Barcelona: The Referendum of 9N

The first thing to note about Barcelona is that Catalonians are very patriotic. Barcelona is the capital of the autonomous region of Cataluña in Spain. In the past, it was its own country and today many people believe that it should be independent once again. If not completely independent, then Spain should change it's constitution to make all the autonomous regions states and give them more power to govern themselves with more independence. All around Barcelona, on nearly every building, are the red-and-yellow-striped flags of Cataluña. Many signs about the "referendum of 9N" (ninth of November) were in English. This seemed peculiar to us at first, but my professor explained (once I returned to Granada) that Catalonians and Spaniards know what most Catalonians want, but Cataluña hopes for the world's support against Spain's denial of the legality of their referendum. Hence, it is in English. 

The Spanish government has said that a vote for independence, even if it doesn't lead to independence, is illegal. However, the grand majority of Catalonians want independence because the Spanish government requires their autonomous region to give more taxes than all the others (it doesn't tax individuals like the US government does, but the regions) since Barcelona is the financial capital of Spain. So a millionaire in Barcelona has to pay more than a millionaire in Granada. The middle class pays more as well because everyone does. Another reason is that they feel culturally independent from Spain since they have their own traditions and their own language, Catalan. Twelve students and I went to Barcelona the weekend of the "illegal" referendum of 9N. I am quite proud that I did all these things in less than 48 hours. 

Above is one of the signs and flags that cascaded down a whole apartment building. Below is one of the many information stands encouraging people to vote. Notice, the sign is in Catalan and not Spanish. In fact, when we asked for Spanish menus at restaurants we were often told "we have English or Catalan, not Castellano" by the servers or establishments. It is never referred to as Spanish, always Castellano. English is more common in Barcelona than Spanish. 

Below is the picture of the front of the Basilica of la Segrada Familia. It is all privately funded and will be finished sometime in the future. Though its designs are said to have been created by Gaudi in the 19th century, the actual blueprints were destroyed when Spain was occupied by Napoleon's France (if I am remembering correctly…I might not be). Regardless, the actual building is more of an inspiration and keeping to the style of Gaudi. 

Notice the random bunches of fruit on top of each point…yeah part of the oddness in Gaudi architecture. This Cathedral felt more like the Mormon Temple or the Church of Scientology to be honest. As far as buildings go, probably one of the most unique works in Europe.

So my friend Julia planned out what she wanted to do in Barcelona. Since Julia is the kind of person who is naturally in charge of things, I and her friend Maria tagged along with her. I am so glad I did! Below is the largest market in Europe called La Boqueria. Its located in the mist of Las Ramblas, which is like 5th Avenue for Barcelona. Miles of huge stores. It is was one of the coolest experiences I've had in Spain.

Barcelona, and really la boqueria, is famous for its fresh fruit smoothies. Where is the best place to try one? The market with all the best fruit of course. I might of had more than one…but they were only 1 euro…

Pictures can't do it justice. It has every kind of food you can imagine from produce, meat, bakeries, dried foods, ethnic foods, seafood (a lot is still alive….), candy, and there are even bars inside to have a meal. It is great because you walk around and just eat for like two or three hours. Spain has produce that is WAY better than what is in the US. Perhaps it's all the sun here, but everything is sweeter. If you don't like certain fruits in the US, there is a good chance you might like them in Spain. =

These are local fruits I have tried in Spain but are not in the US…well I guess we have mangos.

Ugh…I gagged…for so long. THERE IS SO MUCH.

Good thing Julia was there to make fish a little less repulsive:).

Oh perhaps fish don't repulse you? How about a slice of a chilled block of blood;).

Ah…candy! Yes there were all kinds of chocolate vendors too.

After that, we went to the Gothic District that night and the following morning. That night we saw the Cathedral of Barcelona. It was beautiful, and we got lucky and happened to see it during mass. I would recommend going to a cathedral in Spain during mass, it is a different than the normal tourist experience. It's more authentic and seems more like a church rather than just a work of art. 

