The train is here

16 years after arriving in Sevilla, a beautiful town of no economic importance whatseover (but home of the ruling prime minister) ...

two months after the last promised 'drop dead' date, the attempt to meet which caused massive problems to the local rail network ...

Barcelona gets its AVE high speed rail link to Madrid. 

The delays and maladministration have probably done more to fire Catalan self-government than any heady political movement could.  When national development minister Magdalena Alvarez swept into town last week to announce the launch date, she was greeted like Typhoid Mary by the Catalan administration who failed to send anyone to meet her at the station. 

But it does look impressive. 

From next Wednesday it  will be as quick as 2h 38m to cover the 400 miles to the capital. The Landers will be on board on 16 March for a planned visit there having snapped up a set of tickets at 42 euros each way. 

Not bad when you think that you get 50% back if you are 15 mins late and the whole lot back after a 30 minute delay.

Let it be noted ...

... that Ben's team, CP Sarria Alevin B, has now won five games on the bounce (after losing six of the first seven) and has charged up the league from 11th (out of 13)  to 7th and could go 6th next week if the results go right.  

This follows today's thrashing of Parc UD 7-2. Next week sees the second half of the season. Onwards and upwards!

Pascal’s big night out in Barcelona

Arsenal reject and fat lump defender Pascal Cygan came with Vilareal to the Camp Nou on Thursday night for a Kings Cup tie. Here’s the story of his evening:

There’s Pascal

He's big, old, slow and bald

There’s Leo

Leo’s young, fast, lithe and has long hair

Watch Leo run!

See Pascal’s eyes

Pascal is scared

Pascal has an idea

‘I’ll stick my leg out to stop Leo’

Ouch!

Here comes the ref

Waving his nice yellow card!

Now here’s the free kick

Pascal is watching the ball

He is not watching Thierry

Who scores with a free header

Boo hoo!

Vilareal are losing!

Pascal claps his hands and says

'Come on, we can still win this one!'

(One minute later)

Here comes Leo again!

He runs even faster

Pascal has another idea

‘I’ll stick my leg out to stop Leo’

Ouch!

Here comes the ref

Waving his nice red card!

Off you go Pascal!

You're a complete idiot say his teammates

Night, night say the crowd!

Sun and Snow

These two pictures were both taken yesterday with the Catalan Pyrenees finally opening every station after some heavy dumps and the temperature on the Barcelona beach front reaching 19C. Very nice ... 

Three Kings: what else?

Today is Three Kings in Spain when said monarchs descend from the east to provide children and adults alike with their seasonal gifts in place of (or addition to) the ones provided by Santa Claus 12 days earlier.

For many grown ups, the kings will have provided a Nespresso device, the home espresso machine made by Nestle. You can hardly pass a street hoarding without seeing George (‘Nespresso: what else?’) Clooney advertising the system, while the shop round the corner from us was packed to the rafters yesterday with last-minute buyers. This in a land where coffee is almost sacred.

It’s a great business. The machines themselves range from E150-1,000, the purchase of which hook you into forever buying the custom coffee pods. You’ll want all 15+ premium coffee varieties of course, along with the cups, sugars, biscuits etc that come with it. Once in, you’re hooked, or you end up writing off cost of the machine. Very clever.

The resonance for me was the coffee market study we did at business school some 12 years ago. It focused on how Nestle and Kraft fought tooth and nail for ever 1% market share in the stores while being completely blindsided by the rise of Starbucks, which had persuaded people to buy their coffee at £4 a go in a café rather than take it up and pay an effective 10p.

So this is Nestle’s revenge. And some revenge. John Gapper has a fun article on the Nespresso phenomenon in the FT which reveals that Nestle sold 1.4m Nespresso machines and 2.3bn pods in 2006. It’s a cult, he admits as a user ‘“an experience” rather than coffee, Nestlé told analysts last year and, boy, is it all-enveloping.’

And much cheaper than Starbucks …

Off for xmas

Christmas in New York beckons tomorrow, so a very big, happy and joyful one to everybody. We'll be back in early January.  Whether Ronaldinho will still be with Barca is another matter ...

