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Rome's Palazzo Cipolla hostsGuerra, Capitalismo & Libertà, the largest exhibition ever dedicated to the elusive British street artist Banksy, whose identity remains unknown.
On loan from private collections around the world, the 150 works on display feature the most celebrated motifs by the artist and political activist from Bristol, including his famous rat series. As the title suggests, the exhibition focuses on themes central to Banksy’s work: war, capitalism and liberty.
Over the years Banksy has gained notoriety and acclaim in equal measure for his stencil graffiti paintings which provide a subversive and satirical commentary on modern-day society. From 24 May-4 September 2016
By ELINA RUKA Picture this: a charming Frenchwoman named Charlotte is taking a Spaniard named Carlos and an Italian named Luca out for a drive in her antique Citröen. She is showing them around her native city of Paris and taking them to her favorite spots, many of which are off the beaten tourist track. Contrast this with the traditional scene of tourists clambering out of a huge bus and following a guide carrying an umbrella over his/her head. The trendy traveller no longer waits in long queues at the Parthenon in Athens, the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Colosseum in Rome, but looks for alternative experiences that go beyond the postcard. Hence, an increasing number of tourists are turning to locals for advice, rather than the pages of a travel guide or excursions organized by travel companies. Aside from seeking a genuine experience, some travelers aim to practice what they call responsible and caring tourism by following the recommendations of local inhabitants on how to best spend their stay --and to do so in appreciation of local traditions. A number of websites are following up on this trend with routes designed to make sure that visitors get to see the sites from a more local perspective. Some websites, for example, offer inside tips to get the best coffee in town, or on the most convenient way to travel if the public transport system isn't working, or on things and places that can be enjoyed for free. These websites provide long lists of recommended cafés, restaurants and entertainment spots, while their lists of excursions are sometimes so diverse that considerable time is needed to find the most suitable one for each traveller. Aside from traditional walking tours, some local tourist guides also offer to provide tours of their city on roller skates, by bicycle or even while jogging. Of course, many of these excursions incorporate the usual aspects -including architecture, nature, food, photography and shopping-- but with an interesting twist, with the option of taking a traditional cooking class or going out on alternative nightlife or artistic photo tours. One might also choose to have dinner with a local family and try out the area's traditional foods while spending a leisurely evening learning about the host's native city. One way to select an appropriate excursion is to read about the tour providers and find one who shares the same interests as you. Therefore, before this trend goes viral and is replaced by a new one, go out for a novel experience rather than a bargain package deal!
Jesús Tomillero at the Real Balompédica Linense stadium in La Línea (Cádiz).
Jesús Tomillero doesn't like soccer, yet he has been on a pitch for over a decade, a whistle always hanging around his neck. This 21-year-old from La Línea de la Concepción, in the Andalusian province of Cádiz, was the only registered referee in Spanish soccer who had publicly admitted to being gay. And “was” is the right tense, because Tomillero has just announced he is quitting. He can no longer deal with all the taunts and insults he has been getting since his sexual orientation became known.
“I can’t take it any more. I was scared going into the matches, and that’s not right,” he says. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now, but I can’t keep doing this.”
The last straw was the second-division juvenile game that he refereed last Saturday. Back in the stands, one fan began yelling out abuse such as: “Aren’t you ashamed of blowing the whistle on that, you fucking fag?” or “They’re going to score that goal up your ass, you faggot!”
“You go into shock at times like that,” explains Tomillero. “You have trouble believing your ears. It’s a shame that these things should happen in the 21stcentury. And the worst part is not the insults themselves, but hearing everyone else laugh.”
“I started to get interested after going to my younger brother’s soccer practice. I started out refereeing friendly matches, and little by little I trained and started to love what I was doing,” he recalls. “Being a referee is my life, it’s in my blood, on my skin.”A waiter and member of the Popular Party’s youth group, Nuevas Generaciones, Tomillero got involved in the world of soccer almost by chance. And he shows off a leg tattoo depicting two cards and a whistle.
“I’ve been very happy these last few years, even this last year,” he says with pride, hoping that his example will help educate younger kids. But the fact is that the Saturday episode has been a recurring nightmare for the last 18 months. “Ever since I admitted that I was homosexual, every day has been worse than the one before. I’ve been insulted often on the pitch, even by six- and seven-year-old children.”
