La Liga

Racing Santander: 0
Barcelona: 3

Goals scored by: Villa; Iniesta and Messi

IBIZA!! Back to the Island...

For the record, we are not just going to Spain to eat Paella, sip Cider and get all cutural. Most of the time we will be having fun, and there is no place to Party like IBIZA! It is probably one of the most famous 'club' island paradises in the world. So, whip out you Venga boys CD and start getting amped! Although, I really hope they have moved on?



So I reckon 3 days on this Island Paradise is in order. We Will probably needs to progress to a small town with nothing else to do but Siesta thereafter, and eat food...

Bandera de Libertad

For those of you who can watch.

K'naan feat David Bisbal

Right, so I am back! I never went anywhere, but life happened...

So, even though the chill of Winter is still in the air here in Cape Town, I noticed a few shoots of green on the oak trees that line my street in Southern Suburbs, Cape Town. Summer is on its way and I no longer have to commute to work in darkness.

Having been able to see the city under sunlight this morning, I was reminded of an article written early this year stating that the government of our Fair City wants to model new developments and zone changes on that of Barcelona.

There seems to be quite a few similarities between Cape Town & Barcelona, Apparrently?

For one, both Cities are the epitomy of Cosmopolitan lifestyle, with cafes and restaurants. Beautiful Beaches and historical landmarks...

Who knows maybe we can have a bit of Barca in the Fairest Cape?

El desayuno

I've started to shop with "Spanish" ingredients in mind and the result has led to some cool meals. Some have gone down well, others not so much. Anyway here's one for you to try if you like.

Omelette

Two eggs

Chorizo sausage (uncooked)

Green chilli

Mozzarella cheese

Rosemary

Garlic

and lemon to squeeze over

In a bowl I mixed the eggs and mozzarella with paprika and seasoning.

Chopped up the chorizo, chilli and broke off the rosemary leaves from their stalks.

Fried up the chorizo, chilli, rosemary and garlic in Spanish olive oil till the chorizo was cooked.

Poured in the eggs and mozzarella. Left until the edges started to brown slightly.

Popped it under the grill until it starts to brown slightly.

(you should turn on the grill as soon as you start chopping up the ingredients.)

There you go. I added some salad leaves with cherry tomatoes, green olives and some plain yogurt.

Now it needs a name. Any suggestions?

¡Hola Señora de España!

El Comprador has asked me to post this as his computer said no to logging into SSGM.

Adriana Reverón Moreno

2010 winner of Miss Spain

¡Aaay!

I don't have a T.V. at home so I have to get my daily news from gym while on the row machine. On today's news a bull made a rather sneaky launch into the stadium. This isn't the picture though but now we know that this sort of thing has crossed other bull's minds. Some of you have stated that you can't watch youtube on your bandwidths so I took the liberty and broke it down for you in panel form.

Primero

Segundo

Tercero

Cuarto

Sneaky little move there. Found the leverage and the rest was just an inner evil laugh. They managed to tire the clever torro down, though it took some man power. So the lesson of this story is pretty clear. Always bring your camera cause your video could be broadcast across the globe.

El Video

¡Hola Señora!

Spanish reporter Sara Carbonero

Say it with me:

"Hello Lady!"

Basque Cider

In my first post I said I'd blog about cider (because of the whole apples thing) when we have lost interest in the blog and posting goes stagnant. I also said to check back in the middle of August as that was my prediction. Turns out I have the gift of prophecy. Here's the post about cider in Spain.

Cider has been made on the shores of the good old Iberian peninsula for some time now and has it's bearings deep in Basque Country. Asturias produces up to 80% of Spain's cider as well as consuming up to 54 litres per person a year. Another region of note is Gipuzkoa. During the Spanish civil war most apple orchards where abandoned and cider production almost became none existent except for the Gipuzkoa region. It was only until the 1980's that the production and celebration of cider came back successfully. The town of Usurbil started a day festival called Sagardo Eguna which promotes the drinking of cider and now special event is held in several towns throughout Basque Country.

