This past week in Spain, (my first full week), I got to learn so much about the culture and History of Barcelona as well as Spain as a whole. In class this week I had two presentations, one going over the history of Spain and one talking about the impact of the European Union on Spain as well as Europe as a whole. My first presentation was on the history of Spain, specializing in the years from around 1930 to about 1975. I got to study the civil war in Spain in the 1930s between the Nationalists and the Republicans and how Francisco Franco took over Spain in 1939 and ruled as a dictator until his death in 1975. I found it very fascinating that countries like Spain among others remained a dictatorship after seeing what happened with Hitler in Germany.
My second presentation was on the European Union and its rise to prominence in Europe. I found it interesting that before the introduction of the European Monetary System many countries in Europe based their currencies’ value off of the Deutsche Mark, which was the German currency. The reason they did this was because their currencies were previously based on the dollar, but once the dollar became no longer backed by gold in 1971, all the countries that had dollar-based currencies then had floating and flat currencies. In order to combat this, many countries based their currencies and monetary policies on what the German central bank (Bundesbank) decided to do. But when the European Monetary System was introduced in 1979, many Western European countries then joined the European Union with a new common currency, the Euro. Through the European Union, countries were able to establish a common monetary as well as foreign policy system. They were also able to establish a common market, meaning that workers were able to travel freely between countries, and countries were also to freely trade with each other with the removal of tariffs as well as import and export taxes.
This weekend, me and a couple of friends went to Cadaques for the day on Saturday. We took the public train to Figueres and then took a taxi the rest of the way to the coastal town of Cadaques. In Cadaques, the economy seemed to be based on tourism as well as fishing based on the number of fishing boats we saw in the bay area just off of the public beach. The houses were all made of limestone and reminded me of the numerous white-colored houses in countries such as Greece. The food was amazing, especially the seafood (I got the calamari) as well as the gelato (I got coconut and caramel flavored scoops). They seemed to be known for their gelato because there were at least 20 shops along the road by the beach, so we tried to choose the most authentic one. We then finished the day by taking a ferry ride to Ros?, where we got to see the Spanish coast as well as some of the other coastal towns on the East coast of Spain. Overall, it was a very culturally enriching week.