Listen and learn

He is a record holder already. He won several titles as a player, and now he is demolishing statistics as a coach. So far, Josep Guardiola has won all three Spanish league titles that he has competed for as a trainer. When Barça bet on this rookie coach to replace the successful Frank Rikjaard to lead the team, only a few believed he could do it. He had never managed a team before, but from the very beginning, Guardiola showed that his leadership as a captain on the field was transferable as a coach. He is a great motivator, no matter if his men are little more than boys taking their first steps in professional football or international stars with massive egos. Guardiola has shown that he knows how to handle a group of top-level football players.
However, this season, after winning the Club World Cup, the Champions League and two La Liga titles in a row, everyone expected less from his group of Barça warriors. However, something happened that helped Guardiola to motivate his team to even greater heights, in the process making him the very first coach to win three La Liga titles in his first three seasons. This 'something' has a name: José Mourinho. Shaming the world of football and even some Real Madrid fans, the Portuguese legend began playing a dirty campaign with the aim of winning via the media what he has largely been incapable of winning on the field.
Guardiola stood strong against every attack, every accusation, every blow below the belt. When needed to motivate his men, he answered with strong words through the press, and like a practitioner of judo, used his aggressor’s strength against himself.
As a result, Barça found the motivation needed to keep the team on high alert, an attitude that helped them to win another La Liga title and an appearance in another European Cup final at Wembley.
The image that accompanies this column was taken two days after winning La Liga. It is amazing how Guardiola manages to keep his men fully concentrated, as they listen to him in silence. Look at the faces; there is only one leader in this group: Josep Guardiola.

Cometh the hero

He is Perry Freshwater, a.k.a. 'Aiguafresca'. He was born in New Zealand, but he played for the English national team in several Six Nations and Rugby World Cup games. He is about to retire from professional rugby, but last month he proved he still has something to offer.
Perry started his career in Europe with the Leicester Tigers in 1995. In 2003, he moved to Perpignan, the capital city of Catalunya Nord to play for USAP, the rugby equivalent of Barça in football terms. With USAP, he won the Top14 French Championship in 2009.
Last April 9, USAP came to Barcelona for the very first time to play their Heineken Cup quarter final game against Toulon. As you can see in the picture, the match was played in a real party atmosphere, where people from both north and south of the Catalan border got together to seal a brotherhood with roots in a common history, language and culture. More than 55,000 tickets were sold, a record for a Heineken Cup game, and it opened the door to a new tradition, that of USAP playing in Barcelona at least once a year.
The match was a tough one. USAP seemed astonished with the spectacular scenario of the Olympic Stadium filled with Catalan flags, and by the response of the fans, not only from Catalunya Nord, but from more than 15.000 followers in the south. Toulon, a team owned by a billionaire who signed lots of international figures, led by the English star Jonny Wilkinson, understood from the very beginning that Perpignan was the team that had to demonstrate their strength. It was not an easy task. The magical feet of Perpignan’s Jeroni Porical kept his team alive, but they saw the light at the end of the tunnel when replacement Freshwater appeared on the field. "Aiguafresca és al camp. S’ha acabat el bròquil!" said a fan in a Twitter message, which could be translated as "Freshwater is on. It’s all over now".
As if through prophecy, in a fantastic move, Freshwater followed Guilhem Guirado’s burst to score what proved to be the winning try.
Aiguafresca became the hero of a day that will be cherished in the memories of many present in Barcelona. It was a day when the brothers from Perpignan came to show us how to win a tough match.

