A brief reflexion about AMERICAN CRIME STORY If I had to choose a tv show of the last year, I wouldn't have any doubt: American Crime Story I have to confess I had a lot of doubts about the quality of the project. I am not a real fan of its creator, Ryan Murphy. I mean: He's able to get very entertaining and enjoable tv shows, but they are as shallow as a pond. But the miracle happened. AMERICAN CRIME STORY is not a perfect fiction. It doesn´t matter. It gets something more difficult: to capture the zeitgeist of a place and a time. ACS works in different ways that they feed between them. It's a lot of things at the same time. It's the chronicle of one of the most popular stories of the criminal America. It's too a dazzling exposition of the judicial system of the USA and its paradoxes. You can find also a portrait about the borning of the Reality TV and specially a treaty about racial issues. I don't want to do spoilers but I'd like to highlight the episode focused on the popular jury. In this episode we can check everything we discussed in the previous paragraph. A process in theory so relevant and driven by a lot of regulations and laws becomes somewhat arbitrary. The racial confrotation, the personal situation of every member of the jury, the manipulation of the laws by the well paid team of the Defense... Everything counts. Some times, more than the own justice. To sum up, I strongly reccomend this show to everyone.

Searching for the Great American Novel The first question is: What is doing a spanish guy talking about the Great American Novel? Especially because I don't speak english properly and I didn't visit America for the first time until I was 25 years old. Yes, you're right. But you've to understand that the North American culture is probably the most expanded one around the world. And I've read a lot of books in my life trying to discover what is the authentic Great American Novel. What does it mean Great American Novel? That's the first problem: for most experts there isn't something like a definition. Anyway, we're going to try one: an ambitious plot that captures the true soul of the country and their citizens, a large tapestry that shows all the features of being american, maybe part of the history of the country, of his contradictions. This is weird because most of literary critics think you can find the first example in "Moby Dick" by Melville, a novel that it doesn´t happen in America. Why then they choose it? Maybe because you can find in it something about the real nature of the human being. It's almost an essay about the goals in life and how they can drive us to madness. The white whale -the authentic star of this story- is a pefect metaphor about us, about America, about the world. If we forward until the first decades of the 20th century we can find a new relevant author: John Dos Passos. I'm thinking of his trilogy about America and also in "Manhattan Transfer" (the first novel where the city of New York appeared like the main character of the book). His literature works like a Kaleidescope in which we can observe a slice of a lot of lifes boiling in their dreams, hopes and desires. In the forties, new names were appeared. Some examples: John Cheever or Yates. The first one preferred the short story, but if we read all these stories on a row we could see and ambitious teatrise about the human condition. A bit years later, Raymond Carver also used the tales to dissect our frustrations. Finally in the last 40 years, we can find a lot of postmodern authors. There're a popular names like Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon or Jeffrey Eugenides. The last one published "Middlesex" in 2002, a book what you're going to find about we're talking. It's a familiar story that starts in the Ancient Greece and arrives until the present, showing during the way what means to grow up and forming a familiy. Let me know what's your favorite American book.

Why i love MAD MEN? A few days ago, a friend inquiring me about why I consider MAD MEN one of the best shows ever. "I know" he told me "that is a good show. I mean, everything works in Mad Men: perfectly settings in the sixties, well-played by the actors, with subtle dialogues... but I can't understand why is the reason you love so much?" I must admit that there was no an easy answer. But actually, I found at least a couple of reasons what explains my love for the show. Firstly, MAD MEN brings to my mind all these pieces of great american literature. I'm thinking of John Dos Passos, Richard Yates, John Cheever.... Authors with the ability to catch the reality, yes, but mainly all the deep undercurrents that flow beneath appearences. In MAD MEN the most remarkable part is not what is saying, it's what is silent. Common stories shaked by an epiphany. There's a second point. It's about what means MAD MEN. It's the story of an advertisement agency in the crazy New York of the decade of the sixties and it's focused in Don Draper, a mysterious, ambiguous and magnetic character. A man with a lot of shadows, plenty of dark holes that we've to fill. His past is an enigma. It's not a coincidence that he works like publicist: his life is his main ad. This kind of character are fascinating. They share tradition with The Great Gatsby: himself made men who have a lot of skeletons in the closet. To achieve the success, they have to do a lot of things they regrese. These men are the perfect metaphor for our time.

Explaining the current paralysis of the spanish government. Hi! How're u? Maybe you have listened something about the current situation of the spanish politics. To brief: We have been trying to make a new government during the last 8 months unsuccessfully. We've voted twice and it's very possible that we have to come back to the polls again by the end of the year. But, why is happening this? To explain this strange moment of our democracy, we have to take a look to the last years. Until 2008 Spain had one of the most growing economies of the european zone, but in 2008 arrived the financial issues. The percentage of unemployed was duplicated in only two years and a lot of bussiness closed. The point that in parallel to all these dramatic events it was discovered that our politicians had been stealing. Not all of them, but an important part of the most important were tainted by corruption. Not mattere the party. The conservative one, the progressive one, even our monarchy had problems with the corruption. Also the local governments, specially Madrid, Valencia and Cataluña. It had been impossible to prove, but there're also suspicions about our president. Drop by drop, the revelations appeared in the media were created a state of indignation. In one hand, hundreds of thousands persons losing their jobs. In the other one, news about public works adjuticated through bribes. These kind of news constitute a perfect breedring ground for the distrust on the system. Fortunely, it appeared a new political party what try to take the voice of the outcasts to the institutions (Podemos). At the same time, it appeared a second party not so radical, but with an important commitment to fight against the corruption. In December of 2015, we had the first elections since the beginning of the political scandal and so the born of these two parties. The result of the election was very complicated. A multipartidism parlament in a very polirazised country. There were some possible combinations to make a government, but the parties decided to come back to the polls trying to improve their results. The second elections, last juny, showed similiar results. At this point, the parties keep negociating, but we have some regional elections in a week and they've prefered to stop it until the elections were done. If they don't get an agreement in a few weeks, we're going to have to repeat elections again. ¡Third time in a year!

Holidays at new york! Hi guys! I've just come back from NYC. I've been there for almost three weeks and I'd like to tell you something about my experience. In the first part, It's important to explain that it was my first time at NYC -not at USA: I visited L.A twice in the past-. I can't say anything that you can't imagine about NYC. It's so special and magical as I expected. The topic is right: it's the place to be. What has been the part that i more liked? Probably the light of Manhattan. I really think that NYC has one the best sunset I've never seen. The sky is red, a bit purple if there's no clouds. It's like a subtile layer of melancholic dropping over the citizens that they're returning home. Sincerely, I love the city.