Be an Expat Cultural Ambassador: Host a Thanksgiving Lunch the Saturday After

Spaniards will also be interested in all the Thanksgiving
 iconography, like the cornucopia or seasonal squashes.

I have a suggestion to all my expat readers in Spain. Next Saturday, a week from today, host a Thanksgiving lunch and invite some of your Spanish friends.

I know some of you are already planning to continue this American tradition, despite the fact that there is no holiday on Thursday and that nobody else here is as excited or nostalgic as you are. But for those of you who are planning a meal, make sure to invite a local. And for those of you who weren't, reconsider hosting the meal. Thanksgiving ("Día de Acción de Gracias") is an excellent American tradition to share with your non-American friends. And I recommend that, rather than try and complicate matters by hosting it the Thursday evening of, move it to the following Saturday (Nov. 26th this year) for lunch, which will meld better with your Spanish friends and families' schedules and tendency to do family meals around lunchtime. (The weekend lunchtime in Spain, afterall, is practically the same as the unusually early 4PM Thanksgiving "dinner time" in the U.S.) Besides, I think the Saturday after Thanksgiving has practically become the official Expat Thanksgiving Day. (Run a quick search on "expat Thanksgiving" if you don't believe me.)

Our Thanksgiving table in 2009

A Thanksgiving meal is an excellent opportunity for you to be a cultural ambassador. I have hosted a Thanksgiving meal here in a Spain a couple of times already, and am gearing up for another one next week. My Spanish friends love it! Apparently they know all about it from watching American TV shows, and above all because of the series Friends. So they were tickled pink to see all the classic dishes: turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, various kinds of New world squashes, or sweet potato. But were interested in learning more about the many variations and culinary twists on Thanksgiving dishes that we Americans are more routinely exposed to back home. (What an opportunity to impress Spaniards with the fact that Americans do have a local cuisine!) They would also start to ask me about the story of the pilgrims (peregrinos, a.k.s. puritanos) and Indians (nativos, indígenas), though I would try and respond by talking about present day traditions like watching an American football game or the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, or the annual presidential tradition of pardoning one turkey the Wednesday before. (You may also want to brush up on your Thanksgiving history ahead of time by visiting this site.)

The Macy's Parade in Manhattan: parade of cartoon characters, global logos, and holiday icons.
Watching it on television is one of several national Thanksgiving pastimes in the U.S.

What's more, back home the tradition in my family, and I believe in many families, was to always try and invite at least one person or couple who you only sort of knew, but were interested in getting to know better. It helped to mix up the usual conversation. So Thanksgiving is a perfect platform for all you expats who've been too shy or had too hard a time getting your Spanish colleagues to hang out with you socially. Just play the "it's culturally important to me" card (even if it's not). I personally try to aim for a mix of Americans and Spaniards, so that there's an even cross-cultural dialogue at my Thanksgiving lunch (and also so that I'm not the only American there besieged by questions... and, for that matter, so that there are other Americans there to argue with me over my limited, or biased answers).

My wife's apple pie with a lattice top for the pie crust

I'm giving you a week's notice, which should be plenty of time to plan it. Some dishes are even easier here to tackle than back home. Here in Valencia, Pollos Planes, a butcher chain that specializes in poultry, has been able to provide me a fresh whole turkey (pavo) with only 4-5 days notice. Fresh turkey, not frozen! Though in my experience it is often hard finding the ingredients to bake things in Spain, El Corte Inglés carries most of the baking goods you will need. They also carry certain classic accompaniments like Cranberry sauce (salsa de arándanos rojos). My wife manages to make an amazing apple pie (tarta de manzana)... a dessert that always impresses our Spanish guests both for its deliciousness and its American authenticity. Being from Texas we always make corn bread (pan de maíz), but surely you'll have some regional dish that you'll want to introduce your friends to.

So try it out. I promise you will have fun. Your American guests will appreciate it for the nostalgia and pride, and your Spanish guests will enjoy sharing an authentic American experience with their American hosts. So Happy Turkey Day to all of you!

A Thanksgiving Turkey, centerpiece of the holiday meal.

