"They can come here to see me. Six of them already have. It's so much nicer over here."
"What was the last place you lived in the US?"
"Houston."
"Oh man!" I laughed. "The freeways, the traffic, Houston sucks!"
"Yes, it does."
"I like other places in Texas, though."
"I love Austin. It is one of my favorite cities."
"Since you're Spanish, were you ever annoyed at being confused for a Mexican growing up?"
"But I am also Mexican. Texas was Mexican!"
We were sitting at an outside table, in the shadow of the hulking ruins of a Roman wall. The square was filled with people eating and drinking. Half a dozen small kids kicked around a couple of plastic soccer balls. A middle-aged Gypsy played the accordion for tips. It was cool, breezy and quiet enough to talk comfortably.
As a seaside resort, Tarragona has plenty of foreign tourists, but not too many to make the place tacky. Thanks to compounding ineptitudes by Delta Airlines, my plane was more than three hours late leaving Philadelphia, so I ended up being rerouted through Amsterdam. My flight into Barcelona, then, was filled with mostly blonde Dutch vacationers, including many small children. People were literally giddy with laughter, jokes and general goofiness at the promise of being on a Spanish beach in a few hours. A mother sang one verse to her toddler. A twelve-year-old turned around and said "Hola!" to the Spanish young lady next to me.
Increasingly, Russians are also vacationing in Spain. Moreover, the Spanish government have been targeting rich Russians and Chinese as immigrants. In 2012, anyone who bought a house for 160,000 Euros was given residency. A year later, this was bumped up to half a million. At the Barcelona airport's arrival terminal, there is a large add in Chinese for Spanish real estate. With a birthrate of just 1.3 children per woman, Spain needs immigrants to sustain its economy.
Of the 19 Arab "terrorists" of 9/11, Mohammed Atta is the most recognized. Fingered as the suicide pilot of the first plane to hit the Twin Towers, Atta's name and face have become famous. The Cairo-born Atta has been traced in the mainstream press to a Hamburg university, Brooklyn apartment, Maine public library, Oklahoma motel, Florida flight school, San Diego house, Kandahar house, Georgia payphone and Prague Casino. There is a video of a smiling and laughing Atta supposedly declaring his suicide will in Afghanistan, but with no sound, it can be him saying just about anything, and nothing in the short clip even indicates that it was filmed in Afghanistan.
Two months before 9/11, Atta flew to Spain from Miami. Landing in the late afternoon in Madrid, Atta met up with Iqbal Afzal Admat, an Arab with an Irish passport, and they stayed in adjacent rooms at a hotel near the airport. The next morning, they rented a car and drove to Tarragona, where they met four more buddies. After 9/11, the Spanish police conducted a ten-month investigation of these Arabs' movements in Spain, and the result is a 700-page report that documents no crimes, just a few guys checking in and out of hotel rooms. Several made calls overseas. Two drank vodka. One visited a theme park.
With nothing to sensationalize, El Pais still managed to publish on June 30th, 2002 an article called "The Terrorist Summit Where 9/11 Was Prepared Took Place in Tarragona" ["La cumbre terrorista donde se preparà ³ el 11-S se celebrà ³ en Tarragona"] Sprinkled throughout with pure inventions, it often reads like pulp fiction. A typical passage, "Atta, 33-years-old, born in Kafr el Shikh, showed his Egyptian passport to the customs control, and neither his glance nor pulse fluttered when the National Police agent looked him in the eyes and, with a faint gesture, ordered him forward. A man who two months later would trigger the worst attack against the United States since Pearl Harbor (1941) appeared quite a bit less than a suicide pilot. Dressed in a short-sleeved shirt, long pants and shoes, he held in his right hand an elegant leather wallet. Although his face was characteristically Arab, he appeared as a Western tourist."
According to the official 9/11 version, there were supposed to be 20 suicide terrorists, but one man, the Yemeni Ramzi bin al-Shibh, could not gain entry to the US, so he stayed behind in Europe. Captured in Karachi, Pakistan on September 11th, 2002, al-Shibh languishes in Guantanamo at age 42.
