Educational Apartheid: Languages in schools

It’s the day of the “vuelta al cole” next September. By the school gates you wave goodbye as junior enters primary school for the first time. A tear in the eye but joy in the heart, as you will have decided that junior is to be taught in … taught in which language?

From the start of the next school year there will be free parental choice as to the main teaching language at the voluntary nursery level and at primary level, but not at secondary level. This will be in line with the election manifesto of the Partido Popular government. After a fashion. There was meant also to have been free choice in secondary schools. There still will be, but not yet. It’s all a question of money.

Electoral promises are fine, but they do require that the money exists to back them up. The Círculo Balear, the fiercely anti-Catalan and staunchly pro-Castilian organisation, reckons there is the budget, but then it probably would. The government says, however, that the education ministry needs to shed a 35 million euro debt before secondary schools are included. So this – 35 million, if you follow the government’s logic – is what it costs to be able to offer secondary school teaching in the language of parents’ choice.

The budget for education, and the ministry includes culture and university, will be down in 2012 by 55 million euros. With its budget already under strain, it could do without the complication of administering this choice. Because complication is what it is. The education minister, Rafael Bosch, has yet to decide exactly how the choice model will operate, though it would seem that he has in mind a mixture within the same school.

Let’s get this straight, because I am struggling here and you may be able to help. Bosch has, mercifully it would seem, dismissed the possibility of separation into different centres along language lines, but he appears to be saying that there will be separate classes within one school for those being taught in Catalan or Castilian. Have I got this right? Because if I have, it may be good for parental choice but isn’t when it comes to how schools function.

Schools are terrible places when it comes to “being different”. And what you would arrive at with this system is one of apartheid based on language choice. The potential for us and them should not be underestimated.

Moreover, it is an us and them that has the potential to carry on beyond school years. If you want to create a situation of tension between Catalan and Castilian speakers, where better than to foment it than in schools. The notion of splitting along language lines goes against principles of child socialisation that schools should be aiding, not inhibiting.

The Círculo Balear believes that the PP has bowed to pressure from the “anti-democrats of the Catalanist minority”, which it almost certainly hasn’t. Give the PP its own fully free choice and it would probably happily get rid of Catalan from schools, but it is enforcing the provisions of the 1986 act that recognised the right of language choice, but which has since come to mean Catalan taking precedence.

The Círculo, however, may not be right in assuming that an overwhelming majority of parents want Castilian teaching. Back in June it was reported that parents, for the most part, were happy enough for Catalan to prevail. In which case, they’ll be able to choose for it do so.

Apart from a budgetary constraint, the government’s position may have been watered down (albeit perhaps temporarily) by the presence of Sr. Bosch, described as a moderate when he was made education minister.

But this moderation, while it ensures a greater role for Castilian while maintaining Catalan, creates a different problem; two in fact – greater expense plus the linguistic apartheid. The cost of education will have to increase, though not by as much as Sr. Bosch might have wanted, as his plan to add an hour to the school day has had to be held back for now because of lack of money.

Accommodating the two languages, to be fair to the government, is a thankless task. The purely pragmatic approach would be to make Castilian the language and make Catalan a language taught in specific lessons. Where many Catalan-preferring parents would probably have to agree is not with the Círculo Balear’s posturing but with the notion of greater opportunity arising from Castilian.

But pragmatism is too simple when set against culture, history, arguments and tensions. Unfortunately, the government, while it is right in its free-choice policy, might find that it ends up exacerbating these tensions.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

A Normal School Day

On Monday, something extraordinary will happen. Children will be going to school. It is easy to forget that there are such things as schools, given the endless summer holidays now about to come to an end.

The return to school – “vuelta al cole” – is more of a ritual than an educational process. This ritual involves, amongst other things, column inches in the press devoted to the minutiae of the new school year. To this end, therefore, we are told that 129,569 pupils will be attending schools in the Balearics and that they will be taught by 11,366 teachers.

We are also told that, in Palma for instance, 162 police officers will be on traffic duty to ensure smooth circulation at “hot spots” and to ensure good order. Last year, a total of 534 officers throughout the Balearics oversaw the return to school. It is reassuring to know that the forces of law are on hand to prevent any trouble among rival gangs of hoody five-year-olds or unrest between parents jockeying for parking spaces in their 4x4s.

