Last night, when we got home after the long weekend up around the awesome Terres de l'Ebre, first thing I learned from the news is that Augusto Pinochet had finally died while we were driving back. It is too bad that once again he managed to avoid a trial that would have made him officially guilty of all the horrible happenings of Chile during his military coup and his bloody dictatorship.

But he's gone now, and this will be a great relief for the thousands of Chileans who survived his regime, and for those who lost family members or friends just because they defended some ideals. The world will associate his surname to torture, murder and corruption; he surely won't be remembered for the image of the old, calm man surrounded by family members that an ever-shrinking minority tried to transmit.

Last night, I raised my cup to celebrate Pinochet's death. ¡Viva Chile!

Today I went to the hospital to visit the opthalmologist. The good news: as expected, what happened the other day was just a case of optical migraine, which needs no treatment and I shouldn't worry about. Thanks to everyone who mailed me or commented in the blog giving advice or wishing me luck!

The doctor examined my retina, and found nothing wrong with them that would cause “lights” or total blindness. He did find what he described as “the start of retinal folding”, which might be congenite, but I should keep an eye on in case it becomes a real problem. Apparently I should be vigilant to objects appearing with deformed shapes, etc.

So I came back earlier that expected to office, but I really can't do anything here due to the pupil dilation. Everything is blurry, light is extremely annoying, and I'm writing this using a ridiculously big terminal font.

The “get decent sleep” plan continues, and I've been sleeping the expected amount of hours since last Tuesday.

The other day I had an “incident” involving my vision. It has nothing to do with the vision problems many people had the other day, when someone posted some pr0n on various Planets.

For some time already, maybe two or three years, I've had this weird vision problem at times, when I'd start seeing some black stains with some flashing “lights“, even with my eyes closed. These symptoms would go away after a few minutes, and washing my eyes with a good amount of water also helped. It happened a lot during mornings, and I somehow connected it to showering with too hot water, using a certain brand of shampoo (Say no to Revlon!) and shower vapour. When I described the symptoms to my mother, the reaction was the expected in a house of doctors and nurses: indiference. En casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo, for those who understand it.

On Sunday I stayed up helping Belén with her DEA paper until 5AM. I woke up at 7:30AM, and stayed at work like a zombie, until I had a chance to have a needed nap at 6PM. The problem was my nap was a bit longer than I wanted, and woke up at 9:15PM, still tired but no longer sleepy. I wasn't sleepy until 4AM, and next morning I accidentally overslept, and rushed out of the bed to get to work as soon as possible.

While preparing, I suddenly noticed my vision went a bit blurry and strange. I thought it just was one of those ”stains”, until I closed my right eye to rub it and all I saw was darkness.

I totally freaked out. “OMFG, I'm fucking BLIND”. I wanted to phone someone, but wireless had broken down and I didn't have my mobile phone with me, so I tried looking at a text file I have in the laptop with some numbers on, when it ran out of battery. I grabbed my old mobile and failed to introduce the correct PIN three times.

I went to the bathroom, covered my right eye, and yeah, there was darkness. If I waved my hand over my blind eye, I would barely notice some movement on the left side, but that was all. Still very frightened, I washed my eye thoroughly and to my relief, I was able to see the upper part of my field of vision. After some more, I had recovered all my sight. Whew.

I managed to speak to Raül on the phone, who told me this probably wasn't too bad, just the optic nerve being tired due to stress and so on. My mother also asked an opthalmologist at her hospital the day after, who confirmed this. It's probably caused by my recent whacky sleeping habits (basically non-existing), general stress, and long exposures to computer monitors. The doctor asked her if I had a headache, which I didn't the day before, but I had one the day after, when she asked. “How do you know?”, I replied.

Last night I went to bed at 00:05 and managed to sleep eight hours for the first time in many months. I'm really going to make an effort to fix my sleeping habits, because they were quite fucked up lately, not catching up sleep even during weekends. On Monday I'll visit the doctor anyway, just to confirm all of this.

Coincidentally, Russel Coker also had similar symptoms this week, and also blogged about it.

I've been watching the Lebanese bloodshed since it started. It really makes me sick.

I have discussed this with many friends. There was little discussion though: we all thought this is a plain war against civilian targets. I tried discussing with people who could maybe be more supportive of the Israeli points of view. I tried talking to some of my right-winger relatives... and I haven't been able to find anyone that can say a word of support of what Israel is doing in Lebanon.

