Category: Spanish Culture and News

Seven mothers from Serradilla del Arroyo (small place near Salamanca) have stripped off to pay for their kids’ after school activities. I bet their kids are soooo happy that mum did that, because in a village of just 500 people, their school mates are going to find out pretty damn fast!

Update: Lots of people have found this post due to the appearance of this story in the world press. In the comments below you will find that one of the mothers has left contact details about hot to contact them should you want a copy of the calendar. See the comments below and the bottom of her webpage for more details.

It’s very rare that I will go to see a band play live if I’ve never heard any of their music (actually it’s pretty rare that I’ll see any band live at all these days…) But last night we were lucky enough to see Ojos de Brujo live in Madrid, and I didn’t know a single one of their songs before walking into Madrid’s La Riviera, one of the few decent small venues in the city. All we had was a recommendation from a friend, and high praise from the Guardian, who rightly hail the group as “one of the slickest and most exciting bands in Europe”.

Eleven or more band members take to the stage, including a drummer, percussionist, 2 acoustic guitars, a bassist (who performed mind-numbing feats of string slapping), the wild, rasta-haired lead singer (Marina), the singer-rapper-human-beat-box guy, who does vocal battle with the whacking feet of the flamenco dancer who changes dress between numbers, a fuzzy-haired trumpeter who is too cool – and good at the trumpet – to be true, the bloke with the decks and the synths who steps up front occasionally to harrass the audience into making more noise…

The result is the most incredible cacophony of sound I’ve ever heard, and a stage show that seems as brilliantly improvised as the finest jazz, and is 100 times more entertaining than going to the theatre.

They look like they are having the time of their life on stage, obviously love each other’s company and have huge respect for each other’s evident talents, but what exactly do they sound like? I suppose you could call it a unique fusion of flamenco, jazz, soul, rap, dance, Indian chill-out, funk, rock … I’ve never seen or heard a show like it.

Next time they tour your neck of the woods, get tickets.

Join our Spanish Music discussion in the forums.

Pretty, blond, pouting child, next to the word ‘Bimbo’, above the phrase ‘For a more tender world’ – can’t see this ad for Bimbo breads going down too well in the English-speaking world!

Tree house seen in Sierra – hope kid never takes up architecture
click to enlarge

We just got back to the capital after spending 10 days in the Sierra to the north of the city. We got a lot of work done, saw almost no-one, and breathed a lot of fresh air. It was wonderful. As we drove into Madrid Marina asked me how it felt to be back. Not too bad. She dropped me off at the door to our building with all our bags, and then headed off to park in the underground car park around the corner. When she finally got upstairs she looked distinctly unhappy to be back in Madrid.

Apparently, as she turned onto the ramp down into the basement car park, another car was on its way up. So, she stopped, and began to reverse back out onto the street to let him up. Unfortunately another car was now coming down the road towards Marina, and stopped so close that she couldn’t reverse out enough to let the car coming up the ramp out. She turned and looked at the guy behind, a 50-something man in a BMW, and he crossed his arms in defiance and shook his head, making it clear he would not move, even though he had no cars behind him.

Marina got out, went up to his car, and asked if he would please move back so she could in turn reverse further and let the other guy out. He said no, he would not reverse (we’re talking 2 metres!), that she would have to go forward, drive round the block, and come back instead (which would take about 3 minutes!) At this point the famous Spanish caracter came into play, and Marina gave him a piece of her mind. He promptly reversed the 2 metres, allowing Marina to do the same and let the other guy up, who, of course, drove off without a word of thanks.

Another fine example of why Spanish women have had to learn to take no s*#t! (…and how a lot of people in big cities, or big cars, are complete w*#+!rs …)

Marina just left a long comment on our recent article about Spanish women and their inherent ‘feistiness’, known here as carácter. I think it is a valuable contribution, and worth posting here:

“Of course there are plenty of Spanish women who are not fiesty, but funnily enough, if I look at a lot of our foreign friends that have a Spanish girlfriend/wife, without exception they are all strong and full of Spanish character 🙂

I think to look at the reason for this, Franco or no Franco, we have to look back at least 30 years, and even a bit longer. For a person around my age (32) the difference in freedom and opportunities that our mothers had in their youth compared to ours is massive (I reckon that even my grandmother enjoyed more freedom than my mother when she was young). Being able to see how women have worked for their men and children, giving all of their time in usually not very rewarding tasks, makes one appreciate much more the freedom and opportunities that women enjoy nowadays, and I guess that makes us very protective and defensive about it. I guess what happens in general is that we apply the same protection to other matters in life as well, for example if someone jumps the queue. But here we should also take into account that Spanish society is a complaining society: The Spanish, in general, love complaining and do so, both men and women, in a much direct way than people from other countries.

