There have been many verses written about the changing of the seasons – but try finding an ode to autumn that was composed under a palm tree. Tropical climates don’t have four distinct seasons, which can make transition months such as September and October a little odd for those of us sipping coconuts all year round (I know, bring out the violins).
I realised autumn has begun in Europe because the new quarterly issue of Konfekt, Monocle’s sister publication, has just arrived in Bangkok. Unpacking these care packages from HQ and flicking through the beautiful pages helps me stay connected. Sophie Grove’s editor’s letter is essential reading. I must say, though, her poetic musings on the season’s transient splendour feel even more otherworldly when the air-conditioner is on full blast and the sunny scene out of my window is one of jet planes cutting across blue skies.
This is not a sob story, as you can tell. Still, as an expat, losing autumn and all of the seasonal rituals that come with it can take some getting used to. Many of the signals I grew up with in the UK – both man-made and from Mother Nature – no longer function like they used to. Thai clocks don’t change and evenings get dark at roughly the same time every day, give or take an hour. Temperatures peak in April while flu jabs are administered in May, ahead of the rainy season. Our household is even more out of sync because we are home schooling our children. No uniforms to buy, new-term butterflies to deal with or huge parental sighs of relief that the long summer holidays are finally over.
A French friend of mine in Hong Kong, which has a similar wet-and-dry cycle to the Thai capital, missed the autumn hues and spring scents of his childhood so much that he moved to Japan. Do I miss the four seasons? Absolutely not. I grew up in the drizzle and grey of south Wales. Thirty years later I wake up every morning thinking that I’ve won the Welsh lottery. But we as humans all need milestones – birthdays, Mother’s Day, Children’s Day (a particularly big celebration in Bangkok) – to mark the passing of time.
It’s no different in Thailand and I would argue that people here are particularly connected with the actual comings and goings of the Earth, rather than the commercial requirements of a fixed calendar. Royal Ploughing Ceremony or Farmer’s Day is a public holiday that’s astrologically determined and announced each year. The Buddhist holidays are useful tools for new arrivals looking to find a new rhythm – but please don’t test me on them just yet. It took me years to figure out the ancestor worship festivals and Ghost Days in HK.
To fill in the gaps left by the four seasons, I have come to rely on some alternative seasonal tells. I call these tropical-flavoured rituals the five Fs.
1.
Fruit
Fruit sellers drive around Bangkok neighbourhoods, parking next to the pavement to sell whatever produce is in season. While I can’t understand the Thai being shouted out of the loudhailer, I pay close attention to the goods piled up on the back of the pick-up truck, which is by far the best way to tell what season we are in: mango season (yay), durian season (yuck). Our bowl is currently transitioning from mangosteens to pomegranates. Marian plums, known locally as mayongchid, are the golden ticket. Harvest time in March lasts a matter of weeks and the arrival of these hard-to-get fruits – an egg-sized mango-meets-plum – signals the start of “Thai summer” and Songkran, the country’s traditional New Year.
2.
Festivals
Water fights for Songkran in April beat Easter egg hunts every day of the week, but Loy Krathong in November is my favourite festival. It’s kind of like Guy Fawkes night in the UK but instead of the ritual burning of an effigy, we light candles and float banana-tree vessels on a lake. The comforting thing about Christmas in Thailand is that the holiday is celebrated as a big shopping event and the city is dressed up in decorations. The confusing bit is that many workplaces, government buildings and hospitals leave the tinsel and Santa Clauses up all year round.
3.
Footwear
Winter might be around the corner in many parts of the northern hemisphere but the only wardrobe change in Thailand involves footwear. Bangkok is now in the middle of the rainy season and that means a torrential downpour could suddenly appear, flooding the road and ruining a favourite pair of trainers. Smart Thais pack emergency flip-flops in the car while the hospitality industry prefers a local brand of rubber Converse-style shoes punched full of holes for efficient drainage. I have a nifty pair of jellies but fastening them can be a faff. The benefit of entering the dry season is the freedom to put the rubber away and wear leather and suede.
