Voices en Español

Whew, what a political week it was. It started in Chile with King Juan Carlos of Spain telling Hugo Chávez, the leader of Venezuela, to shut up during a political conference, and the phrase ¿por qué no te callas? immediately became a catchy domain name, a new tapa in Sevilla  and a ringtone. In the U.S., California supporters of presidential candidate Barack Obama launched a Spanish campaign ad on YouTube in the form of a telenovela. (Thanks to La Política for turning me on to that tidbit.) In Miami, Roberto Casin, writing for El Nuevo Herald, railed against the misuse of Spanish and said he didn’t like the way Spain’s leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was messing around with the Spanish language to win a few extra votes. Zapatero, capitalizing on the first letter of his surname and the sound of “la zeta” in Spanish, has had fun recently by adding the letter Z to words that he believes define his leadership. (prosperidaz, competitividaz, calidaz, estabilidaz y modernidaz.) Across the Atlantic, Spain turned off the lights for 5 minutes in a symbolic protest to call attention to the problem of climate change.What will happen this week? Well, here at Voices en Español there will be a new podcast. It will be a two-part interview with Zuleika Deciga, a Mexicana with a very interesting job. Look for it to hit iTunes tomorrow or Tuesday.¡Hasta pronto!Eleena