jenniferdebeer

observed uses of the Internet that are llamativo (i)

i was leisurely reading the saturday 21 October European edition of the El País (i´ve as yet not adopted an English printed news source), when in reading the page 2 story about Putin´s "rape joke" and its consequences at the Finland meeting, I noted that according to the article, some persons present at this high-level meeting searched the Web to confirm the rumour of Putin´s gaffe:

Los jefes de Estado y de Gobierno se quedaron ayer estupefactos tras conocer la apología de la violación verbalizada por el presidente ruso, Vladímir Putin...
La sala en la que ayer permanecían reunidos los embajadores y altos funcionarios de la UE se convirtió en un ir y venir de fotocopias con las declaraciones de Putin, que en seguida entregaron a los jefes de Estado y de Gobierno. Otros, buscaban en Internet tratando de confirmar lo que decían no poder creer.... (my emphasis).

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Then, reading today´s El País online (I only buy the paper version on weekends) I see that some e-mail and sms grassroots political campaigning has been going on in Spanish society. At issue is the following: recent weeks have seen lots of brouhaha around who will be the next Mayor/ess of Madrid. Lots of speculation, which is not so unusual, but it was said that the current Vice President, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, Spain´s first woman in this role, might be the PSOE ´s (Spain´s "Partido Socialista Obrero Español" - Socialist Workers Party roughly translated, and current ruling party) candidate for Mayoress of Madrid. The story headline goes "Queremos que De la Vega siga siendo vicepresidenta. Pásalo" (We want that De la Vega continues to be Vice-President. Pass it along.) which echoes the words of the sms and e-mail which have apparently been circulating in Spain. A second e-mail in support of De la Vega has also apparently been circulating under the auspices of the Red Ciudadanas de Europa (RCE) , a society whose President, Paloma Saavedra, claims that according to surveys, De la Vega is the most popular member of the Spanish government.

So, what did I do but plug in my spanish sim card to see if a message had accidentally strayed into my mailbox (it hadn´t) --- smile.

posted by Jennifer A. DeBeer @ 21:57