La Selección Nueva

I find myself sitting at my computer tonight, watching the Spain-Bosnia game, which is absolutely meaningless, as Spain have already won the group with 9 wins out of 9 games, and Bosnia have already wrapped up second place, meaning they'll have a two-leg playoff with one of the other second-place finishers from Europe. So in reality, I'm more focused on the results coming in from right next door in Portugal where I find myself rooting for Malta, for the sole reason that I'd prefer not to see Cristiano Ronaldo at the world cup.

But despite the fact that I'm following the events in neighboring Portugal with greater intensity than I am the events of my adopted national team - Spain - the events of Portugal aren't unrelated to my Spanish predilections by any stretch of the imagination. Real Madrid, the new club for the new Ronaldo (and a new Ronaldo for the same club), have said that they stand to lose 90 million euros in marketing value if Portugal, and therefore Ronaldo, fail to make the world cup. It's not that I put any credibility in the financial estimates of the Real Madrid accountants - but even if they're off by 200%, that's still losing enough money that it would make me exceptionally happy.

In any case, Simao has just scored for Portugal to put them 2-0 up, so it's seeming quite unlikely that the Portuguese could blow that lead at home against European minnows Malta, and that'll do the job of putting them, and Ronaldo, the world cup. So while I'm ruing Madrid's good financial fortune, I got to think about why it was so important to them to have Ronaldo in the world cup. And as I was watching La Selección (the affectionate name the Spanish have for their national team) pass the ball around and just dominate the crap out of a pretty good Bosnian side, I realized that today's Selección has very little Real Madrid influence. (Since I began writing that last sentence, Bosnia have scored two goals in stoppage time to pull within three and the game has ended 5-2.)

But not only is la Selección not Real Madrid influenced, it's not even stereotypically Spanish influenced. When one takes the traditionally stereotype of Spain, the images are of Andalucia first, and second Madrid and the surrounding rural area. Cataluña, the Basque Country, and Galicia, are the nationalistic (used here in terms of desiring to be autonomous, rather than in reference to the nation state as a whole) regions which generate the most backlash from the rest of Spain.

But with Barcelona, the Catalan capital and generally leftist capital Spain, being the best club, not just in Spain, but in the world, it only makes sense that la Selección is comprised of a number of Barcelona talents. What aids Barcelona in this is that they have arguably the best youth academy in the world. Even the non-Spanish players coming out of the Barca youth academy are incredible. Lionel Messi and Jeffrén Suárez, for example. But Spanish, and Catalan players in particular, dominate the Barca youth academy products. The short elite list comprises, Xavi, Busquets, Fabregas, Puyol, and Piqué. Busquets is the exception in that if everyone is fit, he doesn't start for Spain. But with Puyol and Piqué anchoring the Spanish defense, and Xavi and Fabregas in the midfield, that's four core players of Catalan birth and Catalan training.

But let's look at the rest of the world's best midfield. The players: Andrés Iniesta, David Silva, Alberto Riera, Marcos Senna, Xabi Alonso, Juan Mata, and Santi Cazorla.

Iniesta, despite being from Castilla la Mancha (a large sparsely populated region outside of Madrid), is a Barca youth academy product and his combination play with Xavi prompted Wayne Rooney to dub him the best player in the world.

Silva is from the Canary Islands - not exactly what one thinks about when thinking of Spain - and plays with Valencia. It's not that this is un-Spanish; it's just not the quintessential Spain.

Riera is from the other set of islands - the Baleares - Mallorca to be more precise, and played in Barcelona with the other team - Espanyol - before moving to Liverpool.

Senna is a nationalized Brazilian.

Although Alonso now plays for Real Madrid, he went to the Real Sociedad youth academy (an all Basque affair), and is Basque by birth. That means he would be more Spanish in the eyes of Spaniards if he were Portuguese.

It's difficult to discount Mata's Spanishness. He was born in Castilla y León, although north enough to not be from anywhere near Madrid, and plays with Valencia.

Likewise, Cazorla was born in Asturias and plays with Villarreal.

So the heart and soul of the Spanish side, the part of the team which gets all the credit for the success, is quintessentially un-Madrid. The starting lineup at the European Championships last year was most commonly Senna, Xavi, Iniesta, and Silva. And the most likely introductions were Fabregas and Alonso.

The forward line, while not being as non-Spanish as the midfield, also has its elements of being non-Spanish. Villa, like Cazorla is Asturian. He plays with Valencia, however. Torres has more or less become the poster-boy of the national team. He's the most widely known player internationally, he scored the goal to win the European Championships, and, well, he's rather handsome. He's from a suburb of Madrid but grew up with the Atlético youth academy and is pretty anti-Real himself. Guiza is of gypsy descent, something not uncommon for European footballers but infrequently talked about. Finally, striking debutant as of today Negredo, is pretty Madrileño. He was born in Madrid and played some football for a Madrid-affiliated club in a lower division early in his career. Now he plays for Sevilla, the team from the Andalucian capital. Now THAT'S Spanish.

