It was a very bad week for Spanish sports, and I'm surrounded by lots of depressed people. In the Formula 1 World Championship, the Spaniard (don't remember his name because I could care less about car races) had a huge lead going into the final day, and everyone expected him to win. Somehow he ended up in 7th place - Spain was not happy. As popular as Formula 1 is here, though, it's nothing compared to soccer (of course). Spain played Portugal last night and lost 4-0. It was the worst game I've ever watched in my life. I don't think national depression has set in yet because everyone is in total shock. Two huge upsets = unhappy country.
On a happier note, I'm making Spanish friends! I've been doing lots of "intercambios" through the university where I meet up with Spanish students who study English and we each practice the other language. It's very helpful for improving my Spanish, but also super fun because you pretty much just go out for coffee or tapas and talk for an hour or two. I'm really happy because some of them are starting to become "real" friends rather than just intercambios. There are some interests that I've learned I have in common with pretty much ALL Spaniards: the TV show How I Met Your Mother (Como conocí a vuestra madre), the band Muse (no big surprise, since all of Europe loves them), and soccer (although this is usually only true of guys - Spanish girls are surprisingly indifferent to the sport). I've also learned that Spaniards are almost always late - if they say to meet at 6, they arrive at 6:10 at the earliest.
Last weekend I went out with one of my intercambios and some of her friends - almost all of them were learning English, so they knew some of the lyrics to the American pop songs that play about 75% of the time in the bars. Along with all the current pop stars - Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, etc - I've heard a TON of Bon Jovi. The whole bar was singing along with incredible enthusiasm to "Living on a Prayer," even the people who clearly didn't know English - it was hilarious. I knew the lyrics to a few of the Spanish songs that played, so that earned me some respect. They were really shocked that I knew any Spanish songs.
It's really interesting talking to Spaniards about politics because they're so much more liberal than Americans. They have universal health care, and really don't understand why so many Americans are against it. They're also really surprised at the socialism fear in the United States, considering Prime Minister Zapatero is a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party. Spain seems to be much more focused on the good of everyone than the US is. Everyone is, of course, very pro-Obama and very anti-Bush.
Spain is still very much a Catholic country - I think 70% of Spaniards, or something like that, consider themselves Catholic. However, it's becoming less and less Catholic by the year. I think over 90% were Catholic in the 90s, and the percentage has been dropping steadily ever since the end of the Franco regime. The vast majority of Catholics don't attend church, I think only like 10% or something. (I've read these statistics before from reliable sources, I just don't remember the exact numbers....) So things got really interesting when the pope visited Spain a few weeks ago and really offended everybody. He of course chastised the country for allowing gay marriage and abortion (which didn't offend people too much because they were already expecting him to say that), but he really crossed the line when he talked about the "dangers of secularism" and compared Spain's trend toward secularism to the priest-killing Republicans during the Civil War. Because not attending church is CLEARLY the same thing as killing people. And never mind that the Catholic church at the time was backing Franco's regime, which was commiting equal atrocities. Some people felt that he supporting the former dictatorship - not a good move, Benedict. I talked with my friend Ildara about the visit since she's Catholic. I asked her about being Catholic while not necessarily agreeing with everything the pope says, and she responded, "we don't agree with ANYTHING the pope says."
Hopefully I'll get to see the new Harry Potter movie soon - I'm really excited about watching it in Spanish instead of English! Although lots of countries do subtitles for American movies and TV shows, Spain almost exclusively dubs. Perfect for me to practice (dubbed movies are SOOOOOOO much easier to understand than regular Spanish films because they speak so clearly!!!), although all my intercambios hate it because they can't practice their English. My Spanish professor said that the dubbing is a result of the Franco regime - Franco loved dubbing because it made it so easy to censure films. There were some movies that had huge plot points completely changed because they were too immoral. Now, everyone's so used to dubbed films that they're not going to switch to subtitles. But it's really weird to see a movie on TV with a movie star like George Clooney and thinking, "that's not what George Clooney sounds like!"
