This rant has been near the surface for several years now, but a news report on television yesterday set me off, and I need to write it down to get it off my chest. Let me be clear. It’s not that Spaniards are stupid or generally bad drivers, the problem is that they are taught wrong at driving school! Believe me, I know, because I had to go to Spanish driving school to get my Spanish license.
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Every year, right around Santiago, nearby Santander celebrates its Semana Grande (Big Week), with the most Spanish of traditions: bullfights and tapas. My interest in bullfighting has waned in recent years, but my interest in tapas is as strong as ever! On Sunday, the last day of the festival, my wife and I went to sample the wares that the restaurants around Santander had to offer.
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This past weekend my town, Colindres, celebrated its Second Annual Beer Festival. We went only one day last year, but this year we went all four days. I had a total of 3.5 liters of beer in seven half-liter (±1 pint) mugs. They also had liter steins, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy one. Plus, I subscribe to the “smaller servings is better” beer philosophy of my adopted country.
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On my recent return from the United States, I had the displeasure of taking Spanair flight JK 6116 from Madrid to Bilbao on an Airbus A320. I’m not a big air traveler, but I take about ten flights a year. This A320 had the least amount of legroom on any plane I’ve ever been on. Spanair should be ashamed of themselves for cramming so many seats onto this aircraft.
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In the protest of the British salt tax in colonial India in 1930, the leader of the protest at the Dharasana Salt Works, Sarojini Naidu, told his followers, “You must not use any violence under any circumstances. You will be beaten, but you must not resist: you must not even raise a hand to ward off blows.” When the protesters began pulling away the barbed wire protecting the salt pens, the police began beating them with steel-tipped lathis (an Indian martial arts fighting cane). American journalist, Webb Miller, described what he saw that day:
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For a long time, I have been unable to understand the point of political and social demonstrations and parades and such. I have at least two posts to this effect. What does Congress care if a bunch of rainbow-flag-waving hippies are out on the National Mall? That’s not going to change anyone’s mind!
With the combination of a number of successful political demonstrations – the most successful being that of Egypt – in the first quarter of 2011 and a video lecture I saw on YouTube, I finally had an epiphany about why demonstrations matter, and how they can be effective.
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I love it when current events cause a traffic spike on my blog. The big news in Spanish sports today is regarding a video clip where Sergio Busquets, a soccer player for Barcelona, covers his mouth, looks at Marcelo Vieira, who plays for Real Madrid, and says (no audio, just video) either “morro” or “mono”. Both require the tongue to hit the palate, and are more or less indistinguishable with video alone. The important facts of the case are that, Barcelona and Real Madrid are the principal archrivals in Spain’s favorite sport, and Busquets is a white guy from Barcelona, while Marcelo is a black guy from Brazil. Oh, and “mono” means “monkey”.
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When my in-laws came back from their annual Easter trip to the La Serena region of Spain, they brought back a wheel of the typical cheese of the region, Queso de la Serena. It’s made from the milk of Merino sheep, and it takes almost two dozen sheep to product enough milk for a kilogram of cheese. It’s coagulated using a natural vegetable rennet taken from the cardoon, a thistle-like plant related to the artichoke. The coagulation happens very slowly, allowing for a rich, but tart, flavor to develop. Cheeses coagulated with cardoon tend to be very creamy, making the interior of the cheese very oozy. In fact, a traditional way to eat it is by slicing off the top and eating the creamy inside with a spoon. I’ve never done that, but it sounds wonderful.
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Several weeks ago, I got an email from my Uncle Neil recommending a movie to me. He had previously recommended Primer to me, which I loved and watched several times to catch all the intricacies of the time travel, so I had high expectations. Timecrimes is a low budget Spanish film shot here in Cantabria, my region of Spain. If you look at any of the movie posters or trailer (I recommend not watching the spoiler-laden trailer), you might get the idea that it’s a horror flick with a bloody-bandage-wearing scissor-wielding homicidal maniac, but it’s really not at all. It’s more about an average man trying to outsmart himself.
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This is one of the more curious Spanish expressions to me. I think it was first introduced to me by my Spanish friends in England when my future wife traveled alone to Spain for a wedding and I had to stay behind because the British immigration officers were getting uneasy with me going to and from Spain so much. Here’s a brief definition of the expression, followed by a longer explanation I’ve gathered from some internet research:
estar de Rodríguez: adj. the state of being left at home alone to work by one’s spouse (wife, typically) and children, while they go on vacation.
