Anyway, this post is about the power of Twitter, which so far I was underestimating. How cool is to have Rasmus responding to you directly and in a non official manner?

Priceless.

PS. in January 2009 I was creating Rasmus Lerdorf page in ro.wikipedia. So probably exists a Law of Compensation. :)

I’ve been to Crosstalent 8 yesterday. Usually at the previous sessions we talk about media/creativity/advertising stuff, but on this one Vicens Castellano tried to convince the eager audience that they should focus on making money by converting all passive aspects of their life in actives. I told them and I still think is wrong.

Yes we have to have money to live. The system works like this.
Yes even I use and ask for money for my services.

But there are people out there who know to make money better than me.
And those people cannot do what I do.

I am not for extreme especialization, but we divided the work into social casts. See Ernest Gellner social anthropology. Be better at what you like and leave the money making business to those who know to make money.

This is the short version of my view.

I want to ask my money back or something. Or at least to cry out loud for this situation that everybody is considering normal. The doctors told me this is a happy case. They are accustomed and they don’t really care anymore. What if you have more important health issues? You can fuck yourself as this Catalan government cares for. They are more preoccupied in political issues or in getting the fucking tourists buying trinkets in Rambla.  Everybody should sue CatSalut for not providing for the money we pay for. And at least not to vote the same stupid political manager over and over again.

I’ve send this to CatSalud,  Lavanguardia and Periodico de Catalunya. Probably a useless action, because CatSalud managers probably get some villas and nice cars from not doing anything and keeping the situation like it is now, as every public manager in Spain, and the newspapers that are interested only in making money or scandal sex stories when they appear.

I have a discussion with a friend of mine about the real estate market in Spain. Her argument is that there is a gross surplus of unsold houses and this is the reason that the construction business is stopped. This article (es) states that 20 years of real estate boom on the coast had produces enough houses to satisfy generations of people, that it will take years to sell this houses. It is interesting that the author questions the logics behind this extraordinary growth, pushed by greed of local and foreign investors, residential tourism raising trend and demographic growth.

Nevertheless, the article is shortsighted and probably serves the same people who created and now mantain a crisis. As I no longer work as an architect I can look at this phenomena from afar. Here are my conclusions:

• People still need house. In fact, in the last four years, Spanish population growth rates have been unprecedented in the country’s history. According to INE (i.e. Spanish Statistical Office) data, from 1900 to 2000, maximum growth between two censuses was reached in 1960-1970, with mean year-on-year growth of 1%. However, since2000, that population growth figure has been exceeded every year and reached a peak of 2.1% in 2003. The second feature of this population increase is that it was unexpected. As can be seen from Graph 4, United Nations population projections for 2050 carried out barely ten years ago clearly underestimated the forecast Spanish population trend. Thus, in the mid-nineties, with a population of 43 million, it was estimated that this figure would hardly be 30 million by 2050. At present, the INE forecasts it to exceed 50 million inhabitants (pdf), 4 a disparity of 24 million (a 50% error) in the demographic projections for the middle of this century. Immigration in Spain has a growth rate of 2.1% a year. And they tell me that we don’t need houses!?
• what is wrong? Is wrong that politicians are RULED by money and architects are OVERULED by politicians and urbanologists are RULED by architects. Urbanism is a mixed science studying geographic, economic, political, social and cultural factors that should be taken into account when building a city. Of course nobody cared about this, and that is why instead of cities you have now cemeteries as the article author correctly states. This cemeteries can be populated through political action, but this government which responds only to big companies stimulus won’t do it. Not unless you have the next option…
• The next option is to WAIT. If something is broken, like the real estate now, the Spanish superthinking is the less proactive that you’ll ever see. LET’S WAIT. Maybe the things will go back and fix by themselves. This way we won’t be forced to loose money or to move a finger on social environment. Who will suffer? First the society, people will have to continue to live in favelas. Then let the constructors die and the architects, they are only accessories to the ‘making money from real estate’ business. But waiting is more important. Much more important. Remember the story that during the ’30 crisis in USA they throw the milk on the fields instead of selling to a lower price? Well this is happening now as well. Constructing cheap, which would be a normal response to all this expensive speculative prices, is the BIG adversary now for the people who have invested their money in house speculation. That’s why they want to block the construction permits, in order to keep the current prices until they will sell existing properties, or otherwise somebody could come and construct houses for 20.000 euro and sell them, and they would get stuck with 200.000 euros unsellable houses. So they have to create the impression of an overflow of houses. Tell that to my friends who share apartments.

My conclusion. You must still build as it is still very necessary. Build cheap and you’ll sell everything. And I don’t worry to much for the people who will loose money on existing construction build to be sold at extravagant prices. They had their winning time and they lived very well. For them I have the following advice: learn to loose, but never loose the lesson.

Because here happen things that I didn’t see in real third world economies.

• internet is a monopoly.
• telephony is a monopoly.

These are the main reasons everything goes bad. Telefonica Spain has the property of all lines and these lines can be rented only to a few Telefonica parasites: Tele2, Ya.com, Ono, that are supported only due to the fact that monopoly is forbidden by law. But apart from this these ones treat the client the same or worst as Telefonica.

In Spain there is a law that requires ISP to deliver 10% minimum of what you contract. Yes you read well. The European Union law against the fake ISP advertising that requires 80% minimum bandwidth from what you signed is not applicable in Spain and probably never will. Is like paying for a car and only getting 1 wheel.

Another thing that disturbs me. We are in 2008 and the maximum bandwidth that I can contract from any of these interbreeded providers is 20Mb which in reality is 2 or 3mb. Which in reality is 250kb. In 2008!!! You cannot get fiber optics. Ono is the only provider of fiber optics but they don’t do it for private persons or in my area in the center of Barcelona. The rest of the services involved, or the technical expertise of these companies…. forget about it. My mother knows more I swear.

:)) You gotta be kidding me.

And the worst thing is how they treat you. As you don’t have options … you are nobody so feel free to shut up. Or write on your blog.

A word for foreign investors looking to invest in Spain: JUST DON’T!

// Update almost a year later. 23/06/2009
Things are as same as always. Lately I had some more interactions with Telefonica, Jazztel and Vodafone. They all really suck.
We need an internet revolution in Spain.

// Update 22/09/2009

And finally I canceled my ya.com contract. An awfull experience with them all this year until the last drop ( cancelling is a nightmare ).

Cine recunoaște ipostaza să ridice mâna și să treacă în careu.

I’ve never seen the Pope ever leaving his Vatican comfortable chair in order to go and put himself between the Arabs and the Israelis fighting in Gaza, or Kosovo, or Irak, or Afghanistan, or East Timur, or ….

I’ve never seen the Dalai Lama teaching his meaningful love and peace philosophy in the favelas from Brazil, or Guatemala, or Indonesia, or Lesotho, or anywhere in Africa… (but I’ve seen him giving lectures and conferences in Barcelona or New York with 18 euros entry fee).

What is the point of being known and famous if you loose your courage to go out and use your power in first battle line?