The defense also has its "Spanish" influence in Andalucian native Sergio Ramos and Salamancan born Alváro Arbeloa, both of whom play for Real Madrid now. But as I said before, the back line is anchored by the Catalan duo Piqué and Puyol. First string left-back Joan Capdevila was also born in Cataluña, as is evident by his first name, the most common name among Catalan men. Of course there are also Marchena (Andaluz) and Albiol (Valenciano), the latter of whom plays for Madrid now. But of course, there is Andoni Iraola as well, Basque born, the Bilbao-playing right back.

Yet of course, Iker Casillas, the (until today when Negredo made his debut) only remaining Madrid youth academy product, born in Madrid, played his entire career for Madrid is still the captain. At only 28 years of age, he's still in the early part of his career as a goalie, a position where players typically peak in their early 30s. This will permit Negredo or some other Madrileño, Madrid youth academy product to develop into the next Raul of Spanish football so that there is always that quintessentially Spanish player to lead the team.

Disclaimer: I do not believe that the real Spain is limited to Madrid, Andalucia and the surrounding countryside. What I am referring to when I discuss this typical image of Spain is both the stereotypical image from abroad, and the image the majority of Spaniards in these regions have of Spain itself.

2 extensions from my last two posts

1) History of America day two of legitimate class

Well, honestly, calling it a legitimate class might be a bit of a stretch. We watched a movie for an hour. But that´s not why I´m bringing it up. Oh no. The subject of the movie was what made it noteworthy: Atlantis.

I may not have been able to understand much of the spoken content of the movie because the acoustics were horrible and I would have been struggling to understand it in English, but I could read place names, and, unsurprisingly, they were all concentrated around Greece. Greece? Oh right, because of Greece´s long history with the western hemisphere... clearly not.

The only justification I can come up with is that there was a theory "in the air" in Europe in the 16th/17th centuries that suggested that the peoples of the ancient lost civilization of Atlantis were those who populated the Americas. That theory, though lacks practically any modern day support, as can be seen through the most superficial of Google searches. In which case, I have to conclude, that we´re talking about Atlantis for no reason whatsoever.

The second item on my list is a little grammatical equivocation made unfortunately by the New York Times. In today´s article about Hertha Müller winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, the following sentenced appeared as the introduction: "Herta Müller, the Romanian-born German novelist and essayist who has written widely about the oppression of dictatorship in her native country and the unmoored life of the political exile, on Thursday won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature."

The problem, I hope, is self-evident: imprecise prepositional selection. Normally, when we talk about the oppression of something, we talk about the oppression of a group of people who are on the receiving end of the oppression. In this case, however, the author has done the reverse, I presume. Dictatorship is not something we usually think about as being oppressed, although I suppose by authoritarians, perhaps dictatorship has been going through a period of severe oppression in the United States.

Anyway, given that this phrase, "the oppression of dictatorship" caught my eye, I thought I might share it with all of you. Some pictures already posted on facebook; the rest will come soon.

Wishing I Understood Less Spanish...

For those of you eagerly awaiting a lengthy 5,000 word epic tale of the exhibiting of heroism, the rescuing of damsels in distress, and the escaping by a whisker of the death's clutches that was our trip to Granada and Córdoba, you're just going to have to wait a bit longer. That dramatic tale will come, and now that I've hyped it up so much, it will be nothing but disappointment. Today, however, I want to talk about the first real class at The Universidad de Málaga (UMA).

In comparison to heroic tales, it may seem boring, but I assure you, my three readers, that it was anything but. In fact, it was actually somewhat interesting. Well, on a small scale, I didn't find the subject matter that interesting today, but on a big scale it was very interesting because it indicates the way the course is going to be taught.

As many of you know, the course I am taking at UMA is Historia de América en la Edad Moderna or History of America in the Modern Era. The study proceeds from the pre-Colombian civilizations up to, but not including the Bolivarian revolutions in the early 19th century. Any interesting time, to be certain, and one with which I'm not particularly familiar.

Well, naturally, to enter directly into the highly advanced ancient civilization would be to forget an explanation of how they came to be. Therefore, we began the first content-based course with theories about how the western hemisphere came to be populated. Were we discussing modern day theories based on archaeological and anthropological evidence? No. Rather, we were discussing 15th and 16th century theories about how there came to be people in the western hemisphere - everything from "they originated here" to "they're descended from Vikings."

Well, these theories might be interesting, but it seems to confuse to the focus of the course, no? The theme of the course is the western hemisphere. There could be some purpose to explaining the different theories that obtained in Europe at this time about the populating of the western hemisphere - for example, how this influenced different explorers' interactions with the indigenous peoples. However, not only was this not mentioned, but come the last 15 minutes of the class, we said goodbye to all these theories, and talked about the currently accepted entry via Bering Strait theory.

So then what purpose did the introduction of these now debunked theories serve for the course as whole? It served the purpose of removing the indigenous people as the focus by replacing them with the European elite. The course focuses on the regions with which Spain had contact. The book that is to provide complementary reading for the course is titled something like América Española y América Portuguesa. Great, then why did we spend 15 minutes talking about Leif Ericson, Erik the Red, and Thorvald, and their journeys conquering Scotland, Iceland, Greenland, and their entry into Quebec? I mean, Thorvald's kind of a cool name, but the dude's influence on the western hemisphere has to be said to be minimal.

