Climbing in the Mountains of Spain

I am so lucky to have met a Spanish local named Emilio from the climbing wall at the University, because he has been kind enough to invite me on two different climbing trips to the mountains. I would not have been able to climb outside without his generosity, because it requires a knowledge of the area's camping and climbing spots, climbing gear, and a car to go on these types of trips. The first place we went was called La Pedriza. According to a friend of mine, this is the best place to climb near Madrid and I loved it.

We did some slab climbing, which is where the wall is slanted away from you and there are nothing but tiny holds throughout. This type of climbing is really great for me, because I am light and have a long reach, so I had a ton of fun! I flashed (did it on my first try) a route that was supposedly a 6b, which is roughly equivalent to 5.10 c/d and is up there with my most difficult climbs. I got these pictures from one of the girls that went with us to climb, and although they aren't great and a lot of them aren't of me, they can give you an idea of the location and the people I was climbing with.

Jose is waving

this is Emilio

This was our view from our climbing spot. Beautiful!

After we finished climbing, we went camping near a river by the mountains and it was so beautiful. The weather was perfect so we just slept on the ground in our sleeping bags.

The last time that we went out, we went to some mountains outside of a suburb of Madrid called Gestafe. This time we did crack climbing (which is where you have to utilize a long crack in the rock as your main source of hand and foot holds). This type of climbing is really difficult for me, because it is a bit painful sometimes since you have to jam your hands and feet into the crack to support your weight. But I was really happy to be able to work on this style of climbing and I did pretty well overall. Unfortunately, I have no pictures from this excursion but hopefully, I will have more pictures from future climbing excursions to share with you. And whenever Duke gets here, we are going to have so much fun climbing in Mallorca!!!

Toledo!

I just realized that you'll think I've been wearing this brown dress every day!

 OK, so I got to go on another Friday excursion through the Institute of Franklin this week. I was really happy about this because sometimes the list fills up too fast and there isn't room on the bus to go. These excursions are so awesome because we get to go and see parts of Spain for free with guides!
Toledo, is a small city a little south of Madrid where there is a strong presence of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. It sits atop a hill and is surrounded by a river, giving it a very protected feeling.

The entrance to the City

The entire city is built as if on terraces with sharply inclining and declining, labyrinthine roads.

This street and house are so old that you can easily imagine the princesses and caballeros of Historic Toledo

There is an expression, "yo tuve una noche Toledano", which means I had a really bad night or a night without any sleep, because in historic Toledo, in its cramped streets, there were many fights on horseback, screaming from balconies, and parties, making sleep very difficult.

 The first church that we visited, la Sinogogo de la Santa María la Blanca, is highly representative of Toledo itself, because it contains the presence of the three religions. The walls and ceilings have the characteristic detail of a Muslim mosque while the floors are composed of tiled stars of David and in the far end of the room, there is a Christian addition.

facing the addition (notice the cross and the stained glass window)

The christian addition

The characteristic detail of Muslim architecture

1000 stars of David

 The Monasterio San Juan de los Reyes was the second place that we visited on our excursion. This monastery was beautiful, but I don't have much to say about it except that it is yet another demonstration of the former might of the catholic church in Spain.

The patron saint capable of giving you a boyfriend or girlfriend if you pray to it

This door is approximately 5 feet tall--People used to be so short!

an orange tree!

In between the visits to the two churches, we took a relaxing lunch in the plaza. Cierra and I bought delicious nectarines from a frutería and ate them while we tramped up the beautiful, cobblestone, winding streets and admired the random wares, including armor and swords, visible through the windows of little stores.

After a long day of walking up thousands of inclined streets, we were ready to go home.

The Political Situation in Spain

You may have heard and be interested in all of the recent protests in Spain so here is my account of what is going on.
Although people warned me about going near them, the protests are really not dangerous at all. I have seen major protests in Madrid, Valencia, and Barcelona. There was even a small one in the plaza in front of my school in Alcalá but that one has already finished while the others are ongoing.

Who are the protesters and what are they protesting?  The people who are protesting in Spain are mostly young Spaniards who cannot find work. The unemployment figure in Spain is currently 20% and most of those unemployed are young, college-educated people. However this figure is not accurate, because a lot of young Spaniards find work and are paid under the table, yet continue to receive unemployment benefits for a maximum of 2 years. This an exacerbating factor in the collapse of the Spanish economy.

Despite the fact that most of the protesters are upset and protesting due to the collapse of their economy, the things they are demanding from their government are actually non-material. Although the demands of the protesters are all somewhat different, their is one theme: more democracy, less corruption. 

 Pictures from the protests in the Puerta del Sol, Madrid

To citizens of the U.S., this may seem a bit non-specific and whiny but in Spain, there actually is a crisis of democracy and corruption. Their political system, for example, takes into account the voters much less than the political parties. An example of this is that the citizens of Spain do not actually elect their president, instead, they elect their preferred party into the congress and then the congress elects the president. Furthermore, the citizens of Spain do not elect specific members of political parties to be in the congress, instead, the members of each political party arrange themselves on a political party list of candidates in order of the most powerful and then for example, if 25% of the citizens of Spain elect the popular party to be in the congress, then the first 25% of the list of 37 political party members will then be elected to congress. One problem with this method is that there is a very strong discipline of the vote, meaning that members of a political party almost ALWAYS vote together, because they are more accountable to the each other than to the citizens that they represent.


Furthermore, it is a historic fact that Spain is home to severe political polarization. You may think that Barrack Obama is a socialist or that he is more like a communist than a republican, but the truth is that in the U.S., there actually is no political left. There WAS during the 1920's when labor unions and leftist political parties called for the protection of the worker and retribution from big businesses, but since McCarthyism, true socialism and communism have become insignificant in the U.S. political sphere. In reality, democrats and republicans share very similar ideologies and therefore, there is much more voting against one's party in the U.S. than their is in Spain. In Spain, there are a multitude of relatively popular political parties ranging from anarchists to communists (who believe in land distribution and everything) to fascists to neo-Nazists and when you have so many extremely different political parties, there can be true hate between them making civil wars and independence movements and ongoing threat in Spain. 


What could be some consequences if the Spanish economy collapsed? Something quite interesting is that while Obama has been trying to create better national healthcare for the U.S., he has also told the president of Spain, Zapatero, that he needs to eliminate Spanish social health programs. This is because Spain is in economic turmoil and is currently being bailed out by the European union, which is being bailed out by the U.S., which is being bailed out by China. Therefore, Spain will most likely be the first to lose its social health programs. Furthermore, the large rate of unemployment of the youth is also putting a huge strain on the tax income that is supposed to be for the currently retired.

Another possible consequence of an economic collapse is social unrest resulting in civil wars or the sedition of autonomous regions from Spain. This kind of severe consequence is of course less likely, however, it is worth noting that there are many regions of Spain where it is more favorable to think of oneself as part of that region as opposed to being part of the country as a whole. Therefore, people in those regions often times resist speaking Spanish and instead, speak their own languages and barter with the government for more independence. For example, the terrorist group of País Vasco, ETA (now less of a threat than in the 90's but still existent) committed unspeakable acts of murder and torture all for the sake of becoming independent from Spain. 


Despite animosity between political parties and between the states and the federal government, I have learned to appreciate the sense of unity in the U.S. Unlike in Spain, the people of the U.S. are united by the ideas present in our constitution and in the declaration of independence as well as the American dream. Happy fourth of July! 


P.S. I am curious to know more about this dangerous algae in Grand lake