Last Sunday was a day, and a night, to remember. Long before the match started drivers were tooting their horns and the streets were full of people all, absolutely ALL, dressed in red and yellow (well done the Chinos, who must have sold Tshirts and face paints to every child in Spain and most of the adults). Even some of the cars were dressed roof to wheel in red and yellow, and those that weren’t had red and yellow flags waving from their windows. Then at 8.30, the streets were deserted. Not a car moved in Malaga city centre, something which can’t have happened on a Sunday evening for decades.
In all the bars and wherever people had gathered to watch, predictions were made about the final score, and the octopus was praised by millions of Spaniards for its obvious sagacity. Will Spain ever forget the octopus?
Then millions of people watched, gasped, covered their eyes, held their breath and groaned in unison. Spain united, totally united.
And at the end, an explosion of joy the likes of which we may never see again. People poured out of the bars, yelling and hugging each other. They danced in the streets and blasted their vuvuzelas – will anybody ever forget the vuvuzelas? Malaga at midnight was more crowded and joyful than it has ever been, and it is a city known for partying like there’s no mañana.
In years to come people will remember that night, and those of us who want to recall our own experience of it will probably ask “Do you remember where you were the night Spain won the World Cup?” And then, “Do you remember the octupus? And the vuvuzelas?”
Filed under: Spanish language by Liz Parry
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I’ve been taken to task on this blog for criticizing Spanish customs (strangely enough, on the question of how Spanish waiters serve tea, which isn’t a Spanish custom anyway) and it led me to think that maybe we could have a little debate! “When in Rome do as the Romans do” (or as we would say in Spain, “donde fueres, haz lo que vieres”), suggests one reader, saying she has lived abroad for 30 years and never criticized her host country. Becky takes a stance I’ve occasionally seen in Letters to the Editor in SUR in English, on the lines of “If you don’t like it here, why not go home?”
Leaving aside that Spain IS my home, I am inclined to think that criticism is one thing, and not adapting to a new country’s customs, or trying to learn the language, is another. But it’s all debatable.
Should foreign residents criticize what they don’t like? Should they try to change Spanish ways, if they are convinced another way is better? Or should they do as the Romans do?
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I seem to write a lot about airports (not so odd maybe since I also seem to spend a lot of time in them…) and now it’s Malaga airport’s turn again. I still like it, and the big new terminal, T3, is very…. BIG, I think best describes it, and new…. but I had to laugh, the first time I used it. The queue for my BA flight was the longest BA check-in queue I have ever seen, snaking its way back into the old terminal, and when my suitcase finally trundled off on its conveyor belt the check-in attendant told me rather sheepishly that the distance from where I was, to the gate I needed to get to, was a matter of yards (he may have said ‘metres’). If I could have gone straight there. But the security desks were about half a mile in the other direction, making a round trip of about a mile. (I exaggerate, I am an adopted Andalusian).
The detour, of course, took me via all the new shops, including the BIG new duty-free one called The Shop. I went in and was tempted by the vast displays of new varieties of chocolate – new to me, anyway – and I was looking for the way out when I realised that a number of staff were gathered round the brandy and cognac area with mops, and several more were running some sort of relay with buckets, which they were positioning strategically. The big new roof was leaking.
I had to run the half mile then to get to the gate on time, or I’d have taken a photo.
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A new terminal at an airport was officially inaugurated this week, and everybody was there to see it, from the King and Queen downwards. But which airport was it? How many people actually know that it is currently called the Pablo Ruiz Picasso airport? Probably even fewer than the people who know that Sheffield-Doncaster airport is named after Nottingham’s legend Robin Hood. Or who know the geographical whereabouts of some of the remote airports used by Ryanair and which claim to belong to, for example, Milan. (more…)
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I was reminded yesterday that globalisation has not yet reached certain places, and there are still cultural differences affecting such vital matters as cups of tea. In a very central cafe in Malaga, my companion asked for tea, and being wise to the ways of cafes in Spain, specified that he wanted it with milk. Not wise enough though – the dinky little milk jug which came with his dinky teapotful of tea contained hot milk.
How anyone could fancy tea with a drop of hot milk is as far beyond me as people who can dunk their teabags in a whole mug full of the stuff, but as they say here “sobre gustos no hay nada escrito” – nothing’s been written about (there’s no accounting for) tastes. Personally I think hot milk should only be served with coffee, and can’t understand why hotels everywhere expect you to make your coffee with cold milk, thus making the coffee even more lukewarm than it was before. Or do I mean less lukewarm?
Degrees of lukewarmness aside, I just had to tell my companion about the time I went into a very central cafe in Melilla, with my parents. I emphasize the “central” bit because they cater a lot to tourists and are presumably used to foreign ways. My parents were also wise to Spanish ways, and asked for their tea, not with lemon, but with cold milk. Off went the waiter and came back with two teabags dangling in a teapot full of cold milk.
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I love the AVE!! I really do, I think it is the best possible, best ever way to travel. I hate the Renfe website. I hate a lot of Spanish websites. It seems to me that I can reserve cars, and book flights, and buy books, and bid for solar powered garden lights on ebay, all on UK based websites, with no problem at all, but when I try to do anything similar on a dot es website I end up shouting at my computer.
