Archive for 'Spain'
El País in Finland
Tuesday October 20th, 2009. 11:13 AM. Published under Finland culture, Spain, helsinki. 1 Comment.
El País (in English: The Country) is the most widely-circulated daily newspaper in Spain. Price in Spain: 1.20 €, Price in Helsinki: 2.75.
BTW. You can check the most important today’s front pages in the world in Kiosko.net and even more (838 newspapers in the world) in Newseum. From Finland only Iltälehti.
Iltalehti is a tabloid newspaper (sensational newspaper) and it translates directly as “Evening paper”. And ¿What? Wikipedia says that Iltalehti.fi is the most popular website in Finland as of November 2008. 0_o I didn’t expect this.
Writing from Helsinki
Sunday October 11th, 2009. 12:57 PM. Published under Spain, Tampere, helsinki. 4 Comments.
Bye, bye Tampere. Hello Helsinki!
New period in the life, leaving behind in Tampere great fellows and supportive teachers in Onnenkieli, where I have been 5 months learning Finnish.
Then, a busy and great month September: 2 weeks in Estepona, Spain, and then moving to Helsinki to start working in a Web development company.
Two days ago we received finally at home the Internet connection (25 Mbits !), and I have many things to post in this blog, so be ready. During this week I will write some new lines and more photos.
In the meanwhile, cold has arrived to Finland already and trees are telling you: Be ready, winter is just around the corner!
San Fermín and the bulls
Tuesday July 7th, 2009. 10:34 AM. Published under Spain. 3 Comments.
Yesterday 6th of July has started the festival of San Fermin, in Pamplona, in the north of Spain. Most popular event in this festival is the running of the bulls “los encierros” in the morning at 8, from 7th to 14th of July.
I have never been (it’s 1000 Km far from Málaga), but it is one of the most popular festivals of Spain, specially outside of Spain. It’s a big party all day long, and the bull is not the main thing of San Fermin; is the alcohol and crowds of young people having fun.
Also many foreigners run in front of the bull. Main reason of its popularity outside of Spain is due of Ernest Hemingway, who brought it to the general attention of English-speaking people, specially in USA, when it was published his novel “The Sun Also Rises” (1926), where San Fermin events are main part of the plot of the novel.
You can see the videos of the running of the bulls 2009 here. And very good photos of 2008 by Big Picture.
Where do the bulls go? They run to their death: to the bullfighting square, where later will be killed. Like in Pamplona in many other main cities of Spain. Even I respect people who like bullfighting, like my grandparents, I am against it and it’s a shame for me that the main tradition of Spain is this animal torture.
(Credit: Enfoque Diferencial)
PETA organized every year some activities to make world conscious of this torture. Like me many other Spanish people, specially young generations, doesn’t like bullfighting and don’t support it. In the future I am sure this activity will be only part of our history.
EDIT. Today I have seen this original campaign in meneame called ‘Love Spain, Hate Bullfighting’ by the The League Against Cruel Sports.
C&P: In recent independent polls we learned that 89% of the British public would never visit a bullfight and that 67% of Spaniards are not interested in bullfighting.
World’s cleanest countries
Tuesday April 21st, 2009. 12:55 PM. Published under Finland culture, Spain. 1 Comment.
Forbes has published a list of the world’s cleanest countries, with Switzerland in first place:
1. Switzerland.
2. Norway
3. Sweden.
4. Finland.
5. Costa Rica.
(…)
30. Spain.
(…)
39. USA.
This study has been made by Yale University and you can see the complete list here and the methodology used.
The report ranks 149 countries on 25 indicators tracked across six established policy categories: Environmental Health, Air Pollution, Water Resources, Biodiversity and Habitat, Productive Natural Resources, and Climate Change.
Although Forbes published this week, it seems the study was made in 2008.
Spanish crisis in Finnish TV
Saturday April 4th, 2009. 08:04 AM. Published under About the blog, Job, Music, Opinion, Spain. 22 Comments.
A Finnish TV channel has created a short documentary about Spanish crisis. After the crazy growth of the construction last years and speculation, the happy days are finished. The bubble has burst. Nowadays Spain has the highest unemployment rate in all Europe and many families with economic difficulties.
Estepona
Wednesday March 25th, 2009. 12:20 PM. Published under Music, People, Spain, Videos. 5 Comments.
Promoting my hometown… ESTEPONA (Málaga)
Estepona, in the coast of Málaga is renowned for its beaches, which stretch along some 21 km of coastline. Bordering with Marbella, its population in 2007 is 65.0000. More data en Wikipedia.
When here snow starts to melt, in Estepona people starts to go to the beach… it’s not fair, not.
