A LOOK BACK

I’ve de­cided to ded­i­cate this final col­umn of the year to a re­view of the ar­ti­cles I wrote for this mag­a­zine in 2024, tak­ing into ac­count my com­mit­ment to be more pos­i­tive in my writ­ing. At the end of the ar­ti­cle, I’ll give you a tally of how I feel I got on in that re­spect.

We started well, as Jan­u­ary saw me writ­ing in glow­ing terms about the Cata­lan health sys­tem fol­low­ing a health scare at the end of 2023. Yes, a pos­i­tive start as I began the year with grat­i­tude – both for Cat­alo­nia’s health­care pro­fes­sion­als and for sur­viv­ing a sur­prise hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion. A sim­ple ER visit for con­ges­tion es­ca­lated into a heart pro­ce­dure after alarm­ingly high tro­ponin lev­els were de­tected. The ex­pe­ri­ence left me shaken but im­mensely thank­ful for the kind­ness and ex­per­tise of the doc­tors and nurses. It also gave me a new lease on life: “I enter 2024 not only with grat­i­tude but a first-ever bucket list”.

In Feb­ru­ary, I vented about my strug­gles with a Span­ish so­cial media agency hired to boost my on­line pres­ence. Didn’t take long for the cyn­i­cism to creep in, did it? Mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, missed dead­lines and un­apolo­getic at­ti­tudes led me to muse about dif­fer­ing cul­tural ap­proaches to cus­tomer ser­vice. I won­dered whether the com­pany’s be­hav­iour, which I saw as un­pro­fes­sional, might be con­sid­ered per­fectly ac­cept­able lo­cally. My ques­tion hung in the air like the prover­bial bad smell: “Is it me?”

March sucked me into to the dreaded world of Barcelona’s rental mar­ket. My tale of re­new­ing my flat rental con­tract un­folded like a com­edy of er­rors, in­volv­ing shady agents, il­le­gal fees and curt re­sponses to my queries. Forced to ac­cept a du­bi­ous con­tract, I summed up the or­deal with a nod to Lou Reed: “Some­where, a land­lord’s laugh­ing till he wets his pants”.

Re­turn­ing from a trip abroad in April, I dis­cov­ered my scooter had been towed due to sud­den road­works. De­spite my best With­nail-style de­mands for jus­tice, I was told the tow­ing was law­ful and fined 131 euros. My take­away? “Learn the rules, mate,” though the ex­pe­ri­ence did seem to ex­em­plify the Kafkaesque bu­reau­cracy faced by res­i­dents in Barcelona.

In May, I tack­led the lan­guage of in­ter­na­tional re­port­ing on Cat­alo­nia’s in­de­pen­dence move­ment. Dis­sect­ing the por­trayal of fig­ures like Car­les Puigde­mont, I ac­cused in­ter­na­tional jour­nal­ists of par­rot­ing Madrid’s bias. The col­umn high­lighted how loaded lan­guage can sub­tly ma­nip­u­late read­ers’ per­cep­tions.

June and July saw me re­flect on my years here, as Cat­alo­nia Today cel­e­brated its 20th an­niver­sary. I shared mem­o­ries of work­ing in trans­la­tion and foot­ball com­men­tary, high­light­ing mo­ments like hav­ing my own local TV show – The Week in Foot­ball – and being Barça TV’s on­line Eng­lish com­men­ta­tor. Mean­while, Sep­tem­ber’s col­umn on sum­mer in Sant Ger­vasi cap­tured my frus­tra­tions with noisy neigh­bours and the op­pres­sive heat, con­trast­ing these with the rare joy of a neigh­bour’s blues piano.

Oc­to­ber’s col­umn fo­cused on Barcelona’s trans­for­ma­tion into a tourist mag­net. I de­scribed nav­i­gat­ing Les Ram­bles as “a con­tact sport” and lamented the city’s gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, while No­vem­ber took a culi­nary turn, ad­dress­ing food waste in Cat­alo­nia. From limp let­tuce to post-calçotada left­overs, I called for smaller por­tions and bet­ter plan­ning: “Eat what we’ve cooked, and cook what we’ll ac­tu­ally eat”.

So how did I get on in my at­tempts to be more con­struc­tive in my 2024 columns? Well, a brief re­count seems to have it at Pos­i­tive anec­dotes 5 Moan­ing again 5, with one tie (I’m call­ing the scooter col­umn “bal­anced”). Over­all, a draw then. But hang on a minute, by my reck­on­ing, that’s an im­prove­ment on years gone by. Let’s see if I can look be­yond the world’s woes in 2025 and tip my writ­ing in favour of being pos­i­tive by this time next year…

Opin­ion