From ‘Spanish Lessons. Beginning a new life in Spain’ by Derek Lambert

……..restaurant recommended……In my experience , policemen anywhere in the world knew the best establishments in which to take on ballast.

The village [where they lived] was more a family than a community; crime hadn’t entered its portals (except for regular bank robberies in which money was handed over amicably); old people and children were cherished; bureaucracy existed to be outsmarted.

Paperwork was the scourge of Spain ………

………..he loved sports, invariably an asset in male company in Spain.

Emilio was getting into his stride now. “In Britain……

“What about your old people?”…… “What do you do with them? Stick them in nursing homes. We keep them with us and they die among their loved ones.”

He was tough and insular like many Basques. As far as I could ascertain they had every right to be: their homeland, set among misty green hills in the north on the border with France, was unique. They spoke euskera, or “eskara” according to their dialect, a language like no other; they were descendants of Europe’s aboriginal inhabitants, pre-dating migrants from Asia three thousand years ago; they were taller than their neighbors; as well as the ballgame pelota, they enjoyed esoteric sports such as woodcutting and stone-lifting; they ate and drank hugely; their reputation for chivalry to women, real or romanticized, pre-dated Women’s Lib by centuries.

Gypsies, many of them far removed from any Romany bloodline, had a rough ride in many parts of Spain. The purveyors of flamenco, which originated in Andalusia in the eighteenth century, were well respected, but outside that hand-clapping, guitar-strumming, heel-tapping brotherhood they were often treated with contempt.

……..the violent mood swings within Spain. An obvious tendency when you thought about it. Iberians, Celts, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Moors ….all their legacies cut off and trapped in the great sack of land that embraced Portugal, knotted at the neck by the Pyrenees.

Spaniards were compulsive gamblers – the national Christmas lottery, El Gordo (the Fat One), was the biggest in the world in terms of money invested – and wage packets were lost at poker, fortunes made on forecasting results of matches on the football pools.

…..horns ripping the artery on the inside of ….thigh, the wound that caused most deaths in the bullring.

…..Spain …….the national disregard for noise …………I once gobbled up my breakfast in a New York diner because the waitresses barking orders loudly, incessantly, into the kitchen were putting me off my sunny-side-up eggs; I discovered that they were all Spanish.

“……When you reach my age” – he must have been in his eighties – “you realize that all dissent is a waste.”

“Tomorrow?” He jerked back in his seat. ……. “Impossible!”

But we knew it wasn’t, because in the final reckoning a Spaniard always accepts any challenge in love, war, or gastronomy.