Word: regionalization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...this highly autonomous region, others see the rejection of bullfighting as a rejection of Spain itself - and thus a promotion, in the Manichean logic of such things, of Catalan identity. In Catalonia, after all, people dance sardanas instead of flamenco, prefer their death-defying feats in the form of castellers (human towers comprised of people standing on the shoulders of others in ever-smaller circles) and turn every Barça vs. Real Madrid match into a bout for national honor. More substantively - and controversially - the region requires all students to be educated in the Catalan language and is engaged...
...After decades of both intense anti-bullfighting activism and benign neglect (Las Arenas hasn't hosted a bullfight since 1990), Catalonia may become the first of Spain's autonomous regions to officially ban the sport. At the end of October, the Catalan parliament will begin the first round of voting on a popular initiative that seeks to outlaw bullfighting completely - and establish one more difference between the region and the rest of Spain. If the initiative survives the vote, lawmakers can propose amendments before a final vote is held, probably by end of year. (See pictures of bullfighting...
...Indeed, Catalonia has long led the movement to do away with what is still referred to in Spain as the "national fiesta." In 2003, the region passed a sweeping animal-protection law that, among its many measures, restricted towns without bullrings from building them and prohibited all children under age 14 from attending a corrida by placing the equivalent of an R movie rating on the event. The following year, Barcelona's municipal government declared the Catalan capital an "anti-bullfighting city" in a nonbinding resolution; 70 other Catalan towns and cities have since followed suit. (Read "Spanish TV Says...
...many Catalans opposed to bullfighting? Some point to the region's generally progressive political tendencies, especially when it comes to animal rights. "As a coastal [region], Catalonia has always looked toward the rest of Europe, so certain sensibilities and ideas enter here first," explains Oriol Batista, a city councilman in Mataró, a town that was among the first to impose a no-kill law for abandoned pets...
...democracy, but his treaty demands - including one that relates to a long buried dispute that goes back to World War II - are bewildering, say E.U. officials. While in exile between 1940 and 1945, the Czechoslovak government led by Edvard Bene? ordered that all German speakers in the Sudentland region of Czechoslovakia should be deported and their property seized. Klaus now claims that the E.U. Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is incorporated in the Lisbon Treaty, might become the basis for property restitution lawsuits by descendants of those German-speakers. He says he wants a clause in the treaty guaranteeing that...