We’ve put up two great new Spanish-learning videos this week at notesinspanish.com – do check them out on the Notes in Spanish Blog! Gracias! Bén

Casteller from Mike Randolph on Vimeo.

In the city of Tarragona, Spain, castellers gather every two years to see who can build the highest, most intricate human castles. It requires astonishing strength, finesse, and balance. Not to mention courage.

Thanks so much to Mike for sending me this video. I went to this event, the Concurs de Castells, about 10 years ago (and wrote about it in Errant), and have longed to go back since, it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in my life. If you want to go in two years time, get a ticket as soon as they are released, they fly!

Competition time!

Over at Notes in Spanish we are holding a quick competition with a 100 Euro prize for the best Spanish-learning question.

Virtual Business cards!

I was in our local herbolario (health-food store) the other day, when I saw that there were a bunch of cards on the counter belonging to a friend of ours that has opened a yoga studio. How nice for the store owner to advertise this for them for free.

It made me wonder what the online equivalent of ‘leaving a few cards on the counter’ would be. I know the web has ‘link exchanges’ (though we don’t do that), and just plain linking to something one likes (we do do this!), but how would a friend leave a card on the Notes from Spain counter?

Later that day I got an email from Simon at Los Gazquez (where we recorded a great podcast!) sent out to all his friends:

If you believe in sustainable and cultural tourism, if you believe art has the ability to make communities and individuals thrive, if you believe that a house built on profound ecological principles as a means to set an example to the world on how individuals can bring change and reverse the adverse effects of climate change and environmental pollution then become an Amigo de Los Gázquez.
All we ask is that you help out with a little promotion. From time to time we will produce a new graphic image such as those you can see on the blog page (cool, tasteful and entertaining, not spammy) promoting either new residencies by artists, creative courses or eco-holidays.

Well we certainly believe in all those things, so here is Simon’s card, on our counter, from these Amigos de Los Gazquez:

At last, Apple is doing film rentals in Spain

Spain has been way way behind on the on-line rentals thing (no netflix for us!), but according to El Pais, Apple has finally opened up a modern-day video club to the nation. It will be interesting to see how much uptake it has in a country that is rather fond of the bit-torrent option… “According to the United States, Spain has one of the worst file-sharing “problems” in the world.”

Click here to see what movies Apple is offering in iTunes so far in Spain – not much!

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