If we were the problem, it would be very convenient, kick Greece out, everything's fine. But what happened to Spain? What about Portugal? What about Italy? What about the whole of the Eurozone? We need more cooperation and less simplification and prejudice about what has to happen.

To be sure, political unions between European countries have often failed in the past, but usually only after relatively brief periods. Denmark and Iceland separated after 130 years; the unions between Spain and Portugal and between Sweden and Norway each lasted less than a century.

Noam Chomsky has a book, which I read for the first time when I was in Spain, called 'Fear of Democracy'. There is your answer. Fear of democracy. In Honduras, they had a sham democracy. It was run by elites, what was called a liberal democracy, but in reality was a false democracy.

'El Gordo' is the name given to the oldest lottery jackpot in the world - and the richest. Held every year in Madrid on December 22, the Christmas Lottery culminates with the picking of the El Gordo number, the Fat One, which, for many, has become the true Christmas miracle in Spain.

Sertorius was far from being strong enough to renew the gigantic enterprise of Hannibal. He was lost if he left Spain, where all his successes were bound up with the peculiarities of the country and the people; and even there, he was more and more compelled to renounce the offensive.

The most important thing is that Spain have a good team no matter who plays. It is always nice to see your name spoken but the important thing is that the national team does well. But having good players for every position is important because there are always injuries, drops of form.

The certainty that our football, the football of Spain, is recognised, that's very important to us - perhaps more important than the successes and the joy that you can create. Football hasn't always been appreciated, and luckily our football is appreciated now, at all levels of society.

The longer you stay in Madrid, the more you realise what this club means to people - not just in the city but also elsewhere in Spain and around the world. No matter where we played, we'd see our fans. No matter whether we played a Clasico or a small cup game, the Bernabeu would be full.

The history of exploration has never been driven by exploration. But Columbus himself was a discoverer. So was Magellan. But the people who wrote checks were not. They had other motivations. And there's Columbus - he couldn't even get Italy to pay for his voyage so he has to go to Spain.

In the early 1800s, both Spain and Portugal disseminated the smallpox vaccine throughout the Americas via the 'arm to arm of the blacks,' that is, enslaved Africans and African-Americans, often children, who were being moved along slave routes as cargo from one city to another to be sold.

The geographical location of Sweden and, therefore, short growing season meant that the range of produce is not as abundant like say France, Italy or Spain. This influenced the cooking culture and forced cooks to be creative with a handful of ingredients. It's a very modern way of cooking.

On the morning of January 17, 1966, a real-life dirty bomb crisis occurred over Palomares, Spain. A Strategic Air Command bomber flying with four armed hydrogen Bombs - with yields between 70 kilotons and 1.45 megatons - collided midair with a refueling tanker over the Spanish countryside.

It was in Spain that [my generation] learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many, the world over, feel the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.

The type of cuisine I do, especially after being on 'Iron Chef' for several years, is a lot of global cuisine. My strength has always been Mediterranean cuisine across the board from Morocco, Spain, Italy, Greece, France, but I think now I'm doing a lot of very different cuisines all the time.

I was not happy as a traveller, I did not feel really at home anywhere I went, even in Spain which was the most I felt at home, I still was a foreigner. I missed Australia, and I can't tell why. It's just this is what I grew up with and this is the things I wanted to make meaning of in my life.

When I was younger, I had some close friends who always loved European football, and Real Madrid at that time were the dominant force. I remember family holidays when we used to go to Spain, and we'd bring back replica shirts of Real Madrid and pretend to be the players when we played in the park.

The kings of Spain brought us the conquistadores and masters, whose footprints remained in the circular land grants assigned to those searching for gold in the sands of rivers, an abusive and shameful form of exploitation, traces of which can be noted from the air in many places around the country.

Even when we were under the Spanish flag, we had a movement that just wanted assimilation into Spain, a movement of autonomy - which has been the majority always - and a movement for separation. In that sense, Puerto Rico's political reality is very different from any place I know in the whole world.

