Let's Learn About Spain! Part 1 of 3

Hello!

I know my last post about Vantage Point was a little…intense and aggressive but I just wanted to say that the rest of IES saw it last night and their consensus was pretty much word-for-word what I said in my blog. So maybe it’s just that we consider ourselves experts about or defenders of our dear second home of Salamanca or maybe it’s that we’re snotty and obnoxious, but really, if Vantage Point made you think that Salamanca was kind of a lame place to go (or decidedly Mexican), we’d love any opportunity to convince you otherwise!!!

With that in mind and with the EVER-CLOSER familial visit (¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡CANNOT WAIT!!!!!!!!)(followed by Em’s visit! Yay!) I’ve decided that it’s about time I wrote a little post about good ol’ Spain, aided by images from Wikipedia and Google Images. I love the internet. But anyway, in addition to my disclaimer that I have clearly and unashamedly stolen (borrowed?!) these images without reaaaaally crediting them (most of them are for public/common usage so I’m not too worried, but just in case), I’m going to write a disclaimer that in no way do I believe this “history” or this information about Spain, Salamanca, or Spanish life/politicians/royalty to be complete or necessarily 100% accurate (though I’m doing the best I can! Blame Wikipedia or my history books, or the knowledge I’ve picked up here!!).

Some Americans have a really bad reputation with geography (I myself still avoid talking about most cities in Europe because I really don’t know what countries they are in nor what countries they neighbor, so consider this preaching to my own choir…or whatever the phrase would be) and apparently have been known to believe that Spain is somewhere in the Caribbean. PLEASE NEVER MAKE THIS MISTAKE THANK YOU.

Spain is part of the European Union (screw you, Euro! Screw you and your horrible treatment of the dollar, despite your amazingly colorful money, differently sized bills and fun 2-euro and 1-euro coins!). And about as far south as you can get in Europe, practically rubbing shoulders with Africa. As my advisor from Bowdoin (a Spaniard herself, from Zaragoza) taught my Spanish culture class, Spain has long had to deal with the stereotype of being, as she put it, the dirty south. As many northerners in the US feel about our darling southern states, much of Europe consciously or subconsciously sees Spain as a place to go to the beach and relax, as a place populated by lazy people who never miss a siesta or a good bottle of wine, as an exotic neighbor who is currently being overrun by poor African immigrants. That is, somewhere you go on vacation but not somewhere you really respect (kind of the way northerners in the US treat southerners, both in the US and from places in the Caribbean).

People in the north of Africa see Spain as sort of their only hope, or a step closer to Europe. Spain has always resented the way Europe has seen it but simultaneously seems to resent the fact that it’s so close to Africa. Just as it is in the US, immigration from the south is a major political and social topic of debate. You don’t notice it as much in Salamanca but farther south and in Madrid it becomes clearer.

(For those of you who may be wondering why I haven’t said anything about Portugal, which is just as close to Africa as Spain is and just as far from Europe, if not farther, it’s because to anyone who is not actually from Portugal or who is not a scholar of Portuguese or a Brazil-hater-but-Portuguese-lover or whatever they may be doesn’t reaaaaally give a crap about Portugal. We visited a few cities in the fall and had a great time and enjoyed its historical landmarks etc etc and the people were friendly enough and I think Portuguese is a beautiful language but in terms of the grand scheme of Europe or the World, it hasn’t done much since the good ol’ days of the intrepid explorers and conquerors. At least that’s the sense one gets in Salamanca.)

Okay. Continuing on.

Here is the present day Spanish flag. Sidenote: I’ve been going to Trivia Night with fun kiddos and there is a flag section which has newly rekindled my childhood love of/fascination with flags of the world (Mom, Dad, whatever happened to my collection?!) and maps. So maybe my interest in the history of this flag is more enhanced than it should be. But! Here it is.

See that awesome shield? Without getting too insane, here is basically what it represents.

