General Strike is tomorrow

Tomorrow there is a nation-wide general strike against the PP government's labor reform law. When I hear General Strike I tend to think of the heyday of European socialism when they people believed they could crush capitalism once and for all if everyone just stopped working. I'm not completely clear on what is hoped to be achieved this time. The governing party won an absolute majority last fall and can basically do what they want, so I guess that this strike is pure protest. I was asking one Spanish person about this, and she rolled her eyes and said "yes, I know, we Spaniards do everything too late. If anything we should have protested last fall, before the election, because the PP said that they were going to put a labor reform into place if they won, and they won, so what did we expect?" As I see it, the government holds a kind of high ground; a pretty obvious rhetorical rebuttal would be to say something like, "this is a liberal constitutional system, and the proper way to voice your political views is through the ballot box, not by shutting down the country"-- but this is as far as I'm willing to go with talking about politics, because I'm only too aware of how annoying it is when people from other countries start with that.

General strike in Spanish = Huelga General

More importantly, in Galician = Folga Xeral

GENERAL STRIKE against the labor reform and the social pact. [Mini poster-within-a-poster:] "Mobilize yourself for the distribution of work and wealth." Social Justice - Public Services - Employment - Rights - Liberty.

These are lines from a poem, and I'm finding them hard to understand. Something like: "The rope that tempers the force of destiny broken, an entire people rebels within time-- general strike against history"

I doubt I'll be able to get to work tomorrow-- I doubt the buses will be running, or that they'll get picketed out or something. Maybe I'll go to the protest to see what it's like. On the other hand I don't know how enthusiastic I am about being the obvious foreigner with a camera.

Petroglifo

Today we went on an excursion to the mountain to see a petroglyph.

Hoy hicimos una excursión al monte para ver un petroglifo.

Hoxe fixemos unha excursión ao monte para ver un petroglifo.

Below you can see it, traced in chalk.

Abajo se puede verlo, trazado con tiza.

Abaixo pódese velo, trazado con xiz.

This man was an amateur archaeologist and told us about the petroglyph. It dates back to 4000 BC, or the Copper Age. They don't know exactly what the patterns could mean.

Este hombre era un aficionado a la arqueología y nos contó cosas sobre el petroglifo. Se remonta a 4000 a.C., o sea la Edad del Cobre. No se sabe exactamente que podrían significar las marcas.

Este home era un afeccionado a la arqueoloxía e contounos cousas sobre o petroglifo. Remóntase a 4000 a.C., o sexa a Idade do Cobre. Non se sabe exactamente que poderían significar as marcas.

Frivolous pop culture

Here's something just for fun. This is a Brazilian song called "Ai se eu te pego" that is incredibly popular here. Its popularity in Spain is based on the fact that Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese soccer star who plays for Real Madrid, celebrated a goal by doing the dance that goes along with the song. And for months this song has been ubiquitous here. Everyone knows it. Little kids know it and sing it. The three-year-olds at my school started singing it all together one time. The truth is that it's a pretty simple and repetitive song.

The point of the song is that the narrator goes to a dance and sees a really hot girl and he's saying "oh, if I get my hands on you" or something of that sort. There is an English translation which says "if I catch you" but I think this sounds weird in English. My Brazilian flatmate, who also speaks American English fluently, insists that in Portuguese it sounds really tame and means something like "If I could hang out with you." The thrusting motions in the song seem to suggest otherwise but who knows.

I'm not really sure if this song is popular in the US. I sent the video to my sister and she seemed a little baffled. "What is this song? This video is weird, there are just like a thousand women singing the same song." On the other hand the statistics on youtube show that people in the US have been watching it. (The official video has 246 million views, and that's not including all the other unofficial ones.)

Sports, Football, Politics

The Spanish are really into sports. Football (Soccer) especially. There are numerous newspapers dedicated solely to sports, and of course every regular newspaper has its sports section too. TV news programs also have sports sections and there are even 30 or 60 minute sports reports on regular channels.

One cool feature of the soccer leagues here is that after every season the worst teams in the first league move down to the second league and the best of the lower league move up. I feel like this makes the 2nd league actually interesting, in contrast to, say, minor league baseball, in which even if you are the champions, you're still just champions of the minor league and are condemned to stay there and lose all your best players to your major league patron. I guess this is all a historical thing cause the minor leagues of baseball have their origins in farm teams.

Vigo's team is called Real Club Celta de Vigo, and while in the past it was really good, and played in European leagues and stuff, now it's in the second league. So most people here also support a team from La Liga. Basically you have to choose either Real Madrid or Barcelona, since these are by far the most dominant teams in the league. You can find Madrid and Barcelona paraphernalia in all the shops here. In my school it seems to be about a 80-20 split favoring Barça. The kids always ask me what my team is, or to phrase it the Spanish way, of what team I am. I dodge this controversial question by claiming to be of Sevilla.

A lot of the teams here have odd English names like Athletic Club, Racing (pronounced Rah-thing), or Sporting. Then there's Real Betis Balompié, which uses an unusual but really more authentically Spanish word for football-- balompié instead of futbol. See, all the other sports names seem to be calqued from English-- so that basketball is baloncesto (balón = ball, cesto = basket), handball is balonmano-- and so logically football should be balón+pié=balompié.

Tennis is pretty popular too since the Spanish players are so dominant.

The NBA is actually a big deal here which always suprises me. You always see NBA recaps on tv. There are a few Spanish players in the NBA so the coverage always features them disproportionately. And by disproportionately I mean that they take up like 90% of the time.

Below you can see some translated excerpts from an article in El Mundo about the connection between politics and football. It focuses especially on the rivalry between Real Madrid and Barcelona FC.