In three weeks, I have seen how Hizbullah killed some Israeli soldiers in some area around the border between Lebanon and Israel. As far as my (as an international online paper reader) judgement can tell, the location where this happened is disputed. Some say it was inside Lebanese territory, the others say it was an Hizbullah incursion into Israeli soldiers. I really don't care.

The immediate result of this action was a campaign of air strikes against Beirut and other Lebanese cities aiming to give a measured response (cache, and beware this is explicit) to Hizbulla's aggression. This, apparently, included destroying any vital infrastructure in heavily populated areas of Beirut, including bridges, power plants, hospitals and apparently random buildings.

While the Israeli army said the military operations were aimed to get rid of the Hizbullah camps and infrastructures around the border where they fire their rockets against Haifa and other Israeli cities, and their headquarters in Beirut and other southern cities, what the world espectated during the first three or four days of air strikes was pure horror. Hizbullah-controlled areas were like ghost quarters, so any bombing of those were very unlikely to take any Hizbullah victims. On the other hand, the rising number of civilian victims was the first bits of news that I could hear in my radio as I woke up every morning.

All of this, with a great amount of cinism and unlimitted cruelty. The Israeli army declared that the civilian population in the South should be leaving their homes (measured response), while they knew they were doing exactly what was needed to prevent this, by locking them up around destroyed bridges, harbours, airport and roads. The first columns of the lucky refugees who could afford fleeing to the North were greeted by Israeli bombs, leaving a good number of scattered bodies.

In Spain, the news shocked the public opinion and Zapatero, along with Chirac (IIRC), declared those actions were untolerable and unproportionate, and should be stopped immediately. This brought some local politics fun, when on one side the Israel ambassador in Spain accussed Zapatero of being antisemitic, and the right-wing leader Rajoy called the thousands of people who spontaneously demonstrated against the war in a few cities "clowns" and "ignorant".

Watching what the UN has done to stop these warcrimes, I really think it's a great moment to shut down that useless organisation and let some big corporation buy their nice building in New York City to build their offices in it. Once again, when some countries tried to come up with some resolution that forced Israel to stop, the United States waived their vetto flag. Once again, the Security Council has done nothing to put an end to another chapter of violence in the Middle East. The vettoing powers of some of the members is so ridiculous that it makes it totally inoperative. So, as the UK and US governments were not going to do anything to stop the air strikes, Israel had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted for a week.

And then, Israel's measured response destroyed one of the UN's buildings in Lebanon, killing four annoying observers, despite their calls warning that the bombs were falling too near their location. Only then, the United States decided to send Condie to have a look around the area, surprise visit to Beirut included.

I wonder, what phone number must the innocent women and children who cannot escape their cities and towns dial in order to warn the Israeli army about the proximity of their bombed targets?

After two visits of Condie to the region, nothing has changed, as the fourth week of operations starts. This is getting on my nerves. I don't, and won't, justify any of the Hizbullah attacks on civilian targets using Katyushas, or the kidnapping of soldiers, or whatever. What I see is that unless Israel takes a radically different approach to their problem, nothing will change either. Violence isn't at least. Apparently, their military operation isn't going well at all, and is not damaging much of Hizbullah's military capacity. What are they going to do? Will they occupy southern Lebanon for 20 more years?

The social movements this kind of actions are generating is also very, very worrying. On one hand, I read that around 85% of the Israeli population approve this war and think this is what their government needs to do to make them safe. This is pretty shocking. On the other hand, everyone still in Lebanon, even the Christian community, are united against the attack, helping each other in their survival quest, while the popular support to Hizbullah is rising, with big concentrations of people cheering them in the streets. This is just two years after similar demonstrations in Beirut forced the Syrian military out of the country.

While the Israeli war against Lebanon (I won't buy the "It's against Hizbullah" bullshit), sadly all the media, cameras and journalists have given their back on Gaza, which is under similar, but probably more brutal and savage military operations by Israel, as another soldier was kidnapped just one week before all of the Lebanon stuff started. The press doesn't have any news of how things are going in Gaza. The last thing I remember is that the UN was warning about the threat of a humanitarian disaster due to the lack of any kind of supplies in Palestine. If Palestinian kids are starving, the media are not letting us know.

Yesterday, 54 civilians were killed in an improvised underground bomb shelter in Qana, most of them being children. The Lebanese civilian death toll must be well over 500 as of this writing, with a ratio of at least 1:10 compared to Israeli military victims. When will Olmert have enough? The only way I see this will end up for good is when the Israeli public realises being at war in three fronts is quite expensive and damages their home economies. Maybe, at that point, people start hearing what the Meretz party minority in the country have been saying for years.

