Spain is Cool!

Spain itself consists of various regional populations including the Castilians[35], the Catalans, Valencians and Balearics (speakers of Catalan, a distinct Romance language in eastern Spain), the Navarrese, the Basques (people inhabiting the Basque country), Basque language speakers, and the Galicians, who speak Galician. Regional diversity is important to many Spaniards, and some regions also have strong local identities and dialects such as Asturias, Aragon, the Canary Islands, León and Andalusia.

Spanish people or Spaniards constitute the nation or ethnic group native of Spain, a country in the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern Europe. Spaniards are largely descended from prehistoric indigenous Iberian peoples, although there has been a subsequent long history of migrations that have also left their mark. Substantial populations descended from Spanish colonists and immigrants also exist in other parts of the world, most notably in Latin America, where they are mainly mixed to varying extents with many other groups, most usually, but not only, with indigenous Americans. Within Spain itself, the Spanish identity is often considered not so much as a proper ethnicity in its own right, but rather, as an amalgam of distinct regional ethnic groups.

Although the Inquisition was created to halt the advance of heresy, it also occupied itself with a wide variety of offences that only indirectly could be related to religious heterodoxy. Of a total of 49,092 trials from the period 1560–1700 registered in the archive of the Suprema, appear the following: judaizantes (5,007); moriscos (11,311); Lutherans (3,499); alumbrados (149); superstitions (3,750); heretical propositions (14,319); bigamy (2,790); solicitation (1,241); offences against the Holy Office of the Inquisition (3,954); miscellaneous (2,575).[citation needed]

This data demonstrates that not only New Christians (conversos of Jewish or Islamic descent) and Protestants faced investigation, but also professing Catholics could be targeted for various reasons.

* The literature of the 18th century approaches the theme of the Inquisition from a critical point of view. In Candide by Voltaire, the Inquisition appears as the epitome of intolerance and arbitrary justice in Portugal and America.
* During the Romantic Period, the gothic novel, which was primarily a genre developed in Protestant countries, frequently associated Catholicism with terror and repression. This vision of the Spanish Inquisition appears in, among other work, The Monk (1796) by Matthew Gregory Lewis (set in Madrid during the Inquisition, but can be seen as commenting on the French Revolution and the Terror); in Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) by Charles Robert Maturin and in The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Polish author Jan Potocki.
* Samuel Shellabarger’s Captain from Castile deals directly with the Spanish Inquisition during the first part of the novel.
* One of the best known stories of Edgar Allan Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum, explores along the same lines the use of torture by the Inquisition. The types of torture that appear in the story have no basis in history, however.
* In France, in the early 19th century, the epistolary novel Cornelia Bororquia, or the Victim of the Inquisition, which has been attributed to Spaniard Luiz Gutiérrez, ferociously criticizes the Inquisition and its representatives.
* The Inquisition also appears in one of the chapters of the novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880) by Fyodor Dostoevsky, which imagines an encounter between Jesus and the Inquisitor General.
* Small Gods, (1992) one of the Discworld Novels by Terry Pratchett centres around a small country - Omnia - in which all the inhabitants are (nominally) followers of the “Great God Om”. One of the ways to ensure that all Omnians follow the words of the Omnian prophets, is a torture body, known as the Quisition, whose methods are reminiscent of those ascribed to the Spanish Inquisition.
* Carme Riera’s novella, published in 1994, Dins el Darrer Blau (In the Last Blue) is set during the repression of the chuetas (conversos from Majorca) at the end of the 17th century.
* In 1998, the Spanish writer Miguel Delibes published the historical novel The Heretic, about the Protestants of Valladolid and their repression by the Inquisition.
* The Captain Alatriste novels by the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte are set in the early seventeenth century. The second novel, Purity of Blood, has the narrator being tortured by the Inquisition and describes an Auto-da-fe.
* The Argentine Author, Marcos Aguinis, produced a work titled “La Gesta del Marrano”, which portrays the length of the Inquisition’s arm to reach people in Argentina during the 16th and 17th centuries.
* The Marvel Comics series Marvel 1602 shows the Inquisition targeting Mutants for “blasphemy”. The character Magneto (comics) also appears as the Grand Inquisitor.
* The mature audience manga Berserk features, in volumes 17-21,a priest named Mozgus who, with the assistance of dedicated “inquisitors”, brutally tortures and executes hundreds of Pagans in a thematic combination of the Spanish Inquisition and the witchhunts.
* Incantation novel by Alice Hoffman. A young adult fiction based on the Spanish Inquisition. Story told by Estrella deMadrigal as she lives with her conversos family in Spain.