The Centre of the World

La Gare de Perpignan, in the capital city of French Catalonia, or Catalunya del Nord, used to be a grey, forlorn train station on the very bottom rung of the French Republic, so far away from Paris.
Then, on August 27 1963, the Surrealist genius, Salvador Dali, went to Perpignan and made a proclamation that changed the reputation of La Gare: "It all became clear in a flash: There, right before me, was the centre of the universe", Dalí said.The painter publically declared that the Perpignan train station was el centre del món, the centre of the world.
Later, Dalí even created a painting entitled ‘L’Estació de Perpinyà’. The work of art is considered to be an exceptional example of the Surrealist movement. The piece, which features a small image of the train station amid figures of rural farm workers, is intensely symbolic of Dali’s obsessive concern with immortality.
Since then, the people of Perpignan have made Dalí one of their most beloved heroes, and the memory of his surreal words will no doubt live on there forever.
Almost 50 years after Dalí’s revelation, Perpignan inaugurated a new train station to receive the TGV high-speed train that connects the city with Catalonia. Aptly, the first trip on the new line was between Perpignan and Figueres, the hometown of Salvador Dalí.
The new station is a state-of-the-art building, with a large shopping area, an auditorium,12,000 square metres of business space and will soon also boast a spectacular sports area. One of its tasks is to boost the neighbourhood of Sant Aciscle, an area damned to the periphery until now that Dalí’s words have been made a reality. The new Centre del Món, a train station facing south, looks towards its sister of Catalonia on the other side of the Pyrenees.
In recent years Catalunya del Nord in general, and Perpignan in particular, have begun to realise that the answer to the neglect and contempt of distant Paris is to be found over the Pyrenees, where a market of seven million people share a language and a culture.

Let’s go electric!

Antonio Tajani, a Vice-President of the European Commission and European Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship, recently travelled to Milan – by fossil fuel guzzling plane – to take part in the 'Mobility Tech' exhibition. There, Trajani drove an electric Smart car to show the EU’s support for electric vehicles that will soon begin appearing en masse on our streets.
In January 2009, Catalonia Today published an in-depth report on hybrids cars, a technology that combines electrical energy with fuel-driven engines. Almost every big carmaker is offering a hybrid vehicle on its range and in the following months we will begin to see the emergence of all-electric cars, such as the Smart pictured. Catalonia is keen not to miss this particular train and the Seat factory in Martorell will soon be producing 20 electric cars every day.
We know that oil is getting increasingly expensive, as it becomes increasingly difficult to extract, forcing us to take more risks to obtain it, often with fatal consequences, such as the Gulf of Mexico’s disaster.
We are all worried about this problem, but we aren’t going to change our way of life. Governments push citizens to buy more cars, subsidising the industry and offering buyers tax breaks. Thus, electricity seems to offer the right answer. Instead of refuelling at petrol stations, we will be plugging our car in every night at home, just as we do with our iPods or our mobile phones.
However, I can’t help wondering if we aren’t solving one problem only to create another. How are we going to produce enough electricity to recharge car batteries? Most power plants are still using fossil or nuclear fuels to generate electricity. If fossil fuel, we are simply swapping the tank of the car for the tank of the power plant. If nuclear, we should keep in mind that the waste generated by nuclear plants is a hot issue in every country, especially here.
The answer could lie with wind turbines and solar energy but their contribution to the total amount of energy consumption is far from sufficient. We still wait to see how we will get around in the future.

Are you sure you want the euro?

A few months ago, EU finance ministers gave the final approval for Estonia to adopt the euro as its currency on January 1, 2011.
Meeting in Brussels, they decided to use the existing exchange rate of 15.6466 kroon to one euro as the final conversion rate.
The tiny Baltic state, with a population of 1.3 million, will become the 17th member of the single currency.
Estonia met entry requirements on inflation, debt and deficit levels, interest rates and currency stability, but one can’t help wondering if this is such a good idea and that perhaps Estonians should have second thoughts. When many eastern states joined the European Union a few years ago, adopting the euro currency was the main goal for all of them; the euro was seen as a guarantee of stability.
However, with the financial crisis that shocked the continent and the world, the euro showed that it is not invulnerable. The Greek collapse threatened the entire currency system and forced the EU to create new controls to avoid such crises in the future.
Of the EU’s 27 member states, 16 currently have the euro as their currency. Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria and Finland adopted the currency in 2002. Slovenia joined in 2007, followed by Cyprus and Malta in 2008, and Slovakia in 2009.
Although Lord Mandelson had claimed Britain should still join the euro despite the crisis, at present public opinion in the UK is against joining the euro.
Estonian authorities are campaigning strongly to gain the approval of the public, who expect the euro to be a key element in overcoming a crisis that has hit its economy. However, a new currency is anything but new to Estonians. The kroon succeeded the mark in 1928 and was in use until the Russian invasion in 1940, after which it was replaced by the Soviet ruble. Upon regaining independence, in 1992, the kroon was reintroduced. Now the kroon will dissappear again, and the euro will be the official currency when 2011 begins.

