utterly disenfranchised from Spain. The only thing they could share in was the uneasy conscience that to be Spanish was to have participated in fratricide.

TO BE CONCLUDED

Feeling Good To Be Spanish? Part 2

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Javier Weyler of Stereophonics - Keeping up with the Joneses

2008-12-03T03:53:00.001+01:00

Drummer Javier Weyler speaks to Luc Ciotkowski (despite some technical problems) about being in Stereophonics and the release of their ‘best of’ album, Decade In The Sun, this month.

Ffffffffffffffffffffhh……”
I hissed at my telephone, shook my head and contemplated throwing the thing at the tiles of the office floor. A resigned sigh is the last thing you can hear on that track on my digital voice recorder before it clicks off, and at that actual time I was left to curse a well-known Spanish telephone service provider (my chief suspect for the technical fault). It’s not every day that you get the chance of a telephone interview with a member of one of your favourite bands, so when I talked to Welsh rock band Stereophonics’ Argentinean drummer, Javier Weyler, and the phone line got cut off not once but twice, I was obviously disappointed, well, gutted. Still,
I got a few questions in with Javier, and he and the Universal Music people were kind enough to call me back when we were cut off the first time.

So, yes, the Welsh band’s drummer was born in Argentina and raised in Venezuela. The story of how he joined the band is quite well known. Stereophonics members Kelly Jones and Richard Jones met Javier in a London recording studio in 2003. Over a couple of chance meetings, in Argentina towards the end of that year and again in a recording studio in April 2004, where he played on some demos for their next album, they made friends and a few months later they invited him to join the band permanently.
Me being used to hearing stories of how people have ended up in Madrid, I was curious to know Javier’s trajectory from Venezuela to that recording studio in London. “I started playing when I was 13 years old and I had a band in Venezuela. Did a couple of records and I wanted to take it to the next level. London is one of the best places for music. I’d liked The Rolling Stones and The Beatles and that kind of music. London’s associated with that. Originally, I went for one year to study engineering and production. Then, I started working in different studios in London, and Stereophonics were at one of the studios I was working in. We became mates, we got on great.”

The band are currently promoting their first best of album, Decade In the Sun: The Best Of Stereophonics, which comes out on 10 November before a UK tour in December. I asked Javier how they decided the track list from over 10 years of songs: “The difficult thing was to select songs that went well together. Kelly sat down and went through the catalogue. Then we had to get the running order right. But we’ve been cooking it up for many years- the guys have been for four or five years anyway. There are so many good songs to choose from, six records’ worth of songs. There are lots of bands that do a ‘best of’ after two albums!” So, were there any songs that he would have liked to have made the cut that didn’t? “No, not really. With the second disc (there is a deluxe edition with a second CD), we could put on another 20 songs that include B-sides.”

Depending on how you interpret it, the title Decade In The Sun may sound a little misleading as a summary of the Stereophonics’ experience since their rise to fame with their first album in 1997. That first collection of songs, Word Gets Around, shot them to stardom, number six in the UK album chart and a Brit Award for Best New Group. Their five subsequent studio albums have all hit number one in the UK, they are undoubtedly the most successful Welsh band of their generation and also one of the biggest acts in the UK. It’s true that the sun has shone on them over the last decade, but a little black cloud has been walking around with them, too.

Stereophonics’ relationship with the British music press was uneasy from the start. Had they appeared two years earlier, they might well have had a much easier ride from journalists, but they didn’t. The medium that had spent the mid-nineties overdosing on Britpop could no longer stomach bands, like Stereophonics, who sang about working-class culture. Music writers, like other sections of UK society at that moment, wanted to escape or ‘trade up’ for a while and Stereophonics suffered for their realism. They received labels such as ‘bland’ and ‘meat and potatoes’. Outright war was declared when lead singer Kelly Jones penned the song Mr Writer on the band’s third album, Just Enough Education to Perform, as a retort to the dishonesty and easy criticism of music journalists. Lines like, “Why don’t you tell it like it is?” “What do you really know?” and, “I’d like to shoot you all”, seemed to deeply upset ‘Messrs Writers’ across the UK. Kelly Jones’s ‘Whiskey’ vocals became ‘sandpaper’ vocals, a ‘sexy, 40 honey-filtered cigarettes a day voice’ was now described as ‘whingeing’ or ‘wrenching Ford Cortina’.

While they continued to sell out concerts and make number one records, fans weren’t overly bothered by this, but the public sacking of drummer Stuart Cable had many expecting an end for the band. But this was where Javier came in and the fifth album, Language Sex Violence Other?, became another UK number one and got begrudgingly better reviews. People were talking of a new energy around the band. I asked Javier about this and the effect his arrival had. “I think it was a combination of things. They had lost Stuart (Cable). Losing a band member and friend, it was a difficult time. They would be the best to talk about that. Really only they can talk about that. Then, they had just made a more soulful record (You Gotta Go There To Come Back). And, I mean, the band has always changed styles. And it was my job, to be like that. I was really hungry because I’d just joined.”

Last year’s Pull the Pin received further begrudgingly good reviews and was yet another commercial success. Guitarist Adam Zindani joined and the band have completed their decade in the sun with a healthy glow in their cheeks. Javier, who describes having to learn five albums’ worth of material when he joined the band as, “More challenging than difficult”, said his favourite songs from before he joined the band were, “Local Boy in the Photograph, Bartender and the Thief, and Mr Writer. When I joined, I went through the catalogue album by album, so I got to think about that a bit”.

Admitting he didn’t know the band right from the start, I asked Javier what song he first remembered hearing from Stereophonics. “Mr Writer. I saw them perform it on Jools Holland and I thought, ‘Fuck, these guys can play.’” A few years later on, he’s releasing a ‘best of’ with them and gives no indication of stopping. “The ‘best of’ is great, too, because it’s a way for new fans and people in territories where we’re not known so well to discover the songs.”

Decade In The Sun:
The Best of Stereophonics
Stereophonics
Release: 10 November
Considering the readiness of most bands to bring out ‘best of’ albums at regular intervals, it’s a rarity to find such a compilation that spreads across six albums. If you know the group,
I need say nothing. If you don’t, this the perfect chance to discover them.
VIBE STARS *****

Interview with Stereophonics drummer Javier Weyler

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Digging out your Bonehead

2008-12-03T03:47:00.003+01:00

Oasis’s seventh studio album comes out this month (October 2008) and the first reviews indicate a return to form and further improvement on the well-received Don’t Believe The Truth. To coincide with the release of Dig Out Your Soul, we saved our summer interview with founding member and iconic guitarist Bonehead until now. Luc Ciotkowski had a few beers with the ex-Oasis man in Supersonic the day after his DJ set at the Madrid indie club.

Consoling a distraught fiancée who had been painted like a clown by an over-zealous make-up artist meant I missed Bonehead’s (Sunday name Paul Arthurs) DJ set. The packed house and hero’s welcome at his “Best one yet”, however, were proof enough that no indie fans have forgotten the rhythm guitarist who parted company with his Oasis band mates in 1999. Convinced to give deejaying a go last year and inundated with offers when he set up a MySpace page, Bonehead came to Madrid’s Supersonic club on the personal recommendation of The Charlatans.
The following day, I met Bonehead in the club and what was meant to be a 20-minute interview became more like a 1-hour-20-minute chat. The Heinekens were going down well and could have turned into a few more, had it not been for a polite reminder from Supersonic’s Pati that another, understandably, increasingly annoyed journalist was waiting for an interview.
Conversation went from his appreciation for the Prado museum, to his lament that ex-international Irish footballer Roy Keane quit drinking, to how his life might have been different had he followed Liam Gallagher’s lead and moved to London.
Here are some good bits of my interview with Bonehead:

So, have you heard the new Oasis record? (This was in the summer before any songs had been made available.)
Yeah, I’ve heard it. I’m Oasis’s number one fan. It’s groovy. That’s all I’m gonna say. It’s a record they should probably have done years ago.

Did you get a rest after you left Oasis or have you kept busy all the time?
I’ve been doing things all the time. Been on loads of people’s records, you just won’t have heard about it.

Do you feel quite detached from it all now?
Detached, no. Wherever I go, in the supermarket, in the street, people are like, “It’s Bonehead from Oasis!” When I go out with Liam in London, or anywhere, he’s a nightmare to go out with – it’s Liam Gallagher: people are all over him. But when I’m with him, it’s not like, “It’s Liam Gallagher and that other guy who used to be in Oasis”, they go, “It’s Liam and Bonehead! Oasis!”

Is it weird, though, to see them performing and stuff, and you’re not there, there’s Gem (Archer) in your place?
Not at all. I was mates with him years before and I was delighted with the choice. He’s a far better guitarist than me. Gem just takes pressure off Noel; gives him a lot more scope.

Would you go back and play with Oasis if they asked you?
Ha, ha! I’m saying nothing...

Are there any bands that have caught your eye at the moment?
What? Up-and-coming bands? There’s not that much, actually. There’s one band from Manchester called The Vortex. Unsigned. They’re brilliant. They could do it, big time. I went on stage and performed with them. It was like being back in Oasis, in ’94; they had so much passion.