We are also informed that it costs, on average, 825 euros to kit out junior with his uniform, his sportswear, his books and pencil cases. And come the day, on Monday, the press will be at the ready to learn whether the return to school has passed off “normally”. This is perhaps the strangest part of the whole ritual, as each year the normality (or not) is reported. Why should it not pass off normally? What would constitute an abnormal return to school? Finding there isn’t a school any more? Whole classes of pupils being abducted by aliens?

It is, one has to conclude, the sheer abnormality of children actually going to school that makes the vuelta al cole such a big news item. Yet for all that one can raise eyebrows at a summer holiday that starts when it is still spring and ends almost as autumn’s leaves begin to fall, the Mallorcan and Spanish school pupil still manages to put in significantly more hours than do pupils in some other European countries, ones in which the pupils perform far better than their Mallorcan counterparts.

The real education story, as I have mentioned before, is not the length of holidays, the school hours, or even the return to school, it is the rotten standard of public education in Mallorca and the Balearics.

Herr Bosch, Obermeisterführer for education in the Balearic Government, has spoken about increasing the number of school hours, but for now there are more pressing matters that he has to concern himself with. While he has also been speaking about “normality” existing as the new school year starts, there is the far from normal issue of what language should be used for teaching returning to the political curriculum. Far from normal, except in Mallorca.

In a widely publicised speech, the Balearics president, José Bauzá, has asserted, not for the first time, the claims of Castilian as “our language”. Bauzá, who has recently sprouted a beard in an act of facial-hair sympathy with his inglorious national leader, Mariano Rajoy, appears to be backtracking on what seemed a hard line against Catalan prior to the May regional elections. He is making more accommodating noises about Catalan, but will nevertheless have been bolstered by a declaration from the Catalonian supreme court that Catalonia has an obligation to incorporate the Castilian language as a vehicle for teaching.

Herr Bosch, meantime, has announced that, by the start of the next school year, there will be an equality between Catalan and Castilian in Mallorca’s educational system. So when the vuelta al cole occurs next September, things will be normal, if one accepts that there should be equality of the languages, abnormal if one doesn’t (either way) and almost certainly a lack of normality, because everyone will have been engaged in a full-on row about it between now and next September.

But we shouldn’t count against Bauzá and Bosch pressing further the claims of Castilian on the educational agenda over the next few months. The new model beardy Bauzá, who, with his growth, has managed to look more like Richard E. Grant than he did before, would very much prefer “Withnail y yo” to “Withnail i jo”.

The Catalan question aside, Bauzá has said that, under his Partido Popular party, education will get better. He would hardly say the opposite. But “educación, educación, educación” it is, and not “educació, educació, educació”. And on Monday all this education will be normal, except that little in the world of Mallorca’s education can be said to be normal.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Educating Rafa: Mallorca’s schools

One of the names I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used to over the next few years is that of Mr. Bosch, Rafael of this variety. As new education minister for the Balearics, can we expect Mr. Bosch to promote instruction in engineering? Will Mallorca’s schools be subject to his use of power tools or will they be set to a gentle wash and softened by a fragrant conditioner?

Mallorca’s state-run schools aren’t very good. Or at least, what they produce underperforms in comparison to most of the rest of Spain and therefore most of Europe. In key competences, such as maths and comprehension, Mallorca and Balearic school children rank among the bottom four of Spain’s regions. The standard of English is such that two-thirds of students at the Universitat de les Illes Balears admit to not understanding it, despite instruction at the university and years of teaching at school.

The education spokesperson at the CCOO union has a point when he suggests that, of the ministries in the new Bauzá administration, education should be given the greatest priority, above even that of tourism. Mallorca’s future lies with well-educated and motivated raw material that can help to shift the economic emphasis away from a reliance on tourism and to change an attitude among young people that they can aspire to no more than being waiters and hanging out on the beach.

The union has expressed concern that the new administration might be targetting education for privatisation. It is probably a touch of scaremongering, but it is just one issue that confronts Rafael Bosch as he takes over the education ministry. The CCOO, and the other two unions representing teachers, have, however, given Bosch’s appointment cautious approval. They describe him as “moderate and communicative”.

