SPANISH CINEMA - A SPANISH AFFAIR (Ocho Apellidos Vascos)

SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL IN AUSTRALIA 2015

Here are some cultural tips, if you were not born in Spain, about the main cultural & social idiosyncrasies of Andalusia (in the South) and the Basque Country (in the North) that will help you to enjoy and understand better this comedy. 

Are all stereotypes shown in the film believable? Are they true? The answer is yes and no. Spain has evolved rapidly in the last decades into a modern European country, so many of the stereotypes regarding habits and customs are no longer accurate, but they are still part of the cultural identity of each place. Stereotypes referring to character or temperament always manifest themselves within an spectrum, that is, some individuals may display some characteristics markedly whereas others not at all; I would add that, all in all, stereotypes are helpful navigation tools, as they simplify reality, but we have to keep in mind that they can mislead us in specific situations. 

In this film nothing must be taken too seriously. It is a satire of two regional stereotypes: Andalusia and Euskadi (The Basque Country). In Spain there are stereotypes for every region of the country. People used to make jokes about specific regional traits, and it would work in each direction (I laugh at you and you laught at me) and for the sake of a healthy sense of humour let's hope this will continue to be the case.

THE PLOT: Rafa has never left the city of Seville, Andalusia (Southern Spain) where he was born. He meets Amaia, a young woman from the Basque country, who is visiting Seville with her girlfriends. Her basque boyfriend has sumped her and to cheer her up her two girlfriends take he to Seville. The trip has the opposite effect on Amaia who hates the 'compulsive' joy of Sevillanos. She is perceived by the men form Sevilla as a graceless woman who is most likely an ETA terrorist, another stereotype for the Basque people.  

It turns out that Amaia leaves Sevilla but left  her handbag at Rafa's place.  Against his friends' advice Rafa wants to return it to Amaia and travel to Euskadi, in the North of Spain. When he arrives, a series of misunderstandings force Rafa to impersonate being a full-blooded Basque who has eight surnames (to prove to Amaia's father that he is a genuine basque); he imitates the accent of the Basques but this is not great help and he gets more and more entangled in his fake character in order to have the love of Amaia and take her with him back to Seville.



CULTURAL STEREOTYPES

ANDALUSIANS are extroverted, they can express their feelings easily and many of them can be the funniest people in the country; once they start telling stories & jokes it' hard not to laugh, they are masters of exaggeraiton so you can have a really good time with them. They are also such great raconteurs and can improvise jokes as they speak, their language is flourished and often poetic, they do not feel embarrassed with expressing "feelings" and their world is still full of animistic beliefs, objects are given human characteristcs. It may have to do with the legacy from the Arabs, that brought with them a tradition or oral stories, like the 1001 nights and also created beautiful love poetry; when Andalusians speak it is common not to understand a word because they tend to cut the words in half (para ti = pa'ti, for example); also,  they don't speak at you but shout at you or even, scream at you, as if you were totally deaf; they don't like to work in large amounts, and ideally what they like is to spend the day at the bar eating olives and drinking cold beer; Andalusian women are feisty and can talk for hours, often all at the same time, (men can do this also but with less intensity); they all dance the Sevillanas, young and old, and sing flamenco, clapping their hands, they also play the Spanish guitar; they are majortarily religious and express devotion of the Virgin Mary, or rather, the many Virgin Mary's that you can find in Seville which have been given very glamorous names; they invented 'the siesta', or so they say, and they live in the present, so there's always  mañana? They may be perceived sometimes a uneducated or unsophisticated but this is superficial, Andalusians are very wise, their wisdom is very, veru old, so be attentive and observe them before labeling; they all seems to be from Seville or Granada, but Andalucia has another 6 provinces ... Finally, regional cuisine seems to be to be reduced to two popular dishes: 'gazpacho' and 'pescaíto frito' (fried fish) but this os not the case. 

