Huelga General - Sevilla, España - 29 Septiembre 2010 (29S / 29-S)

September 29, Sevilla, España.

Today there was a general Strike - the Huelga General - coordinated by the syndicates and labor unions. According to one source, this was the first general strike in Spain in nearly a decade. With all the protestors picketing the streets, preventing employees from working, and condemning capitalism and the recent, pro-business reforms and austerity measures by the Zapatero government, I set out to do what seems most logical. I went shopping.

But shopping I didn’t do. Only a few, brave businesses on side streets had their doors open at the stroke of 10 a.m. These shopkeepers were standing at their entrances, however, on the lookout for protestors and to see if other business were opening or participating. The large businesses on or near the major shopping streets - Calle Sierpes and Calle Teutuan - were mostly closed. The managers of stores in the main shopping zone brave enough to open in the morning were quickly forced or persuaded to close their shutters by heckling picketers and mobs. At times, a picket leader would ask to speak with the store manager and employees, inform them about the motivations of the huelga, and ultimately persuade them to close. Other times, it was more physical: mobs entered stores yelling and compelled the managers to close by force or aggressive intimidation. In both cases, applause, heckling, and sticker vandalism followed the protestors’ success. Watch the footage I shot here:

I thought I was being smart by wearing red today, but it wasn’t the best call. While I blended in with all the protestors, several police men were suspicious of my photographic assertiveness. I got surrounded, detained, and questioned for taking pictures of them. They told me that I had to erase the photos before letting me go. As any sane person would do in this situation, I disappeared into the crowd and kept my photos (album here).

When inalienable rights are compromised, I stand behind protest. But when governments enact reform in order to protect and continue the means of securing those rights (and, as some would argue, privileges) from collapsing, protest is nothing short of mismanaged energy and misguided anger. Some of the Zapatero administration reforms, according to the BBC, are as follows:

“The Spanish government has approved an austerity budget for 2011 which includes a tax rise for the rich and 8% spending cuts. Madrid has promised European counterparts to cut its deficit to 6% of its gross domestic product (GDP) next year, from 11.1% last year. Government workers face a pay cut of 5%, starting in June, and salaries will then be frozen for 2011. A tax rise of 1% will be applied to personal income above 120,000 euros. Smaller savings include an end to a 2,500-euro cash payout for new mothers, known as "baby cheques". Unemployment has more than doubled - to about 20% - since 2007.” 

These measures are not an attack on the workers, the general population, or their rights. Rather, they are the means by which Spain can continue to guarantee the rights and privileges of its citizens. The alternative - economic depression, hardship, and the loss of even more jobs - would be much worse. And as everyone knows, especially when bundled with other issues like food shortages and political instability, economic depression can ultimately be the tinder that sets fire to the rights and privileges we hold so dearly and take for granted.

Needless to say, it is counter intuitive that syndicates and labor unions would endorse a day without work, business, and income, when it is in part the lack of these things that are compelling the Zapatero government to cut-back spending and enact austerity reforms. 

At any rate, things were very quiet after the afternoon siesta and many shops reopened without issue. I was able to buy the jacket that I had my eye on. This jacket was made in Spain and I bought it from a Spanish retail chain. Hopefully the labor unions and syndicates appreciate the contribution to their pensions, free health care, and other social securities I quite happily surrendered in the form of my business and the IVA (sales tax). 

Huelga General - Sevilla, España - 29 Septiembre 2010

Huelga General - Sevilla, España - 29 Septiembre 2010

Death in the Afternoon: Corrida de Torros

Nothing is worse than hearing a bull bellow in agony while it is being slaughtered by the very person that has been feeding it like a king its entire life. Supposedly, if the matador is good and accurate, the final stab should collapse the bull in seconds. Lights out. No suffering. No bellows. I didn’t see good matadors Sunday evening. I saw a lot of suffering. It was amateur night and the bellows of 6 unlucky bulls reverberated throughout the beautiful night’s sky. 

