The past two weeks, San Sebastian has held their 60th
annual international film festival which turned the usually quiet city into a
mob of tourists and celebrities. Although the streets and restaurants were much
more crowded than usual, it freed up lots of spots on the beach which I was
happy about! One of the most famous film festivals in the world, the people of
San Sebastian are very proud to be the hosts and spent many weeks preparing.
From my balcony, I can see the main film festival building which sits right on
the beach and is where the majority of the films, award ceremonies, and the Red
carpet were located. Movies were played at various venues around the city in
many different languages, and although I’m sure the movies are what attracts
many, to me it seemed like the celebrity sightings were the highlight of most
of the Spanish publics week. A few days before the festival began, we heard
that many celebrities from around the world would attend and I was surprised to
recognize the names of many from America such as John Travolta, Dustin Hoffman,
Ben Afflack, and Richard Gere and of course Penelope Cruz. There was a large
Red Carpet that was rolled out onto the sidewalk leading into the main center
where people would crowd around to hopefully catch a glimpse of the celebrities
attending movies. The biggest crowd of fans gathered all around the Maria
Cristina hotel where all of the celebrities were staying. Only a block from my
apartment, I could hear the screams of fans when a celebrity got out of their
car and entered the hotel. One evening when my friends and I were walking to
dinner, we were passing near the hotel and saw hundreds of people crowded
around and start to scream and take pictures. We pushed our way through and saw
that it was John Travolta waving to the crowd! To me, it is cool that such a
small city was able to attract so many celebrities.
John Travolta sighting (believe me, it's really him!)
Last Wednesday, however, the crowded busy streets were bare
and the city and Film Festival shut down due to a city-wide labor strike. The
strike was organized by 2 national labor unions and was a nation wide effort
with strikes in many cities across Spain. The Spanish government is planning to
pass a bill with huge cuts ($50 billion) in public spending and increased taxes
on necessities such as food. The day before the strike was planned our teachers
told us that we would most likely not have class because many of the Spanish
students and faculty would be participating in the strike but they told us that
it would not be violent and we had nothing to worry about besides the fact that
every store in the city would be closed. So, sure enough the next morning all
of a sudden I could hear all of these car horns and then people chanting and
banging on the dumpsters in our street. I was a little scared at first and me
and my roomates peeked out of our windows, not sure if it was safe to go on our
balcony. We could see people basically hanging out of their windows all along
the street so we felt safe to go out on the balcony to watch. On our street (really small and mostly
residential) there were around 20 people waving basque flags and chanting. We
watched them go up to the door of each business and bang on the door and then
the store owner would step outside and dramatically lock his door- showing that
he was closing his store- hang a poster supporting the strike on his door, and
join the group to continue to the next store. After they had gathered all
everyone on our street, we watched them continue onto the main street where we
could hear what sounded like bigger groups. We made a joint decision that we
shouldn’t go to class and waited inside our apartment for the morning. After
the commotion on our street we didn’t hear anything else and the streets looked
almost eerily quiet because nothing was open. Later in the afternoon, we saw a
few more shops opening up near our house so we went out to explore. 95% of the
shops were still closed- all with big posters promoting the strike and the 5%
of the places open were the bars where all of the protesters had ended up. We
found that kind of funny that the whole city decided to take off the day of
work and protest in the morning and then party in the afternoon! There haven’t
been any signs of strikes or protests in the past week- and the Basque region
is the wealthiest in Spain so we haven’t really seen any other signs of the
financial crisis.
So, a pretty exciting and eventful two weeks leading up to…
OKTOBERFEST!
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