Is real passion the extra thing you need to make it?
Yeah, but it’s more about your songs. I mean, Noel’s an unbelievable songwriter. He had all of these songs coming out of him. He’d be sitting in the corner in the studio with his guitar and say, “I’ve written a new song”. He did that with Supersonic. “He’s going, “I’m feeling supersonic, give me gin and tonic” and there was this dog called Elsa in the studio: “I know a girl called Elsa, she’s into Alka-seltzer...” and Alan McGee (Creation Records boss) goes, “Right, that’s your first single”.

Something I’ve been wondering about for years and that me and my mates used to argue about – You know on the album cover of Definitely Maybe, in your living room, what really was the big ball thing? Was it a lamp?
No, no, it was a globe. A big inflatable globe.

Ahh, right. And it was George Best in the picture, wasn’t it?
Yes. And the glasses of wine – that’s what you don’t know... Ribena!

Really!?
Yeah, it was Ribena; we were all drinking beer, but you know, how would that look on the cover – drinking beer?

I can’t believe it was Ribena... You made it rock and roll and alright for young fellas to drink red wine. I think for the next three years every young person in the country wanted to copy your front room, too.
We couldn’t decide what to do for the cover. I mean, we didn’t know what it was supposed to look like. We were all round at my house. Liam wanted to get a block of butter or margarine on a plate, have photos of that and put it on. We were like, “Yeah Liam, fuck off”. Then we decided, “Let’s just do it right here, right now”.

What happened to all the stuff?
I’ve got the windows at my house now. I took them and I’ve got the fireplace, too. And the flamingo...
I gave that house to my sisters, my sisters lived there together. The people that have it now have one day a year when the act out the scene again.
Someone lies on the floor and they all get in the positions we were in.

What did you make of all the controversy going on after Noel (Gallagher) questioned Glastonbury having Jay Z as a headliner?
Noel’s a businessman. He says that and the sales of the album [(What’s the story) Morning Glory?] go up by 200% and Wonderwall gets back in the top 100. His band’s got a new album out soon and everyone’s talking about Oasis again. I know for a fact he likes Jay Z. So what? Next royalties cheque’s going to be good.

Amy Winehouse got a lot of criticism for her performance at Glastonbury, and people weren’t impressed with her at Rock in Rio, here in Madrid, either. What did you think of her?
Nah, I saw her at Glastonbury... I’ll give her one more year like this and she’s finished. It’s the drugs: they ruin it all. Everyone said we were all on drugs ten years ago. But I wasn’t.
Even when Liam was falling apart, we were all there to pick him up. But what’s she (Amy Winehouse) going to do? She’s got a bunch of session musicians on stage with her that don’t give a shit, just get paid and fuck off.
That Duffy, if she doesn’t go the same way, in two years, she’ll have taken Amy Winehouse’s place.

Bonehead

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Shout Out Louds - Adam Olenius

2008-12-03T03:41:00.002+01:00

The five-piece from Stockholm formed in 2001 and released their first album, Howl Howl Gaff Gaff, in Scandinavia in 2003. In 2005, they joined the Scandinavian invasion of the music world when Howl Howl Gaff Gaff went worldwide and received critical acclaim. If Shout out Louds had won hearts in both Europe and America for their unrepentantly ’poppy’ brand of indie rock, then they set about breaking those hearts, in a good way, with the melancholy-laced but trying-to-be-optimistic follow up, Our Ill Wills, in 2007. The Swedish quintet have toured with the likes of The Strokes and Kings of Leon and have just returned from a tour of Brazil. Aifric O’Reilly spoke to the band’s singer and songwriter, Adam Olenius.

Have you had any time to see Madrid?
Yeah, this time we actually went out into the city and went to a bar and looked around.

What do you make of it?
I like Madrid. Actually, we played this festival two years ago. We had a day off and went out to eat and walked around. We really like food a lot, so we tried to find the best restaurant we could. I really like the whole tapas thing, I think it’s a very good way to eat.

In Spanish, they’ve got a saying, ’hacerse el sueco’, literally ’to act or make yourself Swedish’, and it means to ignore someone or something, or to pretend you didn’t see someone when you did.
They think the Swedish are obnoxious??

No, apart from that, the Spanish absolutely love the Swedes. I don’t know where the saying comes from.
But what ideas of Spain and Spanish people do you have in Sweden?
They’ve got a good opinion of Spanish people in Sweden. I’ve got a lot of friends who’ve studied in places like Barcelona. Unfortunately, I don’t know that many Spanish bands. There’s one song by a band called... Limones?... that I always play when I do DJ sets.

Of course, your own concerts and doing a set at festivals are different, but when have you felt surprised by a great reception at a festival? Where have you felt like, ’yeah, this is our crowd’?
In some cities we’ve got a really big fan base: like New York City and Berlin. Spain’s been really good, actually, here in Madrid. We’ve played Moby Dick twice, so we knew people would remember us. Yeah, the Spanish have been a good surprise. It’s cool when you travel for 24 hours to Australia and people know your songs, it makes you want to make another record.

Which song of yours would you recommend to someone who hadn’t really heard your music, to bring them in?
We choose singles because that’s what we want people to hear, it’s sort of us in three minutes. I don’t know, I like the song South America. There’s one song, Hard Rain, it’s the last song on our current record that’s seven minutes, really eclectic with everyone doing something. That and the first song off that album, Tonight We Have To Leave It, capture what we’re doing.

Why do you think Scandinavia, and in particular Sweden, is so well represented on the international music scene at the moment? Why is there so much coming out of there?
I think it’s been like that for a long time, at least since ABBA. And further back, you have to think of all the big old jazz bands and rock and roll, soul and motown acts that used to go and play in Sweden.
(Nowadays) I think we’re not afraid of having a pop sound, without sounding boring at all. I think there’s the Scandinavian, Swedish melancholy together with really strong melodies, but we’re not afraid to sound good. It’s a very sad sound, but with very good melodies and very big interesting productions. It helps that we know the English language pretty well. Part of being in a band is competition and when there’s other big bands you have to go and push yourself, do something different.

How do you feel when people compare you to The Cure?
I don’t mind it. Well, it’s a brilliant band and I love The Cure, but it’s my voice that’s quite similar... There’s nothing I can do. I wanted it to sound like Neil Young, but I failed!
It’s a big band (The Cure), so it’s hard not to be influenced by that (comparison). It’s actually not one of our favourite bands, it’s just happened.
You do get sick of it sometimes, it just takes the focus off what other things we have.
There are millions and trillions of bands who sound the same, look the same. I don’t care what they say anymore, I did, like a year ago, or two years ago. That’s why we record at home, to be in Stockholm and try to have a Swedish sound. Try to be normal people for three months a year.

Interview with Shout Out Louds Adam Olenius

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The Raveonettes - Sune Rose Wagner

2008-12-03T03:35:00.003+01:00

Summercase Festival Madrid 2008: While The Sex Pistols’ John Lydon clowned around in a Wee Willy Winkie nightshirt on the main stage to a largely disappointed crowd, ‘summercasers’ who had opted for something different were treated to the refreshing but at the same time vintage sound of The Raveonettes. European Vibe’s Luc Ciotkowski talked to the New York and Los Angeles-inspired Danish indie band.

To best describe feel of The Raveonettes’ music at the moment, I’d say this: Sweet-looking Los Angeles meets sinister New York City in a bar and they leave together. They disappear off down an alley, where the, in fact, not-so-sweet Los Angeles stoves NYC’s head in with her stiletto.
The Danish storytellers of these unwholesome fairy tales, Sune and Sharin, have really become an interactive band: they’ve posted mini discussions about all the songs from their most recent album, Lust, Lust, Lust, on youtube, they talk to their fans on MySpace and regularly post free downloads of tracks they’ve done. They even give away what in my opinion is the record’s best song, Aly Walk With Me, on their website (get it, it’s class).
With Sharin not in attendance due to being full of baby (her little sister, Loui, filling in on vocals), I talked to Sune a couple of hours before The Raveonettes’ Madrid set.

Your album this time, it’s got a dirtier sound. It’s kind of dirty cool. For you, what’s changed about it?
Yeah. I don’t know, it’s hard to say... How we make the albums is just whatever we feel like. I just recorded a hundred songs and we just narrowed it down to the sounds that we liked and went in that direction.

Lots of our readers are people from all over the world who’ve made their home here. Do you think the experience of living out of your country makes you become a different person?
No, I don’t think so. I mean, I’ve lived in New York for five years and I still feel very Danish in everything I do, but sometimes the problem living in Copenhagen was that it could be hard to find inspiration. And I just like living in a city where everything is possible, all the time. All the stuff you’re interested in always comes through there. I think for a creative person to live in New York... it’s ideal.

You’ve really got into all the MySpace stuff, the blog and the video discussions on youtube with Sharin.
It’s a lot easier to be in contact with your fans now. Sometimes people write me on MySpace, they do that a lot and they say, “A long time ago you posted this song that I really like and I can’t find it anywhere”. And I’m like, “Well, give me your email address”, then I email it to them, send them an mp3 of the song. Because I always put myself in their position, if there was a band I was crazy about, it would be awesome to be able to write them, personally. They have certain questions about guitar sounds, or whatever, and I’ll always answer them.
People are genuinely interested in the music and people are interested in who writes the music. Sometimes I think it’s hard for people to read certain interviews, trying to figure out what kind of people they are, because a lot of things that you say in interviews are taken out of context when printed. People can be like, “Why did he say that?” And you’re like, “Well, I never said that”. So it’s pretty cool if they can just ask you directly and you answer them truthfully.

