Intern, continued

Well, I met with my tutor and now I know what the internship is about. I have to perform a series of surveys about how social networks (all social networks, not just Facebook :-P) have an impact in the way expatriates in Spain adjust to the local environment. The expatriates must not be latino since that is the typical stereotype of an immigrant in Spain and a lot of literature has been written on that regard. I will work with Western Europeans, North Americans, Asians, and so on. Anybody interested in taking part of the survey? We will give away pens and mugs :-)

Intern

I have started working as an intern at IE. I will be aiding a strategy professor in his research work about expats in Spain. I will be telling how things go.

Euskadi

Last week I went for a short holiday to the Basque Country. The first impression when you are entering the region while riding on the train is that you are in a completely different country. All of a sudden you leave the vast plains of central Spain and bump into green mountains, full of all sorts of crops, forests and sheep. One fertile hill valley after another reminded me of my home country and the Andean landscape. Finally we made it to Bilbao. This city is overstretched along a narrow river valley, and around it you find a lot of viaducts to help the highways sort out the many hills around the place. The old city is nice and well preserved, and the food there is quite nice. A myriad of "bares de pintxos" offer you a wide variety of options when it comes to eating. However, most of the city has been built with gray, sad buildings, which damages the urban landscape.
From Bilbao we took a one-hour bus to San Sebastián. These two cities differ from one another in many ways. First of all, San Sebastián is right by the sea, next to a lovely bay, Bahía de La Concha, which offers a great landscape as well as nice beaches. Second, San Sebastián is way smaller, which makes sense given that it is mainly a tourist spot while Bilbao has developed itself as an industrial and commercial center. Third, San Sebastián has more parks and "green spaces". The common point between the two cities, besides the vicinity of mountains and the euskera, is the great food you can eat.
I certainly recommend Euskadi (the name of the Basque Country in euskera) as a holiday destination. If you get dry weather, I am sure it might be totally enjoyable (we had rain pouring down on us almost always). Try the food, watch the nice landscapes, go to the sea, take it easy and relax there. It's worth the experience.

Spain vs Turkey

I went tonight to the Bernabeu to watch Spain vs Turkey. Here are my remarks on the match:
Turkey proved to be a very complicated rival for the Spaniards. In the first minutes of the match, the local defense was half asleep and the Turks had a couple of clear occasions to score. After that, La Roja became more focused on the match and began to keep the Turkish attackers at bay. Nevertheless, the five midfielders with whom Turkey was playing with managed to effectively close all the available spaces making it hard for Xavi and his mates to connect with the attackers. Cazorla had a night to forget so all efforts to breach the Turkish defense on the left side didn't succeed. Senna was also a little bit nervous and confused. The first half ended 0-0.
After the break, Spain started to try attacking on the right side, relaying on Sergio Ramos, who had a wonderful match. He became constantly a threat to the rival defense, generating many occasions for La Roja. But none of them found the net. Finally, after a free kick, the ball ended at the feet of Ramos, who made a cross that Piqué used to score the only goal of the night. After that, Spain went from a 4-4-2 to a 4-5-1 to try to generate more occasions using the wingers and to fill up the midfield in order to block any Turkish attacks. They managed to do it successfully and it was another victory for the Spaniards.
In general, the match wasn't a pretty one. It was played mainly in the midfield, with not too many shots on goal. The absence of Iniesta was felt all along the 90 minutes and Alonso didn't prove to be as good as a partner for Xavi. Silva played during the last minutes because of physical problems, and his absence during the rest of the match was a hindrance for the Spanish offensive intentions. Let's see what happens in Istanbul next week.