4.
Flags
The benefit of living near two powerful neighbours – the revenue department and finance department – are the flags and bunting that hang outside government buildings. The colours are changed ahead of major royal birthdays and the bank headquarters down the road erects an elaborate structure. Each member of the family has a colour determined by the day of their birth. The king was born on a Monday so his colour is yellow, which is why civil servants often wear yellow polo shirts at the start of the working week.
5.
F**king birds
Thailand is blessed with an abundance of wildlife. Its birds and reptiles are accustomed to living in built-up areas, don’t hibernate and are mostly harmless – and that includes the water monitor lizards often seen roaming around the parks looking for fish to eat. The real danger in the Thai capital is sound, or I should rather say, noise. Peak mating season for geckos is nearing an end. I am rather fond of this tropical nighttime symphony but yearend ushers in a new rabble rouser. Mornings belong to the Asian Koel, a particularly noisy member of the cuckoo family. The mating calls of these early birds, a cacophony of squawks that become increasingly louder, work better than any alarm clock and outscreech Bangkok traffic.
I was invited to a party this week to mark 40 years of The Independent, the newspaper-turned-content powerhouse where I worked for close to a decade before joining Project Monocle. The event was held at the British Museum. During the soirée, guests were able to nip off to see the Bayeux Tapestry, the near-1,000-year-old, 70-metre-long embroidery that’s in the country on loan from France – and for which securing viewing tickets is almost impossible. So yes please.
The tapestry is displayed flat in a long glass cabinet. There’s a digital screen that also runs its entire length and picks out key moments from this stitched narrative that depicts the story of the Norman invasion of England in 1066. The room is dark. Beautifully lit.
Trouble is, if one person is determined to take in every damn detail, you can get stuck staring at the same panel for a long time. And believe me, there were some very swotty people ahead of me. My former colleague Ruth suggested that we should do a speed read by jumping in wherever we saw a gap. “You know what’s going to happen. Do you really need to see it all?” she asked. Ever the editor, she’s always able to see how to make something more concise. I forbade this move and made her join me in the queue; there would be no fast-forwarding.
One thing that soon stood out, as it were, was the large number of penises depicted. There were some proper whackers on horses but also several gentlemen displaying their knackers like medieval flashers. I imagined an 11th-century embroiderer returning home after a long day crafting the tapestry. “Good day at work, dear?” her husband might enquire. “You won’t believe it; they’ve got me back on horses’ willies. Today, I had to do a real big one and now my wrist hurts. But they’ve promised me arrows next month. I might even get to stick one in someone’s eye… Any gruel left for dinner?”
We’ll go back to the penises in a moment. But just to say that the tapestry is, as you would expect, amazing. It’s like a medieval version of a Netflix series – Stitchflix – in which you get to see the backstory of the invasion, have nice asides about daily life, witness battles, enjoy sufficient killing to keep you engaged.
And, of course, there are several scenes that have gone on to become famous. Yes, when Harold gets an arrow in his eye but also when Halley’s Comet shoots across the sky, though that comet looked more like a shuttlecock to me. But I won’t raise that as an academic challenge.
Back amid the hum of the party, champagne glass in hand, I introduced myself to Grayson Perry, whose famous narrative ceramics and tapestries share a creative lineage with the Bayeux masterpiece. I asked him about its bawdiness, that high penis count. He had wiser thoughts than me and we ended up discussing how it’s all a part of what makes people British and should be embraced. Geoffrey Chaucer, salacious 17th-century cartoons, bedroom-farce plays – there is a long thread that runs through British culture.
Back home, I searched online for “how many penises in the Bayeux Tapestry” (I have an eclectic search history) and discovered that there’s a bit of an academic to-do on the topic. Medieval scholar Christopher Monk set the bar at 94, with 88 equine examples and five gentlemen’s appendages. But now another academic has claimed that what had previously been considered a scabbard is actually one more to add to the willy tally. Monk is not to be budged. He told one media outlet, “If you are not careful, you might fall into the trap of seeing penises everywhere”. Sort of like stumbling into an academic Finnish sauna.
