Spain may break up. If it does it will be because Madrid has been deaf to the feelings of the Catalans. The Catalans signed a Constitution in 1978 that said that should they ever want to become independent all of Spain would have to agree. This was a big mistake on their part. Because there is no way independence will ever happen in this framework. If there was a vote now in of Spain around 80% of Spaniards would vote against Catalonian independence, but around of 54% of Catalans would vote in favor in a Catalonia-only vote, which is what they want to have this Nov 9th. This is partly out of their desire to be independent but also because Madrid has told them that they have to live by the 78 Constitution no matter what. That even if most of them dislike being part of Spain they have to stay in. In my view Madrid and the rest of Spain should allow the Catalans to vote for their independence but with time to win them over again. And in those years it should first negotiate the exact conditions of their independence, and then go on a charm offensive as the British did. Most likely during an improving economy. If the Catalans become independent they could be out of the EU, out of the euro, etc. There are so many unknowns that I think it is possible to win against independence by truly showing more cons than pros. Moreover the Catalan leadership has been incredibly corrupt. Jordi Pujol one of the biggest promoters of Catalonian nationalism and leader of Catalonia for many years has made a huge fortune for him and his family out of the Catalonian people. Catalan leaders have issued dangerous levels of local debt and Catalonia was recently saved from absolute bankruptcy by Spain. Catalonia, as opposed to the Basque region who diversified its industrial base, has followed economic policies that were as ill conceived as those of Madrid. Catalonia has based too much of its investment on infrastructure and debt, overextended its welfare state and has achieved slightly worse results than Madrid. But by forbidding debate on independence what Catalans see is the negative of staying together. And they do have a point when they argue that they, as well as Madrid, give too much of their income to the rest of Spain. But this is something that should be renegotiated all over Spain, setting limits on regional transfers and making some regions of Spain manage slightly more on their own. This is not a Catalan problem, it’s a Spain problem. Both Madrid and Catalonia give around 8% of their GDP to Andalusia, Extremadura and so on and this should be modified. But as it stands, the existing Constitution is just not fair on the independence issue and will lead to civil disobedience. The Catalans may become independent in spite of the Constitution because the rest of Spain should not use military force to keep them in the Kingdom. Dialogue and showing the positives is the only valid unionist strategy. Personally I believe that Catalans have the right to be independent and as a Spaniard I see my objective that they choose not to do so, not that they are forced into the union. And I think there are enough valid reasons to stay united. It’s time to change the slogan from “España a la fuerza” to “Juntos molamos” o “mejor juntos” – better together as the British said.

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I have simultaneously used an iPhone and an Android for many years. Two pockets, two phones, two carriers. Verizon Android and T-Mobile iPhone in the USA Tuenti iPhone and Vodafone Android in Europe. But for a long time, my favorite phones had been Androids. Until this month Androids could do many things that iPhones failed at. You had a wide choice of size and my favorite screen dimensions were around 5′ bigger than any iPhone. Sharing on Android was much better, you could share any service with any service, iPhone picked winners. Android allowed WiFi apps like our own Fon app, iPhone did not. Some phones like the Samsungs came with replaceable batteries and by 5pm every iPhone I had was dead. So were the Samsungs but I could change the battery. Lately Samsungs like the S5 became waterproof and that was awesome during the summer. And then there was SwiftKey, the multilanguage keyboard that read my mind (because it read my Gmail), the keyboard that could guess whatever word was coming next in whatever language, the keyboard that spared me from having to use that horrible language changing globe of the iPhone clearly designed by monolingual people. But I still carried iPhones. The iPhones I used for other reasons. One, a big one is design. They were always the best looking phones. I just liked them as objects. Video and photography, no matter what Android makers did, they could never beat the iPhone neither the photo apps nor the cameras. And games of course. So many more games and better games for the kids. In general almost every app looked better and worked better on the iPhone. But what good was all this if the iPhone would be too small to type in, would only work with one language at a time and its battery would die by 5pm?

