The Fourth of July

Yesterday was the Twelfth of October. El dia de la nacionalidad. The legendary day Columbus discovered the Americas. (That's him, in the picture, high on a pedestal surrounded by angels, triumphant soldier figures and lions. A detail below.) Columbus is a big deal around here, of course. Well, actually, that has surprised me. While celebrating Columbus makes sense here, after the vast expansion of Spain's empire in the 16th and 17th centuries, I hadn't realized the extent to which Spanish national pride is still linked to those years of empire.
In Madrid, there's a big parade. But it was a strange holiday here in Catalonia. The streets were virtually empty, save tourists, cops in full combat gear and circling helicoptors. Barcelona's parade was egged a few years back and that, apparently, was the end of that. The cops were out to prevent riots, in case anyone cared to display some nationalist sentiment. No one did, it seems.
I spent the day in Sitges, a town on the shore just south of Barcelona. The place is overrun by tourists in the summer, but the beaches were empty on this rainy fall day and the town seemed real, and beautiful. The town was hosting an international film festival; I was there with a couple of friends from school to see what we could see. Our first discovery was an Irish flick about vicious genetically modified exoskeletal cow fetuses that snuck around biting people. Thumbs way way up. The next left us stunned. It's called "The Fountain," by Darren Aronofsky, director of Requiem for a Dream. The Fountain is also about mortality, and provocatively so, but this film is as beautiful as Requiem was dark. The soundtrack alone is reason to see it.
And here, to close, is a gratuitous Gaudi picture. Slung mud; somehow also stunning.