I'm back!!!

Hi all!
You might have been wondering where I've been these past few days, and I'm happy to report that I am officially and definitely back in Salamanca! Those of you with a facebook account have probably noticed that I just posted about 8 photo albums...for those of you who haven't noticed or who are not cursed/blessed with the joy of a facebook account, here you go!! I will probably write a little more about my family's visit to Spain this past week as well as Em's visit (she's here now!) once she leaves on Sunday but don't worry, it won't be NEARLY as long as my typical posts. Enjoy the photos, and thanks to all of you who have been commenting!!!!



Photos from Janna and Kendra's 21st birthday parties as well as some from when my family was in Salamanca:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021432&l=0d762&id=4602208





I'll be back soon with photos from Em's visit!!!!
Think good thoughts about the weather getting back up into the 70s instead of the 50s where it's hovering now...ew......
besos,
-c-

Let's Learn About Spain! Part 3 of 3

Picking up sort of where we left off, here is the Rey Juan Carlos and his lovely wife, the Reina Sofia, in the early days. Aren’t they cute?!

And here they are now. Still adorable as ever!

These darling monarchs have 3 children, the most famous or dare we say important of which is their son Felipe (he has 2 older sisters). My advisor from Bowdoin told our Spanish culture class about how for years the women of Spain were ready for handsome (eh, I guess) Felipe to get married. There were rumors and there were probably short-term and less-than-desirable girlfriends for many years and people were starting to get desperate. When he finally announced that he was marrying Letizia, a common gal who was the face of one of the most popular nightly news channels, everyone was surprised but relieved. It’s kind of funny, if you think about it—she’s not royal, so you’d think most of the country would kind of be like “um, who?!” but since she was probably one of the more recognizable and trusted faces/people in the country for at least a few years, she was kind of already royal or famous in her own way. Here they are.
Now before we get into the modern political stuff, I just want to take a minute and express my love for the Spanish royal family. Apart from the fact that I’m from the US and so most monarchs seem pretty quaint and yet exotic to me and thus I’ll always be a little jealous of countries that have royal families (despite the fact that they are figureheads and pretty much just sit around being special) and from the fact that like most Spaniards I fell a little bit more in love with Juan Carlos when he told Hugo Chávez of Venezuela to “shut up,” and apart from the fact that I understand that maybe it’s time to phase out the royal family as Juan Carlos gets older and the opportunity for a deeper transition to democracy nears, I REALLY REALLY REALLY want the royal family to stick around AT LEAST until Felipe and Letizia’s oldest daughter Leonor gets to be queen. LOOK AT HER!


This is Leonor on her first day of kindergarten (the school she goes to is mostly made up of children of national guards etc), which was televised last fall while I was here and made me fall in love with her right away. Those of you who know me know that I adore little kids and hello, how can you say no to this face?! She was totally unfazed by the paparazzi, p.s. And pulled her rolling backpack most of the way to school. She rocks, I can tell already.
And here they all are, with Letizia holding Leonor’s little sister, Sofia (named after GUESS WHO!?).

Okay, okay. So as previously mentioned, Spain is a parliamentary monarchy. The president of the government has all the power (well, all the power that the Congress and Senate don’t have, but you get the idea) because the King, as I said, is kind of just King because he’s king. As you may or may not know, Spain is currently in election season, with general elections for president of the government happening on Sunday the 9th. Jose Miguel Luis Zapatero is Spain’s current president, head of the PSOE or Partido Socialista Obrera de España, or the socialist party. And here he is.
(extra credit! What autonomous region does that flag behind him belong to?!?!)

The opposition party is the PP or Partido Popular which is more conservative than the PSOE and generally more popular in Salamanca. Without getting too much into the nuts and bolts of the Spanish electoral system (although I’m supposed to write a paper on the technical differences between the American and Spanish electoral processes, but whatever), in Spain, the party is way more important than the person.

Representatives/senators HAVE to vote with their party or they are pretty much kicked out and there is a huge scandal (unlike in the US where each representative can mostly do as they please, at least until the next elections), when you vote, you’re really voting for a party and less for the person who is in charge (while I guess that’s what it’s like in the US, here I get the sense that although some people [like myself] have arbitrary opinions like “Rajoy creeps me the hell out,” in general they are much more like “oh, well, Zapatero might piss me off but I’m loyal to the PSOE and I know he’s going to do what they say, so…I’ll vote for them as usual anyway.” I don’t know, as I write that I realize that that’s not something exclusive to Spain because clearly Americans vote for parties over people, too, but anyway. That’s just the sense I get.

