Thursday January 17

Had a registration appointment today at noon. Later, class at 5 included a 2-hour walk around the old Jewish quarter of the city, called Santa Cruz. We learned that Santa Cruz was totally redone at the beginning of the 20^th century because it had fallen into disrepair and it was a dangerous part of the city. So it was rebuilt in the image of a “typical” Andalucian village – which actually makes it a big fakery. It’s really touristy and hasn’t preserved much of its history. Our professor pointed out some cool stuff, though, including which churches used to be synagogues, an old tomb (now built into a parking structure) of a Jewish man, the spots in the walls that were for the iron gates that used to enclose the quarter, etc. The main synagogue (only 3 were legal) was destroyed and now there’s only a plaza with a big iron cross…anyway now Santa Cruz has lots of hotels and small shops and restaurants. Everything there tends to be too expensive, and tourists buy it because they don’t know any better.

Then at 7 we went to a talk by Rosa Díaz, a Basque politician. She talked about language politics (Spanish vs. Catalán vs. Euskara), making changes to the constitution, “miracles of the masses”, etc. It was hard to understand her at first (not that she spoke Euskara or anything; she spoke Spanish) but that got easier. She spoke for an hour and then took questions for another hour. It was a long night – 4 total hours of class.