A heated political debate...

So the other day, I was having a discussion about politics with Merce as the Spanish presidential elections are coming up this Sunday, and plus the Spaniards are also very interested in the upcoming U.S elections. The two main political parties here are the PP and the PSOE... most people here seem to equate Zapatero of the PSOE to our Obama, except Zapatero is a few kilometers to the left of Obama I think. Actually, their "right wing conservatives" are about like our standard liberals in the U.S. Zapatero is younger, more popular among the young people, etc... similar campaigning strategy to Obama really.

Merce said "People need to vote with their heads, not with their hearts." In the midst of our discussion Pedro interrupted and said "No no no ladies, you have it all completely wrong. You are VERY uninformed." Merce and I paused for a second, wondering if this discussion was about to get ugly, and then Pedro continued: "...you have to vote with your hand, you know, when you pull the little lever down in the booth, otherwise you'll end up with a really big headache. Sometimes they have those touch screens nowadays too but you still have to use your hands for that I think."


As a continuation of this story, this morning Pedro was telling me about how Guinness the cat managed to open a fairly heavy door this morning somehow to let Guillermina (the other cat) through... Pedro said to me "Guiness is very intelligent, he uses his head for everything.... even to open doors." I wanted to make a comment about Guinness being a bit hard headed, but that saying doesn't really translate into Spanish. Instead I decided to ask, "Does Guinness use his head to vote too?" "Of course he does, paws don't work very well for voting... they just don't have the cats in mind when they design those machines."