So here is Mariano Rajoy, Zapatero’s rival (elections are TOMORROW!!!!!!).
And here they are together, with poor Zapatero looking seriously creepy.
I’ll let you know what happens on Sunday, though at the moment after 2 debates (the first of which was the first in 15 years—Zapatero promised when he was in the running 4 years ago that if he was elected he would have a debate when his term was up).

Okay. Now that we’ve blown through centuries of history, dictatorships, and the cuteness of all generations of the royal family, it’s time for a tiny blurb on Salamanca! I’m not going to get into all of the amazing landmarks etc etc we have going on here because I don’t want to ruin it too too much for my family (I’ll probably do a post like that on Salamanca at the end of the semester or when I’m at home, dying for an excuse to talk about this place), but here’s a teeny preview.

Here is Salamanca’s awesome flag.
And here are a few “older” versions of the shield on the flag. I don’t know why there were snakes at one point, then wolves, and now lion-ish creatures up at the top, but whatever. I also don’t know why there seem to be Aragonese stripes, or why the image seems to have been switched over time.

And here is a supremely pretty view of Salamanca from the south, across the Río Tormes, looking up at the Cathedral (okay, technically we have 2, one from the 1200s and one from the 1500s).
Here is one of my own photos, a view farther down the river (to the west, or the left, based on the above photo) from the Puente Romano which is one of Salamanca’s landmarks I said I wouldn’t mention before. It was built in the 1st century AD and is still mostly intact (15 or so of the 30-something arches haven’t been touched). At the end of the bridge on the Cathedral side of the river there is an old statue of what is apparently a bull (it is on all fours and has no head, so you can sort of decide for yourself) which can be seen on Salamanca’s shield, on the flag and as shown above. Kinda neat.


Phew.
Well, that’s all, guys, I hope you learned at least SOMETHING about Spain after reading that post! If you have corrections or comments or questions, please feel free to comment or email me!!! I apologize if I’ve offended, confused, or stressed anyone out with this post. But I hope you enjoyed it, at least looking at the photos!!!

Many besos,
And family arrives on Wednesday, the 12th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-c-

Let's Learn About Spain! Part 2 of 3

Now begins the semi-historical and in no way complete part of this blog-post series.

NOTE: I realize that most of this is too long and informationally pregnant for any of you to actually read it and care, or retain any useful information, and I guess for those of you who feel obligated to read it, I apologize, but I guess I'm mostly doing this for myself and I think it's sort of funny to blow right through generations of kings and queens. Maybe I'm wrong. Point being, I write too much, but I'm having a great time and I hope I'm not the only one. But seriously I don't really expect anyone to read every single one of my posts...okay! Onto the history!

Those of you Americans and those of you who know anything about Spain know SOMETHING about Isabella and Ferdinand, aka los Reyes Católicos, aka those who financed Columbus’ fateful voyage in 1492, aka those who unified Spain (well, at least Castilla and Aragon) with their marriage, aka those who conducted that whole thing called the Inquisition. Those fun people! No but seriously they were hugely important. Look them up on Wikipedia if you want to know more about them, but I’ve basically summarized the important stuff, as far as I know. Heh.

Not the cutest couple ever, but oh well. Here is a nicer image of Isabella.
This super-important couple had a crazy daughter called, appropriately, Juana la Loca (siblings=Maria and Catherine of Aragon, who you’ve probably heard of), who married a Flemish dude named Philip the Handsome. Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe somewhere around here began the Hapsburg (Austria) family chain of reign (ha) in Spain. Anyway, Juana and Philip had a son named Carlos V who later married Isabella of Portugal (we’re in the early 1500s here). Their son Philip II was king of Spain until 1598. He married 3 times, once to Queen Mary I of England and once (4th wife) to his niece. Ooh! Delightful. Anyway, he was succeeded by his son Philip III (son of his 4th wife) who married Margaret from Austria (we’re in the mid-1600s now) who was succeeded by Philip IV (so creative with the names, people!). Carlos II was the only living son of his dad’s second wife (and niece! Again with the nieces!) Mariana of Austria (still in the Hapsburg family). People thought he was bewitched (including himself) because of his physical and mental disabilities (inbreeding will catch up with you sooner or later!).

