Ha! I hear all you SpainStruckers say, we already know the word dieta, Mo, so you can save yourself the trouble and write about something else.

Ho! is my reply to that. Dieta obviously means “diet” in Spanish, so don´t expect me to warble on about something that simple (though I can´t even lose the kilo or six I´d like to).

No. I´m interested in another meaning of  this word in the plural - las dietas, the daily expenses, mainly for food, that people in good jobs get when they´re on business trips.  In Latin America, the term used is los viáticos, and the relevance of this will soon become apparent.

I heard a story about this dietas question today which not only has left me discombobulated but even more disdainful of the institutional disintegration afflicting this country today.

Turns out I know a guy who works for a big, Spanish cultural organisation (though perhaps “disorganisation” would be a more appropriate word).

It also turns out that this guy was invited by the Spanish Embassy in a large, South American country to give a forty-five minute plenary address to the country´s national Academia de la Lengua. 

Wow! CV opportunity.

The guy, whose salary has been cut by ten percent in the last few years and whose last Christmas pay was withheld by the government, and who is about to lose – illegally – some €700 from his remaining, meagre stipend, asked his boss if he should go.

No. The institution would not finance such a trip.

Consequently, the Academia de la Lengua, also acting for a university in the capital city with a name that rhymes with alharacas (big song and dance about something) stated it would finance the flight and hotel for a four-night stay.

“Am I getting to go now [ya shitbag bastard ye]“? enquired this guy of his boss.

“Do whatever you think is best for the institution”.

So it was all arranged. The guy offered to throw in a three-hour course along with the plenary since he was going so far and it was costing the Embassy so much. Everybody was delighted.

But, turns out that today our guy was informed by his boss´s secretary (his boss hasn´t spoken to him personally in over a year and has removed his contact details from the organisation´s publicity) that, fine, but would he sign this bit of paper in which he accepts that the showcase, cultural organisation, presided over by an old gentleman with a liking for Botswanan elephants, won´t be paying his dietas - and furthermore, while he´s in South America, he won´t be getting the lunch vales he does when working in Madrid.

He refused to sign it.  And he´s not going to write back to the Embassy in South America and ask if they´ll feed him while he´s there or if he´ll have to run down the street and buy a couple of arepas with his own plata.

So, that original meaning of dieta again.  Guy´s getting thin.

And furthermore, there´s a bit of a quibble about travel and medical insurance…….

Turns out this  South American country´s just lost one dictator, is engaged in a dodgy election procedure/power struggle, has the highest murder rate in the world and the guy´s not sure if they´re paying for his insurance!

The other meaning of viático is the sustenance of Holy Communion administered to a person in mortal danger.

Apt.

So this guy says he´s not going like that.

And this girl is glad.

She could have made a real song and dance about this, but she didn´t.

Yet.

Bieber Babe and Guest Poster, Malassie.

Well, I know I promised I´d write a J.B. review  but I just couldn´t be biebered, so at the risk of falling foul of anti-child slavery laws, here´s my second guest post by none other than Malassie, Bieberphile extraordinare.

(I slipped her a fiver for this, quite sufficient I think, since I had to edit it extensively, so don´t go running to Save the Children)!

In order to get your neurons working, and to counteract the frivolity of the subject matter, the review of the nenaza´s concert is in Spanish. ( I´ll tell you what nenaza means below).

“El concierto de Justin Bieber fue el mejor concierto que he visto en mi vida. Justin no empezó el concierto hasta que todo el mundo estuviera dentro, algo que fue necesario ya que la organización fue penosa. Perdimos los teloneros aunque escuchamos las dos últimas canciones de Carly Rae Jespen, This Kiss y Call Me, Maybe.

El Palau Sant Jordi era enorme. Tenía una planta normal arriba del todo donde había tiendas pequeñas con todo de Justin Bieber, desde camisetas hasta gorras y más. Luego estaban las gradas – había escaleras para bajar. Luego más abajo estaba el escenario que tenía 5 pantallas, una enorme, escaleras y una parte que salía como un catwalk.

Cuando había ambiente y el lugar tenía a todo el mundo dentro las luces hicieron un ‘flash’ y una foto de una llave con un ala de ángel y en la esquina del ala, una ‘B,’ apareció en la enorme pantalla. Luego un contador de 10 minutos empezó a contar hacia abajo.

