Cosas...
More Interesting Facts About Spain:
- “Juan Español” is the Spanish equivalent of John Doe or Joe Plumber
- One of the only good things Franco did was remove a lot of petty laws- especially 1930s Nationalist laws restricting every facet of daily life. For instance, “Henceforth, in both restaurants and at home the egg dish will consist of a single egg.” That kind of law was abolished- and good thing because the Spanish love their eggs!
- Under Franco, a military officer could not be dismissed for ANY reason- including insanity.
- Catalan, a minority language spoken in the Spanish region of Catalonia is actually spoken by more people than better-known languages such as Danish, Finnish, or Norwegian with more than 6.5 million speakers (even though its basically not taught outside of Spain and spoken in only a very small region).
El País Vasco
Many of you may have heard of the Basque region of Spain because of its notorious Nationalist terrorist group ETA in recent news, but the more I learn about the region, the more mysterious it actually seems. Numero uno, Basques speak a language called Euskera, which is basically unidentifiable to a normal Spaniard. Linguists have always known it was extremely old and of course Basques like to claim that it is either THE oldest language in the world or the language of Noah’s son- doubtful. But, most linguists are sure that it is more than 3000 years old.
This is where it gets weirder- doctors have found that the Basques have the highest proportion of type O blood anywhere and they have the highest percentage of Rhesus-less blood (therefore causing erythroblastosis) in the world. Anthropologists have been studying Basque remains from 2000 BC and found that the people who lived there then had nearly the exact same physical characteristics as the Basques of today (who are considered bigger and stronger than the average human). What’s even more- 10,000 BC Cro-Magnon man has all the same characteristics as these Basque descendents, suggesting that the Basques of today might be direct descendents of Cro-Magnon man. Plus, the absence of any sort of migration myth from their folklore suggests they’ve been there for a really long time. Strangely, though, there are many genetic similarities between the Basques and the Celts of Ireland and Wales.
And anyways, of course ETA is a point of interest (ETA being the Basque terrorist organization). One weird thing about the terrorist actions of radical Basque nationalists is that they want to be separate for PURELY cultural reasons-they have plenty of money (they were one of the most industrialized sections of Spain) and are no longer persecuted-in fact, they have many of their own privileges that other autonomous regions do not have. Its leader once said, “Even if the Spanish state were to become a model of democracy, it wouldn’t change things as far as we are concerned. We are not, nor have we ever been, nor shall we ever be Spaniards.” Of course, this does represent a minority viewpoint. Most people from the Basque region are not as adamant about being their own country and most people definitely disagree with ETA’s use of violence. Nonetheless, since the late 1950s when they formed, the ETA has killed more than 800 people in terrorist attacks throughout Spain, including many important political figures. In the 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid, many immediately suspected ETA and the government was quick to blame them (especially since the then conservative PP prime minister had literally just supported Bush in the Iraqi war and did not want to accept the possibility that he was being punished), but those attacks were on a scale much greater than the ETA has even achieved and usually they take responsibility for their actions. [As a side note, it is interesting to look back on the coverage of the 2004 attacks (in the U.S. its 9/11, here it is 3/11), especially since I take the commuter rail on that exact path to work every day on those exact lines that were blown up between the Atocha and Mendez-Alvaro stations. Weird. What are the odds?] Anyways, case in point is that I find it fascinating that there is a functioning terrorist organization in such an otherwise sophisticated and developed country. Most of the time I associate major terrorist organizations with radical religious beliefs and lack of development.
That is all for now. More about Barcelona and Segovia later… when I don’t have a paper and a midterm to work on.