There is nothing is Spain which is quite as much fun as a good old political row. It is now a few weeks since the Spanish King Juan Carlos told the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to “shut up”, but the issue is still rolling along. Most people in Spain think that it was perfectly within the rights of the King to be as direct as he was with Chavez, but not everyone is in agreement.

In this months edition of the magazine we are having a look at this little political incident. Our Spanish editor Susana analyses how the second person tú was used instead of the more polite and formal usted.

Anyway, here is a nice video of the whole confrontation (with English subtitles). You can make your own minds up!

Most of us Anglo Saxons have had a pretty dismal week after being dumped out of the European Championships by the Croatians. The predictable domino effect took place, and the coach of the English national football team, Steve McClaren, has been booted out.

He said, “I am not one to sit around on a beach”, before promptly scooting over to Barbados to enjoy some of the 2 million pound compensation. So, the hunt is now on for a new boss. Most people have already ruled themselves out of contention: Martin O’Neill is busy with Aston Villa, Lippi can’t speak the language, Wenger is far too French and even Steve Coppell of all people has ruled himself out of the running. All a bit of a joke really.

This got me thinking back to my childhood, when something similar occured with the England manager of the time, Graham Taylor. Taylor has an even worse time of it than McClaren and made the cardinal sin of losing a football (not soccer) match to the USA. Very bad news. He, of course, ended up out on his bottom a year later after failing to qualify for the World Cup. However, looking back at the video below, he seems much more palatable than Steve McClaren. He had a little bit of passion and didn’t survive on a wave of different sound bytes. He even had the good grace to resign.

Have a look at this little video, an extract from a documentary made during the last couple of years of Taylor’s reign.

The latest action photograph of the English football team has made its way through to the European Vibe office.

My favourite quote from the English newspapers today has to be from the Daily Mail - The wally with the brolly!

After yet another poor performance from England under Steve McClaren, (which resulted in England losing 3-2 at home to Croatia and not qualifying for the European Championships next summer) the FA finally sorted themselves out and did what the fans have been asking for months and gave him his marching orders.

We wait and see what wonders the FA come up with now, and reopen the debate whether we appoint a English manager or go down the foreign route again.

By Tahira Lindsay

It’s a sad day for Hip Hop. Kanye West’s mother, Dr. Donda West, has passed away. According to reports, Dr. West died late Saturday night, November 10, in Los Angeles, California from surgical complications. Only hours before her death, Dr. West was released from the hospital after a seemingly successful cosmetic surgery in which she received a tummy tuck and breast reduction procedure. During hours of recuperation at her home, it is reported that she stopped breathing and had to be rushed back to the hospital where she soon died after paramedics were unsuccessful in resuscitating her.

Dr. Donda West was more than a successful writer, entrepreneur, and educator. After the rise of her son’s rapping career, Dr. West retired as the chair of the English Department at Chicago State University to manage Kanye´s exploding rap career. Along with Kanye, Dr. West founded the Kanye West Foundation in an effort to combat the severe drop out rate in high schools across America. Undeniably, Dr. West served as one of Kanye´s most important advisors, but overall she served as the muse to many of Kanye´s greatest hits. In one of Kanye´s most intimate songs, “Hey Momma”, released on Kanye’s second album Late Registration (2005), Kanye boldly professes his love for his mother”

I wanna tell the whole world about a friend of mine
This little light of mine and I’m finna let it shine
I’m finna take yall back to them better times
I’m finna talk about my mama if yall don’t mind

Dr. Donda West will surely be missed. As a woman who was able to balance the realm of Hip Hop and academia, Dr. West’s greatest accomplishment will always be the love and understanding she had as Kanye’s mother. Our hearts go out the West family and friends during this difficult time.

May the hip hop beat live on.

By Ellen Marks

Aside from being one of my favorite sources of entertainment, the Museo Thyssen-Bornmisza is one of the three corners of Madrid’s “Golden Triangle of Art.” The Thyssen, differing from the Prado and the Reina Sophia, displays a private art collection of refined taste. The collection was started in the 1920’s by Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. He married a former Miss Spain, Carmen Cervera, who has taken over the collection. Individual portraits depicting the couple at their best –arguably somewhat glorified- can be seen just within the door of the museum.

The Thyssen offers a nice contrast from the Prado and the Reina Sophia by providing a range of expressionism, impressionism, and works from English , Dutch, and German art schools. Personally, I was most impressed with the private art collection displayed. On the first floor, I found myself staring at early Picasso, and more modern works by Lichtenstein. On the second floor, I was enamored with impressionist works by Monet, Renoir, and Pisarro. Impressionism exhibited by various artists gave me a much better understanding of the movement. The museum even has a number of works by Spanish artists such as Regoyos and Beruete.
After a few hours of fulfilling my art craving, I hit up the Thyssen shop on the first floor. While I was impressed with “Los Vessenots” by VanGogh, I definitely do not feel comfortable wearing it on Tshirt. I settled for some postcards and a book on Paul Cezanne which I read over tea in the café.

While the Prado is highly advertised and is most likely on your Madrid To-Do list, the Thyssen defintely interested me more. The varying tecniques and time periods displayed can be interesting to even those who aren’t fluent in art trivia. The Thyssen private collection is definitely worth a few euros and can provide an afternoon of classy entertainment.

Well. What do you think of Guinness’ new logo? It’ll be released in the near future.

By Ellen Marks

It doesn’t seem too much of an exaggeration to say that football in Madrid is close to a religion. From what I’ve observed, the games are events which must be watched, either in person or on TV at home. While I’ve watched many of this season’s games on TV, last night I saw my first game in person. Watching Raul score at Bernabeu was definitely a much more exciting experience than my usual couch-potato TV futbol intake.

