Girona, Spain

Internationals and the U.S. Election

The U.S. bites their political fingernails just days before the election, while internationals have mixed views about its significance but a clear choice of a candidate. One thing’s for certain: if the world could weigh on next week’s election, Sen. Obama would receive some serious global support.

According to a recent Gallup Poll surveying 3.2 billon citizens of 73 different countries 24 percent of internationals prefer Obama in contrast to 7 percent who prefer McCain.

Some of the strongest support comes from Europeans whom, if given a stake in the election, would ensure a landslide Obama victory.

“If I could vote I would vote for Obama because for me he represents the change not only of the national direction but international,” said Alberto Arévalo, an international lawyer living in Barcelona. “Normally from experience we’ve learned not to trust presidents, but with Obama I’m sure there will be change.”

More than 60 percent of Europeans believe a new U.S. president will have an impact on their nation and Obama is the favorite with 65 percent of the population preferring him.

The European leg of Obama’s world tour can be credited for the spread of “Obamamania” across the pond. His Berlin speech led to the German press dubbing him the “The New Kennedy” and one Frankfurt editorial screaming the headline “Lincoln, Kennedy, Obama.”

However, the international view of the election is a patchwork of opinions. A whopping 69 percent of world-citizens didn’t state a presidential preference and typically don’t believe the election makes a difference in their country.

“First of all it’s not my country,” said Sienae Kim, an interior design student from Seoul. “It’s not happening in my country and secondly I don’t really know about the political things and third I don’t believe what they’re saying.”

U.S. political attitudes in South Korea have gaping generational differences. The “386-generation,” known for anti-American sentiment and Korean nationalism, are stark contrasts of their war-era parents. Still, Obama fans represent a significant portion of the country. Kim says if made to choose she would pick Obama because she believes McCain equals Bush.

“When you’re disappointed with something you look forward to a new person,” she said.

Others believe the election has proved to be more of a media sensation than anything else.

“It’s kind of horrible how much we do know about the American system,” said Wendi Smallwood, a Canadian English teacher. “We should know more about our own country,” Smallwood said she purposely tries to avoid reading U.S. news but believes Obama would prove a better president.

“It seems like he’s a bit more concerned with education and medical insurance rather than going and bombing the world,” she said. “Obama seems more willing to be a team player in the international community rather than a vigilante.”

Published in University Star, October 29, 2008, Volume 98, No. 27

Museum of the Strange and Deranged Salvador Dali

Visit the Salvador Dalí Theater-Museum in Figueres, Spain to view the world’s largest piece of surrealist art.

The museum, designed by Dalí, has a touch of all the oddness and abnormality that is prevalent in his work. Here, some of the Figueres native’s finest pieces, as well as full-room pieces created explicitly for the museum, are on permanent display. The Dalí museum holds it all from recreating the sex-appeal of May West in an exhibit made of giant lips, eyes, and blond hair to ceiling paintings of melting watches and elephants. The building was completed in 1974 atop the rubble of the original Figueres Theater, which was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War.

“Some of his stuff was kind of disturbing but it was good,” said Krystle Yague, an international student visiting the museum. “He was brilliant.”

Dalí is most known for his surrealist paintings. Pictures of melting clocks and semi-human figures blurred into objects are typical, but realism and cubism works can be found here as well.

“I feel like he took the weirdest stuff he could find and put it together, but it made sense. It turned into art,” Yague said.

Dalí’s surrealist work was partly inspired by a method he developed all of his own — the paranoid critical method. The method is the way of perceiving reality an artist uses to find different ways to view the world, such as his painting Metamorphosis of Narcissus. The artwork seems to be of two bony hands with eggs perched on the fingertips emerging from a pool of water, but it the figure of a thin Narcissus with a sulking head appears on the left.

Dalí’s artwork was not restricted to the canvas. He designed jewelry, crafted sculptures and painted the entire ceiling of the Palace of the Wind, an ambient parlor on the second floor. The ceiling is resonant of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, with immaculate detail and surreal religious allusions. The work portrays a barefoot Dalí and wife Gala in a near-embrace above a cloud of angelic figures. A scene of the Apocalypse, where melting clocks and broken wheels cascade over crowds of confused figures, borders one end of the ceiling while a scene of the two entering paradise contrast the other.

Dalí’s most concrete inspiration was by far his wife with whom he was madly in love and includes in his works. However, they lived several miles apart and Gala had many lovers.

The Spanish crown bestowed the title of Marquis to the Dali before his death, a title written on his crypt in the belly of the museum where the artist rests beneath his life works.

Published in University Star, October 22, 2008, Volume 98, No. 24

Barcelona's Vanity Fair

The Rambla is a tree-lined historical avenue three-quarters of a mile long that pulsates through the center of Barcelona.

