Hugs and Handshakes all around

It's June, which means the school year is ending, and it's graduation season...and there are lots of award and end of year ceremonies that are similar.  Also the odd swearing-in.

On Friday, 1 June, I had not one but two semi-formal social commitments.  First of all, I was invited to attend the awards ceremony for the most outstanding Erasmus students at the Complutense, on the somewhat shaky grounds that I have been one of the substitutes for the English-language adviser this term, and one of the award winners was from University College London (though the young lady in question is actually French, and being an extremely good student had no need to talk to me for the entire semester anyway).  That was in the morning.  Second, in the evening, I was invited to an optional "end of year gathering" for Fulbrighters before the program officially ends in just two weeks time.

Given that the Fulbright and Erasmus programs have some common features (and some interesting differences), the two ceremonies had some interesting parallels and divergences.  All in all, both were nice affairs, which succumb to the human temptation to make formal milestones to mark endings of things, and indulge in a little benign self-congratulation.  Both involved hugs, promises to stay in touch, excellent tapas, and beer and wine for those participants who enjoy those things (and fanta and coke for me).  But given that they both happened to take place on the same day (and in fact almost literally at the same hour) as the PP government of Spain fell and the PSOE replaced them, and as the shaky Italian coalition took power with all the grace and finesse of what a car insurance ad here calls "a teenager who parallel parks by ear" the overwhelming presence of diplomats from no fewer than six different countries led to some amusing reflections.  The most important one of course being that most of the invited diplomats wisely took advantage of their prior engagement to deliver anodyne congratulations to a bunch of sweet young people to be unavailable for comment while governments dissolved and re-formed.  Like Macavity or Corporal Nobby Nobbs, they were distinctly not there when it came to dramatic events in Moncloa or in Rome, but in this hyper-connected age of checking smartphones, few of them were able to completely keep their concern about what the more tactful among them referred to as "challenging events in the world" from out of their remarks.


The occasion at the Complutense was in thesala de juntas (or conference room) of the historic Edificio A and was designed to honor the Erasmus students who had written the best essays about what their Erasmus year had contributed to their "academic and personal development."  The third prize was shared between an Italian boy from the University of Padua and a Slovenian girl from the University of Ljublana, the second prize went (as mentioned) to a French girl from the University College London, and the first prize winner was a young man from the University of Lille.  (I think it says all that need be said about the French sense of design that his essay was an -- admittedly heartfelt and beautifully written -- ode to the physical beauty of the Complutense.  I love the Complutense very much, and am very sad to leave it, and the people are amazing.  But it has got to be one of the ugliest and most inconvenient college campuses I've ever seen.  Only someone used to the pathetic tradition of French parks would think the layout made sense.)  The Complutense was represented by a variety of academic dignitaries involved in "international relations" and they invited the ambassadors of the home universities of all of the honored students.  France and Italy simply sent cultural attachés (they had fancier titles than that but I can't remember them), but the British and Slovenian ambassadors actually showed up in person, which I thought was a nice detail.  ("Un detalle" as the Spanish say appreciatively of a gift or thoughtful gesture.)

The ceremony naturally involved several Complutense professors talking, and then all the diplomats talking, and then finally all the kids reading abbreviated versions of their winning essays, which were (as the director of the Spanish as a foreign language program at the Complutense, possibly the only one who personally knew all the kids involved kindly said) "the most interesting part of the event."  Actually, the rest was quite interesting too, partly because it shines a light on the slightly schizophrenic nature of the Erasmus program, which (I think unintentionally) explains larger ideological problems which beset the European project.

For one thing, in spite of the famous definition of a diplomat as an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country, it occurred to me during the speeches that another definition of a diplomat (or a "cultural ambassador" like a Fulbrighter) is someone sent abroad to project those national stereotypes which foreigners find most palatable.  I don't really have any stereotypes about Slovenia, so all I can say is that their ambassador (who was the only woman among all the day's diplomats) spoke very good Spanish and seemed genuinely warm and kind toward the girl she was honoring, and the other kids, and pleased that Ljublana had succeeded in producing a prize student in the very first year it had sent an exchange student to Madrid.  I understand Ljublana is a university town, as well as being quite pretty, and I must say that while I still have no burning desire to visit, if I were in that part of Europe for any other reason, I think the young lady and her ambassador were sufficiently prepossessing that I would stop there to check out what seems like a nice place.  So basically, job as ambassador done.