Love it or hate it, bullfights are a matter of course in Spain. Despite the recent prohibitions in Cataluña (see this link), bullfighting - known as a corrida de toros in Spanish - is extremely popular. There is a certain logic to the “sport” that an untrained observer cannot immediately comprehend. The banderilleros are graceful and taunt the 1500 lbs bulls with their technicolor capes. Meanwhile, more quick-footed banderilleros jump out of the charging bull’s path at the very last second after stabbing it in the shoulder with two banderillas. After the banderilleros weaken the bull, a matador goes in for the kill and stabs the bull with a sword in a “kill spot.”

But the novice matadors on Sunday night repeatedly failed to kill the bulls quickly (WARNING: watch this video that I took for an example). It took the matadors several attempts to sink their swords into the “kill spot,” thereby inciting the bulls to moan in agony. The crowd often echoed the moan, seemingly due to their disappointment with the matador’s skill rather than the bull’s wellbeing. An uproar of another kind, of course, celebrated the bulls’ eventual, if slow, demise.

After seeing the first bull suffer, I was secretly praying for some retribution. I got it... not once, but twice. One matador got hit hard by a bull, flung into the air, and then trampled on before his mates distracted the animal and whisked the unlucky Spaniard out of the ring. Two fights later, a banderillero named Jesús Márquez suffered worse - a bull charged his leg and severed his femoral artery (see this article, and this one. WARNING: watch this video of the actual incident.). Human blood now painted the ring. Márquez was carried out and rushed to the emergency room. The remaining fights continued as planned. 

I had not formed an opinion on bullfighting before coming to Spain, and I’m not entirely sure that I was able to form an opinion after seeing my first bullfight. I saw suffering and retribution. Either way, I definitely didn’t leave the stadium feeling as jubilant as if my favorite football team had just won a game. I felt unnerved and fatigued. Empty even. At least, I was assured, the bulls don’t go to waste - their meat is eaten and their skin is crafted into kitschy goods for tourists to buy. 

Applying for a Visa at the General Consulate of Spain in Miami

While there was a slight snag in my VISA application - my local background report was “expired -, my appointment was nothing short of fabulous. The lady who processed my application told me that I could send an up-to-date local background report via e-mail or snail-mail, thus saving me another trip to Coral Gables. She was really helpful and generally in a cheerful mood for being inundated with work; a line of about 25 people had already formed by the time I left. I was even called to the front of the line when I returned to the consulate in order to get a copy of my passport notarized - something that I had forgotten to do while I was there. It was, generally speaking, an extremely positive experience.

I'll have something stapled into my passport that looks like this in about six weeks:

Things to remember for future consulate or embassy visits: arrive early; take a positive attitude; and speak their language.

I returned to Avon Park, Florida with notice that the suddenly-implemented and stress-inducing FBI background clearance requirement had been waived for the 2010-2011 academic year.

Departure: 65 days.

Sevillian summertime temps: a comparison

Temps swing wildly in less than a week's time:

Messing with the bull (again)

Like in the beginning of the eighteenth-century, Spain is in bad economic shape. Then, however, a surge in monetary production and imports contributed to a marked “price revolution” (a.k.a. inflation) in Spain and, to a lesser extent, with its trading partners. While no longer the world’s primary producer of money, the topography has little changed. Some features of Spain’s economic ‘backwardness’ are historically recurrent, and seemingly extend into Spain’s horizon.

Credit issues: Spain’s credit rating has been downgraded. What does this mean? Countries have credit ratings to illustrate how likely they will be able to repay government debt obligations. Spain will appear more “risky” to foreign debt (bonds) investors. With a history of bankruptcies extending into the centuries, this is nothing new to Spain really. Even after Spain declared bankruptcy in the seventeenth-century, for example, investors continued to lend to Spain (buy bonds/debt). But, naturally, they asked for higher returns from Spain to balance the risk. This prolonged, to a certain degree, Spain’s fiscal ineptitude. We can assume a similar situation now.

