A complete disaster

I feel the urgent need to express my anger because, one more time, i can only feel disbelief at how things are done in my country. I do not pretend to do an extensive and profound analysis. In reality, life is much easier and i don't need to do research and write up a PhD thesis to see and feel with despair that what many Spaniards left as famous quotes, hold true. In brief, that Spain is a country filled with indiference towards their people and future. Those who pursue a creative career, those who pursue research, those with intellectual curiosity, are doomed to indifference and contempt.Simple reasons, simple facts, just the experiences of a few years in a short 25 years life, have been enough to show me this, and have been enough to feel let down, disappointed. The chance to live, study and work in 4 different countries made me see that yes, Spain is different.

I only need to take a look at how the universities work. We can start from a huge and extremely inefficient bureaucracy, which during three years gave me lots of reasons to commit murder. People who do not know their job and people who are just not willing to do it. I will remember with anger the hours spent going from one place to another trying to find a person who would finally help me rather than sending me somewhere else. I will not forget the times when it seemed that i needed an eternity to get a simple document or a signature. As an example, i will not forget the time i was told i would have to wait from 3 to 7 days for a document (a simple paper) because i needed a signature from the head of the Secretariat. It didn't matter the fact that i kindly asked her to please call that person to come down (it would take 2 minutes) and sign because i was leaving Spain in two days and i really needed that document. In Spain things do not work that way and if you want something to work, you have to shout. So i did, and i said i needed that document and i was tired of people not doing their job and that she would have to contact that person immediately and the person would have to come down and sign. To come down just takes two minutes, the same as when she comes down to smoke her cigarettes and have her coffes every now and then. It took her half an hour to get the document done and it just almost cost me a heart attack. I will not forget that my friend missed an extraordinary scholarship that she should have obtained thanks to her academic records simply because the idiots lost some document and she was never informed on time. I will never forget the numerous emails I sent to different academic and administrative departments which were left without a response. I will never forget the absolute lack of coordination between different departments regarding all important matters. A whole bunch of helpless people whose most exasperating habit is the face of disgust with which they receive you and perform their job.

You can imagine my surprise when i saw that another way of doing things is possible. The shiny smiles i was attended with, the brilliant professionalism and the amazing efficiency i observed in Denmark...comparisons are indeed, odious. I will never forget the first time i went to a desk and i said i needed a document to be signed and sent to Spain. I asked if they could indicate me where i should go. She asked me what i wanted and after i explained it She told me: “No problem, we do it here! Just a sec.” All this with the biggest possible smile. I was baffled, with my mouth completely opened just watching how the girl signed the document and sent it by fax. OK, i thought Denmark must be Perfectland, an extraordinary exception never to be repeated again. Well, it turned out to be similar in New Zealand and so far it has also been quite good in Czech republic. New Zealand was a dream, problem solving at the speed of light. As an example, i remember i was selected as a proxy in one of the Electoral Collegues during the regional elections in Spain. This is mandatory so i went to a desk and asked them to make a letter stating that I could not attend because i was living in New Zealand. The letter was done and sent in 5 minutes, no cost, nothing but a big smile. Another example: when i went back to Spain i had some inquires and needed some things and I contacted both the supervisor for exchange students in New Zealand and the one in Spain. The one from New Zealand answered in a few hours. The one from Spain never. These are just a few simple examples, easy to grasp for everyone. Please, to all you Spaniards who read this and have never studied or worked abroad, can you possibly imagine this? Going to a desk (two at the most) and get your things done quickly and accompained with a big smile? I know it is difficult to imagine but believe me, it is possible.

But if there is something that really breaks my energy is the education system and the quality of the lecturers. Let's begin with the lectures and this is possibly the hardest part to write for me since i also had the chance to meet a few fantastic lectures whom i will keep in my heart for the rest of my life. What in the hell is wrong with the lecturers in Spain? They look just like another bunch of office holders, unmotivated and without any passion for teaching. Countless are the number of lecturers I met whose teaching agenda resembles the one that was given in the prehistory. This is particularly striking in a degree like biology where you have to be constantly updating your knowledge and agenda, otherwise you get out of phase extremely quickly since the amount of data and knowledge broadens by the minute. This also means, many of the things that were believed to be correct a few years ago dont hold true anymore. It is extremely frustrating to find a lecturer at university who is teaching you something you know it is incorrect! When i went to university for the first time i was full of expectations, excited thinking of the incredible world of ideas, discovery, innovation, passion...and i found unbearable lectures, unable to accept a different opinion, unwilling to change their ideas or have any type of debate. Lecturers who would come to give a 50 minutes lecture that would consist of reciting notes. Boring lecturers whose goal seems to discourage their students. I will not forget our lecturer in the microbiology course. She would come day after day to class, to spend 50 minutes reading notes which had probably been prepared 15 years before or more. In the exam, she made thousands of corrections which were actually wrong! You can imagine the frustration of finding out that our grades are lower because this woman who is supposed to be teaching us is wrong. I didnt want to leave it like that and talked to a fantastic lecturer (one of the very few) and said that i wanted to go for an external correction. Her response? “You are correct but do not do it. They will all be on the side of your lecturer, it always happens and then she will have the right to recorrect your exam, and she will bring the grade further down, believe me”. I was shocked. Conclusion, i missed what would be translated as the excellence grant, which is very pursued scholarship, just for a few decimals, those that i missed thanks to a lecturer whose only goal seems to be to destroy the hopes and motivations of her students.

But what can you expect from lecturers who have spent all their lifes in the same university and have hardly (if any at all) had any professional career other than teaching? They have always occupied the same position, without any “fresh air”, they have never been abroad and never known anything other than their very limited little world of teaching. All the professorate receives money to do research, yet only 40% percent of the professors does any research at all. The research career of this 40% is often, very poor. Those who do research usually do it in the same place where they studied and then started to work, again having a “world” extremely narrow. I believe this is due in part to the very little prestige being a lecturer has in Spain, specially in something like biology, which is still considered to be, among people in their 40's or older, like being an outcast. This leads to having mediocre unmotivated teachers. Besides, the stiffness and slowness of allocating resources (which by the way are very limited) by our universities is incredible and the flexibility for our lecturers to move around through unviersities an absolute joke. What is a lecturer, who has never seen anything other than its desk, and who has never published a paper or done any research going to teach me? Once again, another world is possible.

Those lecturers in Denmark or New Zealand who would sit down to discuss a paper published by the same lecturer itself! A lecturer who would show us critical thinking and research-oriented approaches; who would discuss thousands of papers and the problems encounter, who would discuss troubleshooting and ask for our ideas and comment. Do you understand this, what do you think the problem here is, how would you solve it, what might be the reason for this result, what would you look for next? Hours and hours of discussions, seminars, slides, powerpoints...lectures and practical work where the professor is actually constantly asking you and encouraging you to not only ask but question things. But of course, these lecturers and professor are, first of all, researchers, with a whole career on their backs. They have a professional life on their field an because of that, they are suitable for teaching. Comparisons are, once more, odious.