It was on the other hand completely unsurprising (but mildly funny) to watch the French attaché and the British ambassador compete with polite determination over "my" University College student, as they both addressed remarks specifically to her in French, and the English ambassador (not to be outdone) went out of his way to congratulate the first prize winner (who was purely French) in French as well, since he felt like his competitor had a claim on his candidate.  Nor was it surprising that the French attaché said in careful Spanish that he was going to "take advantage of the internationalism of the occasion and all of those present" to make a few remarks in French, and proceeded to give the rest of his speech in French with obvious relief.  Or that the English ambassador blithely refused to read a prepared speech and instead seemed to improvise in what was probably mostly Spanish, although in a genuinely bizarre accent, that I think left some of the audience puzzled.  I presume the British Ambassador is a Conservative and obliged to uphold Brexit (which the Complutense representatives mentioned a little anxiously and said how glad they were that University College London had been so willing and eager to continue their exchange agreements post-Brexit, and what a valuable institutional partner they were).  To the extent that British ambassadors ultimately answer to their Foreign Secretary, they are nowadays in a similarly unenviable position to American ambassadors, whose desperate attempts to get people to ignore the ravings of the man they represent somewhat resemble trying to wrestle an angry pig to the ground before applying lipstick.  After repeatedly congratulating all the students (possibly while trying to remember enough vocabulary to formulate the next sentence) Her Majesty's ambassador to Spain chose to loyally cite "what our prime minister said recently" about how important "internationalized" universities were in a Britain that was post-Brexit going to be more "internationalized" than ever.  I will do the poor man justice and say that I think had he chosen his French counterpart's cowardly option and spoken in his native language he would have said "international" rather than "internationalized" (or "internationalised.")  But as it was, his repeated attempts to pronounce the word "internacionalizado" (which might be a neologism, though I've heard "globalizado") and repeated missing syllables (always different ones) left the Spanish speakers in the audience looking at first puzzled, and then pained, and then amused.  (It doesn't help that while Spanish politicians are famously monolingual, the Spanish professors in attendance all speak quite fluent English, with only mild accents which certainly do not hinder comprehension, as I know, since some of them spoke English with me after the ceremony during the tapas.)

The Italian diplomat naturally had an advantage in terms of speaking the local language, although the difference between Spanish spoken very rapidly with a heavy Italian accent and just plain Italian is not always obvious to someone whose first language is Germanic.  (For me personally the only difference is that an Italian trying to speak Spanish is easier to understand than an Italian just relaxed and speaking Italian, but if you asked me which actual words were different I'd have a hard time being specific.)  I would love to know whether the cultural attaché of the Republic of Italy was consciously playing to stereotype when he stopped waving his hands around to repeatedly bang the table for emphasis.  He was really only tapping the table with his knuckles as he kept his hands from waving in the air by waving them low along the table, but as he was wearing a couple of heavy gold rings they made a nice loud knocking noise against the polished wood which punctuated his remarks.

Naturally everyone was smiling by the end of the hand ballet, because we develop stereotypes which give us pleasure (which is why I suspect smart diplomats play to them).  But in fact the Italian diplomat's speech stated somewhat more openly a number of themes that had already come up in the others.  Practically at the moment when an investiture ceremony was taking place in Rome that brought frankly anti-European parties into the government, the Italian cultural attaché in Spain made an impassioned (and not completely plausible) speech about the history of the Erasmus program being linked to an Italian (Sofia Koratti, if I heard her name correctly) who got a Masters at Columbia in an unspecified subject in 1958, and then returned to Italy and fought with the Italian academic establishment to get them to recognize her academic credentials from a foreign university, and thus became dedicated to making it possible to study abroad and have your credits be automatically internationally recognized.  And it came to pass after nearly thirty years that her dream came true, when the Erasmus program was inaugurated in 1987.  And thus was born a program which was devoted to bringing people together, which we must protect even though we live now in a difficult era, when people are skeptical about the European Union, looking no further than the case of Brexit "or even in Italy" but we should remember that Europe is still the most advanced region in the world in terms of both economy and social welfare, and we must defend the Erasmus program and all it stands for in order to defend "nuestro sueño europeo. Grazie."  (End with wild applause and possibly cheers and weeping.  Or at least some polite clapping by people who were already thinking about the wine and tapas.)

