Foreign Perspectives

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Every time that the issue of ID cards comes up in the UK, there are questions asked about how securely the information collected will be held and every time the government says “trust us”.

Well, today we’ve seen just how much we could trust the government with our information. Not that far at all as it happens as they’ve just managed to lose the complete ID records of just about everyone in the UK. Had it been anyone other than the government that had lost it, those places providing ID theft solutions would be advising everyone to change their bank accounts. When you’re talking millions of people, that’s not really a runner of course.

Still, there are encouraging signs in this fiasco. For one thing, it’s a great example to refer the government to when they say that the ID card information will be perfectly safe. And, of course, it’ll be a brilliant excuse to use when your bank claims that you’ve overspent on your credit card as you’ll be able to say that your identity was stolen.

Perhaps TNT aren’t the best company to use if you’re sending really valuable items in the post!

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With the rapid rise of the Catalán language just over the border in Spain the problems in communication with those coming north have been magnified considerably.

Starting earlier this year we began to receive guests from “Spain” who could barely speak French or English and simply refused to speak Spanish. Since we don’t speak Catalán we’re increasingly finding ourselves pretty much resorting to sign language with some of them.

Aside from anything else, that makes sending out of our acknowledgement e-mail something of a problem. The majority of those coming from south of the border are from Barcelona and that’s a very cosmopolitan city with Spanish from all over the country and indeed Latin America living there but obviously with a large Catalán component. The only language that we know they all speak is Spanish yet sending out an acknowledgement e-mail in Spanish will clearly insult the Cataláns.

The net effect is that we’re considering calling it a day with e-mails to Spain yet that causes complications for them and in fact we’ve already received a complaint from one Catalán couple (in English, as they won’t write in Spanish and nobody outside Spain can understand Catalán) because they say we were closed the night they’d booked. In fact, because they’d refused to read the directions e-mailed to them in Spanish, they were banging on the door of our neighbour’s house and he was off on holiday.

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We’ve noticed a distinct hardening of the attitude of the Catalans in Spain over the last couple of years which has been gaining momentum of late.

Two years ago, any time there were brochures in shops and whatnot, they were always in Catalan and Spanish. 18 months ago that stopped and since then they have only been in Catalan.

18 months ago, we could speak to the shopkeepers in Spanish. Since about 12 months ago, they have refused to serve us in Spanish.

A year ago, we could speak to all our Spanish guests in Spanish. For the last 6 months or so they have refused to speak to us in Spanish. This is particularly crazy as few of them speak French well and many don’t speak English well either. Twice recently we have virtually had to resort to sign language although both they and we speak Spanish! The latest booking was quite comical in many ways as I can understand Catalan reasonably well but can’t speak it: the potential guest could speak neither French nor English yet refused to acknowledge my replies in Spanish which she could understand very well.

Wendy tells me that recent developments indicate that already demonstrations have taken place in Catalonia. Can violent ones be far off?

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