All this is connected with our educational system, where everything is mostly lectures. That is once more, 50 minutes of boring lecturers reciting their notes and us copying them. Thousands and thousands of notes to be memorized. You see? It really looks like they are preparing us for some office positions! Then you go to another country to continue study like it is my case and i find that yeah, i probably have more knowledge than most of the people there, but i am missing something important. Students in Spain are in general unmotivated and they dont even really know why they are at university. They dont really enjoy, they dont take a lecture as something magical where you go to learn, to get fascinated, to train how to think. Not at all, there is only stress thinking of the final exam for which you need to put 100 pages of endless notes in your brain, those which you will forget two days after all exams are finished, when you get completely wasted to celebrate the end of the exam period. This knowledge makes no sense at all anymore. Of course you need to have some basic knowledge, but it is the hands-on work which provides you the experience and the capacity to create, to critically think, to innovate, to broaden your perspective and to solve problems. Of all what i learned at university, i seriously doubt i remember 5% of it, but in two years in the lab i have learnt 1000 times more than during my 5 years of uni. But i said that thesse endless notes do not make sense any more and it is pretty obvious it is like this. We have acces to internet, to thousands of data bases, electronic journals, webinars!! It made sense 50 years before, when getting access to some information was a real pain in the neck, but now? In 15 minutes i can find thousands of papers for a certain topic, lots of electronic books and discussion forums etc. I can contact experts in the matter and wait for their reply...i dont need those thousands of notes in my brain i need to think! I need to imagine, i need to ask, i need to find out, i need to wonder. This is something not understood in Spain, and this is because the administrative stuff, the lecturers and the politicians of my country have no professional life out of their office desk, have never created anything, do not have a view of the external world, there is no “fresh air flowing through the doors”. In three years and a half at the university in Spain i didnt have to write a single assignment which would resemble a scientific journal. We were never taught that. How to write a paper, how to make a good seminar, how to give a lecture, how to write a review. When i flick through the assignments i made in Spain and look at my high grades...i dont know if to cry or to laugh cause all our assignments resembled those from school. Not a single assignment that would look like a scientific journal in three and a half years and, as an example, i wrote more than 5 in a year in New Zealand.

Practical focus. Dialogues, discussions, field work...that is what other serious countries focus on. We focus on memorizing and when the practical work comes, we dont even have workbooks for all the students. Overcrowded universities, flooded with unmotivated students missing resources. Our universities are, what a brilliant lecturer described once, as cofee for everyone. There are way too many people and the problem is that there are almost no ways to discriminate between those students who are worth something and those who are not. An astonishing 30% of university students abandon university within the first two years! The average time at university is two more years than the expected! And this happens because the basic education in Spain is also failing, filled also with unmotivated teachers incapable of transmiting passion and love for what they teach to their students. An education where students hardly have to fullfill any requirements, where students begin too early at university (i started when i was 17) before they can make up their mind and an education where students get completely disappointed once they make it to uni. In Spain, everyone has to study, and you find students who do not care at all and therefore go throughout the whole degree without asking a single question to their lecturers. How in the hell is it possible that most of the students i met at university were uncapable of writing a text without making grammar mistakes! Even now, when i read things from friends, i get shocked, with some grammar mistakes that should be punished with prison (do not take this literally). Universities filled with students who do not know how to write, who do not have any ambitions and who do not really see anything precious and beautiful in being at uni. Where is that field of excellency that was supposed to be the uni? How can you motivate your students, how can you really get the best out of them, how can you get close to your student, discuss, get to know it, when you have 100 people in class? In Denmark i had group discussions of 10-20 people and in New Zealand too. What a marvelous thing.

Apparently, our minister of education believes that this might be solved, at least in part, by increasing the university fees and cutting money expenditure on research and education. What a brilliant fellow. He even says that in Spain there is the attitude of “everything for free” and things cannot continue this way. Do you want to know, my dear minister, what free means? In Denmark, you do not pay anything for your degree, either for a bachellor or for a masters. Even if you are a foreign student, you pay nothing. Every single Danish student receives enough money a month during 5 years to manage to leave on that, out of their parents home. That is, you have students focusing on their studies while learning how to get by out of their parents home (many times in other cities), establishing strong conections with other fellow students and flatmates. This brings the point that students in other countries are much more mature than in Spain since they already live by themselves and have a broader mind than a Spanish student who still lives with its family. In Denmark, they even find funny that 22 year old students still live with their parents. Sweden is very similar, another beautiful example on its own. University education is also usually free of charge in Germany and it is free also in Czech Republic (although that might change soon). I could continue with examples and countries but the idea is clear. These countries invest much more in their students and education, they seem to be floating on what you, my dear minister, consider the attitude of “everything for free” yet the research is more and better and the student failure is much lower. It seems that not all is about money but i would say more about mentality and the system...but of course you dont want to change that, since you have the same failed mentality.

Actually yes, you want to change things, and indeed this is another characteristic of our beautiful country. The two major political parties which alternate in power have found very funny to be constantly modifying the educational system. Small patches for enormous wholes, patches which only damage more since without a program with continuity we will get nowhere. A wonderful example was all this Bologna plan, never properly explained and an absolute disaster. Lecturers arguing to keep their lectures and positions, defending its share of power (deplorable). They said that it was to adapt to education in Europe. What the hell? Biology is now a 4 years degree when the bachelor in most countries is 3. There are not true masters and this is just an excuse to pay thousands of euros (the price is rising like foam when serving a beer) for a ridiculous “masters” which lasts 1 year, a year and a half at the most in which there is almost no practical work (6 months at the most), there is no real masters thesis to be writen up and there is no real continuity afterwards. My friends, university mates, who did the 5 years degree called licenciatura like me, had to do a master because surprise surprise, although they were still part of the old plan they were not allowed to go to PhD straight away anymore, they had to do a masters, they had to pay thousands of euros for something which hardly taught them anything, left them profoundly diappointed, only delayed their PhD and ruined their pockets. In other serious countries, you have a serious bachelor at the end of which you have to write up your first thesis. Afterwards you go into the 2 years master program. In the case of Denmark or New Zealand, for instance, the last year of the masters is only in the lab. You find a supervisor who has a place (there is place for everyone since all professors pretty much do some research) and you work on their topics for that year. That is real research and so in the end, you might even publish a paper if you are lucky. Students can start before of course, in their bachelor or in the first year of master if they have the courage and the excitement to look for the place. In Czech Republic i work at the Academy of Sciences, a public institution but it is not a University. It is full of students, from the bachellor to the PhD doing their research there. You can contact a researcher, say you want to do the research there for your thesis and if you look interested enough, you get a position. Even the bachelor students get some money for their work (learning process) there. Can you Spaniards believe this? Can you really believe that in your second year of university you would have a place doing research together with people with a whole research career on their back and getting some money a month for it? In Spain yes, there is a place for a few students who get in contact with some department and have the luck to find a lecturer who is also doing interesting research and has a place and resources for you. These are very limited places and of course you get no money at all for it. In other countries, available to almost everyone. But of course it is difficult to do this when there are almost no resources and the university is filled with unmotivated people and overcrowded, offering coffe for everyone while rejecting research. The whole Bologna plan was intended for small groups to have discussions, tutorials etc. How in the hell can you do this with 1,4 million university students? When most of the universities are completely bankrupt and have no resources to implement the new guidelines? An absolute joke. In Spain most of the students finish uni without having worked in a lab so in conclusion, no lab, no thesis, no final state exams...nothing.