In March, Tomillero filed a complaint over another verbal aggression by a Peña Madridista kit manager. The Cádiz Competition Committee suspended the man for nine games and made him pay a €30 fine.
“I have received support from other referees, friends, relatives and people I don’t know at all,” he says, grateful at all the messages of support on the social media.
Even acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias have sent him notes. “Good afternoon, Jesús. Our opinion on this is clear: we condemn all types of violence or discrimination. You have our support. Be strong and keep your spirits up. Affectionately,” wrote Rajoy. “Keep your spirit up, Jesús. I trust that sports authorities will not allow these things to happen again,” wrote Iglesias. El País in English, by Susana Urra.
Sadiq Khan's victory as the mayor of the world's greatest city is not only a testimony of London's success in accommodating and celebrating diversity, but will definitely give a boost in Muslim morale and determination to work for the common good with civic participation.
However angry the extremists on both sides may be now, this has given a clear message around the world that anyone with ability and ambition has a place in Britain's public sphere.
In this period of optimism it is vital that citizens, Londoners and beyond wage a war against our common enemies that keep on dividing us: ignorance, prejudice, intolerance and fear.
“Creo que puede ayudar a ofrecer una narrativa alternativa al radicalismo”, opina Muhammad Abdul Bari, de 62 años, responsable de la ONG Muslim Aid y expresidente de la mezquita del Este de Londres. “Desde los ataques del 7 de julio de 2005, no hay día en que en la prensa no se retrate negativamente a los musulmanes. La elección de Khan dará confianza a los musulmanes para acceder a la vida pública. Indirectamente, puede ayudar a combatir la radicalización, ya que contribuye a que las comunidades musulmanas tengan confianza en que hay un futuro para ellos en este país. Que pueden tener éxito si tienen talento, que la vida pública está ahí también para ellos. Ese mensaje puede contribuir a marginar a las minorías extremistas. Y a la vez, la sociedad verá que los musulmanes no responden al estereotipo con el que a menudo se les retrata. Es un mensaje de Londres a todo el mundo”.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari is an educationalist, author and parenting consultant.
This wonderful and richly-detailed photo depicts Mulberry Street, one of the great arteries of ethnic and cultural life in Manhattan at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. This picture was taken in 1900. As you can see, there was a tremendous amount going on here. The street is full of market stands, most selling fresh produce, but if you look closely you can also see cobblers selling what look like button-top shoes, furniture movers, a sidewalk café, and a sign for something called “Banco Malzone,” which was probably a small local bank that specialized in making short-term loans to Italian-Americans in the neighborhood. This neighborhood of this era has been depicted in countless movies taking place in New York City, including The Godfather, Part II, Once Upon A Time in America and Avalon.
The geography of New York's Little Italy is interesting. Mulberry Street was one of the five streets that came together at an unusual intersection in Lower Manhattan–the other streets were Orange, Cross, Worth and Little Water–that became known as the Five Points. Located only a few blocks south of the location shown here, the Five Points was the most notorious slum in New York, and possibly the entire world, from the early 19th to early 20th centuries. This period (1900) would have been toward the end of the Five Points’s notoriety, and it’s doubtful that many of the generally honest and law-abiding citizens of Little Italy would ever have ventured down there. But Manhattan was less a city in 1900 than an uneasy confederation of independent neighborhoods; many worlds were contained on these streets.
This was not taken as a color photo, but was a chromolithograph (or “Photocrom”), which was a high-resolution black and white picture artifically colorized.
This hilarious Spanish short film with English subtitules about education (or rather, the lack of it) will have you in stitches. Written and directed by Manuela Moreno, it was nominated for a Goya Award for best fiction short film in 2014. It was awarded Best Script and Best Director at the Jameson Notodofilmfest.
One icon mourned another during a powerful concert in Brooklyn last night. CHARLES BRAMESCO
During the ’80s, Prince and Bruce Springsteen put out some of the best work of their careers and ignited an ongoing debate over who truly ruled the world of rock and roll. In the 80s alone, Prince cranked out masterpiece after masterpiece, with Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999, Purple Rain, Around the World in a Day, Parade, Sign o’ the Times, Lovesexy, and his brilliant Batman score all elevating him to the top of the music world. Meanwhile, Springsteen forged such paeans to hardened americana as The River, Nebraska, Born in the U.S.A., and Tunnel of Love. They traded the top spot on the Billboard charts and the Pazz and Jop poll back and forth over the course of the decade, occupying an entirely different level of songcraft and guitar prowess.
