For me, it is sad to see inmigrants lose their ethnic identity as they try and hide their origins once they have arrived at their destinations. Madrid is a great example of how ecuadoreans, eastern europeans and africans all try to “blend into the mix” amd “do as the romans do”. Far from asking them to dress like the people in the photo(towards whom I have nothing against) I do believe they should keep some of their traditions, accents, family connections. It is possible that people want to leave a sadder part of their lives behind, and start a clean page. However, I believe immigrants here, and all over the world try(usually fail) to change their looks or accents because of their desire to fit in, which is increased by the lack of tolerance of many spanish people. Whether its children in schools, or their parents at work, signs of this intolerance can be seen everyday by anybody who is attentive. It is things like these which prevent a long term mix of cultures that would no d0ubt benefit the city. A perfect example of this could be Los Angeles, California. Home to Americans, Latinos, Ethiopians, South americans, Europeans, Asians etc etc etc, it has developed a sense of respect and/or admiration for different points of different cultures. Not only do the citizens benefit from this but the state, from its massive amounts of imports which satisfy their global customers. It is a city where you can blend in, without losing grip with your culture, and can proudly say something like: “I am ethiopian” without being looked at with a strange face of uncomprehension. Perhaps it is the few years Spain has been open to this “public”, maybe time will decide, but hopefully before these hundreds of thousands of people and their kids turn into ordinary middle class spaniards and behave like everybody else.

what do these people think they are doing? I mean, if you are really angry you go out and demonstrate outside some building.Far from being an article trying to change peoples way of revolting against governments, ill for once be a bit of a radical(for once?)if you are really angry, go ahead, burn the prime ministers car in sign of protest. What do the french arabs that are revolting against the system think they are going to do by burning their neighbours cars? is it a revolutionary way of recruitment, burning up the cars of people that are in your same situation and hope that because of it they will be smashing and burning the streets next evening?Martin Varsavsky pointed out something similar in his blog referring to the disruption caused in Mar del Plata after president Bush’s visit.I was in paris last week and it is kind of scary to think that this was going on at the same time that i was there. Thank you T.C for the link. If you have quicktime, click on the following link to watch a pretty shocking video taken just a few days ago.

http://joi.ito.com/archives/2005/11/04/home_video_clip_of_paris_police_shooting_in_suburbs.html#comments