In one of your video discussions you say how there are lots of little errors on a track. It sounds like that’s something you want.
Yeah, I always liked music that was very spontaneous; when it was recorded, it was recorded, because if it sounded good, it was meant to sound good. We can’t go into the studio and try to recreate the demo that we thought was fucking brilliant. Why don’t we just mix the demo and put that out? And that’s what we always do, that’s why we never go into the studio and record. Because we can’t recreate what we think is perfect. So there is a lot of mistakes, there is a lot of guitars that don’t stop when they’re supposed to stop. But there’s still a certain freshness, energy and spontaneity and things that make the music interesting.

You give away Aly Walk With Me for free and that’s my favourite song off the album. Did you not think, “Oh this could be a massive single for us and, you know”, “We could make a lot of money off this one”?
Nah, we’re not interested in that. We want longevity, that’s what we’re about. We’re very happy that we’ve never had a huge single, then you’re suddenly disappointed because the next one didn’t make it into the top ten or whatever. We’ve never had that. I’m very proud that we do what we do in a continuous kind of flow. We just want to continue to put out quality music and be the best band we can be. We’ll give things away, or they can buy certain things. We do it very organically, keep it cool, you know.

Interview with The Raveonettes Sune Rose Wagner

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Madonna - Hard Candy

2008-12-03T03:33:00.002+01:00

European Vibe is delighted to bring you an interview with arguably the biggest star in the world. We catch up with Madonna, who talks about her need to make music and the big names she collaborated with to produce her new record.

She has had more top ten hits on the US Billboard chart than any other artist (beating Elvis Presley into second place). She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year and she is listed as the “World’s most successful female musician” by Guinness World Records. Hard Candy is her eleventh studio album in her 26 years in the music industry, but she still looks fantastic and sounds amazing.

We have all grown up with Madonna. Anyone under the age of 40 has been hearing Madonna’s music for most of their lives. The 80s fashions she inspired might have gone out, come back and gone out again, but the words ‘reinvention’ and ‘reincarnation’ are so closely linked to her that it’s rare to see an article about Madonna without at least one of them appearing somewhere. I don’t want to say that Madonna is fashion, it’s more like she is to pop music fashion what each season''''''''s ''''''''new black'''''''' is to clothes fashion.

The other thing that no one can help mentioning in any article about Madonna is the fact that she turns 50 this year. It’s true that we would make far less of it if she were a man, but it’s hard not to be impressed that she doesn’t look out of place in the slightest alongside Justin Timberlake, a man half her age, in the video for her current single. 4 Minutes has been number one in the charts in 12 countries (at the time of writing), including the UK Singles Chart, and has reached number two in the US Billboard Pop 100 (number three on the Hot 100); it’s her first major hit since Hung Up in 2005. It is the first single from her new album, Hard Candy, which enters the charts as we speak.

As well as Justin Timberlake, Madonna has enlisted Pharrell Williams, Timbaland and Danja to help produce her latest record. Their influence is easily detected, but there is also a clear movement back towards the sweet pop of 80s Madonna (well, it is called Hard Candy). Some critics will complain and have complained that the record is not adventurous enough. I have to agree that if you don’t normally like Madonna much, but enjoyed the more adventurous tracks off the likes of Confessions on a Dance Floor and other albums over the last ten years, then you might think the record lacks an edge. However, if you own a copy of The Immaculate Collection, if you like JT, Pharrell or Timbaland, or if you are just a big Madonna fan, you’ll love this album.

So! Here is the interview with Madonna:

You have so much going on now with films and the album and various other things. Is music still the foundation, central part of your creative existence?

Hmm. Is it the central part of my creative existence? I mean, the thing about me is, in terms of creativity, the first place that I started expressing myself as an artist was through dance, and that’s completely and utterly connected to music. So for me, becoming a songwriter and a singer and a performer was a perfect segue from dancing. And I think that even when I get involved in film projects, I always think of them in a very musical way.

I think about what music’s gonna be scoring the scene. Music inspires me to write a scene. I feel like music is still very much an integral part of every aspect of my creativity. Yeah.

You couldn’t imagine just going a long time without making music?

No, no. I’m always gonna wanna write music and I just feel like music speaks to people in a way that no other art form can. And it is, in my opinion, um, the most accessible art form. So, yeah, you could say it’s my first love. Yes. (laughs)

Each time now, each time you make an album it seems to have a new facet, a new territory that you’re going into. With this one, did you have a very clear idea at the beginning before you started as to what you wanted to speak about?

When I made the decision to work with Pharrell and Justin and Timbaland, it was really just a matter of I loved their records. And after I made Confessions On A Dance Floor, I was scratching my head, thinking, well, what do I want to do next? What kind of music do I want to do next? And so I asked myself, well, whose music do I love right now? Who am I listening to? What records am I buying? What makes me excited? What am I excited about right now musically? And it was those three. So I thought, well, why don’t I work with them? Yeah. And I did.

Your video has some Japanese dancers. How was that experience working with them?

They were amazing. They’re called Hamutsun Serve and, uh, I discovered them on YouTube and I thought they were incredibly unique and special. And I was really happy when they said they’d fly over from Japan to London and, and be in the video. And I’d love to work with them again. So that was great, yeah.

madonna hard candy interview

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Feeling good to be Spanish? part 1

2008-11-28T01:34:00.002+01:00

Part 1

The glorious triumphs of Spain at Euro 2008, Rafa Nadal’s victories at Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, Sastre’s performance on the Tour de France and the heroics of Spain’s olympians have most other nationalities envious, but are the Spaniards feeling good about being Spanish? The separatist and regionalist divisions that currently exist in Spain are much publicised. However, if we’re going to answer the question of whether the Spanish feel united again, we must ask if they ever really felt united in the first place. To do that, we need to have a little look at history.

Spain started to be modern Spain when Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon unified the crowns of their kingdoms. Together, as the Catholic Monarchs, they emptied the last of the Moors out the peninsula, banished the Jews, set up the Spanish Inquisition and had the stroke of luck that Columbus found them a new continent full of riches. Catalonia belonged to the Crown of Aragon, which over time very much became the junior partner in the union with Castile. Castile imposed itself more on the reconquered south and Seville was happy to be the only authorised trading port with the Americas. Throughout the Golden Era of the 16th and 17th centuries, Barcelona saw its importance decline as trade moved from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic while Castilian Spanish became the preferred tongue of the empire over all the other Iberian languages.

A very important thing to bear in mind during this time, though, was that the different regions were actually separate kingdoms, principalities or counties, bound to the Spanish crown, but with quite extensive self-governing charters called fueros. While these regional powers were gradually dismantled, the Basque Country kept its fueros and Basques began to see them as rights rather than privileges.

The start of the 19th century was a spectacularly rubbish time for Spain to get invaded by France, but they did. Although the first effective application of guerrilla warfare helped the Spanish to unite in ridding Spain of the Bonapartes, Spaniards quickly realised they were utterly divided on how a new independent Spain should be.
A decade later, Spain’s empire was all but wiped out and Ferdinand VII taking back absolute power for the monarchy was making the country’s political landscape look very fragile. Before his death, Ferdinand changed Spain’s laws of succession, which had before made it impossible for any female heir to ascend to the throne if there were any living male heir, so that his daughter, Isabella, could become queen instead of the crown going to his brother Carlos. Spain’s traditionalists and staunch Catholics sided with Carlos and Carlism was born. The rest of the century saw the Carlist civil wars rip deep divisions between the Spanish, and the belated arrival of the Industrial Revolution in Spain brought with it the new political ideologies of Socialism, Communism and Anarchism.
By the end of the century, pretty much everyone in Spain was an ’-ist’ of some kind.

The driving forces in Spain’s Industrial Revolution were Catalonia (textile industry and trade centre) and the Basque Country (heavy industries: iron and coal mining, ship building). It’s difficult to overstate the importance of Catalan and Basque industrial preeminence in the late 19th century and early 20th century in shaping today’s political climate in those regions.

At this stage, we have to note that a sense of nationalism was not as keenly developed as in other European countries; whether in Aragon, Catalonia, Extremadura or Andalucia, people’s first affinity was to the pueblo. The Catalan nationalist/regionalist movement grew from the burgeoning middle class of workshop/factory owners and merchants and was more to do with perceived excessive control and taxation from Madrid than anything else. The Basque movement, however, was fuelled by cultural and racial issues more than economic ones. What had always been a rural region with a deeply traditional and religious people, was quickly becoming an industrial centre with mass immigration from other parts of Spain and all the ‘ungodliness’ typical of the new industrial towns and cities. The self-governing powers that the Basque Country had always enjoyed had been revoked due to their support of the Carlist side during the Carlist Wars. The founder of the Basque Nationalist Party, Sabino Arana, campaigned for support under the slogan “God and self-government”. Arana was responsible for designing the Basque national flag (with his brother), reviving the long in-decline Basque language and Neo-Darwinist rants which wouldn’t have looked out of place in Nazi Germany, like this one:

“A great number of them[non-Basque Spaniards] seem to be undeniable testimony of Darwin’s theory, since rather than men they resemble apes, rather less beastly than gorillas: do not search in their faces for the expression of human intelligence nor of any virtue; their eyes only reveal idiocy and brutishness.”

