Jordi Solé

Yesterday our friend Jordi came to visit us to talk about starting a Tai Chi course and we ended up talking about Spain's and the world's problems. We agree on a lot of things - that the world is over-populated, that the AVE is a waste of money and that Spain is in for a situation like Greece and that the Euro will probably fall apart. Jordi's solution is to buy himself a piece of land in the countryside where he's going to build an ecological house to live in when things get tough. He foresees greater inequality with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. We agreed on a lot of things except his extreme Catalan nationalist views.

Jordi said that Spain had a crazy scheme to build a train tunnel at 2000 metres altitude through the Pyrenees but that it has been vetoed by Brussels, but the Sagrera scheme to build the largest station in Europe will go ahead. Madness - We saw the destruction for ourselves when we went to France.

One of the problems Jordi sees is that of the super-rich who set a bad example for people to follow. He thinks within the next few years money (the Euro) will lose its value and our savings will be worth a lot less than they are now.

Sant Jordi

Yesterday was Sant Jordi when men are supposed to give a rose to their wife or girlfriend in return for a book, but I saw quite a lot of women buying roses so I don't know what they were up to. At Thomas's school some of the older children had made little books, some of which were incredibly professional-looking. (Children's book writers of the future)

In the morning we dropped into the Come In English bookshop and bought some books for Thomas and a poster of opposites which we have now put on the wall of his bedroom and he seems to like it and can already say many of the words.

Then we took a walk down Rambla Catalunya and saw the AFAC stand and had a chat with them about putting a link on their website for the school. Most of the main bookshops were there - BCN books, Alibri, Happy books, but I didn't see Dismar or Casa del Llibre anywhere. The CIU were also handing out bookmarks to promote themselves.

In the evening we all went to Casa Asia for a book presentation of some Chinese books for children by the publisher Maguregui (Liao Yanping) but not many people came. I wasn't really surprised as people with children would bve at home with them at that time and were probably tired after walking round the streets all day.