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October 22, 2012

White elephants

Dear NI2 students,

I find this audio documentary very interesting as it is about our country. They use the idiomatic expression "white elephants", what is it? Can you guess? 

Spain's runaway to nowhere

  • What do you think of the situation described here?
  • Do you agree with this view from abroad about Spain?
  • Are there any other mistakes that were made in Spain in the past?

This documentary was downloaded from BBC assignment. It's a great idea to download the ones you are interested in to improve your listening skills.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

White elephants may be buildings or constructions that have never worked because there weren´t useful and there were unrealistic.
This is one of the consequence of the real estate bubble.

Unknown said...

White elephants are public buildings that they aren´t profitable like airoirts, theaters and convention centers. Then those public buildings are abandoned and not used.

This is an example of our lying and thieve politicians. Anything goes for power.

Maybe other countries think that people in Spain have always lived as rich people.

Flor Sanabria Marcos said...

When they talk about "White Elephants" they are not talking about animals,of course, but about buildings or infrastructures´s projects that didn´t become the succesfull bussiness that were projected.
The most worrying thing is that thouse projects, financed with public or private money aren´t working and at last who suffer the consequences is the people who were expropieted or contribute with their taxes.

Mariola Statkiewicz said...

"Spain's runaway to nowhere "described the economical situation in Spain actually.
Spanish "real estate bubble" is compared with white elephants. One of the Spanish journalists told:"Spain suffered an attack of wealth".
In this report people spoke about governments and political parties in Spain and about a construction project - CIUDAD REAL INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT(SPAIN) that was unreal since the beginning. The Ciudad Real Airport opened in 2008 but it closed in April of 2012.
I wish the situation in Spain will be better in the future.
The question is: How much time do we have to wait to see it???

Unknown said...

Well done all of you! Your answers are correct. A white elephant is an important project that has failed very badly and may have cost a lot of money.
Can you imagine what people in Europe think about us after listening to stories like this one?

As Mariola said, I hope the situation will improve in the near future.