The Rain In Spain

It has been a while since I posted some random ramblings and after a week in Spain, it seems like the perfect time to do so. Here is what I learned…or remembered….last week.

The word drizzle does not exist in Spain. When it rains, it pours, and boy did it pour this last week. It is rare that we get time just to chill and relax – we travel plenty but usually it is fast and frenetic. Every so often, when the batteries are a little depleted, we try and get away for a good old fashioned break. When you want to relax, you want sun. Hence why we went to Sevilla. They were vicious rumours about the city being one of the hottest cities in Europe. It rained all week. Still, it was heartening to know that there was a heat wave in the UK and Switzerland was glorious.

The good old Spanish media. Real Madrid scrape a draw against Barca with ten men and the media hammer Jose Mourinho saying that it was no way for a Real team to play against any team, especially after spending hundreds of millions. Fast forward to Wednesday night and their Copa victory playing virtually the same style and Mourinho is suddenly a tactical genius. No team can live with this Barca by taking the game to them but Mourinho has got them well drilled and organised enough to compete. Kudos to Javier Clemente who was 100% correct in supporting Mourinho and the style in his Marca column – if only the rest of the paper wasn’t so blinded and fickle.

I have wanted to go to Sevilla for a number of years now so it was great to finally get there and see what the buzz is about. I can confirm that Semana Santa is not the best week to go there however. That said, wandering around with Oranges hanging from the trees every few yards was fantastic. Buying a huge box of strawberries for less than two Euros was just as pleasant. I could get used to stuff like that.

As cool as some elements were in Sevilla, there was one slightly bizarre trend. Every chap has to make the occasional crotchal rearrangement, but the number of rearrangements among the Sevillanos was extreme and slightly disconcerting….so much so that Burns and I were rolling around laughing if cringing every time we spotted it. It was common. We are not weird. Just for the record.

So we moved from Semana Santa and the rain in Sevilla to Madridand their rain midway through the week. Madrid is a pretty cool city, but I think undoubtedly our favourite place is the Mercado de San Miguel. Always full of people, but they are worth fighting through for a sandwich or two. Anybody wanting a reason to go to Madrid or planning to go soon, check it out – I am prepared to put my reputation on the line for this place. Heck, I’ll even put Burns’ on there too.

My last random thought from the week, that I can remember anyway, was from the Copa del Rey final. Having spent a fair amount of time in Barcelona, I know the sentiments that run there so I was not surprised to hear the Catalan fans boo the Spanish national anthem before the game. I was surprised though that TVE muted the sound from the stadium and isolated the anthem, while other television channels played it normally. English fans were hammered when they booed the US anthem in Vegas for the Hatton/Mayweather fight and rightly so. This is no different. Gerard Pique spiced things up after the first game by telling the Madrid players that Barca were going to win ‘their king’s cup’. I would love to be a fly on the wall in the next training camp of the Spanish national team after some of the things that have gone down between Barca and Real in the last few weeks.