Well I am here to report that my new iPhone 6 is the first phone since Android became competitive that beats any Android I now have. And currently I have an HTC M8, an S5, a Moto G, and a OnePlus One which is a very special yet buggy high end Android phone. Yes I am still hesitant about the non replaceable battery in the iPhone 6, I will have to test it will, see if I can last all day. But the iPhone 6 at 4.7in is the perfect size, it is incredibly beautiful, thin and light, it abandoned the “we are better keyboard dogma” and got SwiftKey, it allowed WiFi profiles that are almost as good as WiFi apps for Fon, it came with 128GB of memory so I can get a large supply of Spotify extreme quality songs and all the games for the kids they want. Before I used to always be on an app diet, especially with the apps for Leo (7) and Mia (3), games that take over 1GB each. Now we can app binge and then put them on a game diet, but with choice. And the iPhone 6 is far superior at video and photography. After the iPhone 6, iPhone it is now. Will continue to use Android and iPhone but my time on phone ratio will radically shift towards iOS. Having said this, I don’t want to end without bringing a key factor here and that is cost. The iPhone costs $850. Yes $850 forget about those rip off offers with contracts, that is what it really costs, what Apple gets. And for $129 you get a an unlocked, no contract Moto E. A Moto E is not 15% of the phone an iPhone 6 is. If you, like most of humanity, are a person who lives on a budget, the Moto E is 80% of an iPhone 6 for 15% of the cost. What Android has that Apple never will, is the ability to bring 84% of humanity to the Internet. And for that we should thank Google. Even a low end iPhone costs 4x as much as a Moto E. And this is why iOS is only in 11% of all smartphones sold in the world right now. Moreover Android still rules at sharing, first it gives it OS at no cost to others and that is why their phones are so much more competitive, but also I love the way Android allows you to share from anything to anything. I find it impolite that Apple picks winners and losers by greatly limiting sharing among its preferred services.

Still even Google (trends) will tell you that with 11% global marketshare, iPhone is always more news than Android.

As I read that Scotland may become independent in 11 days, I realize that the English and the Castilians kingdoms have had a similar historical fate. Both first conquered, annexed or joined together nearby kingdoms and territories (via treaties/marriages) and became what is now Spain and UK. After that was accomplished, both then went overseas to conquer a remarkable chunk of the world. As a result English and Castilian Spanish became the two largest Western languages. So these two very small nations, the English and the Castilians had at one point incredible empires with what today would be half a billion people (Castilians) and over a billion people (England). In the late 1700s, and mostly during the 1800s and some remains in the 1900s, these colonial empires fell apart, to the point that what remained of the former glory was the original core Kingdoms of what today is UK and Spain.

But now, over 200 years after key colonies were lost, the early nearby unions, Scotland and Catalonia, may also become independent. Five or more centuries later the mighty kingdoms may go back to their humble origins. Why have the Germans have had such a tendency for reunification, and the British and Spaniards for fragmentation, could be the subject of many books. Probably it has something to do between what is seen as a union of equals vs an imposed culture. Or maybe it is a perception by the Scots and the Catalans of economic benefits to be obtained via independence. But whatever the motivations are, reality is that as of today, half of the Scottish want out and may get out of the UK on September 18th and a similar percentage of Catalans seem to want out. I am not sure how long the Kingdom of Spain will stay together under the framework of the 1978 Constitution. Personally, union or independence in both countries is fine with me, I can see both sides of the arguments. But what is not fine is to keep people in a union they don’t want. Better to vote and see.

In the case of Catalonia, if there is a referendum, I would hope that it goes beyond a yes or no for independence. What is needed is a previous negotiation that would give more clarity to voters on key issues such as, would Catalonia be in the Euro or out, in the EU or out, what part of the Spanish national debt would it take with it, would it vote as a whole for independence or per province (if Spain is divisible, so should be Catalonia) and so on. I am in favor of a referendum in both cases, but with very clear visibility of what yes or no means the day after.

(Photo credit: The Telegraph)

Lately Facebook is trying to be more like Twitter and succeeding. And there’s good reason for that.