Last night, Springsteen paid tribute to his fallen contemporary during his concert at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, when he opened with a stirring rendition of Prince’s signature opus, “Purple Rain.” Springsteen’s concerts are the stuff of legend, attracting attendees hundreds of times over on the merit of their exuberant, cathartic energy, and the already-anthemic Prince classic fit perfectly into Springsteen’s set. It was a poignant moment as he growled out the soaring chorus of the song, with the crowd joining in to accompany his vocals. Both Springsteen and E Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren shredded solos that would have made Prince proud, showing the same passion and dexterity on six strings as the dearly departed Purple One. But there can only truly be one Prince, and for many of the superfans in attendance, the cover inspired both a twinge of sadness as well as an emotional release.
Springsteen has long been a reliable source of reassurance and comfort during national crises, whether it was sifting through the wreckage of 9/11 with his albumThe Rising or chronicling the slow, sad decline of American industry. At this time of country-wide distress (really, though—this grieving process has revealed that absolutely nobody dislikes Prince), we can rely on the Boss to soothe our aching hearts. At the same time, there’s nothing quite like the original, so:
BREAKING NEWS: Prince has died at age 57. Born Prince Rogers Nelson on June 7, 1958 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the singer, songwriter, multiple instrumentalist, producer and actor was recognized as a musical genius, trend setter and advocate for artists’ rights. His indelible impact on pop music culture dates back to when he first surfaced in 1978 with his debut album "For You."
I will never forget his concert at the Carranza Stadium in Cádiz in August 1993.
The singer, who was on his "Piano and a Microphone" tour," also had to cancel two shows earlier in the month due to the flu. The "Purple Rain" singer's last performance was Thursday night in Atlanta.
His early albums -- 1979’s "Prince," 1980’s "Dirty Mind" and 1981’s "Controversy" -- built his core fan base while also creating controversial buzz due to their fusion of religious and sexual themes.
The 1984 semi-autobiographical rock musical drama film "Purple Rain" –- and its best-selling soundtrack -- vaulted him into the pop stratosphere. The film won the now-defunct Best Original Song Score award at the Oscars and the album was his best-selling one, amassing sales of over 25 million copies. Through his career, Prince won seven Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. (ABC NEWS)
Villanova Wins NCAA Championship on Last-Second Shot
Slide Show
SLIDE SHOW|10 Photos
Battle for the National Title
Battle for the National Title
CreditBob Donnan/USA Today Sports, via Reuters
HOUSTON — They run the play so often in practice that Villanova CoachJay Wright hardly needed to draw it up in the huddle. It is instantly recognizable by a simple name: Nova.
It is the Wildcats’ go-to set with less than five seconds remaining on the game clock, and there they were, all tied with North Carolina in Monday’s national title game, with 4.7 seconds left.
The Tar Heels had just put the Wildcats on their heels, storming back from 10 points down in five frantic minutes, tying the game on a circus 3-pointer by the iron-willed Marcus Paige, and breathing new life into a game that seemed to have long since slipped away from them.
But after Wright called the play, the ball went into the hands of the Wildcats senior Ryan Arcidiacono, who raced upcourt, turned and flipped the ball backward to Kris Jenkins, trailing the play. His shot rattled through the rim as time expired.
Cameras caught Wright saying one word: “Bang.”
“It is still surreal,” Wright said later.
Confetti rained. Players dogpiled. It had been 31 years since Villanova’s last national title, in 1985, but the Wildcats had delivered again, 77-74, over the Tar Heels, a No. 1 seed, at NRG Stadium in front of an announced 74,340 fans who exited in delirium or disbelief.
NEWS CLIPS: SPORTSBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS1:31Villanova and U.N.C. on Championship
Video
Villanova and U.N.C. on Championship
Coaches and players from University of North Carolina and Villanova University speak to press about Villanova's national title win on Monday.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on Publish DateApril 5, 2016. Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images. Watch in Times Video »
It was the first buzzer-beating shot to win an N.C.A.A. men’s national title since Lorenzo Charles’s dunk for North Carolina State in 1983, and the first title game to end on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer.
Jenkins, a 6-foot-6-inch junior forward, had been 280 pounds when he arrived at Villanova, a recruitment that materialized thanks to his adoptive brother, North Carolina’s Nate Britt. The Britts adopted Jenkins in 2007, and Nate was Villanova’s original target as a prospect. But Villanova fell in love with Jenkins’s soft touch.