Israel has the right to defend itself. This is the official motto of Israeli and American leaders. When this right is extended and abused to the point the main targets and victims are civilians, Israel walks quickly away from a perdurable solution. Today, hostility against the state of Israel is even greater than last month. Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, will probably be the winners of the conflict when the bombings end. Not the best recipe for a peaceful future.

A few months ago I wrote about the 75th anniversary of the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic which was celebrated throughout the state. That weekend I visited a fantastic exposition of Republican and Revolutionary war propaganda posters, in Segorbe.

Today, Spain remembers the beginning of the end.

During the evening of the 17th of July and morning of the 18th, a group of generals of the Spanish regular army raised against the democratically elected left-wing government of the Republic. History says that the murdering of Calvo-Sotelo, a right-wing leader, was what finally provoked the conflict. It was no secret that the same right-wing and some elements in the army had been conspiring for weeks about an uprise. The only question was when, but the government was fooled by general Mola and didn't take really effective measures to prevent it.

Warning from sanitary authorities against venereal diseases

Mola and Sanjurjo planned to start taking over official buildings and army quarters and quickly seize control of the major cities. During the first hours of their rebelion, they managed to take over most of the southern regions in Andalusia, Extremadura and parts of the Northwest, plus most of the islands and the Moroccan protectorate area. Meanwhile, the Republic did not manage to react quickly due to the weakness of the government, and in the first days of the crisis, the government changed a few times. Finally, the Republican parties decided that to defend the state they should give arms to the unions, and soon after many militia groups were getting organised in the cities, and columns sent off to liberate other towns.

Solidarity of Catalunya to the Basque front

The insurrection was suffocated in Barcelona after some heavy fighting against the military in the Montjuïc castle; the Anarchists of the CNT grew strong in Catalunya and Aragón, and offered good resistance in those fronts.

After the first days of the coupe d'etat, it was clear neither the legitimate government or the rebels calculated how things would go after the first days. The government was confident in being able to end the rebelion as they did four years before; the fascists thought they would have quickly brought down the government with a successful coup. But after the first week, the country was divided in two halves, and both sides of the conflict were keen on fighting, due to the big social fracture during the last months of the government.

The Republic asked for help to the League of Nations, but the United Kingdom and France decided not to intervene, scared about the conflict trespassing the Spanish borders and becoming another bloody war in European fields. The only official external aid came from the USSR and the International Brigades, formed by volunteers of more than 50 nations. Some well-known personalities like Ernest Hemingway or George Orwell came to aid as well. Orwell wrote about his life-changing experience in a Barcelona immerse in the social revolution, where he joined the anti-stalinist socialist party POUM. Badly wounded in the neck, he left the front and went back to Barcelona, and witnessed the assault of the Telefònica by the communists against the anarchists, during the fets de maig, after which the POUM was declared illegal. Orwell captured his experiences in the frontline and Barcelona in his book Homage to Catalonia.

“To defend Madrid is to defend Catalunya”

Franco and Mola, aided by the Northafrican troops and soon after by their fascist allies of Italy and Germany, didn't have big problems seizing the Basque Country and Asturies in the North, but not before making the town of Gernika disappear below the nazi Condor Legion bombing, in what would be a test for the massive aereal bombings of Word War II.

The battle for Madrid was fierce, and the city wasn't occupied until the very last days of the war. The long defence of the capital made was immortalised in the famous phrase No pasarán.

Madrid's “No pasarán”

During the war, anarchist groups controlling fields and towns in Aragón and Catalunya managed to bring a Social Revolution to the area. The people collectivised the land and industries, administered by local assemblies. This experience is regarded as the time when Libertarian Communism has been successful. The experience ended dramatically when the anarchists were treasoned and blocked by the communists, and eventually defeated by Franco at the front.

“Each bullet for a target”

After the first and a half years, the fronts had stabilised in Madrid and the East of Andalusia, until early in 1939, Barcelona fell in Franco's hands, after the bloody Batalla de l'Ebre, being followed by Girona and the rest of Catalunya. The fate of the democratic state was clear. Two months later, Madrid fell and València and the small area still under Republican control surrended.