However, Arana’s ‘racial purity’ fears struck a chord with the Basques who felt threatened by the arrival of so many maketos (non-Basque Spanish).
Indeed, ’ungodliness’ was growing all the time all over Spain as the influence and power of the Church fuelled resentment of it. A short-lived First Republic gave an addictive taster to liberal-minded Spaniards before the Bourbon monarchy was restored. Army generals had taken to stepping in and seizing control of the government whenever things got shaky and, to avoid this, the conservative Cánovas del Castillo devised a system of election rigging, designed to keep everyone happy. Conservatives swapped power with progressives every four years, something which destroyed parliament’s last shred of credibility among the people. Cánovas de Castillo was assassinated while serving as prime minister in 1897, his killer was an Italian anarchist.
This turmoil would be dwarfed a year later, though, when Spain’s self-image would hit an all-time low.

Feeling good to be Spanish? Part 1

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Medina Mayrit

2008-11-28T01:17:00.004+01:00

I went for a bath in the centre of Madrid

Opposite me here, in my little office, cum gym (well, there’s my exercise bike), cum guestroom, there’s a poster of Granada’s Alhambra. The magnificent Moorish fortified palace has always made me wonder how many beautiful things from Spain’s Muslim era were lost forever with the religious and ethnic cleansing of the Christian Reconquest.

Madrid did not become Spain’s capital until long after the Arabs had been defeated, converted, driven out and/or slain, but it owes its very name to its Arab former rulers. The site of Madrid was a strategic military point for the Arab kingdom of Toledo and during the ninth century they built a small palace and a citadel, al-Mudaina, close to a river to use as a water source that they called al-Majrit (which, not particularly imaginatively, means ‘source of water’ in Arabic). In modern Spanish, it’s a sure-fire assumption that any word beginning with ‘al’ comes straight from Arabic. In Madrid, you can see the Arabic footprint just by looking at the names of places. Try to find some tangible vestiges of Madrid’s Arab past, though, and it’s a different story.

When the Christians captured al-Mudaina in 1085, the mosque was converted into a church as was the practice throughout the Reconquista. Nearly all of the architecturally superior mosques across Spain were hurriedly knocked down and rebuilt, or built on top of, as inferior, and often quite ugly, churches; the Christians were in a great rush to impose themselves on their newly acquired lands and having a church in each settlement was important as having a fort. The new church in al-Mudaina was named Virgen de Almudena and, centuries later, inspired the construction of Madrid’s current cathedral, Catedral de la Almudena. Coincidentally, just opposite the cathedral are the Arab walls that are virtually the last vestiges of Moorish Madrid.

If you want to find anything more Moorish, you have to search deeper, literally. Just off what I call, not particularly affectionately, ‘Scallies’ Square’ (Plaza Jacinto Benavente), throbbing with thieves fencing their stolen goods, tourists, workers and locals all milling around, is the entrance to Medina Mayrit on Calle Atocha. A few steps into this building and the evolution of the name Madrid, from Matrit, Majerit and Mayrit (all coming from al-Majrit), makes perfect sense. What you find is a restored remnant of Arab Madrid’s water system: what was called al-gubb, hispanisised as aljibe, was a big cistern for storing water for drinking or bathing. The aljibe has been re-adapted as a hammam (Arab baths), and the vaulted pools, the smells, the atmosphere and the Andalusian chill out music combine to make you feel a lot closer to Moorish or Mudéjar Madrid than the madness its 21st century version just a few metres above.
As the warmth of the hot pool bursts back into me after a dip in the cold pool, I wonder about the Spanish attitude to their Arab past. It seems odd that the Spanish still talk about their Moorish era as an ‘occupation’; while Islam was driven out by turning the mosques into churches, Arab influence on the Spanish remains visible if you look closer at the Spaniard. Marta Sánchez Matamoros from El Escorial tells me a typically handsome Spanish man is, “Moreno con ojos grandes y negros” (tanned and brown haired, with big, dark brown eyes). Would that be moreno, as in the adjective meaning dark skinned or dark haired, like a moro (Moor)? Would what we consider ‘Spanish eyes’ exist without the mixture of Arab and European blood coursing through Spanish veins? The irony of Marta’s comment is that her second surname, Matamoros, means ‘Moorslayer’. Whether the madrileños around me accept their Arab heritage or are musing on the contradictions of Spain like me, they are happy to soak up the relaxation of Medina Mayrit, before returning to the madness of the city above.

Medina Mayrit

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The Will to win

2008-11-28T01:01:00.005+01:00

From May 2008:

Not only is the football season reaching its exciting climax – all the eyes of European basketball fans are on Madrid for the Euroleague Final Four, and the ACB Playoffs are still to look forward to at the end of the month. In an exclusive interview, Tau Cerámica player and New Orleans native Will McDonald talks to me about basketball in Europe, living in Madrid and the Basque Country, differences in mentality and small Spanish beds.

At the beginning of the month, European basketball will crown a new champion, and, this year Madrid hosts the Final Four- the semi finals and final of the Euroleague. The Spanish ACB regular season finishes mid-month, before the real excitement of the domestic season begins in the Playoffs.
Basketball is massive in Spain and, while it can’t compete with the immense popularity of football, it has been established as the country’s second sport for a long time.
This year, one Spanish club has made it to the Final Four, Tau Cerámica from the capital of the Basque Country, Vitoria. They will battle it out for European glory with Russia’s CSKA Moscow, Israel’s Maccabi Elite and Italy’s Montepaschi Siena. Playing for Tau, Will McDonald, a 2.07m (6ft9in) tall American, has been been through the experience of adapting to life in Madrid. The pro from New Orleans played for C.B. Estudiantes in the Spanish capital for two years, until moving to the north of Spain to play for Vitoria-based club, Tau Cerámica (official name Saski Baskonia).
Will was kind enough to take time out to talk to European Vibe Magazine:

What do you think of your chances of winning the Final Four and taking the trophy back to Vitoria?
Well, we got this far, why not go on and win? We’ve got the same chance as the other teams.

Who do you see as the biggest threat in the Final Four?
The team we play first, the Russians (CSKA Moscow). They’ve got the biggest budget of any team in Europe. They beat us over there, and here, too.

Do you think Real Madrid will be tough to beat in the ACB Playoffs?
Well we’ve beaten them every time we’ve played them this season, so they’ll be more worried about playing us than we are about playing them.

In your opinion, is there a clearly different style of play in Europe compared with the NBA (faster, slower, more or less technical, etc.)?
Totally, European basketball is to-tally different from American basketball... To me, over here the basketball is more fundamental. You have to be smart. You can’t just be a super athlete. You have to be smart, you have to know the game. There’s a lot of guys from here that go and play in the NBA, but it’s difficult for players fromthe NBA to come and play here. Players come here from the NBA and they get cut from their team, like, low teams within a month or two. You know, they go back home, because it’s not the same. It”s a different style of play. You have to know the game in European basketball.

Did you find it difficult?
Not so much, because I came here straight from college. I started off my first year playing in France, in a low league. I played well and was in a team with a bunch of older players. I played with three American players and two or them with French passports- so they’d been there for a long time. So they explained the game to me the whole year long.

Your first season in Spain was playing for Gran Canaria. After that, you played for Estudiantes for two years in Madrid. What did you think of the city when you lived here?
My first city in Spain was Las Palmas, but I went to Madrid and it was great. Great city and great people. The only reason I left was for a bigger team with a bigger budget and European games, you know. If I could have my cake and eat it, too, I’d be on this team but in Madrid!

(laughs) I suppose life in Vitoria is pretty different to Madrid? I mean, I know the city and it’s a lot quieter...
It’s very different, yeah. They’re more... they’re more serious here. Everything runs smoothly, everything is run more smoothly here. They’re kinda like...

More organised than in Madrid?
Yeah, almost like the military. (laughs)

(laughs) How do you find the Basque Country different from other parts of Spain?
They real proud. They’re like, everything they do is Basque, Basque, Basque... and I like that. I actually like that and think that’s what makes them a people, and different. Without being racist, being proud of your culture, you know. I really like that about them. And I love the food...

Yeah, It’s fantastic! And do they make you feel welcome up there, as an American?
Yeah, I never had any problems. And this is basketball, I mean the fans pretty much always make you feel welcome.

Have you encountered much racism in Spain?
Um... Sometimes. There’s racism everywhere. I’m from America, and to be honest wit you, I think there’s more racism in America, much more racism than in Spain. And I think, I don’t encounter much racism because of my profile. I think, my opinion is, if I was just a normal black guy walkiing down the street, then, yes, I’d encounter more. But maybe because the people know I’m a basketball player, they treat me different from a normal black person.