Documents obtained free of charge, labs available to everyone, getting even paid for your work, all this happens in other serious countries...our beloved minister says that we are used to having everything for free but we pay for everything in this freaking country. Every single document you need to apply for, a scholarship or for any other reason, you pay a serious amount of money and besides you have to wait sometimes days, weeks, months or even years (i will get back to this). This is another fantastic thing, the scholarship. Spain actually does have quite a few scholarships but many times the method to select is quite wrong and not always people who deserve those scholarships actually get them. They are too grade-oriented and it really overlooks many important things like technical aspects of that person, creativity, independence, maturity, motivation, cultural development, future projects...During my studies i didnt find a single person with better grades than me yet i found many people who were definitely better than me and who i know will have a much more prosperous future from a scientifically profesionally oriented perspective. Simply because they are good, they think well and because of their ambition, interests and passion.

Just a few things that make up the whole thing sad and ridiculous. I think of all my uni mates and in general i feel sad. There are two main programs by which doctoral training is funded. These programs are called FPI and FPU. The call for FPI was in February last year and the provisional list with the accepted candidates was in July and should have been aproved at the beginning of August. They came out in December, simply because they didnt want to authorize the expenditure. To begin their PhD, the students had to enroll in September. But without the approved list, they did not have access to tuition. Imagine those who pursue a masters which cost thousands of euros. Imagine those who pursue PhDs, they are already 24 or older and get no money at all. Besides, the "FPI" also grants aid for material to research groups where the students are to join. That means most people have begun to work without getting paid or having insurance. Others simply cannot afford it so they have not begun.

More of the same with the “FPU”, whose call was in May but in november we found out that many places where removed and that funding was reduced in 50% for stays abroad. Imagine the shock of those who were already abroad and found out they were not going to get any money, or those who had been arranging the stay witht the foreign institution and finally had to communicate they cannot go. Most of the friends from uni who still are in Spain have been working for free for months, or many months waiting without getting compromised with anything else. Doing a PhD in science absorbes most of your time however i have friends who have to be serving drinks in pubs to be able to afford their PhD since they are getting nothing. Most of my friends who are between 24 and 28 years old are still living with their parents and have no income. Many of my friends have run away and left Spain and they are studying abroad. They send me messages telling me all the offers or opportunities they have to continue a career there. Of all my close friends, i can only think of one who is completely independent now and does not need support from a scholarship or parents and of course, he lives abroad, just like me. This is way worse than what i ever had to go through but i know the feeling of being without money and feeling abandoned by your institution. When i was on eramus i started in August 2010. I didnt see a single coin of the scholarship until the end of february 2011, 6 months!! When i went to New Zealand, it also took 6 months until i saw any money. When i told this to students from other countries, they were all shocked. They all got their money before going or immediately after arriving. What the hell is going on in Spain?

These are things that keep floating in my mind. A desolate landscape that fills me with sadness and anger. This whole thing came back to me yesterday evening, for a very simple and stupid happening which just reminded me everything. When i applied for the PhD position in Czech Republic, they asked for my title. I said well i am sorry but i havent got it yet. Yes, i applied for my title in july 2011 and i dont have it with me yet. They didnt believe me and it really took me time to convince them. Only when i showed them a document stating that i applied for it, signed by the University president, they accepted it, still incredulous at what was going on. In Czech Republic, like in any serious country, you get your title immediately, because you deserve to have it immediately, especially considering how important it is when it comes to applying for jobs and positions. In Czech Republic, like in any serious country, the tittle is for free. In Spain, your title, which you have gained thanks to the effort through years, costs 150 euros. A title that costs 150 euros and which i have not seen after a year and 7 months! But the most funny thing comes now. I received yesterday a letter stating that i had obtained what would be translated as exceptional degree award, which is obtained when you have the best grades of your promotion. I receive this a year and 8 months after i finish and you know what you get out of it? You are exempt from paying the fees for your title BUT only if you show this notification before applying for the title! I applied for this tittle more than a year and a half ago you idiots! At this stage i just burst laughing. Spain is different. In Czech Republic, students with As and Bs in their record automatically get some money a year, without the need to apply for it and if you finish the degree with the equivalent to what i got, which is “summa cum laude” they get much more money and a lot of recognition. I dont care about the money although of course it would be nice to receive some, but i care about that recognition, that acknowledgement. In Spain all scholarships, everything seems to be money oriented but people forget about you. There is no acknowledgement of your effort and your achievements, no motivation, no encouragement. There is nothing but in this case, a letter arriving to my parents home, a year and 8 months later. Many excellent students are never addressed, never wanted, never acknowledged, indifference is the response and so they just leave. Where i work here in Czech Republic i receive lots of emails in the areal mail offering PhD and postdoc positions. If you go to the website of the Faculty of Biology from Universidad Complutense de Madrid there is a bulleting board for job offers. I have been checking that every now and then, mostly as a curiosity, always expecting to find something. Do you know how many times i found, not many, simply a single job offer? Never.

Thinking of all this, does anybody wonder why Spain does not have a single university among the 200 best ones in most of the world lists? United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, France, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Ireland, Norway always find representatives in these lists. But then again, how are we to get this without any continuity in our educational program and a complete revolution in our concept of the importance of education, how to teach students and the value they have for our future? But our beloved minister believes, we are used to having everything for free and his approach is to cut, cut and cut. The science secretary Carmen Varela already said it, there are too many researchers in Spain (i wonder where) and they have to focus on quality. For sure, they are on the way to get that...

In Spain is taking place now what is called brain drain. Our beloved minister says to that: “...many of those, once they acquire some experience abroad, come back, and this is a very enriching experience for our country, and highly valued by our companies”. I would lie if i said i left Spain because of the lack of opportunities. I never tried. If i live abroad is because i love it, i love living in a foreign country and experience it every day. However, believe me when i tell you, Mr. Jose ignacio Wert, beloved minister of education, that if i had left because of the lack of opportunities, after what i have seen, i would never go back to Spain. And believe me, beloved minister, when i tell you, that many of those who left in search of opportunities, will never go back to Spain. I tell you this because, unlike you, i live abroad, and i know what i am talking about.