And being perceived as moderate might well be a blessing, given that President Bauzá had suffered, some time before the elections, his now infamous, self-confessed “mental lapse” in respect of language, one that has, ever since, dominated discussion as to the PP’s attitude to language and the party’s potential for scrapping Catalan as a language of teaching. This will be an issue that will dog Bosch, though, for his part, he is saying that there needs to be greater effort in the teaching of language – three languages in fact: Spanish, English and Catalan. Hierologically, the hitherto anonymous Bosch does not appear to adhere to the notion of Castilian being the sacred language.

He recognises that the law as it stands allows parents freedom of choice between Spanish and Catalan as to the main language of teaching. For the most part, Mallorca’s parents are happy enough for Catalan to prevail, while schools and pupils have expressed their preference for Catalan, and on occasions vociferously so.

The language question does threaten to overshadow all other matters in Bosch’s ministerial in-tray, but it is way less important than the main one – that of improving standards and combatting what he has described as the “intolerable” situation regarding the high level of year repetition that pupils in Mallorca are obliged to undergo. To this end, Bosch is planning to create a “social pact” between the teaching profession, unions and others to develop a model of education in the islands. Which sounds all rather grand, though we will have to see what it actually means. More practically, he is hinting at adding an hour to the school day, which, pact or no pact, the unions might find a tad hard to swallow.

At the same time as Bosch has got his feet under the ministerial desk, the schools have broken up for the long summer break. It might seem that Bosch, if he believes that longer hours and more schooling are necessary, should perhaps shorten the holidays. The fact is, however, that adding hours isn’t necessarily a solution and nor would be a shortening of the holidays. In Finland, for example, there is an eleven-week break, a lower annual number of school hours than Spain (quite appreciably so) and a way higher standard of achievement than anywhere in Spain.

Mr. Bosch is not only education minister. He also has responsibility for culture. And perhaps here lies a clue for him. Improving educational standards in Mallorca is less a matter of longer days and more one of changing cultural attitudes to education. The people he really needs to be educating are parents.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Something To Remind You: Books

It was St. George’s Day on Saturday. Sant Jordi’s day. It was also the day of the book and of the curious ritual of exchanging a rose for a book. What happens nowadays? Do Interflora and Amazon both deliver?

The personal may be being taken out of many aspects of life, the Kindle and the iPad may be assuming greater significance, but the book itself endures. Rather like vinyl, the book is more substantial, more tangible than a disc or the physically non-existent, the download. It is more personal.

In Palma, they celebrated book day. Politicians took the opportunity to celebrate some time as last men and women standing. Before they succumb to their probable fate in May, the regional president and the mayor of Palma were among the visitors.  Antich was talking a good book, or was he a talking book? The next legislature will introduce initiatives to develop reading, so he said. The education minister was on hand to echo this and to insist that it was necessary to give strength to plans for reading development. What have they been doing for the past four years?

Reading, sales of books, financial assistance for parental purchase of books; these all crop up among the statistics that are regularly trotted out in the press. More than literature, Mallorca has been creating a generation that can read figures rather than prose. The attention that is paid to reading does, though, emphasise the role of the book in local society.

But this same society has been bemoaning standards. Last September, at the literary gathering in Formentor of book publishers, concern was expressed at the fact that children no longer had the “experience of the book”. Public education is sub-standard enough for it to have been admitted that, while children read, if not as much as they might, they don’t understand. Levels of comprehension in Mallorca and the Balearics, along with other core benchmarks in education, are below those of the Spanish average and well below those of Europe as a whole.

Despite a tradition of the book and literature, Mallorca has produced little by way of great works. Not on an international scale, at any rate. Yet, the island can lay claim to being the birthplace of the European novel. Ramon Llull’s “Blanquerna”, written in the thirteenth century, is often held up as the first of its kind. It was written in Catalan, emphasising the importance of the language in civilising mediaeval European society, something that is conveniently overlooked by many.

There was a mere gap of some 700 years before something approximating to a great work about Mallorca came along, Llorenç Villalonga’s “Bearn” about the fall of the Mallorcan nobility. But for most people outside Mallorca, both it and Llull’s work are obscure and generally ignored. A more recent Mallorcan literary tradition hasn’t been one at all, but a foreign invasion of Peter Mayle-apeing pap.

