Summer Solstice

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21/06/2020

Best time to get honey

From time immemorial, after winter the snow disappear and warmth covers the foliage with green shoots and garlands the earth with flowers. Many of which were used for medicinal remedies.

According to tradition, the best time to collect honey from hives was the first full moon in June. With that honey they prepared a magic drink that they supplied during the month following the union of married couples to foment love and to guarantee the fertility of the newlyweds.

In the Scandinavian cultures it was customary for newlyweds to drink libations during the wedding ceremony and the first lunation mead was toasted in memory of Odin, father of the Norse gods. Its consumption also extended to other cultures. Thus, this nectar of the gods was known in the time of classical Greece under the name of melikraton and the Romans took it mulled with wine, aqua mulsum.

The Festival of Litha

Before the Christian era, during the night of 21 June, the northern hemisphere also celebrated the festival of Litha. During this night, it was tradition to collect flowers and plants with the belief that they possessed healing powers. In addition, they lit bonfires after sunset to ward off the evil spirits. The festival of Litha is preceded by the feast of the goddess Beltane, which marks the summer solstice in Celtic tradition, followed by the Lughnasadh festival, or the wedding of the god Lug on 1 August.

In the northern hemisphere, when the sun passes through the Tropic of Cancer, the summer solstice marks the beginning of the summer season. Following this tradition, the month of June continues to be preferred for weddings and possibly the honeymoon has its origin in this tradition.

According to the opinion of some anthropologists, the solstice and its celebrations have been present since Neolithic times, and today it is still considered one of the most important celebrations of the year in the cultures of northern Europe, as it remains in some Occitan valleys, like the so-called Crèma deth Taro in the town of Arties (Val d’Aran) which is celebrated on the night of 23 June, and in which a fir tree trunk is jumped by young people and then dragged along the streets to the sound of music and cheers. According to popular belief, the people are purified and the evil spirits are banished.

So while each one of us awaits what future the stars hold in store for this summer, as we observe the Moon, Mars and Saturn on this magical night, some of us may not be able to avoid untying some of the bands that bind our memories to our skin. And we too may end up invoking the spirit of Litha grant us the divine grace of dreamed-of kisses tasting of honey and desire.

Barcelona’s blotted out history of hygiene, fecal waste business and the Caganers.

By

Esa Ennelin

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19/06/2020

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Barcelona has almost 2000 years of special connection with neatness and human feces.

There are a lot of peculiar histories, but one of my favourites is the history of hygiene and cleaning services of Barcelona.

The neatness of the old town has been a matter of controversy for centuries. From Roman baths, through scarcity of hygiene of Christians in the medieval times, to the business of fecal waste pickers, stinking streams and bad chemistry with the modern water closets. But let’s start from the beginning…

Mens sana in corpore sano, “a healthy mind in a healthy body”

The city of Barcelona was called Barcino in Roman times. Barcino as other cities in the Roman Empire was famous for taking care of the personal hygiene of its citizens. Romans understood the connection between hygiene and health. “A healthy mind in a healthy body” was a widely used expression in those days.

Inside the bath houses, citizens got cleaned and people could receive cosmetic treatments with natural ingredients. Public baths and toilets became also an indispensable space in social life. In these beautifully decorated and comfortable places, even ordinary Romans could meet with higher members of society and do business or plot political conspiracies together.

In Barcino there was at least three public baths. The only one which still remains, is hidden in the basement of Barcelona City History Museum at the Plaça del Rei. The Romans also built a sewerage network that evacuated the fecal waste to the sea. Link

But still, public toilets and baths in Barcino wouldn’t have passed our modern standards of hygiene. Bath houses and people’s clothes were cleaned with urine. In the absence of toilet paper, the butts cleaning device was a wooden stick with a sea sponge attached at one of the ends. Usually, the sponges were also public. Only the wealthier citizens carried their own.

Muslims, Jews and Christians during the “Dark Ages”

In the early medieval times, after the fall of Rome, the sewer system disappeared. But, people still used to clean themselves with warm water inside the barrel saunas or baths. Public bath houses were popular throughout medieval Europe. Link

The public bath houses raised also controversy. Some people, especially the clergy, objected to the fact that men and women could meet and spent time with each other naked. It could lead to illicit sex… and it sure did. It seems to have been widely accepted that a bathhouse was not only a place to get just clean and healthy, but where you could spent time with prostitutes and have sex. (Maybe because of this medieval tradition, many of the brothels in Barcelona are still disguised as saunas).

The medieval times divided Barcelona and its inhabitants according to three religious communities – Christians, Jews and Muslims – and the conceptions of the human body and water that each faith promulgated.

Muslims were the cleanest

The cleanest, in terms of body hygiene, were the Muslims. Water was a purifying element. The believers had to clean themselves before each prayer.