Robert Capa's “Muerte de un miliciano”

Franco declared a totalitarian regime to, according to the fascists, “reconcile” the two Spains. In the first five years of the regime, up to 100.000 were executed in the franquist repression, including the Catalan president, Lluís Companys and many intellectuals. The dictatorship continued executing people until two months before Franco's death, 36 years later. Hundreds of thousands also had to exile in México, France and other destinations, leaving Spain in ashes, road gutters full of scattered bodies and the population facing famine. The cultural elite left the country, making the state's clock go back at least a decade. Their reconciliation really meant humiliation and repression. Many people were also murdered during the war behind republican and rebel lines, but the genocide of the aftermath had was unmatchable.

The Republic promoted education among the troups

It is a bit late to restore the dignity of the victims, but not too late. Some associations have been fighting since the end of Franco's regime to get some kind of public recognition for their suffering, for their priceless fight for the legal and democratically elected Republic, for the people who didn't make it.

Excellent anarchist poster rejecting the politisation
of children by any of the three loyal groups

Other people reject these efforts banning them of "revisionism". Not too surprisingly, these are the sons or grandsons of the people who won the war. The current government is about to pass a “Historic Memory” law which aims to give recognition to all these people who gave their lives for an ideal and freedom. Unfortunately, due to pressures from the right, it is probable that the text will be ammended to make it more acceptable by them. I fear it will end up not pleasing the victims at all.

I have a passion for Spanish Civil War related matters, and in the last years I tried to use any opportunity to listen to my Catalan grandmother talk about war affairs in Barcelona, and my grandfather, from a town in the middle of the Republican side of the Teruel front, but born in a very catholic family, about how the war went on in Vall and the nearby mountains.

From the defensive “No pasarán” to the encouraging “¡Pasaremos!”

I know my grandfather only told me the less compromising stories, like how he was sent to dig refuges until he was 16 and apt to fight in the Front, or how he was put in charge of hiding the church's valuable relics in a few barns. He never told me about how life was after the war in the small town. It is dramatic to see that all the people who were old enough to have a sense of what was going on at the time are so old that these unvaluable memories and stories will be mostly gone in ten years.

(Most of the pictures are taken from the Sociedad Benéfica de Historiadores Aficionados y Creadores' website, which has a huge documented catalog)

Not at all!

The Pope is visiting València next weekend. According to Rita Barberá Noya, the mayor of the city during the last 16 years (I mildly remember her predecessor), “All Valencians will welcome him warmly”. Well, not exactly all.

The Pope's visit was decided by the previous one a few years ago, and Ratzinger, shortly after being “elected” his successor, announced he would still visit València for the World Meeting of the Family.

In principle, I would have no problems with him come visit the city, even if I have no sympathy at all towards his figure or the role of the Catholic church either in Spain or other places of the world. For example, I think the last two popes are direct responsables for the AIDS drama in many countries of the African continent. It is unacceptable and quite unethical that still today, after decades of fight against this deadly plage, the Vatican keep saying “no” to the usage of condoms.

As I said, I would have no problems with his visit, if it was a normal visit. But no, this is the València, and the government likes to show that they can do things in a grand way. Not so long ago, Ratzinger visited Poland, and from what I've read, the authorities there didn't organise anything grotesque like what's going on here, in the sense that people living in the areas affected could more or less keep on with their lives, and the visit didn't cost much of their tax money.

València won't work like this. Anyone who has visited us will probably know what I mean: the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, Terra Mítica, the America's Cup harbour... are examples of pharaonic projects, all funded with public money that are real black holes of budgets that never end up growing.

The Pope will stay in València around 24 hours, and will give a series of sermons and speeches. For the ocassion, the Valencian local government has gone all the way to make his visit the most spectacular event of the decade. Although the government won't disclose it officially, the press talks about a cost of 30 or 40 million Euros, paid by all of us, including atheists, agnostics or muslims.

Spain is not a catholic state, officially. Sadly, it is in practice. According to Vatican sources, 94% of Spaniards are catholic. The number goes down to 76.1% according to CIS, but the reality is that just a small fraction of these people are practising catholics. The Spanish church uses these figures to get funds from the state. I am included in that 76% just because I was baptised soon after I was born. There are people trying to apostatise, but it seems in most cases their efforts are futile, as the documentation sent to the eclesiastic authorities is either ignored or sent back with a hilarious excuse such as “your baptism is a historic event and cannot be changed”.

Parts of València have been closed to transit for two months. This is because the authorities found that the optimal place to build his giant altar with a special microclimate was on top of the bridge of Mont Olivet, one of the arteries of south València if you want to leave the city. The neighbours of the area now popularly called "ground zero" have been subject to all kind of annoyances: the access to their houses is restricted, they've had to give lists of people living in each place, and they are now not allowed to use the upper terraces of their buildings (they are taken by snippers).