For the visitor, Mallorca and books mean not the unknowns such as Villalonga, but what gets thrown into the suitcase. Holidays are reading time; for many, the only time they read a book. New technologies may spawn greater interest in reading, but the Kindle is still subject to the same drawbacks as the book on holiday: Ambre Solaire thumbmarks and grains of sand working themselves into the crevices.

The book on holiday can take on greater significance than merely a means of whiling away some hours on a beach or by the poolside. It is a remembrance, something to remind you. I know exactly where I was when I read William Trevor’s gut-wrenchingly sad “The Story of Lucy Gault” or when I laughed hysterically at the insanely irreverent “Henry Root Letters”.

Both are somewhere, among all the other books, the old copies of “Wisden”, the Ian McEwan first editions, the translation of the bible for the Inquisition, the “Malleus Maleficarum”. These are my own descendants of what I grew up among – Hemingway, Dickens and the less cerebral Mickey Spillane and Harold Robbins.

The day of the book is a fine idea. There should be more of them. If only as a reminder of the greater aesthetic of the book. It can be read, but it can also be seen as a single object and even smelt. The new technologies don’t offer the same pleasure and appeal to the senses.

In years to come, will the day of the book become the day of the electronic book? Stalls of handheld devices? Will the exchange of gifts mean a rose for a Kindle? I very much doubt it.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Naked Ambition: Carlos Delgado

You can’t blame a man for harbouring ambitions. But there is understated ambition and there is naked ambition. In the case of Carlos Delgado, he has stripped himself bare and exposed himself as unashamedly as a naturist strutting along the water’s edge at Es Trenc beach.

Delgado, the retiring mayor of Calvia, is not normally the retiring sort. He will vacate the mayoral throne this spring and, following a period of ominous silence, is making his intentions loud and clear. And by doing so, he brings to a head and into full public, voyeuristic glare the divisions within the Partido Popular.

Delgado has announced that in a PP administration he wants to be either tourism or education minister. Either, for differing reasons, would be the nuclear option. He knows it, and so does everyone else. Tourism is the most important ministerial appointment, while education is the most politically loaded.

Why does Delgado appear to be so confident that he might land either of these positions? That he is widely perceived to be the real power in the party behind José Bauzá may have something to do with it. His relative silence and absence over the past few months seemed to start when the suggestion of his power began to be given an airing.

Even such reticence, though, can reinforce an image of behind-the-scenes scheming; silence can be golden when it is tactical treasure. The reason for my dubbing him Grytpype-Thynne is only partly because Delgado means thin; another is because, like Peter Sellers’ Goons character, he is seen as something of the villain of the piece.

But it is for this reason that Delgado is arguably the most interesting politician in Mallorca. He conveys an impression of being the genuine political-animal article. His ability to appear divisive says much for his lack of equivocation. You know what you’re going to get with Delgado, or at least you think you do. The trouble is that many would rather not get it, including many in his own party.

Delgado was trounced in the run-off against Bauzá for the party leadership. It was a snub of the anyone-but-Delgado variety. Yet, despite the pair’s rivalry, it soon emerged that Bauzá was moving closer to Delgado and to his philosophies. It was this shift to the right that started the ruptures which continue in the Partido Popular in the Balearics.

Delgado has never hidden the fact that he believes in the primacy of the Castilian language. When Bauzá said much the same, here was just one example, latched onto and claimed by his opponents, of Delgado’s influence. It is this streak of anti-Catalanism that would turn his appointment as education minister into more than just a political hot potato; it would be a three-course meal with brandy and cigars to follow and indigestible for almost every other political party in Mallorca as well as those to the left within the PP.

The Catalan question is the local PP’s Europe question. It is one that carries less weight with the electorate than the obsession with it suggests, but the prominence given to it, and wrapped up in the further question of regionalism, is of a conservatism which, rather than seeking to conserve social, political and cultural subsidiarity (of Catalanism), openly rejects it in favour of the sovereignty of the Spanish state and Castilian.