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Similarities between the UK and Spain, which were flagged up for me during a recent trip – at East Midlands airport, yet again. What is it with set menus, that are set in stone? At McDonald’s in Malaga (I am told, I haven’t been since the first one opened in Pryca Los Patios and I came away hungry, unable to eat either the moist old cardboard which featured on the menu as “hamburguesa” or the grey stuff in the plastic tub called “ensalada”) you can’t have “una hamburguesa y una caña”. If you want a caña, it has to be with a jumboburguesa and patatas fritas with a free portion of alioli, or somesuch combination. It’s not like that at the place down the road from work, where I eat regularly and happily for less than you could spend at McDonald’s. At El Barco, you can have the three course “Menú” for 8 euros with so many choices you wonder where they keep all this food in the small kitchen. And if you only want one dish that’s fine, and the price is adjusted downwards, and if you prefer coffee to pudding, that’s fine too.
What happened at EMA was that it was early and I was in search of English breakfast. You know, bacon and eggs and toast and marmalade. I toured all the possible catering establishments and finally settled in the last one, which offered a variety of breakfasts claiming to be “full traditional English” etc. Since when have hash browns been either traditional or English? I have nothing against hash browns except that they are greasy, tasteless and a waste of space, but surely this is a double misnomer?
It transpired that I couldn’t have my bacon and eggs without them anyway. The girl at the counter helpfully suggested that I should opt for the “kids’ breakfast”, which allowed me to choose my three ingredients (two eggs, one rasher, so that was OK) but also made me accept a “free” carton of violent orange coloured stuff with a straw. Then I had to buy my coffee, toast and marmalade separately, and when my traditional English marmalade arrived, it was strawberry jam. That is SO Spanish!
Next time I think I’ll go round them all asking for kippers. It’s something to do, while you’re waiting around at airports 
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Over the past weeks I have had to revise my opinion about East Midlands airport. Just a bit. The main reason is that whoever installed that rip-off plastic bag machine has now removed it, or else it’s hidden away somewhere and the security people no longer direct you to it as a matter of course if you have a lipstick somewhere about your hand luggage. There’s another reason, too. During the coldest spell since the last one, (which I remember well was in January 1979), with snow piled high everywhere, and even the M1 and the A1 closing down at times, East Midlands stayed open and all four of the flights I took between there and Malaga departed and landed more or less on time. A worker at EMA proudly told me it has never closed, come snow or fog, because it has the best clearing gear and the best radar systems – so I suppose I must forgive it for the plastic bag lapse.
As the Spanish say, “rectificar es de sabios”, which is to do with wise people and rectifying.. so although I can’t think of an equivalent in English, I would say it means I have changed my mind and am saying so (and that makes me wise! )
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This blog, which was supposed to be about the Spanish language and maybe the odd Spanish custom or two, should probably be re-named, since more than one of posts have turned out to be about airports and airlines, and I can’t resist adding another, in the form of a warning to all readers thinking of going to Italy….
I took a short break in Italy this summer, staying at that wonderful B&B I have mentioned here before and taking in an outdoor concert and a wine-tasting session, as recommended by the wonderful hosts! Going to Italy for a few days is a very Good Thing, that’s not the problem, the problem was that I had to get a Ryanair flight back, from Milan to Malaga, and it left at 6.15. A.M. (My capitals!) And not just from any Milan airport – oh no, this is the one also known as Orio al Serio, or Bergamo, or combinations of the three.
Remembering my student days of sleeping under the stars on airport roofs, or stretched out on three or four airport chairs, I was quite OK with the early morning start and assured Annie and Mario that it would be fine, I’d just get there the night before and be happy with my book till the flight left. But NO, NO, they said! Milan Orio al Serio Bergamo isn’t like that, and I had to spend as little time as is humanly possible in the place.
Mario (hosts don’t get any better than Mario) drove me there from Negrar in the middle of the night, and I was so grateful that he did! Milan Orio al Serio Bergamo is without doubt the ugliest, most uncomfortable, worst designed cattle shed you can imagine. It has a few chairs – metallic, with fiercely uncomfortable armrests between them. To get to the gate, you have to go up some steps, through an area with a small bar, and then down a passageway which looks as if it hasn’t been cleaned or refurbished since the linoleum days of the 1950s, and down some more stairs – and then back again because the small area is jam-packed full of people waiting for three flights to Spain and you realise that the toilets and last chance of a coffee are back through the tunnel where the bar was.
To add insult to injury, the emergency exit from the crowded flights-to-Spain area was faulty, and anyone just brushing against it would set the alarm off. For half an hour. Nobody took any notice, other than to try to cover their ears, so the airport security people must have been used to it, but it meant that even book-reading to pass the time would have been totally impossible.
What a fine place Malaga Pablo Ruiz Picasso (AGP) airport is!
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Last year at around this time I remember I actually summoned up a small amount of interest in the Eurovision Song Contest, and it gave me something to write about. That was when Chiquilicuatre played a ridiculous part wearing a ridiculous costume, singing (??) a ridiculous song in the … well adjectives fail me really when it comes to describing the Contest. But there was the possibility that being so in keeping with the whole set-up, he might even win. He did better than other Spanish contestants over the past few years, but not well.
(more…)
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