Aside from the strong suspicion that Italy alone might not be able to take complete credit for the Erasmus program, and the thought that there was more than a whiff of sexism involved in not recognizing a woman's academic credentials in Italy in 1958, there are a number of minor points here which don't make sense.  The first and most obvious is that (as the author and a number of readers of this blog know quite well) the United States is not and never has been part of either the Erasmus or the "Erasmus+" program (the latter aimed at European countries that are either candidates for EU membership or countries that are interested in strengthening ties with the EU).  So whether or not Columbia's graduate degrees are recognized in Europe (and I certainly hope they are), the Erasmus program does nothing for American students, or for Europeans who wish to study in the US.  (That would be the evening's Fulbright program.)

The second problem is that it is unclear whether the glory of the Erasmus program is its creation of international understanding (like the Fulbright, which is not schizophrenic and is fairly clear on its goals) or whether it is designed to reinforce the common "sueño europeo" of a rising generation who will identify themselves (like the French girl who has lived in London for the last ten years and is a University College student except now she's living in Madrid and being a student at the Complutense) as "a European product" because their identity will be tied to a continent not a country or region.  The director of the Complutense's "International Relations" program mentioned that after thirty years there were really two "Erasmus generations," the nine million students who had participated in the program, and the estimated one million "bebés Erasmus."  (Those who take the "European Dream" less seriously, and tend to think that students simply want to get drunk and party away from parental controls, tend to sniff that the year abroad is better known as the "año orgasmus."  More seriously, after thirty years of classically spending a year abroad and breaking up with your home country sweetheart, some significant portion of the nine million Erasmus students do end up with partners from another EU country.  Their children -  the "Erasmus babies" - quite naturally refer to themselves as European, since they in fact have no single national identity.)  In other words, the rhetoric around the Erasmus program uneasily straddles the gap which has become central to the EU recently: is this a foreign exchange program, or one to reduce regional differences between a political entity which is gradually moving toward nationhood?  Is the point of spending a year in another EU country to understand a different culture, or to reinforce that Europeans actually all belong to the same one?  The official line of the Brexiters (and thus the poor British ambassador, whatever his personal opinions may be) is obviously the former, with the "understanding a different culture" being part of being "internacionalizado."  The Italian's "sueño europeo" is much more a vote for the "commonality of Europe" (as opposed to non-European immigrants toward whom the Italian government shares the British governments general antipathy).

Personally, I think the increased speed of transportation and communication, and the gradual awareness of other parts of the world as more than former colonies that is slowly but surely seeping into the European consciousness means that the one million Erasmus babies are simply the first generation to realize that they are Europeans as well as being Europeans.  A hundred years ago idealistic and cosmopolitan young citizens of Western Europe called themselves "citizens of the world."  But decolonization and the subsequent rise of former colonies as economic powers has made today's young Europeans realize that the "world" is a lot bigger than their corner of it, and is no more thrilled to offer them citizenship than Europe is to offer citizenship to the rest of the world.  So today's youngsters are humbler and more realistic, and call themselves "Europeans" and speak of "European" values, where their great grandparents spoke of "world" citizenship and (even more ambitiously) "universal" values.  (The colonialist fantasy of Star Trek is simply taking the word "universal" in things like "universal declaration of human rights" at its literal value.)

I hope that the ugly flailing regionalisms of Europe do not drag the EU through the unhappy years the US celebrated as it reached maturity around four score and seven (and also around the time the trans-continental railroads were completed, a transportation network which now looks hopelessly obsolete compared to the EUs).  Europeans tend to smile incredulously when I quote Eric Foner's comment that before the Civil War Americans said "I'm a New Yorker" and "the United States ARE" and after the Civil War they said "I'm an American" and "the United States IS."  But the the EU is a noble project, and I would hope one hundred years from now Europeans will be as unable to imagine their history not as an inter-related continental confederation as Americans are now.  It doesn't mean that regions and languages will necessarily fade away (just ask any Texan who thinks "pen" and "pin" are pronounced the same way), but it will hopefully involve a certain humble recognition that Europe's history is no longer, or more linguistically varied or complex than most of the rest of the world.