Our beloved minister of education, Mr. Jose Ignacio Wert. Photo obtained from nesiakrenaia-elenafuentescara.blogspot.com

Beyond the known

Below there is a real musical masterpiece from Vangelis, a Greek composer, and a text from me, showing   what this music awakes in me. The music was composed for the movie 1492: Conquest of Paradise, which does not do justice at all to this wonderful music. 

Hopefully with this post I can picture in your minds what my imagination creates when I listen to this amazingly beautiful music. Below you have the story, which runs from the beginning to minute 9:47. I have put the times so that you can follow it and see how I put it together and compare it to your feelings, thoughts etc. But anyway, you can just not pay attention at all to it and simply listen to the music first or read the story and then listen to it or...whatever you want. Just enjoy it :)

00:00-00:54 [Columbus, thinking]:

-This is coming to an end. It is just a matter of time that they become against me. Despair begins to corrode my insides as I can breath the air of mutiny at all times. Do you ignorants think I do not see what is happening? I can see you whispering at all times in every corner. I can see your hateful filthy faces and your poisoned looks drilling through my skin. I can smell your anger, your fear, your insanity, your bloodlust!

[The crew whispering and staring at him. Plans to kill Columbus are on the way].

[Still thinking]:

-Where in the hell are you, my promised land, guilty of my dreams and follies? At which point did I leave everything and did I decide to go for you towards adventure? Show up, I can smell you, I can feel you. Please, do not deceive me.

00:54-1:22

No! I cannot be wrong. I will fulfill my destiny and make my place in history!

[Addressing his crew]

-Comrades! Brothers!

[Columbus is interrupted by a mosquito (a sign of a nearby land), which comes down to Columbus's hand. Columbus is stunned, speechless for a few seconds and starts whispering]:

-What is this? Impossible. Is this a sign from heaven? Are you a messenger, coming from the spiritual world to reafirm my words?

1:22-1:40 [still whispering]

My stomach is about to betray me. An electric current moves menacingly emanating from the center of my body to the end of my limbs. My heart pounding and the energy unleashed because it cannot be held anymore...

[Everyone else is motionless, holding its breath and staring at the sight of the messenger...]

1:41-3:06 (Read quite quickly) [Columbus raises his voice and continues the speech]:

I understand your weariness and despair. I feel your frustration and your distrust. I also suffer from this disease called fear! But together we will overcome it! We have set on a journey beyond the known! We have ventured down a path that truly represents the very core of the human soul, of human existence! This unique quality of the human race that makes us insatiable. That willingness to give up everything! To leave the family and our lives behind and venture into the unknown in search of glory and eternity! Our soul is thirsty! Thirsty for knowledge, hungry for adventure, hungry for greatness! We were born with a special spirit, a spirit too large for a human body. A spirit that encompasses humanity itself, desirous of expansion, terrorized by the physical limits imposed. A spirit that will rise above the heads of the worldly people, to write its name in the timeless History, the one which consists of demigods that were once incorrectly called men. We have confronted the mediocre and before them we have raised! We were born with a glorifying star and an inevitable fate! We were born to change the world and nothing will stop us. Our ancestors watch and impatiently wait for us to come to our destiny, that which we pursue with devotion, without trembling, without hesitation. Fear may sometimes contaminate our blood, but we always triumph over it and expell it from our body. Our mind can slack off at times, clouded with grief, but our energy and determination is incorruptible and before any inconvenience on the road, our glorious venture dominates.

3:07-4:26 (Read very slowly)

[Still the speech]

Beyond just the glory awaits us. We await riches without paragon. They will write books about our adventures, and will tell stories and songs about our findings and wealth. We will be immortal. The world will not be the same anymore because we will have expanded its horizons. God pushes our blessed Santa María with his omnipotence, while our ancestors and all the glories that have contributed to human development applaud with devotion. The mighty wind is just a mere instrument which drives us towards our realization as gifted spirits. That destiny full of riches is there, before us. Our name in history is there, right in front of us, at our reach. Are we going after it?

Yeah!!!!!! Our destiny!!! God bless Columbus! Come on ruffians, damn lazy bastards! Full sail, no time to lose!! Yeahhhhh!!! [Everyone sings in ecstasy].

4:27-6:09: Columbus looks towards infinity, glimpsing the promised land, while the cheers and chants happen, charging the atmosphere with energy and electricity.

6:10-8:34 (read very very very slowly)

The depth begins to decrease. Everyone begins breathing harder, wide-opened eyes, expressionless, unblinking. 200 meters! 150 meters! 100 m! 80 meters! Time is eternal and all the crew watches, concentrated trying to guess a sign of land through the dense fog that covers everything. After a while of confussion, impatience and tension, the fog finally leaves, uncovering the promised land. The one that will expand the boundaries of human knowledge. The one that will bring them wealth and will make them immortal. It is God's land, reserved for those who contain a giant soul.

8:35-9:47.

Columbus sets foot in it and overcome with emotion, raises his head and looks at the sky. He looks to one side and the other, watching the rest of the crew celebrating the arrival. There is no sound, no wind, nothing. He attends as a spectator to the grandeur of this land. Everything goes in slow motion, no sound and there is no place in him for a single thought because he is overwhelmed, and can only behold. His chest expands close to bursting and finally, he releases all that stored overwhelming energy, that of a giant, with a deep breath as he kneels in the sand and raises his hands to heaven. He is immortal, he is in history.

And here the actual part of the movie where they disembark

The Red Giant (final conclusions)

I had the intention of sharing my experience in China with this series of posts, nothing else. I did not have the intention to get deep into any particular issue or drive these posts into any political discussion whatsoever. It is true that i rised some points throughout the posts but never went deep into them. I cannot pretend to show more than what my visit was, simply 19 days traveling through a small part of China and having no knowledge of Chinese language at all. What i wrote is very simple, just impressions of a guy who has been traveling around enjoying a beautiful country and having serious difficulties to engage in a conversation with local people. These were my impressions and they are subject to criticism because they can of course, be wrong.

We also have to take into account the fact that i was in Sichuan only for 15 days. If we had had more time we would have planned it in a very different way. This means, yes, i am sure that you can avoid the crowds much better than we did. I can imagine traveling by bike, getting to more remote places and spending more time trying to find beautiful isolated places and do them yourself. This was out of our scope due to the time limitation but i think we still managed pretty well to avoid them. Just have this in mind when you plan any traveling there because any known place will be packed.

Other things you shouldn't get suprised of:

-At least in Sichuan, 90% of the food they shell is expired, in many cases it has been expired for a couple of months.

-The information centers are usually closed and if they are opened you will be very lucky if someone speaks any English at all.

-Of course people will try to give you a price which is at the very least, twice more expensive than for Chinese so...bargain, bargain, bargain and bargain.

The food is incredibly good. A few things you should try:

Dim sum in Hong Kong, which are small bite-size portions of food (let's say, kind of Spanish tapas). Try also their fruit like the dragon eye or the rambutan. The ice cream with mango and read bean. Hot pot in Sichuan, wonton soup and Chinese damplins, congee for breakfast, winter melon stew, crab balls, and all the seafood...endless list and you will love it. Of course everything accompained with rice for which they have this saying: “Precious things are not pearls or jade but the five grains” (one of them is supposed to be rice, and now it is included as “of which rice is the finest”).