Away from the basketball court, what did you do to like to do here (in Madrid)?
In Madrid, I did everything I can think of! It was almost like being at home, I was around a whole bunch of people- from all types of different cultures... And I did everything from going to every restaurant you can go to, to going to the zoo, and the amusement park! And if I got a night off from practice, I’d go to the disco. Not just one type of disco but all kinds. I didn’t just want to go to certain discos because they had certain people there.

What was your favourite part of Madrid?
What’s that place... Cuatro Caminos. I was letting my hair grow, it was long and I would go to a Dominican, a Dominican shop to get it braided. I’d been going there and the people opened their arms to me, you know. Not from the basketball but just as a normal person. And then I was going to the dinner with the family, and just relaxing; I started hanging a lot in that neighbourhood. I felt kinda comfortable with the Dominican people.

What are the things you like most about Spain?
The only thing that’s really different is the people. My favourite part is just getting into different things. Every time I go out, go places I see something different. I learned something new nearly every time I went out in Madrid, every time. In Spain and Europe, it’s just got different aspects, the way I wanna live when I go back to America. I think that things are a little different here. When I go home, I don’t see the need for people to spend all their money on rings, jewellery; people don’t do that here. You could be standing next to someone in the street that has the smallest car you saw, and they could have the most money in Spain and you would never know.

Is there anything you still miss from home?
Of course my friends, that’s the hardest part of this. My friends and family, I mean, that’s my culture: I have been there all my life. I understand that culture better than I understand the Spanish culture of course, that’s why, during season I do my best to bring my family here. I have people stay with me and keep me company.

Do you think you will want to stay in Spain once your playing career is over?
Yeah, next year I’m buying a home. Once I’m finished playing, I’ll probably do six months over here, or five months over here...

Most of you basketball pros are pretty big guys. What with there being a wider selection in larger sizes, do you get team mates asking you to bring them clothes on visits back to the States?
All the time! My Spanish friends often want me bring them... T-shirts and stuff in the larger sizes. You get, like, ‘orders’ for these types of shoes... and hats and clothes in the bigger sizes, yeah.
I find Spanish beds are usually kind of short, length-wise, and I’m only 1.78 metres (Will is 2.07 metres tall). Have you been able to find a bed in Spain where you can stretch out?
No, I gotta have a special bed! We have it in the contract that they put a special bed in the apartment.

will mcdonald exclusive interview euroleague final four 2008

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Ireland in 5 days

2008-11-28T00:30:00.004+01:00

Currently the world’s number one in the Quality-of-life index, I show you some of the things that have always made Ireland a spellbinding place, on a five-day road trip around the west and north.

"Sure, I haven’t the time to clean me arse”, a man said to me when I asked him if he was in a hurry, while I was working in a bar in Ireland a few years ago.
You might not use exactly the same expression, but you’ll be thinking something to the same effect if you try to see all that Ireland has to offer in one trip. Ireland is one sixth the size of Spain. It’s smaller than Castile and León or Andalusia, but unless you have a couple of months to spare, it’s best to choose your route realistically and concede that at the end of your trip you’ll be wishing you had more time to spend in the places you’ve visited.
Ignoring Dublin, and Belfast and the southern half of the island, we’ve decided to take you on a road trip from the west, going northwards up the coast and eastwards across the top of the Emerald Isle. There’s a lot of driving on our chosen route, but we’ve carefully picked out the highlights based on a five-day trip.

Due west and a three-and-a-quarter-hours drive from Dublin, our first stop is the capital of the Gaelic West, Galway. This is where the natives told me you can find the best pint of Guinness outside Dublin, as The Black Stuff is said to lose its quality the more it’s shaken, and the direct Dublin-Galway rail route keeps jiggling to a minimum. Whether stout is your drink or not, you’ll love the pubs and going-out scene in Galway. Lots of pubs have kept a Gothic feel and are charming outside and in, not that looks are necessary to add atmosphere to a place with a bouncing, youthful vibe. The city’s two colleges ensure a constant rejuvenation, although its reputation as the cultural capital of Ireland gives it a far wider appeal to people other than students. From spring to late summer, it always seems that there’s some festival going on. During the months of July and August, Galway fills up with young Spaniards trying to immerse themselves in English. Ironically, most of their practice comes with Italians, Swiss and Koreans who have all had the same idea. You will want to stay longer, especially when your effortlessly acquired hangover kicks in, but now it’s time to go into the wild and begin the real road trip.

Moving westward into Connemara, the landscapes can change quite dramatically. From the lush banks of Lough Corrib to the harsh, rocky land with tough grasses, where I thought I’d landed on the fictional Craggy Island from the TV comedy series Father Ted, you can feel the remoteness of the region and a kind of beauty that is different from what you find elsewhere. This isolation from the rest of the country explains why it has the biggest Gaeltacht, Irish Gaelic-speaking area, in Ireland. Oughterard, a fishing village on Lough Corrib, is worth a short stop, but the must-see in Connemara is the stunning Kylemore Abbey, the site where Belgian nuns fleeing from World War I founded a Benedictine nunnery. The two mountain ranges that contrast the loughs of Connemara are Maam Turks and The Twelve Bens. You will pass the foot of the latter on the main road northbound after the area’s biggest town, Clifden. The French singer, Michel Sardou, has immortalised the region for generations of French people with his song, Les lacs du Connemara, which has attained epic status. The lyrics to the song are almost as well-known in France as those of the national anthem and you shouldn’t be surprised if you hear it pumping out as the last big song of the night in clubs from Paris to Bordeaux to Marseille.

Northwards again towards Mayo and taking the coastal road past Louisburgh, we come across Ireland’s holy mountain of Croagh Patrick. The mountain already had religious importance before Christianity arrived in Ireland, but it was at this site, in the fifth century, that Saint Patrick reputedly completed a 40-day fast, while building a church at the same time and finishing up by banishing all the snakes and serpents of Ireland. When it was discovered that snakes had been extinct in Ireland since the last Ice Age, some interpreted that the legend referred to the symbolic use of serpents by pagan druids at the time. Whatever truth lies behind the legend, Croagh Patrick remains an important site of pilgrimage and draws around 25,000 pilgrims every year on the last Sunday of July (and you’re supposed to do it barefoot). Not far away is the attractive and relaxed town of Westport, in Clew Bay. This is a place with the kind of easy-going atmosphere I love about Ireland. It was in a pub near here a few years ago (not actually in Westport, granted) that I left a jacket wedged between a fruit machine and a wall and found it still there when I came back six months later (stinking of stale tobacco and beer, but still there).
Cutting through County Mayo, past Castlebar and Charlestown, we enter County Sligo and head straight for Sligo Town. As well as giving us a base to visit seaside resorts like Strandhill and the impressive Lough Gill (home to W.B. Yeats’ famous island of Innisfree), Sligo is a great place for a night-out, and at the top if you want to see live traditional music. One of the best pubs is Sheila na Gig, owned by the well-known band, Dervish, but there are plenty of other good venues to drink and listen to music.

Ever northward into County Donegal and westward beyond Donegal Town, we come to the old fishing port of Killybegs, to rest in the bay and prepare ourselves for what comes next: the highest sea cliff in Europe. The Slieve League is probably not the best place for you if you suffer from vertigo, even the road going up from Teelin can be a bit scary. It’s always windy, but if it is too much so, or there is heavy fog, you may have to miss out on seeing the summit. However, if the weather permits and you can stomach it, the 600-metre precipice provides breathtaking views as the waves crash and froth silently at the bottom of the cliff, which, encrusted with amber deposits, seems to glow yellow, orange and red in the light. I don’t know it’s true, but people say that on a clear day, you can see one third of the island from the top.
We go north for the last time in the Republic of Ireland, passing Glenveagh National Park on the way, to Dunfanaghy. Here, you can visit the workhouse, restored as a history centre in remembrance of the Great Famine in the 19th century, and you can see the wild beauty of the cliffs at Horn Head.
Our journey turns eastward and we pass Donegal’s biggest town, Letterkenny, before crossing the border and Derry (or Londonderry), the only city in northwestern Ireland, and continuing beyond Coleraine. The route across the top of Northern Ireland takes us to the seaside resort of Portrush, and this is our base to explore the nearby distillery in Bushmills. The Old Bushmills Distillery is the oldest licensed distillery in the world, with its 400-year anniversary of being licensed this year, although there are claims that whiskey was being made there 400 years before that. Just three kilometres north is the Giant’s Causeway; a UNESCO World Heritage Site and regularly number one in lists of must-see attractions in Ireland. The unnatural-looking rock formation was explained by the legend of the Irish warrior-giant, Finn McCool (Fionn mac Cumhaill), and the Scottish giant, Benandonner. The Causeway had suposedly been built all the way from Ireland to Scotland, so Finn McCool could fight the Scottish giant. Seeing that Benandonner was much bigger than him, Finn McCool got his wife to cover him with a blanket and pretended he was the baby-son of himself. When the Scottish giant saw the size of the ‘baby’, he fled back to Scotland and ripped up the Causeway as he went, so Finn could not follow him. The reality is a less exciting story of volcanic eruptions that left thousands of interlocked basalt columns as lava cooled. I personally prefer to fantasise about the giants’ mythology, and the setting makes it easy to suspend belief.