But beyond the headcount debacle, perhaps that’s why people – especially British people – have responded so enthusiastically to the tapestry. In its panels, we see echoes of ourselves: not just a history lesson but a reminder that some things about us haven’t changed much at all.
Want to read more of Andrew’s columns? Click here.
The week in which Monocle arrived in New Delhi was an eventful one. The downtown streets were swarmed by the Cockroaches (officially the Cockroach Janta Party), the self-deprecatingly named protest movement spearheaded by a restless cohort of Indian youth – and authorities went to considerable lengths to deter them.
On the weekend before Monocle set up shop at members club D’Monde in association with our sponsors, Hitachi Energy, much of the city’s metro was closed, mobile internet access was suspended, and roads were blocked by police and paramilitary checkpoints. Nevertheless, Delhiites found their way to our coffee mornings, our cocktail evening and to our panel discussions.
The set-piece conversations included contributions from Nobel physics laureate Didier Queloz, Hitachi Energy CEO Andreas Schierenbeck, American aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, and Indian aerospace engineers and entrepreneurs Srimathy Kesan and Susmita Mohanty. They were hearteningly bullish on India, in particular, and the future generally.
It might seem counterintuitive to think of India as a laboratory for new ideas. At 3.3 million sq km and with an estimated population of 1.4 billion people, the country is unfathomably enormous. It is infernally complicated and obdurately maintains a tradition of barely penetrable bureaucracy (the greatest murmur of approval elicited by our guests was via Queloz’s suggestion that India ruthlessly streamline its visa procedures). But this country is nevertheless ahead of some curves.
Not far from us, Bloomberg hosted its annual New Economy Forum, where I spoke to the editorial director of Bloomberg New Economy, Erik Schatzker, who noted that the time for India’s long-standing policy of strategic non-alignment might have come. “Other countries,” said Schatzker, “are coming to the same conclusions that India came to long ago about the reliability of the superpowers.” Benefits that Canada, the UK and Europe have long enjoyed “are fast disappearing because the US has unilaterally decided to stop underwriting that system,” Schatzker continued. “India is affected but not to anywhere near the same degree as a country such as Canada, for example.”
Even those dissenting from India’s current direction are confident in its ability to go its own way. For this weekend’s episode of The Foreign Desk, I visited the office of Shashi Tharoor, the veteran politician, diplomat and author, who is currently a member of parliament for the opposition Congress party. “We tend not to be terribly impressed by foreign examples,” Tharoor said. “And everything we’ve seen in India in these last 79 years has very much been of an Indian model. And we’ve been through everything: one-party dominance, coalition governments, the rise and fall of governments in matters of months. India has found its own way of adjusting to new realities each time, and this will be no exception.”
The bright blue sky of a perfect autumn day hung over the white tents at Frieze this week. On Wednesday, the opening of the UK’s most important art fair was so packed with invite-onlys that it made you wonder where so many very important people had been hiding for the rest of the year. The art market, we are told time and again, is not what it once was – but is there hope for it to be found in Regent’s Park? Or just the opportunity for some excellent people watching?
At one end of Regent’s Park, Frieze Masters – the section of the fair dedicated to works created before 2000 – tells a fascinating story of craft and creation. There are some wonderful things to see: meteorite fragments, dinosaur skulls and historic weaponry among them. “You could say that we’re telling the story of our universe – not just of mankind and of human creativity,” Emanuela Tarizzo, the director of Frieze Masters, tells Monocle. “We see more people collecting art alongside natural history and it reflects a way of collecting that was already in existence at least 500 years ago – the so-called Kunstkammer [cabinet of curiosities]. It’s fun to see it come back today with different generations.”