Don Ernesto: Hemingway's Novels in Spain

So if in the previous entry I gave us a rough introduction to what Hemingway actually saw in Spain, here I want to open a dialogue about Hemingway's literary vision of Spain. One book I've been reading on this subject is Edward Stanton, Hemingway en España (Editorial Castalia, 1989). (Admittedly probably not the best source, but one of the few available to me in Valencia's public library.) This is how I might sum up Stanton's characterization of Don Ernesto: he grew up loving the untamed wilderness of America (think fishing in Michigan with dad) and resenting his overly civilized mother (think forced music lessons). He left America with a deep dissatisfaction with the suburbanization of the West and the effete and insincere 1920s high society.

Spain, and bullfighting in particular, as Hemingway imagined it, was the opposite of these: a sincere, untamed, joyful (as in not cynical), manly (as in, not for "dandies"), humble world. Projecting this image onto the Spain he discovered, Hemingway described it as the place where he should have been born, the place of his spiritual rebirth. And thousands of others have flocked here (and elsewhere) chasing after the myth of this charismatic, adventurous visitor. I'm inclined to call it the "Hemingway Mystique," if you can pardon the pun on Betty Friedan's classic feminist treatise.

On the trail of a great writer, you can find this sign in Pamplona along the route
of the running of the bulls made famous by the Nobel Laureate.

For an excellent critique of Hemingway's vision of Spain, a perspective offered by a Spanish (Basque, no less) historian, Paco Pereda, check out an interview with him in its entirety at this blog. (Many thanks to The Hemingway Project for conducting this interview and posting it online. Your blog project is excellent!) I paste here a sample of the interview, which I think nicely summarizes the limitations of the Hemingway paradigm, even for explaining its central motif, the San Fermín festival and the bullfight:

"[I]t’s difficult for Americans to understand the meaning of bullfighting, but keep in mind that it’s also hard for the Spanish! For most Americans, Hemingway has been a good introduction to bullfighting, but at the same time, this has been problematic. Hemingway likes to exaggerate. He takes Spanish culture to be one huge party. Yes, there are great parties and immense enthusiasm during the bullfights, but the Spanish understand that it’s just an event. It’s not our real life. Well, the natives also tend to exaggerate; it’s normal for people to exaggerate about something they are famous for. The bullfighting situation is really not much different than the way people party and celebrate important sporting events all over the world. There is terrific enthusiasm during the event, but it’s still just a game."

It is my personal experience that these cautionary words apply equally well to all of you study abroad exchange students out there visiting Spain. (I was once one of you.) When you are living in Spain for just a year, your Spain is an extended vacation (culture = museums, travel = exotic locales and fiestas), very different from the reality that many Spaniards live (culture = evening TV and sports, travel = work commute). I think it is hugely suggestive that the title of Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises, was changed in the Spanish translation to Fiesta.

And the Pereda interview continues, offering some insight into the polemics surrounding bullfights and its politics:

"Over the last 100 years ago bullfighting has gone from a popular spectacle followed with devotion to something steeped in controversy and unacceptable to about half the population. Bullfighting has always belonged to the rural world, the conservative and the traditional peoples, the upper classes. Today Spanish society is complex, divided, postmodern, and highly urbanized. Its liberal values repudiate the mentality of risking death and bloody struggle which bullfighting is about. Bullfighting survives today thanks to the traditional sector of society and the tourists. (Hemingway has played a big role in this). Tourists come here in search of a traditional Spain that no longer exists but is prepared for them with nostalgia."

So outsiders should tread lightly when gushing about the cultural "authenticity" of witnessing a Spanish bullfight. Such claims about authenticity carry political implications for _whose_ Spain you subscribe to.

I put some of Hemingway's books to a crude test of central themes: Wordle, an online tool that generates word clouds from the most commonly used words in an inputted text. (Warning: this is a dangerously entertaining tool for us humanities scholars who publish or perish.) Don't worry, it automatically removes certain words like those favorite conjunctions "and" or "but." I've posted a few here for your entertainment.

A word frequency cloud or "wordle" generated by the text of The Sun Also Rises.
What's interesting is how little of Spain or the Hemingway paradigm comes through on this
wordle, until you peer more closely and spot: "bull", "bottle" (presumably wine), square
(presumably translated from plaza), and "fiesta".

