Reasons to be CHEERFUL

As the year draws to an end, in­sta­bil­ity reigns in the Span­ish par­lia­ment, with the So­cial­ists in need of votes, Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence lead­ers be­hind bars, for­mer of­fi­cials still in exile and threat­ened with ex­tra­di­tion, while protests in favour of in­de­pen­dence con­tinue to take place in Cat­alo­nia, and the coun­try’s pro-in­de­pen­dence par­ties are of­fer­ing Pedro Sánchez their votes in ex­change for ne­go­ti­a­tions on self-de­ter­mi­na­tion.

How things change? Or not. A lot has hap­pened in Cat­alo­nia in the past 12 months, but in some ways every­thing re­mains stuck in a show­down be­tween com­pet­ing views with lit­tle hope of ei­ther side back­ing down. Who knows – at this point many would say, who cares – how things will turn out in the end, but one could be for­given for look­ing back at 2019 with a sigh. Whether you sigh or not, you can check out our re­view of the year from pages 21 to 45, which of­fers a, sadly all too brief, overview of some of the major sto­ries that dom­i­nated the news in the past 12 months.

But, hey, it’s al­most Christ­mas, and a new year full of hope and promise is on its way. Be­sides, not every­thing was doom and gloom in 2019, as plenty of good stuff hap­pened, events that can only be de­scribed as progress, and which can help us ap­pre­ci­ate liv­ing in a so­ci­ety where most of us don’t have to fear being jumped by a tiger, dying from an in­fected fin­ger, going more than a few hours with­out fill­ing our bel­lies, sleep­ing in the rain, or hav­ing our throats cut while we sleep. If you look for them, there are rea­sons to be cheer­ful, and here I’ll list just a few of the pos­i­tive things that hap­pened in 2019 that were often buried in the news. As it only took me a few min­utes to dig them up, I’m sure there were plenty more I didn’t see, and I for one am sure there’ll be plenty more like them in the year to come.

Fi­nances are some­thing we rightly worry about, and there’s no doubt there are plenty of peo­ple in Cat­alo­nia strug­gling to keep their heads above water. Yet, un­em­ploy­ment fell last year, and gross av­er­age salaries re­turned to above €2,000 for the first time since 2015. Civil ser­vants got a pay rise, and Cata­lan ex­ports hit record highs, with Barcelona air­port see­ing over 50 mil­lion pas­sen­gers in its fa­cil­i­ties.

Health, an­other major con­cern, also saw plenty of good news, with Cat­alo­nia be­com­ing a world leader in organ trans­plants, while the coun­try’s can­cer rates are now below those in Eu­rope and the US. The first total ar­ti­fi­cial heart trans­plant was car­ried out here, and progress was made in loads of med­ical areas, such as pi­o­neer­ing laser surgery for epilepsy in­tro­duced at Hos­pi­tal del Mar, a new cell treat­ment de­vel­oped for mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis, and the first mi­graine re­search cen­tre open­ing in Vall d’He­bron hos­pi­tal. Mean­while, the health de­part­ment an­nounced spend­ing of €30m on pri­mary care cen­tres, while home­less peo­ple in Barcelona can now get free med­ical at­ten­tion.

Then there’s the en­vi­ron­ment, what a night­mare! True, but the net­work of elec­tric ve­hi­cle recharg­ing sta­tions was ex­panded, and re­cy­cling con­tin­ued to rise, while plenty of en­vi­ron­men­tally-friendly so­lu­tions were un­veiled at fairs like the Barcelona Motor Show and the Smart City World Expo, which along with the Mo­bile World Con­gress drew thou­sands to Barcelona and helped keep the city on the world map. In fact, Barcelona was cho­sen to host the new Eu­ro­pean su­per­com­puter.

I could go on but you get the idea, and for many in Cat­alo­nia, the most im­por­tant thing of all was that Barça won the league again.