in the smaller and warmer cities of Spain but in Madrid, most stores are open all day.
“Have you been to a bullfight?” my friend from California asked me over a facetime call. In the United States, bullfighting is always classified as a Spanish tradition and a popular Spanish past time. However, its popularity has greatly declined, and the average Spaniard has probably never been to and does not intend to go to a bullfight. Now, it has become very controversial because it exhibits animal cruelty. Contrary to my assumption that bullfighting was just men on bulls fighting each other, the bulls are actually killed during the fight and it is not a gentle process. So, my answer to “have you been to a bullfight?” is “no.”
“Everyone speaks Spanish in Spain!” is a common assumption that many people told me before I arrived in Spain. After visiting other parts of Spain, I found this to be false. Actually, there are 4 languages spoken in Spain: Castilian (Castellano), Catalan (Catalán), Basque (Euskera) and Galician (Gallego). Though some Spaniards may call it Español, Castilian is actually what the English language calls Spanish. Americans often associate this language with Latin American Spanish. However, it is considerably different as the Spanish Castilian uses different common phrases, different pronunciations, and different grammar tenses. Catalan is spoken in the Northeast region (Barcelona), Basque is spoken in the northern region (the Basque country) and Galician is spoken in the northwest region (Galicia).
