History Lesson.

Alas, Monday again. But what a fun weekend! On Friday, the whole program (about 80 students or so) took a field trip to the south of France. The town we visited, Bayonne, is just a short bus ride away! It was surprising how easy it was to pass over the border...I didn´t even know we were in France until our professor announced it to the bus! Once you´re inside the European Union, passing between countries is a piece of cake. It was like passing into Wisconsin on the highway.

Bayonne was great...a very small, picturesque town along a river. It was the kind of thing you´d see on a blank-on-the-inside Hallmark card. Quaint shops, colorful window shutters, people sitting outside cafes. AND AWESOME FOOD. Bayonne is famous for its chocolate, and the French in general are renowned for their naughty baked goods. We took full advantage and I fell in love with a small tart with some kind of whipped cream concoction and fresh raspberries. I'm considering making the two-hour trip just to eat another. The rest of the day was spent exploring and enjoying the PERFECT weather. The second town we went to was actually in Spain, but we could wave to France across the itty-bitty port that sat between the two countries. It was a great day!

The core of the second town is still surrounded my its ancient defensive city wall.

The next morning, I had an unexpectedly long breakfast with my host parents. Breakfast is never a big event in Spain (the other day, I thought to myself how much I had eaten for breakfast. And then I realized I'd consumed 5 toasted crackers with jam.) but we ended up getting into a really long (and great) conversation about the years before the death of Francisco Franco.

Stop right there - gotta give you a little background before I proceed. If you didn't know, Spain's democracy is still a figurative teenager. Until his death in 1975, Spain was under a right-wing authoritarian regime, with Franco as its leader. Long story short, the guy was nuts. His government, which aimed to "preserve the Spanish culture," targeted any lifestyle that wasn't traditional, conservative, and Catholic.

And if you weren't? There was a good change you would end up in jail - if you were lucky. At the time of his reign, Franco had institutionalized torture, used the death penalty liberally, made forced labor prisons (think concentration camp) and censored everything. I asked my host parents about life during Franco's reign, and whether they felt affected by it...wow, what a life they have lived. Here are some highlights.

Censorship. Everything was censored - you couldn't buy the majority of popular books, movies, or toys in Spain. My mom told me that when she and Jose Luis were dating, they used to drive to France to go to the movies! A lot of people also went to France to buy books, and would sneak them back over the border, hidden in their cars. Strange to think that the same towns I went on a field trip to the day before may have been a Spanish booklover's safe haven just a few decades ago.

The Church. Franco basically insisted that all of Spain's citizens were devout Catholics. Any non-religious holiday was removed from the calendar, or it was changed to a day that honored a saint. This is interesting - it was obligatory that EVERY boy that was born be named José; and EVERY girl be named María. Maybe Franco thought that if everyone was named after Jesus's parents, they'd be better at...life? (My name means "from Britain"...I wonder what that's gonna do for me.) Since it would be every mother's nightmare to have a jillion little José's and María's running around, most of the children had a middle name that they went by. For example, my host mom's name is Conchi, short for "Conception" (real cute). Buuut, her REAL name is María Concepción. And my host dad is José Luis. Essentially, this entire generation has the same first name because of Franco.

Getting in trouble. I asked Jose Luis if either of them had friends that went to jail for protesting. I almost dropped my jelly spoon when he told me this story.

Short answer: Yes. They had tons. It was incredibly normal to hear that someone else went to jail. The story that ensued quickly taught me that it takes much less than actively protesting to run into trouble: what started out as a normal drive to work for my host dad ended with him being detained by the police, urinated on, and forced to lay on the ground for five hours. What happened, you ask? Did he attack someone? Rob a blind old woman? Kick a baby? No. Au contraire, he stopped his car at a crosswalk and let pedestrians pass. CLEARLY, his beckoning wave for the group to pass in front of him, and their returned wave of gratitude was a secret password. Thank goodness the police were there to intervene on Jose Luis's secret plans...perhaps to smuggle some copies of "The Little Engine That Could" from southern France, heaven forbid.

The end. The day Franco died, Conchi said that she'd never seen so many bottles of champagne in her life. All morning and all day, people were outside celebrating, calling their friends and loved ones, and finding more and more wine to pop open - all while holding their breath and fixing their eyes on Madrid. Sure, Franco had died, but the future of Spain was still a mystery, and the government was incredibly unstable. The days that ensued were probably some of the most nerve-wracking of all.

It's crazy the things you can learn about someone over a cup of coffee and some crackers (and REALLY GOOD JAM, by the way). Every day here, I am surrounded by an entire generation of people that grew up knowing nothing but the oppression of a dictatorship, living now in one of the most powerful democracies in the world. What a life! It just goes to show that the culture of a country goes beyond cold stone cathedral walls, the strokes of paint that craft masterpieces, or the ingredients of tortilla española (though all are appreciated, especially the latter). Culture, at its best, is buried deep under the skin and behind the eyes of people that live life a little differently than you do. Culture is people.

I'll take that over a museum any day.