With the road trip coming to an end, our road back to Dublin goes south past Belfast and into the Republic again. If you can allow yourself one last detour, then make it Newgrange. The famous prehistoric site is a passage tomb that predates the Egyptian Pyramids and Stonehenge. This could be the last bit of magic on a trip filled with it. And that’s how we leave Ireland this time, with a quote as true now as when it was said in 1958, “God made the grass, the air and the rain; the grass, the air and the rain made the Irish; and the Irish turned the grass, the air and the rain back into God”.

Ireland in 5 Days

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Magnetic Corr

2008-11-28T00:15:00.001+01:00

While her brother and sisters are off having babies, the baby of The Corrs is making her own music and attracting a different audience from that of the immensely successful Irish outfit.

Thinking of The Corrs brings back some interesting memories for me. For example, I once lived with a couple who sometimes had rather fiery arguments. The arguments always concluded with the girl in the couple slamming their bedroom door, putting on The Corrs’ song, I never loved you anyway, and throwing her boyfriend’s personal effects around, amid loud crashes. Fortunately, her ire only seemed to last for the four minutes or so that the song was playing. The volume always came down as the next song kicked in (which, I think, appropriately considering this behaviour, was So Young), which was her boyfriend’s cue to go in and begin reconciliation. The couple are still together today; it seems they, like The Corrs, have matured together.

The quartet of siblings from Dundalk; Andrea, Caroline, Sharon and Jim formed their band in 1990. Andrea, the youngest of the four, was just 15 at the time and Caroline and she were still at school. The following year, things got off the ground when they auditioned for the BAFTA and Golden Globe-winning film, The Commitments. Although Caroline, Sharon and Jim made only minor appearances as musicians and Andrea had a small speaking part, they succeeded in getting a manager and began to tour Ireland over the next few years.

They were signed to Atlantic Records in 1995 and, by 1996, they had been reaching the top of the charts in Ireland, New Zealand and Australia. A year later, they had supported Céline Dion and were bringing out a second album, Talk on Corners, which built on their success with Forgiven, Not Forgotten. Both albums now made it into the top four in Spain, but it took a remix of Talk on Corners, and a mind-blowing performance at the Royal Albert Hall on Saint Patrick’s Day 1998, to send The Corrs rocketing to the top of the charts in the UK. The first thing that really brought them into my consciousness was hearing the cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams on the radio, with a beautiful Irish sound and the gorgeous, sweet vocals of Andrea Corr.

When saw the video, I think I fell in love three times in seven tenths of a second. The striking beauty of the three sisters sparked a phenomenon in staffrooms, offices factories and bars all over the world. In at least three places I’ve worked, men have sat around discussing the great dilemma: “If you could sleep with all The Corrs (but it has to be all four of them) or sleep with none of The Corrs, what would you choose?”

After years of commercial success, the band’s popularity started to wane, and the siblings made the mutual decision to take a break from The Corrs; Caroline, Sharon and Jim all to raise their families and Andrea to pursue solo projects. Andrea explains, “By the time we made our last record, everyone was either pregnant or with new babies and so they needed to tale time out... and obviously I wasn’t doing any of that”. Inevitably, as she began to promote her first solo album, Ten Feet High, interviewers all wanted to know why she wasn’t having children and raising a family like her brother and sisters. “I look forward to it. I’m just not at that point in my life yet”, were the polite but firm words that Andrea honed to end that line of questioning.

Explaining her decision to start a solo career, she says, “There had been a record deal from about two records previously and I didn’t take it because I was obviously happy within The Corrs. I’d already written some songs, so I thought, ‘Maybe it’s fate; I should push myself and do it’.” Nevertheless, the idea of emerging alone from the protective and close-knit environment of The Corrs after 16 years was a giant leap out her comfort zone and it must have been very daunting. However, she received support from two Dublin friends, U2’s Bono and Gavin Friday, and she cites their help as she developed her album, “They very much gave me the confidence to do it. I would play them my songs, as I wrote them, on the piano. It was going in a different direction and they embraced that”.

Ten Feet High came out last summer and it was indeed very different from The Corrs’ brand of Irish pop-rock, “It took four people to create that sound and this is just me on my own”. The record has been most successful here in Spain, where it got to number nine in the charts, although its reception elsewhere was disappointing: it peaked at 38 in the UK album charts. The first single from the album, Shame on you (to keep my love from me), is still receiving good radio-play in Spain, but was largely overlooked in the rest of Europe. It’s an anti-war protest disguised as an upbeat dance tune and received good reviews, but they haven’t translated into commercial success. Reviews were mixed for the album itself, which is an eclectic selection of story-based songs. Its eclecticism is perhaps its commercial downfall: trawling through the mixed reviews, I found that everyone seemed to like something about the album, but didn’t agree on what. Maybe, though, what Andrea needs to do is be patient and wait for people to catch on to what she is doing, rather like The Corrs had to in the beginning. Andrea says what she thinks on her website: “I'm thrilled with the results. Even if nothing happens with it, I'll go to my grave happy I've done it. But naturally, I hope it does do well. I kind of think it deserves to". I think it deserves more recognition, too. Watching some of the acoustic versions of her songs on youtube, I couldn’t help thinking she would have kept more of The Corrs fans loyal with a stripped-down style. But Andrea is trying new things, and I’m kind of hoping her siblings will stay concentrated on raising their families a little longer, so we can see what she does next as a solo artist.
In any case, she isn’t asking, “What can I do to make you love me?”, but challenging herself to make the kind of music she wants.

Andrea Corr has collaborated on U2’s tribute song, The ballad of Ronnie Drew, for Ronnie Drew of The Dubliners (and pioneer English teacher in Spain in the 50s) who is suffering from throat cancer. The song is available now as a download and the profits go to the Irish Cancer Society.

Books made into films

2008-11-27T15:33:00.002+01:00

The journey from the page to the pixel is one of constant difficulty for directors and producers around the world. So, just which books make good films? Luc Ciotkowski explains all.

If “Sequels are never as good as the first one” is the biggest cliché to come out of people’s mouths as they walk out of the cinema, then “It wasn’t as good as the book, though” must be a close second. I’ve never liked it, for me it’s a bit like comparing your mum and your dad: you might like both, one or neither of them, but it’s not really fair to compare. There are nearly as many books adapted into films as ones made from original screenplays and the degree of success has varied hugely. The one thing film adaptations always have in common is elision (leaving things out). The most famous attempt to put every single thing from the book into the film was the adaptation of the novel, McTeague, in 1924. The result was a 16-hour-long silent film, called Greed.

Unsurprisingly, not many people have tried to do the same thing since. Knowing what to leave out and what to change has always been the secret of making a book into a movie, a ‘boovie’. Books with lots of internal monologues, where a big part of the story is told by the characters’ thoughts, are particularly difficult to show on film. The traditional way to get around this was the voice over. Voice overs were a very popular device for expressing what was difficult to show through visuals or dialogue. The problem is that it’s incredibly easy for this to come across as cheesy, taking away from the film’s credibility, and it’s now associated with old films. Blade Runner, adapted from Philip K. Dick’s Do androids dream of electric sheep?, notably used voice over and consciously created an ‘old film’ feel. The film was a huge critical success despite diverging substantially from the book.
More recently, The Lord of the Rings enjoyed enormous success, in spite of the author of the book labelling it ’unfilmable’. The gigantic book, which takes most people a couple of months to read, had to be stripped down ruthlessly and even then the result was three films with a total running time of ten hours. 17 Oscars and an army of fans all over the world gave Peter Jackson’s adaptation the thumbs up. Only the saddest obsessives of the book, with doctorates in Elvish and enhanced pointy-ears complain about departures from the book.

Another commercial success was 2006’s second highest grossing movie, The Da Vinci Code. Even though it made money and featured an all-star cast, the adaptation of the smash-hit novel was panned by critics and audiences alike. The suspense and intrigue that was conjured up on the page just didn’t make it onto the screen.
Sometimes, of course, you can have your hands tied behind your back if the source material isn’t up to scratch. Scientology conman, Ron Hubbard, had his paper-wasting Battlefield Earth adapted to the screen with his disciple John Travolta in the lead role. This frequent winner of ‘the worst film of all time’ didn’t so much provoke comparisons between the book and the film as comments like, “What on earth was that?”

There will always be good ones and bad ones and, to sum up, the South African poet, Roy Campbell, once said something very interesting about translations, and I think we can apply it to adaptations: Book to film adaptations (like wives) are seldom strictly faithful if they are in the least attractive.

Books made into films

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Watched Battlefield Earth again recently. Still can't work out what the feck it's meant to be.

Edinburgh

2008-11-27T05:02:00.001+01:00

A fairy tale, a ghost story, a period drama, a romance, a crime thriller or a story about drug-addiction; walk around Edinburgh for a weekend and you’ll see how it’s a fantastic place for any of these. You might even feel like you’re in one (with a little luck neither of the last two). No visitor who I’ve spoken to has failed to comment on its striking beauty, but there’s something more about my other home city that makes people fall in love with it. It’s something mysterious, and something magical.