Anyway, if you followed any of that….Philip V then showed up in the early 1700s (grandson of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain) and started off the Bourbon family reign that has lasted until today. So after Philip V we have Ferdinand VI, Carlos III, Carlos IV (whose wife Maria Luisa of Parma caused quite a ruckus with her supposed and definitely obnoxious lover, Godoy)…
Carlos IV is the old dude and Maria Luisa is the ugly dark-haired woman in the middle. This is their family as painted by Spanish artist Goya (the more I write in here the more I realize I’m leaving out….crap). Anyway, so after Carlos IV we have Joseph Bonaparte (yes, Napoleon’s brother) who decided to rule Spain between 1808 and 1813 (yes, this caused problems, no, I’m not going to get into it). Ferdinand VII (son of Carlos IV and horrible Maria Luisa) succeeded him until 1833 when Isabella II took over. Ferdinand VII’s brother Carlos wanted the throne and there were wars known as the Carlist wars where Spaniards fought over Carlos vs. Isabella. Some strange Italian dude named Amadeus ruled for 3 years. Then there was the First Spanish Republic from 1873-1874 (with 5 presidents in that time! Kind of unstable…which is why the second republic is way more famous) and then Alfonso XII took back over the monarchy. His son Alfonso XIII (grandpa to Juan Carlos, current Spanish king!!) took over in 1885.

If I had any dead Spanish history professors they would be rolling over in their graves right now…sorry….

While Alfonso XIII was in charge there was the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera from 1923-1930. Then began the Second Republic in 1931 and Alfonso XIII left the country. The 2nd republic was super progressive and gave women the vote, approved the right to divorce, separated church and state, and many other liberal things, much to the joy and utter relief of about half the country (and then lots of republican supporters killed priests and nuns and burned convents, but in their defense, traditionalists/carlistas/soon-to-be-fascists were fighting right back once the civil war started).

Here is the flag of said Republic. Can you see the differences between this flag and the current flag (not just the colors...)?

There are families around Salamanca that still fly this flag, but usually in their windows (not out on flagpoles or anything TOO prominent). So the 2nd republic had the misfortune of existing during a time of extreme tension in Spain, a time of poverty and instability and strong political action (citizens really did care about what was going on, they participated, etc).

So the Guerra Civil or Spanish Civil War (brother vs. brother, neighbor vs. neighbor, just like the American civil war only this time with way more dangerous weaponry and help from dictators like Mussolini and Hitler on the side of the nationalists aka sublevados aka Franco’s side aka Falange Española aka the fascists) lasts from 1936-1939. During this time the Basque city of Guernica is bombed by the Germans (who used the war as an opportunity to practice for WW2), inspiring famous Spanish artist Picasso to paint this impressive (in style and in size!) and emotionally wrenching painting that you’ve probably seen before.

The war ends right as WW2 is about to begin (literally less than 6 months beforehand) and this man takes power for the next 36 years.
Ah yes, the fascist dictator and leader of his very own personality cult, Generalissimo and Caudillo Francisco Franco.

He was an intense Catholic, Fascist, Conservative, Homophobe and Anti-Semite as well as a strong believer in the unity of Spain (aka anti-autonomous communities or regions like Catalonia, Galicia, and Basque Country, even though he was from Galicia himself). Among other things, he eliminated all political parties except for his own, the fascist Falange Española; restored Napoleon’s Civil Code from 1804 which did such lovely things as state that women were minors, couldn’t vote, couldn’t divorce, had no power over their earnings or family money, and that their husbands could take away their kids without their say; took all of the infrastructure and housing plans from the 2nd republic and turned them into his own (apartments all around Salamanca today still have the Franco plaque on them that say that they were constructed under the Ministry of Housing or whatever from his dictatorship),

Fun fact about Franco—he died on my birthday in 1975. He was sick for a while before he finally kicked the bucket (is that rude?) and my parents told me that on SNL they had a running thing on the news where they’d be like “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.” As Kat says, some people were/are mad that he died in bed and some are mad that he died at all.

