You say tomato, I say tomate

Got an email from Australia today asking how you pronounce the name of our village, Juviles. A good question, and one I've not yet addressed on this blog. So here goes. As a rough approximation for English speakers, it's
hoo-BEE-lez
although as the locals tend to ignore the letter 's', it's often
hoo-BEE-lay
Anyway, it's not Jew-viles, Dew-villas or Jubblies. Nor is it, as at least one locally-resident English-speaker has it, Hoo-billies. Although I quite like Hoo-billies. Makes me think of the Beverly Hoo-billies....
I've no idea what Juviles means, if anything. The names of most villages here have an Arabic or Latin route that relates to the landscape, or the function or rank of the settlement. All I can find online is that Juviles is probably "pre-Arab". If anyone knows the derivation, I'd love to hear it.

Spain's Olympians return from Beijing

I was sorry to see Spain losing out to the US for the gold in the basketball yesterday. The game ended in a very friendly mood, I noticed, with the players hugging and high-fiveing each other. This is perhaps not surprising, as most of the Spanish players (presumably classed as Olympian amateurs for the Games) play for million-dollar salaries in North America and knock about with their adversaries on a regular basis. Away from the basketball court, Spain did less well than expected, and remarkably less well than the UK. We British won loads of medals, which is hardly in the spirit of the thing and certainly not to be encouraged in the future.

Anyway, here is an exclusive pic of "Team Esp" on their return from China. Or it might be some more of the fancy dress from the Juviles fiesta earlier this month.

While we're on the subject, why do we have to say "Beijing" when Spanish speakers can still get away with calling it "Pekin"? Shouldn't they be referring to the Chinese capital as "Veillin" or something like that, just to be fair?