"Estoy segura de que mi madre y mis hermanos tienen la certeza de su utilidad indiscutible en este mundo, que saben en todo momento lo que quieren, lo que les parece mal y lo que les parece bien… Y que han sufrido muy poca angustia ante ningún hecho." (from Carmen Laforet's Nada - great stuff.) Laforet, the author of the influential Bildungsroman Nada (1944) and other less-well known works, has died at the age of 82. Nada was influential partly because it found a fictional voice for women writing under Franco, partly because it found strategies for dealing the Civil War and Francoist Spain in the kind of oblique manner which bypassed the censors. For reasons which nobody's very clear about, Laforet produced practically no fiction over the last two decades of her life. Expect the Spanish language web to be full of useful articles about her over the next few days.
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... according to today's Daily Express (a front page story, no less, where it suggests, in true Express style, that Britons are leaving home for Spain in droves in anticipation of the "flood of immigrants from Eastern Europe"). Technically, of course, I'm an immigrant to Spain from Northern Europe, but nobody's ever applied the term to me - not to my face, anyway. The reasons the Express gives for moving here are not really the perceptions of someone deeply acquainted with the culture, who might have thought of a few better reasons than the ones they published:

1. They have 16 bank holidays a year - here there are only nine.

2. Petrol stations are manned by lots of staff. You never fill your own car.

3. Bars and restaurants have no set closing hours.

4. The weather is 25 per cent better than in Britain with an average daily temperature in June being 30C.

5. It has the fourth best healthcare system in the world and Britons, as EU citizens, don't have to pay.

6. It has Europe's third lowest cost of living (after Greece and Portugal).

Mmm... yes, though No. 2 could probably have been sidelined. No reference to the Spanish people, or anything like that, unless it's the petrol pump attendants - definitely a high priority when it comes to leaving your job and upping sticks with your family. The rest of them are true, probably, though I'm not sure how they measured the weather. To be fair, the Express should really have balanced things out by giving point-by-point warnings to its readers:

Six reasons not to move to Spain:

1. The shops are shut on the 16 bank holidays, so you can't buy anything.

2. The staff manning the petrol stations can sometimes be seen puffing a cigarette, so you're taking your life in your hands by buying petrol at all.

3. When you stagger out of a bar drunk at 5 in the morning, it can be hard to find a taxi, especially in the Pyrenees.

4. It's too bloody hot in July and August.

5. The healthcare system is only quick and efficient if you have a serious problem. Like everywhere else, probably, EU or no EU.

6. House prices in the cities are amongst Europe's highest, and wages are amongst Europe's lowest.

Oh, and a few Express readers might be surprised to find, also, that:

7. Spain is full of Spanish people who don't speak English.
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If, like me, you live in Europe and buy things from Amazon, then you may be assuming that it's always cheaper to buy from an Amazon close to home. Closer should be cheaper, somehow. But it may actually not be, as this handy new site, which compares the prices of the various Amazons (including p&p to your country), tells you. How much money have I thrown away down the years? (Via pjorge.com's fine site.)
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I'm working on a text about Rafael Alberti at the moment, and I'm having real problems exactly translating the word burgaillo (he used to catch and eat them as a child in Andalusia). It's become a question of honour; I've been wrestling with the bloody word for days, though I doubt whether I'd especially enjoy having a burgaillo in my mouth. What's needed here is someone who's an expert in translation, but also an expert in Mediterranean marine life, someone who feels a thrill of pleasure on seeing the word manodonta. Perhaps some types of seafood just don't travel. And while we're on Latin, then this is well worth a click of your time.
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The area near where we live has three of the finest places in Madrid to spend your money: the Santa María de la Cabeza market, a shop which sells nothing but plastic objects, and a fine two-storey ironmonger's. I was in the ironmonger's today buying two small grilles (rejilla, in the unlikely event that you should ever find yourself in Madrid needing to buy one) for a window we're having replaced. The moustached man in front of me in the queue to pay suddenly turned and said to nobody in particular "this country is una mierda". In a very lucid manner, he then went on to explain why this is so, and basically it's because the country with the some of the highest house prices in Europe is also one of the countries where people are paid least. "How can a man who earns 90,000 pesetas a month be expected to pay 20,000 pesetas every time he has to see a lawyer?" he wondered, and paused. Someone else looked at him and declared "Señor, I am that man." At that precise moment, there was a slight commotion in the shop as a security guard whipped out, from under the coat of a middle-aged man, a saw that he'd had been trying to steal and threw him out of the shop (in Madrid, you quite often see people being thrown out of shops for trying to steal). This little event seemed to be part of what the moustached man had been saying. Later I spotted him talking animatedly to his new friend, both of them no doubt putting flesh on his thesis that Spain is una mierda.

