Which, I believe, is Valenciana for ¡Navidad Feliz!, the latter being Castillian, or what the British would normally refer to as Spanish. With what seems like a plethora of languages in the Iberian peninsular, we Brits, who are world-renowned for struggling with foreign languages anyway, are apt to get even more confused. Before attempting to translate, one has to figure out what one is translating from. There’s Catalano (Catalan), further up the Mediterranean coast, Valenciana here with Castelano (Castillian) throughout. At Bilbao, where our ferry arrives, it’s Basque, characterized by a lot of “tx” combinations. I recently bumped into Galega (Galician), too. Then there’s word order: I’m still unsure as to whether there is any preference between ¡Navidad Feliz! and ¡Feliz Navidad!, both of which seem to be used.
Anyway, regardless of language, after the 3-month run-up that Britain seems to force upon people, the big day is finally here. Happily, it is not such a big day in Spain, which is one reason we enjoy coming here at this time of year. Another, of course, is the weather.
As Francine and I have both recently invested in expensive new camera equipment further presents, other than small stocking fillers, are superfluous. So, today really came down to this, the first being a good helping of fruit units (freshly squeezed orange juice – yes, those Spanish oranges again – with fermented grape juice – Cava) and the second a healthy helping of protein in the form of a roast half sucking pig.
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