We have finally managed to launch notesinspanish.com which means a whole host of changes!
This is where all the Notes in Spanish podcasts will be from now on.
We have our own ‘store’ where we will be selling all the worksheets. We will no longer be using Lulu.com for the worksheets.
We have had to increase the price of the worksheets slightly to cover the costs of PayPal’s percentage and site costs. The new cost is $1.85 (just under 1 British pound).
Next week we will be launching Notes in Spanish Intermediate on the same site.
We really hope you like the new site, of course NFS will continue here as always. Any feedback on the new site, the worksheets store and anything else that comes to mind would be really welcome! ¡Que Nervios!
Check it out at notesinspanish.com. There’s a new Advanced podcast out as well – Trapicheos!
As usual it has been really difficult to pick a winner from this month’s submissions to the NFS Flickr Group, but this photo by Manuel Garcia is a work of art. I highly recommend you check out his photos on Flickr, or his photoblog.
The photo was taken during the annual horse races on Sanlúcar de Barrameda beach. These races take place over two periods of three days, the first usually in July, and the second in August, though the actual date itself depends on the tides – low tide is essential so that there is enough room for all the horses. Exact dates should be announced in plenty of time on the town website.
Not many people put a trip to Vallecas at the top of their birthday list, but it really appealed to me! Another wonderful market lies at the centre of a very traditional Barrio Madrileño. More photos are up on Flickr.
Comment on this episode in the Notes from Spain forum.
While a few Spain bloggers have been kind enough to contribute to our Top 5 series, you lot have come up with some excellent alternatives in our forum competition. The brief was easy, just produce a Top 5 list connected in any way to Spain. And the winner is… Steve W with this excellent list:
1. Nine people in a hire car, bumping down a track to a beach bar at 4am.
2. Fireworks and marching bands at 8am for 7 days in a row.
3. 72 people injured in a bull running. “Same time tomorrow chaps?”
4. Kalimotxo – red wine and coke.
5. Brandy for breakfast before work.
It sums up all the madness, disregard for health and safety, and general predisposition to having a good time that we love so much about this country. What would you add to this list?
Thanks go to all the other excellent entries, in no particular order (and I hope I have you all!):
Top Five best mistakes made by my Spanish students, by Barca
Top Five strange but true vignettes of Spanish life, by Barca
Top Five best times of the year, by Greytop
Top Five Significant Spaniards, by Marbella
Top Five Things a Spaniard would never say, by Marbella
Top Five Podcasts from Spain, by Valenciason
Top Five Tourist Activities in Spain, by Valenciason
Thanks to all of you. Steve W wins a Notes from Spain T-Shirt… but will have to be patient as they are still in the design phase!
Is this the craziest fiesta in Spain? Anywhere in the world for that matter? This morning, between the hours of 11 a.m. and midday, 40,000 ‘guerrillas’ pelted each other with 110 tonnes of tomatoes in the Valencian town of Buñol! Full marks to Graham McLellan, author of the above photo, for risking his camera in that environment… it doesn’t seem the ideal place to be wandering around with anything electronic! Well, same time, same place next year if you’re fond of soft, red, over-ripe fruit!
The experiments in celluloid continue (aka Ben goes for a wander with his Canon Ixus!) Flamenco on a sunny afternoon in Madrid’s Retiro park… Forgive the wind at the beginning and dig those passer’s by! Direct video link
During my first three years in Spain I read every book on the country that I could get my hands on. The travelogues that I most enjoyed came from a bygone era – Orwell’s outstanding Homage to Catalonia, the brilliant Voices of the Old Sea by Norman Lewis, to name two of my favourites. Apart from Duende (another great book, but is it all true?), the only contemporary book of this genre that I really enjoyed was Driving Over Lemons, by Chris Stewart, with its quiet and pleasant tales of setting up home and farm in Andalusia’s Alpujarra mountains.
