Basque Grammy

This note comes to us thanks to EITb:

Latin Grammy Awards

Basque Country's "La Oreja de Van Gogh" wins Grammy award

11/03/2006

The Basque band won the Grammy award for best pop album by a duo or group with vocal for "Guapa." Shakira dominated the Latin Grammy awards as she won a leading four trophies.

Basque pop music band "La Oreja de Van Gogh" won a Grammy award for best pop album by a duo or group with vocal for "Guapa."

Shakira dominated the Latin Grammy awards as she won a leading four trophies, including album of the year for "Fijacion Oral Vol. 1" and song and record of the year honours for "La Tortura" last night (November 2).

Though Shakira, who also won best female pop vocal album, stole the spotlight at the event, gyrating her way through a rendition of "La Tortura" with her chest heaving and hips swaying, she also took the time to shine a light on one of the most heated issues in the United States, that of immigrants working in this country illegally. She threw her support to those trying to become citizens as they work without documentation.

"I hope soon they will receive they recognition they deserve from the government," said the Colombian superstar said.

Other multiple winners included the reggaeton group Calle 13 and Argentine rocker Gustavo Cerati, who both won two awards each. Cerati won best rock song for "Crimen" and best rock vocal album for "Ahi vamos."

"Arroz con habichuelas"

Calle 13 picked up awards for best music album and best short music video Grammy for its reggaeton song "Atrevete te, te!" Its members were ecstatic as they won, bouncing onstage to pick up the video award. "I'm honestly wetting myself," Calle 13 rapper and lyricist Resident. "I'm very nervous. I want an arroz con habichuelas when I get to my house," he said in reference to a Puerto Rican rice and bean specialty.

Other winners included Mexican singer/accordion player Julieta Venegas, who was nominated for four awards. She won best alternative album for "Limon y sal" in the pre-televised awards ceremony.

Under the Mexican regional award categories, Joan Sebastian took away the best banda album award for "Mas alla del sol."

Oscar and Grammy

The self-titled disc by Cafe de los Maestros won best tango album. The recording's Argentine producer, Gustavo Santaolalla, already won an Oscar this year for best original score on the movie "Brokeback Mountain" and recently composed music for the film "Babel."

This year, New York's Madison Square Garden played host to the Latin Grammys. In the past, the show has alternated between Miami and Los Angeles. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg took to the stage to a Latin beat, escorted by several female dancers dressed in red. "Welcome to my house," Bloomberg said in Spanish.

The evening included performances from Ricky Martin, Andrea Bocelli, and a tribute to reggaeton and salsa.

Thursday's show was broadcast by Univision television for the second straight year. Ratings lagged in 2004 when the Latin Grammy Awards were broadcast in English by CBS. But the show attracted more than 5 million watchers in 2005 - its first year in Spanish - up from about 3.2 million in 2004, according to the ratings agency Nielsen Media Research.

Musicians from Puerto Rico earned 33 Latin Grammy nominations, including all the nominations for best urban music album and best salsa album.

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Basque and Welsh

This interesting article about the languages spoken by peoples trapped in the outdated concept of mega-nation comes to us thanks to News Wales:

Basque lesson for Welsh language

3/11/2006

Eleanor Burnham AM returns tomorrow from an official visit to the Basque Country of Spain where she hoped to find new ways to promote and develop the Welsh language at home.

Ms Burnham, a fluent Welsh speaker and Welsh Language Spokesperson for the Welsh Liberal Democrats, arranged her visit in the hope of finding a good example of how minority languages can thrive in smaller countries such as Wales .

Her trip included a variety of visits and influential meetings:

A Meeting with Martxelo Otamendi, Editor of the Basque language newspaper Berria, to discuss the possibility of a national Welsh Language newspaper

A visit to the Basque parliament in the capital Vitoria

Meetings with people involved in the government departments of language and culture to discuss language issues in these areas

A visit to a tri-lingual school as a model for how Welsh language medium education could be developed in the future

Ms Burnham said: "I am so pleased to be visiting a country which, although small in population, has so successfully preserved its own language in everyday life.

"I firmly believe that the future of the Welsh language lies in a rights-based agenda for individuals in Wales and the Basque example provides a multitude of ways in which Welsh could be taken forward in the 21st century.

"I will be completing numerous visits in the fields of culture, language and education with the hope that these models can provide progressive, workable reference points for our own country.