After we left the cathedral, we walked out and there was a concert going on in the plaza in front of it. People were doing the traditional folk dance of Cataluña to the orchestra music. It was very cool!

This is one of the palaces of King Fernando of Aragon (remember he married Isabel of Castille…'found' the New World?). It was moved to the Gothic District of Barcelona brick-by-brick in the 1930s. That night we happened upon their History Museum which is inside of it. No I did not want to go to it only because it was their history museum. It is because of what I saw underneath it. Underneath the palace is the ruins of the town here when the Romans colonized Spain. We decided to come back in the morning since it was only 5 euros for students.

To be honest I'm forgetting the name of this plaza…but the picture below is the Generaltit in Barcelona. If you ever see news conferences about Cataluña wanting independence from Spain, and their political leader Artur Mas is speaking, it will almost always be in this plaza in front of the Generaltit (the name of the building below). What is that shiny sign on some apartment building to the right of the Generaltit? Well...it's important.

It is the count down to 9N. 

Julia happened to hear about this famous bar called La Oveja Negra (The Black Sheep) that is in the Gothic District. It is a tad ironic since it used to be a monastery. 

This is a picture when we first got there at like 10:30. It has a huge stone fireplace, barrels, and I got the best drink I've ever had in my life. Its Sangria con Cava (Sangria with Champagne). Julia and I shared some and we loved it! Well Julia, Maria, and I were waiting for our other friends there and it soon became packed. It is famous because you can get 5 liters of any drink there. They apparently bring out huge plastic containers that have spouts which people fill with beer or the sangria/cava mix. Let's just say once it got to be midnight it was a madhouse and the line was almost to the door. It was definitely a neat experience and I'm glad we got their before the rush so that our group had seats.

Below are pictures from the famous Gaudi Park in Barcelona. It was cool, but we didn't go to the part you had to pay to get into.

Here is the view from a ledge in the free part. Something we didn't get to go to in Barcelona was their beach.

The morning of 9N! It was actually a tad disappointing. I was hoping for the face paint and everyone wearing flags like you see in pictures of their national events there…but at least I got to see perhaps the first member of the Cataluña (Catalonia in English) Army!

Maybe the rain calmed people down, I don't know. But I saw no craziness. There were also swat cars there. Oh and this is the same plaza from the night before with the countdown.

walking through the Gothic District in the daylight.

These last pictures are from inside of the museum with the ruins beneath the palace. The stone was part of the cloth-dying business there. It is still blue to this day.

Here is where they made fish sauce! I don't remember the word in spanish (they didn't have the word in English with the translation) but I know what it is from my Hellas class at OU. Those huge pottery bowls would hold dead fish for weeks until it got good and…well you know. Fish sauce was like ketchup for them.

A pillar and room of an early Christian church. That was cool to see. 

Oh and the bowls they used to ferment wine. The town had a whole set of systems for making wine. They are still red today.

Lastly this really big room inside the palace. We just happened upon it, though I'm not sure what it is. I'd imagine it was some kind of throne room/ball room…maybe a dining hall? It is just very large with grandeur tapestries on the side.

Overall I loved Barcelona and didn't get to do anywhere near all you could! you could spend a weekend easily (perhaps more) on just Las Ramblas. That isn't even counting the Gothic District, the Beach, the Gaudi exhibits. It was definitely very neat.

Las Alpujarras

I actually went to the Alpujarras a long time ago, I've just been lazy about blogging. We went to Nerja, a beach, on this trip as well. We spent a day doing a 6 hour hike through the Alpujarras area of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It was an hour drive to the hotel and the hiking spot from Granada. It was also only a two hour drive from these mountains to the beach. Granada's location is famous for allowing someone to go to the mountains and beach all in the same day. On a clear day, you can see the Mediterranean from the mountain tops. Unfortunately, it wasn't a clear day. Since Sarah and I are both from the University of Oklahoma and were wearing OU t-shirts, we felt the need to take the stereotypical pic for study abroad students from OU. Though it isn't a good picture, it is memories!