"What was the last place you lived in the US?"
"Houston."
"Oh man!" I laughed. "The freeways, the traffic, Houston sucks!"
"I like other places in Texas, though."
"I love Austin. It is one of my favorite cities."
"Since you're Spanish, were you ever annoyed at being confused for a Mexican growing up?"
"But I am also Mexican. Texas was Mexican!"
We were sitting at an outside table, in the shadow of the hulking ruins of a Roman wall. The square was filled with people eating and drinking. Half a dozen small kids kicked around a couple of plastic soccer balls. A middle-aged Gypsy played the accordion for tips. It was cool, breezy and quiet enough to talk comfortably.
As a seaside resort, Tarragona has plenty of foreign tourists, but not too many to make the place tacky. Thanks to compounding ineptitudes by Delta Airlines, my plane was more than three hours late leaving Philadelphia, so I ended up being rerouted through Amsterdam. My flight into Barcelona, then, was filled with mostly blonde Dutch vacationers, including many small children. People were literally giddy with laughter, jokes and general goofiness at the promise of being on a Spanish beach in a few hours. A mother sang one verse to her toddler. A twelve-year-old turned around and said "Hola!" to the Spanish young lady next to me.
Increasingly, Russians are also vacationing in Spain. Moreover, the Spanish government have been targeting rich Russians and Chinese as immigrants. In 2012, anyone who bought a house for 160,000 Euros was given residency. A year later, this was bumped up to half a million. At the Barcelona airport's arrival terminal, there is a large add in Chinese for Spanish real estate. With a birthrate of just 1.3 children per woman, Spain needs immigrants to sustain its economy.
Of the 19 Arab "terrorists" of 9/11, Mohammed Atta is the most recognized. Fingered as the suicide pilot of the first plane to hit the Twin Towers, Atta's name and face have become famous. The Cairo-born Atta has been traced in the mainstream press to a Hamburg university, Brooklyn apartment, Maine public library, Oklahoma motel, Florida flight school, San Diego house, Kandahar house, Georgia payphone and Prague Casino. There is a video of a smiling and laughing Atta supposedly declaring his suicide will in Afghanistan, but with no sound, it can be him saying just about anything, and nothing in the short clip even indicates that it was filmed in Afghanistan.
Two months before 9/11, Atta flew to Spain from Miami. Landing in the late afternoon in Madrid, Atta met up with Iqbal Afzal Admat, an Arab with an Irish passport, and they stayed in adjacent rooms at a hotel near the airport. The next morning, they rented a car and drove to Tarragona, where they met four more buddies. After 9/11, the Spanish police conducted a ten-month investigation of these Arabs' movements in Spain, and the result is a 700-page report that documents no crimes, just a few guys checking in and out of hotel rooms. Several made calls overseas. Two drank vodka. One visited a theme park.
With nothing to sensationalize, El Pais still managed to publish on June 30th, 2002 an article called "The Terrorist Summit Where 9/11 Was Prepared Took Place in Tarragona" ["La cumbre terrorista donde se preparà ³ el 11-S se celebrà ³ en Tarragona"] Sprinkled throughout with pure inventions, it often reads like pulp fiction. A typical passage, "Atta, 33-years-old, born in Kafr el Shikh, showed his Egyptian passport to the customs control, and neither his glance nor pulse fluttered when the National Police agent looked him in the eyes and, with a faint gesture, ordered him forward. A man who two months later would trigger the worst attack against the United States since Pearl Harbor (1941) appeared quite a bit less than a suicide pilot. Dressed in a short-sleeved shirt, long pants and shoes, he held in his right hand an elegant leather wallet. Although his face was characteristically Arab, he appeared as a Western tourist."
According to the official 9/11 version, there were supposed to be 20 suicide terrorists, but one man, the Yemeni Ramzi bin al-Shibh, could not gain entry to the US, so he stayed behind in Europe. Captured in Karachi, Pakistan on September 11th, 2002, al-Shibh languishes in Guantanamo at age 42.
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