Madrid Teacher

I am halfway through one of the most insightful and interesting books I have read for a while Bloody Foreigners by Robert Winder. It is about the impact of immigration in the UK well since time began. He argues that the first people in the Uk were from Iberia (the country not the airline I hope). He then discusses the contributions immigration has brought to the UK and how is was accepted or not by the indiginous population. Some of the chapters tie in with what I have discovered while researching my family tree over the past year. I can trace part of my family back to the time of James II in Oxfordshire and Berkshire ( I always knew that I wasn´t a true northerner I fond bitter, well bitter.) I also have roots from Ireland on two lineages, although one was in the army round about 1820 and the other line were from Meath and Dublin, they came to Liverpool during the famine. Winder´s book dicussess some of the problems faced by the Irish when they arrived in the 1840s and 1850s, this has led me to further investigate this period of history.

The book has also enabled me to reflect on how in Spain immigrants are treated (I have blogged on this before). The thing is that both Spain and the UK are countries built on previous waves of immigration and it would seem axiomatic that because our countries have developed through a mix and meetng of different cultures with a new modernised culture formed from this, and seeing as both the UK and Spain are more or less good countries then maybe we all should welcome immigration with more open arms and hearts. I am sure that there is something Hegelian there.