Tourism is a different matter entirely. It is far less political and far more an issue of industrial and economic strategy. In February last year, prior to the election for the PP leadership, Delgado made his opinions plain enough. He favoured the prioritisation of tourism legislation over that for land. He advocated changes to allow for the establishment of condohotels. He called for the creation of theme parks and sports centres aimed at reducing the impact of seasonality. His party has said that it will press for changes to IVA, so as to reduce its burden on the tourism industry. All of this, you would think, would make him the darling of the tourism industry and of the hoteliers. You would be wrong. The hoteliers have made it clear that they don’t want him.

For such opposition to be stated is extraordinary. The hoteliers, when faced, as they have been over the past four years, with regular, new tourism ministers, have always uttered the same diplomatic mantra – that so-and-so will be good for the industry, even if they haven’t meant it. They haven’t waited this time. Theirs is a pre-emptive strike to seek to deny Delgado one of his ambitions. But why?

As Delgado has said much that should be music to the hoteliers’ ears, their rejection of him seems surprising. But perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps they don’t much care for naked ambition. Perhaps they don’t much care for him; he is far from being universally popular. Perhaps they fear that he might ruffle some feathers. Whatever the reason, Bauzá surely cannot ignore the industry’s objections. If he acknowledges them, then that leaves education.

Bauzá has himself become divisive in a way that does not bode well for what should be within his grasp, the presidency of the Balearics. If he bows to Delgado’s ambition for education, the divisions are likely to widen. But then who actually makes the decisions and who actually wields the power?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Dubbed: Television and language

Come on now, admit it. How often do you ever watch a television programme in Spanish? If you don’t live in Mallorca or Spain, you’re forgiven, but if you do … . There is one very good reason for not watching Spanish telly, apart from the language issue, and this is that, for the most part, it is unrelenting garbage. Better that you stick to “X Factor” or “I’m A Celebrity”; altogether more culturally enriching.

I’m not going to be holier than thou. I don’t watch Spanish telly much. I used to, before I realised just how bad it was. What limited diet I have is largely confined to football. I should make more of an effort as there are some gems of the bizarre, such as the channel which seems to be devoted to a woman reading Tarot cards or human towers competitions replete with slow-mo action replays of a small child slipping and crashing onto the bodies below.

Foreign programmes are usually always dubbed, and there are an awful lot of them. Yes, you can view some in the original language as well, but for the Spaniard the voiceover (VO) is preferable. The Germans do it as well to films and telly programmes. It is so ridiculous that I once saw an interview with the boy who was the German “Harry Potter” and who had become a star in his own right. In Spanish I have watched “The Shawshank Redemption” with a Morgan Freeman who probably comes from Madrid and who almost certainly isn’t black.

Dubbing, as opposed to showing programmes in the original language (almost always, therefore, English) with subtitles, may lead to the madness of an actor’s personality being stripped away by a VO artist, but it can also have a serious aspect, in that it inhibits the learning of English.

However, the experience in Germany is quite telling. Though German TV dubs, the standard of English in Germany is high, far higher than it is in Mallorca or Spain. Television does have a role to play in teaching English, and no more so than in the Netherlands where, together with an educational system which promotes English from an early age, the watching of shows in English has been established practice for many years, given that the BBC has long been available. But television can’t overcome an instinctive problem, one to do with the sounds of language.

There is an article by Nick Lyne about Spanish television, dubbing and language acquisition on the qorreo.com website. It’s interesting, but what is even more interesting is a comment about the article. This makes the point that the Spanish language has a “particularly not-rich set of sounds in its register”. This means that it can be difficult to pronounce, speak and therefore learn other languages, such as English.

The contrast is made with, for example, Dutch which is a much richer language in terms of sounds. I would guess that the same applies to German. The greater the range of sounds in a native tongue, the easier it is to acquire other languages; or so the theory seems to go. Without getting too technical, Spanish has comparatively few spoken sounds compared with English. A linguist at the Spanish equivalent of the Open University has made the point that Spanish pronunciation of English is poor because the greater number of English sounds are reduced to the few of Spanish. (Incidentally, Catalan has a few more sounds than Spanish which should, in theory, make things easier.)

The imbalance in sound recognition has major implications for the teaching of English in schools. The same linguist has said that no one seems to be bothering to make the acquisition of new sounds a key element of English. The extension of English use in teaching in Spanish and Mallorcan schools is all well and good, but how good are the teachers themselves at speaking it correctly? Despite the number of years of English instruction, the professor of language psychology at the University of Navarra is concerned that pupils leave school still not knowing how to speak English.