Before Facebook, it was you telling your friends what you are up to, and them doing the same, mostly in writing or via photos. This had a problem that for some “Murphy’s law of Facebook”, those who you cared about the most, posted the least and those who you wanted to learn from the most, were silent. On top of that, Facebook had the “toddler challenge”. Toddlers don’t make friends because they want lots of attention, but can’t give attention. Facebook became a community of attention seekers. Twitter saw this. And what Twitter did to escape this problem is to do away with “befriending” and start an asymmetrical platform from the ground up. A community that by design accepts the reality that talent is unevenly distributed. Twitter killed reciprocity and allowed a few people to lead over many others, those who were truly interested Twitter rewarded with an audience. Facebook then saw a successful formula in Twitter and partly copied it allowing those who generate interest to have followers as well. But that was a secondary feature and Facebook could never give up being a friendship platform, a symmetrical platform of personal news. A platform in which everyone is supposed to generate similar levels of interest. But lately as it became clear that that wasn’t the case, Facebook brought in more Twitter-like elements. Especially media. The latest are “trending articles” for you to follow important media events, and “related articles” a feature which also drives you towards media. These new features were so successful that many media publications now, such as Business Insider, Wired and others, get more traffic from Facebook than from Google. Facebook’s evolution from friends only, to followers and friends, and now to friends, followers and media is working and is making people spend more and more time on Facebook. And in a way it allowed Facebook to sell ads using news organizations, something that not even Google was able to do.

Now the part that I don’t understand is the lack of admiration from the other side or why Twitter never copied what worked best at Facebook. To me what would be crucial is to tinker with the 140 character religion. The 140 characters have forced Twitter’s users to come up with all sorts of ways around it. People attach pictures of long texts, attach links that then Twitter shows or lately Marc Andreessen has come up with a numbered style that many have copied to make their tweets longer. And if there is one place where it really doesn’t make sense to have 140 characters is in DM. If Twitter had made DM unlimited in characters and able to incorporate pictures, videos, and even location early on it would have been a real competitor to now Facebook-owned WhatsApp and possibly to Snapchat as well if it had allowed true privacy. It would have then dominated the public and the private spheres. Twitter had the right concept but they never went full force in the private exchange world, and WhatsApp came out of nowhere and ate their lunch, all $19bn of it.

(Photo: Matchbox)

I met King Juan Carlos on a few occasions, I also spent a couple of hours with him alone at his office. And what I saw was a great man who was trapped in a lifetime job he did not choose. A person who had to fight his own instincts to be a free man and struggle hard to stay on as King. And if he stayed on until today it was not because he loved to be King but because he loves Spain. Not royal Spain, all of Spain.

Most people think being King is a great job and blame monarchies for giving Kings or Queens this awesome position to a person who was not elected for it. But if people really understood what the job is like, most would refuse it. And I actually do know people who rejected that job in other monarchies. These are people who had the opportunity to marry a prince and did not, mainly because of the lack of freedom and constant public appearances that the job entails. Or people who abdicated to marry somebody they were in love with and wanted to lead a more normal life.

From what I saw, King Juan Carlos dream would have been not to be King. When he was younger he would escape from his King’s duties, drive somewhere in his car, try to be a free individual for a few hours. Being King is a daily obligation, not a choice.

The first time I met King Juan Carlos I had to dress with a special kind of tuxedo to dine with him in the royal palace. It was mandatory. And when I walked to greet him, my discomfort with wearing those clothes became so obvious that he read my mind and said. Hombre, Martín, ¿y tu que crees que a mi me gusta ir vestido así? (do you think I like to dress as a king?) and gave me a big smile. After that comment I felt at home in his palace. That phrase to me said it all about how he felt about being King. To me it meant behind Juan Carlos the King there is Juan Carlos the man. A funny, kind man who came to greet me with a charming, ironic comment. And in that meeting I realized how Juan Carlos the man, was actually greater than Juan Carlos the King. Yes, King Juan Carlos had shortcomings and his share of family scandals. But King Juan Carlos fought for democracy and led Spain through a period in which without him, paradoxically, democracy would have been more fragile. When I think of the Spain that he got at the start of his reign, and the Spain that we have, I am grateful to him. Everyone focuses on the fact that Kings are not elected, but few think of how Kings themselves do not choose what to do with their lives. Are we at their service or are they the ultimate public servants? In Europe’s constitutional democracies, it’s the latter.

Mia(2) and I went for a walk at our farm in Menorca when all of a sudden she asked me. “Dad can you carry me in your arms? When I am in your arms I can touch the sky” I was moved by her request and carried her in my arms until we arrived at an area of the farm with pre historic ruins. When we were there I asked her where else she felt like she could touch the sky. She told me she could touch it when she climbed to high places. I asked her to show me and she walked up to this stone fence and touched the sky.

So if you ever wondered where the sky starts, here is her proof, the sky starts at around 1.5m from the ground. She certainly convinced me. Now I know that the sky starts somewhere between Mia and I.