A blog about our new life in Sant Cugat, strange discoveries, amusing local news, politics, economics and cute stories about kids.
The mosquito trap arrived from Malaysia the other day. I set it up and ran it overnight.
Here are the preliminary results:
It’s not clear if the mosquitoes that were male or female.
Update:
The fan fell off the motor and I had to glue it back with crazy glue. Luckily the motor hadn't burned out yet by the time I noticed.
Final update:
In the end it didn't seem to make a big difference, and probably wasn't worth the money. Basically from Aug-Sep was mosquito hell.
The Catalan minister for public works, Joaquim Nadal said that “now is not the time to place blame” in the tragedy in Castelldefels, but then goes on to say that it was really negligence on the part those non-rule abiding Ecuadorian, who fail to understand that this is a country of rules that must be followed. Not that he’s blaming anyone.
An excellent infographic from El Mundo shows how the tragedy unfolded.
Like any tragedy of this magnitude, many things all went wrong at exactly the wrong time. The timings of the trains, the confusion around the closed overpass, the crowding of the underpass, the fact that it was in the middle of the night, the fact that a team of security guards was scheduled to arrive seven minutes after the incident, an impatient crowd of teenagers, etc.
Twelve people were killed last night by a train passing through the station at Castelldefels when a group of about thirty people tried cross the tracks on the way to the beach.
This is one of the worst rail accidents in Spain in the last 30 years.
It’s unclear whether the underpass was open or closed at the time. There is an overpass, but it had been closed since October when the underpass was opened.
From this image from Bing maps, you can see how tempting it must have been to jump the tracks and get to the beach:
It’s a bit shocking that they had no police or proteccion civil near the station to keep things under control. Everyone and their dog was heading to the beach last night, and I’ve usually been quite impressed with Spanish crowd control efforts.
I’m also surprised that the train wasn’t able to make an emergency stop, given that the track around the station is completely straight for a couple kilometers in each direction. The accident happened around 23.23, and the train from Alicante had been due to arrive at Barcelona at 23.46.
We bought our coca today, which is a pastry that look suspiciously like a roscón de reyes but flat and without marzipan. The long line at the local bakery near the train station in Valldoreix suggested that this was one of the better places to get it
Tonight the Nit de Sant Joan activity starts in Sant Cugat. I’m looking forward to seeing the Diables de Sant Cugat.
If you miss your chance to buy a Coca de Sant Joan, don’t worry, You can buy your Coca de Sant Pere (patron of the fishermen) next week, which looks exactly the same, except with a different saint.
If you are wondering what all those signs advertising Petards are (or Petardos for the non-Catalan compliant signage), those are the really loud firecrackers and fireworks you will be hearing a lot of over the next couple days. It’s not quite as bad as in Alicante, where the ground literally shakes, but still enough to make all the dogs in Sant Cugat wish they were elsewhere.
If you’ve lived outside Spain for more than 10 years (even if you are Spanish) and you are moving to Spain for work, you may qualify for the special regime 24% tax rate for 6 years.
You need to act fast, since you only have 6 months from the day you register as a resident to apply, and they are pretty strict about enforcing this.
First thing you need is a letter from new your employer’s HR director stating these four important points:
1a: Que D. MAX MUSTERMANN con NIE numero X0123456 y domicilio en [where you live] está prestando sus servicios en GRAN EMPRESA S.R.L. desde el día 1 de Abril del 2010 como empleado par cuenta ajena con contrato de trabajo ordinario por tiempo indefinido.
2a: Que la dirección del centro de trabajo en el que D. MAX MUSTERMANN presta sus servicios es en [address of your office].
3a: Que el trabajo de D. MAX MUSTERMANN se realiza en territorio español.
4a: Que D. MAX MUSTERMANN está cotizando a la Seguridad Social española siendo la fecha de 1 de Abril del 2010.
Now fill out a Modelo 149 and take this together with your letter, NIE papers and passport to the big tax building in Plaza Doctor Letamendi. Go to the third floor and ask for the extranjero desk. They will take your forms (ask them to look them over to make sure there are no obvious mistakes) and put them in the queue to be processed.
Technically the law says they should get back to you in 10 days, but in reality, it may take as much as 6 months. Ask them which month they are currently processing to get an idea of how long it takes.
If all went well, a letter should arrive about six month later either at your employer or at your home (to us we got one of each). This letter proves your status and you can give a copy to your bank and employer to allow them to give you this special status.
Remember that the status is not tied to your job. If you take another job, you get to keep your status.
Once your six years are over, you might consider moving to Holland, where there’s a 30% tax ruling for expats.
(In Spanish)
“I’d like a bocadillo”
“Would you like cheese, jamon serrano or jamon dulce?”
“Can I have it with jamon serrano and cheese?”
“Sorry. Only one.”
“Even if I pay extra?”
“Sorry we can’t do that”
“Uh ok… but you sell jamon serrano by the gram, can’t you just charge me for that?”
“No.”
“Uh… ok then. I’d like a bocadillo with cheese. I’d also like to buy 20 grams of jamon serrano.”
“That’s a very small amount of jamon.”
“Just enough for one bocadillo.”
Over the years I had always assumed that the hyper-inflation during the Weimar Republic was what ultimately lead to the rise of the Nazi party.
This is why I was a bit shocked to read the history of Heinrich Bruning, one of the last chancellors of Germany before the Nazis took over.
The hyperinflation took place from 1921-1923, and between 1923 and 1929 the economy had more or less recovered.
But then in 1929 the world economy crashed, taking the German economy down with it.
With a doctorate in economics, Brüning seemed like the ideal chancellor to bring the economy back on track in 1930. His plan to reduce deficits to reduce the burden of debt had a somewhat familiar ring to it:
Brüning disclosed to his associates in the German Labour Federation that his chief aim as chancellor would be to liberate the German economy from the burden of continuing to pay war reparations. This would require an unpopular policy of tight credit and a rollback of all wage and salary increases.
[…]
Brüning's measures were implemented in the summer by presidential decree and made him extremely unpopular among the lower and middle classes. As unemployment continued to rise, his cuts in welfare and reductions of wages combined with rising prices and taxes, increased misery among workers and the jobless.
The lack of spine of the trade unions in opposing these rollback led to a huge shift of support away from the traditional left wing parties and the rise of right wing demagogues.
I think that one of the reasons that austerity has been popular among certain economists is that they fail to understand the psychology of loss aversion. A 5% paycut hurts so much more than a 5% pay increase combined with 10% inflation. An economist might say “but wait! those are mathematically equivalent!’ Tell that to the mob waiting outside.
Austerity turns economics from a win-win game in to zero-sum game, similar to the classic life-boat exercise. Who gets tossed overboard to save the boat?
