The other evening, while enjoying a quiet drink in a Madrid hotel bar, I struck up a conversation with an attractive, if over-groomed, young woman and her improbably handsome and well-dressed companion. The former was French, the latter American. Still in their mid-twenties, they seemed wealthy, and were well traveled, having made a number of references to returning from, or going to, exotic, far-away locations. Eventually I asked what they did for a living. “We work for an international company that sends us around the world,” the woman answered mysteriously. “Oh,” I said, asking on a hunch, “do you work in advertising?” “Well, kind of,” answered the woman, with the air of somebody … [Read more...] about Madrid, capital of the special advertising section
Farewell to Delibes’ rural dissent
Miguel Delibes, who died on March 12 at the age of 89, was born in Valladolid, the capital of Castile, where he lived his entire life. He was typically Castilian in many ways: serious, courteous and unostentatious to the point of austere; less common in this conservative region, he was also a liberal democrat. Delibes described his work as “Castile speaking”; he spoke of the lives of rural people and the disappearance of rural communities as Franco tightened his stranglehold on the countryside in the 1950s and 1960s through an unholy alliance between landowners and the Catholic Church. Like many other artists who lived through the Franco years, Delibes spent his life fighting a … [Read more...] about Farewell to Delibes’ rural dissent
A cinema industry locked in confusion
Two new films have just won the top prizes in their respective countries: Celda 211 (or Cell 211), by Spanish director Daniel Monzón; and A Prophet, directed by France’s Jacques Audiard. Both are prison dramas. Both are currently on release in Spain. Both are box office smashes. And that’s pretty much where the similarities end. A Prophet is a confidently directed, superbly acted, universal story of a young man’s rite of passage into hell; at the same time it’s an indictment of France’s brutal prison system, where a disproportionate number of Arabs are locked away, often for relatively minor crimes. Celda 211, on the other hand, is a lacklustre yarn based on a formulaic script, … [Read more...] about A cinema industry locked in confusion
Only the lonely: bank robbery with a political conscience
Despite the fact he was Spain's most-wanted man for 13 years, there has been relatively little media coverage of the recently published autobiography of Jaime Giménez Arce, aka El Solitario (the loner). The 54-year-old former bank robber is serving a 47-year sentence for the murder of two civil guards in 2000, so he won't be doing the rounds of the chat shows any time soon to promote Me llaman El Solitario: autobiografía de un expropriador de bancos (They call me the Loner: autobiography of an expropriator of banks). So what does El Solitario, who was arrested in Portugal in 2007 as he plotted his next heist, tell us about those 13 years of bank jobs, what motivated him to take up a life … [Read more...] about Only the lonely: bank robbery with a political conscience
Laporta: first we take Barcelona
What do you do after making one of the world’s most successful football clubs even more successful? If you’re outgoing Barcelona president Joan Laporta, you think about going into politics. Catalan politics. Bound by the football club’s two-terms-only rule, the 47-year-old will be out of a job by June 30, by which time Barcelona’s 100,000 members must elect a new president. Press reports suggest that Laporta will announce his intention to run in the regional elections due in Catalonia this autumn. Over the last year, his political ambitions have gradually taken shape. He briefly flirted with the two main nationalist groupings, the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), and the conservative … [Read more...] about Laporta: first we take Barcelona
Jailed for telling the truth
As you read this, the General Council of the Judiciary, the body that oversees the activities of Spain’s judges and courts, will be frantically searching for a way to limit the damage Judge Ricardo Rodríguez Fernández has caused after sentencing two journalists to 21 months in jail for publishing the names of 78 political party members on the internet. Baffling would be the politest way to describe the judge’s decision, which has dismayed defenders of freedom of speech and dealt a blow to the credibility of Spain's judicial system. The story dates back to 2003, when Daniel Anido and Rodolfo Irago, respectively the director and news chief of the SER radio network, were following up a … [Read more...] about Jailed for telling the truth
Never a prophet in his own land?
First, the Goyas. He was in the running for best original screenplay, but didn’t make it. More importantly for many, Pedro Almodóvar returned on February 14 to Spain’s top movie awards ceremony after a five-year absence to hand Daniel Monzón the best film prize for Celda 211. His presence was highly symbolic, given that Broken Embraces had been overlooked for Spain’s top film prize, as had he for best director. The film was nominated in five categories, among them best screenplay; in the end it won best soundtrack. This year, the story is that the director and the Academy have made their peace, even if Almodóvar rejected a very public plea from the organization’s president, Alex de la … [Read more...] about Never a prophet in his own land?