There is an art to pouring the cider. The bottle of preferably one year old cider is held above the head and poured into the glass that you hold as low down as you can. It's a messy affair but necessary to oxygenate the cider and produce bubbles.

These guys have taken it further but this may very well have been a three o'clock in the morning idea.

This area also has a regional dish called Fabada made from mixed sausages, pork and butter beans. I may give it a try.

Here's something to tie it all up. Xabi Alonso comes from Basque Country.

He's famous for somethings as well.

Los Abrazos Rotos

¡Hola! Los amigos, I received an email from Labia (yes...I subscribe) and on the list of movies showing at el momento es Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces). Si, it's a Spanish film directed by Pedro Almodóvar and stars Penelope Cruththth. Z is pronounced th in Spanish, as well as ci, ce, sometimes x so there's a lot of ths going on but then so does English. There the thumb thought that theoretically those Theseuses think through the theatrical thermos...you should be feeling thoroughly thpecial right now.

I have no idea if it's good or bad, I'll have to go see it. Alberto Iglesias does the music score so at least it's going to sound good. It's running from yesterday (12th of August) til the 19th of August at the Labia on Orange. Times are a la here.

La Trailer

In the mean time

We've been a bit slack with the posting so here are some tunes to entertain you in the mean time. This clip is from the film Vengo.

Moorsic

In my previous post we had a look at how the Muslims influenced Spain, one such way was through music. A musician called Abu l-Hasan made a significant change to the ancient oud by adding a fifth string and set the foundations of Andalusian classical music. There are some other groups of people who contributed to the birth of flamenco but I'll cover those in future posts. In the mean time here's a clip from a film called Vengo that celebrates flamenco. Grab your fancy saffron sprinkled Spanish popcorn or coffee and enjoy.

When you're done with that, here's a clip of a guy playing the oud flamenco style.

COFFEE

Thristy anyone?

El Maestro

So it’s all organised, we are all going to learn Spanish. Come September you may see that our post will transform from poorly typed; spelt and grammatically incorrect English, to poorly typed; spelt and grammatically incorrect Spanish... Ah the Joy!
So how did I manage to find such a teacher? That’s a secret. Well, not actually it's just boring. So anyway this dude is apparently from Argentina and speaks fluent Spanish. He has no real credentials and that’s because I haven’t bothered to check. I am seeing it as a “Verimark” trial. If we haven’t learnt a thing in 30 days, I will demand that money back guarantee.
The real question anyway is does he know what he is in for?

Scenario 1:
Karlos might kill him with his version of Spanish food (you see we will require learning to speak conversationally, so the thinking is to talk Spanish over dinner etc). So even though Karlos cooks like Jamie O and if only Karlos had thought of the lisp first he would have been twice as famous. It could turn out to be a repeat of the Jamie does Italy show (watch it and you’ll get the joke).

Scenario 2:
As the energetic, hard to sit still type of person that I am. This will bring the teacher another challenge. After 10 minutes the conversation may turn south (meaning back to English) or I’ll get bored and walk out. Even worse I could force him into one of those ‘roll’ play scenario’s where we want to learn to shout Spanish Banter on a soccer field and force ‘Teacher’ to be the goalie, where we shout Spanish nasty’s while conducting penalty shootouts...The teacher being the target. This could send him running albeit slowly back to the train station.

Scenario 3:
Warr will get fed up with ‘Teacher’ and decide that he is no longer interested in being taught by the little swine. He will subsequently head off to Exclusive books and Purchase the BBC Language Books and DVD’s on Spanish, and end up speaking better than all of us anyway.

So to ‘Teacher’ we wish you all the luck!

Al-Andalus

The key to understanding anything is education and the best way to understanding a country's current state is to delve into their history and see what events have shaped their way of life and thinking. In the case of Spain this is rather broad and quite unique in comparison to the rest of Europe. Around 700CE the moors conquered the Iberian peninsula and through several hundred years they revolutionised Europe. The Moors carried what they had learnt from the Greeks, added their own advancements and then returned this back to Europe via Spain. Europeans subsequently took what they had learnt from the Arabs, added their advancements and carried it throughout Europe effectively kick starting the Renaissance, one of the most important eras in Europe's history. I fortunately have found a fantastic documentary explaining this part of Spain's history. If you have the time and the bandwidth to go through it, I would strongly recommend that you do. It conveys a good picture of the layers involved in the development of this rather fascinating country.

