The Irish have lost their language and won English. What else have you gained? What else to lose? I've spent a week in Dublin, living and analyzing Bloomsday, a festival based on James Joyce's vibrant novel Ulysses.
I have previously been in Ireland, north and south, east and west, in the 20th century and in this 21st century. In most cases in order to analyze what can/could be brought from us. I have no clear answer. Ireland is a beautiful country, which has suffered a lot in contemporary history, and maybe that's why you find lovely people there. I've made my best friends. I would like to know where it is going at the moment. Why it is still in a critical situation.

The Irish entered the peace processes in anticipation of the Basques. Republicans were looking for independence and unity across the island, and we were often repeated that hope was on population growth, that is, Republicans' growth was faster. Now they've won in votes, but Brexit has stuck in the middle. New governments cannot be set up. The limit dividing Ireland cannot be removed. We cannot advance in the dream unit.

Meanwhile, in the South State, which a century ago is an independent republic, things have taken their own path. Own? I'm not sure. It is possible that here too Sinn Féin will prevail in the forthcoming elections, that is what is quoted in it. But what kind of society will the supporters of the United Republic find if they come to government? Are they going to be able to move towards the goals at once?

In Dublin, the capital of the former hibernia has been considered. The Hibernian metropolis is known in modern literature. These days James Joyce is an omnipresent referent celebrating his Ulysses in the successful and institutionalized Bloomsday. On 16 June, a whole day, Dublins Leopold Bloom are trying to repeat what they had lived on their streets. We wanted to try what we found on their way.

Ulysses is Dublin, but far from it, James Joyce wrote the novel in Trieste, Zurich and Paris. He left Ireland at the age of twenty-two, claiming his atmosphere was drowning. When all of Europe was at war, Joyce began writing the novel for seven years. Someone reproached him for fleeing to neutral Zurich (“what he did in wartime”) and the writer replied: “I wrote Ulysses and what did you do?”

In the fifth chapter of the novel, Leopold Bloom, aware that his wife usually meets with a lover at both's house to attract his wife Molly, plans to buy and give a scarce lemon soap in a famous Dublin pharmacy. A century after the novel was published, we found Lincoln Place's Sweny's Pharmacy. Patrick J welcomes us with hospitality. The owner Murphy, hearing that we were Basques, has put on the counter the novel Ulises in Basque, in an edition translated by Xabier Olarra and published by Rana. After admiring our admirable surprise, he takes the guitar and sings us the melancholy song. Gaelikoz. “The wind coming from the vicinity of the mountain brings new people with it.”

Exciting. But Ireland was lost and on the streets of Dublin many children of neoliberalism, many, are now Dublins, from historic O’Connell Street to Grafton Shopping.

Dublindar is a collection of stories in English written by James Joyce.