Al llegar a cero, se fue desplazando por una especie de túnel de tren y luego había flashes de fotos de Justin y un hombre negro hablando. Luego apareció en letras grandes, ’Justin Bieber’s Believe’. La pantalla grande se dividió en dos y Justin salió arriba con un traje blanco y unas alas enormes de ángel.

Cuando tocó tierra, los bailarines de al lado suyo le quitaron el arnés, él dijo ‘Let’s go!’ y la música empezó  con la canción, All Around The World.  Los bailarines y las coreografías, en mi opinión, eran excelentes y la organización de los números fue exquisita y preciosa.  Estas son las canciones que hizo:

• All Around the World
• Take You
• Catching Feelings
• One Time
• Eenie Meenie
• Somebody to Love
• Love Me Like You Do
• She Don’t Like the Lights
• Die In Your Arms
• Out of Town Girl
• Be Alright (Con guitarra)
• Fall
• Never Say Never
• Beauty And a Beat
• -Solo de batería-
• One Less Lonely Girl
• As Long As You Love Me
• Believe (Con piano)
• Boyfriend
• Baby 

Cada par de canciones ponían pequeños videos para entretenernos mientras Justin recuperaba su aliento y se cambiaba de ropa, algo inteligente. Los vídeos estaban muy bien hechos y sin duda, se lo habían currado.

Uno de los que me gustaba mucho era para  la canción She don’t like the lights, donde él se fue del escenario perseguido por paparazzi y en la pantalla aparecía con un traje y estaban en un edificio abandonado. Él corría de los paparazzi mientras que ellos le perseguían. Luego salió al tejado y se cayó y fue cuando apareció otra vez en el escenario y empezó la canción.

Los efectos eran impresionantes, desde láseres hasta explosiones y seguro que era algo difícil de manejar porque era inolvidable. Los sonidos no estaban mal, ya que se podía escuchar a Justin con tanto grito de chicas, aunque en una canción calmada mi madre decía que desafinaba.

Niña pasmá

Después de algunas canciones, Justin hablaba en inglés y parecía como si las chicas le entendieran (claro que yo le entendía perfectamente). Se veía como quería hacer un buen trabajo porque se le veía en la cara y lo representó perfectamente, porque me dejó pasmada.

Justin incluso lanzó cosas a las fans (una camiseta blanca,una chaqueta negra de cuero, una botella de agua de la que había bebido y sus gafas de sol) y se quitó su camiseta y actuó con su chaqueta y nada debajo y la verdad es que su cuerpo estaba muy bien formado.

Dan Kanter es el guitarrista de Justin y es muy bueno, sobre todo con guitarra acústica. Hizo un dúo de guitarras con Justin muy bonito.

Después de la canción Beauty and a Beat (donde no apareció Nicki Minaj sino que aparecía rapeando en un vídeo), Justin volvió a desaparecer y reapareció en la parte alta del escenario donde una batería se encontraba e hizo un solo de batería muy bueno.

Después de más canciones, Justin empezó la canción Believe donde tocó la primera parte, calmada, en un piano de cola blanco mientras cantaba.

Terminó con la tan conocida canción Baby en la que se quitó su camiseta blanca. Cuando terminó dijo, ‘Thank you very much, Barcelona’ y desapareció. Las luces se encendieron y el show terminó.

En conclusión, Justin, la música, los bailarines, las canciones, los bailes y los efectos fueron impresionantes e inolvidables, algo que vale la pena del dinero”.

Sara Parrondo Dolan, aka Malassie.

OK, some vocab from Mom.

nenaza – big lassie

planta – floor

gradas – bleachers

pantalla – screen

escenario – stage

de al lado suyo -on his side

desplazar – move

arnés – harness

aliento – breath

currárselo – work hard on something

desafinar – sing out of tune

tejado – roof

pasmada – amazed in a slightly imbecile way

piano de cola – grand piano

And now for some English.

Check out this “expert” video from some eight year old to hear how well the young Spanish girls sang in English to “Yástin” in Barcelona (ruining my favourite J.B. song into the bargain).

Even The Bieb can´t belieb what bedlam it was.

Mo is peeved, but this time I´m not alone. There were thousands of us peeved parents still queuing outside the vast Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona on Saturday night as the first of Justin Bieber´s two teloneros (support acts) was onstage entertaining what must have amounted to a couple of hundred spectators afflicted with Bieber Fever.