We went to the mountains during the fall so it was pretty to see the leaves change as the trail went through the forest. Unfortunately, I had terrible allergy problems on this trip which made it kind of miserable. It was really dusty and 60 students walking along a trail made it even more so. It was pretty though, so I'm glad I did it.

The Alpujarras is also a historic and very old region of Spain. The pueblos in the mountains have been there since the Moors came to the area and established them. While on the trail you may see leftover parts of presses or items of the agricultural livelihoods of the people in the mountains. Below is a picture of them.

The white pueblos can be seen along the trail. We walked through several. They made me feel like I was going back in time. Though Spain is a first world country, the homes here seem to lie outside of the stereotype of wealth. Many do not have doors and look dilapidated. It is beautiful, just in its own way. There were many times when rural Spain seemed like a different country than urban Spain.

I can't believe I actually saw a man herding mountain goats through the pueblo (village).

Each pueblo has a little church. These are all white pueblos I might add. 

After we walked through the one in the pictures above, we saw the next white pueblo and even the one after that while walking on the hiking trail.

The picture below shows what I mean by beautiful but dilapidated

My last picture is just of one of many waterfalls we saw while hiking through the forest. There are areas of the hike that were very dry, like my picture with Sarah. There are pictures like the one below which are very green with streams and waterfalls. There were also some areas where all the leaves were changing. Overall, the Alpujarras were varied and beautiful. Their pueblos seem like small, close-knit communities locked in the past.

London: Yay for English!:)

When I told my host mom we were going to London for four days, she acted disgusted and asked, "Why? You need to spend more time in Paris!" Women in Spain feel no qualms about giving you their opinion…on everything. Sarah and I were both like, WE DO NOT SPEAK FRENCH (my host mom does). I do want to see more of Paris, but we were like…YAY ENGLISH! Let me say that London felt a lot like the United States compared to France or Spain. After all, she is the mother country. In general, it seemed a unique blend of both old and modern. Many places in Europe feel antiquated and locked in the past, but London was very original in its mixture. All the technology was what we have in the US. That may seem weird to say, but the computers here in Granada are like the computers we had nearly ten years ago. I had a student in one of my English classes today (I teach classes for an internship) ask me if the technology was more advanced in the US. It was difficult to word my response in a way that didn't come off as snobby. Anyways, London was fun! And here are some pictures and stories of what I did. The picture above is of Westminster Palace (Is it incredibly idiotic that I didn't know Big Ben was a part of Westminster Palace? Sad, I know.) And below, another picture….the building is huge.

Aaaaand another picture…but notice King Richard the Lion Heart raising his sword below! Surely you remember Robin Hood;).  

Here is a picture of Sarah, Caitlin, and I. We went to London together. Caitlin met Sarah and I there.

So I got super excited when I saw this statue of Oliver Cromwell. In college I took a class called Tudor History and another class called the Idea of Freedom (in which there was a book called Inventing Freedom, which talks of him) and between the two Civil Wars in England over the King vs. Parliament and Protestantism vs. Catholicism are fascinating. Especially since those issues spilled over into the American Revolution.

Parliament Street! While looking at Westminster Palace we kept walking and saw the governmental buildings of London. I don't know where to input this comment in the blog, but I also saw Fleet Street and freaked out. My friends thought I was weird throughout this for my historical nerdiness. Fleet Street is the street where Bloody Mary (Mary I) held her public bonfires to burn protestants. When british people call cigarettes a "fag", the word comes from the wood used for those burnings. If someone brought a log to add to the fire of those to be burned alive (in order to purge them of their 'heresy'), the logs were called fags. The people who brought them received a special dispensation for their sins by engaging in such a 'pious' act. Anyways, such is the bloody history of Fleet Street. Now, it's just a bunch of stores on a normal street. But I did take a picture of the street sign (not much to look at so didn't post it). It's cool to me because my professor in Tudor History joked of the underwhelming nature of Fleet Street and how now it's just a sign. At the time, I never thought I'd see it.

So I started with Westminster because it was pretty, but really we did that the second day we went around London. The first day, stepping off out of the train station, you see this: St. Pancreas Station. I thought it was King's Cross, but no King's Cross is right next to it (they are hyphenated as a single destination for a lot of transportation). St. Pancreas is the international train station. However, it is the station used in the Harry Potter films as King's Cross (according to Sarah and Caitlin who were obsessed).

