spain – Page 84 – don't confuse the narrator

tall, taller, tallest

The rains have come, so we must get the windscreen wipers fixed on the car. That will probably entail a trip to the mechanic’s workshop – a trip to the taller mecánico.

Personally, I’ve always wondered who the shorter mechanic was, but perhaps you have to be over a certain height in Spain to be admitted into the secrets of the internal combustion engine.

Looking more closely at the photo, I see that this is not the competitive situation I had imagined at first: it’s not the taller mechanic and the even taller mechanic, just the same mecánico aiming his advertising at different levels. Perhaps he hopes that when Sultan Kosen does get a car that he can drive comfortably, he will take it to this workshop for repairs.

having a good time

The weather in Spain is very predictable. Not just what weather there will be, but when it will happen. Last year, on September 10th I wrote about the first torrential rains of the autumn. This year, I received an email on September 13th including the phrase, “Greetings from stormy Madrid.”

As you can infer from the photo, a lot of the rain in Spain has fallen in my back garden. Whether the rains will last long enough to do much good remains to be seen, but, for the moment at least, I don’t need to do any watering.
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post scriptum

Today, almost a month after it was started, the wildfire in the Valle del Tiétar has officially been declared over.

It started at lunchtime on the 28th of July and was under control by the 3rd of August. On the 13th it was described as “técnicamente extinguido”, but there have been people deployed in the area since then, damping down and making sure that it didn’t flare up again.

Two people died and 4211 hectares were burned, including a large area of the Sierra de Gredos Regional Park.

I can’t help but wonder how the person who started it feels now.

ash Monday

Today, after six days, they have finally announced that the fire in the mountains is “controlado”.

In the end, the area of land destroyed is said to be around 4,200 hectares. That sounds vast to me, but Agustín González, presidente de la Diputación de Ávila, has described it as “un rinconcito” – a tiny corner – Continue reading “ash Monday”

of eñes and Elvis

Some years ago there was a great fuss about whether Spain was to be allowed to keep on producing and using computer keyboards with the ‘ñ’ character. I think it was around the same time that the alphabet was reformed and, although the eñe retained its independence, the ‘ch’ and ‘ll’ ceased to be treated as separate letters in dictionaries. (I was reminded of this on my last UK visit, when I had fun trying to find things in my sister’s old Collins dictionary published decades before the reform.)
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