Christmas decorations? Firelighters? I have no idea why anyone would want to dry that many pine cones …
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Fields Of Cones
Tag: spain
Urged by her friends out of retirement, the 71-year-old retired judge surprised all by winning the mayor’s race on the wave of Spain’s rising protest movement. What will she do with her newfound power?
The unlikely tale of how a young Colombian’s communist convictions led him to leave his family in Spain to fight with Ukraine’s Putin-backed separatist rebels.
VIRGINIA KILLER A “HUMAN POWDER KEG” A man claiming to be Bryce Williams, the assumed name of the gunman who killed Virginia journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward during a live broadcast yesterday, sent a fax to ABC News afterward in which he described himself as a “human powder keg.” Williams, whose real name was […]
MALAGA — There’s a classic children’s song in France that says a lot about how the world sees Spain. “Dans mon pays d’Espagne, olé! Y” a un soleil comme ça!” (In Spain, my country, olé! There’s a sun like this). The song also touches on things like bullfighting, the sea, flamenco dancing — all the […]
La Vanguardia, August 4, 2015 Catalonia is set to go to the polls next month, as regional President Artur Mas called early elections for Sept. 27, intending to use the vote as a fresh bid for independence. He announced the election as “an exceptional measure,” says Tuesday’s front page of La Vanguardia. In a televised […]
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Water Over The Bridge
For 2,000 years, the Roman aqueduct of Segovia, in central Spain, has defied the passage of time. With the French Pont du Gard (of which I’ll show you a picture soon), it’s one of the best preserved examples of its kind.
La Razón, July 1, 2015 Right-leaning Spanish daily La Razón declared Wednesday that “the Greek contagion is Podemos.” According to the Madrid-based newspaper, allowing the Spanish left-wing populist party Podemos to come into power could undermine Spain’s economy just as it has begun to recover from a deep recession. Podemos was one of several anti-establishment […]
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The Three Ages Of Spain
On a hot April day on the Plaza Mayor (Main Square) of Cuenca in central Spain, generations intermingle as activity resumes — after the compulsory afternoon siesta.
All eyes are on legendary Argentine striker Lionel Messi ahead of Saturday night’s Barcelona-Juventus final of the Champions League. Here’s our world tour of gasps and shouts of amazement for the best soccer player of his generation. Olé! Lionel Messi: Lovin” Leo In 7 Languages par Worldcrunch
The toppling of two Christopher Columbus statues in Buenos Aires suggests the president’s sympathies with the continent’s indigenous movements. It’s another of the government’s “confused” reinterpre
TURIN — Italian politicians from very different backgrounds have been trying to capitalize on last week’s victory of Spain’s anti-austerity party Podemos in regional elections: from centrist Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and the populist Northern League leader Matteo Salvini, to the banker-turned-cabinet minister Corrado Passera and leftist LGBT activist and governor of the Puglia region […]
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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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Eurovision Contestants 2015: Spain
Spain’s contestant this year, 29-year-old Edurne, said that taking part in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest was the most important project of her career — and honestly, we don’t know whether that makes us happy or sad for her. The lyrics (in Spanish, bonus points) to her song “Amanecer” are about that emotional instant before […]
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Extra! Deadly Attack In Barcelona School
La Vanguardia, April 21, 2015 A deadly attack by a student in a Barcelona high school was the lead story throughout the Spanish press on Tuesday. The headline on the city’s leading daily La Vanguardia reads: “Shock After The Murder Of A Teacher By The Hand Of A Child.” The newspaper reports that the 13-year-old […]
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Here is a preview of our exclusive newsletter to keep up-to-date and stay inspired by Smart City innovations from around the world.
Anti-austerity party Podemos is not the only group upsetting politics in Spain and trying to capitalize on popular discontent. Another party gaining favor among voters is the significantly less radical Ciudadanos (“Citizens”). Formed in Catalonia, the party promotes national unity and has been attracting voters from both the left and right who are fed up […]
Architectural and planning innovations have given new life to Bilbao, Spain, transforming it from a grey post-industrial city into a trendy tourist destination.
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Song Du Jour #3, Lust For Life
British film director Toby Tobias told Metro today that Iggy Pop, who will star in his upcoming movie Blood Orange as — guess what — a rock’n’roll legend, was “such a gentleman” that he saved an injured stray cat while on set in Ibiza. We thought this deserved a few spins of his “Lust For […]
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Jumped Off The Page
When I dug up this shot of the statues of Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza next to the monument to their author Miguel de Cervantes, in Madrid’s Plaza de España, it got me hunting for other literary characters who had come to statufied life: I’ve got one photo of the Little Mermaid in […]
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Barns On Stilts
A stone’s throw away from Santiago de Compostela, I took this picture of a hórreo — a kind of granary built above ground and characteristic of Spain’s northwestern Galicia region. The pillars end in flat stones to prevent rats from accessing the grain stored there. When I took this shot in the month of July, […]
One of Spain’s richest women is up against banks insisting she pay back her debts. How did the heiress to the Koplowitz construction dynasty come to this?
