CARNIVAL CELEBRATION, THE CRAZIEST PARTIES IN SPAIN

This year carnival celebration will start in Spain next 3rd March. Carnival in this country is celebrated nationwide though the most raucous festivities are in the Canary Islands, Cadiz and Sitges. While each town has its own unique flavour of celebration, they all have a devotion to having a good time. In these main destinations during Carnival it seems that no one sleeps as the drinking and dancing go from dusk until dawn. You can see extravagant costumes and people in masks everywhere, and in any of Spain's Carnivals, you'll have a lot more fun participating in the masquerading than you will just watching.

About their origins, most popularly it is believed the term Carnival derives from the words "farewell to the flesh," a reference to the excesses that led up to the sombre Lent. Some suspect Carnival is derived from the Roman solstice festival, the Saturnalia, where participants indulged in much drinking and dancing. Saturnalia is believed to have had the first parade floats, called the 'carrus navalis'. Probably these pagan roots were the explanation why they were banned for forty years during the General Franco dictatorship.

The most popular and beautiful carnival in Spain (and probably in Europe) is the one that takes place in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, it is really a great spectacle to see all the extraordinary costumes parade with dresses made of beads and satin and feathers, each one more flamboyant than the last one. But although this is the most amazing, in fact, during these carnival days, in every single little town of Spain, people are eager to wear a disguise and have a good time during ten days!

By the way, I promise to bring to this blog more amazing photos of 2011 Carnivals and update this post in a few days.

KING JUAN CARLOS I AND 23-F COUP, 30 YEARS LATER

30 years ago today a mustachioed Lieut Col Antonio Tejero, proudly wearing the uniform and a shiny tricorne hat of the Guardia Civil, burst into the main chamber of the Spanish parliament brandishing a gun. Thus began what Spaniards refer to as 23-F, the attempted coup of February 23rd, 1981.

Tejero was the frontman of a military-led operation against Spains’s fledgling democracy. General Franco, the last of Europe’s prewar dictators, had died fiave and a half years earlier, still in power and the parliamentary monarchy that the new King Juan Carlos I had established was far from solid.

The death of Franco elevated Don Juan Carlos de Borbón to the throne. Until Franco’s death Juan Carlos had remained in the background and eemed to follow the dictator’s plans of appointing him his successor as head of state and later King of spain. Once in power as king, Juan Carlos facilitated the development of the current political system, as his father Don Juan de Borbón, had advocated since 1946.

So, the so called Spanish transtition was the era when Spain moved from the dictatorship of Francisco Franco to a liberal democratic state. And the transition began with Franco’s death. Nevertheless, the transition proved challenging, as the spectre of the Civil War (1936-1939) still haunted Spain.

And this coup attempt proved to be later as a defining moment in introducing democracy to Spain and at the same time, everybody agree that the role played by King Juan Carlos that long night was just crucial for the democracy in this country.

Here you can see a video of King Juan Carlos speech when at dawn he lead to the country to support the democracy process and this speech eventually led to the failure of the coup:

 

JOSE VILLEGAS Y CORDERO, A REGIONALIST PAINTER

Jose Villegas y Cordero was a Spanish painter, born in Sevilla (1844-1921). At 16 he sold his first work in the Seville World Fair. He studied for several years in Madrid, where he often went to the Prado Museum to copy to Velazquez and his technique acquired the spontaneity and the use of color of Velazquez. Also he greatly admired orientalist painting and traveled to Morocco and later on to Rome, whose early work there was about local customs topics (there he would paint many subjects of bullfighters), though he actually painted about many different subjects. In 1901 he was appointed director of the Museo del Prado, moving to live from Rome to Madrid, where he died.

And these are some of his paintings:

THE PRESTIGIOUS CHEF SANTI SANTAMARIA HAS DIED IN SINGAPORE

The prestigious chef Santi Santamaria has died of a heart attack in Singapore. He was the first Catalan chef to achieve three Michelin stars and won the National Prize of Gastronomy in 2009, he was  totally against the use of chemicals in the kitchen.

Santamaria was born in 1957 in Sant Celoni (Barcelona), where he opened the restaurant "El Raco de Can Fabes" in 1981, together with his wife. At the time of his death he was presenting his new restaurant, Santi Restaurant, to the international press, when he suddenly collapsed. He had developed its business in the East recently.

He was a great defender of traditional cuisine and gastronomy in favor of keeping away from the chemical elements popularized in the new cuisine and challenged haute cuisine to inform their customers of the ingredients used, because he believed that ingredients and methods used were in detrimental to the quality and nature of the products. He said: "If it comes to having imaginary experiences, this is already achieved on drugs". It was truly a brave man defending his ideas regardless of fashion.

