I was chatting to some Spanish mates the other day about my favourite newsreader, a certain Mónica Carrillo, who sends my heart aflutter everytime she says ‘crisis economica’ – but they were fairly dismissive and instead raved about a certain Patricia Conde, who presents a comedy review / current events TV show called Sé lo que hicisteis (trans. ‘I Know What You Were Up To’). Check her out in action below:
Well, I still say Monica is tops. Now don’t get me wrong here: Patricia is clearly a top babe. But here in Spain, while I’m still regularly knocked sideways by these dusky latin beauties, for the locals they’re just ten-a-dozen. Blondes, on the other hand, get special attention and even an average looker will get herds of men tripping over themselves to chat them up. It’s clearly a rarity thing. In the UK we have a shortage of dark latinas and thus I find them exotic. In Madrid, they have a shortage of blondes and thus find them exotic. Well, that’s my theory anyway and I’m sticking to it.
And BTW, Monica, if you’re reading this, pls get in touch. I’m not rich and I’m not handsome but I have all my own teeth and can make a great Cosmopolitan.
Since Tuesday, when Chelsea nilled Barcelona away, hopes have been rising in Madrid that maybe, just maybe, Real could put one over the old enemy in Saturday’s second leg of ‘el Clasico’. A win in the Bernabeu would bring Real to within one point of the Catalans with four matches to play. ‘Squeaky bums time’ as someone in football once said.
The default mode of Spanish sports reporting is ‘intense’ but they’ve managed to ratchet it up a few notches . The national and local TV news and radio talk shows have been frothing up the tension all week and yesterday the sports paper AS consisted of 22 pages of Real-Barca, the TV guide and a picture of a semi-naked babe (she thinks 2-1 to Madrid BTW).
Also yesterday, the daily magazine show on TV called España Directo got caught up in the hype – and got caught out. A live report from Nuevos Ministerios was showing a special grand digital screen that has been set up to show text messages sent from Barca and Real fans (or anyone else who wanted to get involved) via something similar to Twitter – A Twitterfall in public as it were. Well, the super enthusiastic reporter was interviewing those responsible for the set-up and then getting vox-pops from people who had stopped to check out the excitement when he turned to the camera and said – OK let’s check out some of the messages. The camera focused on the screen and while there three messages flashed up, one after the other. The first said (and I’m paraphrasing here) ‘Stick it up your arse Barca, go f*** your mothers”, the second was simply “Sex!” and the third was “Eto, f*** off back to Africa and take your CDs with you” (a reference to the fact that many illegal African immigrants sell bootlegged CDs and DVDs on the streets).
They hurriedly cut back to the studio where the host presenter smoothly went on to another item.
TVE, the Spanish equivalent of the BBC but without the left-wing bias, secured the rights to show English Premier League matches this season. We get a regular two matches a week (Saturday and Sunday) plus Carling Cup and Scottish Premier league games.
Liverpool and Arsenal are the most featured matches because these two teams both have Spanish ’seleccion’ players, and Tottenham are popular too since they have a Spanish manager (Juande Ramos). Liverpool in particular seem to be the focus as they have 3 Spanish stars (Torres, Alonso and Reina) plus the manager is Madrid-born Rafa Benitez. The opening match this season (back in Sept 2007) was Aston Villa vs Liverpool.
The appetite for all football remains incredibly strong here. A friendly warm up match before the current season started between La Liga champions Real Madrid and Portuguese side Belenses took 26% of audience share – mid-week – with 3.2 million viewers, whilst on the same night Atletico de Madrid vs Celta Vigo garnered 6% audience share. Also, a recent internet poll on www.laguiatv.com (a Spanish television guide) on the question “What is the worst thing about TV during the summer?”, some 9.4% answered “That there’s no football.”
ABC newspaper has a regular weekly feature listing the top ten most popular TV shows using audience data from GECA / Sofres. Last week the no. 1 prog was ‘Escenas de matrimonio’, which can loosely be translated as Short Stories of Marriage. It’s a sitcom on the Telecinco channel cut into short comedic ’sketches’, showing the lives of 3 married couples of different generations who all live in the same building. It garners an average audience of over 4 million and was an instant ‘hit’ when first shown in 2007, but has also incurred the wrath of lefty-liberal progressives (i.e. shrill wimmin) such as La Federación de Mujeres Progresistas who claim it shows women in demeaning and stereotypical roles. In other words, it shows contented housewives who worry about making a nice supper for their hubbies. Disgraceful!
¡Hola! ¿Qué Tal? Another working day. About 18:30 Madrid-Uno’s eyes gave up on staring at a computer screen, so, healthily, he decided to watch a television screen instead.
Madrid-Uno finds watching TV helps his Spanish. In particular, he finds the most helpful progs are the game shows, the news and the football coverage.
The game shows are good because there’s lots of asking questions and, ‘cos it’s a game show, the questions are usually set-up for idiots. Which, in Spanish at least, Madrid-Uno is. Tonight there was a choice of four game shows including: Allá Tú on the Cuatro channel, a fairly simple game which would be called ‘It’s Up To You’ in English; Metro a Metro on TeleMadrid, a quiz based around the Metro underground system; and Lingo on La Sexta.
The news is good because the presenters’ speak clearly and one can match the day’s events to the inflexion in the news presenters voice – grave, surprised, mucho serio, false levity for humorous story at end of show, etc.
The football is good for two reasons. Firstly, since all footballers, all over the world say the same thing after every match (the boys done good, we fought hard and came away with a result, bollocks was that offside, etc.,) Madrid-Uno can understand surprisingly large chunks of the dialogue. And secondly, because Spanish football commentators are absolutely bonkers! These guys make Jonathan Pearce look somnolescent. They chatter and joke, gossip and laugh amongst themselves constantly and when they really take-off during times of incident you lose them completely and instead have to just sit back and listen to the musical torrent of invective / joy / fear / gloating. Much to Madrid-Uno’s delight he also found that the Spanish really do use the word caramba! – as in: “Paco beats one man, he beats another, he shoots, Aye Caramba! Off the post.” Madrid-Uno’s friend Zipper told him a great story about a famous Spanish football commentator. Spain were playing Italy in an important qualification match back in the 1980s and at somepoint the Iti’s scored. The commentator supposedly exclaimed, in full Ron Atkinson blunder mode, “Balls! Cut off their balls! Those cheating sons of Italian bitches!” hehe.
Useful Tip
A useful tip for learning Spanish, passed on by Misterio, is to switch on the teletext for deaf people when watching a film on TV. Although the translations are not exact it really helps you to link the pronounced words to how they are spelt. Don’t do this when you have Spanish friends over though… It really annoys ‘em!