"The future of the Welsh language lies with the rights of the individual and I believe we should be exploring the new avenues opened up by similar countries with minority languages throughout Europe ."

By the way, Basque region of Spain?

Is there a Welsh region of England?

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Chile Supports Basque Peace Process

More international support for the peace process, this time from Chile according to EITb:

Chilean parliament passes statement supporting Basque process

10/19/2006

Among other requirements, the Chilean lawmakers demand that the decision of the Basque society will be respected.

The Chilean parliament has passed unanimously a statement supporting the peace process in the Basque Country on Thursday. Among other requirements, it demands that the decision of the Basque will be respected. The document has been handed in to Basque Premier Juan Jose Ibarretxe in the afternoon.

As soon as Ibarretxe arrived in Chile, he has been welcomed with a pleasant and unexpected surprise, since a delegation of the Chilean Senate has informed him about the statement.

In the text, the Chilean lawmakers show their pleasure for the Basques’ decision to carry a peace process, resulting in a scenario where all rights will be respected.

On the other hand, former Spanish president Jose Maria Aznar tried to persuade Chilean parties not to pass that statement boosted by former president of the Christian Democrat Party of Chile Adolfo Zaldivar.

It should not come as a surprise to find out that Aznar is trying to derail the peace process, after all, his vision of the world is one in which peaceful resolution is out of the question.

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Basque Cuisine

This article was published at EITb:

Basque cooking, one of the best cuisines in the world

This statement is corroborated by everyone who visits this region and eats at a bar, restaurant, steakhouse or cider farm - the food is very good in the Basque Country.

Traditional cooking based on the quality of its products and their simple preparation, with roots in public tradition and in which seafood plays a special part, although we should not forget our tasty meats and local products such as beans, cheese and junket. These and other products complete the extensive repertoire of our traditional gastronomy.

In the seventies, after researching, innovating and extending the repertoire of traditional Basque cooking and after a first contact with French cuisine, a group of young chefs came up with the idea of the so-called New Basque Cuisine, and today some of the leading chefs in this movement are household names. As a result of their experimentation and research, the group came up with new ingredients, new ways of preparing food, new aromas and combinations, creating an exquisite and creative cuisine.

Speaking of the Basque gastronomy, it would be impossible not to mention the Popular Gastronomic Societies, which can be found all over the region. These masculine redoubts represent a unique phenomenon and maintain the attachment to local culinary traditions very much alive. Without them, it would be difficult to explain the deep-rooted popularity of Basque cuisine. In these Societies, men cook for their friends and relatives, making gastronomy the basis for their social relations.

Another of the curiosities of Basque cooking are the "pinchos" or "tapas", small portions served in most bars and restaurants and which represent another opportunity to try the delicacies of our cuisine. The Basque Country offers a wide range of restaurants, steakhouses, seafood restaurants, cider farms, etc., for all tastes and pockets.

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Gilberto "Gillo" Pontecorvo

Gillo Pontecorvo, the Italian filmmaker who directed the 1965 classic "The Battle of Algiers," died in a hospital in Rome on Thursday. He was 86. The cause of death was not given, but Pontecorvo suffered a heart attack a few months ago, news reports said.

Though Pontecorvo directed only a handful of feature films, which he also wrote, each was a reflection on some of the most gripping human dramas of contemporary history: class struggle in a village of fishermen in "The Wide Blue Road" (1957); the concentration camp tragedy "Kapo" (1960); and the political thriller "Ogro" (1979), about the killing in 1973 of Luis Carrero Blanco, then prime minister of Spain, by Basque freedom fighters.

But he will be best remembered for "The Battle of Algiers," about the bloody uprisings that led to Algeria's independence from France. The movie had been commissioned by the revolutionary government of Algeria and was based on a book by Saadi Yacef, once a leader of the National Liberation Front, who also produced the film and ended up with a starring role as the leader of the revolutionaries.

It was shot on location in the Algiers Casbah, and almost all the characters were played by nonactors, with a mix of locals and tourists in the roles of the country's French residents, which added to the film's documentary quality. On Friday, Yacef mourned the death of Pontecorvo. "It is my brother who died," he said in an interview with the Italian news agency ANSA. "I will never forget him, not only for what he did for Algeria, but for how he was, for his life. He was a patriot."

