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¿oyes el viento?...

9-M and others

I should have tittled this post "Spain still goes on" but I didn't want to make the blog look like a review about the different EU countries since in my last post I talked about Italy...
but nevertheless, this post will go over the highlights of the current situation of Spain. Even if I am here, I like to be updated about what's going on in Spain.

Firstly, the elections coming up this Sunday. I have to say that I am very angry with the Spanish embassy in Stockholm for not having sent me the papers which would allow me to vote even if I am in Sweden. Unanswered calls, no reply to my e-mails,... anyway. I am quite aware that it is important to vote, specially at decisive moments like this. The one good thing that has happened during this electoral period has been the fact that the candidates from the two major parties (PP- conservatives, PSOE- socialists) have finally accepted to participate in a public debate. Actually there have been two. I was able to watch them the day after in youtube and in the websites of Spanish newspapers. (Please take a look at the video in the Youtube link) Aparent conclusions from these debates: the socialists have a stronger candidate and they are, according to polls, said to be the most voted party next Sunday.

My personal opinion according to what I've seen... I am not going to analyse the concrete arguments of either Zapatero (socialists) or Rajoy (conservatives) but what I am going to point out is the attitude of both them during the debate: it is certainly not acceptable to giggle about certain aspects or to just come back over and over to the same arguments whenever they do not belong to the discussion. The conservatives will still be unable to reach the government as long as they keep with this candidate and with their political untolerant attitude...

The best thing about these debates on TV has been that they have proved that Spanish people are interested politics (still!): over 12million people watched the debates. I must admit I feel proud about this, we DO care about what politicians do! :)

More things... well, what actually pushed me to write this post was the finding of this extract from my favourite radio programme, "La Ventana", presented by Gemma Nierga. The interview is about an investigation called "In the mind of the torturing" which has ended as a documentary/book. Baltasar Garzón, a well-knowned Spanish judge responsible for trials about terrorism and international genocide (specially about the Argentinian dictartorship), and Vicente Romero have condutec it. In this link you will get to the interview... It's really shocking to think about their inner feelings during this investigations as they dealed both with those who were torturing and those who were tortured...
The question which has arised to me after hearing about the investigation process is: up to where should the legitimacy of foreign countries and what's more international organisms to take to trial those who are acused of having commited crimes in their home States?
The case that I am concretely thinking about is the jugding of the Argentinian militars by Spanish courts... the trial for these crimes started earlier in Spain than in Argentina due to the inmunity laws that were aproved after the dictatorship...

bumping into Happiness...

Today while reading the blog of an old friend I met some lovely lines about "la felicidad", which is actually the same as happiness, but in Spanish sounds so much nicer ;) After having read it, I couldn't help it looking up in wikipedia.com (it's becoming one of my daily tools here) the definition of "felicidad"... situación involuntaria en la que los factores internos y externos interactuan activando el sistema límbico (does anybody know what this means?), que estimulado adecuadamente, informará de este estado anímico. I found this too technical so I kept on searching. I didn't actually find the definition but something rather more interesting: Satisfaction with Life Index: the average self-reported happiness in different nations, using direct measures of happiness as an alternative to traditional measures of policy success. Surprinsingly (or maybe not so surprinsingly) Sweden is amongst the list of the most "happy" countries in the World...

from the most happy to the less happy: green>blue>purple>orange>red

I'm finishing this brief thought about "la felicidad" with an interesting sentence from Henry Van Dyke: "La felicidad es interior, no exterior; por lo tanto, no depende de lo que tenemos, sino de lo que somos." TOTALLY AGREE. Happiness is born in our minds...

What makes me happy right now? To think about sunny lovely weather, just as the one we're having here this week despite the low temperatures (2.3ºC right now in Ryd, 23.44)...

Looking foward to tomorrow,

Have a good night ;)

The Stereotypes...

This is not the 1st time I stop to think about stereotypes... Actually, I thought quite a lot about it before going to the IW Milan in April this year cause the topic of the week was "Fight against stereotypes". I guess it's something that always comes up to you whenever meeting foreign ppl, what's the idea they have aboutSpanish ppl? About Sweden... I believe it to be a very cold place, I thought the ppl were cold too but having had the opportunity to meet quite a few Swedes this year (wonderful IW's!), I think the stereotype I had was wrong. At first they can seem closed and distant but give them the chance and u'll see they are very nice ppl :D A fact: in Spain it is said that ALL Swedish girls are hot. True or false?
I've been speaking lately to 3 young nice Swedish guys (who will from now onwards be Mr. X, Mr. Y and Mr. Z) about the Spanish stereotype. I'll base this post on what they said. Hope the conclusions will be positive!
Well, according to Mr. X ( I promised to keep his identity hidden), Spanish ppl are darked haired and loud. Mmm, yes, that's true, we're quite loud, I should say noisy... but how are u supposed to be heared in a crowded bar plus high volume of music if u don't shout?
Mr. Z spoke about the warm character of Spaniards: "u like partying and drinking". Is that positive? The partying definitively,though the drinking not so sure if it's in terms of alcoholism. Anyway, who doesn't enjoy a lovely warm afternoon drinking a couple of beers with some friends or even better, with some tasty sangria? Come on! Nobody could ever resist! But he added somthing else, he believes Spanish ppl to be very friendly. That's nice Mr. Z! Thanks!
Mr. X added some other facts such as the language. He answered "yes" whenever I asked him if Spanish sounded sweet to him. :D Does Swedish sound sweet too?
Mr. Y knows too much about Spain. And more he'll get to know whenever his Erasmus here starts ;) To sum up all of his information, he thinks Spanish girls are nice.
So... I feel they didn't have a negative view on Spanish ppl, hope that all Swedes think the same!

I just found this pic in Google images... will we love Linköping at the end of the semester?