On our tickets for Bieber we were informed that the doors would open at 17.30.  At 19.00, having stood in one of two massive queues in the cold for over an hour and still 100 yards from the entrance, the second telonera, em, Barley Hay Stetson (?) of Call Me Maybe fame was already on the stage, playing to a half-full arena.

See me, maybe?

I was seriously beginning to worry we wouldn´t get inside by the time Justin Bieber, the absolute idol of my 13 year old Malassie and the reason for our trip to Barcelona to the tune of some €500, appeared on stage, even late, as he is often reputed to be.

Paradoxically, this seemed an even greater worry when the “organizers” decided to move things along. A policeman with a megaphone started ordering all those over 14 years of age just to “go in.”

The result was a stampede.  The lines broke form and thousands of people, most of them screaming fourteenies-and-over, ran for the entrances. The esplanade of tall columns of lights became a free for all and the recent tragedy, in which five girls were crushed to death at the Madrid Arena due to a lack of organization and security, came to mind.

The same policeman announced that parents of children under 14, the under-fourteenies, were to continue to wait in line to – and I´m not joking – sign an authorization!

What?

We parents of the young Beliebers, only present because at the time of purchase it had been stipulated that under fourteens had to be accompanied by an adult, also with a purchased ticket, were now expected to wait in line while Harley Day Heston (?) went through her act.

But we did.  People complained, myself included, stung once again by how painfully, inefficiently bureacratic even the simplest of endeavours – taking your daughter to a concert – is in this country.

As for authorization, I was Malassie´s in-the-flesh authorization! Or did these Barcelona bureaucrats or promoters fondly Belieb that the likes of myself was attending this concert because I wanted to see and hear a 19 year-old Canadian heart throb use barely literate lyrics like, “Baby, baby, baby, oh, I´m like, baby, baby, baby, oh?

I´m a veteran of rock concerts and wouldn´t be seen dead at such a preppy, pretty, perfunctory, poppy affair by choice, but even us ageing rock chicks love our daughters and want to make their dreams come true.  So there I was – and well aware why my presence was required.

When I was younger, I sneaked into Celtic Park free to see The Who, paid the Glasgow Apollo security staff a quid to get into a Queen gig, had to give up front row seats for Kiss or be crushed by a pressing avalanche of Kiss Army adepts and feared the Apollo´s bouncing balcony would cede under the weight and headbanging of Status Quo fans. Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath, Nazareth, Rainbow, Bowie, Bon Jovi, Motorhead, Rush, UFO, Boston –  in the seventies I went to what I could afford and it wasn´t half of what my guitarist brother went to.

I learned what claustrophobia meant at rock concerts.

I get security.

But this wasn´t it.

We continued to wait. Then the woman in front of me and her two daughters slipped through an askew barrier and made for the melée of fourteenies-and-over pushing to get in.  In one beat I grabbed my daughter´s hand and we did the same.

“If anybody asks you, say you´re fourteen, I told her,” as we jostled under the nose of the harrassed doorperson trying to check backpacks  [why would you need a backpack at a concert?] and bags and tickets and DNIs at the same time.  I waved the tickets under his nose and we ran through.

It was chaos inside the stadium, with girls running shrieking down huge flights of stairs, people queuing up for drinks and hot dogs [what is it with the Spaniards that they have to load up with food at a concert?] and the sound of Kaley Jay Crepton (?) deafening our attempts at hearing the directions of the steward to our seats.

By the time we finally sat down, Sally Née Getsome -  MUM!  HER FRICKIN´ NAME IS CARLY RAE JEPSEN! - was starting her biggest hit. We half-listened to it as we decoated and rewatered and she soon left the stage, probably as peeved as we were and wondering what the hell Freddie Mercury had seen in Barcelona.

The Palau, at half-past seven, when the main attraction was supposed to appear, was about half-full.

Unbeliebable.

Fortunately Justin Bieber didn´t appear until everybody was finally inside. If you´re interested (and over 14) I´ll give you my concert review this week. Meanwhile, have a laugh at this parody of Call Me Maybe by, em, well, you know ….

Gift gone wrong – Malassie was terrified!

 I´m finally getting round to another post in what was going to be a series dedicated to the large Romanian population in Alcalá de Henares.

