Homage to French Catalonia

Back today after a couple of weeks in France.  We had a good time - a nice part of France (Rousillon, aka French Catalonia) and a 2000 mile round trip on the train which went really well. I pretended it was only Francis who was excited about sleeping on a train, but I thought it was pretty good too.

It's dangerous to make comparisons between your life at home and the life that you have for a fortnight on holiday, but here goes.  I kept thinking about social capital - those things that make life liveable.  It was much in evidence - my main memory is of people kissing the bus driver when we got on the bus to Perpignan - you don't get that in Leeds.   

It was also noticeable in the way people shop.  This time, partly because we didn't hire a car, we braved butchers and greengrocers for more of our food.  It took ages - because people spent time over buying their food - and had a good old chat with the person serving them.

It was the same in cafes and restaurants.  On the way home we went to a random restaurant near Perpignan station, and had the best moussaka I've ever had.  The plat du jour was genuinely the dish of the day - and it was brilliant.  The guy was friendly, it was good value, and we left France very happy.

We arrived back at St Pancras the next day and went to Carluccio's for lunch.  The contrast couldn't have been more stark.  The focus was on squeezing every last penny out of us, in the name of "service".  Did we want bread and olives?  Did we want a salad?  Did we want more water?  Of course, "today's specials" were the same specials as when we went there two weeks ago.  And let's just say the espresso had clearly spent more time with an accountant than a barrista ("if we reduce it in size to 16.5ml, we'll increase our GPM by 23%").

My point is that daily life was made easier by the businesses and entrepreneurs we came into contact with in France.  Business felt like something that contributed to daily life, not a mere opportunity to screw a few customers and make some money for shareholders.  

It was interesting chatting to some friends we stayed with in Paris on the way down to Argeles.  I don't follow french politics closely but I know that Sarkozy's big idea is to "modernise" the country and "liberalise" the economy so that it can "compete in the global marketplace".  I'm sure there are things that need changing in France, but you can't help but worry that they'll lose a lot if they follow our neo-liberal lead.    For example they've introduced choice into education - so you can ferry your child across the city. They've liberalised the energy market ("It's even the same electricity!  the billboards scream).  He'll no doubt make the labour market more "flexible".  Hopefully they can learn a few lessons from our experience over the last twenty years.  

Comments

[Edward]

Oooh! I’m so envious of you Rob – I too have a great interest in the Catalonia and Basque perspectives which are very relevant to the Scottish socio-cultural situation.

I have to say that over (many) years of occasionally going to France and (far more) Spain I noticed the long-term commercial depredations on regional French and Spanish cultures. I’m worry that the reality is their cultures have endured just that wee bit longer because they were initially a less attractive market for the big corporate retail interests that were busy exploiting the UK and central urban markets of France and Spain etc.

I was approached about 4 years ago by a potential associate who just could not keep up with the amount of work she was getting from Spain – her consultancy provided strategic advice on supermarket and hypermarket developments. She reckoned that her food retail sector in Spain was growing phenomenally and was ‘just so under-developed’!

The saddest part for me was that her consumer research showed the Spanish folk in the Catalonia and Basque regions were getting just ever bit as enthusiastic of mass retail as the people in the likes of Madrid (and even earlier in the UK). She reckoned, moreover, that the advent of tourism had ‘softened up’ and ‘prepared’ the Spanish consumers – it would seem that we in the UK are just as guilty as the USA of cultural imperialism.

Anyway, a couple of weeks and I’ll be in the civilised North East of Majorca where I will again clumsily try out a bit of cod Spanish with Catalonian stresses and pronunciations that my good pal John (ex Spanish lecturer) will guide me on – and I will get a strongly positive response from the local people for making this effort :-)

[Geof Cox]

As usual Rob I couldn't agree more. Traveling through the Frencjh countryside recently I couldn't help thinking how in the UK we only hear about the problem of the EU agricultural policy subsidising 'inefficient' farming - we don't hear about the other side of that coin - which is about beautiful countryside and a more human scale, pace and quality of life.
I don't in fact believe that subsidies are the best way to deal with this distorted idea of 'efficiency' by the way - but as consumers and in our other social engagements we have act against the reduction of human and natural life to bland globalised half-measures - and in favour of the local and the unique and the eccentric and the, well, REAL.
A couple of links you might find interesting on this:
The slow food movement - http://www.slowfood.com/
Paul Kingsnorth - http://realengland.blogspot.com/

[Edward]

I came across this article online that suggested the threat to French traditional eating habits may not in fact come from the supermarkets as I thought; instead, the real threat is the humble sandwich combined with the hectic pace of contemporary lifestyles in France– again indicating that France is no longer the traditional cultural refuge that we may hope/want it to be:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/25/AR2009062503940.html

[Rob Greenland]

Edward, Geof, thanks for your comments on this. It's funny, I almost wrote in the above piece about big adverts on the Paris Metro for english style sandwiches. The french lunchtime is definitely under attack.

I suppose there are times when things need changing - a friend tells me of working for a bank in the 1970s and being pretty much drunk most afternoons because the culture was one where you went out for a drink with clients most lunchtimes. And even in my worklife, in my first temporary job after university (working in part of the civil service)a colleague of mine went out for a couple of pints every lunchtime - and just about every Friday was spent in the local italian restaurant for someone's birthday/leaving do. There's something lost there, but I suppose it's progress in other ways.