Huesca

Someone has stolen the statue of George Orwell in Huesca

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In the winter of 1937, George Orwell fought on the front of the Alcubierre mountain range (Huesca). Years passed and he promised: “If I ever return to Spain, I firmly promise to have a coffee in Huesca.” The same Orwell who fought in the trenches and bled on the Aragonese front, the writer of ‘Homage to Catalonia’, never drank that damn coffee because he died before. Eighty years later, Huesca served him the cup with a tribute: a bronze bas-relief raised in the Miguel Servet park. It didn’t last long. Early Thursday morning, a week ago, the bronze disappeared. They tore it from its pedestal and only the sandstone remains. It’s been a week and it still doesn’t show up. One of the most beautiful tributes has been desecrated to the father of the great dystopias, from ‘Animal Farm’ (1945) and ‘1984’ (1949). Because this is a robbery of collective memory. The historian Víctor Pardo defines it harshly, as “an absolutely despicable and condemnable act.” Together with the Orwell Society, they mobilized the social bases, got the money and raised 15,000 euros, with bonuses and shares of 10 euros. More than 500 people contributed and made the proposal a reality. This was just two years ago. The sculpture only cost about 8,000 euros but, in total, about 25,000 were raised. So the surplus was used to build commemorative plaques and other efforts. They commissioned it at the end of 2023. On May 19, 2024, it was inaugurated and now no one knows where it is. Who has it been? When writing against tyrannies and authoritarianisms, anyone might think that this is a political robbery. The Orwell Society, as a literary society and charity registered in the United Kingdom since 2011, claims to have no political affiliation. The latest local reading It was organized in the Castle of Montearagónnear the place where George Orwell was wounded. However, there is no claim from extremist groups. After all, we are talking about an anarchist. That’s why Pardo has nipped speculation in the bud: the motive for the crime smells like pure junk, a theft that seeks to be sold by weight: bronze is paid for at 6 euros per kg and 120 kg is more than 700 euros for free. A handful of dirty bills at some junkyard sale in some suburban junkyard. A warm relationship in a cold winter. Orwell set foot in Huesca in 1937, with an Aragonese winter that froze the bones of the militiamen. Fascist bullets whistled from the enemy trenches and the rebellious side controlled the city. POUM volunteers surrounded the perimeter and Orwell watched the domes from afar. He dreamed of final victory and having hot coffee, a very simple wish. The Francoist bullet pierced his neck weeks later and he almost bled to death. He survived by pure miracle. He left Spain months late, narrowly fleeing his own supposed Soviet comrades. So the monument represented an enormous civil triumph. The work of Javier Sauras was nestled in the green lung of the Aragonese city with great affection. “It is stealing a bronze sculpture that represents a historical figure from the universal literature of the 20th century (…). It is robbing the citizens of Huesca of an artistic and heritage work,” bellows Víctor Pardo, who complains of a certain institutional apathy. Scrap and silence. The work, which belongs to the municipal heritage – that is, the citizens gave it to the City Council after paying for it out of their own pockets – has not been pursued either. No one has issued announcements and the City Council filed a simple routine complaint at the police station. The Citizen Collective found out by chance and no one issued an apology to Sauras or Orwell’s family. The son, Richard Blair, who applauded excitedly at the inauguration alongside Quentin Kopp, president of the association, has not received news from the “Ministry of Truth.” Like the almost two-ton sculpture of Eduardo Chillida – stolen in Getafe, They ended up selling it for just 30 euros in a scrapyard in San Martín de la Vega to be melted, the fate of Orwell’s plate does not seem to aspire to a good ending. And it would be a real shame if Orwell’s melancholy face died definitively under a miserable scrap metal blowtorch, honestly. Images | DiscoverHuesca In Xataka | A Millennium Falcon next to a 17th century staff: an occupied house uncovers the stolen treasure in La Rioja

the initiative of a town in Huesca to make neighbors look each other in the eyes. “We’ll put the cell phone in a bag”