My feeling is that my body and all my things inside me - when I move, when I do everything - are Brazilian because my family is Brazilian, and my mother language is Brazilian Portuguese. But all the thinking in my life, all the treatment with people, I think I'm more from Spain. That's how I grew up.

The running joke about the Premio Cervantes, the most coveted literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, which was established by Spain's Ministry of Culture in 1976, is that Cervantes himself wouldn't have received it. This is because he was, in his heart, the most anti-Spanish of Spanish writers.

I got the call to play Tony Manero in 'Saturday Night Fever' in Madrid, a role I'd always wanted, as it's such a well-constructed show, and my background is in musical theatre. I'd been travelling back and forth between London and Spain for auditions and had been borrowing money from friends to do it.

The interesting thing about the China story, getting back to the macro and micro, and as dire as I think the macro story is - due to bad credit and credit extension that makes Greece and Spain and the U.S. look like child's play - when you get to the micro of individual companies, they look even worse.

The E.U. cannot give up on common solidarity. The idea that every country does its own thing, and history and geography decides whose turn it is - whether Greece or Italy or Spain or, who knows, even Poland if there's a crisis in north-eastern Europe - that just can't be. There has to be a common policy.

Let me tell you a story about when I was growing up in Spain. Many Sundays, we would invite 30, 40, 50 people to the countryside, and my father would make a big paella. He put me in charge of the fire and the 'stove' - the rocks that hold the pan. But he wouldn't let me cook. I got so unbelievably upset.

My father was born and raised in Havana, Cuba. His family is from Spain. My father never taught me how to speak Spanish when I was little. That's very disappointing to me. I'm still planning on learning it on my own. I really want to travel to Spain and immerse myself in the culture and learn it on my own.

The big difference between league football in England and Spain is that more teams compete here. In Spain, it is usually only two teams going for the title, which is not necessarily a bad thing because you get great matches between the two, but I think the English league is better for being more competitive.

I have always considered it a beautiful metaphor that Cervantes had no fixed address in Spain. He is thus everywhere and nowhere. There are a number of sites connected with his life, but none attract hordes of travellers the way Stratford-upon-Avon and the Globe Theatre in London draw Shakespeare aficionados.

Living in Barcelona, I have my own little ghetto utopia. There are 3,000 ghost towns in Spain, and I've used the images of them a lot in my backdrops for my solo spoken-word stuff. The ghost towns could be from two buildings to 40 - things died out, or there were plagues, the roads don't lead there, whatever.

I'm much better known in France and Germany and Spain than I am in the U.S. When I go to Russia, I get mobbed; I have groups of fans waiting for me out in the hotel lobby, waiting for me to come down off the elevator. In China, I almost got beat up because people were trying to get me to do a drawing for them.

My first time alone in Spain playing basketball - that kind of made me tougher, especially for my character and my personality. It's not easy when you're alone. Some nights you have bad games or bad days and it's not easy. I think that is the one thing that changed me, to make me a better person, a tougher guy.

The thing to keep in mind is that we're still in the very early days when it comes to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Saying there's a silence is a bit like if Columbus, looking to discover a new continent, only sailed 10 miles off the coast of Spain before turning back to say, 'Nothing out there!'

I must say, the standard of football we play in League Two is better than I thought. I think, if you compared it with the fourth division in other countries, such as Italy, Germany and Spain, League Two is much, much better - and that's very positive. The intensity and the tempo is as high as the Premier League.

When I go to Colombia or Mexico, I speak Spanish. When I go to Italy, I speak Italian. When I'm in Germany, I speak German. Would I expect them to speak English in these countries? No. I mean, great if they do, but no. Would I be offended if in Spain they say we speak Spanish? No. If I was an immigrant there, no.

After the Moslem Africans lost control over Spain, they began to prey on the Africans further to the south. They destroyed the great independent states in West Africa, and subsequently set Africa up for the Western slave trade and the Arabs were in the slave trade before Islam and they are still in the slave trade.

I'm part Spanish. My paternal grandfather came from Spain via Singapore to Manila. On my mother's side it's more mixture, with a Filipino mother and a father who was Scotch Irish-French; you know, white American hybrid. And I also have on my father's side a great-great-grandmother who was Chinese. So, I'm a hybrid.

