Iconic cafe faces uncertain future
By Andrea Comas
After 124 years Madrid’s historic Café Gijón is facing uncertainty. The lease on the establishment’s popular terrace has expired and Madrid’s City Hall has put it on offer to the highest bidder. It just may be another sad story of how the crisis is ravaging Spain.
The Café Gijón opened in 1888 and soon became an important meeting place for intellectuals of the time, like Santiago Ramon y Cajal, Ramon Valle-Inclan, Pio Baroja. Later Nobel laureate Camilo Jose Cela became a regular and his book “The Hive” was inspired by the café. Throughout its history, the “tertulias” or, gatherings of leading artistic, cultural and political people, have never ceased. Currently the café is frequented by contemporary writers such as Francisco Umbral and Arturo Perez-Reverte among others.
When our TV crew told us they planned to do a story about Café Gijon, I was reminded of the first time my father took me there for dinner with acquaintances. He told me it was a very famous café where intellectuals had their gatherings and debates. I can’t recall ever having seen anything like that. But in my imagination the Café Gijón became something symbolic, something special. It was as if you received a dose of culture just by entering.
A few days ago I was back at the Café Gijón, this time without my father but with my cameras. Hardly anyone was inside, just a smattering of female civil servants drinking their mid-morning coffee at the bar, and a few foreigners led there by their guide books. The light streaming in through the windows created a nice atmosphere, but there was no hint of the famous tertulias.
Europe’s quiet crisis
In 2011, the life of Portuguese citizens changed.
Changes that appear to be hidden but are smoothly spreading beneath our toes. We feel them, we breathe them, but we don’t obviously see them.
Throughout 2011 we worked to gain a front row seat to the changes.
Is it a spring fog or an autumn drizzle? Sometimes in life things change so fast and dramatically but the skyline will still brighten with the same sunrise or sunshine.
Where did it start? The U.S.? Iceland? Ireland? Greece?
Through interviews, Fado songs and Portuguese guitar music, we present our view of Portugal’s fight to understand themselves and the global crisis as well as to change and move forward.
In the eye of the Greek storm
By Yannis Behrakis
(View a slideshow of Yannis’ photos from the Greek financial crisis here)
In the past 20 months the Greek financial crisis has been one of the world’s top stories. Day in, day out words like, IMF, ECB, and Troika are mentioned as some of the most common words in my country. People who knew nothing about economics and had never heard of strange words like “spreads”, “haircut” and “bailout”, now seem to have become almost experts in financial matters. Everywhere you go in Greece people talk about the same issues — an upcoming default, the economic meltdown, the misery the unemployment, the rising prices, the possible loss of their deposits in banks if Greece goes back to its old currency, the drachma.
According to the latest polls, Greeks are the most unhappy people in Europe and it’s easy to see why. On the streets of my home town Athens, people don’t smile much, they argue a lot and on some days it seems that misery looms over the capital. If you add to that the terrible traffic jams caused by one or more protests that occur every single day, on top of the increased number of beggars, drug addicts, illegal immigrants and homeless, Athens seems in its worst shape ever. According to another study last year, the center of Athens was “closed” for 2-3 hours daily due to protests, resulting in, according to shop owners, a financial catastrophe for many in the once booming downtown Athens.
These daily protests often lead to very violent riots and clashes between protesters and the police, or even clashes between rival groups of protesters. The words austerity measures are the most “painful” though — the government has agreed along with the troika to impose some of the toughest austerity measures ever imposed by a government in Greek history. There is not a single Greek who hasn’t be affected by the austerity plan — many people lost up to 50% of their income. Greece has the most “new poor” people in Europe and many people believe that “the worst is yet to come”.
So how do you cover a story like this? A story that affects you and your family, a story that left some of your friends and colleagues and members of your family without a job and hope for the future? A colleague who has worked as a photojournalist for over 25 years at one of the top Greek dailies was marching along with several thousands of press people towards the parliament in protest against recent layoffs and pension reductions and other tough measures said to me: “Yannis, I walked from home today. I have no money to put petrol in my motorbike.” and “My last payment was 450 Euros and it’s the first payment after July!!” It was a sunny Tuesday, October 18, 2011.
Having covered many of the same events as Yiannis as a photographer I have to agree 100% with what he says. Reporters are seen as the enemy by both sides and are often attacked. Of all the photographers working in Thessaloniki, I don’t know of a single one, including myself, who hasn’t been assaulted by either police or protesters, sometimes both on the same day.
No wonder Greece is considered to be one of the most dangerous place in EU to work as a reporter.
Greece’s new army of the homeless
By Yiorgos Karahalis
Ragged clothes, small piles of belongings and a bleak future, Greece’s new army of homeless have swelled in numbers since the debt crisis hit the country.
As part of ideas to highlight the story that has dominated headlines for the past two years, I wanted to illustrate the emerging problem of homelessness in a country which has seen a rise in the number of homeless by 20-25 percent in the last two years alone – a staggering rise in a country where adult children live with their parents, in some cases until the day they get married, and pensions traditionally go to support young families.
Athens is the country’s largest city with an estimated population of five million and where the homeless problem is much more visible than anywhere else. Even its city center, a top tourist spot, sees dozens of homeless people having made building entrances and shop fronts their new home. Sleeping bags and cardboard boxes piled against walls, a few shopping bags of clothes and food their only belongings. Homelessness has now permeated all genders, races, ethnic backgrounds and social classes.
The large number has forced shelters to restrict people to a few nights stay before making way for new people. Many of those who are getting a hot meal or just a night sleep in the shelters, are still stunned by how fast their lives changed. One of them said he could not believe how quickly it happened, how he went from a homeowner with a job as a chef to a homeless person cooking in such a shelter. “We are all potentially homeless,” he said.
yeah I agree, war will come soon, in times of crisis, strange people with dark ideas come to power.
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Resident Photographers Blog Expert
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The Wall
Preserving a heritage, an old style of living is remembering once’s history, it is like going back in time, to remember the old days. As such, modernisation should not deplete our heritage, and efforts to conserve is priced higher than economic value, the main concerns is how to make it profitable, by selling products of memory, a photograph, the traditional way of making coffee, long forgotten menu of foods will draw in the crowds, if you plan and conceptualised properly, even so, there may be provisions in the governments for old buildings, which may lessen your burden.