 
This said, Hemingway's novels make for impressive prose, so much so that one could argue that they helped redefine Spain even for Spaniards. So here is a starter list of his major works which use Spain as the muse.

Major Works by Hemingway on Spain:

1926             The Sun Also Rises  – This novel is about a group of expats living in Paris,
                     who fit the profile of the "lost generation," that decide to visit Pamplona during
                     the festival of San Fermín. It is loosely autobiographical in that this is
                     precisely how Hemingway came to enjoy the July festivities in the early
                     twenties when he was stationed as a reporter in Paris.
1932             Death in the Afternoon – A nonfiction book about the art, ceremony, and
                     traditions of Spanish bullfighting, using the ritual as a deeper inquiry into 
                     human nature and fear and courage.
1938             The Fifth Column – A lesser known work, this play is set during the Spanish
                     Civil War. Its main significance is that it is a work about the war published
                     while the war was still going on, and the title helped popularize the term
                     "the fifth column," coined by one of Franco's generals Emilio Mola to refer to
                     any clandestine group of people who work from within to help an outside force
                     overthrow a besieged city (in this case the Siege of Madrid).
1940             For Whom the Bell Tolls – Perhaps his most famous work on Spain, this
                     novel is set during the Spanish Civil War, and is also loosely autobiographical
                     in how it tells the story of an American in the International Brigade. A film
                     adaptation, starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman, came out in 1943 and
                     was a critical hit, helping to draw further attention to Hemingway's work and 
                     views on Spain.
1952             The Old Man and the Sea – Though not about Spain, the old man in this 
                     classic novel is of Spanish origin, and is likely at least in part inspired by 
                     Hemingway's early journalistic coverage of tuna fishing and Vigo fishermen.
1960 (1985)  The Dangerous Summer – A nonfiction series of articles on bullfighting and 
                     the Pamplona festivities written for Life Magazine, first published as a serial in
                     1960, and later republished as a book in 1985.


I also direct you to the following online materials and websites if you are interested in learning more about Hemingway from those more expert than I on the subject.


Some Official Sites on Hemingway and Biographical Materials:

• University of Delaware, Library: "Ernest Hemingway In His Time: An Exhibition":
http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/hemngway/index.htm

• JFK Library, "The Ernest Hemingway Collection":
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/The-Ernest-Hemingway-Collection.aspx

• The Hemingway Project (blog on the Hemingway mystique)
http://www.thehemingwayproject.com/

• New York Times page on Hemingway, including his famous Civil War dispatches
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/04/specials/hemingway-dispatches.html

• The Hemingway Society:
http://www.hemingwaysociety.org/

• Enthusiast website on Ernest Hemingway:
http://www.ernest.hemingway.com/

• Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure:
http://www.pbs.org/hemingwayadventure/index.html

• UT Austin Harry Ransom Center, "Ernest Hemingway" Archive Inventory:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/uthrc/00056/hrc-00056.html/

• Hemingway's Official Page for his 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature (including his acceptance speech):
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1954/hemingway-bio.html

• The Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum Website:
http://www.hemingwayhome.com/

This word cloud for For Whom the Bell Tolls exhibits some more recognizable stereotype elements:
"gypsy", "horses", "primitivo", and "Don". Lest you worry that these clouds lose the core elements
of the novel's plot, the word "bridge" is sitting there right in the middle. Interesting to note how
the word "man" is twice the size (twice the frequency) as "woman".

Given the limits of my knowledge of Hemingway or his literature, I encourage Books on Spain, The Hemingway Project, and any others to please weigh in and let me know if there is anything I left out or mischaracterized here or in the previous entry.

Thanks!

Don Ernesto: Ernest Hemingway in Spain

So I would be remiss to write a blog titled "Not Hemingway's Spain," intended to correct the "Hemingway paradigm," without occasionally saying something about Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) himself, a.k.a. "Don Ernesto." Hemingway is easily America's most famous expat in Spain. (To all my readers: Are there any other nominees? I'm going to start a series profiling past and present expats in Spain. So I welcome any thoughts!)

Here I'm going to start by just outlining a bit the periods of time that Hemingway spent in Spain… And the first thing I noticed is that I've spent more time in Spain than Hemingway ever did! So why are people reading his books anyway? Clearly they should be reading my blog!