If the Erasmus program diplomats were quietly anxious about whether Erasmus would survive the panic of those who want to destroy the identity it seeks to create (the charming Slovenian ambassador noted that she believed Erasmus was the "crown jewel" of the EU "more than Schengen or the euro" and was therefore glad it was still funded in this year's new budget, and that in fact it had received more money), the Fulbright program sails serenely into its sixtieth year, more aware of its mission than ever, and only mildly panicking that the "person to person" diplomacy designed to break down prejudices and hatreds between the US and the rest of the world is the only functioning US diplomacy doing that at the moment.

As yesterday evening's ceremony was only for "Fulbright Spain" (or rather, "Fulbright Spain and Andorra") our only invited speakers were a gentleman from the American embassy, and a Spaniard who was a former ambassador to Washington DC.  (The Andorran ambassador made it for the September gathering, but not for the unofficial one.  I think the four Andorra English teaching assistants probably didn't make it to Madrid either.  Maybe he took them out for beer in Andorra.  That would have been a nice gesture.)  The American repeated the general refrain about the Fulbright being a tool of international understanding, and added that far too few Americans had experience living and working abroad, and that Europeans did this much better (though I repeat that if he means programs like Erasmus, I'm less and less sure that counts as "abroad" any more than a student from San Diego going to college in New England), and that we all should share our experiences and try to persuade others to do so as well.  He ended with a plea for us to consider the foreign service as a career option ("I have to plug my own job") and added that "we live now in very challenging times, as you can all see from the newspapers" and that therefore the foreign service needs the best and brightest "so I hope to see some or most or all of you there at some point in the future."  It was a very American recruitment pitch, essentially arguing that because the government is so incredibly screwed up it behooves concerned citizens to do something.  This is on the one hand a very civic-minded point of view, and on the other a bit like the captain of a ship in a storm yelling at the timorous passengers "don't just stand there!  Bail!  Bail or we are drowned!"  I'm not actually sure what I think about it, but as I'm not a 22 year old teaching assistant, and it's rather late in my career to join the foreign service, I didn't really think the invitation was addressed to me.

Still, it was a relatively kind and cheerful pronouncement compared to the keynote speech from the former Spanish ambassador which was...since I'm writing about diplomats I'll be diplomatic and say "unusual."  Beginning with his disapproval of the looming trade war between the US and the EU, the ambassador went on to explain that the tariffs were an "un-American" action which were unprecedented given the historic commitment of the United States to Europe, starting in 1947 with the Marshall Plan (which Spain was not part of, but ok), and going on to NATO and the defense of "our shared values."  Since I'd already taken the opportunity to google the speaker on my phone, my guess (actually it was a 95% certainty) was confirmed that not only had he started his career under Franco, his father was also a prominent Franquista diplomat, so the vaunted "shared values" were so much hot air.  I've just spent a good bit of time in the Archivo General de Administración in Alcalá reading through exactly what the Spanish government thought and said about what they considered "American" values and they were very very far from "shared."

In a further attempt to (I think?) praise his audience the keynote speaker went on to say that the US was "unique among super powers in all of history" in that it was the only great world power "with no empire and no desire for empire."  I was fortunately not sitting next to the Mexican historian who has become a friend of mine at that point, since I heard afterward that she had to use considerable control to not leave her seat and make a very loud comment.  I glanced sideways at the (very blonde and midwestern) young teaching assistant beside me, and saw that he was tapping a text or tweet or similar (possibly to someone elsewhere in the room) on his phone: "Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam...."

