Viva la España

[trochee]

Spain has rejected their conservative, Bush-loving government in the face of terrorist attacks. My respect for the people of Spain has just climbed another notch.

Why can't I live in a country that responds rationally to violence? The right response to violence is exactly what the Spaniards have done: to throw out the belligerent bums who beat their chest and the drums of war with equal vigor. Unlike some countries I might name, which, when confronted with pointless and horrifying tragedy, rally around the flag and threaten passersby with being bombed flat.

Yet another reason I want to move to Barcelona.

¡Viva!

I wish I could figure out how to enter ñ and ¡ on LogJam without cutting and pasting...

Comments

[isolt.livejournal.com]

Can I go with you? I just found out that the Basques have a sacred tree, and I wanna go live in the Basque country.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

Tell me about the sacred tree business?

Oh, and of course you can come with me. In my fantasy where I'm moving to Barcelona: party at my villa on the Mediterranean coast.

That's the great thing about fantasy worlds: I can go anywhere.

[isolt.livejournal.com]

Sounds sweet. :)

From this page of some useful Basque words:

Gernikako Arbola (1) The Tree of Gernika, the ancient oak tree which stands in the town of Gernika in front of the Casa de Juntas, the traditional home of Basque liberties. During the Middle Ages, Spanish sovereigns were obliged to travel at regular intervals to Gernika to swear under the Tree to uphold Basque liberties. The Tree itself has long been regarded as the symbol and physical embodiment of these liberties; it appears on the coat of arms of Bizkaia, was the subject of a poem by Wordsworth, and miraculously survived the destruction of Gernika by Hitler's air force in 1937. The original tree finally died a few years ago, but a new Tree was already in place, grown from a shoot of the old one. (2) The Basque national anthem, a celebration of Basque liberties composed by the most famous of all Basque bards, Iparraguirre, in 1853.

Sounds an awful lot like a sacred tree to me. :)

[trochee.livejournal.com]

Wow, neat.

And that's Gernika from which Guernica of Picasso's painting. I didn't know that city was a Basque capitol. Looks like the Nazis hated the Basques even more than the Spanish did/do.

entities are your friend

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

You write:
ñ to get ñ and
¡ to get ¡

Re: entities are your friend, but not aquí

[trochee.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the entity tip, but if this title does what I expect then I'll get junk in the title. There must be a utf-8 keyboard entry mode that I can get GNOME or KDE to notice. I just haven't had a chance to notice.

Re: entities are your friend, but not aquí

[evan.livejournal.com]

it happens at the x11 level, and it's complicated. see http://neugierig.org/content/input for some tips on where to start. i think you'll either want to map (something)-n to produce it, or use the compose sequence ~n.

[epanastatis.livejournal.com]

If it had in fact turned out that the bomb was planted by ETA, rather than by Qaeda types as it seems to have been, then there would be far fewer grounds for admiration. ETA-hatred, which by legal extension has turned into hatred for any public manifestation of Basque separatism, is such a pervasive feature of political consciousness in Spain that it even infects the far left. The first reaction to the bombing of some left groups in Spain was an echo of Aznar's--to assume that ETA were the perpetrators and call for public demonstrations against them.

What got the PP was not primarily the bombing, but the fact that the bombing was not carried out by their terrorists of choice--and as that began to be clear, Aznar tried to cover that up.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

Huh. I did not know that.

Where could I read to learn more about Basque separatism from a fair source? I don't mean "unbiased" of course -- what is that? -- but just somebody who's willing to do their homework...?

Your description of the situation seems quite plausible given the little I have heard about Basque separatism and the majority Spanish feelings about it.

[epanastatis.livejournal.com]

Where could I read to learn more about Basque separatism from a fair source?

It depends. There's very little in English. How's your Spanish?

[trochee.livejournal.com]

Not too bad. But it's rusty. I'd still be curious to have the links; maybe I can practice my Spanish. I can't really deal with Catalan, or Basque, though.