wish or hope?

In Carrer Banys Nous which is just down from us, they have for the last few Christmases adopted the tradition of the wishing tree: installing a series of little Christmas trees along the street, providing notepaper, ballpoints and tiny coloured pegs, and inviting passers-by to write down their Christmas wishes, and pin them up for anyone to see. I'm not sure how the tradition was adopted - it doesn't seem native to Catalunya or even related specifically to Christmas as far I can tell. But for whatever reason, the trees tend to attract messages inspired by goodwill and love and people's deeper hopes and dreams, rather than just consumerist fare and Santa wish-lists.

I walk along Banys Nous quite a lot and have seen very few people stopping to read the messages. To me that seems a shame, given their emotion and poignancy. Although I probably wouldn't be very comfortable either if things went to the opposite extreme, and each tree was surrounded by noisy crowds dissecting the details. Still, I decided to take a few shots of some of the messages that hit home for me and share them on the internet. I think I can do that with full respect for the humanity and dignity of the writers. I wanted to do it because the messages are not only about Christmastime hopes and dreams, but also about the times we are living in, at the end of 2012 in this part of Europe.

In the process of translating them from the original Catalan and Spanish, I was reminded of a classic English grammar/vocabulary point from my days as a TEFL teacher here in Barcelona: the ways we use the verbs "wish" and "hope". Sometimes the explanations that an English teacher has to give to foreign learners can surprise a native speaker: there is often a philosophy or an embedded meaning in words you use that you never consciously realised was there.

So when is it correct to say "I wish" and when do we say "I hope"? Second-language English students are taught that we commonly use the verb "wish" to talk about things we want but which are currently not true and are either impossible or very unlikely:

I wish I could fly.

I wish I was the best footballer in the world.

By contrast we use "hope" to talk about things we want to happen that are possible in the future:

I hope I can become a doctor.

I hope Brazil wins the World Cup.

My translator's dilemma was that a few of the notes talk of future desires that you would consider not only possible but completely standard occurrences in normal times, but right now you have to ask whether they are even possible: whether the writers' intentions would be best conveyed by "hope" or rather by stating that they have now slipped away into "wish" territory. For example:

Que encontremos trabajo = 

"I hope we find work"  ?
or "I wish we could find work" ?

Although I must say that in the end I translated some of the wishes rather more instinctively - and if I were to further revise them I might free them up even more. "Wish" also has other nuances; perhaps the structure "My wish is for..." - the act of making a wish - offers the possibility of both "wish" and "hope" without discriminating one from the other. Perhaps this exercise is really all about letting your imagination go to a place where everything you desire is still equally possible.

I wish that the power of money would disappear.

Peace, love, good health for everyone.

Encarna

I hope we will always be together

I wish

they wouldn't call me so much from work.

Pilar

I hope
that both those who are,

and those aren't,

will always feel that they are never alone.

*A*

I hope the crisis doesn't change us!

Merry Christmas!

Triplet of trophies for Barça !!!

I hope I come back next year and have

my own cup of chocolate

For a free Catalunya! 

Long Live the Land! 

Merry Christmas

In some countries, eating is a luxury, in others the luxury is dieting.

I feel very bad for the people

who are having a bad time at the moment.

I wish all of you a good new year.

M B

Siusplau que podam viatjar

a Corea de Sud

amb la meva mara i el meu pare

My wish is that we don't argue

about linguistic questions.

M

Dear Son of God,

Thanks for everything you have given me this year.

My wishes are: Work for C and V;

Good health for M and S.

And all (anything) you want to give to me.

Kisses

G

Love Peace Sex and Independence

I wish that the thieving politicians

would disappear from the planet.

I wish health and happiness to all my people.

I wish we would all realise what marvellous people we have right next to us...

I hope that the love of my life never leaves my side.

I wish for justice, and I hope that I can fulfill my dreams

P.

J.:

I hope Carlota will always be with me.

My wish is to live life to the fullest, in peace and harmony, with my partner, and with my family and community. My wish is to develop professionally in my work, for it to be the job of my life, to turn  a dream project into reality in Africa.

Call me. ...

I hope we find work

I, M, and L

sneaking into history

Nine days have gone by since I took the above photo in our living room: a live TV news cross from Plaça Sant Jaume, featuring a teenage boy I know quite well who rushed out there to try and get himself on the telly- and succeeded. Indeed, if events had unfolded slightly differently he might have also managed to colar-se  - to have snuck in, you could say, to a small place in Catalan history, because the reporters were at that moment waiting for Artur Mas and Oriol Junqueras, leaders of the two largest parties after the recent Catalan elections, to step out of the Palau de la Generalitat and declare that they had concluded their “Stability Pact” to allow a new Catalan government to be formed – the government which the two parties intend to open the path to Catalan independence. As it happened the pact had to wait until this week, when our teenage Zelig was back at school, but agreement was in the end reached: the promise is now that they will hold a consulta on independence by the end of 2014 – a consulta or consultation being a way of avoiding the use of the dreaded R-word since a straight-out Referendum would be illegal, unconstitutional, and, according to the Spanish government, just... extremely naughty and thus deserving of the punishment which they fully promise to administer, indeed on a preventative basis.

