Voices en Español

What I learned this past week:

In a fascinating first-person article entitled “Lost Children, Lost Truths,” by Roger Cohen of the International Herald Tribune, I read about what happened to some babies kidnapped in Argentina during the dark years in the 1970s and 1980s when that country was ruled by a military junta. Cohen questions whether he helped or hurt as a journalist in covering the story more than 20 years ago.

IESE, the MBA program of the University of Navarra, has decided being one of the top business schools in Europe isn’t enough. It’s set out to conquer America and is setting up shop in the Big Apple, i.e. New York City. It’s the first Spanish MBA program to have a satellite campus in the U.S. This is interesting to me because I’m a New Yorker and a couple of years ago I was thisclose to applying to a MBA program in Spain at the Instituto de Empresa. Fortunately, I came to my senses and decided a MBA wasn’t for me.

The Prado Museum confirmed last week that the floor of its brand spanking new expansion is already eroding. Yes, this is news, when you consider that it’s only been 10 weeks(!!!) since this new wing of the museum opened and they just spent 152 million euros on this expansion. Pictures in a Madrid newspaper show the erosion of the museum floors. Turns out that the stone used is great for monuments and sculptures but not so great for withstanding the footsteps of thousands of tourists. Couldn’t they have figured that out before installing it? After the newspaper article, the Prado announced it would replace the flooring. There’s nothing like being embarrassed into doing the right thing.

Coming up this week in Voices en Español: Part 2 of my conversation with Javier Barros del Villar about street art in different cities. ¡Hasta pronto!