The Jews in Barcelona used purifying baths, the ‘miqvé’. A believer had to submerge inside a special bath completely at certain times of the year. There can be found documentation that the Count of Barcelona Ramon Berenguer IV ordered to build new public baths for the city. The Jewish master Abraham Bonastruc built them in 1160. He requested in return a space reserved for the Hebrews. The ruins of his work were preserved until 1716. Still today, the street called Banys Nous, reminds us where these baths were located.

The Christians were the dirtiest residents. According to the extreme Christian beliefs at that time, the body was a prison of the soul. To clean it and taking care of it was considered sinful: “The more mortified and neglected the body was, the closer you became with the God. ”That’s why many extreme religious Christians committed self-inflicted tortures, especially during processions.

The human body waste accumulated in pits called ‘black holes’ inside the houses. People also released their urine from their windows to the streets.

The Modern Age and the “shittiest” job in the City

In the summer of 1854, the government gave in to public pressure and allowed Barcelona’s city walls to be torn down. With the extra space, the district of Eixample was born. The new city extension would become an efficient and livable place, unlike the congested, epidemic-prone old town within the walls. Also, a new complex sewage network was build, although not for all types of waste. The brand new sewer evacuated all liquids from the houses and rainwater from the streets, but human excrement was stored inside the domestic wells, as during the medieval times.

During the early early industrial era, the trade of human excrements had become a big business in Barcelona. The ever-growing number of citizens meant more clients for the fecal waste pickers and their contractors. The designer of Eixample, Ildefons Cerdà i Sunyer, even thought that the entire new extension of Barcelona could be built with help of money earned from the human excrements.

A marketplace of shit

Shit was valuable and farmers used it as natural fertiliser. The peasants bought it from Barcelona hundreds of tonnes every year. Even the Plaça Catalunya was originally designed as a huge marketplace of shit. In the end, it was maybe the upcoming 1888 Barcelona Universal Exposition that made the Catalan politicians feeling embarrassed and to change their original “crappy” idea.

The professionals who evaluated and collected the excrements were called Master Well Cleaners “Poceros”. They wore traditional Catalan clothes with a red cap (the barretina). Like the Caganer “the Crapper”, the popular figurine in Catalonia. He is always hiding with his pants down somewhere in the Nativity Scenes (el pessebre) during Christmas holidays.

Traditionally these Masters went knocking from door to door, ‘bought’ and extracted the dung from the dead wells, only to resell it to the peasants. The price was fixed according to the ‘quality’ of the material collected. The professionals poked the excrements with a stick and made quality checks by tasting it.

There has been a lot of debate in Catalonia of the true origin of the Caganer. In my opinion the popular figurine is a tribute to the professional tasters and all the wealth they created for the Catalan society. The tradition started and got popular at the peak of the excrement business. The Poceros also played an important part in the building of modern Barcelona and helped the farmers to harvest prosperous crops in the countryside.

Income flushed down the drain

Fortunately, the business died little by little when the first artificial fertilisers and the ceramic toilets came out on the market. But still, some residents, especially the less fortunate ones, were manifesting against this technological revolution. Some, because they lost their profession. Others, because they lost their “natural” income.

People also did not “trust” the water closets. Especially in the early years, accidents of gas made some of these precious toilet seats to explode, because of bad design and accumulation of methane. The “stingiest” couldn’t understand why somebody would be willing to flush their precious material “down the drain” and give up even more money to by a water closet.

In the beginning of the 20th century Barcelona the safety of toilets raised still polemic and worries in Barcelona. According to the newspaper Actualidad, on January 24, 1914, in the calle Pelai number 7, a Water Closet exploded and three people got injured. Link

If you are interested to find out more about the subject check out the studies from historian Dani Cortijo.

Scientists claim that water is able to retain memory? And other interesting information about water.

By

Esa Ennelin

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17/05/2020

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“Be Water my Friend” – Bruce Lee.

Since the beginning, water has been the building material of life. Inside a newborn child, there is as much as 85 percent of water. However, as we grow older, the proportion of water decreases. An adult women’s contains in average about 40 to 60% of water and men’s average is about 50 to 70% depending on the body weight.

Water has an amazing ability to adapt. For thousands of years people have considered water as the magical and mysterious element. Almost all the ancient mythologies associate water to birth, life, death and life after death.

Because water plays an important part in all our vital, emotional and even subconscious actions, almost all the religious communities use water in their sacred rituals. We also spill some water out of our bodies when we are happy, angry, sad and especially when we are sexually exited.

Can water store vibrations on its molecular structure?