What makes Frieze Masters such a unique proposal – and what has been masterfully realised this year – is the savvy curatorial approach that underpins it. At the booth of rare books dealer Daniel Crouch is a set of 10,000 satirical prints from the collection of the late British restaurateur Andrew Edmunds. The single lot is esoteric, yes, but extraordinary and shown alongside a 17th-century French printing press. It’s a steal at £45,000 (€53,000). Elsewhere, a 17th-century still life by Jan Brueghel the Elder (which led early sales at about £5m, or €5.9m) hangs alongside an artwork by star British artist Flora Yukhnovich, creating the chance to see both in a new light.
Across the park at Frieze London, which is focused on contemporary work made after 2000, many of the booths belong to familiar names. For those debuting, the fair has been a North Star. “Frieze London has been my favourite fair internationally for as long as I’ve been in this industry,” says Jennifer Carvalho of New York-based Carvalho gallery, which joins the fair for the first time this year. Carvalho is presenting new works by Corinna Gosmaro, Guillaume Linard Osorio and Rachel Mica Weiss, with sculptures, paintings and installations that make use of unusual materials – marble, thread and polycarbonate among them. Carvalho seems content with her sales so far, including of two works by Mica Weiss (who has a waitlist in the US), which sold in the fair’s first hour for £22,000 (€26,000) each. “I wasn’t necessarily expecting that,” says Carvalho. “I have always found the US market to be the most resilient but I see now that the strongest works will find their collectors wherever they are.”
Carvalho’s peppy sentiment is echoed by the energy across Frieze this year – and in the healthy sales sheets. Highlights include the sale of three paintings by Alice Neel for a combined $5m (€4.5m), a new painting by Michaël Borremans for $1.5m (€1.3m) and a second-century mottled red sandstone sculpture going for just over $1m (€890,000).
It seems that great works, as Carvalho contends, will find their buyers and, at both Frieze London and Frieze Masters, galleries have brought their best. In turn, collectors are putting their hands in their pockets – whether for a bronze William Turnbull sculpture or a prehistoric sabre-cat skull. Those blue skies might have been something of a portent and Frieze is painting London in a good light.
Carles Puigdemont has spent almost nine years away from Spain. With a warrant out for his arrest, he risked prison if he set foot inside the country. Holed up in Brussels after a failed Catalan independence bid in 2017, he couldn’t go home when his parents died and missed both of their funerals. Last week, however, the Supreme Court gave the president of the Together for Catalonia (Junts) party a path back when it decided to provisionally lift the warrant against him. But the Catalonia that he left behind is a far cry from the one to which he might soon return.
A stroll through downtown Barcelona offers a glimpse of the region’s changes. The Estelada – Catalonia’s starred flag, which became a fixture on balconies in the run up to the 2017 referendum – is not as prominent as it once was. The mix of languages heard on the streets reflects a population with increasingly diverse backgrounds. Today more than a third of the city’s residents were born abroad, up from about a fifth in 2016.
The demographic changes put pressure on Catalan, a language that has long served as a cornerstone of the region’s national identity. Children are still compelled to learn it at school but it can feel increasingly disconnected from everyday life. Of course, Catalonia extends far beyond its capital and, in many of its smaller towns, symbols of national identity remain prominent. But even here, the fervour for independence appears to have cooled and Madrid is no longer cast as the demon that it once was.
The focus of conversations has changed too. Only a few years ago, a night out often led to a discussion with a stranger about the merits of Catalan independence. Later the conversations turned to Brexit and the parallels – and differences – between the two movements. These days, such comparisons rarely arise. Independence hasn’t disappeared from the political landscape but it seems to have lost its place as a subject of everyday conversation.
It’s not that grievances have disappeared: Rodalies de Catalunya commuter trains still run late and the argument about Madrid’s investment in Catalonia remains unresolved. What has changed is the political response. While these failures once helped to draw hundreds of thousands to the streets under the banner of Catalan self-determination, discontent today is focused elsewhere.