You won’t be missed, at least not by me, Franco. Sorry. Except not really. Even though I’m grateful to you for providing a probable topic for my impending independent study/honors project.

So Franco dies in 1975 and thus begins the transition to democracy. Keeping things simple, Juan Carlos (grandson of Alfonso XIII, king before the 2nd republic kicked him out…remember???) becomes king, founds a parliamentary monarchy, works along with the country to essentially forget Franco and not worry too much about reconciliation or about punishing anyone involved in his regime (v different from South Africa’s transition from Apartheid in 1990), which in and of itself is wicked interesting, at least to me, and will probably feature prominently in my project. The current constitution was ratified in 1978 and things have been generally pretty calm since then. Depending on whom you ask.

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!

Vantage Point: Warning! SPOILERS!

CAUTION: THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD!
DO NOT KEEP READING IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS
IN VANTAGE POINT/EN EL PUNTO DE MIRA!!!!!!!!!!!






So Janna and Julio and Jose and I (I seem to have a thing for people with J-names….like Middkids Jess, Jesse, Joey, and Jake….) went to see Vantage Point last night. And oh my god, as Julio said “poor Salamanca, they’ve made you so pathetic!” (except in spanish). It was mostly entertaining and extremely frustrating. And also hilarious, especially when it was blatantly obvious to anyone who lives in Salamanca that 80% of the scenes were shot in Mexico. It’s one of those movies that I’d only ever see again if I a) was reallllllly missing Salamanca and felt like it was worth the hour and a half of mild torture to see some lovely aerial shots of the city, b) was really drunk with Janna and Julio and wanted to relive the old days, c) wanted to show someone who had never been to Salamanca what it looked like, or d) had amnesia and forgot how bad ithe movie was.

The movie’s tagline is something about 8 strangers all sharing their different viewpoints re: what happened when the president of the US was shot at an anti-terror summit in Salamanca (why Salamanca?!?! Nobody knows). I don’t think they ever actually get through the 8 viewpoints but maybe there was more than one viewpoint per clip. Anyway. It was obnoxious. The first 8 minutes or so of the movie is “real-time” and shows the president showing up, news coverage, him getting shot, and then the bomb going off in the Plaza Mayor, everybody freaking out, mayhem, etc. Then, the rest of the first half or ¾ of the movie is made up of 5 or 6 different “stories” “told” respectively with the following people as protagonists: Dennis Quaid, Forrest Whitaker, William Hurt (the president), Eduardo Noriega, his supposed girlfriend/her terrorist amigos, aaaaaand maybe that’s it. Each of these individual “stories” starts 23 minutes before the president is shot/bomb goes off, and at the end of each “story” the frame freezes and rewinds through everything that just happened until it’s back to a few minutes before this scene, when they all arrive at the Plaza (Matthew Fox and Dennis Quaid are security guards).


This is right before the president (actually, a body-double, which might cause some confusion later on in the movie, but we’ll get to that) gets shot.


This is right after the president has been shot, Dennis Quaid and black security guard saw Eduardo Noriega run up onto the platform and think he’s suspicious when really he’s not, he’s a police officer and anyway in the end we find out he’s been used by his terrorist/anti-american girlfriend. Whatever. There was a lot of yelling and tense faces in this movie.


Forest Whitaker is this poor dude who is just traveling around Europe to get away from his divorce and manages to film EVERYTHING with this camera. At the end of the movie after he’s run around Salamanca like a nutcase and run across streets and saved a little girls’ life by diving in front of an ambulance, he still has the freaking camera! Julio says he wants one because it looks like it is literally a life- saver. Just one of many inconsistencies in the movie…argh. Anyway, it seems like Forest recorded an assassin in a window in the Plaza and so the security guards are checking it out. Matthew Fox later turns out to be a double-crossing liar and is actually part of the plot behind killing the president—the supposed assassin was actually a fan remotely turned on. Matthew Fox decides to go investigate because clearly, he’s in on it, but he plays it off like he’s taking one for the team because Dennis Quaid has some shame in his past and can’t really afford to making a mistake again. Or something.