It’s a seemingly endless parade of flower stalls, cafés and street performers where one can buy anything from Russian hamsters to dancing Simpson figures. The street dissects two of the city’s oldest areas: Barcelona’s aesthetic Gothic Quarter on the east and the slum-turned ethnic enclave, the Raval, on the west.

The Rambla derives its name from the Arabic word “ramla” meaning sandy ground. However, the people-infested street makes up for its lack of actual sand with colorful displays of Barcelonan culture. It is by far one of the top attractions in the city.

The Rambla is so large it is divided into six sections, each named after a close-by building or landmark. The Rambla de les Flors, for instance, was the only place in 19th century Barcelona where fresh flowers were sold and the Rambla dels Estudis was named after a nearby mid-15th century university building that no longer exists.

Today the street maintains most of its quaint charm. The avenue pulsates during the daytime with the murmur of European languages, the incessant blaring of mopeds and the guttural chants of gipsy beggars. Roosters crow from animal stalls, waiters serve sangria to patio clients and human statues dressed as everything from soccer players to the Grim Reaper line the walkway. However, the Rambla loses a bit of its charm at night as artists and flower vendors give way to the rendezvous of drug dealers and ladies of the night. According to the Barcelona Reporter, 20 percent of prostitution in the city occurs in the Raval, which borders the southern half of the passage. Still, the area is often teeming with late-night partygoers enjoying the Barcelona nightlife until daybreak.

Towards the northernmost end of the Rambla is the Plaza Catalunya, a nerve center of the city. Halfway down the avenue is the Boqueria, a huge farmers market selling everything from dried figs to squid tentacles. Here there are more tourists than actual grocery shoppers, but the color and smells of the place are enough to veer anyone from a Rambla stroll.

A walk to the end of the avenue leads to the Port Vell, the original harbor of the city constructed in medieval times when Barcelona dominated the Mediterranean trade scene. A 197-foot Columbus monument signals the end of the Rambla journey with a giant figure of Christopher Columbus pointing across the Mediterranean toward the New World.

The Rambla is dotted with crude drinking fountains looking like old-fashioned water spigots. The fountains aren’t the least bit drinker-friendly, yet like all things on the Rambla, even these have their charm. According to folklore, whoever drinks from them is destined to return.

Published in University Star, October 15, 2008, Volume 98, No. 21

Sagrada Familia - Gaudi on Nature and the New Testament

A visit to the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, Catalonian architect Antoni Gaudí’s lifework, is like a lesson in geometry, nature and the New Testament.

The temple is one of the most visited attractions in Barcelona and received 2.4 million visitors in 2005, the same year it was proclaimed a World Heritage Site by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Barcelona is Gaudí’s art palette for his most monumental designs, but the Sagrada Família is by far the beauty mark of the city’s architecture scene. The Catalonian architect spent the majority of his sickly childhood observing the silent rules of nature. A rulebook, “which is always open and which we should make an effort to read, is that of nature,” Guadi said. Patterns drawn from shell formations, flowers and gastropods, are in constant play in each and every one of his works.

The Sagrada Família consumed Gaudí’s life until his death in 1926. The temple, which began in 1882, is still under construction and slated for completion in the next 30 years, according to the Construction Board of La Sagrada Família Foundation.

The exterior of the temple is like a sculpture storybook of the Bible, with depictions of Christ’s birth, childhood and crucifixion. The western entrance, known as the Passion Façade, greets the gawking tourist with tortuous scenes of Christ’s crucifixion. The scene includes sharp, angular interpretations of Gaudi’s original designs by atheist sculptor, Josep Maria Subirachs. To the left of the crucifixion is a scene of the Last Supper followed by a depiction of the Garden of Gethsemane. In both sides, a blocky sculpture of Gaudí sits, taking notes over the Biblical scenes.

The Nativity Façade on the east depicts the birth of Christ, Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt and scenes of Jesus’ childhood. Overhead, 18 looming medieval-looking towers represent the 12 disciples, four apostles, the Virgin and Christ himself.

Hexagonal pillars inside create vaulting ceilings Gaudí designed to resemble a canopy-like forest ceiling. Unfortunately, besides the ceiling and stained glass windows, the inside of the church is more of a lesson in scaffolding than Gaudí. Tarps, plaster molds and machinery fill the belly of the temple like animals in Noah’s Ark.

The natural spirit of earthen elements is drafted into everything from the vaulted ceilings to spiraling staircases that resemble snail shells. Fruit sculptures plastered with colorful mosaic tiles are perched atop temple towers to represent the fruit of the Holy Spirit. However, the sides of the facades, littered with sculptures of snakes and lizards, illustrate how close evil still lurks.

The work is far from finished, with progress sketchy because of the structure’s questionable foundation. Nonetheless, the temple is to remain one of the most beautiful symbols of Christianity in Barcelona.

-Published 10/1/08