I never thought i would find China so incredibly interesting and exciting. Unfortunately i only had 19 days there and i wish it could have been 19 months. This is my experience and I wanted to share it. Of course i am leaving many things, impressions and thoughts but i probably killed a lot of people with this endless post. I would like to read from other people's experience so...anyone who has been to China i would love to know about the experience. I am open to any critic. If somebody disagrees on something, considers something to be false or inaccurate or has a different view please share it, I would love to read it. If you just want to share another beautiful experience or thing about China, please, do it!

I also saw on the statistics of the Blog that I have also had a few visits from Hong Kong and China. I really hope you enjoyed it and I apologize if I offended anyone with what I said, it wasn't my intention. There are clear cultural differences and we cannot help find some very different and feel shocked about them, but that is also what made the trip more special. China has beautiful things but also others which I found really disturbing. This happens everywhere, it is not exclusive of China. Once more, if someone felt offended, I apologize.

I finish this with a funny observation. It is now trendy in China to wear rimless glasses (i think they are called like this, i mean glasses without glasses!). It was very funny to see it. As far as i know, there is no such a thing in Europe. Am i correct? I wouldn't be surprised if it also exists but I haven noticed. This is it about China. Share your view!

The Red Giant 5 (pilgrimage to the end)

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The last visit of our trip was to Songpang, a town of about 70 000 people a couple of hours from Jiuzhaigou. The center is beautiful, with the old city wall and beautiful streets, and you can see in the distance on a hill an impressive temple. Next day we start our 3 day horse track to Ice Mountain, an impressive mountain with its 5 600 m peak. We go with two locals: Go Chao, 27 years old, with two children (10 and 8 years), and another guy who is 18 and whose name is impossible for me to write. The place has an oustanding beauty and we go through small villages of a few hundreds of people at the most. Their small temples, their houses, their cementeries, their prayer wheels, their Tibetan flags, everything is magical there. I will constantly think of these small villages and people's smiles and greetings when they saw us. At the end of my time in China i was reading this book about the peasant's life in China, which is now banned in mainland China and which deals with all kinds of corruption mostly at the township level, the excesive taxation burden leading to loss of life among the peasantry, sometimes directly through murders and i recall these two examples in 1989 that took place in Sichuan. I will think of the beauty of these villages, people's smiles and this book, depicting a horrifying life in the countryside. The first night we camp at 3 200 m and we have a very nice evening chatting as much as the language barrier allows with Go Chao. The night is frezzing and with temperatures likely to be lower than 10 degrees below zero, i can hardly sleep, my feet are too cold. It has been snowing for many hours and i get out of the tent for just a few minutes, enough to see an amazing moon illuminating the night and giving a tenuous light blue color to the sky and showing everything covered with snow. The feeling was undescribable...

Next day we made it to somewhere above 4000 m, when we had to head back since the weather was getting pretty bad and we did not have good guear for that. That evening in the camp Go Chao wants to make a deal with me: i stay here in the mountains with the horses and the guear and he keeps my princess. Tempting but things stay the way they are and we enjoy another cold night, this time a sky filled with starts, probably one of the most beautiful night skies i have seen in the northern hemisphere. It has been three days and two nights in which we have been the only travelers and that was awesome.

                                   

I want to add that throughout my time in China i could observe that there is an absolute lack of ecological awareness among the ordinary people in this country. You will see them all throwing litter everywhere. I gave some snack to Go Chao and the first thing he did was to throw the plastic on the floor, and this is just the most stupid example. Going to a national park can be really painful if you have to face the incredible amounts of litter that accumulate in some places. A few times i shouted no! And i saw how the person who was about to throw something just looked at me surprised, with no understanding at all of what was going on. These people are directly going to self-destruction, with most of the rivers terribly contaminated and with CO₂ emissions which are expected to double those of all other industrial countries together by 2025 but...they do not have any education on that. The growth is at all costs and you can see that these people have never been told anything that can bring some environmental awareness...

Anyway, bus back to Chengdu and as terrible as it was the one to get here. As incredible as it sounds, we made 3 stops for 6 hours and a half of journey and in all of them they cleaned the bus on the outside, while people were spitting all over the place inside throughout the whole journey. I have only one more experience to add and i hope you have made it til here. The last day in Chengdu we visited the People's Park, which is simply incredible. Thousands of Chinese making groups to dance together all sorts of music including breakdance. Women putting a red carpet and doing as if they were models on the catwalk, groups of people doing exercise, other playing table games, other singing or playing badmiton and the best of all a place were there are lots of ads hanging on trees. These ads are from men who are looking for a wife so they write on a piece of paper their profile, the type of woman they are looking for and their address and phone number, fantastic. We even met these two guys who write stuff on the floor with a big brush and water. They say a few things in Spanish and also in Czech! They went crazy with Katka when they found out she is from Czech Republic and tell her a lot of stuff, one of them talking about the Russain soldiers and that he was with the Soviets once as a soldier blah blah blah...i do not remember well but uauuu, that was good. This is also another fascinating thing about Chinese people and it is all this social life and activities outside, which they also make in mass. We would sometimes be walking on the street and all of a sudden find a group of women together dancing in the middle of the street or stuff like that...

It is time to finish this endless Red Giant post. We take a train back to Hong kong and this time we do not think twice about it, we get a hard sleeper. I am reading this book about the peasantry in China, I am reading also about the environmental problems China is facing. I am thinking about the many souls i have seen in China. I am thinking about the misery i have seen and the crazy growth of the cities, the KFCs and McDonalds next to the hammer and sickle symbol, all the fancy shops and malls etc. I am thinking about how nice this people are and also the hygienic issues they have. I am thinking about the mass travel, the business they are making with tourism and the lack of independent, explorative travel. I am thinking of the innocent questions like why they cannot have facebook and also some of the restrictions and limitations that are imposed on them. I am thinking of something i realized and it is that throughout all this time, i have hardly seen anyone reading. I think i can count them with the fingers of one hand and i would have a few left, and they were just magazines. I am thinking of the large number of Chinese books and docummentaries i want to see and hope to have time for. I am also thinking of how many months or years i could spend traveling in China. I am thinking of their ancient history and of their Communist era. All this on a train that offers me wonderful moments like that of a child pooping on the sink or another child peeing on the trays and everyone throwing the rubish on the floor. This does not matter any more, I am used to it and the views outside, those i am watching through the window are simply spectacular...