Anyway, after all of the short stories that rewind at the end and make you want to scream because you just don’t CARE anymore and you just want to know what happens AFTER all of these freaking clips end, there is like….half an hour or more of everyone’s stories intersecting as the pieces finally fall into place. And it’s cool in the sense that you get it, and you see how all of the points of view overlap, but then the movie ends and you say to yourself….wait a minute, what was the point of that?! We’ll get to that in a minute, more photos for now.

This is poor, used, Eduardo Noriega running from the local police/whomever. He also liked to run across multi-lane highways. The actors in general in this movie really liked to do that. It was obnoxious. Also, much of this took place on an elevated and intense highway system that not only does not exist in Salamanca, it is certainly not SEVEN BLOCKS from the Plaza Mayor as Dennis Quaid says at the end. It might not seem to funny to those of you who haven’t ever been here but it would be like…I don’t know, digitally placing an LA 4-lane highway in Brunswick, Maine or Carlisle, MA. Totally ludicrous! But anyway.



This is poor but sweet Forest Whitaker carrying STUPID ANA (she tries to cross this anomalous highway and nearly gets killed by an ambulance containing the real President, driven by Eduardo Noriega’s double-crossing terrorist girlfriend, but Forest Whitaker saves her). Notice how he still has his freaking camera!

This is right near the end of the movie where Dennis Quaid has just fast-speed-chased Matthew Fox and another terrorist guy in a police car for literally like a half an hour through the CLEARLY MEXICAN streets of “Salamanca.” After he gets squished between an 18-wheeler and a wall in his car and escapes RELATIVELY UNSCATHED, Dennis Quaid runs down to this supposed overpass and manages to find the ambulance that held the kidnapped president, which has not only rolled over on its side about 7 times but has gotten sideswiped by like 8 cars that pile up around it…..only to find the president, alive, and able to STAND UP RIGHT AWAY after all of that.

So Dennis Quaid finds the president and he’s all “call for help! Oh em gee! We’re 7 blocks from the Plaza Mayor” which, hello, you just drove around the winding streets of Salamanca for EVER and you think you know EXACTLY where you are?! Not even!

After everyone is all happy because the president is still alive, bad guys are dead, blah blah, there is like an aerial pull-back shot of Salamanca that not only includes this amazing, anomalous overpass/highway but an elevated TRAM, with an old beat-up tram chugging right across the screen. With the cathedral in the background. In addition to these gems, there is a tall metropolitan/modern hotel tower where the president/security guards are staying, with amazing views of the Plaza/Cathedrals. There is no building tall enough ANYWHERE AROUND SALAMANCA to get such a view. It was done with a helicopter! Absurd. THEN, there is a statue of a dude on a horse outside the plaza. Right, yes, him...I see that statue every day. There was even a Moroccan section of Salmanca, apparently, too. I know, I'm being super critical and whatever, nobody who doesn't know Salamanca would ever KNOW, it's just....too funny! And sad, because Salamanca really rocks.

Speaking of which, why in god's name was there an anti-terrorist summit in Salamanca!? There is no explanation, I'm sorry. Also, WHO WERE THE TERRORISTS?? What was their deal??! What did they want?! That was never explained, either, as far as I can tell. All we really deduced was that the message was "Hey! We're the US! Look at us! We NEVER DIE!!!! YOU CAN NEVER KILL OUR PRESIDENT! Plus, we chose NOT to bomb Morocco (or whatever) because we are MORAL and PACIFIST! Did I mention that you can't kill us, and that terrorists are horrible and are out to get the president but it's NOT HIS FAULT!?!? Plus, THE PRESIDENT IS INVINCIIIIBLEEEE. That is all."

Anyway, we were entertained, if not by the actual movie, then at least by the inconsistencies, anomalies, and sheer absurdity. Plus, cute guys.



Oh! Weird fact! This dude aka terrorist leader man who, among other things, instructs his bellboy friend to strap dynamite to himself and blow up the aforementioned insanely tall and modern hotel, remotely sets off the fan that confuses Dennis Quaid into thinking there is an assassin somewhere in the Plaza, creepily befriends Forest Whitaker, remotely shoots the gun that actually IS in the Plaza buildings that kills the president, and later drives around with Eduardo Noriega's supposed girlfriend is played by a guy who got into the movie business because he's good friends with Matthieu Kassovitz aka Nino from Amélie....small world!



Family gets here in a WEEK!!!!!!
xoxo
-c-