Earlier this year, a survey of students at the university in Palma discovered that 68% admitted to not understanding English. It may not be essential for all of them in their future careers that they do, but given the importance of English in international business and in local tourism the deficiency is somewhat startling. By a remarkable coincidence, a survey of foreign language use by students and adults in different European countries by the Eurostat research organisation at the European Commission revealed that 68% of secondary school pupils in Spain learn one foreign language – English. Learn, but can they use?

The same Eurostat survey placed Spain in the bottom three of countries in which adults speak no foreign language. And no, the UK was not behind Spain; in fact the UK does pretty well in this respect.

But to return to television. Much recent debate surrounding language and whether English originals should be shown on TV was kicked off by Fox’s decision to broadcast “House” in English with subtitles. So, you’ll be able to watch it in English if you want to. The question is: will the Spanish?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

These Words: The Pope and Spanish secularism

The Pope’s favourite two words. Aggressive and secularism. Combined, they come out like a knocking-copy comparative advertising slogan. Marketing people know of the dangers of knocking the competition. The Pope should know of the dangers as well.

The Pope levelled the aggressive secularism charge against Britain. He has now done so as well in Spain. It’s one that carries more weight in a Catholic country, more so than it did in Britain where it should have been shrugged off with a so-what.

The charge carries weight and danger because it is an overtly political statement, one that is explicit in its criticism of the socially liberal, anti-Church policies of the current Zapatero government. The danger is immense. While it may be a reassuring message for a moderate Catholic right, there exist more extreme elements. The added danger of the Pope’s words can be seen in the context of his expression of contemporary secularism. He compared this to the “strong and aggressive (that word again) anti-clericalism” of the 1930s.

Playing the ’30s card resonates with all manner of alarm bells. The anti-clericalism of that time was just one factor that contributed to the rise of Nationalism and of Franco. And strict Catholic orthodoxy was to become an important strand of Francoism.

The Pope is referring to the efforts of the Second Republic from 1931 to undermine the privileged position of the Catholic Church and to introduce reforms such as secular education. The circumstances are nowadays quite different, with regard especially to education. They also differ dramatically in another way. The Republic attempted to address social problems and issues in the first part of the 1930s, but did so against a background of what was a shaky political structure. This is not the case today.

It was the apparent persecution of the Church by Republican constitutional change that was to become a theme of the political and then military struggles of the 1930s. To draw a comparison with anti-clericalism and secularism then and now is not completely without foundation, given the emergence of policies related to abortion, divorce and homosexuality. But the dynamics are very different, as indeed are the issues.

A generation or more has grown up knowing both increased secularism and democratic stability. The Church’s influence has been reduced significantly in a country where only around a seventh of the population now attends mass regularly. And education, one of the battlegrounds of the ’30s, is a further factor in a society that now enjoys better standards of education than before. The Pope might reflect on the fact that the reinstatement of the Jesuits under the Nationalists, alongside the Falange’s control of universities, did not contribute to making a population that much better educated than it was in the ’30s. It certainly did nothing for anything that might have approximated to a liberal educational tradition. Which was really the point of the Church’s opposition to anti-clericalism under the Republicans. And remains so today.

One of the great ironies of Spain and of all the problems it faced from the nineteenth century until Franco died is that Spain gave the world the concept of liberalism. It has taken an enormously long time from its inception as an ideal in the early 1800s for it to have finally taken hold in Spain. The word and the concept have come to be wrongly abused, hijacked by a right wing that has misappropriated it through – further irony – its own politically correct dogma. In today’s Spain liberalism is portrayed, by the Catholic right, as the creation of what it sees as social evils. But this is a stance unshared by and rejected by a majority of the population.

For the Pope, there is more history. It is that of Spain at the end of the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth, when Spain was the perfect example of a Catholic “state” and, moreover, was crucial to Catholic imperialism. For the Vatican, there is much riding on Spain’s ongoing Catholicism, but much which is historical symbolism. The danger in what the Pope has said lies in stirring up that symbolism and giving it political succour. Whether aggressive or not, secularism – and liberalism – have come to define Spanish society. That of today. And it’s only taken a couple of hundred years for it to get there.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.