Word: expo
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When it comes to throwing a party, Spanish alegria, the joy of living, is infectious. Nonetheless, for many Spaniards old "cliches" like El Vacie are all too present. In Seville, a conservative coalition threw the Expo-promoting Socialists out of city hall last spring. "The state wastes money building pharaonic bridges and highways," says new Mayor Alejandro Rojas Marcos. "But it neglects schools, drug problems and employment." In recent months wildcat strikes shut down Asturias coal mines; an eight-week bus-driver walkout crippled Madrid; Basque steel workers fired homemade rockets at police, and La Mancha farmers blocked the roads...
...pavilions of the Universal Exposition. There, 250 fountains gurgle, 325,000 newly planted trees and shrubs shade the weary, and 96 restaurants replenish the hungry. But once over the bridge, sidewalks crumble and the highway dead-ends in a stinking garbage dump known as El Vacie. Within earshot of Expo 92's loudspeakers, 500 Sevillians elbow one another for their daily water ration from a small fountain...
...Vacie differs little from other squatter settlements in Andalusia, where an estimated 44,000 Spaniards, many of them Gypsies, live in poverty. But Expo's construction introduced a new level of envy and conflict. Additional squatters whose homes were bulldozed for the fair moved in, swelling the waiting list for El Vacie's promised houses. At the fountain, a fistfight broke out between women jostling for water, and one was admitted to the hospital with a broken leg. "Expo is a disaster for the poor," says Miguel Angel Moreno, a local Human Rights Association volunteer. "It drained money from social...
...source of pride after decades of diplomatic isolation. This year's bold gamble of staging a world's fair and an Olympics will "show the world the image of a modern Spain, far from the cliches of the past," says Virgilio Zapatero, the Cabinet Minister in charge of Expo...
...Disney parks is a function of their homogenized high quality, their benign totalitarianism. Expo '92, on the other hand, has real aesthetic lows and real highs, jewels, junk, surprises, quirks, genuine diversity. Disney parks won't serve wine or beer, and operatives shut the gates tight by 9 on weekdays. In Seville the fair stays open until 4 a.m., night after bibulous night. Children may not have as much fun at Expo '92 as they will at Euro Disney, but in Seville the hubbub is heartening and authentic, full of life as well as production values...