Unemployment: Spain’s unemployment continues to be its Achilles' heel of economic growth. While news agencies bicker over the figure, an unemployment rate nearing 20 percent bodes poorly for Spain’s future. Again, this is nothing new. While the last time it was this high was in the late 1990s, unemployment too has a historical precedent that can be measured by the centuries.  People then cited the laziness of Spain’s ever-abundant aristocracy.

With the near-simultaneous downgrade of Greece’s and Portugal’s credit rating woes, the Eurozone seems to be in bad shape. With lenders lacking the confidence to lend money to struggling economies, countries will need to take drastic measures to minimize their debt obligations by either cutting spending or increasing taxes. With a mushrooming national debt, the United States - I fear - will soon be faced with a similar conundrum.

Studying conceptions of money in eighteenth-century Spain, it’ll be interesting to observe contemporary assessments of its worsening economic climate.

Smith and Spain in a Contemporary Economic Assessment

The recent video segment “Breaking the piggy bank (again),” on CNN’s business news program The Buzz, discusses American spending and saving habits during the (post-)recession. The underlying question of this brief program is whether the decrease of American saving habits is indicative of economic recovery or of our inability to mind recent economic realities. At one point during the segment, however, the host reads the following quotation by Alex Macha: “The wealth of a nation is provided not by its savings, credit, amount of money in circulation, or ability to print money; but instead, by the nation’s production capacity... Identify the cause of the de-industrialization of the US during the 1970s, 1980s, 2000s to find the cause of our problems we find ourselves in today.”

Macha’s assessment is one of Adam Smith’s most resounding dicta. Macha surely swiped this sentiment from Smith. Likewise, however, to give Smith credit for this idea would also be inappropriate. The notion that the wealth of a nation has nothing to do with the nation’s monetary capacity became popularized during the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries because of Spain’s “backward” economic relationship with its American territories. And I would caution against Macha's overly simplified and (perhaps) antiquated assessment.

As you may or may not know, I have been researching how Spanish society perceived Spain to be in decline and backward during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Like then, many today perceive Spain’s current economy to be “backward.” But unlike the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of course, we have reliable measures and statistics to back these claims up. So it will be very interesting for me to study/research in Spain during this time of continuing economic turbulence. In particular, I’ll be interested in seeing what BBC’s “PIGS” survey yields (PIGS is an flattering acronym for the eurozone countries with continuing economic woes: Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain).

Destination: Spain (Take Two)

In addition to the grant funded by the Junta de Andalucía, I received notice a few weeks back that I won Florida State University’s International Semester Dissertation Research Fellowship (ISDRF) for the spring 2011 and summer 2011 semesters. Needless to say, I’m quite excited about the research possibilities in Spain. My vision and hard work have been, in a way, legitimized by winning this award. While it feels good, I am not unaware that hard work is at hand. I’ll need to rummage through the annals of eighteenth-century Spain and piece the data together. Ultimately, the final product will be the measure of success.

Destination: Spain

Spring came early this year (re: previous post). I just found out that my studies will continue across the Atlantic during the 2010-2011 academic year. I will establish myself in Andalucía, Spain and will remain there for approximately 9 months. While this opportunity (essentially a grant funded by the Junta de Andalucía) requires a teaching load, it is fair and manageable. In fact, it requires anywhere from 12 to 15 hours of work per week. And considering it’ll place me near research materials, the foreign teaching experience sounds like a pretty good bargain.

Mark Rothko - Yellow Band 1956

For better luck...

My fortune-cookie revealed to me that I'll "hve" to wait till spring for better luck (see image below). Humans are funny. We tend to make generic "fortunes" - whether from cookies or tellers - fit into our own personal situations. I won't resist this temptation. Despite Florida's last few weeks of freezing temperatures, spring inches closer. And I am optimistic that good luck will come my way.

As many of you know, I have applied to a host of grants, fellowships, and assistantships to conduct research abroad for the 2010-2011 academic year. Some involve teaching, others do not. Either way, they are life-changing opportunities. It is my impression that the application committees will make their decisions in the spring. In the meantime, however, the dissertation prospectus keeps my anxieties and excitements at bay.

More later...