WELCOME!

I am starting this blog now even though I have been in Spain a while…but I say better late than never! I hope you enjoy it and I would be interested to hear your points of view as well.

I have been in Spain for over 10 and a half weeks now – with less than 5 weeks to go until I go home for the first time I am beginning to anticipate Christmas and all that it means – seeing friends and family! I am very excited…
This week has been quite a quiet week. The previous week I was feeling quite homesick and it was making me feel low – for the first time since I had got here I was finding it hard – it was hard but I couldn’t explain why because nothing ‘hard’ was actually happening in my life – I had got over all the hard bits of finding somewhere to live and starting university. I think it was just more of a psychological shift. I had hit a brick wall and now I was trying to surpass it.
I think a year abroad is mostly about the personal challenges it presents. It’s so very character building because it involves surviving in a foreign environment, and there is a point where it stops feeling like a holiday in the sun, where the novelty wears off and you realise what it all really means. I am glad not to have gone back to England in this first term as I think it’s too early. I could see myself going back and then finding it hard to leave again after having slipped right back into my normal life.
Spain is good place to do the year abroad as it is sufficiently foreign to present those challenges. It is also a lovely country with a rich culture and a very lively people! Madrid is non-stop and the vibe is good.
I was presented this week with a reality shock as I heard the news that a man had been killed in my local metro station in a pro and anti fascist clash. It’s the anniversary of Generalissimo Franco’s death this coming week and fascist marches are planned in the city. It seems there are two extreme ideologies: one is fascism that seems to survive to this day despite the Spanish having put ‘everything behind them’. And the other is anti-fascism – who will do whatever it can to disturb the marches.
As a foreigner who is not used to seeing extreme right-wing marches occur in the middle of a capital city, I am somewhat shocked. I am torn between the right for people to express their points of view, no matter what they are, and the fact that this ideology is a provocation of hatred and violence.
I have read an interesting book recently called ‘Ghosts of Spain’ in which the author, a British foreign correspondent living in Madrid, follows the resurrection and burial of mass graves left over from the Spanish Civil War. 32 years after the end of the dictatorship people are finally beginning to speak up about things that were previously forbidden. It is interesting though as it also shows that Spain has not quite come to terms with its past and the ideological conflict that many say, was a precursor to World War 2. Underneath the surface, the feelings are still raw and the fear still present.
On the face of it Spain has changed enormously – it has an excellent transport system, improving public services (though bureaucracy still reigns as I have often experienced first hand) and richer, healthier people. It’s a country that is going forward, no doubt about it. The past is slowly turning into ancient history as the post ’75 generation grows up with only the memory of democracy and greater affluence.
I stand at an interesting vantage point – I can look at this country as an outsider and draw more objective conclusions of it. I had no particular fascination with Spain before I came but now I have been here for a while, not only do I have a great affection for the country and its people, I have also learned that it is not simply sun, cerveza and flamenco. It is a multi-faceted country with different languages and different people. It is a country of contradictions, where the Roman Catholic Church is still strong but where gay people enjoy more rights than in most other countries.
Anyway, I’ll leave it there for now. Will write more soon…possibly about the farcical system of trying to sign up for university.