A key reason for this is the dominance of concerns other than abstract questions of identity or constitutional status: the cost of living and rising rent prices. Puigdemont’s party chose not to back the recent housing bill put forward by the embattled socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez – a decision that hardly suggests attunement with the concerns of ordinary Catalans. Meanwhile, the cause for independence has become more fragmented. Puigdemont might still command the loyalty of committed supporters but he can no longer rely on the movement to unite behind a shared vision.
The former Catalan government leader is yet to announce a date for his return. It will likely be less dramatic than his sneaky 2024 appearance in Barcelona, which was followed by a swift departure before the police caught up with him. Coming back before the snap election on 29 November would give Junts supporters a rallying point, while waiting until afterwards would help him to reach beyond the party’s traditional base and reconnect with a Catalan society whose priorities have changed.
There is little to suggest that Puigdemont’s political views have shifted. He faces the challenge of not only reviving the independence movement but finding a place for it in a Catalonia that has changed since 2017. If he is to lead a new chapter for the cause, he will have to show how it speaks to Catalans today – not just to the ambitions that defined their identity almost a decade ago.
Tokyo’s creative scene is in full swing this autumn. Monocle stops by three galleries to peruse a graphic design survey, sample an immersible audio visual installation and explore a fresh take on a literary classic from 13th-century Japan.
‘Ryuichi Sakamoto + Shiro Takatani: Ambient Kyoto’
Azabudai Hills Gallery
Azabudai Hills Gallery is the setting for the latest presentation of a site-specific work by the late musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and visual artist Shiro Takatani. Based on Sakamoto’s 2017 release Async, the “Async Immersion” installation builds on his concept of secchi-ongaku (installed music), the spatial experience of sound that he envisaged during the album’s production.
Sakamoto’s 14-track album is accompanied by a 26.4 metre-wide screen that shows Takatani’s visuals. The imagery includes pianos, equipment from Sakamoto’s studio and landscapes that unfurl across the screen while remaining out of sync with the soundtrack. The result is a spatial experience that feels a world away from life beyond the gallery’s walls.
“Experiencing the work within the flow of the ever-changing interplay of sound and image is like watching waves or ripples in the rain,” writes Takatani. It’s “an experience that, while repetitive, never happens in the same way twice.”
‘Ambient Kyoto’ is on view until 25 October 2026; ambientkyoto.com
‘Yoshihisa Tanaka: Archive / Achieve’
Ginza Graphic Gallery
The work of prolific 46-year-old art director Yoshihisa Tanaka takes centre stage at Ginza Graphic Gallery this month. Over the past two decades, Tanaka’s work across contemporary art, architecture, photography and fashion has expanded to include explorations in paper as material and medium. In recent years, he has experimented with creating paper trainers with New Balance and designed an installation using pleated and folded Japanese washi paper to create undulating forms for Issey Miyake’s spring/summer 2024 show in Paris.
Tanaka’s enquiries into the possibilities of paper as not only a medium for print but a material in its own right appear throughout this survey. The basement gallery is filled with publications, posters and invitations spanning the past two decades. Meanwhile the ground-floor space presents design materials from the archives of businesses and universities in containers, display fixtures and other storage designed by Tanaka and made with washi. By reimagining the archive, he considers the cultural value of preserving graphic design and passing it on to future generations.
‘Archive / Achieve’ is on view through 21 October 2026; dnpfcp.jp
‘Learning from “Hojoki”: Tiny Architecture Reweaves Life’
21_21 Design Sight
The celebrated 13th-century essay “Hojoki” (“The Ten Foot Square Hut”) has long inspired people from various walks of life. The nonfiction essay, written by Kamo no Chomei, details the political and environmental situations that moved him to live in a secluded hut in Hino in the Kyoto mountains. Eight centuries after Chomei left society behind, his musings on living in an impermanent world have informed the latest show at 21_21 Design Sight in Roppongi.