He was the inbound passer Monday night as “Nova” took shape. It is designed for Arcidiacono to have the license to make three decisions: drive to the hoop, feed to the wing (where a screen was being set) or look for Jenkins trailing behind.
“We knew what play we were going to,” Arcidiacono said. “We work on it every single day.”
Jenkins said, “For him to be so unselfish and give up the ball, it just shows what type of teammate he is.”
Carolina was vying for its sixth national title, and Coach Roy Williams his third, to move him into a tie for fourth on the career list with Jim Calhoun and Bob Knight. He would have surpassed his mentor, the legendary North Carolina coach Dean Smith.
“I promised them, if they do what I said, we’d come back and we’d have a chance to win the game,” Williams said. “We let Villanova have the ball last.”
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Villanova players mobbed Kris Jenkins (2) after his buzzer-beating 3-pointer sealed an upset of North Carolina.CreditDavid J. Phillip/Associated Press
Arcidiacono, who was named the most outstanding player of the Final Four, scored 16 points. Phil Booth added a team-high 20 for Villanova. Paige scored a game-high 21 points.
When Arcidiacono arrived four years ago, out of shape, mending a back injury, he knew he had a challenge on his hands. Villanova had been 13-19 the previous season, finishing 14th in the Big East. He started calling his freshman teammates “the redemption class.”
“We wanted to get it back to what the standards of Villanova basketball should be,” he said Sunday.
That meant returning the Wildcats to the Final Four, where they had not been since 2009. Wright’s team lost to North Carolina that year in Detroit, and he vowed to make changes. His team was not going to be distracted by the setting, happy to be there. When the Wildcats left the team hotel for the arena this year, for instance, they sneaked out a back door instead of through dizzying throngs of fans in the lobby.
Both teams were experienced, led by senior guards (Paige and Arcidiacono) on a mission. There were no freshman prodigies expected to dazzle and then ditch college for the N.B.A. This was a throwback game.
It had been a fitful regular season, with no dominating teams and with a crowd of contenders leapfrogging one another at the top of the rankings. That uncertainty produced one of the wildest opening weekends in N.C.A.A. tournament history, with 13 first-round upsets and 10 wins by teams with double-digit seeds.
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Seconds before Jenkins’s shot, North Carolina guard Marcus Paige, defended by Ryan Arcidiacono, launched a 3-pointer that tied the game.CreditDavid J. Phillip/Associated Press
All the while, Villanova and North Carolina quietly established themselves as a cut above. The Tar Heels, the No. 1 seed in the East Region, had yet to win a tournament game by fewer than 14 points. The Wildcats, a No. 2 seed from the South Region, had to upset the top seed, Kansas, to reach the Final Four. But on Saturday, they delivered a performance for the ages, setting records for margin of victory (44 points) and highest field-goal percentage (71.4 percent).
That magic had worn off, slightly, by Monday, though Villanova still shot 58.3 percent from the field and 8 of 14 from 3-point range.
It was a sloppy start to the game, with the teams combining for four turnovers and only five field goals in the first five minutes. But Carolina, which had missed its first 12 3-point attempts in Saturday’s win over Syracuse, delivered on five of its first seven, including three in a row from the same corner.
Carolina was leading, 32-30, with two minutes remaining in the half when Joel Berry II knifed through Villanova’s defense for an uncontested layup, prompting Wright to call timeout. The Wildcats went into the locker room at intermission trailing, 39-34, despite shooting 58 percent from the field.
Villanova even outscored Carolina in the paint, 18-12, in the first half, a rarity against the Tar Heels’ interior size. A dry spell for the Tar Heels early in the second half allowed the Wildcats to retake a 49-46 lead with 12 minutes 45 seconds remaining. It would grow to double digit thanks to 3s by Jenkins and Arcidiacono with 5:29 left.
Williams said he tried everything in the huddle to motivate his group. He was making his fifth appearance in the national title game. He was hobbling on along the sideline on bad knees. He had been irritable with reporters in recent days, sensitive to inquiries about retirement or the continuing N.C.A.A. investigation into Carolina’s long-running academic fraud.
But he had brought U.N.C. to its first Final Four since 2009, its last title, and few expected the Tar Heels to leave quietly.