As you probably guessed, the Castle represents Castilla and the Lion represents León. The chains represent Navarra and the stripes represent Aragón. The pomegranate hidden there at the bottom was added when the Reyes Católicos aka Ferdinand and Isabella finally conquered Moorish Granada (pomegranate in Spanish=Granada) way back in Spain’s heyday of the inquisition. The two columns on either side are the mythological pillars of Hercules, at the Strait of Gibraltar (gateway to the Atlantic Ocean) and represent the Spanish discovery and colonization of America. Plus Ultra is the Spanish motto which means “Further Beyond” which I like to think of in terms of Buzz Lightyear’s “To Infinity, and Beyond!” but it was actually modified from a phrase that existed before America was discovered, alluding to Spain’s western location in Europe. The crown on top and fleur de lis in the middle are related to the fact that the current royal family is of Bourbon or Borbón lineage. That would be French. Since 1875 (with of course breaks in between rulers because there were dictatorships and republics that got in the way), the royal family has been Bourbon or Borbón.

While I’m talking about symbols of Spain like the flag and the shield I might as well tackle the image of this bull that is on many T-shirts and flags as well as on the covers of many guidebooks. If you went to Middlebury last summer you know that Aquilino was obsessed with this image.
If you’ve ever driven around Spain you’ve probably noticed one or more of the HUGE larger-than-billboard-size bulls like this one on the side of the road (and unless you’re in a city you probably realized that they were the only billboards around!) and wondered what it was. Well, according to my ever-faithful Wikipedia, this bull used to be the symbol of the Osborne Sherry company back in the old days (starting 1956) when billboard advertising was still kosher (now the law is that they are illegal within 150 meters of a road!?). When the law changed and billboards had to be taken down, some smart guy somewhere realized that they were pretty cool (okay, they were already well known to Spaniards and tourists as an easily recognizable and marketable image) and decided to keep them all and paint them black. They are now so tied to the perception of Spain that there are Catalonian nationalists in Cataluña that deface the bull (or bulls) near Barcelona because they see it as representation of Spain (that they as Catalonian nationalists want to break away from). I think that’s ludicrous and I just think they are neat landmarks, but anyway.

Alright. So, the country of Spain itself.

Here is a zoomed-in (well, compared to the last map) map of Spain. Important cities you should probably learn about: Madrid (the capital), right smack in the center. Barcelona, over on the north-east coast, near-ish to France. Sevilla and Granada are southern cities, along with Cádiz, which is an important port/coastal city. Then obviously there is my darling home of Salamanca, a bit north-west of Madrid and closer to Portugal than Madrid. It’s about 2.5 hours by bus or train from Salamanca to Madrid, to give you an idea. San Sebastian up north right in the elbow of Spain/France is the most expensive city in Spain and Bilbao is where the Guggenheim museum is. Valencia down on the east coast (right above that little sticky-out part of the coast) is another cosmopolitan city with lots of sailing contests and museums. Can you find Santiago de Compostela (destination for religious pilgrimages for centuries), Toledo (ancient capital of Spain, where the 3 main cultures lived in harmony for a fair amount of time), and Córdoba (beautiful mosque that you’ve probably seen on postcards or images of Spain)?





To give you an idea of the importance of various cities, here is a fun little image from Wikipedia. Anyone who has tried to drive around Spain or navigate the train system (I actually like Renfe a lot but friends of mine who have been places like Germany say that Spain is pretty pathetic—nobody would set their watches by the trains here!) knows that Spain is EXTREMELY centralized, at least in terms of infrastructure/transportation. It’s easier to get from Salamanca down to Granada or even up to Santiago de Compostela by going through Madrid.



Oh, the little islands in the box/off to the east in the Mediterranean are the Canary Islands (down in the Atlantic by Cape Verde in Africa) and the Balearic Islands, respectively. You’ve probably heard of Tenerife and Ibiza, hot party/beach spots.

Okay! Moving on. Spain is made up of 19 autonomous communities, as you can see in this diagram (and they each have their own flags, some of which may be more or less famous than others, such as that for Castilla y León or that for Basque Country (have you heard of ETA? We’ll get to that later. Maybe.).



According to the Constitution of 1978 these autonomous communities (much like states, with the provinces in each autonomous community acting sort of like counties in the US, and then each city acting as, well, a city) have the right to exercise their own power in accordance with the way they see fit. According to my regionalism professor from last semester, the debate over the balance of power between Madrid and each of the autonomous communities is Spain’s biggest problem today.


keep looking out for parts 2 and 3!