However, the post isn´t quite what it should be since, rather than describing the activities of Romanians here, I´m rehashing a post from an earlier blog I had. 

It details a trip I made to Romania in 2009 and serves as a nice lens through which to start to get to know these Eastern European people.

Book – a – Rest

I did, I did, I booked myself a rest of only four days in the Romanian capital, Bucuresti  - anyone know how to get the  little tail on the  t ? -  in the style I like best.  Not quite resting, but getting away from it all (household appliances) experiencing a change and carrying out a bit of research.

Romania has Roman and Latin cultural and linguistic roots and so I´d wanted to go for some time.  I didn´t love it, right away, but it definitely began to grow on me.

So, here´s the worst and best of Bucharest. As any traveller knows it´s impossible to be objective about places visited as you project so much of yourself onto them. I gave up on objectivity some time ago as an intellectual chimera – even though in practice it has to be striven for – so my opinions are only that.

It was grey and wet, but I´m a Scot so it only meant that I didn´t see the city at its best. Many of the buildings, including the outside of my accommodation, were ugly leftovers from communism.  The interior of my flat, however, was modern, spotless and complete even if the stairways were antiquated and dreary and the lift had three battered doors requiring three point turns to get in and out.

Imagine doing that with shopping bags, I thought, though the situation never came up as the whole time I was there, I never saw a food shop.

Cue comments on the cuisine.

I had my prejudices, I admit, but I ate splendidly. I had acquaintances from the Instituto Cervantes to show me around and so I often left the menu choices to them. While  I didn´t take to the tripe soup with cream and vinegar, I liked everything else, and I can be a fussy eater.

I liked the mamaliga,  a sort of yellow polenta, loved the aubergine paté, and of course, adored the little mici sausages. There was much more but as I was engaged in fascinating conversation, I hardly noticed it.

I did like the wine, though, big glasses of it served up, resulting in one of my programmed chats going a bit AWOL. I lost the address of my accommodation and the person I´d arranged to meet rang up the agency and, very nicely, walked me home.

From tierra to tara

Cucuteni “goddess”.

I´m a museum freak and went to the Museum of the Romanian Peasant - Muzeul Taranului Roman  (I can´t believe how long it took me to work out that tara and tierra are cognates) and the National History Museum.

I thought both were very good although the information was mostly in Romanian, logically enough. The rural artifacts and crafts were wonderful in the Muzeul Taranului Roman and I was suitable amazed at the massive replica of Trajan´s column depicting the conquest of the native Dacians by the Romans, in the National History Museum.

Trajan was “Spanish”, from what is now Seville, adding another Latin twist to my attempts at understanding the history. I was disappointed to find that the Cucuteni artifacts I´d wanted to see were “not there” – just that, I could get no further information. I hope to see them another time.

The Madman´s House

And, of course, I went to see the gargantuan House of the Republic, popularly known as the “Madman´s House“, built by the dictator Ceausescu and now housing the Parliament.  It looked pretty much like it does in the stock photos, so I just stood in front of it with my “I was here” face on.

I didn´t go inside as my friend wanted to take me around some other places, sometimes on the underground, which I thought was very good. One place was the historic quarter of Lipscani (named for Leipzig) with its mercantile architectural jewels and old shops. Another was to a puffy Russian domed church and yet another, Bucharest University. There was the glass-roofed Pasajul Villacros and Carul cu Bere tavern from eighteen something. I loved it, all of it!

Near East

Bucharest is only three and a half hours from Madrid by plane.  And there was nothing about it to suggest it wasn´t Europe. I´d been warned about packs of stray dogs, orphan pickpocket rent boys living in the sewers and unbearable scenes of Roma poverty. I saw none of this in the capital, though I don´t doubt that these are daily phenomena a little way away from the centre of the city.

My hostess waved her hand, waved it again, when I asked where all the privation was. Moved on, moved on. On my way to the airport, my blink-of-an-eye visit over, a smiling family of gypsies crossed the road in front of my taxi, half of them bent over from the waist like silverbacks and leaning on makeshift crutches. Moving on, moving on, smiling.

There´s a lot of Glorious Martyrs in Romania every day, not just those gunned down during the 1989 Revolution/Putsch. There´s also a lot of nation-building to be done to create opportunities for this young, educated and vibrant population.