Common stereotypes about THE BASQUES. They have no sense of humour, they are too serious; men are fishermen, they are a primitive and insular lot that does not want to mix with other races, so they are all inbred; their national sports are rough, like themselves: stone block pulling and stock lifting, tug-of-war, wood-chopping and log sawing and they also play pelota; also, they don't take no for an anwser, and many men are excellent cooks, who escape from their women to go to these culinary clubs (where only men can be members) and there they cook and drink and cook and drink some more and in the end they eat what they cooked while still drinking and eating some more; the Basques make the best tapas (called pintxos) and the Basque cuisine is considered the best in the country; as mentioned before they are introverted, fairly dry, they often sulk and this is because in the Basque country it is always raining, and so they get into gloomy moods; they believe they are not a region but a nation, they do not like people from other parts of the country, they want independence form Spain and they still fight for it. In fact, one of the jokes portrayed in the film is to think that all Basques are terrorists, although this stereotype may have been softenend with the passing of the time.

EUSKERA (the Basque language)
Approximately 27% of the Basques speak Euskera. With the reinstatement of democracy in 1978 the teaching of the language in schools resumed with the aim to increase the number of speakers. Previously, Franco's regime has seriously undermined Euskera (and Catalan) so these languages suffered a lot. It was the people's determination in the Basque Country and also in Catalonia that kept the languages alive. Euskera is not your average language. In it not a bastardised form of Latin, like the other romance languages spoken in Europe. In fact in Spain, outside the Basque country, no one has a clue about the language. Some believe that Basque is one of the few surviving Pre-Indo-European languages, others, eccentrically, say it comes from outer space, extra-terrestrial beings brought it to Earth. In any case, its origin is still being studied and debated.

Finally, here are some Basque surnames:  Gabikagogeaskoa, Agirregomezkorta, Barinagarementeria, Atxurraagirre, Zuazubizkar, Oianko, Gabikagogeaskoa, Agirregomezkorta, Izagirre, Barinagarementeria, Atxurraagirre, Beranoagirre, Eguzkiagirre, Iparragirre,Maneneagirre, Olatzagirre, Orkaizagirre, Zubiagirre, Zubiaga, Zabalegi, Zubizarreta, Zuazubizkar,  Oianko, Beranoagirre, Eguzkiagirre, Iparragirre, Izagirre, Maneneagirre, Olatzagirre, Orkaizagirre, Zubiagirre, Zubiaga, Zabalegi.

They are long because they attach prefixes and suffixes to family & geographical names.

Here is the longest Basque surname recorded:

FICTION: Thus bad begins (Así empieza lo malo) a novel by Javier Marías

"Así empieza lo malo" (Thus bad begins) is the latest novel of Spanish writer Javier Marías. It was published in Spain on 23 September 2014 and will, most likely, be released in English in 2015.  Marías' novels have been published in 50 countries and translated into 40 languages. He is considered one of the best contemporary European writers; in the last few years his name has been in the shortlist of candidates for the Nobel Prize of Literature.

The title of the novel "Así empieza lo malo" (Thus bad begins) comes from Hamlet. Marías knows Shakespeare's work very well and has used his verses as titles for some of his novels. 'Thus bad begins' is the first half of a verse line from Act 3, scene 4 of Hamlet: 'Thus bad begins and worse remains behind' (Así empieza lo malo y lo peor queda atrás). 

Other novels by Marías with verses from Shakespeare are: 'A Heart so White' (1992) from Macbeth, 'Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me'(1994) from Richard III, and 'Your Face Tomorrow' (2002, 2004, 2007) from Henry IV whose 1600 pages were published in separate 3 volumes.

Marías recognises Shakespeare's influence in his work: 'In my case, the presence of Shakespeare (in my books) is almost connatural'.  And, as a source of inspiration  "...someone like Shakespeare leaves many paths unexplored, many things just announced, strong images unexplained—all this invites you not to follow him but to be inspired. Shakespeare inspires me." (Paris Review. N. 190).

'Thus bad begins' is set in Madrid in the 1980's. Juan de Vere, the narrator, now a middle-aged man, remembers his first job as a personal assistant to Eduardo Muriel, a cinema director. The story is told from the present time and the central plot develops around the unhappy marriage of Eduardo Muriel and Beatriz Noguera. Curiously, as it happened in his previous novel 'Los Enamoramientos' (The Infatuations) someone is spying on the private life of a married couple: in that novel, it was a woman, and in this one it is Juan de Vere himself.

