The Power and Puzzle of Demographics

The median age in Spain is 44 years and in Africa, it's 18.8. As a consequence, by 2050, the population of Africa is expected to have doubled to 2.5 billion, with 60% living in its cities. In Spain, the population is projected to rise to 52 million, but with the largest segment aged between 40-70 years.

Listen to this article 9 min Listen to this article 9 min Ernest Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises in eight weeks after his 1925 visit to the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, a fiesta better known as the "running of the bulls".

The novel, considered Hemingway's greatest, deals with the physical and psychological wounds of the First World War, a conflict in which he had served as an ambulance driver on the Italian front where he had been badly wounded.

Set in the Basque country bridging southwest France with northwest Spain, bookended by the Atlantic and the Pyrenees, it is a hedonistic if cathartic romp by a traumatised post-war "lost generation" as they drink, argue, fight and make up and out.

advertisementDon't want to see this? Remove adsAs Hemingway wrote, "Everyone behaves badly -- given the chance."

In the process, he takes the reader through the culturally and geographically rich Basque region, or Euskadi, where the activity of the Atlantic coastline contrasts with the steep, secluded farming valleys of the interior, from Irun in the north through Bilbao, Vitoria-Gasteiz and San Sebastián on to Hondarribia, Hendaye and Irun, merging towards Bayonne and Hemingway's beloved Pamplona.

Through these...

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The Power and Puzzle of Demographics

The Power and Puzzle of Demographics

The Power and Puzzle of Demographics

The Power and Puzzle of Demographics

The Power and Puzzle of Demographics