Now I have a context against which to set Romanian immigrants in Spain. It´s obvious that, like all immigrants, they´re only here because they can ´t make a living in their own country, one  every bit as fascinating and beautiful as Spain.

I wish them luck.

P.S. I avoided all vampire-related stuff except for the gift for my daughter.

La Corinna who´s with La Corona

It seems I´m the last to know.

Despite my last post on Monsters Together, I´ve missed something rather monstrous that has apparently been un secreto a voces (an open secret) around the Big, Bad Capital City and in the foreign press.

It´s something that makes perfect sense, however.

Sex.

In all machinations in the mire, sex is usually well-mudded in among the Swiss bank accounts, undeclared palaces and private jets of the enfangados (up to their eyeballs in mud ones).

And in the current corruption case against the King´s son-in-law, Iñaki Mangarín (pilferer), I mean Urdangarín, the sex element has the habitual, stereotypical shape of a blonde, social climber with an exotic name and an occupation that defies definition.

Turns out that “she” is the tasty little Frankfurter in the delicatessen of chorizos that is contemporary Spain, a self-styled, German “Prinzessen” Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein (a magnificent moniker which literally translates from the German, of course, as “you´re not totally sane, are you, Witty?”).

This German “aristocrat” with the rumbustious title borrowed unscrupulously from a previous marriage victim has obviously eschewed the inscrutable philosophy of her namesake, Ludwig Wittgenstein, in favour of a completely practical approach to life: bed a monarch.  So the forty-something, trout-pouting, Barbie Doll princess is the current, PVC plaything of the Spanish Crown, Juan Carlos I of Spain.

Since I don´t watch gossip programmes or read the prensa rosa (except at the hairdresser´s) I didn´t know that the Prinzessin had organized the King´s hip-crunching, elephant-murdering trip to Botswana. Or that she was with him on that trip, stopping just short of climbing into the hospital bed with him.

I don´t tend to care about these sex things, despite their effect on the Queen (see La Soledad de la Reina). But I do care about corruption and it turns out that the Princess, the King and Iñaki Urdangarín, while perhaps not quite in the same bed together (though rumour has it that Iñaki has followed the road well-travelled by the soberano sobón, the feely-uppy sovereign), have been in “business” together.

Take the letter that Iñaki Urdangarín, the self-signed Duque Empalmado (cute word-play on his title of Duke of Palma and estar empalmado, to have a hard on) wrote to Corinna in his primary school English to thank her for setting up a fictitious post of Chairman in a sports Foundation for him, with a remuneration of €250,000 per annum for doing absolutely nothing.

“Dear Corinna,

Thank you for your new rapport that you sent me a few days ago. I imagine the effort that you and Guy have done.

Sorry for my silence along these days but I wanted to check with my father in law and Alberto Aza as well before give you feed-back.

I am studding your proposal with a lot of care and I imagine that following days we will meet us to deal the project.

Thank you again and big kiss,

Iñaki Urdangarín”.

Clearly, the Urdangarín mudtrail leads all the way to the Casa del Rey. Perhaps this is why the un-hip, stumbling King with his two walking sticks refuses to abdicate despite falling flat on his face in more ways than one.

Because without the Crown to hide behind, we´d get him, as well as his “studding” nephew.

Dos monstruos juntos (2011)  is the cautionary tale of two privileged, Spanish “beautiful people,” Alfredo and Patricia, bent on achieving even greater social and monetary success, whatever it takes.

They move from New York to set up restaurants and clubs in London and quickly become the fashionable people to hang out with.

Yet their ascent involves laundering dirty money and dealing with corrupt individuals, which ultimately changes their relationship. Izaguirre draws the characters of the “two monsters together” with great skill and uses his own celebrity status to provide an insider view – and condemnation –  of the monstrous goings-on in the hedonistic Spain of recent years.

If you can read Spanish, read this enjoyable and well-researched novel to understand the process of moral corruption so prevalent here today.

See larger image Dos monstruos juntos (Kindle Edition) By (author) Boris Izaguirre Release date September 13, 2011.

In Spain it´s often difficult to find popular images or concepts of women that don´t lock into the virgen/puta dichotomy.

Prostitution is booming despite, or perhaps because, of the economic crisis, with macroburdeles (brothel complexes) like those in La Jonquera engaged in turf wars over this lucrative business.