The 1980's was the decade that saw democracy reinstated in Spain after the years of Franco's dictatorship.  Franco had ruled the country unopposed, for almost 40 years, until his death in 1975, so when he died, the country was ready for change.  The Spanish Constitution of 1978 transformed Spain into a Constitutional Monarchy, and the Amnesty Law passed in 1977, absolved the regime & its acolytes of any responsibility for crimes committed during the years 1936-1977.

So, for some people, there was nothing to fear, and changing sides, that is, moving from being a Franco supporter to a democrat, was not only possible but a straightforward & safe process. The euphemism of the time "changing jackets" (cambiar de chaqueta) conveyed this idea well. Some people, before mutating into instant democrats, did some nip and tuck to their biographies, hiding all that would not be considered appropriate in the newly born democracy; and so, you had some people who, with their faces freshly washed and a new jacket, could carry on with their privileged lives as if they were entitled to it by Divine Law.  

I do not want to go into much detail about the plot of this novel but this is how Javier Marías summarized the book when it was released in Spain last year: “It is about the impunity and the arbitrarily of forgiveness, it is about how we can forgive some serious events while, at the same time, are not willing to forgive small misdeeds; it is about how we can't overlook small matters; it is about sexual desire and obstinacy in love, it's about desire as the engine that moves a person into action and how this can be done in a noble or an ignoble way."

© Imma Hilly, May 2015

SPANISH CINEMA - CARMINA Y AMÉN (Carmina & Amen) Spain (2014)

SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL IN AUSTRALIA 2015

The following are some notes before seeing the movie.

'Carmina y Amén' is the sequel of 'Carmina y revienta' (Carmina & Blow Up) a film that in 2012 took the Spanish cinema scene by surprise. With a very limited budget, Paco León, an actor from Seville, decided to make 'Carmina y Revienta' with his mother (Carmina Barrios) as Carmina, and his sister (Maria León) as María, Carmina's daughter. It was, clearly, a family affair; so much that they didn't even bother to change the character's names. The film, however, is far from being a biopic of the Barrios-León family; it is rather, a successful cinematographic experiment that Paco León had had in mind for quite some time. 

Carmina, the character, was a 57 in the first movie, she lived in Seville and was running a family bar with her husband. The movie starts in Carmina's kitchen. In the small hours of the night she is alone smoking a cigarette and muttering what to do. There have been a series of robberies in the family bar they run and the insurance company is not cooperating. From here onwards we become interested in her story and we wish she succeeds in solving her problem despite her methods, often far from orthodox. 

The film is not a morality tale but one of survival. Carmina Barrios, the actress, has given life to a fantastic Carmina, a woman who is a fighter in the best sense of the word; believing in fatalism, a life set of beliefs that have served so well the Mediterranean people across the ages. His son has recognised that her mother brought to the character much more than he had in mind and could see the Carmina saga expanding, not necessarily as Carmina. We will have to wait and see what he meant.

SOME BACKGROUND

It has been said of Andalusia that it is a matriarchy. May be. This is not the post to discuss this but Carmina, and she certainly is a matriarch, an Andalusian matriarch. She reminds me of another matriarch, Janine Codi, an Australian from Melbourne, that the wonderful Jacki Weaver created in 'Animal Kingdom'. These two women however are very different; Janine Codi was a sociopath, cold, cunning, calculating and manipulative; Carmina on the other hand is fatalistic, pragmatic, a 'what you see is what you get' and 'this is what there is and if you don't like it, stiff bikkies' kind of woman; but she is also wise. She listens to people's problems and only acts if the believes it is necessary.  These two women are strong and determined, and they know how to get ahead in life, even when life is not how they would like it to be.  

THE PLOT

In the first movie, in one of Carmina's monologues in her kitchen at night there is a scene where she looks directly into the camera and tells exactly what will happen in this sequel, which is the following: the sudden death of Carmina's husband. The problem is that he dies two days before his pay is due to arrive. Carmina will convince her daughter to keep her husband’s death a secret for two days, until that much needed payment arrives. 