The news agency also reported that the government of Algeria sent a crown to Rome's City Hall, where Pontecorvo will lie in state until Saturday morning. "The Battle of Algiers" won the Golden Lion at the 1966 Venice FilmFestival, a festival that Pontecorvo would direct for four years, starting in 1992. But what added to the film's legend was that it served over the years as a kind of textbook of urban warfare for the most disparate of audiences, from the Black Panthers to the Pentagon.

It was shown in 2003 to military and civilian experts in the Pentagon's Directorate for Special Operations and Low- Intensity Conflict for them to reflect on the issue of using tactics like torture to combat terrorism. In a 2004 interview with the International Herald Tribune, Pontecorvo said he had found the Pentagon's interest in his film "a little strange."

The most "The Battle of Algiers" could do, he said, was "teach how to make cinema, not war."

Gilberto Pontecorvo was born on Nov. 19, 1919, in Pisa to a bourgeois Jewish family and was the younger brother of Bruno Pontecorvo, the Italian physicist who defected to Moscow in 1950. Gillo Pontecorvo moved to Paris after the Mussolini government passed laws in 1938 discriminating against Jews, and then to Saint-Tropez when the German Army entered the French capital. He joined the anti-Fascist resistance movement in Italy and became a leader of a partisan group in Milan.

According to his biographer, the film critic Irene Bignardi, Pontecorvo was a "man of many lives." He worked as a tennis teacher, deep-sea diver and newspaper correspondent in France before turning his hand to film, which became his lifelong love. In Paris, after the war, he worked as an assistant to the directors Yves Allegret and Joris Ivens and when he returned to Italy he began making documentaries.

"The Wide Blue Road" was his first feature film, "Ogro" the last.

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Another Gehry in Euskal Herria

For those of you amazed by Frank Gehry's architectural wonder that houses the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao I recommend you read this note published by Go Travel Insurance:

Gehry hotel unveiled in Basque country

A new Frank Gehry-designed hotel has been unveiled in Spain's Basque country

The region is already home to Gehry's iconic Guggenheim museum in Bilbao and the new hotel in the town of Elciego, located in an old winery, features similarly striking wavy titanium ribbons.

Eight years in the making, the Hotel Marques De Riscal project very nearly never happened because the Canadian architect was reluctant to fly back and forth from his base in Los Angeles.

However, when he was taken to the oldest wine cellar and drank a 1929 vintage bottle, Gehry reconsidered. "It was very good and after a few glasses I accepted," he said.

The hotel is located in the heart of the Rioja wine region and each of the 43 suites has been designed by Gehry himself. There is a restaurant with a Michelin star, a rooftop bar, a wine tasting corner, a cooking school and an eating area located in an ancient wine cellar.

There are two golf courses located within 35 kilometres of the hotel.

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Visiting Palestine

There is a great support towards the Palestinians in Euskal Herria, that is why I was glad to find this article at EITb:

Basque members of parliament visit Palestine

The Basque delegation will attend several meetings where it will explain the Basque conflict to European representatives and members of autonomous parliaments.

A group of Basque members of parliament headed by parliament president Izaskun Bilbao is in Palestine on an official visit. The delegation is made up of Basque parliament president Izaskun Bilbao Barandica, president of Human Rights Committee Iñigo Urkullu and members of parliament Gema González de Txabarri, Mertxe Agundez, Leopoldo Barreda, Itziar Baztarrika, Unai Ziarreta and Aintzane Ezenarro.

Izaskun Bilbao has committed herself to tackle the Basque conflict at the following meetings: A conference for presidents of autonomous parliaments and another one for European regional assemblies.

Bilbao has arrived in Ramallah accompanied by members of Basque parliament’s Human Rights Committee. They have been welcome at the Palestinian parliament by the deputy president of the institution.

Basque parliament president has expressed her wish that violence will disappear and peace will be established in Palestine. She has also urged Isarael to recognise the Palestinian country and has suggested some steps to solve the conflicts in Palestine and in the Basque Country.

Yesterday the group was welcome by the woman Mayor of Ramallah and they also met several social organisations. The trip will finish on Monday.

Just like the Spaniards and the French must end their colonial occupation of Euskal Herria, Israel must renounce to its genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people.