Having warmed up the room this successfully, the ambassador went on to explain the three fundamental pillars of the close relationship between Spain and the United States.  So naturally in a speech devoted to a program about promoting peace and friendship through personal contacts he said the first pillar was national security (or, as a friend of mine put it later in the evening "defense against scary Muslim people.")  He did not mention Aznar's disastrous foray into Iraq and the infamous "coalition of the willing" (which would have been bad enough) but instead offered an oddly specific fantasy about how unrest in Morocco and Algeria could lead to an "extremist" government there amassing an army to "reconquer Al Andalus" and how in such a case Spain would stand alone because NATO was obviously useless and "it's not like Finland or Norway are going to do anything" so Spain would be utterly dependent on US support, though of course "no pedimos los famosos 'boots on the ground'" but just military aid.  The face and body language of the American diplomat listening to the keynote went from "quietly attentive" to "chiseled in granite and determined to show no reaction" over the course of this rather extraordinary set of comments which insulted a number of EU and NATO members and allies of both the US and Spain, to the point where I wondered precisely why the ambassador had been recalled from Washington just over a year ago, when in fact there had been no change in Spain's government or ruling party.  A few rambling speeches like this to anything other than twenty-two year old English teaching assistants (who were probably not mostly not listening) and he could have created a real international incident.

Continuing the spirit of Senator Fulbright's belief in person-to-person diplomacy the second pillar of the Spanish-US relationship (after national defense) was of course trade, so after another brief excursion into tariffs, the ambassador returned to talking of the glory days of when the US (after unaccountably leaving Spain out of the Marshall Plan) had "taught Spain new business methods" in the 1960s "as we were emerging from the autocracy of Franco."  Again, having just spent a week in the archives, Franco was absolutely not going anywhere in the 1960s, and neither was Spanish autocracy (of which this gentleman was very much a part).

Finally, the relationship between Spain and the US was cemented by shared interests in Latin America (or perhaps shared custody issues).  The ambassador was gracious enough to suggest that Spain could "explain" US policy on things like NATO to Latin American countries because of a shared language (which presumably no US diplomats speak?).  I think my Mexican friend was close to having a heart attack at that point.  I may have missed a few things because honestly after the part about internecine struggles of the royal family of Morocco leading to invasions of Spain by presumably eighth century Umayyads, it was all kind of a blur.

Reactions to the speech in the garden where we all had drinks and tapas (of a very similar variety but more quantity to the morning's Complutense "vino español" - the generic phrase for "outdoor buffet with wine and food) were somewhat varied.  One friend of mine optimistically suggested that since the ambassador had been speaking Spanish some of the teaching assistants probably hadn't understood all of it, and another admitted that she hadn't been paying attention because her back was hurting from sitting on uncomfortable chairs in the auditorium of the International Institute.  A couple of votes went for "senile and rambling" and my personal sense was "PP trying to be a parody of itself."  My Mexican friend consoled herself by saying that she had known already about one of the events referred to in the speech, the upcoming festivities marking the three hundredth anniversary of San Antonio (Texas), to which Felipe VI has been invited, and that she was planning to attend and ask the awkward questions there she had been too polite to ask the ambassador.  I suggested she bring a Republican flag and wave it prominently during the festivities, since I know that it's regularly banned around the Casa Real in Spain, and one should get some use out of the First Amendment.  "I do own a Republican flag," she remarked thoughtfully.  "You just gotta love that shade of purple."  Personally, I had no questions for the ambassador.  I thought he'd made his political positions abundantly clear, and I know enough of recent Spanish history to know that most of the historical references he made were not so much a tissue of lies as a bunch of broken straws of lies that couldn't even be woven together.  But I was tempted to propose un bríndis for Spain's brand new Prime Minister, to whom I am sure (in the spirit of cooperation) we all wish the best of luck.

I carry no particular brief for Sánchez, and the PSOE certainly has its own corruption scandals (which may bring them down sooner rather than later), but I have friends who are cautiously optimistic that at least there appear to be some consequences for corruption starting to appear in Spain (would be nice if that were true in the US), and after listening to the mouthpiece for the PP I can safely say that if I were a Spanish voter I would have no qualms voting for the lesser evil.  It is somewhat funny to watch a variety of diplomats react in real time to the way governments splinter and re-form like patterns in a kaleidoscope.  But on the whole, I think I'm pleased with the latest pattern in Spain, and content that after a day of hugs and handshakes and congratulations on how quickly the school year has flown by, Pedro Sánchez is "the seventh president of the government since democracy" as the news stations are styling him now.  Not a bad way to begin the summer.