Spanish judges and politicians continue to astound with their pronouncements. One judge was reported on Friday to have released without bail a husband accused of cutting the throat of his wife, on the grounds that crimes of passion such as this are not usually repeated by the accused. And today the head of the Galician government is taken to task for accusing of hypocrisy those people who support ‘free love’ and abortion yet still criticise him for not taking action against a local mayor convicted of sexually abusing a minor.

All Spanish TV channels are commercial and so carry advertisements, which take up a significant proportion of each hour of what might loosely be termed viewing. And then there are the product endorsements issued out of the blue by the programme hosts, gushing with specious conviction about some product’s merits. When I came to Spain just over 3 years ago, this mid-programme puffery was relatively infrequent but now it is almost common-place. If you really were desperate for a reason not to watch Spanish TV, this might just be the answer to your prayer. Worst of all, though, are the cash-strapped local TV stations. Their speciality is a banner ad running along the bottom of the screen during soccer matches. Three years ago, these only used to appear when play had actually stopped. They have since progressed – through discrete stages – to their current permanent status. I’m not sure that the situation is as bad on radio but last night I was listening to a soccer match when the main commentator suddenly burst into song, to be joined a few seconds later by his colleagues. This turned out to be a jingle for some product or other. Seamlessly, they then shifted back to the usual semi-histrionic chatter that characterises soccer commentaries here.

I belatedly realised this morning that many Spanish drivers use their indicators in a completely different way from their counterparts in the UK. Whereas Brits use them to signal an intention, Spanish drivers use them as a warning. What they really mean is not ‘If it is safe and OK with you, I intend to turn in a while’ but ‘Stay out of my way. I am about to cut in front of you’. Or ‘I am coming up behind you; Get out of my way’. This, of course, is why they are not used until the last second. It is a nice irony, I guess, that Spanish drivers use their real warning lights as what we might call ‘parking illumination’. I suppose there is a clue to all this in the respective languages. British English uses the word ‘indicator’, which connotes the sense of future intention cited above. Spanish uses ‘intermitentes’, which is merely descriptive and leaves the purpose of the lights open to interpretation on a case-by-case basis.

Wordwatch
Un camping – a campsite
Un spinning – some sort of exercise in the gym involving a cycling machine. Or perhaps several in a circle.