The Sephardic Spanish, a part of Spain

Sephardic Spanish were Jewish people who lived in Spain for centuries before 1492. They held important position in the Government and other important institutions in the country. Moreover, it is said that most of the counselors of Alfonso X El Sabio (The Wise) were Sephardi.

For them, Spain is Sepharad, a promised land in the Bible (Obad. 1:20). When they arrived to Spain, the country was really in a golden period of its time, being a source of culture and a bridge to new knowledges coming from the Arab world, thanks to the Spanish translator monks.

              

In 1492, Spain was in a period of time when it was still building itself as a country unified under only one kingdom. Before that, more than 2 had been ruling different parts of the territory. At around that time, the Catholic Kings became the Kingdom of Spain, and therefore they needed to reorganize some aspects of the Kingdom. Moreover, they were concerned about Sephardic people, because of their economic and social power, while not being Catholic... Therefore, they let them choose to convert to Catholicism, or leave the country. Although many people (really or just admittedly) converted and remained in Spain, some of them decided to leave the country... However, they left it full of sadness, because of their deep roots with Spanish culture and people.

                      

It needs to be said that these event is not exclusive of Spain. It is the only one that happened in Spain and, actually, it is one of the last ones that happened in Europe. Before this one, England and France, among other countries, had done it in a forceful way to Jewish people for the same or similar reasons.

After hundreds of years, these amazing people kept their Spanish roots and carried Spanish language with them. However, it was separated from Spain before it made huge changes and became the current Spanish.
For that reason, "Judeoespañol", or Sephardic Spanish, is more similar to the Middle Age Spanish than the current one. In the next post, I will talk about this language. I am amazed to listen to it, it is a language treasure and, in my opinion, its people is very creditable.

Some references to learn more (please be aware these are long articles):

- Sephardic Jews
- Sephardic laws and customs
- History of the Jews in Spain


¡Gracias y hasta pronto!

Let's talk about wine!

As you probably know, Spain is a wine producer country. It is an important tradition that has been inherited by descendants of wine producer families. Wine is produced everywhere in the country, and we call it 'Vino'.

We have 'Vino blanco' (White wine), 'Vino tinto' (Red wine) y 'Vino rosado' (Rose Wine). We also produced our own kind of Sparkling wine, called 'Cava'. It is produced in Catalonia and it is delicious! Enjoy Spanish wine!




And if you want to learn something else about wines, check this documentary. ¡Tiene muy buena pinta! (it looks very interesting!) =)

Espero que os guste (hope you like it). ¡Hasta pronto! :)

Beautiful flamenco for you!

¡Hola a todos! Recently I have watched a beautiful flamenco video on youtube that I want to share with you. You just need to listen to the music and how she dances with it. It's energic, passionate and emotional.

I hope you like it. ¡Disfrutadlo! :)

 

¡Nos vemos! ;)

(See you soon)

Arabic Iberia, a fascinating Spanish history (Part II)

¡Hola a todos! :) The second part of Arabic Iberia is here, so let's go for it!

As I was saying... Later, the kings that had done that huge war and won it were Fernando of Aragón and Isabel of Castilla, who married each other and became the Catholic Kings. Their marriage was the official beginning of our current (Kingdom of) Spain :).

 

There were 4 kingdoms during the Reconquest: Portugal, Castilla, Navarra and Aragón. As I have said, during that time and after that time, Castilla continued growing and absorbed the other kingdoms, until it was the only kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula in 1492.

Maybe we could say that Spain was born and was build on the basis of a religious and militar expansion project against the Islamic kingdom of that time in order to recover the Iberian Peninsula for the christian kingdoms.

 

And that's already a lot of History for today! :) Now I recommend you to take a nap to refresh all this information in your mind (I will need it as well haha).

¡Qué tengáis un buen día! :)
(Have a nice day!)

Arabic Iberia, a fascinating Spanish history (Part I)

¡Hola! :) As I said in my last post, here I am again, now on time :D
Today I want to tell you about the Arabic Iberian Peninsula, i.e. what the Iberian Peninsula was before really being what we know today as Spain.
Actually, a friend of mine asked me about this part of the Spanish History, so I thought that's a fantastic idea and I decided to prepare a post about that ;)

Before the Spanish people (as we know them at present), there were arabic people in the Iberian Peninsula. They were in the Iberian Peninsula for eight centuries (yes! not a lot... really? haha). There also were some christian visigoth kingdoms that loose their territories (not a lot in that moment) against them in 711.

