14N

November 14, 2012
FOLGA XERAL/HUELGA GENERAL/GENERAL STRIKE


So there was a general strike here and I went to the protest manifestation in Pontevedra... over a month ago. (Better late than never, right? ....right?) Spain is in fact in an economic crisis and has been for several years now, as you (I hope) probably know already. I definitely won't try to explain politics or economics in this blog (not that I could do it well enough even if I wanted to).  But the point is a lot of people here would like a change.

My host sister didn't feel like going to the manifestation- we were missing school and she wanted to use the time to study. My host dad told her, "there's more to life than making perfect grades. You have to get out there in the world and make your voice heard. When things aren't quite right, you have to go and do something about it. If the government is making the wrong choices and it'll leave the students without a future, staying at home won't do much good." (And it was actually much more inspirational than what I've written because I translated if from Galician to English and I wasn't actually involved in the conversation so I could easily have missed parts and also it was a month ago and I didn't write it down, it's just as close as I remember, so I'm sorry if it's lost some meaning). 

This just struck me as a pretty "American" attitude. Taking a stand and fighting for a change. I did end up in a family not too affected by the Crisis, but I can still see perfectly well life isn't easy for everyone here. And what makes me the most sad (is saddest a word?) is that I don't know what can possibly be done to make things better because there are problems everywhere in the world that seem solution-less. But I hope things will get better with all my heart.  And I wish hoping would be enough.

The sign says "Din que chove pero mexan por nós." which means "they said it's raining (having hard times) but it's disaster for us" (I'm pretty sure). There were some really neat signs but I didn't get any pictures.