The Alternative Guide to… Spain
Spain at a Glance
Capital city: Madrid
Population: 46.7 million
Local currency: euro (£1 = 1.31€)
Famous face: Hollywood actress Penélope Cruz , who donated her whole salary from her first Hollywood film "The Hi-Lo Country" to the Mother Theresa Of Calcutta Centre
5 things you never knew about Spain
Language is a funny thing - in Spanish exclamation and question marks are written upside down before the first letter of the sentence... "¿Como estás?" means "how are you?" "¿Creerse la última Coke en el desierto?", literally translated, means "You think you're the last Coke in the desert", but is the equivalent of the English idiom "You think you're the bee's knees".
The construction of Sagrada Família in Barcelona began in 1882 and isn't expected to be completed until 2026, 100 years after architect Antoni Gaudí's death.
To celebrate New Year it's traditional to eat 12 grapes, one on each chime of the bell at midnight. This custom was introduced by vine growers as a way to flog their grapes.
The Spanish National Anthem, "Marcha Real", has no official words. The traditional lyrics were removed in 1978 after the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. It's one of the four nations (the others being Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and San Marino) with wordless anthems.
La Tomatina is an annual festival in the Valencian town of Buñol held on the last Wednesday in August. It's basically one big food fight, where thousands of people throw tomatoes at each other. Don't forget, you must squash the tomato before throwing it as per the rules.
National dish
Paella Valenciana - a dish made with rice mixed with either seafood, chicken or rabbit and vegetables.
If you do one thing in Spain, make sure it’s...
... a trip on the only cross-border zip-line in the world. The Limite Zero wire runs from the Spanish village of Sanlúcar de Guadiana across to Alcoutim in the Algarve, Portugal.
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