About 350 million years ago a series of volcanoes collapsed, cooled and became extinct a few miles from the southern banks of the Forth estuary. Glaciers came in from the west during the Ice Age and ripped out the softer rocks, leaving craggy rock faces to the west and long sloping tails to the east, made of the debris dragged in that direction by the glaciers. Now, I know this is a bit like being at school, but it’s important because when you see Arthur’s Seat, a great big 250-metre hill covered in wild grass and with rocky crags on one side, you will ask yourself, “How the hell did that get into the middle of a city?” On a smaller scale, but even more dramatic, while you walk down the main shopping thoroughfare, Princes Street, one side holds nothing more than a row of Georgian buildings tarnished by shops you find in any UK city. If you look across the road, beyond the passing double-decker buses, you see a swath of gardens, a rocky cliff and a castle on the top that will make your jaw drop. This still blows my mind and I can only guess the impact it makes the first time someone sees it.

From Edinburgh Castle, the Royal Mile tapers down the hill to the Palace of Holyroodhouse (the Queen’s official residence in Scotland) and this, along with the buildings in the ravine to the south, makes up the Old Town. Here you’ll find winding streets and dark closes; passages and stairways between tenement buildings linking streets and courtyards. Moving north past Princes Street Gardens, which used to be the castle’s moat until it was drained, the 18th century New Town begins and contains some of the best Georgian architecture still in existence. This contrast of the Old Town (Medieval) and New Town (Georgian), a UNESCO World Heritage site, is what makes Edinburgh so atmospheric and what inspired Robert Barker to invent the term ’panorama’ to describe the style he used to fit everything in when he painted the city.
A great vantage point to see all of this is Calton Hill, at the east end of Princes Street. Up here, as well as being able to appreciate the juxtaposition of Medieval, Georgian and present-day architecture, you can see several monuments close up, including the half-finished National Monument. ’Edinburgh’s Disgrace’, as it is also known, was modelled on the Parthenon in Athens and helped the city earn the nickname, ’Athens of the North’. The Edinburgh Festival in August and Hogmanay (New Year) party are what make the city world famous, but a celebration that is getting bigger every year is the Beltane Fire Festival. On the night of 30th April, Calton Hill is host to a pagan fertility festival with thousands of people (lots of them naked) gathering to celebrate the traditional start of summer with a procession and a re-enactment of a ritual sacrifice carried out by people in body paint.

Since a direct air route opened last year, Edinburgh is just three hours from Madrid, and, although there’s far too much to see in a weekend, you can get through a lot in this compact, easy-to-get-around city. A ₤5 open return gets you from the airport to the city centre and a ₤2.50 day ticket lets you hop on and off buses that will take you pretty much everywhere you need to go. ’Fast black’ taxis will get you where you want quickly, but they’ll sting your wallet if you’re used to Madrid taxi prices. You can get around much of city and see a lot more by foot. (Girls should save heels for the evening; there are a lot of cobbled streets!) Bed and breakfasts are the best accommodation for you to get a look inside the lovely, high-ceilinged stone tenements, although checking out times feel horrendously early compared with hotels in Spain.

My recommendations in the style of a rip-off of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting: choose the Castle, choose Arthur’s Seat, choose the Meadows (but not at night when you’re liable to get mugged), choose drinking in Rose Street in the day and the Grassmarket at night, choose a Scottish breakfast with square sausage and potato scones, choose keeping away from the aromas of the brewery if you’ve got a hangover, choose climbing the Scott Monument to work off a hangover, choose food and some whisky at Whiski Bar on the Royal Mile, choose descending into the Edinburgh Vaults and pishing yourself with fright, choose the Royal Yacht Britannia, choose enjoying a drink on Leith Waterfront, choose saving some money at the end of it all to buy shortbread and vanilla fudge.

Forget ’Athens of the North’... Athens could be more flattered with ’Edinburgh of the South’. Just make sure you learn how to pronounce it properly before you go.

Edinburgh

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Let's get a tattoo and write about it

2008-11-27T04:50:00.002+01:00

You see, tattoos are cool. It’s cool to have a tattoo. When I was a little boy, if I thought about tattoos, I thought about Popeye the sailor man. Today little kids think about tattoos and they think about David Beckham, Angelina Jolie and many other celebrities they consider fashionable. Now it’s a much bigger feature of popular culture and it doesn’t matter what class, sex or social tribe you belong to; tattoos are appearing in all of them. If the leader of the British Conservative Party’s wife can have a tattoo (and she does), then we can safely say that general attitudes to tattooing are far more accepting and positive than in the past.

Some time ago

The last time I walked into a tattoo parlour was the summer of 2003. I woke up one morning and decided I would like to get my foreskin pierced. I made the trip to an establishment called ‘Dragon’s Lair’, a place with a name, look and feel that screamed everything I believed typical of a tattoo parlour. As I walked in the Scottish sunshine, I clearly remember feeling more apprehensive about going into that place than at the prospect of a five-inch needle going through my genitalia.
So, hang on a minute, why was I going to a place that gave me the creeps to make a hole in my mole? Well, I’d been there five years before to get my nipple pierced. I marched back into the same tattoo parlour and declared to the tattooist what I wanted to have pierced. It was a different guy this time and he looked surprised when I enquired about the ‘Prince Albert’ piercing. He said he didn’t do piercing and so I asked about the man who had done my nipple. He told me that the other guy had died two weeks previously of a heart attack. I took it as a sign that I wasn’t meant to get my foreskin pierced that day. Maybe one day I would get a tattoo instead…

Thursday

As I walk the 20 metres or so from Opera metro to Dark Tattoo’s premises, a 300-year-old Madrid de los Austrias building on Calle Escalinata, I’m pleased it was described to me as, “A nice, clean place”.
Eduardo, Dark Tattoo’s owner, gives me a friendly greeting and escorts me into the tattoo studio. I say ‘studio’ because that’s what it is, I can’t bring myself to use the word ‘parlour’; this is nothing like any tattoo parlour I’ve seen before. It’s sort of sparkly clean, but not in an operating theatre way. The decoration is minimalist and I keep thinking of a mix between a designer jewellery shop and a fashionable new Malasaña bar. Maybe cool without being cold would be a good way to describe it. From the red couch I’m sitting on I can see five doors in the studio with big stylised writing: ‘piercing’; ‘tattoo’; ‘esterilización’ and the men’s and women’s bathrooms. Eduardo finishes with a customer and sits down for a chat. “I want to give the customers the kind of attention I like to receive. We spend time with customers preparing the design and making sure it’s just right”. We ask everyone to come back a week after having the tattoo done so we can explain all they need to know about the aftercare. I don’t want someone’s tattoo to turn out less than the best it can because of not being looked after properly.”

The moment that definitively separates Dark Tattoo from what I associate with a tattoo parlour comes when Eduardo goes to put some music on and offers me the choice, “Do you prefer Frank Sinatra or Buddha Bar?” I’m thinking that the greasy biker guy I saw in Dragon’s Lair nine years ago, moshing to some very loud heavy metal while he waited, would hate this place. So, as the chilled out sounds of Buddha Bar fade in, I ask what kind of people come to the studio. Eduardo says there’s a bit of everything. “A few weeks ago, a 70-year-old woman came in to get a butterfly tattoo on her back. She said, ‘I’ve still got a lovely back, you know’”. Two thirds of his customers are women: “Girls are far more adventurous than guys in the designs and parts of the body they get tattooed and they make up between 65 and 70% of my overall customers.”
What about nationalities, then? It must help that Eduardo speaks fluent English (he worked as a company executive in London for years before opting for a lifestyle change). “Quite a lot of Americans come over here, see people with piercings and think, ‘I want one’. They often get a piercing as soon as they arrive, knowing they can always take it out before they go back. Some come from places where getting tattoos or piercings is considered really bad and the atmosphere here is much more open to it.”
I show Eduardo the design for my tattoo and he’s surprised by my decision to cut off the head of the lion (which does sound odd when you say it like that), but I’ve got a modification plan and we make an appointment for tomorrow.

Friday

I meet the tattoo artist, Gonzo, who is going to be my best friend today. I will let him say anything he wants to me except, “Whoops”, “Oh shit” or “I’ve gone wrong”.
He makes alterations to my tattoo design on Photoshop, then on paper, and finally I end up with a traced transfer of the outline on my right calf. Now is my last chance to run away... No, it looks great and it’s what I want, just please don’t let it be too painful. Here we go.
The needle makes first contact and, yes, that’s sore. But it’s not that bad. Feels a bit like a friction burn. I decide I’m going to shut up until he finishes the outline. I hope he doesn’t go wrong. The pain gets better and soon the outline is finished. The filling in is going to take some time, but I’m relaxed now and we’re chatting away. “People make it difficult to be a tattooist. They don’t consider it a proper job. Friends and family tend to think of it as a hobby. My dad would much prefer me to work in a stable office job from nine to six and not be finishing work on a Saturday at midnight.”
I’m feeling quite good now. Apparently, endorphins are now rushing around my head and numbing the pain. Maybe that’s why some people claim they enjoy the pain of getting a tattoo and keep going back for more.
“I remember the dates of every single tattoo I‘ve got and I’ve got a lot of them”, says Gonzo. “Exactly how many I’ve got is a difficult question to answer. I’m working on my pyjamas.” He goes on to explain the Japanese tradition of progressively tattooing the entire body from neck to ankle, also known as ‘pyjamas’. Although I don’t want to throw a word like ‘infectious’ around with a guy who is poking me with a needle, that’s exactly what his passion and enthusiasm are.

