Month: October 2017

Karl Marx is supposed to have said that history begins as tragedy and eventually returns as farce. Too bad he’s not alive to witness the truth of his remarks as the conflict between the Catalan separatists and the central government in Madrid unfolds here in Spain, day by day, drop by drop, in all its relentless absurdity. Perhaps Marx intuited some universal truth about history, or politics, or human nature—or all three. Perhaps not. At this moment, it’s difficult to ignore the sensation that what we are witnessing here is the farce of two mutually-created firing squads aimed at each other, with the rest of Spain trapped in between.
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Boats are fundamental in the lives and livelihoods of the people who live on Formentera. It’s the smallest inhabited island of the Baleares, which include Minorca, Majorca and Ibiza and is accessible only by boat. It is roughly 30 square miles in size and, at its extremities, only 12 miles of largely infertile terrain connect one end of the island to the other.
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The conflict between the Catalán Separatists and the Central Government in Madrid has put a lot of us on edge, no matter which side we tend to sympathize with.  I’ll share some thoughts about the situation in a later post, but for the moment, let’s look at the lighter side of things.
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