The local police has designed a plan to restrict any kind of transit that affects basically half of the city, even my area which is like 6 kilometres away from the event.

For months, our authorities have used this great opportunity to make religion and the greatness of our pope something normal and quotidian. I haven't seen such a big interference of my life by the church before, not even with the Aznar government, or when I was a small child and the dictatorship had just ended. They are also using the event to promote the achivements of the right-wing local government (via speeches and the propaganda that is distributed in the backpacks given to volunteers) and to bash the socialist central government (which recently approved gay marriage, a new education law that weakens the weight of religion study in public schools, etc.).

I could go on and on, but this rant would get even more boring. I, like many others, think that all of this is not acceptable. As we tend to not shut up when things like these happen, a civic movement appeared two months ago, with a main goal of letting people know that we are not waiting for him, contrary to what the mayor says. The Jo no t'espere campaign has managed to make opposition to this pompous week by placing banners on balconies. Of course, I have my own, and I've also distributed a few more among my friends, one of them being placed a mere 70 metres away from the pope's altar.

No, jo tampoc t'espere

Of course, the amount of Vatican flags outnumbers us greatly, in a ratio of at least 1:100, but anyway. There are so many Vatican flags that this looks more like St. Peter's Square. Others have taken the opportunity to exhibit Spanish flags all over the place, something that probably had not happened in València since the most obscure years of Franquism. Oh well, this is València.

One piece of good news: due the chaos starting in just two hours, we're allowed to leave offices early today, so we can actually get back home. As soon as I get home and have lunch, I'll flee away to the mountains, like a maqui until the madness is over. The 1.5 million pilgrims can have my holy city. Have a nice time, Ratzinger!

As most of you know already, there was a horrible accident in the Línia 1 of the Metrovalencia underway system of València, where I live. The death toll is, as of this writing, 41, and several more people are in critical condition in the hospitals.

Thanks to the many people who mailed, texted and msgd me on IRC to find out about my status. I am ok, as are my closest relatives and friends.

The causes for the accident are not clear yet, but officials say the southbound train, one of the oldest in the system and in service for 20 years, derailed due to an excess of speed in one of the bends of the tunnel, next to the Jesús station, after one of the iron wheels broke. The crash must have been very violent, as the number of dead has always been quite higher than the injured.

With these numbers, in a not so big city as València, you're sure to learn about the luck of people you know. In my case, one of my best friends Sabrina escaped the accident thanks to her stubborness. She had to go to the Hospital Peset a few minutes before the time of the crash, and although her two workmates were taking the Metro, she decided to cycle alone, avoiding taking the deadly train. Her two workmates are, luckily, only injured; one of them was being shown on the very early TV foootage, as she was carried on a stretcher to an ambulance. The only information I have is that one arrived in the hospital unconscious, the other needed leg surgery due to the wounds. I think they weren't among the very grave.

TV stations have been missinforming about the status of the Metro system in València. The reality is that the Line 1 has been in service for 20 years, and I've been a user for at least 17, as it's the only one which connects Godella, where my father lives, and València. I've seen the infrastructure go from brand new to it's current despicable state. There are trains which are as old as the line itself, and others which are even older, as they were in use in an older, now taken over by Metrovalencia, train service which connected several towns with the North and South of the city. For more than a decade, the effort to modernise Line 1 have been inexistant, other than prettifying the old trains to make them look more like the new models in lines 3 and 5.

The railroad Unions of Metrovalencia have been denouncing the state of the infrastructure for several years, and the local government had finally announced a massive replacement of trains for later this year. Just a bit too late. I'm getting ready for the official reports making the train driver the only responsible, though. Valencians are getting used to this kind of deluding.

The needed investments for other “equally important” matters in this city, like the America's Cup or the imminent visit of Pope Ratzinger next weekend have not been delayed for years, though.

It's this time of the year again.

It's a bit disappointing that I'm not going to celebrate my birthday having lots of fun somewhere in Mexico, but things tend to suck every now and then.

Still, I've had quite a good time this last weekend, meeting lots of friends at the Fira Alternativa de València, where I got a few old CDs I hadn't seen around in a while, and a pair of thingies to decorate the house.

On Saturday I even went flying with my uncle on a small 4-seat airplane over València and the south. The Albufera looks fantastic in Spring from up there, even if the sky wasn't too clear. Too bad the America's Cup idiots were out on the sea and the air route we wanted to take along the Valencian coast was closed to low traffic, I guess because there were helicopters filming the stuff. Another reason to hate all this America's Cup business.

