When either Barรงa or Spain play futbol, I’m usually there, with a
bowl of homemade guacamole and some chips, sitting on my couch, watching on
T.V. I was there last night, but without
the snacks.
Soccer games in Spain usually start at 10 pm,
which seems late enough. Last night’s
Super Copa game began at 10:30 pm. And I
was lucky to be watching it at home because many of the 90,000 spectators who
attended the match at Camp Nou (a larger than usual percentage of them tourists
because they are here on vacation while the Catalans are away on theirs) found
themselves without transportation when the game was over at 12:30.
It seems that the city government no longer pays
the 30,000 euros-per-hour that public transportation demands for working after
regular hours and so neither the metro nor the buses were running. City hall representatives say that they wrote
to the Futbol Federation as well as to the two clubs to ask that the game be played
earlier, say at 9:30. But their letter
was never answered and the schedule was not changed. It took some people several hours to get back
to their homes or their hotels, the taxis being overrun with fares. Some just gave up and went to sleep on public
benches.
***
Continuing on the topic of sports, today’s news
has the sad story of Lance Armstrong who is giving up his fight against the
allegations of drug use. They say it may
cost him his seven Tour de France cups.
Some nitwit on the internet named Carpenter says his giving up his fight
is a clear sign that he is guilty, his logic being that if he were really
innocent, he would continue fighting the allegations.
I don’t follow that logic. In the first place, I was always dubious of
the allegations that were brought forth years after the events. But that aside, Armstrong has been involved
in a fight to defend his innocence for years.
I don’t follow closely, but do they keep coming up with new accusations?
new proofs? How long does he have to keep
fighting? It’s already been several
years. Doesn’t he have the right, if he
wants to, to turn his back on the whole thing and try to have a life. He already put up a great fight against
cancer. As far as I’m concerned, the man
deserves to be let in peace. But in any
case, his laying down his sword doesn’t say to me that he is guilty, but
perhaps that he is tired.
***
Spain is on the move to change the laws governing
rentals, specifically, how long it has to take before a tenant who does not pay
rent can be evicted. They are including
some safeguards so that someone who becomes ill or unemployed gets special
consideration. But the rest will have
ten days from the time the court says out.
Spain has the lowest percentage of rentals in
Europe – only 17% of housing is rented, the rest is lived in by the owners or
stays empty (by choice). Until now, if a
tenant refused to pay rent, they were protected by law and could stay in the
property for years. Meanwhile, if the
landlord had a mortgage or other legal financial obligations, building
maintenance, etc., he would have to continue paying them. It was a crazy situation that kept many
people from renting out properties for fear of getting stuck in an impossible
situation.
I was one of those
A few years ago when I owned my villa and was thinking of going back to
live in the US, I considered renting it out.
I did that for about one minute.
I couldn’t afford getting a tenant who moved in and then at some point
stopped paying and I would be stuck with my hefty mortgage and no income to
cover it.
***
Anders Breivik the mass murderer who killed 77 people in Norway was
found by the Norwegian court to be sane.
Of course he’s not sane. No one
who does things like that is sane. But
he is functional enough to understand what he did and to meet whatever the
requirements for sanity might be, and so he can be judged as a sane person. He has been sentenced to 21 years in
prison. His minimum sentence is 10 years
at which time his case can be reviewed.
If, in the future, he is found to still be a danger, his sentence can be
extended. This is a far cry from the
death penalty sometimes imposed in the U.S., or the life sentences (stated
specifically in thousands of years) that Spain imposes on ETA (but not Muslim)
terrorists.
Photo credit: Futbol Club Barcelona