Although scientists have studied water for thousands of years, they are still a lot of unanswered questions. In the 1990s, a French researcher Jacques Benveniste claimed to have proved that water has memory. Few years later, a Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto made scientific community laugh with his water freezing experiments. According to Emoto, people’s feelings, speech and vibration leave their mark on the molecular structure of water. In his emotional experiments, water was subjected to aggressive and beautiful speech, emotions, and music. Subsequently, the test specimens were frozen and the generated ice crystals were examined by microscope. As a result, the water molecules which were exposed to a beautiful vibes formed wonderful harmonious ice crystals. The molecules exposed to aggressive influences were “ugly” and inharmonious.

Unfortunately, both Beneviste and Emoto had to face academic critique. In the end their test methods and results were considered to be full of blubber. But who knows. Many times the craziest scientific ideas are first condemned and only few years or decades later proven to be correct.

In any case, the pure water is odorless, tasteless and transparent. Human senses are not developed enough to smell or taste pure water. We have only learned to sense the contaminants of the water with our eyes, nose or mouth but we still don’t know all the secrets of it. We do not even know the origin of the water in our planet.

Tap vs. Bottled Water

Every day, more of us choose a water bottle instead of tap water. But, because we can’t sense the clean water with our senses, we are easy targets of dirty water business. More than 50% of bottled water sold in the world is actually cleaned and bottled tap water. It has nothing to do with the natural mineral water.

If you are a friend of nature, you should avoid buying bottled water when ever possible. Water bottle business is making a lot of harm to the nature. Just think how much oil and electricity is used in the process to collect, fill and transport a plastic bottle full of water to you.

And, if you think that the water inside the plastic bottle is cleaner than the tap water, you are mistaken. Most water quality studies prove that tap water is cleaner. An average plastic bottle has over 200 times more bacteria than tap water.

Is it safe to drink tap water in Barcelona?

Yes, it is 100% safe to drink tap water in Barcelona. The water fulfills all the requirements of clean and healthy water.

Still many local Barcelona residents choose bottled water instead of tap water because of taste issues. The tap water is taken from two different rivers – The water that comes from the Ter is used to supply the neighborhoods of the northeast area of Barcelona, while the water of the Llobregat serves to supply the neighborhoods of the southwest area of the city. Before entering the water treatment plants, these two rivers cross towns, municipalities and some industrial and mining areas. Probably it is the reason Barcelona tap waters taste is considered the worst in Spain.

Many residents also claim that the tap water tastes different in different districts of Barcelona. They also claim that Barcelona tap water has too much lime. Maybe it’s true. But I keep drinking the Barcelona tap water because I like it and because it’s better for the nature. A great trick to make the tap water to taste even better is just to cool it down in the fridge.

The job that will ruin your life: The Beginners Guide to Working in a Call Center.

By

Ghostwriter

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17/05/2020

0

“Do you want to form part in an innovative, dynamic, progressive, mind-blowing and hyper-ventilating team?”

This article could be an advertisement for a call center company, but it is not. This is a guide how to survive inside a concrete-glass cube, where boredom or heartless workload is part of your day to day routines.

1Where to start?

Internet is obviously the best place to look for a call center job in Barcelona. Infojobs, Monster, Infoempleo, Jooble.org and Trabajos.com are good job sites to start with. Also Facebook’s country related pages are great places to find open call center jobs. Just take a look and find out yourself!

2How to apply?

Filling out an application is easy. Job sites have ready-made and easy to fill forms in their pages. In the job site you also need to attach your CV. The CV is mainly used for checking out, that you’re not a) underage or b) over-educated.

3Waiting for the interview.

After sending your job application, it is time to wait for the first contact. If you applied through a job agency, like Manpower or Synergy, they will contact you one or two times by email or phone. After the first contacts, they’ll ask you to come to visit their office. If the job offer came straight from a call center company, you’ll have to deal first with the company’s HR zombies.

4The Interview.

The only real value of a job agency is making sure that you are real human being and that you have an EU passport. After the first check you’ll be directed to the Office for a real interview. Normally you’re interviewed by an HR officer or by one of your future bosses. I prefer the bosses because the HR people’s questions are sometimes difficult to understand. The interview questions vary from which animal would you like to be, to questions about your real interests in the future. The questions are depending which recruiting trend is hip right now. Just be calm and don´t be “yourself”. Acting different and having new ideas is bad news; call centers are not looking for personalities. They are looking for digital age factory workers and heartless human robots with a tunnel vision.

5Finally I got a Job!

Great, now they start to “train” you. One trainer of mine tortured me for seven long days with bad jokes and drinking stories. The second trainer had started his English lessons 4 months before our sessions. It was just goofy when the trainer had to teach us with complicated technical English vocabulary.

Watch out! During training period they evaluate you constantly. Be sharp, ask questions and never ever play with your phone. They hate that. You can wear a swastika t-shirt and be fine with it, but if they catch you up with a phone, you’re dead meat. Usually they train you one or two weeks and you’ll learn absolutely nothing. They know it. Just cooperate with them and you’ll be OK.

6When the real work finally starts.

