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 [...]

The other day I went down the mountain to do some gestiones. Down the mountain. Bit of an exaggeration; Macharaviaya, the village where I live is only 240 metres above sea level, but it’s ten minutes of spiralling downhill bends to get to the coast, so ‘down the mountain’ it is. Bueno, back to the [...]