The best period of time of that 'Islamic Iberian' people was when the huge and important arabic Caliphate of Córdoba appeared after an arabic emir autoproclamates himself as a 'prince of the believers'.

That caliphate was one of the most important and prosperous urban centers of Europe, compared to the christian kingdoms that were going through a period of absolute decadency.

But all this history changed from 711, when the remains of the christian kingdoms began to be stronger and stronger, and began the Reconquest.
The Reconquest needed as much time as the arabic people were in the Iberian Peninsula: 781 years.  So it didn't finish until 1492.

The Reconquest began in the Batlle of Covadonga, which a noble visigoth called Pelayo won, and then he established the first christian non-visigoth (anymore) kingdom called Kingdom of Asturias.

And that's already a lot of History for today! :) Now I recommend you to take a nap to refresh all this information in your mind (I will need it as well haha) and wait expectantly for the second part (huhu).

¡Qué tengáis un buen día! :)
(Have a nice day!)

Eres tú como el agua de mi fuente... la la la :)

¡Hola a todos! :) (Hello everybody!) I came back from a trip to another city during this weekend and I see that my last post was on Thursday :O ¡Oh, Dios mío! (Oh my God!) I thought inmediately. And I write this post for you all :).

I want to let you know you are very important for the blog and its development, so here you have a very well-known Spanish song ("un clásico" :D ) called "Eres tú", because you are 'el agua de la fuente', the water of the fountain, with this I meant the main strenght of this blog jeje :D Qué bueno, ¿verdad? :) (So nice, isn't it?)

¡Disfrutadlo! :)

¡Hasta pronto, lo prometo! :)
(See you soon, I promise it!)

The languages of Spain: there's not only Spanish! :)

¡Hola! :) Today I want to let you know something about Spain that a lot of people from other countries don't know, as I have seen.

Most of the people think that in Spain there is one language: the Spanish language. It looks evident and of course it is. But that is not the only language we have. Actually there are 4 languages in Spain! :)

You need to know that Spanish is the main language, the language which all Spanish people know and speak as a native language. But appart from it, there are big zones in Spain, groups of cities, that also have another official language, spoken by a lot of people of that places.

For instance, myself hehe. I'm Spanish but I come from Menorca, a little island where people also speak Menorcan, a dialect of the Catalan language which is spoken in the Balearic Islands, in Cataluña, and even in some little cities in France and Italy.

Here you have an example of each other first language that Spanish people could have depending on their birth places :)

English: 

Hello! How are you? I'm fine thanks, and you?

Spanish: 

¡Hola! ¿Cómo estás? Estoy bien, gracias. ¿Y tú?

Catalan: 

Hola! Com estàs? Estic bé, gràcies. I tu?

Galician: 

Ola! Como está? Estou ben, grazas. Vostede?

Basque: 

 Kaixo! Nola zaude? Fina naiz, mila esker. Egin duzu?

I guess you are now newly surprised about Spanish culture if you didn't know this, and I hope that you like it! :D

¡Hasta pronto!
Fins aviat!
Vexo vostedes en breve!
Laster arte!
See you soon! 

Carnaval de Canarias, probably the best Spanish carnival celebrations!

¡Hola! :) Today I want to share talk to you about this very famous celebration that takes place in las Islas Canarias every year. Actually I have never been there, but as I have heard it's a huge celebration, maybe near the well-known Brazilian Carnival celebration.

Moreover, there is a well-known kind of competition in which there are girls that wear really big and decorated costumes and show it to the people. As far as I know, there is a team behind each of that costumes, and it tooks months for them to prepare the costumes. It would be really interesting to go there in Carnival to see it! :)

Here you have some images and a little video, as I like to do.
Enjoy it! :)

 

 

¡Hasta pasado mañana! :)
See you the day after tomorrow!

Las castañuelas, a Spanish traditional musical instrument

¡Hola! :) Today I want to talk about the Spanish castañuelas. There is a different between the ones made of wood (called castañuelas) and the ones made of metal (cróstalos), but Spanish people in general know them all as castañuelas :).

Spanish castañuelas comes from an ancient kind of castañuelas called iberian "crusmata".

As you probably know, the castañuelas are a very famous instrument used in the flamenco dances as the Spanish sevillanas (a topic for another post ;) ) and also in some well-known orquestas like Carmen de Bizet, The Rapsody España of Chabier, and the ballet El Cid of Massenet, to give them a 'Spanish feeling'. Even Wagner used castañuelas for his song 'Venusberg'.