After they kept you on the edge for one or two weeks, you start the real work! Depending of the product and your language, either you work like a donkey or you don’t have nothing to do. There is a big difference on a work load between different nationalities. For example a blond Scandinavian agent needs to answer only a few calls per day for a Pirelli car tire company. In comparison an English agent needs to take so many Hoover vacuum cleaner calls during the day, that he doesn’t have enough time to take a proper shit.

If they don’t give you nothing to do – depending of the company policy – you can read books, play computer games, chat with other idle ones, count airplanes (my record is 81), or write articles! If you’re not so lucky, you don’t really have any other choice but talk on the phone from nine to six.

7How to handle the team leaders.

The first weeks in a call center are the hardest. Usually you got the job in the first place, because there is a new project starting. If you have bad luck, also your team leader starts working for the first time. When you notice that your new team leader is lost and the leader don’t know whats going on, don’t make the mistake to mentioning it. Keep your mouth shut and stay under the radar. It is not a Gene Kelly movie. A good Team leader understands that you’re new. He or she remembers how it to work on a phone whole day. Bad leaders always deny that they have any prior call center phone work or chat screen experience. If you get a good or bad team leader, the best advice in both cases is to stay always under the radar.

8Tier two – The Manager level

Inside a call center management hierarchy, the second level, the “Tier 2” , begins above the team leaders. The second level is occupied by, Quality Managers, Senior Agents, etc. These are the people you need on your side. So skip the Team leaders and make friends with the higher level. You won’t regret it.

Project manager has the punishment power. He or she is the one who you meet officially only twice – First time, when you sign the contract and Second time when you are “released” of it (or if you free yourself). But if you are lucky and get the Project Manager in your radar, just smile, and if possible – say hello. He or she has no idea who you are or why you are even smiling. But it is always better to show your sunny side to the real power inside the company.

9The job really sucks! How to relieve the pain?

Sooner or later your job starts to be literally a pain in the ass. Don’t get depressed. You can make your job more pleasant easily. Communicate with your team, make them laugh and make friends. New friends are much more valuable than your stupid work on a phone, talking to strangers or even the €€€ figures on your pay check.

10Alcohol and other substances.

Last but not least, most of your colleagues drink alcohol. Some of them drink and take drugs during the working hours. One college of mine takes half a bottle of wine for breakfast, two glasses more at the first break, and 2 to 8 glasses during lunch hour. And he is the top salesman.

If you decide to walk the dark side, chew gum, use eye drops and stay under the radar.

Chefs and cooks who prepare delicious food for us may possibly suffer from cancer.

By

Esa Ennelin

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16/05/2020

0

The environment in the kitchens which prepare all kinds of delicious food, is in many occasions poor.

Running a restaurant is one of the most common businesses in Barcelona with thousands of workers involved. However, the health and safety of these workers is too often overlooked.

Barcelona is famous of its fashionable restaurants which attract many tourists to come with admiration. There are countless restaurants serving all kinds of cuisine. Many restaurants have devoted a lot of resources and efforts in their interior design to give a comfortable environment for customers. However, few of us notice that the environment in the kitchens which prepare all kinds of delicious food is in many occasions poor. Busy kitchen workers always need to work under a hot and wet environment filled with oil fume and traps, which leads to frequent accidents and endangers their health.

Injuries can be considerably eliminated through straightening up the kitchen and on the job training.

Every day, inside busy restaurants, kitchen workers hurt by collision with stationary objects due to narrow space or rush work. Other important reasons for injury are fall on slippery floor and poor housekeeping. It is also easy to get injured when manual lifting or carrying heavy loads. Apparently, these injuries can be considerably eliminated through straightening up the kitchen and on the job training.

The problem of heat stress.

The kitchen workers are facing the problem of heat stress. Inside some kitchens the temperature can rise as high as 37℃, far exceeding the threshold value limit of permissible heat exposure of 26.7℃. Other undesirable working conditions together with many heat sources (such as stoves and roasters) impair the health of kitchen workers, especially during the hottest summer days.

Too many kitchen workers suffer from cancer just because they inhale the oily smoke arising from cooking.

It is worth noting that when cooking with hot oil, the kitchen workers’ breathing zone contains highly concentrated air pollutants, including formaldehyde, oilmist and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. It is believed that these harmful substances could be derived from the transformation process on heating unsaturated oil and fat in meat during hot cooking. In fact, some kitchen environments are full of carcinogenic substances. It is hard to imagine that the chefs and cooks who prepare delicious food for us may suffer from cancer just because they inhale the oily smoke arising from cooking. But it is more worrying that both employers and employees in the trade do not realize the existence of such a hazard.

The rate of kitchen workers dying of lung cancer is 15% higher than the general public. If compared against the waiters, the kitchen workers’ rate is also 15% higher.