Well, okay joking aside, I know that I am no Hemingway. I _start_ my sentences with "and", rather than stringing together clauses (and page-long sentences!) using Hemingway's favorite conjunction. I certainly haven't mastered his art of precision, his modern minimalist style. (Am I still rambling on about this point?) Still it is significant to observe one glaring fact about Hemingway's obsession with Spain: though he loved the country and the culture, he never really _lived_ here. And even a quick glance at the timeline below of his visits to Spain and the books he wrote reveals an enormous skew towards bullfights and summer vacations, Pamplona and Madrid, with the notable exception of his extended stay in Madrid as a wartime correspondent during the Civil War. This ought to be a red flag to Hemingway fans to tread lightly in drawing too many conclusions about Spain from his travels and writings on the country.

A more light-hearted image of the bull from those usually seen in connection to Hemingway

I'm only very crudely summarizing biographical highlights here, but another significant thing to bear in mind is that Hemingway was not allowed to visit Spain for 15 years of the Franco dictatorship (because of his political sympathies for the other side). This helps explain the gap below between 1938 (one year before the Civil War ended with Franco's victory) and 1953, the year when the Franco government eased up on Hemingway's restriction and he was invited to return to Pamplona to help promote the festivities and bullfighting culture. (Note the intersection of biography and history: 1953 was the same year the Franco regime more broadly eased up on Spanish-US relations, which I mentioned in my entry on the movie ¡Bienvenido Mr. Marshall!.) Though also significant was the fact that starting in 1928 Cuba would compete with Spain for Hemingway's affections.

Hemingway and his second wife Pauline on the San Sebastian beach.
Apparently I was mistaken, Don Ernesto did enjoy Spain's beaches!

And one last important observation: Hemingway's birthday was July 22nd. San Fermín, the festival Hemingway helped put on the map, happens Jul 7th through July 14th. Maybe I'm making too much of this personal fact, but this means that Hemingway spent many of his birthdays and summer holidays in Spain. In other words, Spain was always Hemingway's vacation, escape from reality, never really his home.

The joy of the spectacle, Hemingway and his fourth wife Mary at a bullfight in Zaragoza.

Timeline of Hemingway in Spain:

1921            At the end of the year, on his way to Paris to be a correspondent, he makes
                    his first stop in Spain, at the port of Vigo, but for only four hours
1923            His first visit to Pamplona for San Fermín; Visits Ronda
1924            Spends July in Spain watching bullfights; its was this particular trip that,
                    according to one biographer (Stanton), inspired the novel The Sun Also Rises;
                    he and his wife (Hadley) also visited the town Burguete in the Pyrenees
1925            Spends July in Spain watching bullfights; he and Hadley visit Madrid,  
                    Valencia, and San Sebastian; following the trip Hemingway starts
                    writing The Sun Also Rises
1926            Spends July in Spain watching bullfights
1927            Spends the summer in Spain with his new wife (Pauline); they visit Galicia
                    and in particular Santiago de Compostela
1929            Spends July in Spain watching bullfights
1930            Spends the summer in Spain watching more bullfights, including Pamplona's,
                    working on his book Death in the Afternoon
1931            From May through August, he passes the summer in Spain curious about the
                    newly proclaimed Second Republic; Arrives in Vigo; watches more bullfights
                    Pamplona's, and continuing to write his book Death in the Afternoon;
                    visits Ávila
1933            In August he travels to Spain with his wife (Pauline) and two sons to see the
                    bullfights in Extremadura
1937-1938   Hemingway was a wartime news correspondent for Collier's, covering the
                    Civil War from March 1937 to May 1938 and stationed out of Madrid. He
                    would also helped with the production of the propaganda film Tierra de 
                    España (1937) and become involved with the International Brigade, fighting
                    on behalf of the Republican forces. Hemingway also met future wife Gellhorn
                    during this period
1953            Invited back to Spain to see Pamplona's San Fermín festivities in July.
1954            Watches the San Isidro bullfights in Madrid in May and June
1956            Visited Spain in September and October: watched more bullfights; visited  
                    El Escorial; and went to a friend's (Pío Baroja) funeral in San Sebastian
1959            Went to Spain in July to documented the Pamplona San Fermín Festival for
                    a Life Magazine series; and stayed with his friend in Cónsola, Málaga
1960            Vacationed in Spain: Pamplona's San Fermín Festival; and again Málaga

NOTE: Here I've only begun to trace out his visits, as I know from many different accounts that Hemingway did manage to make trips to Barcelona, Burgos, Segovia, La Granja, and many other Spanish locales not listed here. Readers and Hemingway enthusiasts, please feel free to help me fill out the gaps and poorly specified trip itineraries.

