I periodically read El Pais, the Spanish daily newspaper. I find it useful to get news from a non-Anglophone perspective (BBC and the New York Times are my main sources for news). I actually hadn’t been to El Pais for a long time, but I had a low key evening last night, so decided to see what was up in el mundo hispanohablante. Needless to say, I was a bit surprised when one of the main articles on the webpage was about an American news story I had heard nothing about!
The headline read, “Bill Richardson firma la derogación de la pena de muerte en Nuevo México” (Bill Richards signs the repeal of the death penalty in New Mexico). This article was nowhere to be found on the homepage of the New York Times or BBC either last night or this morning, although I did via a search find that the article appeared buried in the first section of the NYTimes today. So why is there such a focus on this in Spain? Why is it front page news for El Pais but on page 17 of the NYTimes?
I see two possible explanations. El Pais certainly has a strong focus on the Spanish speaking world. While I might suggest that in the United States are news order is 1) US, 2) Europe, 3) China/East Asia, for El Pais, the news order is 1) Europe/United States, 2) Latin America. The focus on Latin America could have something to do with news from New Mexico. There are a lot of hispanohablantes there, and it would not be unsurprising that given their coverage of this region of the world, New Mexico becomes a hotspot of news reporting.
I find the second explanation more likely, however. Spain is a Catholic nation. As such, despite its leftist tendencies (this is not a bad thing) in other areas, about death issues, it tends to be a bit more conservative. (Please feel free to contradict me here; this is a hypothesis, not fact.) It will be interesting to see when I arrive there in five months (!!!) how natives feel about abortion, stem cell research, euthanasia, and the death penalty – the typically hot issues for Catholics in this country.
Coincidentally, while I was perusing news sources last night, I found an article on the NYTimes website about bullfighting controversy in Spain. In Spain, bullfighters are celebrities. Paparazzi follow them to bars and other places they go. They are always in glossy photos, advertising this, that, or the other thing. And there is a particularly attractive bullfighter who has become very popular. The Culture Ministry awarded him a medal commending him for his bullfighting.
This is not unusual. It happens frequently. Bullfighting is an essential piece of the culture in Spain, and so the ministry wants to reward those people that do it well. Only one problem: he doesn’t do it well. This has sparked a traditionally over-romanticized response the other bullfighters – several returning their medals from the culture ministry because they feel it is too politicized (which it certainly is).
I simply find the other bullfighters’ responses entertaining. It is not as if this is an injustice, and we should move on. No, we have to engage in especially inflammatory behavior to get the most passion out of the situation as we can. I will certainly be an anomaly there. Called a “hyper-rationalist” (not philosophically speaking, I assure you) by my friends here, it will be fun to throw that out the window and become a romantically charged Spaniard for a year.
Here's a link to the bullfighting article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/world/europe/19matador.html?scp=1&sq=madrid&st=cse
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