Live from woodland near the Valle de los Caidos, site of Franco’s tomb, not far from El Escorial – on the 30th anniversary of Franco’s death.
Wikipedia has a concise history of Franco’s life and death.
What other travel-related, based-abroad, expat podcasts do you listen to? In fact, what podcasts do you listen to in general? Please let me know in the comments here! Thanks.
Two photos from the podcast (click to enlarge):
 |
 |
“1,500 sheep crossed the streets of the centre of Madrid observed by curious on-lookers, to celebrate ten years of the law that protects the royal flocks (ed. see first comment below – thanks Luis), and to defend their rights to seasonal livestock migration.” Photo – El Mundo.
Raul, Real Madrid Captain, has had twins, which apparently means they’ll win tomorrow…
Update: Barcelona amazing, Ronaldinho finest player on the planet, Real Madrid – Rubbish navel-gazing has-beens!
Update 2: Raul out for 3 – 4 months with knee injury. That’s nice, he can spend some time with the new borns! Might even improve Real Madrid as well…
Technorati Tags: Real Madrid, Derbi, Football
Fog has collapsed city traffic and flights into Barajas, yet another gangland shooting is discovered, train strikes are ruining half a million people’s month, and heroin is being sold over-the-counter in marginalised neighbourhoods.
But hey, none of that really counts as ‘news’ in Madrid this weekend. Far more important events are afoot. It’s ‘Clasico‘ time this Saturday night, the great Real Madrid-Barcelona football match at the Santiago Berbabeu stadium, and absolutely nothing is going to divert the city’s (or indeed the nation’s) attention from that. Forget all the recent political wrangling over Catalonia’s attempts to secure even more independence, this match is where the nation’s political, emotional and cultural pulse can truly be measured.
Bars city-wide will be packed, the police will be out in force around the stadium, on the alert for high-profile terrorist attacks and the usual hooligan nonsense, and once again the city’s most famous fountain, Cibeles, will be barricaded against the marauding celebrations of Madrid fans. With the way Madrid have been playing recently, however, it is more than likely that Cibeles will be spared any trouble this year, and real news will be allowed to trickle back through a city-wide hangover on Sunday morning.
Greenpeace are demanding the demolition of a monstrosity of a hotel built right on the shoreline of Almeria’s spectacularly wild Cabo de Gata National Park.
The activists claim that the position of the hotel is illegal, as it should be at least 100 metres from the sea. A hotel was once demolished on the Costa de la Luz in not dissimilar circumstances, but this time the construction company has building permission. For this one to be demolished the owners would have to be repaid the entire cost of the project, and that seems unlikely to happen.
But all my support goes to Greenpeace. There isn’t much unspoilt Mediterranean coast left here in Spain and what there is should damn well be left untouched. If I didn’t have ten thousands translations to finish before next week I’d be down there with them….
Anyway, my advice is to see the Cabo de Gata Park while you can, looks like it’s going to be one big Apart-Hotel golfers paradise before too long.
Check out this fine, spot on description of how to blend in with the Spanish. Can’t think of much else to add really!
(Thanks to Betty – whose blog url appeared in one of the nfs comments.)
Do you ever suffer from technological overload? I’ve been trying to keep up with all the latest developments in the world of tech: RSS, Web 2.0, google / yahoo / microsoft wars, diggs, boing boings and endless other newer and cooler ideas and blog-based knowledge banks.
But I think I am about to overload. This is starting to drive me crazy! It started with a casual reading of Scripting news and the odd browse around Flickr. Now I have a score of RSS feeds on my (admittedly great) on-line aggregator, Rojo, and thousands of unread news items reminding me of the futitily of it all. I simply can’t keep up with all the above whilst trying to come up with an equally cool world-rousing web invention all at the same time (because yes, of course I’d love to dream up the next million dollar homepage or frappr phenomenon.)
Sometimes the internet is a curse as much as it is a blessing. What’s a twenty-first century guy to do ? (Help!) Maybe a weekend away from the PC would be a good start!
Sitting by the river in El Pardo, discussing more culture-clash aspects of life and death in Spain. Plus a request for video-casting inspiration… What would you want to see on a video cast of Spain?
If you enjoy the podcasts then please consider sponsoring my 2500 km charity motorbike ride across India in Feb. 2006 Click here for details.
I may be the last one on the net to hear about this but wow, what an idea…. A 21 year old guy from the UK who has made half a million bucks in 2 months from an interesting website idea. Here’s the site: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/, once you’ve checked that out read the interesting part, the blog – read from the bottom up. Amazing…
Madrid’s sex scene doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going. The council has removed most of the prostitutes from the centre’s Calle Montera (they moved round the corner onto the emblematic Gran Via for a while, then headed en mass for the Casa de Campo park), and the city’s few ‘show centres’ do pretty poor business these days. Yet scandal reminiscent of the famous ‘Movida’ days of the eighties is set to hit the capital this weekend.
This Sunday, ‘Follartour’ (follar – def. – have sex, slang) is coming to La Riviera, one of Madrid’s biggest live music venues, for a 12 hour non-stop live sex show. The website blurb promises ‘a show that takes us to the end of our sensual limits,’ that includes ’35 mind battering sexual performances.’ This all sounds like a bit of an excuse for a giant swingers party to me, and there was I thinking that this sort of thing only went on in Paris. If it wasn’t for the 45 Euro ticket price for men (less for women), I might even be tempted to go and check it out – solely in the interests of journalistic research of course…
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 