Many studies conclude that the proportion of smokers among kitchen workers is similar to that of waiters, approximately 40% to 50%. Therefore the findings have made the deduction that lung cancer suffered by kitchen workers is related to long contact with oil fumes

Some of the best restaurants in Barcelona have even installed water spray hoods, or hydro-vents to clean the air. But the problem continues, because most restaurants and bars in the city are small. Many restaurants don’t even have the necessary space and resources to install expensive equipment to clean the air.

Hard work with long work weeks

Next time when you are waiting for your delicious dinner in a restaurant, keep in mind that most Barcelona kitchen workers need to work really hard. Most of them work more than 40/hours per week. It is “normal” that many work between 50 to 60 hours and 6-day work week. Studies show that working more than 40/hours work week is dangerous. It is especially dangerous if you must work in a bad atmosphere contaminated with cancerogenic oil fumes. Long work weeks lead also to serious negative effects on health, family life, and productivity.

All these are possibly the reasons for accidents at work or occupational disease.

In memory of Eduardo Sierra Liñan. A brilliant Chef, who dedicated his life cooking wonderful meals in many of Barcelona’s best restaurants. We will miss you, Edu. You left us far too soon.

Are you looking for an open sales job in Barcelona? What to expect from sales training?

By

Tomi Antila

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15/05/2020

1

Open international sales job position Barcelona

Open Telesales Job Positions in Barcelona.

Many foreigners moving to Barcelona end up working in outsourcing companies to fund their BCN lifestyle. Most of the outsourcing companies offer open job positions for foreigners in telemarketing, sales, account mongering or customer service. But before you can start hitting the phones, you need to have something what companies proudly call ”onboard training”. After the onboard training, you will receive “on-going training” while you are working. However let’s stick with the on boarding training for now.

Onboard Training Inside the Glass Cube

Onboard training basically means that you are a couple of weeks jailed inside the same boring conference room with 10 to 20 people. But, what to expect from the training sessions in the glass cube jail with non-existing air condition?

In the beginning your future colleagues call you as ”new meat” while they are smirking and strolling past that showcase cube you’re stuck in. Nine times out of ten your trainer is a thirty-something Frenchman with horrendous English. The only thing lacking more than his language skills is his sense of humor. After the oh-so-awkward ”introducing yourself part”, you notice that you are surrounded by dimwits. In the end you even start to wonder how these poor training colleagues of yours have managed to survive the rapidly changing world so far.

Organization Orgasms

An advice for all of my Nordic or German brothers and sisters out there… Do not expect to be shivering in the hands of ”organization orgasms”. Everybody knows about Spanish efficiency. The training days drag on from 9am to 6pm. The things that can be learned in one afternoon are taught in nine hours. As you repeat the same things too many times, you cannot help but think that the training is meant for mentally challenged retards. You will also meet that one douchebag who asks his or her last set of question at 5.59pm, when your head is already at the nearest terrace.

Sand Up to your Ass Crack

During the training you need to get your stick figurine drawing hand in shape. You are going to be doing some group activities, where you have to ”visualize the customer call cycle”. You also need to describe in pictures and words the meaning of “customer satisfaction”. Sounds delightful, doesn’t it? For all you introverts out there. Be aware, because you will have to make presentations and roleplaying scenarios from other groups’ drawings. It feels probably as comfortable as sticking couple of fistfuls of sand up to your ass crack. While other groups are doing their presentations, staying awake or not dying out of shared sense of shame, is also very challenging.

The Computer

Hold your horses. Don’t get excited when you are provided with a computer for the training. You’re probably looking at one week (at least) of waiting before the tech guys can create credentials for you and your oh-so-bright future colleagues. Also, don’t get surprised if the HR department can’t count. Your group of 15 will probably get only 10 computers. But sharing is caring, right?

To fight the boredom, after you finally log into the computer, you might want to spend some quality time online. Maybe you can finally stop playing the game ”Who Should I Kill First”- in your head. But you will sadly realize that the new company policy denies the access to everywhere else except the company’s own websites.

How to apply the information learned?

Finally, after the entire role-playing, drawing stick figures, engaging, interacting, online courses, multiple choice questionnaires and endless repeating, the training is over. When you start to work, you can’t help wondering how the hell is it possible to apply any of the information learned from the past three weeks of training. Your new place reminds you shockingly little of the work described during the training session.

In the end you will be asked to fill out an online form and give feedback of the onboard training. A word of advice! Don’t bother. The final questionnaires ain’t gonna change anything.

Tomi Antila

10 Enemies to the Two Wheelers. I love my kick scooter and bicycle, but I don´t want to die!

By

Ghostwriter

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09/05/2020

0

The Wind.

Even though there are no monsoons, snowstorms or any other extreme weather in Barcelona, there is always a constant air current. For a pedestrian, a light sea breeze is more than welcome, but when you are on a bike or a scooter (without motor) you need to struggle against the headwind. And did you know that here in Barcelona there is no such thing as the tailwind.