So that was what I saw today. What I saw yesterday was at the main entrance to the Corte Inglés department store in Argüelles, at the corner of Alberto Aguilera and Princesa. Every morning, an ONCE (Spanish National Organization for the Blind) lottery ticket-seller is there sitting on his stool, draped with pieces of paper. It was with mounting dread that I watched as a young Japanese woman, a tourist, hesitated for a moment and then approached him, map in hand, and asked him for directions to as she held the map up to him. But he seemed to deal with it fine. Ah, the joys of learning about the country you're visiting. Come to think of it, it probably happens to him all the time. Incidentally, if you're ever there, the young woman inside the Argüelles metro station selling lottery tickets has a beautiful, pure voice as she sings out the numbers. Someone from a record company should offer her a deal.
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St. Valentine's was yesterday. But that doesn't mean it's too late to declare your love to him/her/it. When you decide to, then one of these will help you on your way. (Via Blogdex.) And then you can travel the world together. (Via selling waves.)
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A recent New York Times article by Michael Erard tells us that 50 per cent of speaking time consists of silence. Well, it's a nice thought, but whoever carried out the research wasn't sitting in a Madrid restaurant at the time. Many Spanish people, for example, have a way of drawing out their words to fill the silence which they feel is threatening them. Ask for an opinion, and you might get back the following: "Pueeeeees... yooooooo... creo queeeeeeeeeeeeee.... no sé". There's an added advantage to this silence-filling, and it's that other people can't get their words in edgeways. But they try to anyway, turning up the volume to do so, and there you have the dynamic of a Spanish conversation. Ten people all working busily together to fill the hated silence.
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Blogging has been light of late - apologies - because I'm trying to put to bed the next-but-one issue of possibly the finest Spanish audiomagazine in the world, and too many hours in front of a computer screen is bad for the brain. Topics in the magazine will include The Wedding, Mariano Rajoy, a survey of the state of scientific research in Spain (science coverage has been regularly requested by subscribers down the years), an interview with internationally-renowned Catalan chef Ferran Adrià, a feature on the new Picasso museum in Málaga, and a feature on the Segovian folklorist Agapito Marazuela - an interesting chap, partly blind, who walked round the villages of central Spain collecting regional songs. Apparently when shy people refused to sing for him, he'd tell them that he'd just come from the neighboring village, where the songs were really good. At which point they'd start singing - it never failed. Before that, however, there's PdS XII, 1, a special edition dealing with the recovery of historical memory in Spain - powerful stuff, not all of it easy listening, but necessary to an understanding of the fascinating ways in which the country is responding to the complex historical legacy of Francoism.
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You may be interested in seeing what José María Aznar said during the 22-minute speech he gave to the US Congress earlier today. Not much of it was new, and it probably didn't have to be: so far, JMA has neatly sidestepped all the messy WMD questions which are currently bothering GB and TB in their respective countries. The Spanish PM uttered the word "libertad" 14 times, "democracia" seven, "lucha" six, "libre" or "libres" five, "September 11th" four, "amigo" three, "aliado" three, and, perhaps surprisingly, "hispana" only two: he may have other fish to fry. He also found the time to refer to Cuba as an "anomalía histórica". These basic stats give you the general flavour, and it makes you suspect that JMA needs a more creative scriptwriter. If you want to see all four pages of it, here it is, courtesy of El País.

I was surprised this morning to find I had mail from the lawyer of Spanish actress and presenter Cayetana Guillén Cuervo, a general e-mail sent to the entertainment press, denying in the strongest possible terms the rumour that she is having an affair with "un conocido político" and threatening legal action if anyone else says she is. I had no idea about any of this, so I have to thank her for alerting me to it. After asking around, I've learned that the "conocido político" with whom Sra. Guillén Cuervo is apparently not having an affair is the one on the left. (Gossip columnists take note and go to work: she does not actually deny having an affair with either of them specifically, since she mentions no names in the e-mail. Now that would have an interesting effect on Spain-US relations.) It's a shame none of it's true, but I suppose Spain can only handle one fairytale romance per year.
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The Goya Awards, which took place on Saturday night, are the Spanish Oscars - but the politics perhaps peeps through the "entertainment" more than we English speakers are used to in our cultures. Anyway, we can’t call them the Goya Awards any more – at least not in Spanish – because the Patents and Brands Office has decided that the term “Premio Goya” can only be used by the Zaragoza Professional Photographers Association. So the presenters and award winners spent the whole evening trying to avoid the phrase by saying “Goya”, “Goyas” or “premio” but not putting them together in case the infernal wrath of the ZPPA fell on their heads. Most of the ceremony shuttled between the categories of (a) dull and (b) embarrassing. “Parece increíble,” wrote Diego Galán in El País, "que quienes son capaces de admirarnos en la pantalla, tengan luego tan escaso sentido del espectáculo.” “Me aburrí,” wrote Maruja Torres, “como un merengue en una reunión de diabéticos.” The Iciar Bollaín film about domestic violence, Ti doy mis ojos, won seven awards, including all the biggies: it’s sold well to other countries and may appear at an arthouse near you some time soon. But I think, as regards two or three of the prizes, that its cause rather than the film itself was being awarded. The muy diver Mortadelo and Filemón, the most technically accomplished film in Spanish cinema history, also won lots of awards. The Association of Victims of Terrorism organized a protest at the nomination of Julio Medem’s La pelota vasca, la piel contra la piedra for best documentary, apparently under the misapprehension that Julio Medem and the Spanish film industry in general are in favour of innocent people being killed by bombs. The AVT was protesting that the film shows the victims of terrorism negatively, and the families of terrorists positively, and that it’s edited in such a way as to create a parallel between them: anyone who wants to understand something of the issue should see the film and then decide for themselves. Thus much of the evening was spent on soundbites about the importance of free speech – Medem Sí, Terrorismo No said the badges – but La pelota vasca didn’t win: apparently there was pressure from some quarters that it shouldn’t. (I haven’t seen the film that did, Jose Luis Lopez Linares's Un instante en vida ajena, because it’s never been shown in a Madrid theatre, but I will.) All awards and award winners can be seen here. I was sorry to see that the elegant Soldados de Salamina won so little - Joan Dalmau should have taken best supporting actor, as the winner, Eduard Fernández, basically admitted. And the best Spanish film of what little we've had of 2004 – Cuentos de la guerra saharaui – was also passed over, naturally. Most impressive moment of the ceremony: actress and President of the Academy Mercedes Sampietro wishing for an end to “censura – y autocensura”. (The second, of course, is the real danger.) These are strong words, but the shadow of what they describe probably hasn’t hung so heavily over Spanish life for the last 25 years.
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