I am delighted when people comment on this blog, it’s what makes me want to keep writing. But recently there have been a number of abusive and provocative comments. Therefore, I would like to ask everyone to ensure that from now on comments are polite and friendly (nearly all of your comments are!)

In the future any comments that are racist, sexist, rude, abusive, or written with the deliberate intention to provoke, will be deleted. Please also remember to enter a real email address with your comments (your email will never be published). Any comments that do not have a real email address, or that come from the same IP address with different commenter names, will be deleted. Finally, only comments in English or Spanish will be accepted.

Thanks for helping me to keep this a more friendly place from now on!

Well done Spain! It’s half past midnight here in Madrid and the city is alive with horns, fire crackers and sirens! ¡Hemos podido! ¡¡¡Campeones!!! Not sure anyone will get much sleep tonight!

Full reports: English (BBC) | Spanish (20 Minutos)

With the whipping Spain gave the Russians last night, I think they really could even beat the Germans in Sunday’s European Cup Final… though you can never bet on anything where the Germans and football are concerned. It’s going to be a hell of a night for Spain on Sunday though. Can’t wait! Come on Spain!!! Sorry, I mean ¡Vamos España!

Photo: Jarra and Terrace Awning

1.The Romanians

I was chatting today to two thirty-something Romanian guys who were cleaning a pool up here in the Sierra above Madrid. They told me something that interested me, that they would probably head back to Romania next year as the construction industry was going downhill so fast here that there was less and less work with the big contractors.

Plus the extra they did earn here compared to in Romania was hardly worth it these days, as prices in Spain continue to climb. “I’d rather earn 50 Euros less a week in Romania and live about the same”. I wonder if we’ll see a lot of Eastern European immigrants returning over the next few years.

2. The Ice Cream Seller

I was parking my scooter in Madrid the other day, next to one of those green plastic ice-cream and drinks kiosks you find on the streets of big cities. The owner appeared from the back and shook the remaining crumbs from an ice-cream cone bag onto the pavement. I was staring at him, so he looked up, smiled, and said, “It’s for the pigeons, they’ll probably all get diabetes. They need the extra sugar though, so they can, you know…”, and he slowly raised the index finger of his right hand and grinned, “…get it up and make lots more little pigeons!” Strangest conversation I’d had in a while. I must get out more.

[3. Conversation with myself]

[I had to delete a lot of unpleasant comments earlier this week, which made me think, "man, this place must be giving off some negative vibes, I can't be doing with that!" Time to get back to the way things were, a return to the levels of Spain-loving positivity that actually drew complaints in the past, like the comment I found on another blog, "Notes from Spain is just too nice". Hmmmm, feeling better already! Think I deserve a tinto de verano.]

Marina and I are staying up at the in-laws place in the Sierra above Madrid for a few days, where the skies are blue, the air is sweet with the smell of the pines that grow in everyone’s gardens, lizards bask on paving stones, and the summer heat feels just fine in the light, silent breeze.

We wake up with fresh fruit and bird song, and wifi means I can sit writing this from out on an awning-covered terrace, watching those lazy lizards, and the neighbour’s cats that amble self-righteously across the garden. This is the life.

Last night we wandered down to the local bar and sat outside drinking one of the greatest summer beverages ever invented: tinto de verano (literally, ’summer red’). You take a big glass, full of ice, then pour cheap red wine up to the half-way line, and fill to the top with lemonade. Add a slice of lemon and there you have it, instant, light-headed summer refreshment:

Tapas suggestions? Perfect with a plate of ham croquetas or patatas fritas.

(More on Spanish tapas phrases at Notes in Spanish).

We had lunch in a favourite village bar today up in the sierra an hour above Madrid. The bar has a ‘comedor’ (restaurant section) at the back, with two large rooms, the slightly smaller of which is joined to the larger one by a small flight of steps. To kind of comply with anti-smoking laws put in place a few years back (that state that any bar or restaurant over, I believe, 100 m squared must have a section designated for smokers that doesn’t exceed a third of the total floor space), the slightly smaller room up the steps has been deemed the no-smoking area.

Well, that’s a start, except for the fact that this room is only opened on weekends when there are enough customers to merit opening it up and either heating or air-conditioning the extra space, depending on the time of year.

So, we had lunch surrounded by the local Ducados and cigar-smoking obreros and oldies, while the door to the non-smoking section remained shut. Lovely. We like the place so much that we still go, but try to arrive early before it gets too smoky. We have asked to be let in the non-smoking area in the past, but it didn’t go down well (es que la calefacción no está puesta… … the heating isn’t on… ) so we’ve given up.

Theoretically someone could report the place but it seems unlikely as a) it’s a family run place that has been frequented by the same people for years, and everyone is fond of them, and b) everyone just accepts that this is quite normal and knows nothing would come of reporting them anyway.

How I wish Spain would join France, Spain, Italy, Ireland etc and sort smoking in bars and restaurants out once and for all… Come on Zapatero, get with the program!

