Word: spain
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Likewise, humans have lent the cork crop a big helping hand. The cork oak tree, whose thick, regenerating bark is shaved off to make cork, covers about 10,400 sq. mi. (2.7 million hectares) in its native Mediterranean habitats of Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Italy, Tunisia and France. Yielding cork oaks aren't ever cut down; once a decade or so, their thick bark is harvested in huge strips from the trunk of the tree. Today, the survival of cultivated cork forests, many of which are on private land, depends on their worth. If nobody is buying cork, landowners will...
...remote, and sit back to enjoy an NFL match on one of the major networks. But instead of three hours of gridiron bliss, you get a second-rate 1950s musical. While for American football fans this scenario is, these days, just a Heidi Bowl nightmare, for bullfighting aficionados across Spain it's suddenly a bad dream coming true. This summer, for the first time in its 51-year history, the state-run Spanish Television Corporation (TVE) has not broadcast a single corrida...
...time when the bloody ritual that was once Spain's "national fiesta" has come under increased scrutiny, it would be easy to read this absence as another sign that bullfighting is in trouble. In 2004, Barcelona declared itself "an anti-bullfighting city," and earlier this year an animal-protection law prohibiting new bullrings went into effect throughout the entire northeastern region of Catalonia. To prevent future generations from embracing the sport, the law also made bullfights R-rated: children under 14 can no longer attend the spectacles...
...Beyond the overt animal rights conflict, however, the situation may not be so simple. The latest round of controversy followed a story that El Mundo, a conservative daily lately devoted to accusing the Socialist government of undermining Spain's traditional values and identity, ran earlier this week. Yet TVE's decision is more than two years old and arguably has more to do with a 2004 code that prevents violence on public television during hours when children are likely to watch than with an anti-bullfighting agenda...
Franziska and Gerhard Flögel are a middle-aged German couple who love and collect art. In early July they traveled to this remote cove in northeastern Spain to visit the creator in his studio. They toured his inner sanctum in appreciative silence. They marveled at his unusual materials, his precise execution, his sheer ingenuity. And then, like everyone else at El Bulli, they sat down and ate the master's work...