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Repeating and Repeating

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The other morning on the radio, half drowned out by my electric shaver and then the shower, I realised someone was talking about problems in the Spanish education system. It caught my attention because I spent about twelve years teaching English here, in enough different contexts to see that system at close quarters. Earning a crust as an employee in Spain — especially if your Spanish isn’t top-notch — can be hard. What saved me was ending up in a town in Salamanca province where being a Brit was still a novelty. A local language academy was happy to employ me so it could advertise native-speaker classes, and from there it became relatively easy to find work whenever I moved. Over the years I taught everyone from tiny, biting children through to university students trying to beef up their CVs, as well as employees in places as varied as shopping centres, power stations and chemical works. I also spent a year teaching across the full secondary age range in a state-funded but privately r...
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Tinkle-Tinkle-a-Bell-I-Am

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Sometimes I use words that I don’t really understand. Recently, those words might have been health-related: "Just off for a PET-TAC scan," or "I’m glad to hear that your lymph nodes were OK." It wasn’t a health word that I eventually noticed, though; it was one related to churches. Now I’m not a big church user. I usually go into them if they’re open and in some place I’m visiting, but I’ve no idea why. They all look pretty much of a muchness inside—nice enough if you like statues and gold leaf and lots and lots of stone. I have tens, maybe hundreds, of photos of the insides of churches and, unless the photo has a caption, I never know where they are. This all started some while ago on a walk around Yecla in the Purísima church. Our guide pointed out a big red and yellow umbrella that she told us all basilicas have. I’ve noticed them since in various big churches and I’ve said, "Ooh, look, there’s one of those big red and yellow umbrellas to say that this place...
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DNI please?

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I often go to the cinema on Tuesdays and I usually buy the tickets online. The price of my ticket is just 2€ because of a government subsidy. The ticket for Maggie, mere stripling of a girl that she is, costs €7.40 at the over 60s rate. While it's rare at our habitual cinema, it's common at other venues, that I am asked for identification to prove that I am over 65. If I did not have my official ID with me, I presume they would refuse entry. So, despite having an unquestionable right to the subsidised price (because I'm over 65), I must prove it. In practice, this remains a theoretical concern, as carrying official identification is a legal requirement in Spain. For visiting Britons, and I presume for people of other nations, there is an obligation to carry official ID which means a passport for British citizens. Spain has a deep-rooted culture of identification, and ID cards are requested in the most unexpected situations. I often have to provide my ID number for local the...
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Slow going

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I don’t know if you remember—or were even aware, in fact—of the Lake Wobegon series by Garrison Keillor. For me, it was a radio programme about a fictional town in Minnesota where, each week, he began by saying, “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.” Pinoso is rather like that—quiet. Life here rarely moves at speed. While a few people always seem to be hurrying off to do something “mightily important”, Pinoso generally takes its time. Last week we went to the Christmas concert given by the town band. When it ended, they played the town’s anthem and everyone stood; if I’d been wearing a hat, I’d have taken it off. Perhaps a hand-on-heart moment was called for. Maggie leaned over and whispered, “It’s the Trumpton theme.” I’m sure she meant it fondly. We spent Christmas Eve with friends who live in the centre of Pinoso. They remarked that most of their neighbours live to a grand old age. There were plenty of stories: “Pilar is 93—and remember so-and-so? She lived to be 106.” The longev...
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Figgy Pudding time

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I've written about Christmas in Spain so many times that I thought I'd never cover it again. But at the moment, next to nobody is reading the blog so I thought, why not? It's an easy to write, and timely. It's done without reference to sources. I can imagine having to defend its content line by line with most Spaniards; it's a personal take. No doubt errors abound. It's begun, of course. The lights are up in the streets, the municipal nativity scenes are in place, Mariah is singing and Lidl Christmas adverts are on the telly. But the festivities haven't really begun yet—if we don't count the work shindigs and the end of course meals for clubs and classes—because, as you know, any Spanish event, to be worthy of its salt, has to involve eating. Go to the beach and you need a picnic with the rolls wrapped in albal silver paper. Go hiking up a mountain and there may be no mention of stout shoes but there will be a three line whip on taking your almuerzo (lat...
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Pinoso or el Pinos?