Slippery when wet.

The rain is pretty equal to anyone, but on a kick scooter (patinete) your world can roll pretty fast upside down. When the sun is shining, rolling down a hill on a scooter is easy, but when it rains the situation turns out to a dangerous situation. On a wet surface your scooter moves like a “Bambi” on an ice.

Killers on the Loose.

Broom-broom! Cars, motorcycles and other motorized killers are on the loose. Yes, your car can move fast, but where is the Fire? Why do the drivers in Barcelona ignore the red lights? Why are the two-wheelers always ignored? And why can I find every day someone driving a motorcycle on cycle lanes. Is it ignorance? For sure, but it is also a political question. For our own good, we could and we should cut motorized vehicles in Barcelona.

The Others.

Oh, dear. I know, you drive perfectly with your two-wheeler, but what the fuck are the other road users doing? They do not show any hand signs where they are going and when they are turning. They make sudden stops and always drive too fast or too slow!

The Road.

The year 2015 came and the prophecy failed – we don’t have hovering scooters, skateboards and bikes like in the Back to the Future 2. We still need roads. Barcelona surely isn’t the worst what comes to the street maintenance, but it is far from the best. Constant construction zones all over the city are not just inconvenient but also dangerous.

The substances.

Please do not drive drunk! If you do, you don’t just risk your own life but other people’s lives too. But hey, when you’re ape drunk and have difficulties to walk, it’s always good to have a bike with you… The best solution is just to walk with the bike! In that way;

A) You don’t fall so easily.

B) You will get your precious bike safe back home.

C) You don’t kill anyone!

Bike Thieves.

Bike thieves are the scum of the earth. I hate to even write about those A-holes. Needless to say, try to keep your bike locked in a safe place. If you ever manage to meet a bike thief in person, take a photo with your mobile phone and send it to the mossos (Catalan Police).

The Animals.

Cats, dogs, kids and other obstacles move randomly and without thinking. The worst are the small dog owners. Owners of a midget size dogs think that there’s no need to keep the mini-sized Rex on a tight leash. And there you are – rolling over rats with names. You should keep in mind that accidents with small dogs is bad news and usually you are the one who’s going to accept the responsibility for the accident.

Breaking Parts.

While driving on your two-wheeler the worst accidents happen when your bike breaks apart. Take care of your two-wheeler. If do it by yourself, it’s cheap and fun! By keeping good care of your bike you’ll probably avoid a major accidents.

The Helmet!

Nearly all bicyclists who were killed in in Barcelona did not wear a helmet. Most deaths occur as a result of crashes with motor vehicles. So, forget your hairstyle and always wear a helmet. It can actually safe your life!!!

Tip!

On Sunday, May 11 at 9:30 A.M, we are celebrating “Fiesta de la Bicicleta 2017” in Barcelona. More info here.

What are the genetic differences between the Spanish and Catalan populations? Or are there any?

By

Ghostwriter

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19/04/2020

0

Are there any genetic differences between the Spanish and Catalan populations.

The Catalan people and language.

The Catalan people live in the region called Catalonia (Catalunya), in eastern Spain. The Catalan language is a member of the Romance language family and closely related to its origins of Occitan language which is spoken mainly in southern France, and Aranese, which is the official language in Vall d’Aran (a region in the Pyrenees).

Europe’s last Neanderthals lived in “Spain”.

The Iberian Peninsula has a lot of mountains that have facilitated regional division and the isolation of human settlement throughout history. It is the main reason why Spain is so rich in regional variations in food, culture, language and genetics.

Iberia was one of the last regions of Europe invaded by modern humans (Homo Sabiens), and therefore also one of the last strongholds of Neanderthals. After the extinction of Neanderthals and the end of the ice age, a wide range of ethnic groups settled in Iberia; among them Phoenicians, Celts, Greeks, Jews, Romans, Goths, Suebi, Franks, Arabs and Berbers. All of them have left their genetic footprint both geographically and culturally.

Celtic, Roman and Barbaric genes

The Celtic migrations to Iberia had a large impact on modern Spanish genes. Two thirds of Spanish male genes can be traced back to this period under the form of R1b (Haplogroup).

In spite of Hispania being part of the Roman Empire, the Romans did not establish a lot of population colonies in Iberia. There were only few Roman cities in Hispania the biggest were: Barcino (Barcelona), Tarraco (Tarragona), Emerita Augusta (Mérida), Italica (Santiponce, Seville), and Carthago Nova (Cartagena).

Alans, Suebi and Vandals

In 406, the Alans (Iranian origin), the Suebi and the Vandals (Baltic Sea origin) crossed the Rhine together, invading Gaul. Three years later, they crossed the Pyrenees into Roman Hispania. The Suebi migrated to the western half of Iberia, where they established the Kingdom of Gallaecia (409–585). The Vandals and the Alans went south to Andalusia. They crossed over to North Africa in 429 and founded a kingdom that included Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica.

