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Ideas Society

Bezos To Veronese, The Paradox Of Decadence That Keeps Venice Alive

While billionaire Jeff Bezos turns Venice into a vanity set, the Prado museum in Madrid is currently featuring a major exposition of legendary Venetian painter Paolo Veronese. What was true in the Renaissance is almost true today: Art, power and decadence intertwine in the city that learned to live from its own sinking.

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This Happened

Train Bombings To A Nuclear Disaster — On This Day In History March 11

A terrorist attack, a global health crisis, and a natural disaster.

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climate change Future Green Society

Extreme Party Heat: How Climate Change Is Crashing Spain’s Summer Fiestas

Increasingly extreme temperatures are forcing summertime cultural events and festivals, from concerts to Spain’s traditional castell human towers, to adapt to a new climate reality.

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Food / Travel Green Or Gone Society special series

Look To The Skies: Understanding Time And Climate Through Paintings

In his latest book, Spanish meteorologist and author José Miguel Viñas traces the history of painting, observing the skies of artists from different times and latitudes. Walking through a Madrid museum, he explains different types of clouds and historical climatological events.

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Geopolitics

Milei’s Folly: Argentina Will Pay A Real Price For Bad-Boy Diplomacy

Argentina’s erratic right-wing president Javier Milei, seems to emulate Trump and Bolsonaro. But he has taken his bad diplomacy to a new level after last week’s spat with Spain’s Socialist party prime minister Pedro Sánchez.

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In The News

Gùsto! How · What · Where Locals Eat (And Drink) In Madrid

Madrid is the place to be if you want to experience the full variety of Spanish cuisine. Since it became the capital of Spain in the 1500s, Madrid has been a melting pot for culinary traditions from all over the peninsula. Its main dishes are simple, easy fares — often fried — prepared in bar […]

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Ideas Society

Mapping The Patriarchy: Where Nine Out Of 10 Streets Are Named After Men

The Mapping Diversity platform examined maps of 30 cities across 17 European countries, finding that women are severely underrepresented in the group of those who name streets and squares. The one (unsurprising) exception: The Virgin Mary.

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Society

A Madrid Court’s Method To Help Children Testifying In Sex Abuse Cases

Madrid courtrooms have designed private “waiting rooms” for children. In these spaces, a mix of talk and play with a psychologist allows the children to calmly testify before judges.

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Ideas

In COVID Times, Diary Of A Noted Hypochondriac

Every pang or cough could be the virus, or something worse.

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In The News

Madrid To Mexico City, Apartment Shopping In Our Airbnb Age

MADRID — As a freelancer without a fixed salary, I’m rather desperate to buy a studio apartment, something to help ground me in these turbulent times and provide at least some measure of financial security. So far my search has focused on two places: Mexico City and Madrid. The former has a well-established reputation for […]

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In The News

That Awful Timelessness Of Picasso’s Guernica

Sadly, the wall-sized master work says as much about the world’s current horrors as it did about the first-ever air raid on civilians 80 years ago.

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blog

Extra! Spain’s New Instability

La Razon, May 25, 2015 “Instability,” reads the Monday headline of conservative Madrid daily La Razon, after the strong showing of two upstart parties in Spain’s local and regional elections threatened the longstanding two-party duel between the Popular and Socialist parties. The conservative Popular party of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy suffered its worst local results […]

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Future

The Ebola Risk In Europe Is Very Real

BERLIN – Ebola has reached Europe. No, it is not just here via patients brought to isolation wards under strict security conditions to be saved from an otherwise relatively certain death by high-tech Western medicine. Now the virus has arrived in a Spanish hospital, having managed to pass from a priest infected in West Africa […]

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Society

City’s Most Desperate Search For Revenue Ever? Madrid May Fine Panhandlers

Panhandlers, window-cleaners and street peddlers would be targeted in plan put forth by the mayor of the heavily indebted Spanish capital. Good luck collecting…

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Society

Olympics, No Thanks! Local Opposition Grows On Eve Of 2020 Host Announcement

Two weeks ahead of the naming of the 2020 Olympics location, as officials in Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo do last-minute bidding, protests rise in each city against the effects of hosting the Games.

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Society

WATCH: German TV Spot Sticks It To Spanish After Soccer Defeats

The German soccer clubs Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich (whose flags you will see strategically placed below) recently thrashed Spanish teams Real Madrid and FC Barcelona in their respective Champions League semifinals. German Sky sports seized the opportunity to taunt the two teams before their recent games. And after Bayern’s defeat of Barcelona Wednesday night, […]

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Society

Literary Rights And Wrongs: Who Can Publish A Dead Author’s Works?

In Spain and Latin America, debate is raging in the publishing world about whether a dead writer’s heirs have the right to publish works, which in life, the author did not want to publish.

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Economy

Spain’s Solution To Massive Debt Crisis: Over-The-Top Theme Parks

BARCELONA – Barcelona World. The name says it all. The project is as pretentious as its declared objective: “One of the main investment projects that will transform this region into a tourism industry leader in Europe and in the world.” This is what the Catalan Industry and Labor Minister Francesc Xavier-Mena said of the new […]

Categories
Geopolitics

In Barcelona, Rising Calls For Separatism To Cut Catalonia Free From Spain’s Debt

BARCELONA – Making headway through the streets of Barcelona, closed to traffic for the occasion, seemed almost impossible. A crowd of children, students, retired people, business owners, and the unemployed coming from every part of Catalonia had joined together to wave yellow-and-red flags and voice their support for the creation of an independent state for […]

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Society

Austerity’s Bite: Undocumented Immigrants In Spain Lose Health Care

MADRID – Since September 1, undocumented immigrants in Spain are now excluded from public health care. Only pregnant women and minors can still enjoy free public coverage, which had long been available to all undocumented residents. Others can still get care in cases of emergency, but for basic medical treatment, immigrants in Spain illegally will […]

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