When I think of Spain I think of a dog, handsome but dusty, sleeping in the shade of a tangled olive tree, while the sun beats down all around and the cicadas screech. Repeat that scene a hundred thousand times and you will have a passable impression of España.
Of course, there are variations. The…
My previous portero died unexpectedly. One day he was there – a fat and jovial man, bald, glasses, head pushed a little forward giving way to the staircase of rolls in the back of his neck, always with a kind word, or the latest English phrase he’d taught himself, Goot eebening, or just to hold…
Spain’s relaxed nature towards its lifestyle, including alcohol, is terrifying to the sober daughter of an alcoholic.
To have a childhood coloured by the not-so-parental parent my mother became when she drank has tainted my adult relationships with both alcohol itself and those who drink it.
At around eight, I taught myself to sneak wine…
A river mirrors the sky
and a strip of life
sits in between
the middle of the blues
I was reminded
that my internal world
was never really private
because my external life
has always reflected
it back to me
and I’ve been in the middle
the whole time.
Before
I step out of the plane, mimicking its mechanics, and kick into my own auto-pilot function.…
Buenaventura Bravo’s main job during the Spanish Civil War was getting his goats out of the village and into the mountains. This was no top-secret mission, entrusted upon young ’Ventura by the besieged Republican government in Madrid, just something that had to be done; this was the day-to-day life that continued to unfold regardless of…
A screech of, “GET ME IN THAT FUCKEN POOL!” rattles the oven air. Through the haze of red wine fumes baking off my body and the pain of sticky thongs rubbing on sweating, fluid-filled feet, I see the heavenly azure expanse that is the pool and quicken my hobble towards it.
My friend Ebony and…
Stickiness glues every inch of my clothes to me. Blaring sun blinds me from all directions. Wine fumes leave no room for fresh air on this street. A bead of sweat slides down my face to land on my upper lip. It tastes slightly of stale wine. I turn a corner and can finally see…
A seductive siren, San Sebastian sings to me. Headphones in and jammies on, I tell her to shush.
Outside is the reason I am here in Spain for a month-long travel writing course. Outside is the reason I am the furthest physical point away from home in Australia I could be.
I’m in my hostel…
Like many young women who’ve watched the Abba-inspired Mamma Mia! films, I was recently struck by the urge to relocate to Europe and have unprotected sex with three strapping lads before settling down on a Grecian island to raise a daughter with questionable patrilineage.
As I mark two notches in my Spanish belt, the correlations between…
A love letter to my she-wolfpack
This is an ode to the 29 women whom I just travelled with. 29 babes. The 29 femme fantasies, 19-to-29-year-old horny, but mostly hungry college co-eds; two-and-a-half dozen unapproachable beauties, the kinds that slack jaws when they walk in bars, make men gape agaw and bend over backwards…
Where:
Modern Spain is best defined as occupying most of the land that was conquered by, and then reclaimed from, the Moors, minus the kingdom to the west that wasn’t unified under the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon to Isabella of Castille. You know, everything south of Andorra but north of Africa that uses the…
Did you know that Spaniards have their own term of disendearment for us? Well they do, it’s guiri (pronounced giddy), and it basically means sunburnt foreigner who puts chorizo in all their dishes, but is also levelled at us whenever we commit a faux pas while travelling in the kingdom.
Your Spanish friends/girlfriend/in-laws will place hand…