Opinión
Hidden away behind the thick brutalist walls of the Barbican lies a miniature time loop. This overwhelming vortex of repeating imagery and sound is the brainchild of eccentric Icelandic perseverance artist Ragnar Kjartansson. An intriguing space where repetition runs riot…
She speaks discomfort with real boldness and fluency. Her career-summarising exhibition at the Tate is the mouthpiece for this language, and it makes us listen.
Every now and then my eyes are drawn to an object that, for years, played a major role in shaping my ideas about the world. It is a Sony radio receiver, designed for exploring the world of shortwave programmes. I keep it on a shelf near where I write as a piece of nostalgia. I have used it to listen to all sorts of things, but mainly the BBC.
Christmas, like childhood, is burdened by the melancholy that comes from knowing that it must eventually come to an end. But this melancholy is something that we only recognise as adults. No child feels it as they stand before the glow of the Christmas tree lights or listen to children’s carols. To feel it, you need to grow up, you need to lose someone and to realise that Santa doesn’t really exist. Although perhaps they can sense it somehow: my only unhappy memory of Christmas as a child is of thinking about the day we would have to take down the tree. A natural pessimist, I started the countdown on Christmas Day itself and the following day the three wise men met their tragic fate. Brit Es Magazine está creada por gente que vive fuera de su ciudad; algunos vuelven siempre a casa por estas fechas y algunos otros lo celebramos con las familias que nos hemos inventado en el camino.
Galdós produced a very disappointing translation of Dickens. Blasco Ibáñez plagiarised translations of Shakespeare. Some translators missed pages out of their translations and complete versions have only recently become available. And all of them, according to Eduardo Mendoza, are suffering from the same malady, the anger that takes over translators. It has only been a few years since decent translations by Spanish authors started to appear, Spanish authors lending their voices to English authors who they admired, or whose works inspired them.
She takes the corner of my eye and pulls me in over Pedro’s shoulder.
For a brief moment, I think I’ve glimpsed Mathilde from uni, an instance of mistaken identity more common here than back home. But in seconds I realise this girl is like nobody I’ve seen before. The lightness in my legs, filling up and overflowing across the surface of my skin, tells me that without question. Her black ringlets cascade wildly around a bright Mediterranean face. Her mouth is a bold, red fruit, shining with speech. Then, with eyes as dark as a forest, she looks at me. We connect.
My Spanish friends have expressed similar bemusement at our saccharine traditions. What on earth do decorated eggs, a generous rabbit and flowery hats have to do with the Passion? Probably nothing really, which may be why I like them so much.
So, what is Christmas like in England? Is it similar to how we do it in Spain? And how do the Spanish festivities match up to those of our European neighbours?
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Brit-es.com. The relationship between Spain and Great Britain is as remote as the most ancient nation-states in Europe. We should really talk about Portugal, Castile and England (and let us not forget Galicia, the great loser in Iberian-British History). I would recommend reading Atkinson’s classic, A History of Spain and Portugal, where it was all clearly explained sixty years ago.
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