|
Money has been a lot on the minds of much
of Europe's population recently with the much- publicized
changeover to the Euro well into the pipeline. My wife and
I left Eivissa on 19th December, before the changeover, and
returned here on the 16th December, yesterday as I write this,
when the new currency is in use. Today, 17th January, is a
public holiday in Spain as it is the Saints day of Saint Antony,
the patron saint of animals. Called San Antonio Abad in most
of Spain, Sant Antoni Abat in Cataluna, and often Sant Antoni
des porcs (Saint Anthony of the pigs) in Eivissa. Six kilometres
down the hill from our house here the summer tourism centre
of San Antonio is in full festive swing, with no tourists
to participate in the celebrations. But more than half of
my life since the early 1970s has been spent in Vanuatu, in
the south-western Pacific, where pigs are the real traditional
money/currency, so one's mind makes connections that most
inhabitants of Europe might find a little strange.
Here on Eivissa, when one thinks of Saint
Anthony, one thinks about pigs and the story of Sant Antoni
ï es porquet (Saint Anthony and the piglet). Saint Anthony
was a virtuous hermit with a love for animals. He was tempted
by the Devil, but refused to fall into sin. On mainland Spain
early Christian representations of the Devil often show him
in animal form - as a male goat, or dragon or snake or as
a wild boar. Statue representations of Saint Anthony often
have a pig at his feet (as in the famous statue inside the
church of Sa Coruna-Santa Inès, in the north-west of
Eivissa), symbolizing his victory over the Devil. Wild boars
were known in mainland Spain, and in Cataluna such a beast
is called a 'jabali', but such animals were unknown in Eivissa
and the word or term was unknown in Eivissenc language, although
the terms porc fer or singular might be understood and used
if Ibicencos on a rare visit to the mainland saw such a creature.
Consequently, there was not necessarily ideologically such
a close connection here on Eivissa between pigs and evil.
According to one old story, Sant Antoni saved the life of
a gorrinet (piglet), which then followed him around continuously
and eventually dug the saint's grave with its furga (snout)
as the saint was dying - and then the pig buried him in it.
This concept of the friendly pig ties in well with peasant
concepts of the pig as a creature with whom one can have a
close relationship - and many are the pagès (peasant)
stories based around this.
Ibicencos from Vila (Ibiza town) or some
forasters ('foreigners') often made (some even do so today)
a point of despising and joking about the peasants and their
pigs, an attitude rightly resented by the pagès eivissenc.
It is sad that such prejudices still persist here. On 18th
December, an elderly pagès woman was hit and killed
by a car in San Carlos. Later that morning I was in the Town
Hall of one of the major municipalities on the island and
happened to mention this sad event to one of the officials
working there, who laughed and said, "Ha, entonçes
queda una menos"! ("Ha, so there is one less"!).
This attitude shocked me, but the attitude is not unusual
amongst certain segments of the population who sometimes seem
to regard the peasant as a separate species on its way to
extinction. I must admit to a great amount of sympathy with
the view of certain pagès/peasants that maybe individuals
with this point of view should consider finding a home elsewhere
than Eivissa.
Back to money. In Vanuatu, pigs (at least
male ones) are money (see certain of my past articles about
pigs in this newsletter). But as an anthropologist, I have
come across many forms of currency in many different societies
over the years, from 18th century Dutch silver Thalers still
used as payments to highly-respected 'sacred' prostitutes
from one isolated north African tribe; salt blocks and copper
ingots in one part of the Sahara; coca leaves in the Peruvian
Andes; 'Tavuliae' stringed shell bride-price money from Malaita
in the Solomon islands; fruitbat wingbone stringed beads in
New Caledonia to tusked male and hermaphrodite pigs in Vanuatu.
I have come across isolated groups with no knowledge of western
currency, another that would only accept banknotes that were
green in colour, groups that hoarded 19th century English
gold sovereigns and other groups that knew of modern currency
and had potential access to it but refused to use it. Most
traditional currencies have a symbolism that our modern type
lacks, and some can be used for purposes other than an economic
one. The introduction of our type of modern money into traditional
societies often brings with it-increased tensions and problems
and can, in many cases, actually do more harm than good. It
can actually increase poverty, or introduce poverty into societies
where poverty - or even the concept of it - did not exist
before. Modern economists often make the mistake that 'poverty'
is to do with lack of money, or, more usually, that if one
has no money, one is poor. This is not true: I have come across
quite a number of isolated groups around the world who had
no modern money at all, but I would certainly not call them
'poor'- some had/have a contentedness or quality of life better
than many of the stressed-out inhabitants of our modern societies.