Hemingway talking with famous matador and friend, Antonio Ordóñez.
Ordóñez would appear in The Dangerous Summer, published posthumously.

In the next entry I'll say a bit about those famous works Hemingway wrote on Spain, and the picture it paints of the country. I'll also point you to online resources about him which I've found useful to peruse. As foreshadowing, I want to do a shout out to The Hemingway Project, which is a great blog examining all things Hemingway and whose blogger strikes a nice balance between enthusiasm and respect for Don Ernesto's legacy, but also open-mindedness about his limitations and critiques of his works.

Postscript: If you're curious what Spaniards think of Hemingway, you might check out this very recent blog entry about Hemingway in El País, and especially the comments posted.

A more somber image of Hemingway in Málaga in 1959. The unavoidable
Catholic iconography that punctuated Hemingway's depictions of Spanish culture.

That Perfect Gift: Decorative Ceramics from Valencia

So if the "perfect gift" idea I mentioned last week is pretty well known, this week's recommendation is one that I think most visiting tourists know very little about. But, in that sense, it is (almost literally) a hidden gem: adornos cerámicos de Valencia (decorative ceramics from Valencia).

The history of ceramics in Spain is a long one, though things picked up during the Moorish occupation of southern Spain, and then really got going in the 15th century once Chinese ceramics, a.k.a. porcelain china, became popular and local artisans sought to import the technique into their own practices. Here in Valencia the tradition continues on, particularly in Manises and Paterna, where there is still a guild ("gremio") of Valencian ceramic makers and factories which reproduce the traditional ceramic production methods for making tiles, plates, and other decorative objects that appeared over the course of the 15th through 19th centuries. Here I would place these traditions into three categories of gift items.

• Azulejos: 

An example of the kind of ceramic tile plaques
one can find all over Valencia and its regional towns.

It was once quite typical in Valencia, and really all over the Iberian peninsula, to place decorative tiles ("azulejos") on building facades or hung/suspended on the ceilings of very fancy houses. People of a particular trade, lawyer, carpenter, and so forth, might hang a decorative tile outside their workshop ("taller") which showed a figure or image representing that trade. (Indeed, it is still the case that tiles play an important part in Spanish interior design. Spaniards' homes, more so than Americans', commonly have the bathroom and kitchen walls entirely covered by tiles, and might have (a different kind of) tile flooring.)

So one really lovely gift you can buy are ceramic tiles, following this tradition, which are mounted on wooden frames or adorn mirrors and other decorative displays. These traditional-style tiles tend to come in one of three modes. The oldest, based on a 15th century medieval style of production, is known here by its Catalan name "socarrat". The word socarrat, which literally means burnt, is also used to describe the (delicious) burnt rice at the bottom of the paella pan. (In other words, this is a _very_ Valencian word to know!) The socarrat is a red and black tile, red from oxidize iron and black from manganese, which is made by hand painting the tile and then super heating, baking it in an oven until the design is burnt into the clay ("arcilla"), thus the name. For more on the process, in Spanish, click here.

The other two traditional styles are the "gótico azul" (blue tiles) from Manises and "verde y morado" (green tiles) traditionally from Paterna. You can find images of ships, medieval trades, animals, kings and queens, dragons, or artistic geometric patterns.

