Ok, well maybe race is a slightly misleading word. But after walking by the office of the leftist party UGT (the General Union of Workers) and having passed the office of the anarchist political party CNT (National Confederation of Labor) and that of PSOE (Spanish Socialist Worker's Party) as well as having studied all three in their involvement in the Second Spanish Republic and the Civil War, I decided it might be a good idea to send them emails (plus the conservative group PP-"People's Party" who are relatively new on the scene) and ask to chat with someone from their office about their history, their ideology and the future of Spain.
I sent nearly identical emails first to UGT then to CNT then PSOE and then PP (I changed the email in PSOE to reflect the fact that they're in control of the government now and I mentioned that I go to Georgetown in the PP email since their former head, Aznar, now sort of works there/is somehow involved with us). But the difference in email time was no more than 10 minutes.
We will be able to learn a few interesting things from this experiment. First off, I have yet to get an automatically generated response saying something like, "thank you for your concern and email, we will have a representative look at it and get back to you in a timely fashion but please read our website for more information" from any of the groups. The next thing that'll be interesting to see is who writes back first and who doesn't write back at all. After that it'll be curious to see who actually accepts a request from a "student journalist" who is looking to increase his own understanding of Spain as well as spread this understanding via a certain travel/culture blog.
Finally it will be very interesting to actually sit down with these people and hear what they have to say. I'll keep you guys posted on any developments.
Ha ? olivido decirte que las brujas alemanas comen los americanos despues de haberlos cortado las piernas ? Que lastima para ti . Niark Niark !
Posted by: Mélanie | 05/19/2009 at 07:00 AM