Sorprende que el anglicismo llegue ahora, después de tantos años en los que siempre hubo idiotas que nos contaban el final
Por ÁLEX GRIJELMO
Los anglicismos van y vienen, y a veces se quedan. Cuando sucede esto último, suelen pagar al genio del idioma el peaje de su adaptación gráfica al español, lo cual les da derecho a desarrollarse y formar familia. Por ejemplo, football se transformó en “fútbol” y procreó “futbolista”, “futbolístico” o “futbolero”. Nada que oponer ahora a esa voz que cubrió una casilla que estaba vacía (aquello del “balompié” se alentó cuando el sitio ya estaba ocupado).
Sin embargo, llama la atención que circulen hoy tantos vocablos que dan codazos a expresiones previas más comprensibles y descriptivas. Quizás en su aceptación influyó el complejo de inferioridad de quien pronuncia palabras de un idioma que considera superior al propio; pero también se puede incurrir en ese tipo de anglicismo por contagio, desinterés o disipación.
Uno de los últimos barbarismos que se manejan entre periodistas y gente del cine es spoiler. Así, oímos con frecuencia, cuando se habla de una película: “Mi hermana me hizo spoiler”, “cuidado, que vas a hacer spoiler” o “no sigo hablando para no hacer spoiler”, es decir: lo que antes referíamos con expresiones como “no me estropees el final”, “no me cuentes cómo termina” o “no me destripes la película” (“destripar” figura desde 1884 en el Diccionario con el sentido de anticipar el desenlace de un relato).
Cualquier hablante del idioma español sabe mirar dentro de cada una de esas palabras y comprender su raíz o su metáfora. Pero unos cuantos millones de ellos se quedarán perplejos ante el anglicismo, sin capacidad para relacionarlo con ningún otro vocablo de la familia.
Incluso quienes saben inglés pueden extrañarse. Porque spoiler es un sustantivo o un adjetivo formado a partir del verbo to spoil, que significa “estropear” o “echar a perder”. Por tanto, spoiler sería el “estropeador” o “el que echa algo a perder”. Así que al rogar “no me hagas spoiler” estamos diciendo “no me hagas estropeador” (cuando el que se hace de verdad estropeador es quien cuenta el final, no el que lo escucha).
Para cuando spoiler se refiere a la acción o el efecto, el español dispone de la alternativa “destripe”; y para suplir al adjetivo y al sustantivo (“hay que dar una colleja al spoiler”), tenemos “reventador” o, en neologismo comprensible por todos, “el destripapelículas” o “el revientafinales”.
Sorprende mucho que este anglicismo nos llegue ahora, después de tantos años en los que siempre hubo idiotas que destripaban el final del cuento, adelantaban quién era el asesino o anunciaban a voces el resultado del partido que uno dejó grabado. Ahora que me viene a la memoria alguno de aquellos casos, recuerdo bien las palabras que pensé para nombrar al gracioso. Y ninguna de ellas era spoiler.
Para conseguir que una serie tuviera éxito, decían los antiguos manuales de televisión, debía gustar a toda la familia. Debía incluir un abuelo quejica pero bonachón, un padre abnegado, una madre atractiva e inteligente -liberada, pero no tanto-, adolescentes con conflictos de medio pelo y un niño gracioso por expresar sus ideas como un viejo. Un personaje para cada uno. Y, si había que modernizarse, nada como incluir un gay. Luego llegó la HBO -y detrás todos a rebufo- para apostar por las buenas ficciones. Y la televisión volvió a ocupar un lugar prominente cuando muchos ya la daban por muerta, o la ubicaban como contenedor de las banalidades más groseras, que es lo mismo. Porque “una serie no tiene que gustarle a todo el mundo”, asegura Javier Olivares, uno de los creadores de El Ministerio del Tiempo, tal vez la ficción española más arriesgada de los últimos años.
Libre de las ataduras que supuestamente exige el mainstream, la serie de TVE ha sabido aprovechar al máximo su potencial hasta generar un fenómeno fan desconocido en España. Y no sólo con unos argumentos donde se mezclan sin rubor datos históricos reales con anécdotas de la cultura pop. Lo que El Ministerio del Tiempo ha sabido leer como nadie hasta ahora ha sido la importancia de no quedarse recluido en una pantalla. Las emisiones de sus capítulos multiplican la audiencia gracias a los visionados a través de Internet, lo que corrobora que la forma de ver televisión ha cambiado hace tiempo. El espectador ya no admite con facilidad que le digan cuándo y dónde tiene que consumir aquello que le gusta.
