Bizarre situation!

Last Sunday something really terrible happened in Almeria. After the match between Almería and Eibar, the Basque manager Gaizka Garitano attended the press. All the coaches have to go to the press conference room once the match finishes otherwise the club is fined.

One of the journalists that travelled with the team asked him in Basque and, of course, Garitano answered in the same language. Meanwhile, a few local journalists interrupted his press conference saying that they didn’t understand. Then Almeria’s head of press reminded them that there was no problem: firstly he would reply in Basque and after he would repeat in Spanish. My experience has taught me that local journalists don’t quote the away coach. The journalists carried on complaining while Almeria’s head of press repeated again that Almeria has been playing for the last six years in the First Division and that they should respect a person answering in other language as they have always done. Finally, Garitano got really annoyed and he decided to leave.

First of all, I have to say that maybe Garitano should have waited for respect to the other journalists. However, I understand that it is very difficult to stand a situation like that one where some people are behaving so badly. Secondly, congrats to Almería's head of press who tried to help and asked everybody to be quiet and respectful. I have read that afterwards he apologized to the coach.

Finally, terrible attitude of those journalists who didn’t respect Garitano. I think that their attitude was unacceptable. We live in a country that has four languages. Garitano answered a question in Basque because somebody asked him in that language. I could understand somebody getting annoyed if the question was in Spanish and he decided to answer in Basque, but that was not the case.

In a lot of press conferences we have our speaker answering first in Catalan and after in Spanish the same question for the press to have the same quote in both languages. There isn’t any problem and everybody understands.

In the last years there has been a boom of Nationalism and I know that in other parts of Spain they have started hating the Catalans specially. When things like these happen –it is not the first- I think that I am better without these type of people that don’t respect other languages or the differences we have in our same country. It was a pathetic attitude. I know that not all the Almeria journalists acted this way and they felt sorry, but I can’t understand this attitude in our times and from people that have a University degree and they should have respect for others. However, you don’t only learn good manners at school.

Totally disagree

A few days ago, the Spanish King Felipe VI had a meeting with the Spanish members of the European Parliament in Brussels. The Spanish king decided to visit the European Parliament and talk to the different members and ask them about different questions.

One of the moments that caught all the attention of the press was when the leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, gave a present to the King. Iglesias gave him the TV series: ‘Game of Thrones’. He told him that it was a good series to understand all the political movements in Spain.

Therefore, Iglesias achieved what he pretended: all radio stations, TV channels and newspapers talked about this moment. In the next couple of days journalists were debating about his present to the King. For a new party like Podemos it was a great promotion.

However, this peculiar incident covered another that I think was more important. The European Members of parties like CIU, Bildu, Izquierda Unida, ERC e IC didn’t show up when the king visited the Parliament. I have to say that I don’t support monarchy. I don’t think they should have so many privileges and that I would prefer to live in a Republic, even though the President of our country will also have privileges and more money than most of the citizens.

I don’t think it is a good decision because I think manners and respect are first. I totally understand that they don’t want a monarchy and they are against it, but I think they should have shaken the King’s hand. I think manners and respect are more important than political ideas.

Unlucky for them, Iglesias’ decision made that their insolence didn’t have much mention in the different news and only a few people noticed it. However, and as one of the leaders of IU said the day after, I think that their decision was wrong and a mistake.

The hand mixer set

My week has started with new experiences. This Monday, Jéssica instructed me to buy her a hand mixer set. It is supposed to be a very useful machine to bake cakes. It is quite expensive but a friend of my wife told her that in Lidl they were putting it on sale for only 25 euros. Of course it doesn’t have the quality of the professional ones, but for the use she is giving it would do.

As I am off this week, she asked me to go and buy it. She said it would be great if I was there early in the morning because they don’t have many and they get sold out quickly. I have a Lidl five minutes from home, but on Saturday I got my first setback: from the 13^th of April until the 19^th it was closed due to maintenance works. So we had to look for another shop and the nearest one we found is more than 15 minutes walking.

I got up early in the morning to run, got showered and be there at 9.15am when Lidl opens. I made it but when I got there another huge surprise: a great queue in the street waiting for the shop to open. I honestly thought I wasn’t going to be lucky and that if I found it will be difficult for me to get to the funeral I had later on. I decided to sit down in a bench and see if everything turned out well.

 As we got to the door I overcome some people because they had to left the trolleys and some more that were not as fast as me. Now the problem was founding the hand mixer set. I was sure that all of my competitors had more experience and knew perfectly where this kind of stuff is in the shop. Hopefully it was easy to find.

I got there and there were plenty of boxes. I even had time to buy some chocolate biscuits I really like and I made it to the funeral with plenty of time. Yesterday the product everybody wanted was the bakery so I was lucky and I didn’t have any problem. I was surprised because some people bought two or three of them. Jéssica told me that her friend’s mother also explained the same to her. 

The hand mixer set –still in its box- and I have got the promise that she will use it to bake me a cake. As I know you are willing to see it, I will post a photo of it. I hope I have it before the year ends.

Incredible atmosphere

I know I am bit late, but recently I have had a lot of work and I haven’t found the time to seat down and write without pressure. I have a few ideas in my head and in the next few days I will try to write them down. Today I want to explain what I felt two weeks ago when Barcelona celebrated its Marathon, which is improving every year with more participants year after year.

I know this post is late, because the Marathon took place on March 16^th but I think it deserves a few lines. Even though I have been training hard this autumn and winter and I would have been able to complete the race, I didn’t register myself because I wasn’t convinced. However, a few days before the Marathon I started to regret my decision but I couldn’t change it.

As I wasn’t going to run it, I first try to volunteer but they appointed me a kilometre point far from where I live so I decided not to do it. The second option was to wake up early and get down and cheer the runners. Hundreds of people had the same idea because when I arrived to the street there were a lot of people waiting for the runners. I have to admit that in that moment I really regretted my decision.

However, I decided to get down with my running shoes and ready to join some of the friends that I knew that were participating in the Marathon. I saw a lot of them in the 4th kilometre and when they passed by point kilometre number 10 I started to run with José María Rubi, a journalist from RNE who ran under 3 hours two years ago. I went with him during 5 or 6 kilometres and it was amazing.

Hundreds of people along the streets clapping and cheering the names of the runners. The atmosphere was great! There were friends, family, tourists, Barceloneans… A lot of people in the streets. I really felt unhappy when I decided to get back home because I think I wasted a great opportunity to run the Marathon and, especially, because there was an incredible atmosphere in the whole city. 19.000 runners participated in the Marathon that grows every year. 

If you like running and you want to complete a Marathon, don’t doubt it and registered yourself in Barcelona’s one. It is really great!