You can play basketball and have a magic night and score 40 points with your team-mates and win the game. There are favourites for the World Cup, but you can't guarantee Germany, Spain, or Brazil will win, but here, everyone can guarantee that Mercedes or Ferrari will win the race, and this is very sad for the sport.

One of the reasons I chose to come to Liverpool was because of the mentality of the club. It's a working club and a working city. I don't know why, but I feel like one of the people here. They recognise me and wish me luck, but in Spain, they surround you and you can't do anything. I think they're happy with me here.

People are, in the confines of their own apartments, becoming Magellans of the interior world and reaching out to this alien thing and beginning to map it and bring back stories that can only be compared to the kind of stories that the chroniclers of the New World brought back to Spain at the close of the 15th century.

People have to understand one thing: at the age of 18, I arrived at a dream club like Manchester United. It was a dream come true. But, even at that moment, I was thinking about playing in England for some years and then going to play in Spain. Even at that time I was thinking that way, and I always gave 100% everything.

Come now: Do we really think that the gods are everywhere called by the same names by which they are addressed by us? But the gods have as many names as there are languages among humans. For it is not with the gods as with you: you are Velleius wherever you go, but Vulcan is not Vulcan in Italy and in Africa and in Spain.

My chocolate is special because it's real. My pistachios are from Italy, and the almonds are from Spain. We make our own marzipan. If I sell a product that says 'raspberry,' it's real raspberry. My plan was to make the best product possible and be the least expensive of the best chocolate makers. That's still our position.

'Jigarthanda' will be the first in the Kannada industry to do this type of an experiment. All these days we use to do our recordings in Mumbai, Hyderabad, or in Chennai. But this time we have recorded in three different countries: Spain, Italy and the U.S. We have used around 50 foreign spring orchestra including violins, etc.

I am a big fan of the Gallagher brothers. At Liverpool, they came a few times; they are friends of Steven Gerrard. It was nice to meet them. When I was in Spain, I couldn't speak English, so I couldn't understand the lyrics. When I came to England, I started studying music and trying to understand what my favourite songs said.

It was difficult at Villa because they'd struggled for two years and I'd come mainly from Barcelona B in the second division in Spain. I needed time to adapt but Tim Sherwood and Remi Garde had to win games; they didn't have time to think about little things about my game. It was a bad moment, it was such a hard, sad experience.

Every league has its own culture, its own identity, and its own type of football. It's very physical in England, but technical skill comes to the fore in Spain, where everybody wants to play beautiful football. The standards are very high in Germany, too; the teams are physically strong, very disciplined, and very well organised.

My father was a San Francisco firefighter. He also was an amateur artist. Art ran deep on his side of the family, which originated in Spain. He painted our portraits. My mom, Jacqueline, was Scots-Irish. They met in 1947 when dad played for the Houston Buffalos, a minor league baseball team affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Truth to be told, yes, it does feel very strange to be in the Spain setup without Xavi. Ever since I broke through for Barca and Spain he's always been around. We've always had a great relationship and he's always set an example in every way, when it comes to camaraderie, how much help he's given me and, above all, in footballing terms.

I would agree that much with people who accept private property - that conscription is an unpardonable transgression, whether it be "corrupt" or not. The Spanish anarchists opposed conscription during the civil war in Spain as a gross expropriation of property, the most precious property that we have, our own physical beings themselves.

I remember thinking when I was younger - we used to take holidays to Spain and France, and I just thought I was never going to get further than Spain or France. I really didn't when I was younger. And then I started auditioning for 'Narnia,' and the first thing when I got the part was go straight to New Zealand, halfway around the world.

When my generation, those early days of television - I know I've been thinking about this lately - my two flashes of me as a little boy. One, I'm standing in front of the radio freaking out that Nat King Cole's singing 'Lady of Spain', just this stuff coming out of the radio, and Guy Williams singing 'Wild Horses' coming out of the radio.

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