Directed by Atelier Bow Wow co-founder Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, the exhibition uses Chomei’s work as a lens for examining the essence of architecture. The exhibition asked designers, builders, artists and architects to create interpretations of Chomei’s 10-foot-square dwelling, drawing from their own tools, materials and perspectives on contemporary life. Yusuke Obuchi and Jun Nakamura refashioned an abandoned feed silo into “walking architecture”, while Yusuke Omuro and Kawacho-Gumi created a storage shed based on the writings of the late novelist Chotaro Kawasaki.
Each tiny dwelling explores ideas around society and architecture in light of the challenges of contemporary life. “In order to overcome such dilemmas and anxieties, we would do well to fundamentally rethink the lifestyles to which we have become so accustomed,” writes Tsukamoto.
‘Learning from “Hojoki”: Tiny Architecture Reweaves Life’ is open until 11 January 2027; 2121designsight.jp
Paris Motor Show, the Mondial de l’Auto, is an important showcase for French car manufacturing. French president Emmanuel Macron likes to tour the halls when the exhibition, which prominently features homegrown brands such as Renault and Citroën, comes around every other year (this edition was no exception). But when the show opened earlier this week, all anyone could talk about was the Chinese marques fanned out across the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. The Asian powerhouse showcased a new confidence that includes technological advancements in the electric-vehicle space, at a price that has already proven attractive to cash-strapped European consumers.
But China might not be racing ahead entirely. This year’s show opened with a potential get-out-of-jail-free card for European carmakers, as negotiations between the EU and China led Beijing to agree to export quotas for Chinese hybrid vehicles, which have been flooding the European market. The news was cautiously welcomed by the Europeans who Monocle spoke to on the ground at the show. “Anyone embraces fair competition,” said the CEO of Renault-owned Romanian brand Dacia, Katrin Adt. “But it’s difficult to compete against competition that might not be fair.”
Fairness is in the eye of the beholder. A decade ago, it was China that sought to limit access to its domestic market and to force Western companies to partner with local players. Now the tables have turned: overproduction and an increasingly sluggish domestic market is prompting China to push its cars abroad. Europe, which once profited from selling cars in China, is now the one protecting its own market. As he toured the Motor Show, Macron emphasised the importance of Made in Europe and welcomed the EU deal that limits the number of Chinese hybrids entering the continent.
But Made in Europe (or China) is also a fluid concept these days. German designer Stefan Sielaff shaped the luxury cars that Chinese brand Zeekr had on its stand near Mercedes-Benz, which is itself approximately 20 per cent Chinese owned. Mercedes-Benz’s Chinese stake is so large that it could be barred from selling in the US under newly proposed legislation that would cap Chinese ownership at 15 per cent.
China’s agreement to – at least partially – level the playing field is good for Europe but it only goes so far. The continent also needs to put up a fight and prove that it can compete with Beijing on price and innovation. In France, Renault and Citroën have taken a step forward, rewiring their heritage for the 21st century. Citroën, for example, has brought back its decades-old 2CV in a playful, affordable new style. “We always want to be a bit experimental, a bit weird,” said chief designer Pierre Leclercq about the car, which comes with a ready-made picnic basket. Renault, meanwhile, is bringing back its Twingo model and Dacia brand – laying claim to some of the most affordable electric vehicles on the European market.
What’s clear is that Chinese marques are not going away, as they increasingly partner with European names and expand their manufacturing hubs into the vieux continent. The Chinese are eager to tap into long-standing European heritage and expertise, outperforming legacy brands in the process. European rivals will have to lean on more than just their own history – and government intervention – to respond.
Listen to ‘The Monocle Daily’ from our Paris studio on Tuesday.
Following last weekend’s Houthi attacks on its airports, Saudi Arabia is seeking US defence support. The appeal comes a year after the kingdom gave its military a historic cash injection, making it the world’s eighth-largest defence spender – and is a test of the alliances that it has cultivated.
Last weekend’s attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 300. King Fahd International Airport in Dammam has also been targeted by the Iran-backed Houthis, who have claimed responsibility as Saudi Arabia steps up airstrikes supporting a Yemeni government counteroffensive. A conflict that Riyadh had hoped to leave behind is again reaching its passenger terminals, raising the question: why are the country’s principal gateways still so vulnerable?
