Category Archives: Living la vida española

March 28, 2008 · 12:32 pm

The Real Obama Card

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A Scottish friend just sent me an email asking why all of his American friends are so pro-Obama and why he doesn’t know any Republicans. Surely there must be some Republicans, he inquires. After thinking about, I came up with the following explanation:

I know plenty of Republicans, but they’re all in the States. In Europe, Americans won’t admit that they’re Republicans because ever since Bush took office, an American can’t get laid abroad. We have been relegated to pretending we are Canadians to get a “yes”. Now, change is in the air. There is a window of opportunity — it’s what I call the Obama Card. You tell the señoritas that you’re pro-Obama, and you can start believing in change. Yes we can!

As a matter of fact, the entire American ex-pat community’s support for Obama — he did win the Democrats Abroad primary — may be based solely on an eight year dry spell. Yes we can!

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March 9, 2008 · 10:30 pm

Spanish Elections: Not My Country

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The Spanish Presidential Elections are/were today, and it looks like Zapatero and his PSOE Party have won.  In other words, Dumb has just beat Dumber. Normally I would care — I do enjoy elections — but it has simply been an incredibly boring campaign with almost no interesting options or political arguments. Just look at the basic facts: Continue reading →

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February 8, 2008 · 9:34 pm

Spanish Presidential Elections: Dumb and Even Dumber

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Make no mistake of it, Spain’s incumbent president, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, probably has the lowest IQ and his cabinet have the lowest combined IQs of any ruling government in Europe. These guys are just dumb, and also naive. They’ve botched almost every foreign policy, economic, and national security decision possible. They have also engaged in activities that have ranged from the utterly incompetent (the AVE bullet train projects) to the offensive (energy company mergers) to the mind-boggling (ETA negotiations). The Ministry of Finance went so far as to blame inflation on the citizens for leaving too big of a tip when ordering coffee (Spaniards never leave more than spare change, by the way), and he told people they should save money by eating rabbit for Christmas dinner. If it weren’t so outright pathetic, it would be laughable.

But never fear, the opposition party, the Partido Popular, led by clueless imbecile Mariano Rajoy and helped by the Spanish Catholic Bishops are making sure that Spain will be ruled for another four years by Zapatero’s PSOE socialist party. Last week, those Catholic Bishops did the democratically responsible thing and actually made a public statement telling Spaniards that as Catholics they were obliged to vote against Zapatero because of his stance on abortion rights and negotiating with terrorists. Last time I checked, Christianity talked about God, not Caesar. It’s more double jeopardy. Bishops should be talking about how we live our lives to stay out of hell, not out of jail.

Then today at lunch while reading the conservative Spanish newspaper El ABC (Marca was already taken), I ran across something incredibly disturbing. Rajoy is proposing legislation to regulate the use of the veil (meaning female Muslims wearing a head garment) in public places and schools. Why? To avoid discrimination against women. Well, this got me going. Spain has the worst income disparity between men and women of any country of Europe. Hey, do you think workplace discrimination in Spain is caused by the 25 Muslim women in the entire country who may wear a cloth on their head?

The ethnocentricism is appalling! Continue reading →

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January 16, 2008 · 2:25 pm

Living la vida española

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I just saw a new Facebook group called, “You know you’ve lived in Spain when . . .” that was kind of stupid, but did include some things that I thought were pretty on point. Here are the fairly accurate ones: Continue reading →

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January 6, 2008 · 5:54 pm

Too Much Home Entertainment

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I have a case of too much home entertainment on my hands. One of the problems is that Christmas normally lasts from the day after Thanksgiving until December 25th. After that point, all Christmas music and decorations should be safely put away until the following November. But this is not the case in Spain where the Epiphany is celebrated as a central part of Christmas season.

