Word: spaining
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...Gist:Barlow is not a half-assed carnivore. An expatriate Brit who relocated to the Galician town of his Spaniard wife, he launches himself on a foolhardy mission: travel around northwest Spain and eat as much pig as possible. Snout, marrow, heart, bladder, head-all of it. Along the way, he tells the tale of Galicia, a cold, rainy, and stubbornly independent piece of Spain on the Atlantic Ocean. It is "a patchwork of small, low-intensity farms...real working countryside" and home to Don Quixote's Miguel de Cervantes, longtime Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco, and the Castro family...
...Lowdown: Galicia is the non-Spanish Spain. It's typically not warm, not anywhere near the Mediterranean, and far from the foot-stomping, castanet-clanging, torero ole-ing that characterizes the nation's more well-known southern coast. As Barlow writes it, Galicia is a misty, mysterious place full of cagey old coots and rustic food fanatics. What better place, then, to embark on a semi-ridiculous, typically male journey. With good humor and shameless enthusiasm, he has written a delicious meat mash note...
...Omar and Zaina have set their sights further to the south, and few experts can figure out why. "It's not as though Spain is an especially easy country in which to gain asylum," says Alfredo Abad, director of the Spanish Refugee Aid Commission. "We have some of the lowest acceptance rates in Europe." In fact, only 570 of the 7,664 who sought asylum in 2007 were granted, a drop in acceptance, says Abad, of 58% compared to the previous year...
...fact that Spain has been the victim of jihadist terror - 191 people died in the Madrid commuter train bombings of March 11, 2004 - would also seem to work against bin Laden's favor. "Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden himself have signaled that Spain continues to be a target," says Jesus Nuñez, co-director and security expert at Madrid's Institute for Conflict and Humanitarian Action Studies. "That would suggest that Spain isn't going to receive his [son's] petition with...
...also rejects the idea that bin Laden Jr. has cause to hope to win the support of his countrymen in Spain. Saudis do have considerable influence among Spain's Muslim community, since they have financed a number of mosques, including Madrid's huge Islamic Cultural Center, and also helped engineer, according to many observers, a recent, unexpected change in the leadership of Spain's Islamic Commission. But it hardly follows that they would support Omar, no matter how convincingly he distanced himself from his father. "Saudi Arabia wants to show the world it is doing everything it can to crack...