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Global Charts #7
It’s almost the weekend! Time to see what the world’s been listening to this week. Worldcrunch: Outsiders, “Summertime Blues” Austria: Meghan Trainor, “All About That Bass” Dominican Republic: Mozart La Para, “Pa Gozar” Swaziland: M.anifest & HHP, “Jigah” Saudi Arabia: Ismaeel Mubarak, “Shoog” Macau: Jinny Ng, “Love Is Not Easy” Source: Hot Music Chart
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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 […]
SAN ANTONIO — It’s a mild evening on Passeig de Joan Carlos I, opposite Ibiza’s historic Old Town. The setting sun bathes Life Marina Ibiza, an apartment development designed by renown Paris architect Jean Nouvel, in a surreal sea of color. At the Madrigal Bar, Champagne cocktails are being prepared. At the roundabout by the […]
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Watch Your Step
I’m not a big sports fan, but I do watch the Tour de France every year. These guys were about a whole other kind of cycling, racing like madmen down the stairs of Dalt Vita, Ibiza’s old town.
Doggy business stinking up sidewalks is a very real problem in towns and cities around the world. Different attempts to clean up include raising fines, public leaflets or even a project in Buenos Aires to give green collars to the dogs whose owners scoop their poop. So inevitably it would have to come to this: […]
I was told that on the spectacular road from Palma de Mallorca to the Sa Calobra Creek, there are more than 800 turns. Which didn’t discourage some fearless (reckless?) cyclists from racing downhill, in the middle of ongoing traffic.
MADRID — Princess Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano has been preparing for this moment for 10 years. Soon the 41-year-old will be climbing the steps to the Spanish throne — a first for a Spanish commoner — to take her place beside her husband Felipe VI. That everything would happen so quickly after the unexpected abdication of […]
Just over a year ago, when Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands handed her eldest son Willem Alexander the reins of the country, everybody in Britain wondered whether Queen Elizabeth II would be next. Now, as Spain’s Juan Carlos, 76, steps down to “renew” the monarchy, questions are rising again about the British queen’s succession. But […]
Geraldine Chaplin once recalled her famous father’s resilient humor, which persisted even onto his death bed. At 88, Charlie Chaplin’s health was failing, and as doctors and relatives observed him, his eyes closed and barely breathing, Geraldine’s mother audibly declared that the “final moment” had come. “I’m just playing dead,” Chaplin muttered back. He remained […]
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Tied To The Job
Between the 1950s and the 1970s, we witnessed how Spain’s Costa Brava gradually lost some of its charm. Such picturesque sights as this ropemaker are impossible to find nowadays.
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Looks Can Be Deceiving
These conical hats, or capirotes, and white robes were worn by Spanish penitents during Easter celebrations long before the white supremacist Ku Kux Klan began donning them. But they’re still spooky.
CORDOBA — Back in 1984, UNESCO included Spain’s Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba on its World Heritage list. Thirty years later, the site that tourist guides describe as one of Andalusia’s architectural masterpieces — a symbol of the golden age of the Umayyad civilization and of the “concord” between religions — now represents conflict. Though the exceptional […]
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Waxy Ex-Votos
Fifty kilometers (30 miles) west of Barcelona stands the beautiful Santa Maria de Montserrat Benedictine abbey. Like many holy places, it features ex-votos, or offerings — but I had never seen such a profusion of wax body parts, most of them given as a gesture of gratitude for having been cured from a disease afflicting […]
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Tacky Architecture
Not everything famous French architects build is tasteful. Jean Nouvel, the Pritzker Prize winner behind the Arab World Institute in Paris and Barcelona’s Torre Agbar, is also responsible for this “colorful” Las Boas complex on the Spanish island of Ibiza.
A German-Spanish startup has created technology it says is so effective turning light into energy that it can also utilize moonbeams and office building windows.
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Before The Tourists
In the 1950s, the Costa Brava — northeastern Spain’s coastal region — was identified by the Spanish government and local entrepreneurs as suitable for substantial development as a holiday destination. In the 1960s, though, we were still able to catch a glimpse of how peaceful life was, before they basically covered everything in concrete.