Liberté, Égalité...and Sangría

Some historians says that history tends to repeat itself and on my recent holidays I managed to confirm that the statement is not far from truth. In 1808 a bunch of heroics Spaniards battled hard in Madrid, to rebel against the French invaders commanded by Napoleon. The epic rebellion was immortalized by the genius painter Goya in one of his most famous works.

Unfortunately, today we can say, that their admirable sacrifice was in vein. Although we momentarily threw them away, they are all back.

No kidding. I just recently return from a trip to Spain and everywhere I looked there was a Frenchman. Whether it was at the plane, at a bar or even cooking a paella in the beach, Frenchman were walking proudly among us as if they were Trump supporters.  I tried to do some investigation of my own to find out the motives of this reconquering of the nation but you all know how hard is to understand their logic. Anyone that has recently watched, a French movie will know what im talking about.


Third of May Painting by Goya ( Prado Museum)

But, what has been the response of the Spanish authorities to this invasion? Well, they have decided to change the official time zone of the country in an attempt to confuse them.

I must say I truly support the initiative. Spain has an endemic problem with time. And I do not refer to that Spanish tradition of eating our meals at least 4 hours later than anyone else in the world. By the way we do that on purpose, to ensure tourists don't overcrowd our favorite restaurants. Neither to the fact that meetings start in average, at least 30 minutes past the scheduled time. And no need to mentioned the famous "mañana, mañana" popularized by our administration, and curiously, one of the two sentences that Brits can pronounce in Spanish besides "Otra Cerveza por favor" [Another Beer please].

For a country that once ruled the world we seem to struggle on how to keep with times and regain relevance ( by that I mean followers talking in todays language ). We have got our timing wrong lately in everything we tried.

For years we have also tried very hard to overcome the fact that nobody in the European Union pay attention to us. For that, we cleverly appointed a very tall Prime Minister to make it easier for the rest of the European Leader to notice him in the summits. But as our Napoleon once proved, the height of their leader does not equal his power. So we tried a different approach, and sent a dull balad to Eurovision Song Contest just a year after Portugal won with an even duller one. Clearly a year too late.

Just another recent example, our new brand new Prime Minister watched the Twilight movies on TV and immediately decided to dig the grave of or former dictator without realizing that vampire movies are not in fashion anymore. Again wrong timing

The obsession with time has also influenced television. A recent Spanish TV hit series portrays a secret Government task force that travel through time preserving Spanish history from evil foreign enemies that try to change it. People were glued to their TV set every week to ensure at least the 2 greatest moments of our history were not altered. The first one, the epic Spanish win at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1969, were we avenged the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1700s by clinging the title by a single against the UK in their home soil, and of course our recent victory in Soccer World Cup. Probably the only two historical events that an average Spaniard will be able to remember due to our "great" education system.

But do we really want to be a leading country nowadays? What is the point? Arent we better to be a lay back country where people just enjoy life? If we are already the second most visited country in the world we must be doing something right.

Even the French have surrendered to the truth. Everything taste better in Spain. I even heard one cheering to the crowd the other night: Liberté, Égalité...and Sangría