Unfortunately for non-native speakers, the Andalusian speech is hard to understand as Andalusians speak fast and break words in half, so 'para' becomes 'pa', 'nada' becomes 'ná' and so on.  Students of Spanish should not be discouraged, this is no Salamanca Spanish, but the language is alive, rich, colourful, full of life, very much like their people.  This is the land of my father, so I know what I am talking about.

SHORT STORY: Eduardo Galeano: un mar de fueguitos / a sea of little fires

Eduardo Galeano: in memoriam.
(Montevideo: 3 septiembre 1940 – 13 abril 2015)

De 'El Libro de los Abrazos: El mundo (ver texto en castellano abajo)
From 'The Book of Embraces: The world (See English text below)

Eduardo Galeano reads in Spanish: Un mar de fueguitos




EL MUNDO
“Un hombre del pueblo de Neguá, en la costa de Colombia, pudo subir al cielo. A la vuelta, contó. Dijo que había contemplado, desde allá arriba, la vida humana. Y dijo que somos un mar de fueguitos.
– El mundo es eso – reveló –. un montón de gente, un mar de fueguitos. No hay dos fuegos iguales. Cada persona brilla con la luz propia entre todas las demás.  Hay gente de fuegos grandes y fuegos chicos y fuegos de todos los colores. Hay gente de fuego sereno, que ni se entera del viento, y hay gente de fuego loco, que llena el aire de chispas; algunos fuegos, fuegos bobos, no alumbran ni queman, pero otros arden la vida con tantas ganas que no se puede mirarlos sin parpadear, y quien se acerca se enciende. (...)”


THE WORLD

A man of the town of Neguá, on the coast of Colombia, was able to climb to the high heaven. On his return, he told a story. He said he had contemplated, from above, human life. And said that we are a sea of little fires. The world is that—he revealed—A cluster of people, a sea of little fires. Each person shines with their own light among all others. No two fires are alike. There are large fires and small fires and fires of all kinds and colors. There are people of serene fire, unaware of the existence of wind, and people of crazy fire, who fill the air with sparks. Some fires, foolish fires, do not shine or burn; but others burn life so heartily you cannot observe them without stopping to blink, and whoever gets close, flares up.

 

LANGUAGE MATTERS: I want to learn Spanish because ...

When I start a new class the first thing I do is to ask my new students ... 'Why do you want to learn Spanish?'

Over the years I have been given a great number of answers, ranging form the very serious to the very trivial. Any reason, however, is a valid reason to me, who would struggle to give a reason of  why I love languages so much. I just do. 

So, here is a sample of valid reasons:

• I want to travel to Latin America.
• I want to travel to Spain.
• I am travelling to Latin America / Spain soon.
• I want to do el Camino del Inca. (The Inca Trail)
• I want to do el Camino de Santiago.
• My boyfriend  or girlfriend is a (native) Spanish-speaker.
• My daughter or son is marrying a Mexican (or a Peruvian ... or Argentinian ...) 
• I love the sound of the language. I'd love to speak it.
• I have always wanted to learn a second language.
• I've just come back from a holiday in Europe and I was so embarrassed, everybody seemed to be at least bi-lingual over there...
• It's a language that seems easy.
• I'd like to read in Spanish.
• I am bored.
• I studied the language many years ago. I now have the time to continue learning it.
• If you speak English and Spanish you can travel the world.
• I'd like to read Lorca or Neruda ...
• I want to get my brain working.
• I think I was a Spanish gypsy in a previous life.
• I'd love to be bi-lingual.
• I want to do something different, something new.
• I watch films in Spanish on SBS and I would like to understand what they say.
• My grandfather was Spanish.
• I dance flamenco and I want to go to Sevilla to do a course.
• I want to teach English in Latin America.
• I love Spanish art.
• I want to do a cooking course in Spain.
• I am in love with Penelope Cruz.
• I do business in Uruguay
• I do business in Chile
• I am going to Buenos Aires to learn to dance the tango.
• I want to see Game of Thrones in Spanish

It is a splendid list as far as intentions is concerned. The hardest part is, of course, to start learning and not giving up at class number three, when one realises that this pursuing with this activity will require commitment, perseverance, passion and (these days) it costs a lot of money as well. 


 

Spanish neologisms from English: escanear, resetear, tunear y customizar