After buying my tickets- the cheapest ones possible, I decided to emerge myself in the Real Madrid team spirit. I bought an official Real Madrid scarf and met some friends before the game for tapas and cerveza. A little tipsy, I joined the masses in the hike up Bernabeu’s stairs. When I arrived at my seat, I found a man sitting in it. Being foreign to Bernabeu, I wasn’t about to ask him and his friends to relocate. No worries though, a friend and I found some spare seats nearby and took them. I was amazed at how well I could see, even though my ticket was one of the cheapest in the house.

Though I hadn’t attended a futbol (soccer) game in years, I really enjoyed myself. With the help of a few shouting fans, I found myself familiar with the players names, and was shouting “Pepe!! Venga!!” before I knew it. After numerous “offsides” calls, I developed a deep grudge against the referees and picked up a few new Spanish swear words from the men sitting behind me. I loved throwing my hands up and yelling “Gool!!” with the rest of the stadium.

The Real Madrid fans have a great amount of faith in their team. As the score tipped back and forth between Mallorca and Madrid, the fans refused to panic. Their confidence paid off, when Madrid won 4-3. Feeling proud to be associated with the winning team, I went home accomplished. I know there are a few home games coming up in November and December, and I’ll definitely be sitting somewhere in Bernabeu’s cheapest seats, cheering on Casillas, Robinho and Gago.

Peter Moore remembers going to the cinema in Tanzania

Batman

Man should try everything once, apart from incest and Morris dancing. Well, this is the point of view I was dragged around to, when someone suggested that we go and watch ‘Batman’.

I am not a particularly fierce critic of Batman. In fact I distinctly remember wearing my y-fronts outside of my trousers during my early years in a vain attempt to gain superpowers myself. The problem was that we were in a dustbowl Tanzanian safari city that had only recently unveiled its first sit down toilet.

But, located in the bustling uptown area (possibly not far for the aforementioned toilet) had been located a cinema promising to show ‘Batman Begins’ - 6pm. There were seven of us, and we came to the consensus that we would abandon the current evening plan (bottle of beer - bottle of beer - bolognaise pizza - beer) and instead go and watch the film.

Gorbechov’s Taxi

I wasn’t quite sure was to expect, I imagined that it might be cheaper than £6.50 but I conceded that you might not be able to buy popcorn in two different sizes. Once we had bounced down the street in our Mercedes (which I fancied at some point during the early 1980s may have belonged to someone from the Gorbechov administration) it transpired that I was right. Arriving at the cinema a man popped out from behind a table and promptly charged us 1,500 Tanzanian Shillings (70p) each whilst greeting us with a generous yellow-teethed smile.

The first thing that struck me as we passed through the double doors was that the room was big; the screen was dwarfing us from a distance of 30m and I immediately began to feel like a post-op Mike TV. But before I could begin to comprehend fully the size of the screen, the smell arrived. It was as if this geographical area had been for centuries a favoured urinal for a local herd of stubborn elephants, and they would be damned if they were going to change their habits merely because a cinema had been constructed there.

I struggled on through the ammonia-thick air, my eyes watering by now in the dark, sitting down with a clunk on a British Rail era wooden seat. Batman had already begun. It was quite difficult to see what was happening due to the fact that the film had been expanded to fill the enormous screen (approx. five times normal size), at first glance Michael Caine looked as if he had been inflated by Harry Potter.

Hakuna Matata

Alongside us in the cinema was a man sitting alone what seemed a few hundred meters in front of us. He was straining his head in odd directions and it soon became apparent that he was having the same difficulty in hearing anything that I was. Two small speakers were located at either end of the room and I am pretty sure to say that at least one of them must have been inhabited by a woodpecker. Years of huffing and puffing had seemingly burnt out these poor, small speakers and no matter in which direction I or my friend in front tilted our heads, we could barely make out what (the forty foot wide) Michael Caine was saying.

But, using the ethic of ‘Hakuna Matata’ that I had been building up during the past several weeks, I thought that all would be well due to the film being subtitled in English. Fantastic. Or not. It soon became evident that the translator was a) Of a similar level of English than I am of Welsh or b) On LSD. This fact did take a small amount of time to become apparent, but when the young (but seemingly bloated) Batman was audibly told by one of his benefactors ‘Good news’, the titles at the bottom of the screen read ‘Berghausen will suffer.’

I was by now getting very confused. Staring at the bloated screen and trying to decipher the obviously coded subtitles: who was this Berghausen fellow? For five minutes we sat hearing subtitles that resembled a jumble sale of the English language, such as; ‘Bring cake fast’, and ‘hope forgets carrots’.

Not worth it

It was at this point a good twelve minutes through that the audible language changed. Of course no one realised this immediately as the subtitles continued to whir along eccentrically: ‘News of dangerous cement’ etc. But after a group meeting and some hard listening we determined that the language had changed: Russian?

Our suspicions were confirmed when the fellow in front, jumped up and made for the door. We followed in defeat, only to find when we got there the yellow toothed attendant employing the same persistence we had become used to with the souvenir peddlers outside.

‘No worries, sorry man’, he kept repeating, shepherding us back towards our seats, determined for us to enjoy a complete film. ‘Bad copy’, he added shrugging his shoulders.

It was then that ‘War of the Worlds’ began. Unfortunately by this time the front two speakers had shorted, and the gentleman in front of us (who had also been escorted back to his seat) had burst into fits of laughter, which didn’t particularly add to the atmosphere. This time I reasoned the language was more Germanic and as the subtitles appeared it was for the first time that they read faultless English: ‘Sometimes it is just not worth it.’