Santamaria had a blog about cooking (Santi Santamaria Blog). The last recipe was shared on February 4th and explained how to prepare the hake with pig nose and ears. I enclose below his first opened restaurant Can Fabes website (he had five more restaurants all over the world), to have a look at clicking on the link:

Can Fabes Restaurant website

Juan Mari Arzak, another great chef and great friend of him, said he was stunned and did not have words to express his sadness. And even the famous chef Ferrán Adriá, with whom he had some controversy two years ago, has declared to be in a state of shock.

Sadly he just became grandfather last week and won't be able to enjoy his grandson.

Source: http://www.elmundo.es/

TODAY I HAVE RECEIVED THE BLOG DEL DIA AWARD

I just got today my first award in this world of blogs and it has made me very excited. THE BLOG DEL DIA Site has given me the Blog of the Day Award February 13, and I have to say I feel a bit like those celebrities who pose for new calendars and each of them are covers of some of the 12 months, in this case I am one of the 365 days of the year 2011 and taking into account that these guys blog deals to reward "the most interesting blogs on the network, which despite its quality, still they are not known by the general public" , well, why I should deny it ... ...  but the award has got me very excited!

On the occasion of this award I have done an interview just published out today, February 13, and here is the link in case anyone is curious to visit it to take a look.

http://www.blogdeldia.org/2011/02/sangria-sol-y-siesta/

Thanks to Rafael R. Lopez and his team!

I HAVE STARTED A PHOTOBLOG CALLED SNAPPING LIFE, PLEASE FEEL VERY WELCOME TO VISIT IT

It took me some time thinking of it but finally I decided to start this third blog, about my favourite hobby: Photography. The first blog came in October 2009 (El trolley de Nieves, it's about entertainment and current events), the second in April 2010 (Sangria, sol y siesta, the one we are in now), which was created to bring a more current and cultural image of Spain, getting far from the typical image that many foreigns still have about Spain related to "toros, flamenco and olé" and the third (and hopefully the last one, because blogs take you too much time to keep them updated!), it is just born, it is a photoblog (SNAPPING LIFE), which pretends to have few words but many photographs taken by me, which will show snippets of life on photographs that I have taken, or I will take in future about many different topics and locations.

I hope that friends and visitors who come here regularly and new visitors who comes here every day, will also find of interest this new blog and will go there to visit it whenever you want and where you will also, of course, be very welcome too.

As I have said this new blog is just new born (it has even two posts), but will gradually take more shape. Thank you very much for all your visits and comments always and I wait for you also in:

SNAPPING LIFE

EDURNE PASABAN, ADVENTURER OF THE YEAR

Recently National Geographic, one of the largest and most renowned educational institutions and nonprofit scientific world, has named Edurne Pasaban the Adventurer of the Year 2010.

The award, a prestigious and recognized worldwide, is decided by the National Geographic website. Edurne was nominated along with nine other prominent people in climbing, navigation, exploration, etc. More than 9000 people around the world continue to Edurne on your facebook page. They have been instrumental in the election, as acknowledged by the mountaineer.

In May 2010, 37 year old Spanish mountaineer Edurne Pasaban finished her nine-year quest to climb the world’s 14 tallest mountains, the 8,000-meter (or higher) peaks. As she said: “You climb to the top and live to tell about it or you don’t. And descends can be more fatal than the push to the summit”. And Edurne knows this too well. Six years ago, on her way off of 28,251 foot K2, Pasabán lost pieces of her big toes to frostbite. When she returned home to Spain she felt like a load of things had piled up on me all at once. She was 31 with no partner, no children, and a life dedicated to a quest that had left her missing some of her toes. She had trouble getting out of bed in the morning. She thought about quitting climbing. Then, not quite a year later, Pasaban returned to the mountains, where things were clearer. And last spring, after knocking off 26,545 foot Annapurna and then, 26,289 foot Shishapangma, the alpinist became the first (she is sick of the debate with Eun-Sun’s claim) woman in history to summit every mountain above 8,000 meters.

“If people decided that I am the Adventurer of the Year, I am very happy, you know it,” Pasaban said when she was surprised with the news last week in New York City’s Central Park. “In my life, I never thought I would climb the 8,000-meter peaks. And I never thought I would be the Adventurer of the Year. It’s a nice present, and I would like to tell everybody thank you very much.”

Raised in the mountainous Basque country of northern Spain and standing six feet tall, Pasaban starting climbing when she was 14 years old. By 18, she was climbing in the Himalaya. Pasaban’s mountaineering accomplishments have made her a national hero in Spain. Though Pasaban does not think of her climbing in terms of being a woman, she realizes her impact: “I did not set out to prove anything, but if I can be a reference to help women believe in themselves, I will be very content with that”, she says.

Congratulations Edurne! You deserve it!

Source: adventure-journal.com/

             nationalgeographic.com