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I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure there’s been a bit of an upsurge in Valenciano speaking in Pinoso lately. It feels as if more young people are using it as their first language than they did just a few years ago. Of course, it could simply be that I’ve become better at recognising it—or that I’m eavesdropping more now that my leisure-time activities are shrinking along with my physical capacity.   There’s definitely an institutional push, too. The local council has been using Valenciano more and more. Only the other day, Pinoso Town Hall launched a new Facebook page—its title is in Valenciano: Ajuntament del Pinós. I wouldn’t be surprised if before long Pinoso, or El Pinós if you prefer, follows Monòver’s example and goes fully Valenciano. Monòver even changed all its road signs to Valencian versions of village names. To be fair, those were probably the original ones, though that assumes Valenciano speakers named the towns in the first place. In reality, waves of migration ...
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Is it true anyone can speak Spanish in 15 minutes a day?

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A little while ago, I blethered on about how impressed I’d been by one of those online language-learning platforms driven by AI. This post is a bit more on AI tools and learning a language—Spanish in my case. For a while now, I’ve tried to motivate myself to squeeze in just ten minutes of Spanish vocabulary every day. It’s ages since I've sat down in front of a grammar book and ploughed through the unremitting grind of learning verb tables or trying to understand demonstrative pronouns, but I decided that trying to increase my vocabulary was reasonable enough. And I still look up the odd grammar point from time to time. The adverts on Facebook and Insta insist that such things are unnecessary, and, much as I'd like to agree, I can't. Learning a language is, I think, one vast memory exercise. Obviously there are principles to understand, but language learning isn't driven by principles in the way that maths or chemistry is. Language is logical only to a point. There’s no...
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The long lasting list

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Every now and again, someone asks me for suggestions for things to do. I suspect it’s because I put photos of almost everywhere we go online, so it looks like we’re constantly out and about. We really aren’t. Still, it made me wonder whether there was a blog in it, a sort of local, "things to see and do".  I imagined it would be simple: mention a few places I liked, add in a few side references, and in no time I’d have an easy and interesting blog. So that's what I started to do. My first thought was the Casa Modernista in Novelda. Not far away, a nice, easy visit—interesting, without much walking and well laid out. People we’ve taken there have always liked it. Recently, opening times have become a bit haphazard, so it’s best to book. The Fundación Mediterráneo, which oversees the Novelda house, also runs the Azorín museum in Monóvar. It’s a nice enough old house, with links to the writer. It has wooden furniture and pretty floor tiles but its main attraction is that it’...
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Roadrunner, roadrunner

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I have a hunch that a Spanish general election is in the offing. It’s not because of the number of corruption cases hovering around the governing Socialist Party. It’s not because Junts per Catalunya has recently announced that the government hasn’t kept its promises and they can no longer be expected to support its initiatives. It’s not even because anyone has muttered about a motion of no confidence — nothing like that. No, my suspicion comes from something much slighter: Pedro Sánchez popped into the Radio 3 programme Generación Ya last week. Radio 3, for the uninitiated, is the culture station of Spain’s state broadcaster, RTVE, Radio Televisión España, one of the radio stations that together form RNE, Radio Nacional de España. It’s nothing like the BBC’s Radio 3; the Spanish equivalent for classical music would be Radio Clásica. Radio 3’s natural habitat is contemporary music — rock, pop, indie, electronic, dance, and plenty that slips between the descriptive cracks. An eclectic...
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In near Spain orbit

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This post has nothing much to do with language, but the starting point is, nonetheless, a series of videos and podcasts that I’ve recommended before. Ben and Marina, the Anglo-Spanish couple, produce this material under the Notes in Spanish banner. They currently have two strands: one devoted to pure language content, something – Six essential phrases with llevar – and the other is about how to learn – Mistakes are good, Fluency before accuracy – and so on. I like their work, and if you’re trying to learn Spanish and haven’t come across them, it’s well worth a look. Much of it is free, though they’re also happy to sell you additional materials. In their How to get better at Spanish strand, they encourage people to read in Spanish, watch Spanish videos and television, and take every chance to speak. They often repeat the idea that “You learned your native language by listening” – the notion being that if it works for babies, why not for adults? It may be a little simplistic, but it’s fa...
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