Category: Spanish Culture and News

Princess Leonor is born to Prince Felipe and his once newsreading wife Letizia, posing an interesting question for the Spanish constitution… Looks like a promised change will now be rushed through allowing Leonor to rule as Queen one day – another victory for the women of Spain!

After Mayor Gallardon’s sterling efforts this summer to dig up every other street in the capital in time for the autumn return to work, a new plan is born to bring further agonies to the city streets in the New Year. This time, ironically, it’s more public transport that’s going to cause all the problems. The Metro will not be opening throughout the night on Fridays and Saturdays as had originally been hoped. A fleet of 109 buses will be following the exact route of the Metro lines and stops instead.

That should be interesting in the case of Line 3, whose stops pop up in some of the tightest streets of the old quarter. Driving a car past Lavapies Metro is hard enough, let alone a bus. And anyone who has sat in atraffic jam in a taxi on the Paseo de la Castellana at 3 a.m. on a Saturday morning will quickly spot the futility of this plan. The traffic in the early hours of a Saturday is as bad as it is at 9 a.m. on Mondays. Adding 109 more heavy diesel vehicles into the mix is not going to help, especially as the Madrileños are far too addicted to their cars to see this as an interesting alternative, whether they have been drinking or not.

The real question must be, however, what is wrong with the Metro? Why clog up the city streets by following these perfectly good underground routes, routes that would ease the overground chaos instead of exacerbating it? Perhaps it’s part of Mayor Gallardon’s secret plan to drive us all to hate our cars with such a passion that we eventually sell them all in exchange for bicycles. Yes! The suicidal pursuit of cycling in Madrid! Don’t get me started on that…

Now this is a sensible move. While the UK falls into another collective psychosis over the next epidemic that is(n’t) going to wipe out tens of thoudands, millions even, the Spanish government puts up a simple informative website, http://www.gripeaviar.es/, helping everyone over here to calm down. Good common sense.

‘With a birth rate estimated at 1.28 per woman – far below the replacement rate of 2.1 and one of the lowest in Europe – Spain’s population will fall (and age) dramatically over the coming years. According to Expatica: “By 2050, Spain will have only 30 million people – three quarters of its current population – as well as one of the oldest population profiles in the world”.

No matter how the current crisis around Ceuta and Melilla turns out, a people like the Spaniards, with so little commitment to their own future, will never have the strength to resist being overwhelmed by the burgeoning and desperate masses of the third world at their doorstep.’

An extract from FaceRight.com

Interesting facts in the first paragraph, but is this really about Spaniards having no commitment to their own future? I would say that it has more to do with new professional opportunities for women that disappear as soon as they try to integrate a large family into their working lives, and the fact that rising prices and mortgages make it very difficult to be able to afford to have more than one child these days. I’ll have to find out what the Spanish think about this…

The biggest news in Spain this week is the onslaught (El Mundo graphic) on the North African Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla by thousands of African immigrants desperate to start a new life in Europe. Six were shot in the early hours of Thursday by Moroccan police who claim they fired in self-defence.

Spiegel reports that “Ceuta and Melilla are particularly attractive to migrants because Spanish law requires refugees to be released from detention after 40 days if they are unable to return to their country of origin. Since most African countries refuse to take them back, they are released into Spanish society”, and continues, “To keep the Africans from reaching Spain, Madrid now wants to build a third and even higher fence at Melilla.”

Evidently more fences are not going to make any difference and this is a situation that is only going to escalate. The problem is clearly related to appalling economic and political conditions in Africa, and what on earth can be done about that? More to the point, when are the powers that be going to start seriously trying to do something about that? Yes, happy G8 guys, that means you!

This morning at 10.56 there was a total solar anular eclipse over Madrid, leaving just a ring of sunlight poking out from behind the moon. Still impossible to look at with the naked eye, but sungalsses over the camera lense made these shots possible. The sky darkened a little, a bit like dusk on a summer’s day. Very bizarre to behold.

Expatica reports that over 9 percent of the Spanish population now consists of foreign immigrants. That’s compared to 1.6 percent in 1998, the year I arrived in Spain.

I remember being amazed during my first months in the country by the lack of demographic diversity on the streets of Madrid – everyone was Spanish. The government’s recent drive to legalise unregistered immigrant workers, and thus bring in a lot more revenue in taxes, has certainly done a lot to boost these statistics, bringing legal status to a huge number of South American and Moroccan immigrants. A wise move, culturally and economically. Spain, at long last, is coming to terms with its status as a somewhat plural society – now it’s just a question of waiting to see how long the more dominant aspects of Spain’s traditional monoculture prevail (gastronomy, arts, press, TV etc – still all as Spanish as Spanish can be…)

Bizarre statistic. According to El Pais the Spanish are the biggest Cocaine consumers in the world, just ahead of the Americans. And they seem like such a sensible lot…