Oh show me the way to the next gin tonic bar

Funny how these things happen. You stumble across a bar that makes some really fine Gin and Tonics - and hey presto you pick up the paper the next day and there it is in a feature about the city's best G&T bars.

The G&T here is many miles away from the colonel's pre-dinner tastebud killer that it is in Britain, where it tends to be served with miniature ice cubes and a translucent and tiny slice of lemon in a dainty shot glass.

Here, quite rightly, it's a hearty post-dinner cocktail designed to get the conversational juices flowing. Take a big brandy style schooner, throw in four large chunky ice cubes and pour over a large helping of gin without the aid of a measure. Then get the flavour in - plenty of lime, cucumber, lemon or mint depending where you are.

At the xixbar where we were last night, it was cucumber in the glass and lime wiped round the rim.

The xix incidentally formed the endpoint to a delightful evening that covered all the bases within a few hundred yards on Calle Tamarit. Start out at the minuscule Casa Jacinta at 154 for a vermouth and anchovies. Then a full dinner of amazing tapas at Albert Adria's Inopia (104) and then across the road to xix (actually at Rocafort 19, but who's counting?).

Other G&T bars on the La Vanguardia list today, none of which have been tried (yet):

• Dacksy (Consell de Cent 247)
• Coppelia (Rera Palau 4)
• Snooker (Roger de Lluria 42)
• Shenu (Londres 91)

To which I'd add the Ideal (Aribau 89)

Let them have it

Much as the British moan about the state of public transport, you'd be lucky to get 20 people to stage a march to protest their dire state.

Last night we had between 200,000 (the police) and 700,000 (the organisers) on the streets of Barcelona, using four weeks of suburban rail chaos (the result of construction of the final stretch of the AVE high-speed rail link into the city centre) as the springboard for a pretty impressive demonstration of the strength of nationalist feeling here.

This may be a new phase in the Catalan campaign for greater autonomy from Madrid and/or full independence. No more of the 'we are a people, we are a nation ...' homespun philosophy that has a limited appeal but 'Madrid's buggered it up, we couldn't be any worse'.

Indeed they would probably be a lot better. There's the money and the smarts here, so why not? Nationhood based on competence rather than a cultural ideology. This was no factional left wing demo but one that brought together some 150 organisations from across the political spectrum.

Things may move fast. There is a national general election in 2008 so expect plenty of devloutionary bones to be chucked Catalonia's way - promises which may or may not be followed up if the Socialists get elected. Three years later we get Joan Laporta, president of Barca and nationalist in chief, running for office as President of the region. At that point things get really interesting.

PS Note to Catalans. Please, please stop looking to Edinburgh and drooling over the Scottish National Party's minority government as a template for independence there and here. The Scottish Parliament was a bastardised gerrymandered talking shop designed to quell nationalism and keep the Labour party in power in perpetuity.

It went horribly wrong at the last election, but hell will freeze other before a government in London would ever allows any quasi independent powers to go to Scotland.

The Michelin man disses Spain

They are spitting tacks here that the new Michelin guide to Spain has failed to up the star number count in any meaningful way.

There are no new 3* restaurants beyond the six already established (three in Catalonia and three in the Basque country). Quite what 'El Celler de Can Roca' in Girona has to do to get a third star is unclear. It would also appear that the wonderful Cinc Sentits in Barcelona is not pressing enough wonga under Bibendum's ample rump as it remains starless.

Abac's second star is merited but it seems a rum time to do it as it prepares to move house, while Commerc 24 deserves its star, although I doubt it is any better this year than it was last year or the one before.

But as my brother, who knows a bit more about this than I do, says 'Michelin are hugely unreliable outside France and no one should take them too seriously.' And right now Michelin wants its focus to be on Japan where it has just published its first guide with all the astonishing lateness of an England defender. A drastic uprating of Spanish stars at the same time would have thrown the spotlight off Tokyo. Or am I being too suspicious?

