Two of the first fillers you ever pick up in Spanish are más o menos (more or less) and así-así (so-so), phrases that you hear over and over again in everyday exchanges. Half the time you don’t even hear them: you see them. “How was the exam?” Hold out your arm and rotate your wrist [...]
The most obscene gesture in Spain is the forearm jerk, known as el corte de manga, or ‘sleeve cut’. Much favoured by tantrumy footballers, this involves shooting the left arm straight up at a 90 degree angle while whacking your right palm into the elbow joint. The underlying message, which may or may not be [...]
A lot of people from the UK react with shock horror when I say that I am still Valerie Collins. They expect me to have a Spanish married name: some sort of aristocratic double or triple barreled mouthful: at the very least an exotic and probably unpronounceable surname. But many of them don’t realise that [...]
Shopping in Spain reminds me of how things used to be in the UK. Yes, there are masses of out of town shopping centres, and yes, you will find all the major chains in the High Street, but there’s still room for the ‘little guys’, for the quirky independent establishments that somehow manage to thrive [...]
Have you heard the ‘good’ news? Starbucks is coming to Malaga. Or at least to Malaga airport- when the new terminal opens this Easter. It’s eight years now since the first two Starbucks opened in Madrid. Today there are 71 of them cluttering up the centres of Madrid, Barcelona and Sevilla. There are also two [...]