So a difficult path. But given that Mas and Junqueras are poles apart in terms of their economic philosophies, and we are in deep crap economically, the arguably bigger part of the challenge for these new leaders will just be to stop their house of cards from falling, in terms of the functioning of government in Catalunya, paying wages and bills and most of all interest - and in terms of we the people who are feeling poor, to put it mildly. Right now we are moving into the most depressed festive season I personally have ever experienced, anywhere. Christmas, what Christmas? Still, my Catalan family will have our dinners and gatherings and, without breaking the bank, enjoy them, and in this we are luckier than many people around here and a great multitude in some other parts of the world.

As new Catalan MP for the “alternative left” CUP party David Fernàndez said opening his address to parliament on Friday: “80,000 people in the world will die of hunger today - and the same tomorrow.” Ironically David gave his speech on December 21st, the day that in our media and social networks we were entertaining ourselves with the fact that the world hadn’t ended. Too bad that for many thousands of our fellow humans, the world did end.

christmas lights

Strong use of dynamic blue lighting in our Christmas street ambience this year. And you have to love those jolly red and white stripes as well. Ho, ho, ho!

I took this photo on Thursday night of the paddy wagons that were trawling along behind yet another protest march through central Barcelona (this one the second demo of the week against the Spanish government's proposed new education bill, also managing to group in a general protest about health, education and welfare cuts). And I must confess, when I stepped out into the street with my little digital snappy, it was a bit of a "fuck you" moment. You see, policing may be a dirty job wherever it's done, but the Catalan police force, the Mossos d'Esquadra, are frankly a dreadful commercial for Catalunya. And on Thursday, police leaders and political bosses were forced to climb down from their Orwellian denial of a recent terrible incident - in November, Barcelona woman Ester Quintana lost an eye to what was almost certainly a police rubber bullet, which the Mossos had steadfastly claimed they couldn't possibly have fired. Not that they have exactly eaten humble pie now - the Catalan Interior Minister Felip Puig saved his skin by sacrificing the head of the riot squad, after it became clear they actually did use rubber bullets in that very area.

What happened to Ester (she tells her story at length in this video, subtitled in English) has been happening regularly over the last few years - apparently seven Catalans have lost eyes to police rubber bullets in the last five years. My memory from press reports is that several were just passers-by, and I sincerely doubt if any of them were shown to have committed violent acts. They were just there; in a densely populated city like Barcelona, people are always "just there" - ironically, that is actually one of the things I've always found wonderful about this city: so many people packed so close together and yet the street vibe is pretty easy going. Obviously police are going to need strategies for crowd control at times. But what they definitely don't need is a crowd control weapon used in a way which actually provokes crowds and ends up destroying the lives of random individuals.

Hmmm... written two blog posts, both about demonstrations. Oh well, I guess there will be a bit of that, since this blog is intended to have something of a political focus, and I live right at the political epicentre of the city, where we probably average about a mani a day. Or I might get bored and write about...ooh, love or something.  

   

intentions

Festive season lights on Barcelona's Ajuntament and a square full of estelades being waved in front of it - this photo, taken at last night's pro-Catalan-language rally just down the alley from me in Plaça Sant Jaume, is as good a place as any to start this blog. The Catalan independence issue, this is obviously some of the stuff I wanted to comment on. Stuff that is happening all around me. Stuff a lot of people are getting worked up about. I am too.

I may well get worked up in these pages, if this blog gets going. Although it was inspired by a more reflective feeling: that as a 20 year Barcelona resident who came here from the other side of the world, I might have a few valid perspectives of my own to contribute. Let's see what happens (that may sound like a cop-out response, maybe it is; but it's also because I've never really blogged before).

However I must say, that although the arrival of Catalan sovereignty as a major political issue (in early September this year) was the precipitant for this blog, it was never intended to be the only focus for it. 

There was one day back in that period of early autumn when I had lunch with an old friend I hadn't seen for a while. I had probably never discussed politics with her before, but it was not unsurprising that when the conversation flagged, she asked: "So what do you think about the crisis?"

And I, enjoying the lunch she had prepared, and about to get way behind on the eating of it, answered: "Well, in the first place, no es una crisis, es una estafa - it's not a crisis, it's a rip off. That is my firm belief, because the vast majority who live relatively modestly are suffering way disproportionately to prop up the unsustainable economic system which created the problem, thus allowing business as usual to continue undisturbed. So the system perpetuates itself without reforms, and the powerful stakeholders in the system, and a wealthy minority of the population, continue unabated with the same behaviour that caused the crisis, at least until the next one hits."

Actually my answer, between mouthfuls of chicken salad, was no way as clear and definitive as this one, but that is the beauty of post-editing. In any case I went on:

"And the other thing is that when the protests started here, the indignados and all that, in 2011, at a time when I was feeling reasonably safe in my job, my reaction was to say, hey it's great that people are reacting creatively, but we need to focus on the real crisis: the environmental crisis, which is the big one and is going to break over us all in the next 10 years or so."

"So the economic-financial crisis is already a distraction from the big one, the environmental crisis of resources-climate change-population-energy-food-ecosystems (etcetera). But now, with the issue of Catalan independence, we're getting embroiled in yet another level of detail, threatening to distract us from what is already a distraction."

Well, we then proceeded to be "distracted" ourselves, and had an animated argument about the merits and otherwise of the desire of many Catalans to secede from Spain. Talked for about two hours I think.

That was about 10 weeks ago. There has been an election since then, but that has not diminished the issue at all. Right now, I don't think anyone could fairly call the Catalan sovereignty issue a "distraction" - it is completely central to the political debate here in Barcelona.

To be continued.