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Monday, April 02, 2007 From recent days: Out walking one morning mid-week, realizing that the young trees planted along narrow local streets had begun sprouting leaves, the bare look of winter months suddenly softening, the color green suddenly everywhere again. Stopping in at the local estanco -- tobacco shops, a long-standing institution where one can buy stamps, post cards and trinkets as well as cigarettes, etc. -- to get stamps. The friendly 30-ish guy behind the counter began singing along with a Randy Newman song playing on the radio as he dug my stamp out from an accordion folder in a drawer. In awkwardly accented English, he came out with, "You can leave your hat on....," one of the least likely lyrical extracts I expected to hear in a neighborhood shop that morning. Last Tuesday night, Television Español broadcast the first edition of Spain's version of a French program, featuring candidates for high office taking questions from members of the public, responding with answers as unscripted as you'll get from candidates for high office. Title: Tengo una pregunta para usted (I Have A Question For You). For two hours, the current president (José Luís Rodriguez Zapatero) took questions from 100 people -- selected objectively, it's claimed, by a firm outside the government and TVE -- on topics that ranged all over the map. Out of all the exchanges, some of them fairly intense, the media fastened on the one in which a person asked Zapatero if he knew the current price of a cup of coffee. 80 céntimos, he answered. This was headline news, and for the next two days pages and pages of newspaper space and many hours of radio and television were devoted to squeezing as much out of that one silly Q&A as possible. There was a serious concern behind the question, of course: the drastic increase in prices and general cost of living provoked by the conversion to the euro, and wondering how in touch the president was with an aspect of life that affects everyone of normal income levels. That didn't get a whole lot of press, and I was thankful to see one female journalist speak disparagingly about the entire chapter, referring to the question as "una bobada," as nonsense. The day after the broadcast, with the press foaming at the mouth about the coffee question, Zapatero invited reporters to have a cuppa with him at a government cafeteria. The price, headlines blared, was 70 céntimos. Zapatero essentially shrugged, maintaining a show of good humor through it all. (70 céntimos? 80 céntimos? One joint in this barrio charges a euro -- prices in all the rest range from a euro and 5 céntimos to one euro 20.) Sometime this month, the leader of the right-wing opposition party will be on the show (all of this part of the lead-up to elections coming in May). I suspect I'll do myself a favor and skip that one. A night or two after that, Madrid experienced a night of theatrical happenings, events taking place in theaters and public places all around the center, some going through the night, well into the wee hours. Down the street from here, part of the plaza got cordoned off during the day, a couple of techies set up sound equipment. By evening, something sounding like a cross between crickets and an electronic keening could be heard in the space, a crowd gathering around the cordoned area. I missed the event. By the time I passed, around 11 p.m., the plaza had reverted to its usual nighttime party mode, techies packing up equipment as the crowd swirled around them. [continued in next entry] España, te quiero. rws 4:14 AM [+]
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