As we wind up after a very quick, though not strictly painless two hours, Gonzo explains his opinion about tattoos: “A tattoo isn’t a drawing, that’s just what other people can see. For the person who gets it done, it’s a moment of your life; an association with experiences, memories and emotions”. Well, I’ve got my tattoo now, Gonzo wraps it up in cling film, talks me through aftercare and shows me how they clean up. He tells me that what inspired him to get his first tattoo was seeing a dragon on someone’s back at the beach when he was fourteen. I don’t know if my headless lion will inspire anybody, but I’m certainly very happy with it.

On the tattoo trail

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Warhol on Warhol

2008-11-27T04:43:00.002+01:00

You find culture in bars, in the street, in the queue at the baker’s and in the supermarket: wherever people are. What do you find in an art gallery? Paintings and stuff. There’s some culture in them, yeah, but there’s a hell of a lot more in the people who are walking around the art gallery.”

So went my rant to my girlfriend a few weeks ago as I struggled to justify having never set foot inside an art exhibition after more than two years living in Madrid. The triangle of the Prado, Reina Sofía and Thyssen-Bornemisza art museums and other exhibitions make Madrid one of the most important centres of art in Europe. I’ll let you decide if that means I’m an uncultured pig, but, either way, I’m willing to accept I’ve been stupid not to take advantage of having these things on my doorstep. However, I stand by what I said about culture, even the bit about being in the queue at the baker’s. In general, a British person will resign himself to waiting quietly in a queue, even if he is alone. A Spanish person is constantly trying to engineer some way of jumping the queue and the only thing that preserves the queue is the fact that everyone else in it is doing exactly the same thing. The way people, as a group, act and behave: culture. I don’t think paintings of cherubs flying about holding mirrors for beautiful, chubby, naked women are particularly useful in understanding 17th century Spanish culture. I’m not taking anything away from Velázquez; his paintings show an exceptional talent and skill. That’s what I want from art, beautiful things, not like a bunch of soup cans. Wait a minute; a load of soup cans would say a lot more about culture! But that wouldn’t really be art, right? I’m going to need Andy Warhol to make sense of this.

A bizarre, pervy, autistic, wig-wearing freak of nature. Not necessarily in that order, but those were my first, uncensored and unflattering thoughts about Andy Warhol. When EV sent me to Warhol’s new exhibition, Warhol On Warhol, at La Casa Encendida in Madrid, I thought it was good going, to say he’s been dead for twenty years. Warhol died in 1987 after a routine gall bladder operation, because hospital staff pumped him too full of fluids and provoked a fatal heart attack. By then he had already cemented himself as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century and made himself synonymous with the pop art movement.

He was born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh in 1928 to immigrant parents from what is now Slovakia. His dad worked in a coal mine and the family were Byzantine Catholics (Andy continued practising this religion his whole life). As a child, Andy came down with a condition called St Vitus’ Dance. You might not have heard of the disease, but here in Spain, they have an expression about it. If someone asks you, “What’s wrong with you? Have you got St Vitus’ Dance?” it means you’re moving about and twitching annoyingly. The condition provokes twitchy involuntary movements and this, along with his blotchy skin pigmentation, made him an outcast at school. He spent periods of his childhood bed-ridden, collecting pictures of film stars, drawing and listening to the radio. He and his mother developed a strong bond. To me, it all sounds like the perfect recipe for growing an artist who is a bit weird and, in retrospect, Warhol said he thought his illness was a key factor in forming his skills, personality and preferences.

Warhol studied commercial art and went on to become a successful commercial artist in New York. In 1962, his Campbell’s soup cans paintings were first exhibited and sparked a controversy in the art world. Everyone was arguing whether painting everyday objects counted as art and discussing Warhol’s message that modern, popular culture was something to be celebrated. Warhol used celebrities like Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Kennedy as subjects for his now trademark silkscreen portraits and, through them, grew to be a celebrity in his own right. He opened his studio, ‘The Factory’, in New York and began to extend his artistic expression across all types of media. His giant Brillo boxes were his most famous ‘sculpture’ and the ‘supermarket’ exhibition was another occasion when people brought up the question, “Is this art?” Andy made over sixty films between 1963 and 1968, the most famous being ‘Chelsea Girls’, but the ones that grab my attention are ‘Sleep’ (six hours of a man sleeping) and ‘Blow Job’ (a thirty-five minute shot of someone’s mouth while supposedly being fellated).

It all nearly came to an end for Warhol in 1968, when another interesting character, Valerie Solanas, shot him (and an art critic) in the chest when he was in The Factory. She had submitted a script for a play called ‘Up Your Ass’ and had been demanding its return. On the day of the shooting, she had been informed that the script had been lost and was turned away before she came back with a gun. Warhol almost died and had to wear bandages for the rest of his life. After that, he withdrew from The Factory scene, but continued to build his reputation with high profile portrait commissions from the likes of Mick Jagger, John Lennon and Michael Jackson and by collaborating with talented new artists.

The Warhol On Warhol exhibition shows photographs and paintings by and of the artist (a few film projections, too) throughout his career. For me, it lets you in on how he did it, that is, to become the first artist to be a product and a producer without necessarily being the creator. He used famous things and famous people to become famous. Once he was famous, he made his friends famous by association. Once they were famous, they made him even more famous. His “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes” quote has not only been absorbed into the English language, but has proved prophetic with the advent of reality television and youtube.

Warhol is extremely quotable. I’ll tell you my favourite. It’s not the I-want-to-be-Oscar-Wilde, “I’m deeply superficial”, nor the cynical, “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art”. There is another prophecy come true... And it goes out to all the 30-year-olds in Spain who live with their parents and for whom mummy cooks, cleans and washes their clothes, “Since people are going to be living longer and getting older, they’ll just have to learn how to be babies longer.”
You were right, Andy.

Warhol on Warhol

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Real English - The Teacher Guide

2008-11-27T04:40:00.001+01:00

Real English The Teacher Guide

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Puente

2008-11-27T04:31:00.005+01:00

Bridge’, ‘long weekend’ or ‘bank holiday weekend’. No. None of them are quite there…

There was something strange about my first day in my current job. What I have since come to know as a bustling office, with about 40 people in a rush to do their jobs, phones ringing and a generally very busy-feeling atmosphere, was silent. Five or six people are ambling about and respecting an unspoken agreement to do as little work as possible. Only the odd phone call from Barcelona, Seville or some other regional office can spark them begrudgingly into action. I know that there is nothing unique about this situation and that it is being mirrored in almost every office or workplace in the autonomous region of Madrid. I’m not shocked by it, I had seen something similar when I lived in France and Spanish people often talk about days like this, but I haven’t lived in Spain long enough to be completely unsurprised by the scale of the standstill. It is Monday 14th May and tomorrow is the public holiday of San Isidro in the Comunidad de Madrid. Most Madrileños are probably feeling especially fond of their patron saint this year; he has given them a ‘puente’.

On my first trip to the coffee machine on that Monday a big calendar catches my eye. There are ten red days, two green days and two blue days to represent national, regional and local holidays. 14 public holidays! After weekends swallow some, you always get between 10 and 13 public holidays in Madrid. Mustn’t grumble.

Back there in the coffee room I have already worked out that we’ve got 12 holidays in 2007, but now I need to work out which days of the week they fall on. We’ve got one on a Monday and three on a Friday; what I call bank holiday weekends. We’ve got two on a Tuesday and two on a Thursday; what they call here the “puente”. Employers, realising that one working day between two days off usually results in productivity levels dipping somewhere below those of sloths on heroin, often let their workers take a day of annual leave (some companies even close for business). The day becomes a bridge between weekend and public holiday.

Now, I suspect the clichés about Spanish people being lazy might be floating into your head, but I think that would be unfair. Most Spanish companies still force their workers to take at least three of their four weeks of annual leave in July or August. Really, these little islands (with bridges) of respite are the only thing to take the sting out of 10 months of hard grind in a country with some of the longest working hours in Europe.

Spanish people seem determined to get the maximum benefit from these breaks and, as a result, roads, airports and train stations quickly become as congested as an obese man’s arteries. Newsreaders tell us where the traffic jams are and compare the road death statistics with last year. Nearly everyone has gone somewhere else, whether it’s the beach, the mountains, the country, another city, it doesn’t really matter as long as you go somewhere. Newly-arrived foreigners make contingency plans when they discover all the hotels in their destination of choice have been booked-up for three months.

Those who have to stay behind usually send their minds ‘de puente’, even if their bodies have gone to work.

I missed out on the puente on that Monday in May. But, each time the machine has whooshed coffee into my plastic cup over the last few weeks, those blue and red Thursdays on the calendar have been looming large and they are beginning to look more and more promising.

Puente

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