What kind of a language has two verbs for ‘to be’?! Well, Spanish does, and over at our sister site notesinspanish.com, we have prepared the definitive podcast guide on how to dominate the use of both. For full details and immediate download, click here!
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Good Old Spanish Customer Service…
Things come to a head when the power goes down at catavino.net!
In other news, things are hotting up here in Spain, which means it’s siesta season again! Do you remember what to do?
Many of you will have seen this already, but for those that haven’t, it’s worth noting a) just how a politician shouldn’t behave in pubic and b) the level of censorship employed on the PP-controlled TeleMadrid.
The first minute of the video shows TeleMadrid’s edited down version of Madrid President Esperanza Aguirre’s recent visit to a local hospital.
Jump to 1 minute 12 seconds to see the footage the channel was ordered not to show, where La Espe lost her cool …
http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=49235
Although there are signs of negotiation between the lorry drivers and the government that may bring the current Spanish transport strike to an end, food is still running out in the supermarkets. Luckily we got some staple foods in, just in case. See the video above!
Update: South of Watford weighs in, intelligently, and amusingly!
“House sales have plunged, automobiles have tanked, and credit is throttled, but Spain is experiencing an unprecedented boom in books. Once the nation that read fewer books than any other in Europe, Spaniards have become voracious readers, devouring more books than ever before.”
It does seem that books are “in” these days. Certianly this week’s book fair in Madrid’s Retiro Park, pictured above, was so claustrophobicly packed with book-hunters that I could only manage 2 minutes of browsing before heading to the quiter corners of the park.
One thing I have always loved about Spanish readers is the care they take over their books. Often they are covered immediately after purchase, albeit with ugly brown paper, which makes it impossible to see what anyone is actually reading on the Metro. I wonder if this is becuase they are actually devouring “The Amorous Adventures of Don Libido”, but according to the Independent, literary taste these days is far more high-brow than that:
“Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s latest novel, El juego del Angel, soon to appear in English as The Angel’s Game, was published in April with an astronomical print run of a million, now almost exhausted. Ken Follet’s blockbuster World Without End, which is partly set in the Basque capital, Vitoria, has sold more than a million copies since it first appeared in Spain as El Mundo sin Fin last December.”
In other cultural news, I was shocked over the weekend to hear English coming out of our 14″ make-do-for-now TV. I rushed out of the kitchen to find that the cookery program being shown on TV1 was actually broadcasting a French guy speaking English without, as is the usual practice, overdubbing him badly with Spanish audio.
Instead, to my absolute amazement, Spanish subtitles flashed by underneath. Subtitles! When it is so easy to just turn down his English audio a bit and translate in Spanish over the top, leading to insanity for anyone who is acutally an English speaker and tries to listen to both languages at once.
They say that subtitles never caught on here either because there wasn’t enought literacy in Franco’s times to make them worthwhile, or because Franco could better censor the content of foreign films by cutting out the orginal dialogue and placing a censored version over the top. Perhaps it’s all this book reading that lead to their appearance on the cookery programme on Saturday night. In any case, I’d say strange times are ahead!
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Conversation Starters in Spanish
The latest Inspired Beginners podcasts are out at our sister site Notesinspanish.com. First up, cool conversation starters, coming soon, the definitive guide to Ser and Estar!
Find full details and start listening now over at Notes in Spanish!
Photo: Murcia, Drying Up
“The Spanish Environment Ministry estimates that one-third of the county is at risk of turning into desert from a combination of climate change and poor land use. Still, national officials visibly stiffen when asked about the "Africanization" of Spain’s climate – a term now common among scientists.”
The above quote comes from a must-read article in the New York times. It is the first time I have heard the term "Africanization" applied to the future of the country’s climate, and it does not paint an optimistic picture.
Temperatures are rising, but as the article points out, in areas such as Murcia this also has a lot to do with water management, or mis-management perhaps, where the endless new golf courses are concerned. But then grass, when grown for golf courses, is said to be the most profitable crop on the planet, bringing in top tourist dollar (or euros) for local communities.
One thing is for sure, Marina and I often still dream of moving to the coast one day, but whereas we used to think about setting up long-term in Andalusia, we now think very seriously about making that investment in the north, just in case the worst-case "Africanization" scenarios come true in the next 20 to 30 years. After all, who wants to end up living in a desert?
As I am away for a couple of days, I thought I would leave you with a couple of interesting links. I’ve often heard that getting divorced in Spain is not a particularly good idea for men (people complain that the women always get the kids for example, though I have no idea if that is true), but here’s an interesting quote:
“I am a divorced man and according [to] spanish laws I don’t have the right to exist”
Read the rest at Stigma Rest Room (thanks to Charles for sending in the link).
Secondly, I’m probably the last person to mention the cool new ‘A la Carte’ section of the state Televison Española website. You can watch the best (?) programming from the last seven days from TV1 and La 2, uninterupted by ads, whenever you like.
I imagine the ads will creep in later, once they get the metrics in, but in the meantime it meant that Marina got to catch up on the latest episode of 1920’s culebron La señora, and I could get a few minutes fix (all I can take) of the super OTT documentary Comando Actualidad, all whilst sitting beyond the frontiers of Spain. The service is pretty good, and increases my hopes for the future of efficient digital content delivery in Spain.
An important comment left on the blog yesterday:
“The grass is always greener. We moved here when the Real Estate was booming, bought a house, put children into private school, at the time was not an issue. Although as they got older the fees ended up being 1000 euros a month (every month) when some salaries are not even that!! Now daughter gone back to Uk to University, no money left to continue other childs education. Cannot sell house . Over 50 so struggling to get work. Trying to make it online. It’s soul destroying, we came here for a better life and it has ended up in disaster. There is a lot more to sun sea and sangria. We came here to give our children and ourselves a better life. What more can I say. Be very careful before you upsticks and move. We are truly stuck, stressed out with limited funds.”
Read in combination with this video from the BBC, I would say a lot of those previously keen to take their family off to a better life in Spain are now thinking twice.
Meanwhile The Sun warns, “…many home-owners could now find themselves stuck in a stagnant market”, under the headline, “Property bubble bursts in Spain”.
Then we have, “Plunging prices cause pain in Spain and trap desperate Brits abroad”, from the Guardian. Pretty depressing reading.
The message seems pretty clear. Only buy property in Spain if you fall into one of these categories:
1. It is a second home that isn’t necessarily also a key investment.
2. You are retiring to that home and are convinced you don’t want to go back to the UK later.
3. You already have a very settled life here and are 100% sure you want to stay.
Moving here with a family without a hell of a job waiting for you, or trying to make a fast buck on the housing market, seems like a very bad idea these days.
And I can only imagine what the Brits’ declining faith in the Spanish property market will do the country’s already troubled construction industy… especially since most Spaniards have given up on investing in new coastal/second home properties as well.
Questions raised in this episode:
1. Is it fair that tax payers in Spain should be forced to decide whether to give a percentage of their tax bill either to the Catholic church or ‘social causes’? Shouldn’t we be given more choices? What does the church do with the money?
2. As people continue to pay good money to visit the place the Virgin Mary last appeared to three shepherds, how religious is Spain?
3. As Turkey also decides on a total smoking ban in public places, how long can Spain hold out? When will they finally ban smoking in bars and restaurants here as well?
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 