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The United Kingdom announced a few hours ago that is going to ban social networksamong other things, to those under 16 years of age. In a much more diplomatic line, the Aragonese people of Alcalá de Gurrea will soon celebrate a day without screens to enjoy the best social network: eye contact. This is an experiment that will put the entire town in “airplane mode” and, as you know, people are quite dependentthey will ensure that it is fulfilled in a very curious way. Putting cell phones in a bag with a sheriff patrolling the town. It’s much nicer than it sounds. Town in airplane mode. It will be next June 28 when, for a few hours, the Aragonese municipality will implement this measure. They will invite neighbors who want to join in to leave their cell phones aside to interact with the rest of the town and, as detailed in Chain Beingduring those hours there will only be one cell phone: the one owned by one of those responsible for the activity. “The sheriff will go throughout the town in case something happens and will call the right person if necessary,” the organizers point out. The objective is clear: to make people look each other in the eyes. “The plan is for people to do all kinds of activities but, above all, to interact with each other during those nine hours,” they say. To do this, there will be a group meal, activities such as a kayak experience and common spaces in which various types of activities and creative workshops will take place. What if you’re embarrassed? Well, they have it covered: “the organizers will be waiting for people to break the ice,” they say. The typical “do you know my friend?” of all life. to the bag. And the way to make sure people put their phones aside is to do it…literally. The event, as those responsible in Ser comment, will take place on the outskirts of the town and will be where participants will be given a bag to store their devices. “When you cross the border of airplane mode, there is no turning back: no one will be able to locate you,” they point out. “Since people are so dependent, we will put it in a sealed bag that they will not be able to open for nine hours.” As we read in Zaragoza-Citythe capacity will be very limited in this first edition, of just 200 people and the organizations defend that it is not about giving up technology, but about realizing that we can not be constantly glued to the screens. Not so original. If you are unable to put your phone down for a second (which is not the user’s fault either because applications use sophisticated tactics to ‘tickle’ our brains and that are very addictive), is a good solution. However, you should know that Alcalá de Gurrea is not the only place where this is done. On April 18, Euskadi celebrated the first ‘Family Cell Phone Free Day’ which, basically, was the same: the cell phone was left in a safe and guarded bag to experience a fun day without screens. There is an association called EsMontañas that has also driven a similar initiative in almost 60 Alto Aragonese towns and there are private initiatives such as ‘Offline Club’ that organizes meetings of the style in some cities. Others do it out of obligation. The truth is that the absence of the sound of notifications and not having the phone at hand to pick it up, unlock it and look into space simply on impulse does not seem like a bad idea to ‘detoxify’ the device. Now, it is fine as long as it is voluntary and not an imposition. In Vadgaon, India, every day at 7:00 p.m. a siren sounds which urges citizens to turn off televisions and cell phones with the aim of recovering face-to-face dialogue. And Green Bank, a city in the United States, is a municipality without mobile phones by obligation. Due to the presence of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory implies a radio-silent zone in which mobile phones and Wi-Fi devices are very restricted. Curiously, this situation is a claim for people who want a life without smartphones. In Xataka | The science of “doomscrolling”: how technology hacked psychology so we can’t let go of our phones

Huesca and Lleida were separated by 110 kilometers. It has taken Spain 25 years to connect them by highway

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Spain has a maxim that is repeated when we talk about roads: things go slowly. Pretty slowly, in fact. You just have to see that the A-11, one of the great Castilian-Leonese highways has been in operation since 1995. Or the almost 30 years since the A-60 has been planned without having been completed. Andalusia is not spared either, with roads that They are beginning to approach two decades before finishing. And a halfway case is that of the A-22 between Huesca and Lleida. Barely 110 kilometers separate these two cities in northeastern Spain and, however, it has taken more than a quarter of a century for a highway to be completed between them. The culmination for the luck of the Aragonese and Catalans took place last October. That month, the section between Huesca-Siétamo was finally inaugurated. Just 12.6 kilometers for which seven years of work have been needed but which should have been resolved in 2021. Perhaps that is why the celebration was bitter. 25 years for an hour’s drive They counted on Aragon Digital that the completion of the highway between Huesca and Lleida only had Minister Óscar Puente as a political representative. None of the Aragonese officials made an appearance (autonomous community, provincial council or city council). And it is that the last bypass next to the city (it connected with the A-22 but also gave an exit to the N-240 known as Ronda Norte de Huesca) has been full of controversy. With it, the last of the 11 sections into which the construction of the A-22 has been divided has been completed. Those 12.6 kilometers mentioned above began operating in 2018 and the forecast is that they will be ready in 2021. The investment was 61.5 million euros but citizens have had to wait another four years before being able to enjoy the entire road. The Ministry of Transport explained With the inauguration, eight of the kilometers of the new link have been newly built, leaving the old national N-240 as a service road. In addition to the connection with this road that acts as a ring road, it has also joined the A-23. A road, the latter, that will finally be linked to the A-21 since the tender has been awarded to resolve the link between both roads and resolve the bottleneck that was generated in Jaca. But returning to the case of the A-22, the issue is that the highway was designed in the Transportation Infrastructure Plan 2000-2007. However, in 2004 no relevant step had yet been taken in the construction of the new highway and the work became part of the state promises again in 2005 with the Strategic Infrastructure and Transportation Plan. By then, the intention is for the highway to be fully operational in 2012. The A-22 was one of those infrastructures that was affected by the 2008 crisis. However, despite the adjustments in 2010, the times and investments were not extended excessively. And before that year, the highway had less than 30 kilometers in operation but little by little the sections were advancing and the vast majority of the work was ready between 2010 and 2012. It was, therefore, the section between Huesca and Siétamo that has lengthened the completion of the road. In Herald They covered the news of the awarding of this last section in 2018 but already pointed out at that time that a situation that had been completely stopped for five years before was being unblocked. The promise, as we said, is that it would be ready in 2021. Thus, the A-22 highway has accumulated years and years of delay despite being practically finished. The little more than 10 kilometers that were necessary to close the work have taken 12 years to carry out, the same as it took to have the remaining hundred kilometers ready. Now, at least, Aragonese and Catalans can breathe a sigh of relief and finally have a fully modern road to connect Huesca with Lleida. Photos | Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility In Xataka | Spanish roads have a problem in 2026: repairing a kilometer of asphalt is more expensive than ever

