Photo – Madrid’s Retiro Park

It’s still unseasonably sunny here – I mean it’s sunny every day, hardly a cloud in the sky – no snow this year. That was one of the things that most impressed me about Madrid when I first moved here 13 years ago, opening the curtains in the morning (or the shutters, to be more precise), and seeing bright blue skies, rather than the grey gloom I’d been used to for 3 years of London winters previously.

You can read about that big move in Errant in Iberia, and get ready for your own forays into Spain with our Spanish learning conversations!

If you are a Spain books lover and have read Errant already, then check out our list of favourites, and an interesting new venture, books4spain.com – good reviews on great Spain books.

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Ben and Marina discuss on-going events in “The Spanish Revolution”.

Other links mentioned in the podcast:

- Our Cazorla coverage
- The 150 posters and slogans from the Sol encampment
- The best one of all, from this South of Watford post
- Rosa Diez’s party mentioned in the podcast (that we couldn’t remember the name of!) is Unión Progreso y Democracia (explained on wikipedia here)
- Our Spanish learning site: Notes in Spanish – new videos up for Spanish learners!

And Finally… 2 Videos

The first, from 4Ojos, shows life under the awnings in the Puerta del Sol encampment at its height, just a day before the May 22nd elections:

And this wonderful video (in Spanish) that is doing the rounds at the moment that really explains the whole mess in Spanish politics and economics about as well as anyone could hope to:

A wander from Atotcha up to the Plaza Santa Ana this morning shows that, despite myriad changes, Madrid is still the same old Madrid, and Spain is still fantastically Spanish… Much of what I saw reminded me of the city as I first found it, 12 years ago…

Here a lottery seller stands in the Paseo del Prado, the week’s previous results pinned to the tree behind him:

And still the bright red, back-breaking Bombonas (gas bottles) are a viable source of city energy in 2011… Fiambres (ham, chorizo etc) and Frutos Secos (nuts) are a viable source of human energy too!

Nacional products, like these walnuts, are still considered to be highly superior:

Spot the odd can out (hint, by Heinz!):

Posters on a closed-down fish market advertise a protest organised under the slogan “Joventud Sin Futuro – Sin Casa, Sin Curro, Sin Pensión, Sin Miedo” (Youth without a future – no house, no work, no pension, no fear):

The walk was roughly this:

View Larger Map

More good stuff: Did you catch yesterday’s podcast?

I was poking around on Twitter (me here) recently, and found a link to Stuck in Customs, which has some amazing HDR photos on… which rekindled my interest in photography. Wonderful how the web can do that. Above is a first new HDR experiment (bigger here). Great fun!

We were meant to be in Asturias today, checking out places that we might want to live one day, but energies dictated otherwise, and we’ve had to put it off for now. But we’ll get there in the end, to that quiet mountainous province in the north, where the landscapes are so beautiful they just make you want to dance…

(Click pics to enlarge, a bit)

To celebrate a change in the blog decor here at NotesinSpanish.com (and the fact that I can now display much bigger photos!), here’s an old favourite from the archives, does anyone know where it is, and what this town is famous for? Hit the comments link above!

And the very best photo from the Notes from Spain Flickr Group for June, was, in my humble opinion, Celebración, by Mirall, showing revellers in Madrid’s Fuente de Quevedo, celebrating Sunday’s European Cup win:

Do check out the rest of Mirall’s photo’s on Flickr.

Meanwhile, as the Independent claims that Spain are actually the Champions of nearly everything (thanks Parubin and Margot for the link), I wonder, how much does a major win like this actually do to boost a country’s moral, and image in the eyes of the rest of the world?

Hello from …. ? We are away for a few days fishing for beautiful places, sites and sounds to post here upon our return, but in the meantime, here is a very little quiz for you…

The above photo (large version) was taken yesterday afternoon on the second stop on our trip, where is it?