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 [...]
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 [...]
If Paco and Curro seem remote from Francisco, what can we say about Pepe – the nickname for José? José (Joseph) was, of course, the surrogate father of Jesus, so one explanation is that Pepe is an abbreviation of the Latin Pater Putativus (Putative Father) – PP. Another possibility is that the nickname drifted over [...]
Every other bloke in Andalucía is called Paco. In our village there’s a whole slew of them: Paco el panadero (Paco the bread van man), Paco del bar (Paco of the bar), Paco mechero (lighter Paco – a cheerful chap in his 50s with a mental age of seven who has a thing about lighters [...]