And as for saints, heavy, wooden idols of suffering, lace-clad, virginal womanhood abound.

So something different, something that helps evoke the veritable armies of Spanish women who have rejected these two stereotypes – historically and in the present – is noteworthy.

On our recent trip to Extemadura we found that noteworthy something different:  the Serrana of La Vera.  The word serrana comes from sierra (mountain range) and means a woman of rural, highland origins.  We stumbled on her statue after driving through miles of foggy woods in search of the Mirador (look out point) over Cuacos de Yuste.

In the local, popular mythos the Serrana is said to have been a woman named Isabel Carvajal who lived in Garganta de la Olla during the Middle Ages.  After an amorous dispute, in which she lost her faith in marriage, she´s said to have taken to the hills.

Writers such as the prolific Lope de Vega (1562 – 1635) then incorporated the figure of the Serrana into their literary works, inspired by the stories and songs about her in oral cultures.

The Ballad of the Wild Woman

Despite varying versions, the ballad usually tells of a tanned, blonde woman armed with a crossbow or other weapon. When the mood comes upon her, she drags men off to her cave to have sex with them before killing them.

One prisoner, a young serranillo who had been gathering firewood, manages to escape from her cave full of skulls.

The enraged Serrana is fearful the serranillo will reveal the location of her cave and so she pursues him, her sling loaded with a huge boulder.  She succeeds in knocking off the young man´s cap made of  good, fine cloth and though he laments the loss of it, nothing would induce him to go back and retrieve it from the wild creature whom he describes as a beautiful woman from the waist up and a mare from the waist down!

Performance poster

I like this story.  But before I get hate mail accusing me of being a feminazi, I should clarify that, of course, the Serrana is hardly a model for contemporary women. Yet the principle of rebellion which she embodies is refreshing, even if she is vilified in the ballad for her crimes.

And I´m not alone in my fascination. As of 2010, the town of Garganta de la Olla has celebrated a yearly Serrana de la Vera Day, complete with dramatisations of her life.

Now a tourist attraction, to my mind the Serrana is every bit as good a draw as the tearful, submissive and passive Virgins paraded on high throughout Spain and the brothel tourism that attracts customers from across the French border.

Outwith the control of men, a legendary transgressor who was the mistress of her own destiny, the Serrana is a reminder that women can, and will, oppose a repressive social system such as the one still prevalent in Spain today, despite all the freedoms we´re supposed to enjoy in our “post-feminist” world.

Here´s a version of the ballad.

The ideal couple – and I´m not kidding!

2012 is over, thank the stars, and the carnage of  Malala, Miriam and “The Daughter of India”,  whose vagina was penetrated by an iron bar during rape, is behind us.

So as we head into 2013, by all accounts destined to be Spain´s worst year since the Invincible Armada bottomed up off the coast of Ireland, TV stations aim to bolster our spirits before the coming fray with cheery,  Año Nuevo programmes.

The ideal life is projected before us,  happiness, abundance, beauty, couture, a “leggy blonde in a long dress” and:

 ¡Chicote!  The nearest, human equivalent to a meatball with legs, even if he is a renowned chef  (in a world in which nearly all the cooking is done by women who don´t look like Sandra Sabatés).

So here´s a little quiz to keep you busy over the New Year.  What´s the relationship between the first paragraph above (the one with the carnage) and the photograph above it (the one with the carne)?

Here´s a video to help you along.

¡Feliz feminista 2013 a tod@s!

Seafood soup

On Christmas Day our first dinner course was this fabulous seafood soup, courtesy of husband Ramón. It was delicious and, though a wee bit of a “strain” to make, (the prawns and mussels have to be cleared of sea debris several times) it´s well worth it.  Here´s Ramón´s recipe – go ahead and try it, you´ll love it!

INGREDIENTS:

1 kilo of mussels (mejillones)

1 or 2 monkfish tails (colas de rape)

12 king prawns (gambones)

A [sherry] glass of dry sherry (copita de jeréz,  eg. fino or manzanilla)

1 potato

1 stick celery (apio)

1 leek (puerro)

A few peppercorns (granos de pimienta negra)

1 tomato, peeled and seeded

1 cup vermicelli noodles (fideos)

1 boiled egg

Half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper (pimienta de cayena)

2 bay leafs (hojas de laurél)

Fresh garlic cloves

Fresh coriander (cilantro)

Salt and black pepper to taste

Extra virgin olive oil

YOU WILL NEED

A large sieve, a medium pan, a large pot and a blender.

