A beautiul language and a beautiful city, more so for some than for others Past Review

I gained fluency in Spanish, saw beautiful and historical cities, and learned a great deal about Spanish perspectives on the world (and by implication, what part of my perspective on things is shaped by my upbringing in the US). I had many educational discussions with Spanish students, professors, and my host family about politics and current events and learned that (unsurprisingly) ideaological lines are drawn very differently in Spain than in the US. In general people's politics are more 'left' than is standard in the US. People take for granted that healthcare is fundamental right, that the state should intervene to guarantee certain kinds of substantive equality, that prisoners should have rights, that civilians shouldn't have guns, that education should be affordable, and that public goods should be well funded and have higher prestige than private things. They simply cannot understand why the US is so badly organized as not to have these things. But whereas in the US such beliefs would almost automatically require one to take an anti-racist and anti-islamophobic stance, that is not the case in Spain. I met people, who, in the same conversation, would talk to you about the importance of sharing the burdens of childcare equally between husband and wife and their feeling that islam is inherently connected to terrorism. As the latter belief is abhorent to me, and as I had been raised in an American leftist tradition, I consider these two beliefs to be mutually exclusive. In Spain, they are not. (I should qualify this description of Spanish islamophobia with two following caveats. (1) this does not stop people in the south of Spain from being very proud of their heritage as part of al-andalus, though of course it is always easier to love historical people than present ones. and (2) in part because of Spain's history of civil war and the many Spaniards who fled as refugees, I have met many Spaniards who are very sympathetic to the plight of today's refugees who, in both American and European discourse, are generally assumed to be Muslim. You will find in cities throughout Spain great signs saying 'welcoming refugees.' But signs are cheap, and I do not believe that Spain has had to take in as many refugees as Germany for example so its sympathy may not really have been tested. It's complicated, and there are as many opinions as people.) Another example of what I learned about Spanish perspectives, was their general attitude towards colonialism, which is something like the following. "Well, everyone's been conquered at some point. What's done is done. And anyway, it's been a long time since we were that glorious empire, and since then we've had almost two centuries of constantly changing governments, civil wars, and dictatorships (from Napoleon's conquest to Franco) and then European imposed austerity, so all of that is hardly relevant to us anymore." As with any statement about 'general beliefs of people, you should understand that not all Spanish people think this, or think about it at all. But I would imagine this is not a pleasant attitude to encounter for the student descended from the peoples colonized by Spain. And to the student with no connection to Spain but with an American history education that was both anti-spanish and anti-colonial, this may come as a shock. I could go on for quite a bit longer about Spanish attitudes, or perhaps better to say, the attitudes of some of the Spanish people I met. I found all of this fascinating and educational, and I learned to think about some of my beliefs carefully, not necessarilly because I no longer believe them, but because I understand better why one might not hold them, and how to explain to people why I do. That said, the fact that I could find all of this 'fascinating' is largely reliant on the fact that, because I appear "all-american" and white to a Spaniard my identity was not in play, my sense of self not at risk. Again, read the other comments and see what people had to say.