And boy has it worked. The multitude of stars showered on Tokyo's eateries had the cretinous end of the food writers such as the awful Jay Rayner slavering in awe at what a clever dick Mr Michelin is.

'Do the math' as they would say in Didsbury. As Nick points out:

'If Tokyo has roughly 12 times more restaurants than New York, London or Paris then if what Michelin is claiming is true it should have proportionally the same number of starred restaurants. But this is not the case either for the total number of stars or the number of three star restaurants.'

So bugger Michelin. Look instead at how many French cars cross the border into Spain (many on Michelin tyres) in search of great food at astonishingly low prices, served with grace rather than Gallic attitude, and how few are heading in the other direction. And look at the wonderful new restaurants opening in Barcelona over the next six months as listed in La Vanguardia last week.

Who would be Frank Rijkaard?

After two very comfortable and impressive wins, Barca took a terrible dive on Saturday and lost 2-0 at Getafe.

By all accounts they were dire, but to judge by today's local papers you would have thought they had just lost their 10th successive game.

Fans calling for Frank Rijkaard to go, to change things, to get a grip, sell Ronaldinho etc. I'm sure the radio chat shows had very much the same.

The place has gone mad. It will doubtless all reverse again if they win their next game but you have to have some sympathy with Rijkaard for this constant climbing up and down the outrage scale.

If he's bothered, he hasn't let on. Win or lose, he sounds so laid back he's horizontal, as if he's had a calming walk round the streets of Amsterdam with a nice joint and a bottle of Heineken. Sure, it might be better if he wielded the big stick a little more often, but it's a technique that has done pretty well so far.

Long live the king!

My admiration for King Juan Carlos knows no bounds. His compassion and dignity compared with the bunch of stiffs who head the British crown has been recorded here already.

This weekend though his stock rose hugely in my estimation when he told Hugo Chavez 'Why don't you shut up?' when the pompous and autocratic populist leader of Venezuela continually interrupted Spain's PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, at the Iberamerican council meeting. You can't imagine Queen Elizabeth doing that.

The vile Chavez compared Zapatero's predecessor Jose Maria Aznar to a snake and described him as a fascist. Zapatero politely pointed out that he had been elected twice by the Spanish people.

He might have added that Aznar never mounted a coup d'etat, refused to renew the licence of the nation's most popular television station or called for an end to presidential term limits, all of which Chavez has done. He might also have pointed out, as La Vanguardia did today, that Chavez once regarded Aznar as a buddy and rolled out the red carpet for him when he visited Caracas in 2000.

The left adore Chavez because he stands up to 'the man' i.e the great Satan of the United States and is in some way 'right on' even when he speaks for seven hours at a time outlining his tedious philosophies. But you start with Chavez and you end up with Robert Mugabe, usurping and clinging on to power no matter the consequences for your country.

its songtime

happy birthday to dad
happy birthday to dad
happy birthday to da-ad
happy birthday to dad

xxx

Ben did it!

After six months of hard work, Ben heard today that he had got in to University College School in London. He'll go there in September 2009 when he is 13. It's an incredible achievment and we are all very very proud of him.

Go Sox!

When it comes down to it, there are really only three sports teams in the world worth supporting - Manchester United, FC Barcelona and baseball's Boston Red Sox.

All three represent (on the field) what is best about sport. The endeavour is to entertain, and attack rather than defend. All three have traditionally favoured attack over defence in the belief that if they concede four (runs/goals) they have the means to score five or more.

All three have traditionally also pushed their hugely loyal fan bases to the edge by winning things the hard way. Why play to your full ability and win easily when you can play like idiots, go behind and recover in the last stages of the game?

It has not always worked. In fact all three teams have underachieved massively at the highest level over the years. Barca and United have only won two European Cups each while their biggest rivals Real Madrid and Liverpool have won nine and six respectively.

The Red Sox meanwhile won five World Series before 1918 and not a single other one until 2004, while the hated New York Yankees won 20 or more.

Then on Sunday night, they won their seventh Series. And lo, the world is a much better place as a result ...

A brave man

Pasqual Maragall is the man who made modern Barcelona.

