Gridlock on No-cars Day
Thursday the 22nd was No-Cars Day in Madrid, Spain. On this day people are encouraged to leave their cars at home and make use of Madrid’s public transport system to get to work, when they aren’t walking or riding bicycles to do so. The unofficial ecological holiday is meant to promote an environmentally-friendly lifestyle as…
Blancanieves: Dwarfs, poisoned apples, bullfighting and flamenco
Over the centuries since it was first told, there have been many different retellings of Snow White, the fairy tale by the brothers Grimm, yet none of those retellings has ever looked quite like this one. Released in Spain in 2012 and directed by Pablo Berger, Blancanieves is a black-and-white silent film, set in a…
European Commission’s neoliberal agenda in France: weaker employee rights
If you are following political developments in France a bit, you couldn’t have missed the recent waves of massive strikes and protests that hit the Hexagon. The cause is Hollande’s government push for “reforms” to the labour law. Obviously, the word reforms here stands for a range of measures in line with neoliberal tenets that…
Don Quixote: The tragedy of madness
In April of this year, Spain commemorated the 400th anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of The Ingenious Don Quixote of La Mancha. Cervantes is arguably one of history’s most famous Spanish-language authors – and certainly Spain’s most well-known author – and his novel has become one of the most celebrated…
No need for EU’s own propaganda: for a frank dialogue with people
The EU intends to continue a propagandistic communication policy, bombing its citizens with good news. The Juncker Commission even stepped up a gear, as it increasingly uses media, culture and science as instruments of soft power. “The European Union needs to communicate better about what it does well”. That was former European Council President Herman…
Deadlock: The results of the Spanish general elections
On the 26th of June, the Spanish government celebrated a second general election after more than six months of political deadlock. The result was yet another stalemate, but this time the conservative PP (Partido Popular, or Popular Party) grew in the number of votes and seats gained in Spain’s Congress of Deputies, while every other…
Brexit is a revolt against globalisation: Interpreting the UK vote
European political scene is in quite a disarray. “Right now, we are two or three bad elections away from the end of NATO, the end of the European Union and maybe the end of the liberal world order as we know it,” quipped historian Apple Applebaum back in March (Applebaum 2016). Applebaum, wife of the…
Chantal Mouffe on post-democracy: “It’s like a choice between Pepsi and Coke”
Chantal Mouffe is a well-known Belgian political theorist focusing on the concepts of post-liberalism, neo-marxism and radical democracy. Mouffe gave her talk in Stockholm on 3rd May 2016 in Stockholms Kulturhuset for the occasion of publishing the Swedish translation of her most recent book ‘Agonistik’ (‘Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically’ in English original). Mouffe currently…
Click ‘like’ to send a condolence? The art of mourning in the era of post-modern technology
Grief is an inseparable part of the human condition. But what is grief today and how do we mourn as compared to mourning in the recent decades? As humans, we are used to place our feelings in words, spoken or written; instinctively, we need to make them tangible, formulate them and mould them in order…
Merkel’s blunders are piling up
Mein lieber Gott! So, according to recent polls, German Chancellor’s popularity is on rise again. Does Merkel have to do anything but change the colour of her costume to make a “political comeback”? Perhaps our German friends are drinking too much beer and eat to many Bratwürste by the evenings to have enough time to…