The modern Spain like Italy and southern Ireland takes it more seriously or better said it’s the norm to have a first communion when you’re 12ish. So you can imagine there might be more press about the old dude popping off. The TV channels here zoomed in on the open coffin to see the washed out face of a very old and very dead man – it was a shock. Atena 3 and Tele5 here are the blood thirstiest media I have ever seen, if there is a road accident you see the squidge marks up close if there has been a bombing in the middle-east you’ll see more that just the feet like you do back home.
On Roads
To be honest I was actually quite afraid of driving in Spain. Back in the UK I had broken both legs in a motorcycle accent due to a high speed failed overtaking manoeuvre, I’d travel through the Egyptian desert by night in the back of a Lada with no lights and also survived, driven a lorry in Manhattan, but Spain worried me. As a pedestrian waiting at a crossing it is like waiting to get served in a bar that you’re not welcome. The traffic doesn’t stop, you have to step out in front of a moving vehicle make eye contact with the drive, wait for him to lock up the wheels and then cross. The women of course don’t stop. The point system has only recently been introduced along with speed cameras and prison sentences for drink driving so watching the daily news would be accents, muti-pile-ups an all number of shocking statistics that made any traveller without a death wish to take the train. Buses were also highly dangerous method of travel, constantly leaving the highway via the crash barrier so I limited my contact with these too.
One Spanish friend, Paulo, has a joke with his mates where they mock the presenter of Tele5 news ‘Blood, Death and Destruction’ the classic opening lines to the lunchtime news. If we have the Sun, here it’s all done on the TV bit like America and it’s called the Prensa Rosa – hours and hours of junk, gossip, tripe and stupidity.
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