San Sebastián

Wouldn't mind spending some time over here, would you?

Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències

Well, in keeping with the Valencian swing of things I came across this marvel of architecture. The City of Arts and Sciences is a sort of educational/entertainment centre, lets call it an edutainium. It was designed by local architect Santiago Calatrava and is divided up into several parts. L 'Hemisfèric represents an eye (apparently it "blinks") and it houses an Imax Cinema, a Planetarium and a Laserium. El Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe is shaped like a whale skeleton and handles the science side of things. The other part I found interesting is the L'Umbracle; it contains plant species indigenous to Valencia such as lavender, honeysuckle, palm tree and bougainvillea (that was one I wasn't expecting). The Edutainium also has the largest oceanographic aquarium in Europe.

Here's a bit of history. Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències is build on what used to be the original path of the Rió Turia but due to a serious flood in the 50's the river was diverted and the remaining riverbed was converted into a long park basically filled with all sorts of entertainment for the citizens of Valencia. Would be a great place to chillax siesta style, get some edumication and then head of for some extroverted noches partijes.

You can see the park running through the city in this map.

Here's a aerial shot of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències . See the yellow circle in the top left hand side of the picture?

It's a giant Gulliver jungle gym.

Valencia: The City of Extroverts!

This city is probably one of the most exciting cities in Spain. Its the third biggest city with the Biggest street party, Las Fallas (Needs its own post). It has many well know sights and activities and it is also on the coast, so the beach is always a winner. Furthermore, just some 38km away is the sight for the World’s biggest food fight, La Tomatina! (See our post La Tomatina)

It has been stated by an article I read, that the city of Valencia contains 700 000 extroverts. The article explains that the citizens are very social and there is always something on the go. It would also be fair to say this city has a whole lot of party animals who are friendly in nature. So I reckon this is where meeting and socializing with Spaniards will be ideal.The leisure supply that offers the Valencian nightlife is considered one of the most exciting and complete of Spain. The narrow streets of the "Barrio del Carmen" and around the street "Caballeros" are the places where you can find all the action.The night entertainment in Valencia starts at 23:00. The most visited Clubs are in the zone called "Viveros" but, the fun also can be found in places such as Aragón avenue, Canovas square , Blasco Ibáñez avenue, Honduras square, Xúquer square and Juan Llorens. Going out at night in Valencia also implies visiting the bars that are situated in the historical center of the city around the "Plaza de la Virgen".
If you go to Valencia in the summer, you must go to the beach and have fun, here you'll find a lot of bars and restaurants, some of them are very antique and are decorated in a very simple and luminous manner, most of them have balconies from which you can watch the sea, these restaurants offer traditional sea food.
It is common to begin the Party on Thursday/ Friday eve and only arrive home on Sunday morning.
In Summary, I would say this is the City for the energetic. So I reckon that this may be the highlight to my visit to Spain, and my Amigos may need to prepare!!

La Bandera

I thought it would be a great idea to cover some history of the Spanish flag seeing as the start of the working week is so inspirational. Monday is lunes in Spanish which is similar to the English word lunatic...just saying.

To cut a long post short I'll just give you a link here to the explanation of the coat of arms because it is a lot longer than what I previously thought and my hopes of some quick research was mercilessly dashed on this fine lunes. I'll give you a low down on the colours though. The red and yellow stripes don't mean anything. They have always been part of Spain and this is evident throughout their history on shields and flags of all sorts of kingdoms, organisations, royal seals, blogs, etc. One story is that it represents the bull fights. Red for the blood and yellow for the sand but that's all very romantic in a violent gladiator kind of way that only men will get. The other is that the Spanish king apparently adorned his armada with the colours to easily differentiate them from the others. That makes more sense to me. "¡Hey Pablo! Stop shotting at us, we're on the same team. ¿What do I have to do? Wave a big red and yello...I just thought of something."