Strikes and Something Cultural

There’s no two ways about it, the Spanish economy is in crisis. The majority of Spain has over 25% unemployment, but yet the government still insists on making cuts to every sector, meaning more people lose their jobs so have less money to spend to replenish the economy. This also means that almost every week there is some sort of strike happening. Last week it was a general strike so all bases were covered. While in Britain people might find other ways to protest, the Spanish are insistent that striking is always the answer. This is a tiny bit inconvenient for the average person who isn´t striking when their commute is hard enough without buses suddenly stopping in the afternoon, leaving said person stranded in a tiny Basque town. Cheers Spain. However, the strangest strike I’ve come across so far is when the students go on strike. The students protest against the poor education they’re receiving by missing a day of school (pretty illogical, no?), so they make a decision two days before planned strike, give in some paperwork, and then get a day off school. It's really that simple.

Despite some inconveniences my friends and I are still embracing Spain and we’re trying activities that maybe we wouldn’t normally do anywhere else. We’ve had some successes with the trip to Ermua for the festival and on Friday we went to the ‘Guggenheim after dark’ - a party in the museum which takes place once a month. I found that it was just the right balance between being cultured and getting drunk. However, we have encountered some failures in our desire to be Spanish. It has led to us unknowingly participating in feminism week at the cinema and watching a film about a woman who loses her dog, and then finds it again, only to leave it where she found it (literally the whole plot of the film). Accidently watching a silent movie at a quirky little cinema by our flat based on Snow White, who in this film is a bull fighter that falls in love with one of the dwarves. While planning my year abroad I never imagined I’d be sat in a cinema watching an interesting interpretation of a much loved classic while eating sweets in the shape of fingers. Very surreal. And finally, on Saturday night, we found out about a free concert taking place. We were pretty excited until it turned out the woman would just be screaming whale-like sounds into a microphone to the same tune for an hour.

I guess you can’t fault our efforts!