On top of all of this, there was the constant problem of lexicon. I mean, in the United States, any semi-respectable historian has stopped talking about the "discovery" of the western hemisphere. Not here. Here, Cristóbal Colón descubrió el Nuevo Mundo en 1492. And the rhetoric surrounding what is commonly referred to as the Colombian exchange by enlightened American historians is even worse. For example, in the PowerPoint presentation our professor used throughout the class, the phrases "razas avanzadas" and "culturas civilizadas" (advanced races and civilized cultures) appeared with frequency to refer to Europeans. The obvious problem is that when these phrases are used as characterizations, it implies the opposite of the people against whom the Europeans are being defined.

Perhaps among center-right to rightist historians in the United States (of which there aren't a whole lot), this type of phrasing is acceptable. From my leftist cultural relativist perspective this is akin to making a normative judgment about the worth of the lives of people based on their ethnicity alone. It implies the thinking Europeans better, Amerindians worse. Hence the reason why I wish I had understood less of the Spanish - then I wouldn't have been so frustrated with what I already deem to be a racist teaching of American (total) history. Perhaps it will improve, perhaps not. Vamos a ver.

Language Tidbits

So this first tidbit should interest a lot of my readers because it pertains to ENVIRONMENTLLY FRIENDLY stuff. There´s a clean energy company here called "AlmaSol." Okay, what´s the big deal. A clean energy company. Well, I only realized the interesting homophonal qualities of this word when my mind, to understand it, translated only half. "Sol" is a word I´m quite familiar with (sun, for those of you with minimal Spanish). But "alma" is a word I´ve probably looked up a dozen or more times in the dictionary and it means "soul.¨ So when I translated the first half (all I needed to) of the company "AlmaSol," I was left with "SoulSol," which, of course, is a pair of homonyms. An interesting tidbit only available to the partially bilingual.

That was interesting, this next tidbit is a little more politically charged. In English, there´s no adjective or noun to refer to someone from the United States. We use the term American as both a noun and adjective to serve this purpose. ¨The American went to the store, and he bought some American brands." Well, that´s all well and good unless you´re American and not from the United States. For example, if you´re Brazilian, Mexican, Honduran, Panamanian, Colombian, or any other number of nationalities in the Western Hemisphere.

Of course, Spanish, being the language for the majority of the aforementioned disenfranchised people, does have a term for an American or something American: estadounidense. Literal translation: stateunitedian. Slightly more manageable translation: United Statesian. Translation of leftist academics who feel the English must have such a word: Usamerican. Now, I can see one of these academics, who I have branded leftist, at Dickinson reading this, and thinking that I´m poking fun at them... I am. I think the chances of Usamerican entering public discource range from supremely unlikely to downright impossible. That being said, I´m in agreement with them in principle. English does need a term that isn´t so ethnocentric. While I´m making fun of leftist academics (again, I basically agree with them) let me translate the last sentence into sociologese: "The use of the term American oppresses all those people who are American without being what the use of that term implies, ergo it´s racist and should be struck from the English language."

Okay, so that´s enough making fun of leftist academics. Indeed (for Peter), they have a far better grasp on reality than their conservative counterparts. But before I get myself going on another long-winded rant about rightist thinking is internally inconsistent, maybe I should point out another language tidbit or two.

I have been happily pleased with my astute prediction that there would be a significant number of long words which I would know precisely because they´re long words and so therefore come from Latin. Of the abundance of times one of our professors has asked as "¿Sabéis lo que es (said word)?" it seems there have been only a very small number of occassions when I have not known the word. And the majority of those times, it´s because I don´t know the word in English. For example, our History of Art teacher was surprised that we knew who the Visigodos were. Well, it doesn´t take a language expert to figure out that the Visigodos are the Visigoths. Similarly the Fenicios are the Phoenicians and Romulos y Remus y la Loba are Romulus, Remus, and the Shewolf.

Similarly, my host mom tends to assume I know all but the lengthiest of words, when in fact, many of the shorter words she uses I am absolutely clueless about. (I have just ended a sentence with a preposition, which is in fact, grammatically correct. I refer all of you who doubt this to consult some grammar experts online. You will undoubtedly find one or two who insist that ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically incorrect, but the majority seem to be in agreement that it is, in fact, permissable. The false presumption that the ending of a sentence with a preposition is not permitted comes from a desire to "Latinize" the language. English, however, is not derived from Latin, and so therefore is not bound the constraints of Latin languages. While I´m going in this direction, I´ll also note that the splitting of an infinitive in English is also permitted. Think of Neil Armstrong´s famous quote "to boldly go where no man has gone before." For those of you getting angry that such a long section is in parentheses, suck it up and read the name of my blog.) The result of my host mom assuming that I know all of these smaller words is that when we talk about quite simple things I´m more or less clueless (okay, that´s totally an exaggeration), but if we talk about more complicated things, like, say, politics, so many of the words are cognates that I manage much better.

Righteo, well, that should about do it with the digressions for today. Hope you enjoyed them. More to come Monday after my visit to Córdoba and Granada.