• Decorative plates:

Ceramic plates can also make for a great gift and collector's item. (For European tourists, this could be an excellent local artisan item to build a collection around, as there are great ceramic traditions in Denmark (e.g. Royal Copenhagen) or in Italy, we got an artisanal plate in Sardegna with the classic "pavoncella" bird emblem of the island... just to name a few examples of local iconography and styles one can encounter. In Spain, there are many regions with local workshops who maintain their regional tradition and styles of producing ceramic plates. I have only limited knowledge of this, but I can tell you that once again Manises and Paterna have been historically important centers of innovation in this area. One particularly beautiful traditional style is this golden ornate plate from Manises. (To learn more about them, visit Valencia's Museo de la Cerámica, mentioned below)

• Other decorative items:

And if you are already in a shop buying socarrats and ceramic plates, then you can also look for decorative "pilas" (water basin for holy water or "agua bendita"), to hang on your wall, not to mention artisanal bowls, "cántaros" (jars or jugs), and so on. You'll find them emulating old and new styles, and in sets that can help brighten up a kitchen or mounted so as to add an accent to your office or living space.

A ceramic decorative holy water basin, the classic Spanish home decoration

Bowls, jars, plates, mounted tiles, mirrors, and many more beautiful, inexpensive gifts
made from Valencian ceramics that you can find at Artesanía Yuste

These all make for incredible gifts for friends and family back home. I've thoroughly tapped out this gift idea with my own family, who must collectively own an entire collection of Valencian ceramics. While there are plenty of stores in and around the Valencia capital, I am a very loyal customer of one shop in particular: Artesanía Yuste (Pza. Miracle del Mocadoret, 5 / Tf. 630 373 603), located in a small plaza just off the Plaza de la Reina. In my opinion, if you are making a visit to Valencia, the you _must_ stop by this shop. I am not kidding when I say that you can encounter a true piece of art at incredibly economic prices here, and its central location makes it easy to swing by before or after a visit to the Plaza Redonda or the Mercat Central or the Cathedral. In addition to reproductions, Yuste also sells a limited number of actual 18th and 19th century tiles.

Yuste carries all three styles of socarrat and a variety of traditional images,
already mounted on wooden frames as seen here.

If you call them, you can also ask to have tiles specially mounted however you want,
since they work directly with the producers in Manises and Paterna.

Despite its convenient location, it can be tricky finding Artesanía Yuste. Look for this
passageway ("Passatge de Giner") leading west off the Plaza de la Reina in Valencia.

Ceramics and textiles continue to be important in Spain, today, and particularly for the region along the coast between Valencia and Castellón/Tarragona, particularly around Benicarló. The region has grown rich from small scale, industrial production of these textile materials put to a variety of humble, but functionally important uses. However, Lladró, founded by brothers from the Valencian town Almàssera, has eclipsed these humble origins, and achieved an international renown. They specialize in very expensive high-end porcelain figurines. You can find Lladró shops all over the world, in London and New York (off Fifth Avenue near Central Park). Their figurines are collected by designers the world over. And such ceramic mastery is not limited to Valencia. There are traditional ceramic styles of production in Teruel, and I'm told that Sargadelos in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, is also a very reputable. (For that matter, Portugal also has its own traditions.)  In fact, there must be tons more of these places throughout Spain, so any readers who have suggestions, please post comments!

One of Lladró's more contemporary girls.

Lladró's 1950s 'Valencia Girl' figurine

As with all high art and artesanal craft in Spain, these ceramic traditions not only make for great gifts, but also for interesting tourism. So here I can briefly point you to several nice tours you can do in and around Valencia: 1) the Museo Nacional de Cerámica y Artes Suntuarias, located in the impressive baroque palace of the Marqués de dos Aguas in Valencia's city center, 2) the town of Manises, located just outside to the west of Valencia (better known for being the location of the airport) has a Museu de Ceràmica which explains the production techniques, and 3) Lladró has a museum, "City of Porcelain," in Tavernes Blanques just to the north of Valencia (right next to Alboraia).

The amazing baroque palace of the Marqués de Dos Aguas,
which houses the Museo Nacional de Cerámica in Valencia

I personally love the Valencia ceramic museum's cuina, "typical Valencian kitchen," display shown here

Postscript: Please note that I have had to leave out entirely a discussion of pottery (alfarería), which, though related in some respects, has its own long history and tradition throughout Spain, but would also make for wonderful gifts and collectors items. I'll make a note of this for an entry next year around Xmas time!

In Valencia: El pardal i la cotorra

So I was going to submit this photo to a fun photo contest, "looking up," for a (great) local Valencian expat magazine, InVLC, but I got around to it _way_ after the deadline. To make the most of it, though, I thought I'd post it here.