As Mayor for 15 years from 1982 he brought the Olympic Games to the city and oversaw its transformation from a sleepy and crumbling port to the cool, modern and wonderful city it is today, one that has attracted thousands of people like me to come and live here.

He also spent three years as President of Catalonia, overseeing the region's new autonimy statute, before he retired last year.

Yesterday he got up and, with his wife by his side, announced that he had Alzheimers and would be spending much of his time now in the fight to bring attention to, and combat, this terrible disease.

It was an incredibly brave thing to do and the coverage in the papers this morning was both moving and extensive, with praise and sympathy showered on him by political allies and enemies.

Today I am 18,260 days old...

which means in two days time ... (you can work this out in excel)

Motor racing as it should be

I took a very nostalgic trip to Montjuic on Sunday (along with 250,000) others to see a special festival to mark the 75th birthday of the now defunct racing circuit which winds around the beautiful park.

Among the historic cars which lapped the circuit were a dozen F1 cars from 1975, the last time a Grand Prix was held there. Not only was that the time that I followed F1 with a passion, but it was in many ways a golden age of racing. No pit stops, no tyre changes, no computers - just close racing around wonderful road circuits such as Montjuic, Spa, Nurburgring.

All gone now. In fact Montjuic in 1975 marked the beginning of the end. The drivers threatened to strike becuase of the poor safety features and raced only under threat of having the cars impounded. After 25 laps, a car left the tracks, leapt the barriers and killed four people, two of them spectators. The era of road racing was over.

Barcelona still has its Grand Prix of course on the Catalunya circuit, an event that brings millions of euros into the city each year.

It's a very strange business. Under Franco, the sport was very much the preserve of the Nationalists, organised for and by rich playboys, dukes and counts. I doubt there was much of a Republican presence there.

Today you'll see the nationalist and socialist Catalan leaders hobnobbing with the likes of Bernie Ecclestone and dangling baubles to ensure he doesn't take the franchise away from the circuit to some other part of Spain. Most peculiar.

so we did go mushroom picking ..

in the right place ... in the lavansa valley in the shadow of the Pyrenees
at the right time ... in mid October
with the right guide ... a friend who knows her poisonous from her edible

and we found ... eight.

so dry has it been in September that the mushroom season just hasn't happened yet and probably won't now. It's still 20+C and sunny and the chestnut sellers are due out on the streets any day now.

One day autumn will come ...

La Vanguardia has a redesign

And very nice it looks too. I’ve written here before about what a great newspaper it is and this week’s redesign makes it even better.

New colour presses have prompted a much better use of bigger photos and graphics, while the overall size has been cut down to the same as El Pais. Large elements of the former design (co-authored my Milton Glaser I learned) have been retained but it all looks crisper, brighter and more modern.

What I like about the paper is it doesn’t beat up its readers each day by screaming at them how awful their city, their region and their country is. Instead it explains it to them and let’s them come to their own conclusions.

It reports soberly and crisply on difficult issues such as immigration, violence against women, education, spiralling housing costs and so on. Its journalists see themselves on a mission to explain, rather than sound off and bend the facts to fit their viewpoint. International news is at the front and the sugary stuff about royal children kept to pink pages in the middle.

It’s a sharp contrast to London’s Evening Standard which has until now beaten its readers into submission about how foul their city is, how dreadful their mayor is. It’s depressing and apparently they have now embarked on a mission to be more upbeat.

Local papers should never be unquestioning cheerleaders for their city. But they have a duty to reflect the way their readers enjoy themselves as well as telling the story of what can be improved. Any publication worth its salt should like its readers but not many do. La Vanguardia is one of the few.

It may be the last day of September but ..

.. it was 27C today which was hot enough for us to head to the beach and actually go swimming. and it wasn't bracing cold either but genuinely pleasant to swim in.

They've had the first flurries of snow in the Pyrenees but its not getting much cooler for a few days yet. The Catalans, great mushroom pickers, are getting worried that it is too warm and too dry for a decent crop. one good reason to pray rain ...