Blogueo, ergo sum

 

To blog or not to blog. Actually, that isn’t the question. I blog, therefore I am is more like it. It works in Spanish, too. Blogueo, luego existo. Blogueo? Well, there is a word for blog in castellano, sort of – bitácora, from cuaderno de bitácora, meaning log book (you know, “Cuaderno bitácora de Capitan Kirk, fecha estellar ….”), but that’s a whole three syllables longer and a whole lot less flexible than the ultra-economical, ultra-versatile blog. The only snag is that it ends in g and turns into a mangled ‘blogghh’ in the mouths of some speakers. You do get hard g’s in Spanish, but they are always followed by a, o or u; for example, gasolina, gorila, guitara. When followed by an e or an i, the g becomes soft and guttural, as in genio or gigante. Sticking one at the end of a word is just asking for trouble – pronounced according to Spanish spelling rules, dog and blog rhyme with the Scottish ‘loch’.

But that’s ok. Borrowed words from English are always knocked about a bit phonetically and grammatically to make them sound and look more Spanish. To make the verb ‘to blog’, you just add -ear. First we had zapear (to zap), then surfear, (to surf the Net), then chatear (to chat) and now bloguear (to bore everyone with whatever’s on your mind). You have to add the u, by the way, to make the g hard. From there, you get bloguero / bloguera (blogger), the gerund, blogueando, the past participle, blogueado, and just about any other part of speech you care to construct.

So, there you have it. Instead of letting Valerie (my good buddy and co-author of In the Garlic) battle in the blogósfera single-handedly, this reluctant bloguera has finally blogueado her way into existence.

Theresa O’Shea

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spanish Snow

Hello from rainy Manchester, where I’m visiting my mother. I left Barcelona in balmy, springlike weather. We flew over the snow-capped Pyrenees. And I thought: they look like meringue. And remembered the Spanish expression for beating egg whites till they form stiff peaks: montar las claras a punto de nieve – to snow point. And it was so good to see the snow. Snow, as well as a bit of a lift (sorry about the pun) for the skiing industry, means meltwater, and that means water for the reservoirs. However, as the TV3 weatherman reminded us on Friday, a lot of that meltwater is going to end up in France rather than Catalunya’s depleted reservoirs. In the high Pyrenees the Val d’Aran (where Baqueira Beret is located, a favourite ski resort of royals and celebs plus paparazzi, as seen in the pages of ‘¡Hola!’ magazine) is the only district of Catalunya that mostly belongs to the Atlantic rather than the Mediterranean basin. Here is the source of the Garona – the River Garonne which flows down into France and through Toulouse. Then it goes west to Bordeaux where it forms the Gironde estuary with the waters of the Dordogne and flows into the Atlantic. For all you lovers of useless information out there – and pub quizmasters — the Garonne is one of the few rivers in the world with a tidal bore, which surfers and jet skiers can ride more than 70 miles upstream from the Atlantic. I really had no idea.

The Noise Police

Back to the frenzy that is Barcelona in its normal state. I wake to the roar of engines and machines in our patio de manzana and go to the balcony to check. Oh great! They’ve come to clean off the obscene graffiti that appeared over the holidays in the playground below.

Later, mid morning, I leave the building. My first reaction: I want out. I want desert island. The city is once again totally clogged with traffic. On every street I walk along on my usual bank, shop and errand routes there is drilling and clanging, pavements and sections of road cordoned off, the air thick with dust, men heaving huge sections of pipe in and out of holes, sandblasting facades, welding metal in doorways in showers of sparks.

Obras are the one thing you MUST learn to live with in Spain – especially in crowded cities like Barcelona. Repairs, restoration, rehabilitation, construction, demolition – all go under the one word. Work.

Spain is one of the noisiest countries in the world. In theory, there are all sorts of rules and regulations about noise. However, as we discovered last spring, they do not apply to obras. That was when they demolished the car park down in the patio and were building the community garden or playground. My then flatmate was recovering from major surgery and chemotherapy and feeling like hell, and there was a generator or some such monstrously deafening machine right under his window. I called the Guardia Urbana to come and measure the decibels. They just had to be way above the permitted level. Two guardias came, stuck their heads out of the window, and said there was no point in measuring the decibels as the regulations did not apply to obras, which are by their very nature temporary. Even though, said the guardias with a rueful chuckle, obras can go on for years and years.
“So I just have to screw myself!” said my flatmate. Actually he said something way way more obscene, and in Spanish, but you get the idea.
“If they were a fixture, like a bar making noise every night, then you could report them. Or if the obras start before 8 am.”
Thank you, officer.
In fact the guardia were very helpful and as a personal favour went down and persuaded the obras guys to move the generator to the opposite end of the patio.

Anyway, come on, one day you’ll be doing your own obras. I have lived and worked through the renovation of almost every flat in my block – next door, upstairs, across the landing. I’ve also lived through the restoration of our facades, the cabling of my neighbourhood, the six-month long conversion of an apartment block round the corner into a hotel – they actually had a siren go off every day at 8 am calling the workers in. And then, finally – gloat- I did my own.