Looking up: On the left, the parrot that is perched above Valencia's Mercat Central,
on the right, Saint John's bird alighted on the Iglesia de los Santos Juanes next to the market

Pictured here is the (generic) bird, "el pardal de San Joan," of the Iglesia de los Santos Juanes and the parrot, "la cotorra del Mercat," over the Mercat Central de València. The two birds, perched within view of each other, have long been the subjects of local legends and playful stories. The church bird was long ago a symbol of economic good fortune to visitors who arrived to the city and spotted it from the steps of la Lonja. [Translator's note: pardal in Catalan can actually mean gorrión or sparrow, but my wife informs me that in Valencia pardal is used to refer to a generic bird. Since the castellano name is "el pájaro de San Juan," I'll default to the generic. To any biblical scholars out there, do you know what kind of bird was St. John's?] The parrot was the namesake of a popular Valencian music journal, La cotorra del Mercat, published by Leopoldo Magenti Chelvi in the 1940s; and in the 1990s the Market used a cartoon parrot as the protagonist of its educational materials for Valencian children who visited the market for school field trips.

There is nothing more adorable than watching kids on their field trip to the Mercat Central...
passing along to them the local knowledge and appreciation for L'Horta de València.

One such recurring story is that the two birds talk with each other, la cotorra (parrot) symbolizing the worldly and the mundane life of the Market, and also its chatty gossip (chismes y cotilleos), while el pardal (bird, sparrow) represents the more spiritual world of the church and higher ideals. These two conceptions of life, "el pardal i la cotorra," wordly and other-wordly, are thus locked in a constant imaginary argument about the many busy people and happenings below.

The gargoyles of La Lonja

There really are just so many interesting features of Valencia, thousands of such colorful stories attached to the City's many impressive institutions and local attractions, it's hard to tell them all. Just to give you an idea, these two birds also share the local terrain "above" with a dozen gargoyles, perched on la Lonja de la Seda, a.k.a. Silk Market, opposite the Mercat Central. (Indeed, some add a flourish to stories about the two birds by mentioning their trepidation for these neighboring denizens.)

I promise I'll get around to writing more about the culture of and things to do in Valencia, which is easily the most under-appreciated city in Spain.

The Name Game: Common Nicknames

If previously I described some common composite names used in Spain, here I will expand a bit to mention some common nicknames (whose closest translation in Spanish is "apodo"). In general, giving your friends or family (random) nicknames, at least as a form of endearment, is not as common a practice in Spain as in the United States. What is common is hypocorism ("hipocorístico"), that is to use the "short for" version of a name much like "Bill" is short for William, "Dick" for Richard, or "Susie" for Susan in English. This particular kind of nickname is _very_ common in Spanish.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of common "short for" names you are likely to come across while living or visit Spain (or other Spanish speaking countries for that matter):

Common "Short for" Names:

Women:                                        Common nickname:
Adoración                                     Dori
Araceli                                          Cheli
Beatriz                                          Bea
Concepción                                  Concha
Consuelo                                      Chelo
Daniela                                         Dani
Dolores                                         Lola
Inmaculada                                  Inma
Jesús                                            Chus
Josefa                                          Pepa
Macarena                                     Maca
Purísima                                       Puri

Men:                                             Common nickname:
Daniel                                           Dani
Eduardo                                        Edu
Enrique                                         Quique
Fernando                                      Fer, Nando
Francisco                                      Paco
Guillermo                                      Guille
Ignacio                                         Nacho
Javier                                           Javi
Jesús                                            Chus
Joaquín                                        Chimo
José                                             Pepe
Manuel                                         Manu
Rafael                                           Rafa
Sebastián                                     Sebas

I can't help but think that some of these nicknames have become popular simply to compensate for how depressing, anachronistic, or overly religious the significance of the original full name is (e.g. Dolores, Concepción, Inmaculada).

I learned an interesting nicknaming trend in my Valenciano class recently. In Castellano, nicknames tend to come from the start of the name (e.g.Fran, Edu, Dori, Inma), whereas in Catalán they often come from the end (e.g. Cesc for Francesc, Pep for Josep, Bel for Isabel, Cent for Vicent). Not a hard and fast rule, but interesting none the less.