Actually, the origin of the castañuelas dates back to the Phoenicians, in the year 1000 b.C. Also Egypt, Chinese and Greek people used castañuelas even before Spanish people. There are evidences about their existence even in the Paleolithic! So probably it's one of the first musical instruments that human being have created. 

But Spanish people have conserved, used them, and castañuelas have evolved since the first ones. In the other countries they didn't evolved as Spanish castañuelas did. And they are still being used! :)

Now I leave you with a beautiful video of flamenco dance with castañuelas. Enjoy it! :)

I hope you like my post about Spanish castañuelas.
¡Hasta pronto! :)

La paella española

What is the Paella?

Paella is a typical Spanish food. The main ingredient is rice coloured with species. Moreover, it use to contain chicken meat, prawns, seafood, green peas, etc. We have different kinds of paella, so there are paellas that has meat more than fish, and there are other paellas that has fish more than meat, etc. Anyway, the biggest paellas are made in Valencia. 

Those paellas are so huge that they need several people to prepare them!

Origins of Paella

Linguists believe that the word paella comes from the name of the pan it is made in - the Latin term patella, a flat plate on which offerings were made to the Gods.

It was in the mid-nineteenth century that modern paella was created in an area around Albufera (a fresh water lagoon near the city of Valencia). At lunch time, workers in the fields would make the rice dish in a flat pan over a fire,, mixing in whatever they could find.

Source: about.com

Curious origin, without any doubt! And now it's so delicious :D

 

¡Que tengas un buen día!

Have a good day!

El Mío Cid

¡Hola! :) Taking advantage from the last post, I would like to share with you this video of the beginning of the Cantar del Mío Cid.
El Mío Cid was a legendary man that conquers a lot of territories to the arabic people that were in Spain centuries ago, when the Spanish Kingdom was still being developed and was trying to conquer all the Iberian Peninsula.
The amazing thing in this video is the fact that the boy who recorded it tried to speak in old castilian spanish, and it's amazing to hear it because it has changed a lot :D
Enjoy it! :)

¡Que vaya bien!
Everything goes well with you!

Don Quijote de la Mancha

Don Quijote (Don Quixote) is a novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. It's full title is 'El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha' (The ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha).

When the Spanish teenagers go to the high-school, they have to read part or all this book in their Spanish classes. It's an important book of the Spanish culture and literature. Anyway, its way of writting is actually old, only used centuries ago, but in spite of that I was impressed by that book.

It's also a beautiful Spanish, and I thing that is good to feel respect and admiration for all that changes that languages make during their lifes.
I have also read some thing about the Old English and its way of being written in the past, and I was impressed by that too :) Really curious!

¡Hasta más ver, osado caballero! :)
Till the next time, brave knight!

Canción del Pirata - José de Espronceda

¡Hola piratas! :D Today I want to show you a poem written in the 19th century by one of my favourite Spanish poets, José de Espronceda.

The poem talks about the freedom of the pirates from the authorities and the governors, and all the responsabilities that this freedom implies for them.

José de Espronceda - La canción del pirata
 

Con diez cañones por banda,

viento en popa a toda vela,

no corta el mar, sino vuela,

un velero bergantín;

bajel pirata que llaman

por su bravura el Temido

en todo el mar conocido

del uno al otro confín. 

...

You can find the whole lyric here :)

You can find its translation here :)

A beautiful recitation of the poem :)

And here you can watch a video of this poem put in a song by the rock group Tierra Santa, a really good song (yeah! haha :) ). Enjoy it! :)

¡Nos vemos! 

See you!

Fiestas de San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain

Hola! As I'm from Menorca, a little island of Spain located in the Balearic Islands, I have never seen any bull running like in the Fiestas de San Fermín. But I have to admit that this fiestas are really incredible and amazing. The people runs in front of the bulls to avoid them, and everybody is there seeing and enjoying that traditional and important Spanish celebration.

The Fiestas de San Fermín begin in July, as the traditional song says :)

" ¡1 de Enero, 2 de Febrero, 3 de Marzo, 4 de Abril... 5 de Mayo, 6 de Junio, 7 de Julio... San Fermín! "

Today is the 4th day of this fiesta, and as I read in elpais.com, a well-known national newspaper in its online version, during the 4th day the bulls runs faster than any other day in the celebration, and in a shorter period of time.

I leave two images for you, a little video and the source of the news here. Enjoy it! :)

Source of the news: http://ouo.io/9kBcb

¡Hasta la próxima!
See you in the next post!