On political marketing

In recent days, the spokeswoman of the Popular Party (PP), Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, appeared on Elle magazine not only answering to an interview but also appearing in a series of photos in which they were trying to make her look quite sexier than she actually is (Photoshop makes miracles). Some weeks before, she had also appeared in another magazine wearing clothes that intended to leave little to imagination. All this reminded me of another politician, this time a Colombian one, called Gina Parody. When she was running for Congress three years ago, she was the cover of virtually every magazine in Colombia, and in some of them she was, like her Spaniard counterpart, trying to "sell" a sexy image of herself to the public. And some of the street banners of her campaign portrayed her draped in a violet tissue, with one of her bare shoulders showing off. Male politicians don't escape from this trend, either. Bill Clinton was very appealing as a candidate for the female population of the U.S. sixteen years ago, but because he was appealing as a man as well.
As far as I am concerned, everybody has the right to appear in a fashion magazine showing off if that suits him or her and if it is good for his or her self-esteem. What is sad about this particular cases is that they try to use physical attraction in order to get votes for them. And I'm sure that works, because if not political marketing gurus wouldn't allow it for sure. And if people buy beer because they see a woman in a bathing suit next to it, they may also buy a political ideology. But this is a sign that we are not only living in times of economic crisis, but of political crisis as well. The political culture of the average citizen is rather poor. He or she hardly knows about the program that each candidate proposes. They cannot see the difference between one party or another, except for basic things (e.g. pro-war versus anti-war). So the marketing strategy for politicians is now "OK, these people are so primitive and stupid that we just have to address their basic instincts to get them on our side". I personally hate these publicity gurus but I have to admit that their point makes sense. People now only care about basic stuff, notably food and entertainment. Perhaps the traditional politicians are the ones to blame, because of their incompetence and corruption, but it is also true that civilization in its current state have wrapped us in an environment of self-endulgence that to a certain measure have alienated us. This reminds me of some words from the Unabomber who said that the culture of the late twentieth century was sublimating the will of power of human beings to the point of almost becoming domestic animals. Maybe his prophecy is fulfilling.

Cause

I invite all of you to join, or at least take a look at, this:
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/138200?m=7d290bcb

The two sides of the coin

Spain is a very young democracy, at least in European terms. It was only 34 years ago that the dictatorship ended and 31 since the last Constitution was approved. This means that political debate hasn't had enough time to mature. The dictatorship of Franco, and, before his time, the absolutist monarchy, only tolerated conservative movements and confined the rest into clandestinity. For example, the socalist party (PSOE) has spent around 75% of its existence as an underground movement. Shortly before the approval of the Constitution, a group of militants of the communist party were slaughtered in downtown Madrid. Governments, allied with the Catholic church and the social elite, prevented this sorts of political entities to have its rightful place. Only during the brief lapsus of the First Republic was a climate of tolerance, just to be wiped out by Franco and his army.
So there is still deep hard feelings between left-wing and right-wing parties in the Spanish political arena. This has led to an impossibility to get themselves to "agree on the fundamentals" with the notorious exception of the 1978 constitution. You can still feel the climate of confrontation between the PSOE and the Popular Party (PP), the major parties. In fact, through them you can have the sensation that there is not one but two Spains. The first one, conservative, favorable to the elites, deeply Catholic, deeply neoliberal. The second one, progressist, favorable to equality and integration, rather atheist or agnostic, and, while respecting the institutions of modern capitalism, rather skeptical about what has been (at least until September last year) the economic orthodoxy. And since they represent two quite different positions, each time one party succeeds the other in power, they change a lot of policies. This is not healthy for any country. Lack of continuity is a hindrance to initiatives who need to be implemented in the midddle to long run to be correctly assessed on its efectiveness. Spain should follow the example of its neighbour, France, in which parties from different current have at least agreed on a series of principles and institutions to respect and defend, taking into consideration that this is the key to stability and progress and that everybody, from the workers to the public officers, are winners in this context.
The Spanish politicians should also leave the destructive way they use for making their stand. Sometimes it seems that they were no fellow countrymen at all. What are they expecting from the average citizen to think of them? That they only care about power, about stepping on their rivals no matter what consequences that has on the welfare of the country. How can it be possible that the socialist government boycotts an act of remembrance of the victims of the Atocha bombings only because it was organized by a PP militant? How can it be possible that the PP leaders are trying to create a cabinet crisis only to pave their road to power, risking a deepening on the already existing economic crisis? I think they have a lot to learn about respect and tolerance to address effectively the main concerns of the country.