Going back to equality… from what I’ve seen in England, for English women my age equality is not a big issue, mainly because they take it for granted. And even if in Spain, at least when I was a teenager, we looked at the North European women with admiration regarding equality, I’ve seen a few examples of chauvinist behaviour in young English couples that I wouldn’t accept, nor would most of my friends. One good example is taking your husband’s name when you marry. I know it is a cultural thing, but in Spain most of the women would laugh at that possibility. Even today parents can choose the order of their children’ surnames – people in Spain take two surnames, usually the father’s one comes first and then the mother’s one, but nowadays you can choose to put the mother’s one first.”

Ben and sister-in-law in skip…
I love skips. When I was young my father had a skip hire business and I spent a lot of time jumping in and out of and tossing stuff into them. We always seemed to have one at home, though I have no idea how we managed to keep filling them. So, how happy I was to hire one this morning for the in-laws place in the sierra. While they are away we plan to throw out a whole load of crap, which will either lead to a nice surprise on their return or the start of an almighty arguement (“I can’t believe you got rid of my X”).
 
Anyway, to get said skip I went to the web and did indeed find someone to bring one over on the same day (130 euros for 2 weeks, not bad). However, it was impossible to find out how big a skip we needed. None of the websites I came to via paginas-amarillas.es would tell me what a 10 cubic metre skip looked like. They didn’t even have photos or prices. So I put ‘skip sizes’ into google, and came up with a gem of a website in the Uk where they have actually unploaded videos showing you how big each skip size is. Click here for some classic footage of a 10 cubic yard model. Just what I needed (once I worked out how to convert from cubic yards to meters). Now there is a company that gets the web (they even have a skip blog!)
 
How long until the web shows this level of usefulness in Spain? Could be a while in a country that, unlike the UK, France, and Germany, doesn’t even have Amazon.ES
 

I can’t remember what the figure is up to now, but every time we drive up from Madrid to the in-laws place in the Sierra, a digital display across the highway reminds us and the other drivers pouring out of the city how many people have died in road accidents this year. I think the number is hovering around 1900, and today we nearly saw it increase by a good few right in front of our eyes.

Near death experience no. 1 involved a suicidal fool in a sporty hatchback cut-in on the car in front of us at the very very last minute and at insane speeds in order to get into a slightly less congested and walled off central carriageway. He miraculously missed the car and the sturdy bollards delineating the end of the slip road by inches and sped off into the distance.

Shortly afterwards Darwin-award contender number two nearly side-swiped us off the road at a roundabout as he entered the sweeping curve at a hellish speed, nearly flipping as he squeezed past us on two screeching wheels. He slowed down considerably once he got past us, having obviously scared himself, and us, half to death. At least that is how it seemed from the safe distance we immediately put between us and him, until he reached the next roundabout, and performed the exact same maneuver!

Finally, 10 minutes later, we had the pleasure of encountering your average psychotic mega-SUV-driving imbecile, who undertook us at high speed just as the lane he was in ended at the top of a winding hill. Would his lunch have got all that much colder (or his next beer that much warmer) if he’d filtered in patiently behind us, like anyone else with half a brain, half a sense of self-preservation, and half a right to hold a drivers license?

We arrived in one piece, but distinctly nervy. What happens to these people when they get behind the wheel of a car? Is it just that they know instinctively that in Spain there is a 99% percent chance that they will never be caught performing illegal and potentially lethal moves like these? Do they suffer total amnesia the moment they pass their tests and their driving instruction comes to an end?

Personally I think it is the lack of harsh policing on Spain’s roads. There may be more speed cameras around and the odd breathalysing brigade out on a weekend night in the big cities, but it obviously isn’t getting through to the likes of those who so deftly showed us their desire to wipe themselves and others off the face of the earth this morning.

Then again what can you do in a country that introduces a points system to try and remove licenses from bad drivers, but only takes 6 of the available 12 points away from drunk drivers, who are then free to go out, drink up, and head off into the wild once more?

Update: “UK drivers caught texting could get 2 years behind bars” (link) – This is the sort of thing that makes UK driving a hell of a lot safer. I’m all for Draconian policing on the roads