Finnish Embassy and Focus
Friday March 20th, 2009. 01:26 PM. Published under Finland culture, Spain. 4 Comments.
The Spanish embassy in Finland doesn’t have website wrong! it has (thanks daniel), but Finnish Embassy in Spain does. It has interest links to know more about Finland and also I subscribed via RSS. They used to publish news (in spanish, finnish and swedish) every 10 days. Last new is about the magazine Focus, and it’s available in digital format. I didn’t have time to read it deeply, but the photos quality are really good:
Focus Economía y Tecnología 2009
C&P:
Focus on the Economy and Technology 2009, the annual publication showcasing Finland’s strengths and attractions as a target for investments has come out even bigger and better than before. Read the digipaper!
More information, more languages and also 2008 edition in InvestInFinland.fi
By the way, did you subscribe already to Corbacho en Finlandia? Don’t miss any post.
Stats
Tuesday March 10th, 2009. 06:50 AM. Published under About the blog, Music, Spain. 3 Comments.
It’ only 3 months I have started this blog Corbacho en Finlandia, but it’s growing fast
I have to say thanks to PixelyDixel for publishing a couple of videos I recommend them (Signs and Nascar) and backlink to me, to 4ºD for backlink to me when they published Lisa and thanks to Error500 for his invitation to Spotify at the beginning of the year. I also applied for a invitation for Spotify in that time and because I had it already, I decided to give it in the blog.
And Google has considered that my post is relevant for the search query “invitacion spotify” (invitation in Spanish), since it’s the second result after spotify.com.
So I have about 25 daily visits of people looking for invitations. It’s frustating since I don’t have any more. What can I do to help them? I have emailed to Lutz Emmerich, Country Manager Spotify Spain and he replied me that still you can ask for an account without invitation in this web, but soon they will close it. So be fast!
Sunny Days
Sunday March 1st, 2009. 04:25 AM. Published under Finland culture, Photos, Spain, Winter. 3 Comments.
The sun in winter here in Finland is… shy. Easily can be one week without chance to see it, almost always hidden behind the clouds or the fog.
I live almost all my life in Estepona and Málaga. This area is better known as Costa del Sol, ¿why? Tourist agencies will claim proudly “We have more than 300 days of sunshine all year around”. I don’t care about it. I didn’t care about it. I mean, this is something that you don’t appreciate until you lose it. Supply and demand, economist likes to call it.
If the sun comes out, the best thing you can do it’s go outside to the forest with your couple to enjoy this chance. Like 2 days ago:
Now I start to have Finnish mentality, looking to the sky when I wake up to see if there is some ray of light and counting the days for the warm Finnish summer, when the sun rises at 4 am and sets after 11 pm.
Snow in Madrid: Chaos
Friday January 9th, 2009. 04:12 PM. Published under Finland culture, Photos, Spain, Winter. 1 Comment.
Snowing is not usual in Spain in winter, except in mountains and some areas, but most of the cities is not often to see snowing and rarely snow stays on the streets. That’s why these days Spanish people go to the streets to make photos to have a memory of this weird city landscapes. You can see a gallery here and other one here.
And Spain, sorry to say, it’s not prepared for that. With the words of Enrique Belda, sudirector of the Traffic Department of Spain “(spanish) roads are not designed for snowing”. There has been a lot of traffic problems, even in main highways of Madrid, delayed trains and planes, etc. Kids don’t go to school and authorities they recommend not to use the car.
Here In Finland it amaze me that people is so used to snow, that they don’t see any problem in having snow everywhere. Because it’s a country prepared for it. Finland doesn’t stop for snowing, they keep their normal life in the long winter even with hard weather conditions and icy roads. I wonder what kind of snow storm is necessary for Finnish people stay in their house without going to work / school. These are some habits of finnish people in winter, that still surprise me :
- All Finnish car owners are required by law to equip their cars with winter tyres. Winter tyres must be used between December 1st and February 28th but they can and must also be used outside those dates when weather conditions make driving hazardous. Juan Llaneza has a photo in his blog of this special tyres.
- To get a drive license you receive training to improve you slippery driving skills and nighttime driving lessons too.
- An engine-block electric heater is a great boon for winter drivers who do not have a garage and leave their cars outside overnight. The bock heater makes the car easier to start and reduces fuel consumption. Drivers normally plug their cars into electric sockets in the parking areas.
- Weather reports always includes warning about slippery roads, something that I’ve never seen in Spain.
This hard conditions can be he secret of such a good drivers in Finland, a country of just 5.3 million people and 77 billion trees, has produced more formula one world champions per capita than anywhere else: Heikki Kovalainen, Mika Salo and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, Mika Häkkinen (more) … and other day I’ll talk about rally’s drivers.
But still my favourite one is Fernando Alonso 