Someone-a queen, a king, or a so-called Captain of Industry, our version-finds inspiration bursting out in bright colors in an unexpected corner: a peasant, an explorer, an architectural genius, and brings the essential power of money, wealth and prestige to force the bloom.
Homage To…
As I try to understand something about Barcelona, this anthill on the coast that seems closer to Miami than to Sevilla, I am reading George Orwell’s half-forgotten “Homage to Catalonia.”
Bulls and Flamenco
This shocks us, as we are shocked by Flamenco and the bullring. At least since the enlightenment, we of the New World have believed in our perfectibility, if not in our perfection, in our concurrent right to protection and ease. The essential tragedy of life is not for us; we will circumvent it, somehow, as when I was a small child I believed death would have been “cured” by the time I was old.
Bailouts in the Land of Duende
Today’s Spanish newspaper announces that the bailout from the European Union, a sum of money too large for me to imagine, is going to happen, although a woman I spoke with yesterday says no one knows where the money is really going-probably to the banks, as in the U.S.
Spain: The Country of Civil Dissent
This may be the road to compromise we must all follow: the ancient privilege of a small class and the endless cheerful protest of the mass of those who have less-at least in our eyes,the disadvantaged.