Well, Chris Stewart is back, with part three, The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society. It’s much the same as the first two instalments, lots of amusing encounters with the locals, and local animals (in the first few chapters we cover dung-beetles, an escapee parrot, and the usual errant sheep), but if Chris Stewart is living your particular dream, then this book will be just as enthralling as the first two.
Personally, having been in Spain for a while, I now tend to judge contemporary Spain books on how much I can still learn from them about Spain, and on that count ABAS is doing pretty well. So far I have discovered that a Carmen (leafy enclosed patio in Granada) is only a Carmen if it has a view of the Alhambra, that the Moors would verbally threaten olive trees that produced no fruit, and that I must read more Michael Jacobs… Thanks Chris!
We have decided to launch the NFS Newsletter so that you can keep abreast of what’s new at Notes from Spain! We hope to publish this once a month, and include news about the site, highlights from the month gone by and the month ahead, and hopefully there will be a monthly competition in the pipeline!
The first newsletter will be out at the beginning of September, and will include great news about changes to the Notes in Spanish podcast (all good, don’t worry!)
To subscribe, just enter your e-mail address in the form at the bottom of the left-hand column of this page. Your details will be kept totally private, and you can unsubscribe at any time. And if you have any ideas about what you’d like to see in the NFS newsletter, let us know below!
There are many variations on this recipe, depending where you have it. Sometimes it has a light green sauce if it is made with parsley, or red if you use paprika, in which case it can be either spicy if you use hot paprika, or mild if you use sweet paprika. Any of these combinations is delicious but I have a particular preference for the mild red one, which is the one described below.
Preparation time: 25 mins
Ingredients
1/2 Kg (1 pound) clams
1/2 onion
2 garlic cloves
2 sticks of fresh parsley chopped up in very small pieces
1 tablespoon of flour
1 glass of white wine
3 tablespoon of olive oil
salt
1 teaspoon sweet or hot paprika
Preparation
Firstly wash the clams by placing them to soak in cold water with a pinch of salt for 10 minutes, so that they release any remaining sand. Meanwhile, chop up the onion into 1/2 cm (1/4 inch) squares, peel and crush the garlic cloves, and wash and finely chop the parsley. At this point put the clams in a sieve so you have them ready when you need them.
Select a medium-sized saucepan and pour in 3 tablespoons of olive oil (or until the bottom is completely covered). When the oil starts to smoke add the onion bits and cook for about 5 minutes at medium heat, or until the onion is soft. Then add the garlic and cook for another minute, add a tablespoon of flour and a teaspoon of paprika, and stir it with a wooden spoon so they get coated with the oil and don’t burn. After 30 seconds add a glass of white wine and a pinch of salt, and drop the clams into the mixture and stir them while they open. As soon as they open they are done, but as some take longer than others to open you can take them out and place them on a serving dish as they do so. When all of them are open (remove and discard those that don’t open), pour the sauce over the clams and sprinkle a bit of parsley over the top.
Tip 1 – When you finish eating the clams, soak a bit of bread in the sauce, it’s delicious!
Pimientos del padron
These small green peppers come from Galicia but can be found in markets all around Spain and are delicious to have as a tapa.
There is a Spanish saying which goes "Pimientos del padrón some are hot and some are not†– usually they are not spicy, but every now and again you find a real scorcher that can bring tears to your eyes (or in Marina’s case cause hiccups)!
Preparation time: 6 minutes
Ingredients
1/2 Kg (1 pound) Pimientos del Padrón
2 teaspoons of rock salt
3 tablespoons of olive oil
Preparation
For this recipe you need to use a big frying pan or divide the peppers in to two lots and cook them separately. Cover the bottom of the frying pan with olive oil, and when it starts to smoke add the peppers. Sprinkle the salt on top and swirl the frying pan as if it was a wok, so the peppers fry evenly all over. Let them cook for about 5 minutes or until they start to wrinkle. Place them onto a serving plate and eat while they are still hot.
During my first three years in Spain I read every book on the country that I could get my hands on. The travelogues that I most enjoyed came from a bygone era – Orwell’s outstanding 
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 