Buenas noches! I’m currently writing this after just getting home to Madrid from an action-packed weekend in the beautiful city of Barcelona. One of the wonderful things about GW Madrid is that there are a few excursions around Spain that are included in the program. That includes free transportation, hotel stays, some meals, and even some money for cultural experiences for students. We left bright and early Friday morning for Barcelona aboard the high-speed “Ave” train, which only took about two and a half hours (I slept most of the way). We arrived around 10:00am and hopped on a bus for the next four and a half hours while our guide (our program director, Carmela) gave us our own personal tour of the highlights of the city. We stopped at Park Güell, which is a public park designed by famous Barcelonan Antoni Gaudí. We also stopped for a quick outside view of the Sagrada Familia, an unbelievable church also designed by Gaudí. Later, we ate lunch at a beautiful seafood restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean. It was a day straight out of a Spanish novel.
On Saturday and Sunday, we visited countless museums, the stadium from the summer Olympics in Barcelona in 1992, the Plaza de Cataluña, a market area called Las Ramblas, the inside of the Sagrada Familia, and Casa Battló, yet another one of Gaudí’s amazing architectural feats. I’m exhausted, to say the least. All 19 of us passed out cold on the train on the way back to Madrid tonight. But it was the experience of a lifetime, and I got to do most of it for free (and with my wonderful new friends) thanks to GW Madrid.
Our timing in Barcelona impeccably coincided with a very important election day in Cataluña. Many people don’t know this (I didn’t know this until I started taking higher level Spanish courses), but Spain has several different comunidades autónomas (autonomous communities) that make up the country as a whole. For ages, some of these regions have experienced nationalist movements in which many citizens want to separate from the Spanish nation and become their own separate countries. One of these regions, the Basque (Vasco) region, is actually known for some horrific terrorist activity through a nationalist militant group called ETA. These autonomous regions often even have their own languages. Barcelona belongs to the region of Cataluña, in the northeast corner of Spain. The primary language spoken there is not Spanish, but a language called Catalán. In fact, I found that more natives from Barcelona spoke English than Spanish as their second language. It seemed odd to me that I was still even in the same country as I was in Madrid. It was almost as if in the United States, a large state like Texas or California decided that they were going to have an official language other than English.
While we were there this weekend, elections were being held to vote on whether or not Cataluña should separate from Spain and become its own country. The referendum didn’t pass, but there were certainly signs of stirring political activity there. On the walls of the Metro, there were window stickers proclaiming (a la Game of Thrones): “The Republic of Cataluña is Coming.” The flag of the Independents hung from many balconies. I began to see that the use of the Catalan language in Barcelona is quite a huge political statement. It demands that Spain recognize the separate Catalan culture that still thrives within its borders. If anything, the elections this weekend symbolized Catalan pride and belief in their “national” culture, which I find admirable as long as it doesn’t cause violence (like ETA in the Basque region). There will no doubt be more elections such as this one in the future, as the tide of nationalism grows more powerful. Being a political science major, this topic definitely intrigues me, and I feel that I have learned about it in unprecedented ways by witnessing it firsthand.
As for my home city of Madrid, I have fallen in love with it. Next weekend will be my very first weekend without any kind of trip outside the city, so I am hoping to really get to explore and enjoy where I am going to be living for the next three months. I can’t believe I’ve almost been here a month already. I’m so excited to see what’s next!