María Ramírez

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de diciembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

Pedro Sánchez, leader of the Socialist Party (PSOE), and his wife Maria Begoña Gómez. Photograph: Pablo Blázquez Domínguez/Getty Images

EspañaAspectos Generales

Pedro Sánchez has built a reputation as a successful political gambler, but suspending public duties and threatening to resign, as he did last week, was a political bombshell. It was so extraordinary it led to five days of national puzzlement and the wildest speculation over his motives: from mental health to true love and all kinds of shenanigans associated with the dark arts of politics in between. His announcement that he would not, after all, be resigning, came as another surprise, even to some of his political allies.

The timing of this apparently self-inflicted political turmoil adds to its oddity. The centre-left socialist prime minister spent months putting together a fragile parliamentary majority after a close election in July 2023.…  Seguir leyendo »

Bars and restaurants in Barcelona, Spain. Photograph: Kumar Sriskandan/Alamy

EspañaAspectos Generales

Spain’s employment minister and deputy prime minister, Yolanda Díaz, described the late opening hours of restaurants and bars, earlier this month, as “madness”. “A country that has its restaurants open at one o’clock in the morning is not reasonable”, she said. Hospitality industry figures and conservative politicians responded with outrage. “The deputy prime minister thinks she lives in Sweden instead of Spain”, a furious restaurant owner in Barcelona told El País, pointing out the late sunset in her city. That day, 6 March, the sun set in Stockholm at 5.29pm, and in Barcelona at 6.48pm. In Stockholm, restaurants typically close at 11pm; in Barcelona, restaurants and bars are allowed to open until 2.30am on weekdays, and until 3am at weekends.…  Seguir leyendo »

DB Fernverkehr marketing director Sophie Buyse, Belgian deputy prime minister George Gilkinet, NMBS-SNCB CEO Sophie Dutordoir and ÖBB-PV board member Klaus Garstenauer welcome the first Nightjet night train from Berlin at Brussels-Midi station, 12 December 2023. Photograph: Shutterstock

Europa

José Manuel Barroso, the former prime minister of Portugal and former head of the European Commission, used to say that Europeans were in love with “the intellectual glamour of pessimism”. When I first heard him say that in 2005, I had just started as a correspondent in Brussels after a few years living in the US, and his words rang especially true. There was a stark contrast between the deeply rooted American cultural belief that things could only get better, and the routinely bleak view that prevailed in many European countries, even the wealthiest and most privileged ones. France, Belgium, Spain and Italy consistently rank high in global surveys of pessimism.…  Seguir leyendo »

A small boat being rescued at La Restinga in El Hierro, Canary Islands, 23 October 2023. Photograph: Gelmert Finol/EPA

EspañaPolítica Inmigración

In the first 10 months of 2023, more than 43,000 migrants and refugees landed on the Spanish coasts. Most of them reached the Canary Islands in small boats known as pateras. The number far exceeds arrivals to the UK, whose shores have been reached by about 27,000 people in the same period. The disparity is even more striking considering Spain has a population of 48 million, in contrast with the 68 million in the UK.

People arriving by small boats are a minority in the immigration flow, and are not necessarily the ones who stay in Spain. About 15% of the Spanish population is foreign-born – the population is actually growing due to waves of new immigrants, mostly from Colombia, Morocco and Venezuela.…  Seguir leyendo »

A high-speed train in Aragon, Spain. Photograph: Pedro Antonio Salaverria Calahorra/Alamy

EspañaAspectos Generales

When I was a child, in the 1980s, it was almost inconceivable to take the train to travel between most cities in Spain. The default was a car or a bus. And well into the 1990s a rail journey involved an old, decrepit and congested train. Now it’s almost inconceivable not to take the train if you want to get from Madrid to Barcelona, Seville or Valencia.

The country has managed to build itself the longest high-speed rail network in Europe and the second longest in the world, now spanning approximately 2,500 miles (4,000km) (and still expanding). By way of comparison, France has built 1,740 miles (2,800km), and Britain – still coming to terms with its latest high-speed fiasco – 68 (110km).…  Seguir leyendo »

Los escritores españoles Agustin Martínez, Jorge Díaz y Antonio Mercero ganaron el Premio Planeta 2021 con el libro 'La Bestia', en la ceremonia se supo que estaban detrás del seudónimo 'Carmen Mola', el 15 de octubre de 2021 en Barcelona, España. (Quique Garcia/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

EspañaCultura y Ciencia,

En 2018 se publicó en España una oscura novela policíaca llamada La novia gitana. Contaba la historia de dos hermanas torturadas hasta la muerte y la posterior investigación realizada por la mujer más inteligente y peculiar del departamento de Policía. La novela dio inicio a una exitosa serie de tres libros que ha vendido cerca de 400,000 copias hasta el momento y que ha sido traducida a casi una docena de idiomas.

La novia gitana fue escrita por “Carmen Mola”, descrita por una casa editorial propiedad de Penguin Random House como una profesora universitaria de cuarentitantos años que vivía en Madrid con su esposo y tres hijos.…  Seguir leyendo »

Un hombre fuma un cigarrillo con los ojos cubiertos por una máscara mientras participa en una protesta contra el uso de máscaras protectoras en Madrid, el 16 de agosto de 2020. (Juan Medina/REUTERS)

EspañaSanidad y Salud Pública, ,  

Al principio, el gobierno español tardó en responder al coronavirus y subestimó la débil y riesgosa posición del país, con su sistema de salud descentralizado y sin fondos suficientes, su envejecida población y su flujo de visitantes internacionales. Pero cuando el COVID-19 intensificó su control letal en la nación, el gobierno impuso una de las cuarentenas más estrictas en Europa. Cuando el país logró aplanar la curva más rápido que algunos de sus vecinos, comenzó a flexibilizar las restricciones.

España nunca coqueteó con la idea de la inmunidad de grupo, como el Reino Unido y Suecia. El presidente del Gobierno, Pedro Sánchez, nunca impulsó tratamientos dudosos o cuestionó a la ciencia, como sí han hecho el presidente estadounidense, Donald Trump, y el brasileño Jair Bolsonaro.…  Seguir leyendo »

A man smokes a cigarette with his eyes covered by a face mask as he takes part in a protest against the use of protective masks in Madrid on Sunday. (Juan Medina/Reuters)

EspañaSanidad y Salud Pública, ,  

At first, the Spanish government was slow to respond to the coronavirus, and certainly underestimated the weak and risky position of the country — with its decentralized, underfunded health system, its aging population and its flows of international visitors. But as covid-19 tightened its deadly grip on the country, the government imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe. After the country managed to flatten the curve faster than some of its neighbors, it began phasing out restrictions.

Spain never flirted with the idea of herd immunity, as the United Kingdom and Sweden did. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez never pushed for dubious treatments or questioned science, as President Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro have done.…  Seguir leyendo »

A man wearing a costume of "Toro de Fuego" (bull of fire) chases people during the San Fermin Festival on Tuesday in Pamplona, Spain. (Jaime Reina/AFP/Getty Images)

EspañaCultura y Ciencia

Every July, thousands of people travel to Pamplona, a quiet town in the north of Spain, to watch or join the so-called running of the bulls, or San Fermín, the local holiday. Around 1.5 million people come to a city of 200,000 to attend a festival where reckless, drunken behavior is often portrayed as bravery.

The festival was first romanticized by Ernest Hemingway and his century-old macho, parochial vision. As he wrote to a friend about bullfighting in 1925, “It ain’t a moral spectacle and if a male looks at it for a moral standpoint there isn’t any excuses. But if a male takes it as it comes.…  Seguir leyendo »