THE STOCK

The secret of any soup is the stock. Here we need 3 to 4 pints of well reduced and sieved fish and seafood stock.  Monkfish, though an ugly fish with an ugly name, is one of the best for stock, since it has firm flesh and jellyish bones, giving fantastic flavour and a great consistency.

Ramón in his new pinny, a gift from our friend Karen.

• Steam the mussels in about a half pint of water and keep the juices.  Sieve and filter until clear. Discard any mussels that don´t open.
• Shell the king prawns and keep the tails. Boil the remaining heads and shells in another half pint of water.  Sieve and filter until clear and add to the mussel stock.
• Simmer the monkfish tails in two pints of water with a bay leaf, some salt and a couple of whole peppercorns for about half an hour or until it has reduced about 25% and the fish is tender.
• Remove the tails and separate the flesh from the bones.  Keep the former and discard the latter.
• Sieve and filter and add to the shellfish stock.

THE SOUP BASE

Vegetables provide lots of flavour and natural goodness to soups. The potato acts as a thickener.

• Heat two tablespoonfuls of olive oil in a pot and when hot, add the leek, potato, tomato and celery, all cut into small pieces.
• Season with a little salt and pepper.
• Add two cloves of garlic, diced, and the cayenne pepper.
• Once the garlic has softened slightly, add the stock and allow to simmer for half an hour.
• In the meantime, boil two eggs until hard (12 minutes).  Shell them and split them in half to separate the whites from the yolks.  Add the yolks to the soup and process the lot in a blender until smooth,  sieving again if necessary. Reserve the whites.

FINISHING UP

The soup is now ready for all the  ”bits” we´re going enjoy to be incorporated:

• the king prawn tails, diced
•  the fish meat, flaked
• the white of the boiled eggs, cubed
• a cup and a half of vermicelli, which will provide the carbohydrates. You can add the sherry here too and allow  the alcohol to simmer off. When the pasta is done, add a few sprigs of fresh, finely chopped, coriander.

ENJOY!

None left!

No caption needed!

As we get older, we realise that life is a lottery, despite everything we´re taught to the contrary. The belief in hard work, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and keeping on trying because you WILL succeed is only applicable in limited measure given all the kinds of struggle people face.

Because shit happens.  Shit like severe disability.

Not a week ago, as I was coming out of the bank, I bumped into a couple from around the barrio. They said hello politely, but perhaps because their struggles were all too apparent, they didn´t engage in conversation.

The woman, always pretty but now very thin, used to work in a supermarket, but due to what is clearly a degenerative illness, had to give it up.  She is also a a cancer survivor.

The couple have two daughters around the same age as mine, now 13.  One of the girls was born with a severe muscular disability but the couple fought to have her educated in a normal school and get her proper medical care and she is doing well.

I stood on the corner after they left and chastised myself for going on about my husband not getting his Christmas pay. I told myself to be grateful that our little family is free of the struggles this couple are facing every day.

I wished to God something could be done for them.  And something has.

THEY´VE WON THE LOTTERY!!!

I´d been muttering on again about our Scrooge Christmas, especially when I heard that the El Gordo lottery had struck five minutes down the road from us.

Hell, for once Alcalá is “SpainStruck” and we get nada, I thought, forgetting that other lottery, the one that struck our trains in 2004, leaving dozens of alcalaínos maimed or dead.

That was a lottery our safe and sound family won.

When I heard about the lottery win, I did think of this struggling family, but I cynically decided that no, despite being so deserving, luck probably wouldn´t be on their side.

I was wrong!  You can see them in this video, sitting in the car. How wonderful to see this careworn man, who hasn´t been paid his wages in five months, smile and look his age again.  His daughter tells how they´ve struggled for a few years and that her parents deserve the win.

Well, I´m crying like a madalena! It won´t make a believer in God or destiny or karma out of me – though it might these neighbours – but I´m thrilled that my one, little prayer was answered.  While the health issues faced by this family won´t go away, a fat bank balance will make life much, much easier for them.

So despite these times of “austerity” (legal robbery) this turn of events is making this Christmas a very happy one for me and I hope you all have  a very Happy Christmas and a Guid New Year!