The Red Giant 4 (Jiuzhaigou and the "Mass Travel")

It is early in the morning and we are heading to Jiuzhaigou Valley, a nature reserve and national park in norther Sichuan, located on the edge of the Tibetan Himalayan Plateau. It is 8 hours and a half on a minibus and now i realize i haven't talked about driving in China, that is, another extreme adventure. They literally have no rules here and i really wonder if they ever learn them at the time they get their driving licence or is also like this during their learning period. Forget about traffic lights, pedestrian areas, stops, directions etc etc. When you cross the road you will have to dodge thousands of motorbikes (many of them carrying entire families), bikes, cars, buses etc which will not stop for you unless they can almost touch you. Add to this that they sound the horn for everything. If they overtake, if a car is approaching them, if they are approaching a car, if a car is going to incorporate on the road, if they are going to stop, if they are going to turn and cannot see much (and if they can it does not matter, they will still sound it), for anything you can imagine, they will sound the horn and they are so well trained, that they can sound it dozens of times in a second, and this will happen every second minute (if you are lucky). Now imagine 8 and a half hours through a local road, with a driver who would never be allowed to take any type of vehicle here, hysterically sounding the horn, smoking all the time and casting away demons (actually he went one step further and he was literally vomiting his entrails) while overtaking in a way that made my heart climb up to my mouth. 

To make it is possible because the scenery outside is stunning. Going from subtropical-looking landscape, with misty hills, big lakes and lush forest to the more dry high altitute, with fast-flow very violent rivers, beautiful mountain ranges, sharp and rocky, and small Tibetan villages with big statues and old city walls. The forest is fantastic with reds, yellos, greens...an explosion of colours all merging to create an incredible collage. A bridge appears split into two halfs, i suppose result of the 2008 Earthquake that was quite devastating. We make a stop and i go to a public toilet which is simply fantastic. There are no doors so you can actually see everyone doing its “major business” and the toilets are like the Turkish ones so you see a line of Chinese squatting and doing their bussiness while smoking or checking their mobile phone. AWESOME.

                        On the way to Jiuzhaigou

We arrive and i cannot believe what i see: thousands and thousands of people (later on i find out that the park receives more than 2 million visits a year and about 10 thousand people a day during the busiest period which is of course, now while i am there. When i checked the website of the park there was no warning about this and looked quite good and remote, well...i was wrong. The website also said that people are not allowed to stay overninght in the park and it is only if you go with a guide for a 3-day hiking trip that you are allowed to. Of course there is no way to check this because nobody speaks a single word of English, not even in the hostels or tourist information center. 

Next day we head to the entrance where there is no information center (later we will find out that the information center is inside the park, quite a few km up, does it make any sense?) and of course no English so it gets a bit hard to get the ticket since the woman does not want to understand that we just want the entrance ticket and not the bus. These 10 thousand people are going in massive groups, hopping on a bus which will take them up to the top from where they can walk down or go back again by bus, making stops to take photos. She finally understands we do not want that and gives us only the entrance tickets and surprise surprise, we are the only ones doing the hike up (to be precise there was also a Chinese girl going alone which was a real surprise)...

Going on the walking tracks becomes marvelous because most of the time, there is not a single person. Actually, most of the tracks are closed and we find out soon why. There is a carpet of leaves and branches, fallen trees on the way and broken bridges which cross the river. They are not taking care of any of the walking tracks, which makes it more fun for us but, this is really disturbing and i will explain why later.

The park is incredibly beautiful, where the subtropical and temperate floristic zones meet with the Tibetan Plateau. To enumerate the wonders of the park would be endless but it goes something like this: beautiful forests of mountain conifers; their karst land forms with breath-taking waterfalls such us Nuo Ri Lang, the widest travertine topped waterfall in the world; the wetlands sweeping through weeds, willows and cypresses; the most stunning lakes i have ever seen, with incredible emerald, turquoise and azure blue colors and where the red, yellow, green and brown colors of the trees provide a magical reflexion on their surface; and the small Tibetan villages scattered throughout the park. Then you understand why it is considered China's top national park.

At the top once again we see all these shops selling all type of stuff you can imagine plus people offering to dress you up for the most costly photo of your life. Thousands of people with their cameras (some having two cameras, each of them more expensive than my flat), their ipads, their smart phones, taking pictures incessantly and then i think, Chinese people are incredible making business. Anywhere you go it is about trading and selling stuff and they can make business out of everything. From any shop to a guy who will try to find a hostel for you on the street if you give him some money or someone who will try to find you a way to sneak in a national park without paying if you give him money (i know this from the Chinese guys who were in Mount Emei). But this is already too much. It is a national park and it is pure business. The entrance plus bus costs 220 yuans a day (660 Kc, around 26 euros) which runs from 7 am to 6 pm. Multiply this by 10 thousand people and you get 260 000 euros a day! I really wonder what they do with it because you go on the website and in their “Sustainable tourism and conservation” section they mention some monitoring, reforestation blah blah. Well, of course i do not know how much effort they put into it, how much money is alocated into these things and how useful they are but at least i can feel a bit skeptical, specially considering that one of the things they proudly talk about in that section is their wooden walkways, which, if you remember, are closed and pretty destroyed...I wonder where all that money goes. They also write proudly about their Eco-tourism, which is: you pay much more for a 3-day trip with a guide. However, i suppose you have to order that beforehand through the website or calling, because nobody there speaks English and literally has no idea what that is about. It was still worth coming here. I cannot hide my disappointment about these things i mention, but the park is simply amazing, a real natural wonder. 

Mother nature is the best artist and next to this, that view of Hong Kong from Victoria Peak becomes nothing. If you ever go there, be ready to share it with thousands of Chinese taking a thousand photos per minute, pushing you out of their way if you are in between the camera and the thing they want to capture. Be ready to see people looking like they are going to a night club or for a regular walk on the street, including suits and high heels. Do not forget to go into the towns as you step into one of the other Chinese souls. I remember this one with their “stupa”, a conmemorative monument housing sacred relics, and their large size fixed “prayer wheels”, which pilgrims set in motion, going around the building in a clockwise direction. I remember the beautiful houses with their statues and people greeting you at the entrance. They are such different coexisting worlds...

                           

                         Stupa and the prayer wheels

So yeah, be aware that you will pretty much anywhere have to share these natural wonders with the expanding commercial development, that is, thousands of Chinese. Forget about any independent, explorative travel because China is were “mass travel” was invented, a country where individualistic behaviour is not encouraged at all. They travel in massive social groups, going where everyone else goes and at the same time. China is cheap but if you want to visit these places, be prepared to see your money disappear...

The Red Giant 3 (discovering Sichuan and Buddhism)

We head southwest, to Mount Emei, in search of some beautiful hiking and scenery. Mason warns us that it will be quite touristy but he has not been there since he was a child and i do not really believe him. Thus, we take the bus, looking for a sacred and remote place, searching for an unforgetable experience. Mount Emei's cultural significant is extraordinary because it is were Budhhism first became established in China via the Silk Road from India. The first Budhhist temple was built on its summit during the first century A.D., there are now over 30 temples on the mountain and some of them are authentic masterpices. Imagine these pieces of art surrounded by striking scenic beauty consisting of lush forest and a mist which, at times, uncovers the wild peaks of the mountains and you will understand why it is one of the four holy lands of Chinese Buddhism.

