Spanish views from a small town

Yesterday, a little boy was rescued from a narrow well he had fallen into thirteen days earlier. Unfortunately, the height he had fallen from (he was found at close to a hundred meters underground), had caused his death in the first hours after the incident. It happened in Totalén, Málaga. A family had gone to a patch of land owned by a family member to make a paella in the open air and have a general picnic. The boy, around two years old, wandered off, and either discovered the open hole, or uncovered it. Cats and toddlers are both known for their curiosity, and that, unfortunately, led him to look in the hole, and he fell into it. It wasn't very wide, but two-year olds can fit almost anywhere. The accident reminded me of Jessica McClure back in 1987. Jessica was a year and a half when she fell into a well shaft in Midland, Texas. But her fall was only about six meters. She was singing and crying while rescuers had to mine a parallel hole and a mine shaft to connect it to the we...

Much has been made of the humanitarian ship forbidden by the new Italian government from off-boarding the immigrants it picked up in the Mediterranean. The new Spanish government gave them the opportunity of stepping on firm land in Valencia, and processing there, and, after an agreement, in France, all the asylum petitions. Giving them a hearing doesn't mean all are going to be allowed to stay, but the alternative was letting them drown. A small group of immigrant haters awaited the ship in Valencia, with the usual arguments of "Spaniards first!" In countless pages xenophobic themes run rampant; that the immigrants get all sorts of subsidies, that those subsidies allow them to buy expensive cars and phones, that they don't have to find any kind of work because the government pays their rents, etc. In other words, that they are living off the government without paying any taxes, while the Spaniards fallen on hard times don't get any help.  But that's not t...

Illegal immigration is a spiny problem. So many people want to live a good life, far from misery, war, and hunger. The human thing to do is receive those people with open arms. The economically logical thing to do is make sure they can be accepted without worsening conditions for everyone already here. But when one is confronted with desperate people in desperate conditions, the best thing one should do, is help. After seeing the photos of Aylan Kurdi lying on a beach in Turkey (Remember that little 3 year-old who drowned escaping Syria's civil war? I'm sure many have forgotten.), three firefighters from Sevilla joined an NGO, PROEM-AID, and spent their vacation days at the beginning of 2016 on Lesbos, helping rescue people from the gelid waters of the eastern Mediterranean. One night, they were apprised of an inflatable raft approaching the island that was taking on water. They set out on a boat with two crew members to try to rescue the people travelling on it from certai...

A psychologist, Dr. Arthur Aron, once designed thirty-six questions that help to get to know a person well and experimented their efficacy with groups of couples who were strangers to each other. The questions were broken up into different sets to be asked within a quarter of an hour at the most. Most of the couples took longer with each set. At the end they looked into each others' eyes for around four minutes. Through those questions and through looking at each other, they gained confidence in each other, and one couple from the experiment even went on to get married. Amnesty International took a portion of that experiment, and made a publicity campaign. They had a refugee and a European sit opposite each other and look at each other for four minutes. After that time, and most before, they were smiling at each other and trying to communicate. The objective was to show people that labels simply separate us and dehumanize those we label. That after looking at each other we realiz...

This week Denmark has approved a law that permit s refugees' belongings to be searched at the border and any assets or valuable objects over €1340 in value seized, "to be used toward the accommodation of the refugees." Other countries already have such a policy in place. Switzerland has had such a law for twenty years, in that any money or valuables worth over €900 can be confiscated from anyone seeking refuge. In Germany, two Lands are implementing such laws. Bavaria, that will take anything worth more than €750, and Baden-Wuerttemberg, which will allow refugees to remain destitute with only €350 to their name. In the Netherlands, the government is slightly more generous. It allows families to keep up to €11,790. Though, when they are permitted to work, they have to pay from their earnings a levy for being allowed to remain in the country.  All these new laws (and Switzerland's old one) have mostly been voted into place by national and regional governments to det...

There is really very little to say. The images shown on the news these nights of people escaping war and certain death make me ashamed. Ashamed of being a European in a country whose leaders, along with the leaders of other European countries, do nothing more than say something must be done. But nothing is done, except the erection of more fences, and more hot air expended in meetings that bring about nothing while thousands are searching for a dream of an existence they once had but have lost.  They have lost comfortable lives because of the intervention of the West in their countries. Because of our habits of colonialization. If not by taking over their countries, then by ignoring their customs and beliefs and insisting that our social systems become theirs. Because, of course, our systems are superior. Especially when those countries have resources vital to our systems. At all costs, our way of life must continue and we must have those resources to maintain it. And so we destr...