It’s tempting to wonder whether fewer mirrored Giga-Projects and more attention to national security might have helped but Saudi Arabia has hardly starved its military of money. (The 170km-long megacity, The Line, has been scaled back, along with other projects.) To be fair to the kingdom, Saudi Arabia covers more than two million square kilometres, with its airports, cities and oil installations so spread out that even sophisticated Patriot and Thaad systems cannot provide an impenetrable canopy.
The Houthis have established themselves as formidable adversaries. Once a localised guerilla movement, they’re now a highly capable hybrid military force with stockpiles of missiles and sophisticated drones. And they have geography on their side, operating out of northern Yemen’s rugged mountains.
The Iran war has consumed large quantities of interceptors, putting Saudi supplies and those of its partners under strain. Replenishment could take more than a year. A large defence budget is useful but it can’t instantly conjure extra missiles off a production line that’s already serving a queue of anxious customers.
Riyadh’s allies are providing help, with the US, Turkey and Pakistan sending defensive and technical support and troops. But the Saudi government’s appeal suggests that what is available is insufficient. The kingdom has spent years cultivating these key partnerships; now it needs to determine how much practical protection those alliances provide.
Donald Trump has said that he is considering joining strikes against the Houthis but he finds himself in a difficult position. A ceasefire agreed between the Houthis and the US, brokered by Oman in May 2025, gives him reason to hesitate. The upcoming midterm elections in the US could also temper his enthusiasm.
Benjamin Netanyahu has strongly condemned the Riyadh airport attack – which is noteworthy, given that Israel doesn’t have formal diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia. There’s ongoing talk of the US encouraging Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords. Meanwhile, if the kingdom’s security needs become urgent enough, it might seek access to Israel’s Iron Dome system – a move that would have far-reaching implications for regional alliances.
In the wake of the weekend’s attacks, Anwar Gargash, a senior adviser to the UAE’s president, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, called for renewed defence co-operation across the region. While a Gulf Cooperation Council defence agreement already exists, political trust remains hard to cement. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have backed rival factions in Yemen and competition for investment gives neighbours further cause to guard their interests. But practical co-operation need not wait for perfect harmony.
The damage caused by this latest spate of Houthi aggression reaches well beyond the Gulf. Anu-Eerika Viljanen, Finland’s former ambassador to Saudi Arabia who is now back in Helsinki, told Monocle that a delegation didn’t consider using a Gulf airport in its planning for a forthcoming trip to Southeast Asia. That should trouble Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi.
Saudi Arabia’s hefty defence spending makes it hard to argue that it has spent too little on security. But it is fair to ask whether military readiness has received the same attention lavished on a mirrored linear city or a cliff-edge stadium in the mountains. Achieving the goals outlined in the country’s Vision 2030 plan depends on getting the security basics right. For now, keeping existing airports safely open would be a more persuasive advert for the kingdom than unveiling another futuristic destination.
If you’re Spanish, today’s Fiesta Nacional de España celebrations might be defined by how you feel about the national flag – or your willingness to wear a nifty red-and-yellow bracelet. A brief history lesson before we start accessorising: while the holiday is meant to be dedicated to national unity, its origin has become a point of contention thanks to Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus), whose arrival in the Caribbean on 12 October was christened Hispanic Day. But the holiday’s imperialist roots are only part of the debate.
Brash displays of nationalism have long been a touchy subject for Spain. In the years that followed the end of the Franco dictatorship, flag waving and other displays of red-and-yellow nationalism were mainly left to former regime apologists. For many, the flag remains a right-wing relic. The event’s centrepiece is a military parade overseen by the royal family and government officials, which predictably causes polarised fervour from the sidelines. But this is no ordinary year: Spain is in the early stages of a heated election campaign.