As a matter of fact, children receive their gifts not from Santa Claus on December 25th, but rather from the three Wise Men (Reyes Magos, ironicially a misnomer since they are not kings nor magicians) on January 6th. This all means that after having said my good byes to Christmas two weeks ago, I returned to Spain to find that everyone was still out shopping and whistling expired caroles. Furthermore, as today is January 6th, everything is closed except for bakeries which sell the traditional and inedible Roscón de Reyes (a dry, uninteresting cake). As a result, I have spent today (and the entire weekend) locked up inside my apartment alternating between various Christmas gifts and my new reading list to entertain myself. Continue reading →

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December 9, 2007 · 1:39 pm

Christmas in Madrid

Yesterday afternoon, we took a long walk through Madrid to look at the Christmas decorations. The Plaza Mayor’s Christmas market was full of the traditional Nativity Scene (called a Belén meaning Bethlehem) figurines, but there were also many other non-Christmas articles that could be purchased like Elvis wigs and other more Halloween-esque costumes. Don’t ask because I don’t have an answer.

Then we walked back towards the Puerta del Sol, down towards Cibeles, up to Colón, then towards the Glorieta de Bilbao, and finally to Chamberí. The streets were more crowded, almost unbearably so, than I have ever seen before either during navidades or any other time of the year.

As promised, I made this low-budget video to compete with Paris’ Christmas lights. Yes, that’s Elvis singing “If Everyday Was Like Chrismas”. I also snuck into the video two local images from local bars: hundreds of legs of Jamón and the typically Madrid snack of Bocadillos de Calamares (squid sandwiches).

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November 21, 2007 · 3:56 pm

Spain and Kyoto

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Everytime the U.S. decides to NOT sign an international treaty, I take a lot of crap here in Spain from my friends and co-workers. Without having to enter into the merits of whether the treaty in question should or should not be signed, I always make the following statement: The U.S. is a country of lawyers. If we sign a treaty, we’ll have lawyers making sure that that treaty will be enforced. It is easy for a country like Spain to sign treaties when they know they will never comply with it.

For example, today there was an article in the El Mundo newspaper on how Spain was the E.U. country with the worst Kyoto Protocol compliance record in 2005. Ironically, the same newspaper article says that the world’s biggest non-compliers were the U.S. and Australia, but how do you fail to comply with an agreement you never signed?

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November 20, 2007 · 6:36 pm

Recycled Post of the Week: En Español para Hysidro

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Today my friend and co-worker, Hysidro, told me that he would read Grave Error more often if I wrote more frequently in Spanish. I still recall having asked him for his advice. Nevertheless, I decided to throw the dawg a bone, and for this Recycled Post of the Week, I am giving you one in Spanish from September 2006, called “No sé si estoy enamorado de Natalia Verbeke.”

I think it is actually one of my better posts, so much so that later in March 2007, I tried to write a similar post in English but with much less succes. I suppose you can’t recycle everything.

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November 16, 2007 · 2:07 pm

Dilbert on Usability and In House Counsel

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If you’ve ever worked in an internet company, then you’ll definitely get this comic strip.

It is also reminds me of what I have seen during the last seven years as the fundamental difference between the practice of law in the U.S. and Spain. In Spain, lawyers tell you want you cannot do, and in the U.S. they tell you how you can do it.

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October 4, 2007 · 2:06 pm

Political Civility in Spain and the U.S.

Last night, I watched and listened to podcasts about the primary elections in the U.S. from NBC’s Meet the Press and ABC’s This Week. I was particularly impressed by the civility of U.S. politicians, pondits, and President Clinton himself in discussing the upcoming elections. For example, Newt Gingrich (Clinton’s former nemesis in the House of Representatives) called Bill Clinton the best politician of his generation. He also had good things to say about Hillary. Meanwhile, President Clinton had positive things to say about various Republican candidates. Even Pat Buchanan had a few nice words for Obama.

I got to thinking that in Spain, members of one party (and even journalists who associate with one party) will never say anything remotely positive about anyone from another party. There isn’t even a general notion of respect for former presidents. Then this morning I saw these two pieces of news: Continue reading →

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