As one manifestation of the Counter-Reformation, the Spanish Inquisition worked actively to impede the diffusion of heretical ideas in Spain by producing “Indexes” of prohibited books. Such lists of prohibited books were common in Europe a decade before the Inquisition published its first. The first Index published in Spain in 1551 was, in reality, a reprinting of the Index published by the University of Louvain in 1550, with an appendix dedicated to Spanish texts. Subsequent Indexes were published in 1559, 1583, 1612, 1632, and 1640. The Indexes included an enormous number of books of all types, though special attention was dedicated to religious works, and, particularly, vernacular translations of the bible.

Included the Indexes, at one point, were many of the great works of Spanish literature. Also, a number of religious writers who are today considered saints by the Catholic Church saw their works appear in the Indexes. At first, this might seem counter-intuitive or even nonsensical — how were these Spanish authors published in the first place if their texts were only to be prohibited by the Inquisition and placed in the Index? The answer lies in the process of publication and censorship in Early Modern Spain. Books in Early Modern Spain faced prepublication licensing and approval (which could include modification) by both secular and religious authorities. However, once approved and published, the circulating text also faced the possibility of post-hoc censorship by being denounced to the Inquisition — sometimes decades later. Likewise, as Catholic theology evolved, once prohibited texts might be removed from the Index.

The Spanish Inquisition was an ecclesiastical tribunal started in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the medieval inquisition which was under papal control. The new body was under the direct control of the Spanish monarchy. It was not definitively abolished until 1834, during the reign of Isabella II.

The Inquisition, as an ecclesiastical tribunal, had jurisdiction only over baptized Christians. This included those who practised forms of Christianity other than Catholicism, and at the time were considered heretics by Catholic Church and newly formed Spanish kingdoms. The Inquisition worked in large part to ensure the orthodoxy of recent converts.

El Palau is the last-completed part of a grand City of Arts and Sciences concept designed by the Valencia-born and internationally-known architect, Santiago Calatrava, which began in 1995 and it was opened on 8 October 2005.

Under the huge curved roof structure, 230 metres in length, the building rises 14 stories plus 3 stories below ground. Its height is 75 metres. The 40,000 sq. metre building contains four auditoriums:

* The Sala Principal (Main Hall), which seats 1,700 people, functions primarily for opera, but it can be converted for dance and other performing arts.

The Hall has 4 tiers of seating, a stage equipped with all major facilities and an orchestra pit capable of housing 120 musicians, the third largest in the world. Sadly, it has suffered a number of incidents since its opening which do not allow it to run at full speed. The first of these was the collapse of the main stage platform with the complete set of Jonathan Miller’s production of “Don Giovanni” in December, 2006. This forced the “Palau” to cancel the last performance of “La Bohème”, all of “La Belle et la Bête” and meant that the management had to re-think the whole of what remained of the inaugural opera season. In November, 2007, the entire complex suffered a series of floods which meant that the recently re-built stage platform was paralised once again due to the fact that almost two metres of water entered the lower floors of the building and wrecked the electronics and the motors of the complex stage equipment, forcing the management to once again re-schedule the season, delay the premiere of “Carmen” and cancel the opera “1984″.

Administration of the company is in the hands of Helga Schmidt, formerly from London’s Royal Opera House from 1973 to 1981. Schmidt has attracted some major artists to be involved with the Palau. Among them is Zubin Mehta who heads up an annual music and opera festival, the “Festival del Mediterraneo” which began in 2007; Lorin Maazel who became music director; and Placido Domingo who brought his Operalia competition to the Palau in October 2007.[1]. The resident orchestra is the Valencian Community Orchestra. The theatre’s first season was the 2006/2007. On the first and second seasons the theatre staged 7 or 8 operas per season, as well as operetta (zarzuela) and vocal recitals.

During the 2008/2009 the theatre will stage seven operas and one zarzuela, performances that will be conducted mainly by Lorin Maazel. Soloists include Plácido Domingo, Christopher Ventris, Vittorio Grigolo, Maria Guleghina and Cristina Gallardo-Domâs. The 2008/2009 Festival del Mediterrani will include the complete Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle conducted by Zubin Mehta, with Plácido Domingo. Also, the company promotes symphonic concerts, opera galas and vocal recitals.

El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía (Queen Sofia Palace of the Arts) is an opera house and cultural centre in Valencia, Spain. The theatre opened on 8 October 2005. The first opera - Beethoven’s Fidelio- was premiered on 25 October 2006.

Olive oil is a fruit oil obtained from the olive (Olea europaea; family Oleaceae), a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin. The wild olive tree originated in Asia Minor and spread from there as far as southern Africa, Australia, Japan and China. It is commonly used in cooking, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and soaps and as a fuel for traditional oil lamps. Olive oil is used throughout the world, but especially in the Mediterranean.