No em busquis…

Problems with the neighbours – with the comunidad de propietarios, or in more colloquial terms, the escalera de vecinos. The owners’ association or ‘staircase of neighbours’ never fails to elicit groans and horror stories from everyone who has ever lived in a block of flats in Spain here (and not only in Spain).

The escalera de vecinos has been immortalised in the immensely popular and hilarious Spanish TV comedy series, originally aired on Antena 3, ‘Aquí no hay quien viva‘, which translates absolutely literally as ‘here there is no one who can live’. Obviously, no way does that evoke the torment of life on a staircase of systematically warring neighbours. The expression is really an interjection, a complaint, a supplication, a cri de coeur: living in this place is a fate worse than death!

I won’t go into details here, but the episode in my building was bad enough for me to call in mis abogados, which made me feel safe and protected. The neighbours should know better than to mess with me because my late husband was un abogado – a lawyer – and we still have close contact with his bufete (law firm). I knew that ‘the neighbours’ – a vague term which in fact only represented a few of them – legally didn’t have a leg to stand on in their accusations, but I just kept getting shouted down and insulted. All attempts to explain things reasonably failed, as did all attempts at verbal self defense. Fortunately our lawyer has a very loud voice, as well as the law in her hand, and her eyes give off sparks. She went to the neighbours meeting (den of lions) and put them in their place. I’m still kicking myself though, because in all my arguments with the neighbours, not once did I remember to use one of my favourite Catalan expressions, which I picked up from the TV3 soap opera. It would have been perfect. ‘No em busquis, que em trobaràs.’ Literally: don’t look for me, ‘cos you’ll find me. In a word: Don’t mess with me.

Humorous nutshell explanations of Comunidad de Propietarios, Escalera de Vecinos and Bufete are all included in our book In The Garlic: Your Informative Guide to Spain.

Feliz Año

Buenos días, Feliz Año, Bon Any, and welcome to the In The Garlic blog.

Apart from washing my face and drinking coffee this morning (oh, and eating a stale madalena), kicking off this blog is my very first action of 2008.

A madalena is a typically Spanish lemon-tanged cup cake or what in my Manchester childhood we called fairy cake. Googling ‘madalena’ brings up several parishes named Madalena in the Portuguese speaking world. And www.madalena.pl (I checked this out because one of my sons is studying Polish in Warsaw) devoted to the Madalena series of loos, basins and bathroom fixtures made by – oddly enough – the Spanish firm Roca, which was founded in 1917 and is now the second biggest manufacturer of bathroom stuff in the world. Just in case you were wondering what Spain has given to the world apart from paella and tapas.

I’ve only just discovered that the official spelling of the cake, as established by Spanish language custodians the Real Academia de la Lengua Española, is magdalena. And their official definition is: (my translation) a small cake, made and presented in a corrugated paper mould, with the same ingredients as sponge in different proportions. This is the Spanish version, of course, of the French madeleine made famous by Proust: “A small cake baked in a shell-shaped mold. Also, a garnish of artichoke bottoms, onions and green beans.” Wow. I had no idea. Not only about the veggie garnish, but also about the shell shape. Most Spanish madalenas I have ever eaten are round or square. Or rectangular, when they are called valencianas.

Anyway, In The Garlic is not a cookbook and it’s not about garlic. It’s about Spain, so this blog might be better entitled the Spain something or other blog. Hey, we could even run a competition to find a truly original and non cliched catchphrase or slogan. We think In The Garlic is pretty good, though, and it’s certainly catching on amongst readers.

In The Garlic is our literal translation of the Spanish expression ‘en el ajo’. Estar en el ajo – to be in the garlic – means to be clued up, to be in the know. So when my friend and colleague Theresa O’Shea and I were planning a book that would share our personal experience of life in Spain with those hundreds of thousands of expats living in Spain or planning to or in the process of relocating, that’s the title that sprang to mind: In The Garlic. And because the information in the book is presented in a fun way, with lots of personal anecdotes, quirkiness, jokes and humour, we subtitled it: Your Informative, Fun Guide to Spain.

We made a mistake with the book cover though. We reckoned that prospective readers would be hooked by the title ‘In The Garlic’ and say: “huh? What the hell is that about?” And pick it up to browse. The cover features a cute garlic man with a speech bubble, and inside the bubble is the definition of In The Garlic. Go and have a look at www.inthegarlic.com We now realise, however, that you can’t read the words in the speech bubble when the cover is reduced and uploaded to online bookstores and other websites, or reproduced postage stamp size in newspapers and magazines.

Anyway, from here we’ll be sharing more informative, fun stuff about Spain, news about the book and our promotional activities, and other writings.

Who am I? I’m sure there’s a place to put our profile, but I haven’t got my head around it yet. To use the words of Mark Joyner of www.simpleology.com, I’m an official blogging moron. Anyway, I’m Valerie Collins, a writer living in Barcelona, the capital of Catalunya in north-eastern Spain. Theresa lives in a small village near Málaga, in Andalucía in southern Spain. She’s away at the moment and will be on board soon. She’s also an official blogging moron.

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.