Esta ramificación web no se limita a hacer posible que sus episodios puedan verse online en rtve a la carta, sino que los contenidos crecen y se diversifican dando lugar a programas informativos, podcasts, una tienda con productos exclusivos diseñados por los propios aficionados (los “ministéricos”), videoencuentros con los protagonistas o una serie por la web. Muy pronto se convertirá, además, en la primera serie de televisión en el mundo que emite un episodio en realidad virtual. Su presencia en redes sociales es también notable, consiguiendo una gran repercusión gracias a sus seguidores (muchos de sus episodios se convierten en trending topic mundial en Twitter). Todo este revuelo ha llamado incluso la atención de una profesora de la universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Concepción Cascajosa, quien afirma que se trata de una serie que “ha trabajo su imagen de marca como ninguna otra”.
Todo este despliegue sería, sin embargo, baldío si no estuviera sustentado por lo más importante: una ficción de calidad con historias que enganchan al espectador y bien realizada. Un sello que, promete Javier Olivares, se mantendrá hasta el final de su segunda temporada con un último capítulo “muy arriesgado y atrevido”. [Texto: José L. Álvarez Cedena]
Once upon a time —and it seems quite far-off— there was a respected figure,
the cultured person. He —it used to be a he, but as time went by it
progressively became a she— received an education which differed very little
from one country to another (…), but which was quite different from what we
know today. Our great essayist William Hazlitt went to a school at the end of
the 18th century whose studying programme was four times more comprehensive
than that of any comparable school today: an amalgam of the basic principles of
language, law, the arts, religion and maths. It was taken for granted that this education, already dense and
profound in itself, was only one facet
of personal development, since students were expected to read, and they did so.
This type of education, the so-called
humanistic education, is disappearing today.Governments (…) are, more and more, encouraging their
citizens to acquire professional knowledge, while an education perceived as an integral
development of an individual is not considered useful in modern society. The
education system of days-gone-by
would have contemplated literature and Greek and Latin history (…) as the basis
for everything else. He—or she—
used to read the classics from his/her own country, maybe one or two Asian
writers and the best-known authors from other European countries: Goethe,
Shakespeare, Cervantes, the great Russians, Rousseau (…).
This does not exist any more (…). Instances of
this academic excellence of days-gone-by remain in some universities, in some
schools, in the classrooms of some old-fashioned teachers in love with books,
perhaps in some newspapers or magazines. (…)
Extracts from the acceptance speech given by novelist Doris Lessing upon
receiving the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature, on 26th October, 2001.
She is the highly-acclaimed author of The Golden Notebook.
Ramón Lecumberri Pastor (Seville, Spain, 24.09.97) was born with a passion for kayaking. He has trained all his life at the Club Náutico de Sevilla, one of Spain's top kayaking and rowing clubs. He was also selected for a 2-year training stage with the national junior team at the High Perfomance Centre in Trasona, Asturias, while he completed his high school studies (2013-2015) away from home. At present, he trains with the national junior team at the Cartuja High Performance Centre, and he studies Psychology at Seville University. Outgoing like a true sevillano, social media savvy Ramón has his own You Tube channel and uses Instagramto connect him with team mates, friends and fans from all over the world. In Szeged, Hungary, on 20th July 2014, teenage Ramón and his K-4 crew mates Pelayo Roza, Pedro Vázquez and Cristian Silva beat the Russian boat in the last few metres, with the Australians finishing third, in anamazing 1,000m race at the Junior World Championship:
A young man of stamina and resilience, Lecu, as he is also known, never gives up easily. In a recent 5,000-metre race at a regional championship, his boat capsized after a windy start; he managed to keep his cool, pulled briefly out of the race, jumped onto a pier, emptied his flooded boat and re-entered the race. After catching up with the rest of the competitors, incredibly he finished in second place much to the amazement of the admiring crowd. He then went on to congratulate and embrace the winner. Lecu is an example of fair play, sacrifice and comradeship for new generations of sports lovers.
His next goals: paddling solo at the K-1 1,000m race in the upcoming National Championship to take place in his hometown, Seville, next March 12-13. In the near future, he hopes to classify to take part next July in the European Canoeing Championship at Plovdiv, Bulgaria, or even in the World Championship in Minsk, Belarus. .Go, go, go, Lecu!