"The Madrid/Barcelona duopoly is a metaphor for the permanent tension between the central government and the Generalitat of Catalonia.

In Catalonia, Real Madrid's refusal to allow the final of the Copa del Rey, in which Barça and Athletic de Bibao will play, to be held in Bernabéu [Real Madrid's stadium] has been interpreted as a gesture against Catalan nationalism. Catalan and Basque independentist groups, for their part, have announced that they'll take advantage of the fact that the final will be held in Madrid, in Vicente Calderón stadium, to hold a large sovereignist rally. Football and Politics join hands.

Many first-generation Spanish immigrants in Catalonia support Real Madrid to show their disagreement with and opposition to Catalan nationalism. On the other hand, the majority of the second generation are staunch followers of Barça. This is similar to what happened in the days of Franco with the children of the Guardias Civiles, born in Catalonia or the Basque Country, who were usually Anti-Franquists, revolutionaries and radical nationalists; they needed to seek forgiveness for being the children of a repressive force against nationalism and its symbols. Foreign immigrants shout with Barça fans for their team and against Real Madrid, or vice versa, to prove their will to identify with the country that has accepted them. Peripheral nationalists accuse Real Madrid fans of being centralists.

Within Catalonia, there are different ways of understanding nationalism, each fighting to take the reins of the club, and this is reflected in the club's history. Nuñez represented the independence of the institution. "He didn't let politicians influence anything in the club, that's why they threw him out," many people have told me. With Laporta, independentism took over the club. The repercussions of Guardiola's [the current coach] words in favor of Laporta's management aren't due to the words themselves, but because they're viewed as support for a certain political position. About Rossel, people think he's nationalist but not independentist.

With Athletic de Bilbao, things are a little more complicated because of the existence of ETA and the various currents of nationalism in the Basque Country. Of course, no one considers Bilbao to be the team of ETA. In Galicia, the independentist party is the BNG [Galician Nationalist Bloc], but it doesn't identify with either Deportivo de Coruña or Celta de Vigo, the symbolic teams. Outside of Spain, those who view Catalonia as a nation subjected to Spain defend Barcelona, and those who view Catalonia as just another region of Spain could be supporters of Madrid or of Barcelona."

Manuel Mandianes, "Fútbol, tensión nacionalista." El Mundo, March 16 2012.

UPDATE: Apropos of all this I thought I would record a song I heard some students singing on the bus, which is a parody version of the Real Madrid anthem:
"Hala Madrid, Hala Madrid, el equipo del gobierno, la vergüenza del país"
"Let's go Madrid, Let's go Madrid, the team of the government, the shame of the country"

Graffiti at the shipyards

Political graffiti is a funny thing for me because it barely exists in the US. These pictures were taken at the shipyards.

"No to privatization." "General Strike March 29"

"March 10 Day of the Galician Worker. 1972-2007 The struggle continues." (Portuguese-style spelling)

I find this one kind of funny, because Che spoke Spanish but they've translated it into Portuguese-style Galician. The famous original slogan is "Hasta la victoria siempre"--"forever towards victory"

O Entroido de Tirán

As promised... pictures of our school Entroido (Carnival) celebration

It wouldn't be a CEIP Tirán festival without lots of delicious food!

The three-year-olds were bunnies. Please note the fuzzy feet. They really went all-out. Also on display, yrs truly dressed as a trasgo (elf). Below, our preschool teacher and secretary Eva in her big mama rabbit costume, addressing one of her charges. Bugs appears to be leering.

The four- and five-year-olds were Mouchiños, or little owls. Seriously, these costumes were incredible.

2nd grade dressed as bumblebees. The dog joined in.

foxes

3rd and 4th grades: foxes, squirrels, hedgehogs, trees

Festa da Arribada

On Saturday some friends and I went down to Baiona for the Festa da Arribada. You may remember from my previous post about Baiona that Baiona was where the caravel "Pinta" made landfall after discovering the New World (according to Wikipedia, the Pinta got separated from the Niña and Santa María in a storm, and happened to be the first ship to land in Europe; the other two ships sailed to Lisbon). Arribada is the festival that celebrates that arrival (both Arribada and our word arrive come from Latin ad ripam, "to the shore"). There are banners in the street that read "Bayona 1493," and lots of people dress up in period costume. There are people playing on drums and bagpipes. There are even events like jousting. The narrow streets of the old part of town are crammed with people, kiosks, food stands, grills. You can smell all sorts of meat grilling-- chorizos and other sausages, ribs, etc. There are tables full of empanadas and sweets. Everywhere you can buy small clay bowls of wine called cuncas. Everything is very cheap, unlike the food at festivals in the US.

The replica of the caravel

These are Galician empanadas. The little pastries that are often called empanadas in the US are called "empanadillas" here (using the diminutive). Empanadas can be filled with flavored meat, tuna, squid, codfish, and even octopus. On the left you can see piled-up cuncas.

Picture times are here again

Well, it has been a while. In these cameraless days, you, my faithful legion of readers, have missed out on a lot. At the beginning of February, I went to Lisbon, which is in my opinion one of the most snapshot-worthy cities in the world (btw, I recently read that the word snapshot originally referred to a quick shot with a gun). Later on I went to Scotland-- but maybe I can get some photos from my friends. At my school, we had a really fun Carnival celebration, with costumes and food and a parade-- once I get photos from some of the other teachers, I'll post those. But there's one thing I've been dying to brag about for two months now, which is the views from my new apartment window. They are beautiful and vary in color and nuance according the time of day and atmospheric conditions. Take it away Galicia:

Claude Monet, you're welcome anytime... fifth floor on the left