Buckingham Palace: to be honest, underwhelming. We didn't even know it was the palace when we saw it. We looked like idiots asking a british person where it was. It just looked like a governmental building. I am sure it's pretty to tour, but unfortunately it wasn't open during the season we were there. 

We bought tickets to the Mews and the Queen's Gallery. We thought that they were part of Buckingham Palace. No. The Queen's Gallery was in some normal side building. The art exhibit was on Georgian Royalty (the dynasty during the American Revolution). Disappointing since they should know all we (Americans) care about is the crazy one who used too much lead-based cutlery to eat. They didn't talk or have paintings of him, just his father and when crazy George was a boy. Lame.

The Royal Mews was okay, if you are a car person you'd probably love it. It has the horses, carriages, and cars that the Royal family uses. Below is the most…fancy of the royal carriages. It was neat, it's just that we paid like 30$ for those tickets and felt a little jipped.

Fish and chips. When in Rome right? Well I tried, I really did. Then I pulled a bone out of my mouth and I was done. Sarah and Caitlin glared at me a lot…but I was sorry. I just couldn't do it. But they liked theirs. So if you've always wanted to try it, I wouldn't be discouraged.

The Tower of London: My absolute favorite part. Sarah and Caitlin were bored to death (I was quite annoyed at their Harry Potter obsession though, so we were even). What are those red flowers below you might ask? Hundreds of thousands of poppies. Oh, and they aren't real. They were each individually hand-made using clay to represent the veterans who died in World War I. Quite an amazing site. We were lucky to get to see it since the flowers are for sale to raise funds for veteran services. 

Why was this my favorite part you may wonder? Actually you probably aren't wondering. The history:). I felt very…alone whenever I saw one of the biggest historical mysteries of all time and my friends didn't care at all. Below is a picture of the famous staircase where two princes were killed (or were they?) in the Tower of London by their evil uncle. He had locked them up while he was ruling as regent, but he wanted to be king. He claimed they disappeared, but many of the common people saw him as a murderer and hated him. Later on, construction to preserve the Tower was taking place and workers found the skeletons of two little boys underneath a staircase in Bloody Tower. Historians today still debate what happened, though I for one think he had them killed.

Below is one of the hundreds of engravings in the walls of White Tower. Queen Elizabeth was imprisoned here by her half sister, Mary I. Elizabeth's mother, the infamous Anne Boleyn, was also imprisoned here awaiting her execution. I wrote an essay in my Tudor History class on the Act of Treason (1534) which made it to where calling Henry VIII any bad names was grounds for execution. Anyways, he locked up many people he saw as potentially dangerous to his reputation. They and others covered the walls with their engravings. There are even some men who were captured as American Revolutionaries who made carvings on the wall. 

And of course, the Tower Bridge, which I did walk across.

Walking up the stares out of a Tube station to get to the London Eye….and using zoom...

This is a picture I took by Westminster Palace with the London Eye in the background.

Crossing the bridge...

Shazam! Well…yes it is lit up because they cancelled our appointment when we got there. So we went the next night.

The inside of St. James Cathedral, which was actually probably my favorite cathedral I've been inside. It still felt…religious. It still has services and people for you to talk to if you have questions. I didn't feel like it was only a museum. I know technically many catholic cathedrals, even Notre Dame, have services, but I felt different in this one.

Kensington Gardens (after I went to Hyde Park…I mean that one's in like every regency novel ever).

Still in the Kensington Gardens, but this is my last picture. I chose this one because I wish I had seen rural England. When we were taking the Chunnel back to Paris to fly back, I saw bits of the English countryside, and it was beautiful. There were rolling green hills like out of a movie. So though London is awesome, I wonder if the English countryside should get more credit than it does. In the city, the rainy weather can seem dreary. But in the countryside it seems…ethereal. All the sudden the stories of fairies and elves make sense. It seems…magical and wild.