When we get there we find out how correct Mason was. We see hundreds of people with huge expensive cameras making their way to the entrance. I realize we stand out even more there since we are the only non-asians and besides, we are carrying our huge backpacks and wearing hiking guear while all the others seem to be just going for a Sunday evening walk. I think OMG! Where the hell are we?!?! The first few km is just going up the road and we see some small settlements and we even have the chance to see a postwedding celebration. On the way up i realize there is a reciprocal curiosity and great surprise between the Chinese and me. I look at the girls going up the road with their high heels in massive groups towards what is supposed to be a natural and cultural wonder and i feel fascinated, i suppose as much as they do when they see two foreigners going with massive backpacks on their backs like they are about to climb Mount Everest. We make it to the entrance where you have to pay an entrace fee which, if i recall well, was 240 Kc (about 10 euros) for students. The place becomes more and more beautiful and the more we ascend the less people we find, until we make it to a place where monkeys (Tibetant Macaques) often loiter. I understand why there are so many people, they have come to see the monkeys! We leave a man behind fighting a monkey and as we make our way through these little fellows, making sure they see we have nothing for them, i realize we are pretty much the only ones who continue further and then i take a deep breath and exhale it feeling relaxed...now yes!

After a few more km, the first temple appears before us. I cannot help holding my breath as i stand before a magnificient think which opens its doors to me. Getting in one of these old architectural masterpices is like stepping into a different world were the air is full of mysticism and the inner peace invades into the smallest corner of your body. The gardens, the gilded statutes cast in iron and bronze, the absolute silence and the peaks of the mountains in the distance, shrouded in mist. We were extremely lucky and we got in one of them just on time to watch and listen to the monks during one of their ceremonies and all this being the two of us the only visitors. I was close to having an epiphany! We slept in a temple that night, with the beautiful sound of the rats running back and forth in the ceiling above our heads. The experience of getting up early in the morning with the bells, knowing a beautiful hike was awaiting for us was just the icing on the cake...

After a few hours of hike we finally meet two more guys. They are university students and one of them speaks some English and he is really charming. He asks a bit about our countries and languages and what type of music we like and he says of course what he likes is pop. After meeting them several times on the way we find them with two more girls and an old man. One of the girls has been bitten by a monkey and she is scared. There is a pretty big group a few meters ahead and they are too excited. We make some sticks and the 7 of us go together, to show those monkeys they have to back away...

We wake up next day at 5 am to reach the top before the sunrise. We have heard the sunrise on the summit is simply incredible but unfortunately the fog is too dense and we cannot really see much. It is still worth it, we are on the summit, at 3070 m, were the massive statue of Samantabhadra, a bodhisattva (enlightened being) in Mahayana Buddhism, welcomes us. The summit also brings a surprise. There is actually a road that comes to almost the top through which dozens of buses bring thousands of people. There are lots of shops next to one another selling food, all type of merchandising, jewelry and where they even dress up people with traditional customs to take photos of them and charge them one of their kidneys (meaning a lot of money). There is even a cable car to make it to the other summit. All those shops with lots of Chinese people buying and taking photos are surrounding the temple and the Samantabhadra, holy places for buddhists. People are feeding the monkeys and throwing rubish everywhere and i go in shock. The journey to the top has been done in 40 hours including two nights, in which we have seen 5 more people. The place is full of signs asking for respect to the temples and the place, to keep silence and to carry all our rubish with us. It is a National Park, UNESCO site and a place of incredible cultural and natural significance. We are with the two Chinese students who came with their small backpacks to enjoy some free time and relaxation, and we are surrounded by thousands of Chinese flooding the place with plastic bottles, food debris and paper (which lie next to the sign that asks people to carry their litter), buying stuff and taking thousand of photos, all going in big groups. We take a photo the four of us together and some Chinese people come pointing at their cameras asking me if they can also have a photo with me. I forgot that i am still a fairground attraction for them, which i really love so of course i say yes. I am just having this feeling all the time since i got in mainland China that this gigantic country has two very well defined souls (definitely more) and that they collide in such a strong manner that i really wonder how long this can last. We go down to find out that the buses take you to the village for 50 yuan (150 Kc, 6 euros). If you count the number of people there and the distance of the journey, they are making incredible amounts of money.

Before heading back to Chengdu we visited Leshan and its Giant Budha. We were welcomed by massive floods of Chinese smiling at us and taking photos of us. For the first time we also see some other foreigners (non-Asians). The place is still worth it if you can really stand the crowds. A 75 m Budha carved in the 8^th century A.D. stands on Xijuo Peak, from where you can see the confluence of three astonishing rivers. Other monuments include the Lingbao Pagoda, the Wuyu and Dafo temples and Mahao Crag with its 500 tombs from the Han Dinasty. While waiting for the bus to go back to Chengdu we meet this guy who asks if we need help. We don't, but we start talking to him. He is actually an English teacher and he knows about Czech Republic and the split with Slovakia. He talks about Dubček, who attempted to change the Communist regime during the Prague Spring or Husák, the Communist leader of Czechoslovakia after the Soviets invaded it. I don't remember very well his words but he came to say something like: “Communism is nowhere here, it is an illusion, just like a dream”. He wishes us luck for our trip and we hop on the bus, back to Chengdu...

It is time for breakfast with an Israelian guy who is traveling around Asia and a Dutch guy who teaches English in China. It is also interesting the conversation because the English teacher tells me that the students also cast away demons during class (do you recall what that means?). He told me it is quite frustrating because they show no interest or motivation at all and that they are not used to engage into any participation. He said in korea or Australia he would always get feedback from the students but that in China it is impossible. He prepares games and other things but they never pay attention or they cheat. He said during his classes most people are sleeping, chatting or playing videogames. When i asked him about the age he told me they are at University! But also that they have no motivation because most of them have a lot of money or connections within the Party and those are promoted to the next course no matter what they do. Anyway after breakfast we head to the Tibetan quarter, which is really nice and from there through a nice park to an incredibly beautiful street with a Chinese opera and some amazing buildings. A guy on a bike with very long hair stops and tries to communicate but he doesn't speak English. We can hardly understand anything but he asks if we are from America. We say we are not although he does not seem to care and continues: “America, democracy”, pointing at his phone and showing other words like “woman”. I really wonder if he knows what he is talking about or he is just saying some words he has heard which make no sense to him but then he continues: “America, democracy”. Everyone who has tried to communicate with us goes around the same thing like communism, democracy etc etc.