Last night some friends and I were sitting in the front half of a drainingly hot, smokey, smelly bar watching Spain battle it out with Italy in the Euro-Copa quarter finals. In a large room behind us, 40 or 50 crazed supporters were watching the same game, on the same channel yet, infuriatingly, they were getting the signal 3 seconds ahead of us.

This meant that their ‘oooooooooh’s and ‘ayyyyyyyy’s would let us know that whatever was looking like an exciting dash towards the goal on our tele, was already another cock up in real time on theirs. Most annoying. Turns out they were watching an analogue signal on a huge old TV, whilst our plasma TV used the newer, but delayed, digital tuner technology. That’s the thanks you get for splashing out on a newer Television.

At half time we couldn’t take another minute of the the heat, smoke, and pre-emptive groans from the room next door, and went back to a friend’s house to see Spain eventually make it through to the semi-finals for the first time in a major competition in about 3,000 years. More of the same on Thursday!

In other (related?) news, classy on-line paper 20minutos.com reports that Spanish women are the most depressed in Europe (no doubt because their men are so obsessed with the football), whilst the men are the second most depressed after the British, and continent-leaders on the anxiety ladder.

Thinking this sounded unlikely (penalty shoot-outs aside, Spanish men don’t look all that anxious), I tried to google my way to the original article in the British Journal of Psychiatry, coming away only with this far more likely sounding article from 2001 in the Telegraph:

Liverpool worst city in Europe for depression. People living in Liverpool are more than twice as likely to be depressed as people in other parts of Europe … The lowest rate was found in Santander, where only one in 40 people was a sufferer.

Whatever the case, if Spain win when the final whistle blows against the Russians in Thursday’s semi-finals, expect half of Spain to become instantly, euphoricly un-depressed… followed by the other, more up-to-date half of the country with better TV’s three seconds later.

Let’s find out just how much you know! How many of the questions below can you answer without using Google or other online search engines, wiki’s etc to help you? Answers in the comments please, and remember, if you use Google etc to help you, please do not enter your answer here!

The prize: huge amounts of Kudos to anyone who gets all 12 questions right! Full respect for anyone that knows 9 or more. A few points for anyone that knows more that 6, and nout for the rest of you

Quiz time!

1. Where do the lovers lie of which it is said ’stupid her, stupid him’?

2. This photo was taken from a vast protrusion of rock overlooking a very pleasant Mediterranean town not far from Alicante? What is the name of the rocky mass, and the town it looks over?

3. Who created the combs of the wind, and where are they?

4. In, for example, 1998, how many ‘duros’ were there in ‘un kilo’, and what is each of these?

5. Name this vertiginous nothern walk, the mountain range it starts in, and both of the villages it links:

6. Name two things you often find floating in the top of a Sopa Castellana.

7. In which northerly port is the football pitch in the photo below located, and what is the name of the stadium?

8. What is Tarifa often claimed to have the highest rate of in Spain, and why?

9. Where is the Puerto del Suspiro del Moro and why is it so named?

10. In what classic Spain novel did the earth move, and for whom?

11. In which city does this crazy biannual competition take place?

12. Which is the 5th biggest city in Spain?

Answers below, and remember, no Google etc!

Update: Wow, all the correct answers are in, in less that 12 hours! Scroll down the comments until you see CORRECT ANSWERS HERE printed 3 times (about comment no. 27) to read the summary. Well done all, and you can still test your Spain knowledge if you haven’t taken the quiz yet - let us know how you do!

What kind of a language has two verbs for ‘to be’?! Well, Spanish does, and over at our sister site notesinspanish.com, we have prepared the definitive podcast guide on how to dominate the use of both. For full details and immediate download, click here!

I came across this wonderful analysis of the Spanish rude/polite debate over at the mighty Thoughts from Galicia blog:

…at the macro level, the Spanish are amongst the loveliest people on the planet but, at the micro level, they can come across as astonishingly rude [...] my explanation for this paradox is that the Spanish owe no duty of consideration to strangers but a huge duty towards anyone with a personal connection.

Colin goes on to say:

I was reminded of this listening to a Notes from Spain podcast in which Ben and Marina were talking about the smoking that goes on here where people are eating. Marina’s most pertinent comment was that - putting aside the possibility he was just one of the world’s rude people - the guy who was breathing his fumes over their tapas would certainly have asked permission to smoke if he’d been there among a group of friends.

I think the key here is the phrase, “the Spanish owe no duty of consideration to strangers but a huge duty towards anyone with a personal connection”. Of course this is not always going to be the case, there will be many Spaniards who are outrageously polite at all times to all strangers. But when I showed the above quote to the Spaniard sitting behind me, she simply said, ‘That’s totally true’.

Now, before anyone gets angry about this post, here is the question I’d really like to ask: if this is indeed true, is this just a Spanish thing? Or is this polite/rude - friends/strangers paradox found in most countries these days?