Spanish Scientist, co-discoverer of the human oncogene

Mariano Barbacid Montalbán spent most of his professional career in the United States. In 1998, his return to Spain after a 24-year absence was greeted with extensive coverage in the media, not just in the medical trade press, but in the mainstream newspapers and magazines as well. His return, he said at the time, was not due to a sudden bout of homesickness but came after receiving an "offer no researcher could refuse".
The Spanish Minister of Public Health gave Barbacid the chance of heading a no-expense-spared national cancer research facility, the "Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas Carlos III" (CNIO). With 100,000 square feet of lab space the center, the first of its kind in Spain, occupies an old disused hospital in Madrid, restored and converted at a cost of some $25 million and due to open in 2001. Meanwhile, his team's initial work was being carried out in borrowed lab space, with a grant from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.

It is a personal triumph for Barbacid, co-discoverer of the human oncogene, who had criticized the lack of funding for cancer research. In modern Spain "this is one of the last remaining challenges", he has said. Half the center's annual budget of $30 million is paid out of Spain's National Health System and the other half from research grants.

Mariano Barbacid was born in Madrid in 1949. At age 25, shortly after receiving his doctorate in Science and with work offers from six American research centers, he moved to the United States. Between 1974 and 1988 Barbacid worked for the US National Cancer Institute in Maryland, first as a basic scientist investigating molecular and genetic oncology, and later carrying translational research into early diagnosis of cancer. In 1982 the team headed by Barbacid was one of three to first isolate a human oncogene, a major breakthrough which shed new light on the molecular basis of cancer.

Barbacid later worked for the Department of Molecular Biology at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Princeton, New Jersey, until March 1998 when, turning down another offer from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, he returned to Spain.

Biographies of important people

Rosa Louise Parks was nationally recognized as the "mother of the modern day civil rights movement" in America. Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white male passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, December 1, 1955, triggered a wave of protest December 5, 1955 that reverberated throughout the United States. Her quiet courageous act changed America, its view of black people and redirected the course of history.

Mrs. Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley, February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama.

After the arrest of Rosa Parks, black people of Montgomery and sympathizers of other races organized and promoted a boycott of the city bus line that lasted 381 days. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was appointed the spokesperson for the Bus Boycott and taught nonviolence to all participants. Contingent with the protest in Montgomery, others took shape throughout the south and the country. They took form as sit-ins, eat-ins, swim-ins, and similar causes. Thousands of courageous people joined the "protest" to demand equal rights for all people.


She was voted by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most Influential people of the 20th century.

Interviewing a Foreigner:

Hello! Could I ask you a few questions?




1. Where do you come from? ________________________________________________________________

2. What did you think of Spain before your visit? (Have you been deceived or not?) ________________________________________________________________

3. How long have you been in Spain?/ How long have you planned to stay here? ________________________________________________________________

4. Why are you here in Spain? Why did you choose Spain? What things did you know about Spanish life, culture, sports… before coming? ________________________________________________________________

5. Who are you here with? ________________________________________________________________

6. What places have you already been to?/ What place do you already know about? ________________________________________________________________

7. What do you like most of Spain (from your experience or from your previous data)? ________________________________________________________________

8. What is the food that you enjoyed most (or you would like to try)? ________________________________________________________________

9. Are Spaniards too different to the people in your country? Which way? ________________________________________________________________

10. What do you think about bullfighting? ________________________________________________________________

11. What do you miss from your country? (food, people, landscape…) ________________________________________________________________

12. Are you planning to stay, would you visit Spain again? Why? ________________________________________________________________

13. What do people think in your country about Spain? ________________________________________________________________

14. Would you live here? Why? ________________________________________________________________



Thanks for your time!!!

What can Spain offer to a tourist?

Weather
While the famous Mediterranean climate exerts its influence over much of the peninsula, the landmass of Spain and Portugal gives it a continental climate, i.e., extremes of temperature, hot summers and cold winters, with short spring and autumn. Western Andalusia and the Algarve are warmed by the Gulf Stream, and in summer south winds from the Sahara can be suffocating. Portugal's west coast and Galicia, though also bathed by the Gulf Stream, face the Atlantic and can be cold and rainy. The Cantabrian regions of Spain (Asturias, Cantabria and the Basque Country) have a temperate climate with a great deal of rainfall. The Levante (Castellon, Valencia and Alicante) often suffers from tremendous rainstorms, usually in autumn, which can cause a great deal of material damage. In the Pyrenees, too, flash floods can be a hazard. The peninsula as a whole, though, is extremely dry, especially in those long, hot summers which are its main attraction for many tourists.

Fiestas and Traditions
All Spanish towns and cities have their own special celebrations, as well as the national holidays such as Christmas, Easter Week, All Saints Day etc. The way in which the national events are celebrated also varies from place to place. Most festivities are of religious base, mainly Catholic. See our full listing of holidays.

Food, art, culture, fun, beaches... Anything else???

www.spain.info

Interview- Noe y Raquel

What would you ask a foreigner coming to visit Spain?

Make your comments:

Hello! Can I do some questions?

1.Where are you from?
2.How much time have you been in Spain?
3.Do you like Spain?
4.What did you like more of Spain?
5.What have you eaten in Spain?
6.What is the food that you have enjoyed most?
7.What do you prefer: the food of you country or the food of Spain?
8.What did you visited in Spain?
9.What places would you like visit?
10.Do you appear interesting our museum...?
11.What are the difference with you country?
12.What is the thing that most impress when you came to Spain?
13.What did you think of Spain before of visit? Have you deceived or you have like more?
14. where there is more party in your country or in Spain?
15.would you come to Madrid or you visit other city of Spain?