spanish – Page 9 – don't confuse the narrator

abridged

I knew that la crisis had forced lifestyle changes on everyone in Spain, but I’m shocked to find it has apparently made inroads into a tradition that lies at the very heart of the Spanish psyche: el puente.

No, not that kind of puente. I’m talking about the puente that connects a public holiday to the weekend with an additional – official or unofficial – day off.

Tomorrow is San José, which is a fiesta for some comunidades. Usually, such holidays are celebrated on the actual day on which they fall, which means that when there’s a Tuesday or a Thursday fiesta lots of workers take the intervening day and make a four-day weekend of it.
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losing the thread

Amor, Amor
(after Garcilaso de la Vega)

Love offered me a cloth so fine and rich,
 with folds so ample, I could not refuse 
but sewed myself a habit, stitch by stitch.
 I find the garment shrinks with daily use:
 its generous measures pucker and draw tight,
 I suffocate where once I’d room to spare;
I stretch and strain to free myself, I fight, 
yet still the precious fabric will not tear.
Come, show me one who wants to cut these ties –
 these homespun tapes we fashion for our lives
 to bind ourselves to husbands or to wives –
 and I will show you one who’s spinning lies.
 Each wears the cloth he wove, though I confess 
I wonder if mine’s shroud or wedding dress.

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kisses

As Valentine’s day approaches, the conversation turns to love poetry; revisiting an old poem, I found this fragment:

So many kisses left
on the station steps: kisses
scattered en la boca
del metro.

If the metro station in question were the one in the photo, I can only assume there was a tango playing in the background.

On a lingustic tangent, I really wish bus stops were underground so they also had a “boca”: then I could have called the post “besos & buses” and pondered the association between the Spanish besar and the English “buss”.

no joke

One more post prompted by my trip to Madrid this week: at metro Bilbao, my attention was caught by this advert:

There has to be a joke there somewhere, but “Yo momma is una auténtica terapeuta tailandesa – a real Thai masseuse” just doesn’t seem to work.
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smoke screens

At this time of year, all round the valley, everyone is busy pruning trees and vines and making the most of the dry weather for bonfires. The clouds, mist and smoke all blend and it’s impossible to tell which it is hanging in the still air.