I found the article entitled "Are Europeans Giving Up on Europe?" very interesting because it relates to my current situation of living in Spain, where it is very evident that the economy is suffering. There are positive and negative effects to this. For tourists, the poor economy of Spain is advantageous because everything is inexpensive. Illustrating this, all of the retail stores in Spain were having sales for the entire month of January in order to increase business. Furthermore, if a meal costs more than 6 euros, my friends and I are hesitant to buy it because there are countless restaurants with lower prices. 

From what I have personally encountered in Seville, the negative economy does not seem to adversely affect the moods of the people. In one of my classes, the professor said that Spain has the lowest number of suicides out of all the countries in the European Union. He attributed that statistic to the ever-present sun in Spain. In Seville, the winter is short and mild. Almost every day is a sunny day and rainy days are rare. However, the north of Spain is much colder and frequently rains. I have not been there yet so I cannot speak of the culture and attitudes of the people there, but in Seville most of the people I have met have been extremely friendly and happy. I have not personally encountered an attitude of despair, but that does not mean that it does not exist. 

In the article about how the EU came together and why it's falling apart, I found the positive effects of having countries with better economies and countries with worse economies under the same currency system very intriguing. I had always viewed the EU in a negative sense economically because it seemed to me that the countries with better economies, such as Germany, were getting the short end of the stick as the euro was losing value due to the poor economies of other countries in the EU. I never knew that part of the reason that Germany was doing so well is because other countries in the EU had been doing so poorly. Not only were they a market for German products, but they also no longer had national currencies that they could devalue in order to compete with German prices. As an exporter, Germany relied on these other countries to purchase its goods in order to have the great economy and surpluses that resulted. In my conversations with Spaniards and in my classes, the EU has not come up once. For this reason, I cannot write about the attitudes of Spaniards towards the EU yet. However, I will bring up the topic this week so that I can discuss it in my next post.

This is a picture taken in the city center of Seville.