But just as maybe one group is painfully
coming to terms with modern currency, a new trickster comes
out of the pack. The credit card. Jolly useful, yes, for those
of us in the 'modern' world (well, I assume so: I have never
used one but I am told they can be of assistance), but of
course also useful if unscrupulous individuals, institutions
or governments want information about the card holder. Also
useful, of course, if one of the aims of the card companies,
banks, governments, etc, is to entice the public to spend
more. An interesting series of studies done in the UK in the
early 1990s showed that individuals/families of credit card
holders of similar socio-economic status to non-card holders
tended to spend approximately 30% more than the latter. It's
all good business - and good for business. It's good for credit
card holders to know that they are actually spending more
than they should (well, I suppose most of them know that already
as it seems to me that inordinate numbers of people today
in the modern world are really just working to pay off their
credit card and other debts).
In last Saturday's issue (The Electronic
Ibiza History Culture Edition 046, Saturday 12th January 2002) our editor,
Gary Hardy, gave information regarding the changeover from
the Spanish peseta to the Euro. I would like here to deal
with some slightly less practical aspects of this transition.
Introduction of the Euro into the 12 countries mentioned in
Gary's article will certainly benefit travel and trading within
this area. How much it will actually benefit the ordinary
'man/woman in the street' as opposed to big business corporations
and governments is another matter, though. One suspects that
a sort of Murphy's Law pertains to all such changeovers: if
at all possible, the rich will get richer and the poor poorer
and the ordinary citizen will just have to get used to it.
Economists can 'spin drive' their way around this pitfall
by saying that there will be a 'dribble-down' effect in which
more money being held by those already wealthy will gradually
filter down to those less fortunate. An analysis of the effect
of the billions of $s of financial aid handed out worldwide
over past decades by the World Bank and IMF (see some of my
past articles) shows that this is rarely the case, usually
living standards of the poor seem to deteriorate whilst those
of the rich rise.
Many in Europe, though, have been looking
forward to the arrival of the Euro, and the Spanish government
assured its citizens last year that its introduction would
not entail price rises, although one Spanish television channel
broadcast in November last year indicated prices might rise
between 1.7-3.4%. Watching television in Germany a week ago
we came across a segment of a programme that seemed to indicate
a rather more drastic situation in certain sectors. This particular
German TV channel had sponsored two rather sophisticated German
girls in their early twenties on a 'night on the town', something
they both were wont to do before the introduction of the Euro.
The girls followed their pre-Euro routine: afternoon coffee
and cakes, then an expensive bar, then a similar restaurant
and finally a few nightclubs. When the reckoning came, all
were shocked to find that the new prices for this evening
out averaged between 20-28% more expensive than a similar
evening out in December! So let the buyer beware! At the moment
in Eivissa prices seem just about the same, at least in the
larger stores an supermarkets (although I must admit we have
not been back here long enough to really check properly),
although local friends who met us at the airport on Wednesday
told us that prices have risen a bit more in the smaller,
more 'local' shops. The crunch will probably come at the end
of February when the peseta is no longer valid currency and
when certain store owners, etc, will no longer need to display
prices in both pesetas and Euros.
The bigger crunch will also probably come
on Eivissa at the beginning of the summer tourism season,
when more profit-minded restaurant, bar, nightclub and luxury
shop owners will be sorely tempted to raise their prices again
for the summer trade. As the UK is not at the moment part
of the Euro bloc (and a nation-wide survey in England just
before Christmas indicated that nearly a third of the population
were unaware that most of Europe was converting to a new currency
on 1st January 2002!) some of these owners may be counting
on the fact that English tourists will not be familiar with
Euro values and will therefore more easily spend it freely.
Therefore those of you planning to come to Eivissa this coming
summer should keep your wits about you. There are supposed
to be government guidelines regulating the price changes,
but as we all known, human nature being as it is, one can
guarantee that at least prices will not be lower than last
summer!
Kirk W Huffman
| |
