Camino Barcelona Blog

Imagine this:- you are walking down the street, minding your own business, when a voice appears from nowhere, proclaiming to the world: ‘The day you were born an angel fell from the sky’!!!  Welcome to Spain, ladies! 

This kind of terribly indiscreet- but really quite poetic - flattery is just unheard of in many countries. For example, I can’t imagine it happening in England. If you are lucky, you might get an admiratory grunt or whistle, but little more!!!

The Spanish, however, really do it with style and it is not just bored builders who take part!  The traditional Spanish ‘Piropo’ (chat-up line) is generally a lot less aggressive than the image we have of chat-up lines today and it is genuinely designed to please - not embarrass - the object of desire. 

So, you come to Spain and you receive your first ‘piropo’.  Do you feel fantastic, or mortified….or perhaps both?  When I first discovered this new world of flattery at the tender age of 17, I found the whole custom rather embarrassing…and really quite sexist.  Well, it is always the men and never the women who get to think up the good lines!  But 10 years later, I am more laid-back about the whole thing.  A nice compliment never did anyone any harm…

Our teacher, Leticia, actually held a culture workshop about ‘Piropos’ yesterday - I wonder what you all made of it…

On that note, I will leave you with my favourite ‘piropo’:

 ‘Tu madre debe de ser pastelera porque un bombón como tú no lo fabrica cualquiera’

Your mother must be a baker- it take someone special to make a cup-cake like you!’.

Happy Valentines day to you all!

Kate X

 

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Kate's Posts, Spanish Culture - Cultura española, Spanish Vocabulary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.