Tarraco Arena

There was a time when it was one of the most important bullrings in Catalonia. However, with the passage of time, society has moved on and the former Plaza de Toros in Tarragona has been reinvented as the Tarraco Arena.
The bullfighting tradition in Catalonia has been consigned to the past with the passage of a recent bill outlawing the activity. From January 1, 2012, the legislation approved by the Catalan parliament comes into effect and bullfighting in Catalonia will become illegal.
Which is not to say that the legislation will make a huge impact. Nowadays there is only one active bullring left in Catalonia. It is to be found in Barcelona and is frequented by relatively small groups of foreign tourists keen to see a real corrida before they fly home. Bullfighting in Catalonia is now effectively, and legally, an abandoned tradition.
Several Catalan cities have demolished their bullrings, while others have decided to transform theirs into new spaces. In Barcelona, the old bullring in Plaça Espanya is being turned into a giant shopping centre, as well as the site for the new Rock and Roll Museum of Barcelona.
In Tarragona, the bullring was better known in its final years for hosting the annual  Castells contest. Every year, the best colles castelleres would gather and compete in building their human towers.
After major restoration work, Tarragona’s old bullring, which was built in 1883, is now the all-new Tarraco Arena Plaça (TAP), ready to host concerts, plays, and – of course – the Castells contest.
The result, after five years and 18 million euros, is spectacular, as can be seen in the photo. A huge 40-metre, 1,000-tonne, retractable dome completely covers the arena. Tarragona is hoping to be chosen as European Capital of Culture in 2016 and to host the Mediterranean Games in 2017. The new TAP is ready to be one of the main venues. Without any bulls.

Following in the footsteps of Kosovo and Montenegro

Catalonia is arriving at a crossroads in its history. In 1714, the country lost a war and was absorbed into the kingdom of Spain. Since then, the nearest the country has come to recovering its independence was the short-lived proclamation of the Catalan Republic in the early 1930s by President Francesc Macià. Until now, that is. Today, Catalonia is closer than ever to recovering its independence as a new state within the European Union.
A powerful movement is growing among the people of Catalonia. It is not led by the government or politicians, but rather by the people, who are demanding that their leaders and the political parties catch up. Last month, more than 1.5 million people poured into the streets of Barcelona to protest against the ruling of Spain’s Constitutional Court, which declared some vital articles of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy related to national symbols, language and self-government to be unconstitutional. At this expression of people power, the word 'independence' was on everyone’s lips.
Unsurprisingly, politicians wanted to lead the demonstration, but they were ignored. By definition, political parties are interested in maintaining the status quo but on this issue the reality of change is staring them in the face. Polls shows that those in favour of independence is now a majority and the politicians will have to address the issue sooner or later.
The path for them to follow now appears clearer than ever. Recently, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that Kosovo’s secession declaration in 2008 had not broken international law.
Kosovo is not an isolated case and comes on the back of the 2006 referendum in favour of independence for Montenegro. The new Eastern European state is now waiting to hear that it has been accepted into the EU fold.
The narrative of Catalonia’s independence now appears clear: a formal declaration of independence from the Parlament, followed by a referendum. The people are ready. The politicians are running out of time.