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Behatokia : De Juana's Report

This report comes to us from our friends in Behatokia:

Dear friends,

The case of the Basque prisoner Iñaki de Juana is a violation of several human rights. It is a case of arbitrary detention because of the irregular nature of the extension of his time in prison after having served his sentence in full and being entitled to his release; it is a flagrant violation of the right to freedom of speech, because he is being accused of terrorism for having published two opinion articles that had no criminal content whatsoever; it is an example of justice working at the whim of political interests and special jurisdictional activity; the treatment Iñaki de Juana is being subjected to, in that he is on hunger strike of his own free will and he is being force-fed against his will, is a clear case of inhuman and cruel treatment. This is probably the most flagrant case today, but it is not the only one; Iñaki de Juana’s current situation is but the tip of the iceberg.**

You can find the document attache, or in its pdf version at the address:

www.behatokia.info/docs/Info/dejuana/eng/dejuanaeng.zip

On October 7 a large demonstration marched through the streets of Donostia to demand the rights of Basque political prisoners be upheld.

Specifically, the demonstration demanded:

* the right to be released for the approximately 160 prisoners who are legally entitled to be released,

* the release of the 6 prisoners with serious incurable illnesses and

* the right of the prisoners to be repatriated to jails in the Basque Country

The demonstration, called by organisations from various sections of society, which have come together under the name of the Ibaeta Forum and represent the majority of the Basque organised civil society, was aimed at supporting the prisoners’ struggle for their rights, currently embodied in Iñaki de Juana’s long hunger strike.

After this large demonstration, de Juana decided to give up his hunger strike after 63 days. During this time he was force fed three times, but now, although in a delicate condition, he is recovering at the 12 de Octubre Hospital in Madrid.

However, on the 27th of this month, he will be tried for publishing two opinion articles in the Basque daily Gara, for which the prosecution is requesting 96 years in prison, alleging that through these articles he committed crimes of “issuing terrorist threats” and “membership of an armed group”. Therefore, we believe it is important to continue to follow Iñaki’s situation and especially, to maintain the pressure in view of this trial, which is illegitimate and violates his most basic rights and in view of the possibility of Iñaki being convicted, which would clearly be unjust.

Thank you for your interest,

Behatokia Communication Team

Euskal Herriko Giza Eskubideen Behatokia
Basque Observatory of Human Rights

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Pérez Esquivel and the Peace Process

He is one of the international figures strongly supporting the Peace Process initiated by ETA's ceasefire. This article about him was published by EITb:

Pérez Esquivel: ETA reached the "decision to dump arms"

The Nobel winner who signed a document to boost the peace process in the Basque Country alongside other five important international figures thinks the process is dealing with the "minimum demands" at the time being.

The Peace Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel affirmed that, in his opinion, ETA has reached the "decision to dump arms" and tackle a negotiation period "until the solution to problems is found."

In statements for Spanish radio station Cadena Ser, he added he had the feeling that the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has the "political will" to get rid of ETA's violence in the nascent process.

Pérez Esquivel regretted that conservative Popular Party, in his opinion, "turned its back" after ETA's permanent cease-fire even if "there was no advance" when they were in power despite having contacts with ETA.

In turn, the Nobel winner said that the process is, at the time being, dealing with "the minimum demands" and noted it has to advance towards "the intermediate" and "the maximum."

Pérez Esquivel is one of the important figures linked to international politics that has signed the "International Declaration to Support the Basque Process." There the signatories "encourage the two sides involved, the Spanish and the Basque, to follow" the undertaken path "without a break and in the complete absence of violence until its causes are completely wiped out."

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De Juana's Gratitude

This article about the decision by Basque political prisoner to end his hunger strike comes to us via EITb:

ETA prisoner says he didn't end hunger strike for health condition

The prisoner affirmed he decided to put an end to his hunger strike as he knew about "the fight under way" in solidarity with him and "the group of Basque political prisoners."

Iñaki de Juana Chaos said in a letter published Tuesday, October 10, by the Basque daily Gara and dated October 8 that his health condition was not the reason why he put an end to the hunger strike he started on August 7. He affirmed that was a secondary issue.

De Juana Chaos specified that he decided to feed "voluntarily" after he knew about "the fight under way" in solidarity with him and "the group of Basque political prisoners," the "countless" petitions he received to put an end to the hunger strike, and the compromise of Basque society while demanding the "return" of all Basque prisoners.

Furthermore, he requested "all Basque society" to "pull out" every Basque prisoner from Spanish and French jails, and voiced his gratitude for the "solidarity" received. He also pointed out that he will retain his "compromise" to fight "for the same principles and values" that led him to start the hunger strike.

For the time being, De Juana is still being treated for physical problems arising from the 63-dy hunger strike.

De Juana started to be force-fed by order of the Spanish National Court on September 19.

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