A controversial hippie community wanted a remote place in which to celebrate its lunar party. And Huesca has chosen

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Abellada is A town of the municipal term of Sabiñánigo, in Huesca, which has just been swelling the growing list of ghost peoples of The emptied Spain. A quick look comes with the help of satellite photos of Google Maps to verify that today there are little more than a church and a handful of collapsed houseswith sunken roofs, naked beams and facades overcome by time and weeds. That has not prevented Abellada from being held today in the Aragonese press and nationaljust like did it in 2016. Then, like now, the person responsible is an organization that a priori has little to do with the Rural Oscense: the organization Rainbow communitybetter known by its original name in English, The Rainbow Family. What happened? The news He advanced it last week Diario del Alto Aragón: The rainbow community has chosen the ghost town of Abellada to celebrate one of its annual meetings, the Rainbow Gatheringswhich usually last a lunar cycle (more or less a month) and are organized with tents. In fact, The newspaper requiresthe town has already arrived in the town that will be in charge of setting up the “Seed Camp” and the Civil Guard Comandancia itself Recognize have proof of a “settlement of the rainbow community in the Guarguera area”. “Control of the people who go to the place,” they guarantee. But … who are they? The rainbow community is somewhat a “non -organization of non -members”, as defined by the unofficial website WELCOME HOME! “We have no leaders or organization. To be sincere, the rainbow family means different things for each person.” Hence it is not easy to define it. Broadly speaking, the group was founded in the 1970s, in the US, with a clear hippie inspiration and starting from a philosophy of nonviolence, egalitarianism, absence of hierarchies and respect for the environment. In their meetings they seek to share experiences of community coexistence outside the cities. In fact The collective insists in which it is formed by “people who love the mother earth” and want to “live in harmony with nature.” And what do they do? That link explains that the Rainbow Gatherings are held in remote places, in the middle of nature. In fact Diario del Alto Aragón assures That people who are arriving in the region travel aboard buses or doing Caketop to get as much as possible to Abellada. The rest of the road to the camp covers it on foot, guiding themselves with clues like fabrics tied to trees. Other of its most striking peculiarities is that some members (not all) They are nudists. In their meetings a basically vegan diet is practiced, they are not allowed Neither alcohol nor drugs and can deny the use of electrical devices or cameras. Meetings serve to meditate, play music or do yoga. Why are they news? That rainbow community decides to settle temporarily in the Rural of Huesca is striking in itself, but so far the news has been involved in controversy rather than by the meeting itself (or its content) by how it is organizing. Although at the beginning of May to subdelegation of the Government I recognized Being that “a group of people” planned to settle temporarily in Alto Gállego, the newspaper claimed last week that the rainbow community seems not to have requested permission. “In the region we have no request for authorization,” assured The entity. In An article Published today, eldiario.es affects that same idea: the settlement lacks official permits, which is especially relevant if it is taken into account where it is located: in the peripheral area of ​​protection of the protection of the protection of the protection of the protection of the protection of the protection of the protection of the protection of the protection of the protection of the protection of the protection of the protection of the Natural Park of the Sierra and Los Canons de Guara. In fact, the authorities of Alto Gállego have confirmed to the newspaper that in the entity there is still no record of any request for authorization. At the moment, yes, the sub -delegation confirms that the Civil Guard is “monitoring the situation”, especially to monitor the environmental regulations. And to date, he maintains, “no incident has occurred.” Is it the first time? No. Throughout the last years the rainbow community has already met in other parts of Spain, such as La Rioja, The Sierra de Grazalema either Cerulledain León. In fact, this is not the first time that its members visit Abellada. They already did during the summer 2016 (between July and August), when a hundred and a half people gathered in the abandoned village. The newspaper Herald dedicated them at the time A chronicle in which he explained that the camp had also mounted illegally and began to deploy around a bonfire in the Sierra de Guara Park. “Spanish anti -fire regulations do not allow fire. However, we believe that the natural environment is our home and the system is removing it,” reasoned Then one of the members of the community in one of his forums. “We don’t know who they are”. The memory of that camp has served to increase the controversy now. In 2016 the camp was accompanied by cars and vans that ended parked In the accesses to the villages of the Guarguera and complicating the passage through some roads, for the anger of the neighbors. “It is not just a matter of space, we do not know who they are or what impact they can have in the area,” warn now A resident to eldiario.es. Images | Wikipedia, Guano (Flickr) and Satemkemet (Flickr) In Xataka | Remote town of Segovia is sold for 180,000 euros. Just for what it shows on Google Maps is already worth it

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