Not everyone who loves España, however, needs to be lumped in with a clan of ancient extremists. Enter the pulsera de España – or the diminutive pulserita – which has, since the 1990s, established itself as the ultimate sartorial signifier. What do wearers of these red-and-yellow bracelets want you to know? Any sweeping interpretation is admittedly highly subjective and probably reductive. But the basic message is that they love their country, that their country is the best and that they are protagonists in their country’s success story. You know, that standard patriotic schtick.
Most of those who sport hints of patriotism around their wrists are conservative but not extremist. For many, it’s a material expression of moderate love, though the rise of Spain’s far-right party, Vox, has been recolouring the political conversation. The party’s penchant for overstated exhibitions of old-hat nationalism has meant that wrapping the country’s colours around any part of your body has once again become politically charged. In the current climate, brandishing one of these bracelets, however subtle, is now a way of thumping your chest about the parts of the country that you love, while raising your clenched fist at the parts – or people – you don’t.
Even in sport – one of the few battlegrounds where euphoric flag waving is permissible – not everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet. If you watched last summer’s Fifa World Cup, you might have wondered why Spanish players stood tight-lipped before each match. This wasn’t a silent protest or a collective spell of amnesia. Spain’s national anthem remains lyric-free simply because the country’s 17 regions haven’t reached a consensus on a unifying verse.
Ahead of the country’s November elections, various versions of España are being tabled, exaggerated, argued over, compared or cautioned about. Some of these national visions are simplified portraits of a past that never really existed, while others attempt to stride towards a future that reconciles the country’s complex present. Everyone can probably agree that they want the best for their nation but they just have different ways of showing it.
Spain’s fraught relationship with its pulseritas suggests that the country has a lot of work to do. But as a fashion choice, these little bracelets are still a more prudent alternative to other national-dress choices. Perhaps all Spaniards can agree that wearing the flag as a cape is a thread too far.
Sweden’s media market, whose influence lies in a small, concentrated group of commercial media houses such as Bauer Group, Viaplay, Bonnier News and Schibsted, is undergoing a transformation. What’s making things interesting, however, is that within these organisations, individual outlets are growing and diversifying to reach an audience base that gets their media through a variety of platforms.
About a third of Swedes are willing to pay for online news, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. They represent among the highest percentage of paying news readers in Europe – second only to Norway – which means that the market is not only ripe for engagement but is potentially lucrative too. And the major corporations are taking notice.
This summer Schibsted-owned tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet, which has been in publication since 1830, launched a radio station. The new venture is emblematic of where Swedish media is headed: established brands are spreading their content across various platforms to leverage their resources and talent.
Radio Aftonbladet is positioning itself as a serious commercial competitor to the public-service broadcaster, Swedish Radio, which has had a near monopoly on newscasting over the country’s airwaves for the past century. In the hopes that the newcomer would help to diversify the media landscape, the Swedish Press and Broadcasting Authority awarded Radio Aftonbladet an FM licence that was previously held by a music station with a million listeners. Known for the speed at which it deploys reporters upon breaking news, the radio station can pull from a pool of Aftonbladet’s 200 journalists to fill its airwaves with news, entertainment, sports and podcasts faster than any of its competition.
As global audiences increasingly turn to a wide variety of sources, journalists – as well as the companies that employ them – understand that testing new ground is the only way to survive long term and Sweden is no different. My journalism colleagues in the industry tell me how they are dabbling in different formats, and becoming good at it too.
Aftonbladet’s entry into the radio sphere marks the first time that a commercial broadcaster is attempting to give the public-service behemoth a run for its assured audience, which is admittedly an uphill task. Swedish Radio has been on air for the better part of a century and reaches more than seven million listeners every week (out of a population of 10 million). Radio Aftonbladet might be small in comparison, reaching less than 200,000 listeners per week in its first month, but it is agile and moves quickly. It has also poached some big names from Swedish Radio, such as presenter Henrik Johnsson, suggesting that, in terms of high-quality output, its continued development is likely to be a success.
Though it’s still early days in the race, Radio Aftonbladet makes a compelling case that Swedish media companies are doing it right. I, for one, will be tuning in.