We decided we had not had enough that day so we went to meet our friend Mason, who was giving a drawing lesson to some kids. We are invited to join them in their home. They are two girls, 14 and 16 years old and very excited about us being there. The oldest speaks quite decent English and so the question time begins. She asks me what teenagers are like in Europe. What they like, what they usually do and if they get as much homework as they do there (4-5 hours a day). An even better question comes when they ask me if i have facebook and say that they do not understand why they are not allowed to have it. After failing to answer those questions, they show us some drawing they are doing and some photos on their phones of drawings from other days. They do not have the originals and Mason tells us their parents quickly sell them or take them somewhere to try to get them a name. He talks about “tiger mums”. So it is actually true! If the children were not good at this the parents would never invest any time or money on it. We finally leave our little friends and we decide to end the night in a reggae bar where quite a few people are smoking pot. I ask mason what would happen if they were caught and he says nothing good but according to him it is ok because the police do not know what a joint is...That night we have to say goodbye to our friend and he tells us we are really nice which i really appreciate...he is a good guy.

The lazy Spaniards

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Something people from other countries find interesting about the Spaniards is their daily schedules. I am sure every single Spaniard who has ever lived abroad or met other people while traveling have faced the tremendous curiosity of those who do not understand how we can possibly begin having lunch at 2 pm (and sometimes even finish at 4) all year round, and have dinner as late as 10 pm (or later) in summer. Why Spaniards do not usually go out before 11 pm or seem to have so much trouble to wake up in the morning as fresh as our peers in other countries. This is usually attributed to our Latin blood, the warmth and good weather in the south, the party and other similar nonsense and it serves to support the extended idea that Spaniards wake up late and they are lazy. I am sure there are many factors involved and those mentioned above may have played a little role, making our disorder increasingly acute over time but it turns out that we can actually go back in time and track the main responsible for our schedule disorder.

I am pretty sure i am not revealing anything surprising and unknown for most of you when i say that Spain's timezone is GMT+1 although according to its geographical location it should actually be GMT zone, like that of Portugal or UK. Of course Spain also has daylight savings like any other country in Europe and so our timezone in summer is GMT+2. The GMT system is a global time standard where the Greenwich Meridian is established to have longitude zero degrees. Since the Earth is 360º and the Earth revolves once every 24 hours, that means that theoretically we should have a different time zone every 15º (360/24). This also means that the world turns one degree longitude every 4 minutes (4*15=60min). However, this does not apply to the real world and it is not really adjusted to exactly 15º. We have to take into account geographical, economical and political reasons. Thus, very big countries such as India or China span more than 15º yet have only one time zone. The same accounts for Europe in which not all countries belong to the time zone that would correspond to them according to their geographical location. A clear example is Spain. The Greenwich Meridian crosses Spain at two locations: 42º 41' N, 0º 0' E (Huesca), and 38º 52' N, 0º 0' E (Denia, Alicante). This leaves pretty much the whole of Spain on the same zone as the UK and Portugal. Ok, so i probably haven't said anything so far that you didn't know before.

                           http://www.teacherweb.com/IL/FoxMeadowSchool/MrsSeyller/printapt3.stm

One might argue that this brings benefits since we have the same time as in almost the entire rest of Europe and that anyway, if we have always been adapted to this, what's the problem? But it turns out that the use of GMT+1 is relatively recent in history and if you look at it, it seems we definitely did not adapt to the change very well. We actually had the same time zone as our neighbour Portugal until 1940, just as it corresponds to our geographical location. But then world war II came and the nazis decided to impose their time zone to the countries they invaded, such as France or Belgium, which also used the time zone of UK at the time. The Spanish head of the state Francisco Franco, arguing the desirability of a national schedule which proceeds in accordance with the other European countries, decreed the advancement of legal time in 60 minutes ( click on the link to see the document). We were not the only ones and the UK actually did that too. However, the British lasted only until 1945 with this modified time zone while Spain continued with it until our days.

It turns out that my great grandparents were having lunch at the appropiate time, that is, at around 12-1 pm. We no longer do that simply because we prioritize daylight, proving that we never adapted to the new time zone. Spain is completely misplaced regarding its daylight. The whole idea of the time zones is to optimize the use of daylight so that, for instance, the official 12 pm is as close as possible to the local noon, the time when the sun is at the highest point above the southern horizon. This simply cannot happen in Spain. Geographically speaking it is very far from many of the countries of central Europe. This means that on the East of Spain, there is a difference of an hour with respect to what it should be in winter, and two in summer. Now think of the west part of Spain and this becomes two and three hours respectively. This means that the sunrise in Spain occurs later than in any other place (on the west in winter we get the first light at around 9) and the day already begins quite messed up. A person who wakes up at 7 am is effectively waking up at 6 am. It means we actually wake up quite early and sleep less than the actual recomended time by the WHO. We are having lunch at around 2-3 pm and dinner at 8-10 pm so we should actually start working at around 10 am, showing that our workday is too extended in the morning and falls short in the evening, or at least it should. I say it should because you have to take into account other things. Although the schedules relatively go in accordance with the official time, in our customs we prioritize the daylight, so many people still go to work later than in other European countries and therefore, leave work also later. Add to this the fact that after the civil war moonlighting became something unavoidable for many people. They would have a job in the morning until 2 pm and another in the evening until late in the night, For this reason, there is this very long lunch break which runs for 1-2 hours, which is extremely inefficient and useless. Conclusion: we hardly sleep and our workday becomes endless.

It is growing the idea that we should really get back to the time that corresponds to us given our location. Many people claim that GMT+1 is really imparing our competitiveness, being the main reason of our low productivity. Besides, people go to work when it is still night and this might be increasing the risk of traffic and occupational accidents. In summer what we have is endless days, which, due to our hot weather, become sometimes extremely horrible. Getting back to GMT+0 and a continues working time without break for the “desayuno de media mañana” or a 2 hours break for lunch would imply having much more time alocated to personal time rather than working time. We humans are made to be awake during daytime and rest during darkness. Making this changes would allow us to make a better use of natural light and many people believe that this would positively affect health as well as the productivity and efficiency of workers and companies. Besides, other side effects might be less accidents, less school failure and a better reconciliation of work and family.

In conclusion, to me there is no point in having the same time zone as countries in central and eastern Europe. There is no economic benefit at all and we are just absolutely messed up, suffering from sleeping abstinence, having less free time available and besides, giving the wrong idea to the rest of the countries that we are just lazy bastards who party and then have troubles to get up and work. Let's just look at Portugal. They did the experiment in the 90's of adapting to GMT+1 and the result was quite catastrophic. Their 4 years experiment was translated into worse exam results and failure at school plus an increase in stress and sleeping disorders such as insomnia. It brought more road accidents in the dark mornings and the households increased the energy expenditure. If it proved not to be valid in Portugal and we see quite similar things happening in Spain over the past 70 years, what are we waiting for? Besides we would have the same time in the whole of Spain and wouldn't have this aberrant situation in which the Peninsula is one hour ahead of the Canary Islands. I really wonder how many people would be eager to change it and go back to our right time zone. But whether some people like or not, it is obvious to me that we could only benefit from it. Just to conclude, next time you talk to a Spaniard and are about to say something like “mañana” or how lazy we are, no work only party, blah blah blah, think about this first :).