Meanwhile in the Northwest.....

The party in Bilbao kept on going with people dancing on the river promenades and streets when I went to sleep at 2:00 am. People were just wandering around with cups of beer in their hands or shopping bags with alcohol or sitting in groups on the street. It´s amazing but I never saw any fights breakout and there were plenty of families walking around in strollers or little kids enjoying the celebration. There were plenty of signs, music and flags proclaiming the Basque region as distinct from Spain. The separatist feelings can definitely be felt.

I think Spain has yet to deal with the Spanish civil war. I was surprised to find out that Madrid was a Republican island in a Nationalist region before the war. There were several vendors in Madrid selling Republican flags of yellow, red and purple strips and T-shirts remembering the past government. Despite being such a self-defining event in this country´s history, there are no official monuments or museums about what happened. There are numerous personal books and films but it´s still too emotional for the government to put up anything formally. They really can not take a side and there were victims on both sides. The present socialist government took down a statue of Franco in Madrid a couple of years ago but had to d it secretly in the middle of night. There are still people who revere Franco and visit his burial site just outside of Madrid.

I just arrived in La Coruña, a seaside city in the Galicia that sits on a peninsula that juts out to the Atlantic Ocean, after taking an overnight bus from Santander which is famous for a long stretch of beach. A nice place to lie in the sun and watch the locals play ¨beach tennis,¨ which is basically two or four people hitting a tennis ball with an all wooden tennis racket. No volley ball played or muscle guys (a.k.a. meatheads) posing there. Some of the towns in Galicia remind me of English towns except with Spanish signs. Gone are the yellow burnt out fields and rocky cliffs to be replaced with green pastures and trees that remind me of home. It´s much cooler here and the Galicia region has been often compared to Scotland (even some of the traditional music is vaguely similar).