Today, my step-sister also gave birth to a child, with whom I now share my birthday. Fun :)

Recently Spain remembered the 65th anniversary of our tragic Civil War, an episode which broke the state in two halves which still today haven't been glued together at all.

The origin of that nightmare is the dream of many Spanish people of the early 20th Century. In the morning of the 14th of April, 1931, the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed in Madrid, after two days before, a majority of republican and leftist parties won the local elections; many people celebrated throughout the Spanish territory, and the tricolour flag was shown in many town hall buildings. With the king in exile after these quick happenings, Spain was again a Republic, as decided by the election results.

The Republic brought many social measures to Spain: women suffrage, eight-hour day and many other labour related improvements. The nobility titles were abolished, and those properties were confiscated by the government. And this was just the provisional government. All of this is regarded like a big social and cultural revolution, which was just starting.

Not everyone was happy about this, of course. The newly approved Constitution of December 9 gave the government power to confiscate many of the Church's properties, and limit their great power in political matters. Soon, the episcopacy came with a strategy to defeat the Republic in any possible way. The Royalists were also not happy. There were a series of revolts in the South, and an attempt of coup d'etat by General Sanjurjo. These attacks were repealed; the Republic was still strong.

In 1933, the Anarchists started to be seriously unhappy about the moderate path the government was leading and started striking, which led to violent repression by the Government. The General elections of November brought a victory of the right and extreme-right, and many social and anti-church measures were repealed. Riots and strikes spread throughout the territory.

The Martial Law proclaimed by the right wing government resulted in thousands beings imprisoned. Things went even worse when three ministers of the fascist CEDA entered the Republican Government. A big worker uprise started the 1st of October in Asturies, and Catalunya proclaimed the Catalan Republic.

The revolts were supressed by General Franco, who would be well known in the world just a few years later. Thousands were killed and injuried during the few weeks of revolt, and the Socialist Party was dissolved, leaving the Spanish Courts with barely no left representation.

The next years saw a very unstable government from the right due to internal disputes within the parties that formed it. New elections were called in 1936, and the left united under the Popular Front, which won by a slight margin; Manuel Azaña was the new president. The right, the church and the army continued to undermine the Republic in any possible way. In an attempt to make the military heads more loyal to the established government, the fascist Falange Española was dissolved.

The 2nd Spanish Republic received a massive blow on the 17th of July, 1936 when Franco and other generals attempted a new coup d'etat in the Northern African territories. The Republic started to die as people started fighting the coup back, and the Spanish Civil War started throughout the territory. With the aid of Fascist Germany and Italy, Franco managed to seize control of more and more areas of Spain during the nearly three years of war, and the Government of the Republic had to move a number of times, to València and Barcelona. In January 1939, most of Spain was in Franco's hands, and Catalunya soon fell. Two months later, the fascist troops entered Madrid, and hours later, València surrended.

Still today, people talk about “dos Españas”, the victorious and the defeated. Still today, the is much difficulty in having official recognition for the thousands who died while defending what a majority of people had voted for in a democratic way. Still today, one of the major political parties in Spain refuses to acknowledge what the forty years of Franco meant for the disidents, for the exiled, and for the dead. They are the legacy of Franco.

Today Spain celebrates the 75th anniversary of our Second Republic, with many events in many cities, which will be ongoing for a few weeks. Izquierda Republicana has a good list of events.

I've had the same mouse for probably 5 years, and I'm very happy with the result. Unfortunately, the batteries don't make good contact with the pins anymore and sometimes it takes ten minutes of delicate work to get it going again.

So today, I went to buy a mouse, and surprise, surprise, I had forgotten how much it sucks to be a left-handed when purchasing certain objects.

At the computer store, there were about 25 different mouse models, most of them featuring extra buttons, ergononic shape and other cool stuff. I was ready to buy something for even more than 20€ if it was worth it, but due to the non-simmetrical shape of most of them, again I could only go for the cheapest models.

I took a Creative optical mouse, and downgraded from a cordless mouse with 5 buttons + a wheel to a plain simple 3-button + wheel. At least it's USB... all the low end mice are still PS2.

When I was looking for a laptop, one of the requirements was that the touchpad wasn't slightly displaced to the left. So right-handed-ish...

I know there are shops with stuff for left-handed. Once, my mother bought me a pair of nail scissors designed for left-handed people. All that kind of stuff is generally very expensive and anecdotic, though. I wonder if we'll ever see laws that will force manufacturers to provide inverted items on demand. I want one of those cool mice.