Visigothic Kingdom

At the beginning of the 4th century, the Goths were the first to penetrate into the Roman Empire. After settling in the Balkans, they split into two factions, the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. The Visigoths, under Alaric I, sacked Rome in 410 and established a Visigothic Kingdom in south-western Gaul in 418.

After expanding their empire into Aquitania, the Visigoths expanded south from Barcelona, and by the middle of the 5th century they had conquered most of central and southern Iberia. In the 580s they annexed the Suebi Kingdom, as well as the land of the Cantabrians and the Basques in the north. The Visigothic Kingdom lasted until the Muslim conquest of Iberia in 711.

The Visigothic and Suebi invasion did not leave a lot of Germanic DNA in the Iberian peninsula, but Galicia and Catalonia are the regions with the highest ratios of Germanic Y-DNA (approx. 5 to 10% of the male lineages).(link)

Muslims and Franks

After the Muslim invasion pushed the Visigothic tribes back to Scandinavia, the Franks stopped the Muslim progression in Europe by defeating the Moorish armies at the Battle of Tours in 732.

Under the rule of Charlemagne, the Spanish March was created as a buffer against the Umayyad Caliphate on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees (from Navarre to Catalonia). The March quickly evolved into the independent Kingdom of Navarre (824–1620) and the Frankish County of Barcelona (801–1162), later to become the independent Kingdom of Aragon (1035–1706). The Franks did not, however, colonize the region and the genetic legacy would only have passed through interbreeding between nobilities which had no effect on the genetics of the wider population.

Indo-European genes

The majority of Iberian paternal lineages are of Indo-European (R1b, G2a3b1, J2b2 and a small amount of R1a), which can be traced to the Celtic invaders, and to a lower extent to later Roman and Germanic settlers. In total, these amount to 50-85% of Spanish and in Catalan Y-DNA .

As I compared the Catalan Y-DNA with other regions, I found out that the Catalan genes bear closest relation to the genes of Castile La-Mancha. Even the Valencians did not come as close. The only difference is that the Catalans, like the Basques, are the only Western Europeans completely lacking genetic contribution from Southwest Asia. (link)

The genetic brothers

The Catalan paternal genetic lineages are Indo-European, and their closest genetic brothers are living in Castile Le Mancha. On the other hand, Spain is one the oldest countries in continuous existence in Europe. This long political unity has until the recent decades favored Spanish people to marry between Spanish (Catalans included).

The idea of Catalan race

The idea of Catalan race was first raised in the 19th century and it seems that this Catalan imperialism still exists. One good example of radical Catalan ideas was written by Daniel Cardona i Civit (1890-1943), a comrade of Francesc Macià. “It is necessary that the Catalan woman becomes our first patriotic duty, by not loving any natural enemy of her Motherland. For a Catalan woman only a Catalan husband!”(more here).

The conclusion

So, the conclusion is that Catalans including other Spaniards and even Portuguese are the same ethnic people. The argument that the Catalans and Spanish are a different race is just bullshit. We shouldn’t mix nationalistic ideas with genetics, because Spain has a long and dark history of racial conflicts.

How I managed to get my Foreigner’s Identity Number (NIE) in Barcelona

By

Sofi goes to Barcelona

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09/02/2020

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The NIE (Número de Identidad de Extranjero) is a tax identification number in Spain for everyone who is not a Spanish citizen. It is necessary for all foreigners who want to stay in Spain for more than three months, including the EU citizens. You also need the NIE number to be able to process certain transactions as opening a bank account or buying a property.

In Barcelona, the NIE number is applied from a local police station. Unfortunately it is not so easy to get, especially if you are a foreigner and if you still don’t dominate the Spanish language.

Here is the story how I finally managed to get mine.

Booking the appointment

The problems began when I was trying to make an appointment online. If you don’t book an appointment beforehand online, the police stations that are able to issue the number won’t serve you. In the online appointment application site everything is written in Spanish. If you don’t speak Spanish (like me), it is better to ask for help already in this first stage.

To get an appointment online is really difficult. I tried many days to find a free appointment time from the Police stations near the center of Barcelona. For some reason there were no free times available. I was advised that the best time to get an appointment through the system is on Monday mornings between 8 and 9 AM, but it didn’t work either. After trying every day for a whole month, a miracle happened. I finally managed to get through and get an appointment from a police station outside the city center. But, I still had to wait for an extra month for my appointment day.

My advice is to be patient. Try to book a day from a police station outside of Barcelona. If you are lucky, you can maybe get an appointment time sooner.

