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In troubled times, Europe asks: What does being 'European' really mean?

From islanders on the front lines of the refugee crisis, to those living in Europe’s biggest metropolises, to those tucked into rural communities far removed from the politics of their capitals, many feel that the European Union is at a crossroads.

Maria Milagros, a Spanish Civil War survivor in Guernica, Spain

Sara Miller Llana/The Christian Science Monitor
Maria Milagros in Guernica's city center, near the bomb shelter she says she and her family hid in during the Spanish Civil War.

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Her country has the second highest rate of youth unemployment in the European Union. That’s given rise to new populist parties on the left which have upended the two-party system that has dominated Spain since the death of Francisco Franco. It has now been without a government for eight months.

"I was born in Las Arenas but we came to Guernica for work during the war because my aunt had a job as a seamstress. We got caught in the bombing of Guernica [April 26, 1937]. We were in a bomb shelter just there [not far from where Pablo Picasso’s haunting depiction hangs today]. There was so much noise. And fire. My grandfather’s house burned down. We left to go back to Las Arenas. …

"I was born in the Basque Country. I am Basque but I don’t depreciate Spain. I live within Spain. My father said when I was little I spoke very good Euskera [Basque language]. But after [the civil war] they didn’t let us speak it. You forget it.

"I don’t care about Basque independence. What do I care? What I care about is that people have a job, a house, and that we live in peace. ... I feel European. I support the European Union, but only if it is good for us. Is it so good for us, with so many deaths, so much sad news? They are killing so many people, even a priest [in France]. This is sadness, this is war. This is not life."

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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