The appointment

Finally, after two months, the appointment day came. Me and my translator went to the processing police station. My appointment time was set at 11.08 AM and we were in front of the office ten minutes earlier. There was already a queue outside and we had to wait about 20 minutes to get inside the building. Inside the police station, we had to wait extra 15 minutes to get a waiting number. And after that, we had to wait again about 25 minutes to get to the reception. Like I said, my appointment was at 11.08, but we got in front of our police officer more than one hour later.

Just in case, I brought all my documents: rental agreement, employment contract and passport. I didn’t have a photocopy of my passport, but the person serving us, was understanding and allowed us to bring it later. We filled couple of documents and then the friendly police officer wrote me my new NIE number in a small piece of paper. At this point the officer did not yet give me the official ID certificate.

Make copies to save time

Then we had to leave the police station to make a copy of my passport and to pay a fee for the ID (about 10€). Before I paid the amount, I had to print four extra documents through the internet with my new NIE number to get the right bank details. Luckily, just in front of the station there was a photocopy shop, where a friendly young man helped me to print all the right documents.

As we tried to enter back to the police station we had to wait again in a queue outside. It took us about 10 minutes to get inside, 15 minutes to get a new waiting number, and about 20 more minutes to get back in front of the police officer. We gave the photo copies, and just as I thought everything was done, he told us that I have to come back the next day to get the official ID certificate. Why? I don’t know, but next morning when I came back to the police station, there was no queues and I got finally my official NIE.

My advice for the appointment day is to take it calm. Reserve enough time for the process, because it’s going to take a while. Also, make an extra copy of all your documents.

If you don’t want to go through all of this trouble, there is for example this website https://www.niebarcelona.com/en/, where you can get the NIE number maybe a bit faster. You just need to pay them 90€ and they will do almost everything for you.

Good luck with you NIE application, you really need it.

48 Crystal Moments: Gustavo Vega & Yuuka Nakamura, Spanish view & Japanese interpretation. 18/48

By

Gustavo Vega Mansilla

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20/07/2018

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48 Crystal Moments: Two Converging Views.

[avatar user=”Gustavo Vega” size=”thumbnail” align=”right” /]

18 th part of a collection of 48 poetic compositions, haiku style or close to such form of Japanese tradition, performed by Gustavo Vega. Not all of them conform strictly to the traditional Japanese way… The author prefers to call them, instead of haiku, Crystal Moments.

Yuuka Nakamura, Japanese poet transferred the Crystal Moments to her own sensibility. She feels that some features of Westerness can be translated into Japanese classicism without affecting its meaning. Thus was achieved the two encounter of two views, Japanese, and Spanish, Eastern and Western converging. It is at the same time, a meeting, collaboration, cooperation …synthesis of languages and scripts, East and West.

Best time to get honey

The Festival of Litha

Barcelona has almost 2000 years of special connection with neatness and human feces.

Mens sana in corpore sano, “a healthy mind in a healthy body”

Muslims, Jews and Christians during the “Dark Ages”

Muslims were the cleanest

The Modern Age and the “shittiest” job in the City

A marketplace of shit

Income flushed down the drain

“Be Water my Friend” – Bruce Lee.

Can water store vibrations on its molecular structure?

Tap vs. Bottled Water

Is it safe to drink tap water in Barcelona?

“Do you want to form part in an innovative, dynamic, progressive, mind-blowing and hyper-ventilating team?”

1Where to start?

2How to apply?

3Waiting for the interview.

4The Interview.

5Finally I got a Job!

6When the real work finally starts.

7How to handle the team leaders.

8Tier two – The Manager level

9The job really sucks! How to relieve the pain?

10Alcohol and other substances.

The environment in the kitchens which prepare all kinds of delicious food, is in many occasions poor.

Injuries can be considerably eliminated through straightening up the kitchen and on the job training.

The problem of heat stress.

Too many kitchen workers suffer from cancer just because they inhale the oily smoke arising from cooking.

Hard work with long work weeks

Open Telesales Job Positions in Barcelona.

Onboard Training Inside the Glass Cube

Organization Orgasms

Sand Up to your Ass Crack

The Computer

How to apply the information learned?

The Wind.

Slippery when wet.

Killers on the Loose.

The Others.

The Road.

The substances.

Bike Thieves.

The Animals.

Breaking Parts.

The Helmet!

Are there any genetic differences between the Spanish and Catalan populations.

The Catalan people and language.

Europe’s last Neanderthals lived in “Spain”.

Celtic, Roman and Barbaric genes

Alans, Suebi and Vandals

Visigothic Kingdom

Muslims and Franks

Indo-European genes

The genetic brothers

The idea of Catalan race

The conclusion

Booking the appointment

The appointment

Make copies to save time

48 Crystal Moments: Two Converging Views.

by Gustavo Vega

Japanese interpretation by Yuuka Nakamura

Translated to English by Carlota Caulfield