THE English language is wholly and entirely democratic. No-one tells English speakers how to use certain words or what we can and can’t ‘officially’ say.
Take phrasal verbs, for example.
With an everyday verb like ‘make’, we add a preposition such as ‘up’, and we have a load of new verbs.
It can mean to apply cosmetics to your face (She’ll be with us shortly: she’s just making up), or to invent an excuse (He made up a yarn about a car crash to explain his late arrival) or get together again after a romantic break-up (Has Sandra made up with Simon yet?)
The government has nothing to do with it: the people create these new terms for themselves.
Spanish is very different. There’s a Royal Academy which rules on how words can be used.
On December 5, 1930, the Academy decided that it is okay to use feminine nouns. Today a female doctor can be addressed as ‘Doctora’, and a woman who works as a teacher is as ‘Profesora’.
The Birthday of Two Singers
José Carreras was born in Barcelona on December 5, 1948. He is one of the world’s greatest-ever operatic tenors.
When he was a child, he emigrated to Argentina with his family, but it didn’t work out, and the Carreras returned to Catalunya.
After seeing a Mario Lanza film, the 10-year-old knew he wanted to be an opera singer. He was such a nuisance around the house, constantly belting out arias, that his parents and siblings banished him to the bathroom!
He is now 78 years old, and still performing. José carries in his head no fewer than 60 roles, perfectly memorised!
At the opposite end of the country, in 1950, a gypsy boy was born on December 5, 1950. The name José Monje may not mean much to you, but if you’ve spent any time at all in Andalucía, you will have heard of him by his nickname.
“Camarón de la Isla” of Cádiz is a flamenco legend.
His family was very poor when Camarón was a boy. His father played acoustic guitar in pubs and clubs, and took the boy along, to collect the coins which customers threw.
In the gypsy language, “Camarón” means “blondie”, the nickname his father gave him. It stuck with him for life.
The boy grew into a man, and into a fine singer. He teamed up with the superb guitarist, Paco de Lucía, and together the two revolutionised flamenco music, bringing it out of the bordello, and into the pop age.
But Camarón was a chain smoker, and in 1992 he was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. When he died in July of that year, a hundred thousand mourners attended his funeral.
All About My Mother
The feature film, “Todo Sobre Mi Madre” hit Spanish cinemas on December 5, 1990. It established Pedro Almodóvar as Spain’s greatest-ever movie director.
It is a film about Woman. Almodovar is well-known for his preoccupation with feminine sensibility, and here we go through the range of female awarenesses – Mother, Actress, Whore.
This is not the ‘macro’ masculine world of war and politics, but the feminine ‘micro’ universe of caring, loving and suffering. In a real sense, it is “All About Eve”.
Manuela loves her son Esteban totally and unconditionally. When he is taken from her, she must forge a new life. Back in her native Barcelona she finds fulfilment caring for Rosa the pregnant nun and Huma the barren actress. A new Estéban appears, and the cycle of living and loving begins again.
This flimsy summary of the story gives no real idea of the film’s symbolic and dramatic richness. It is a pattern made of other patterns, with stories repeating, reversing and overlapping endlessly.
Names can mean a break with the past (Agrado, Huma) or they can insist on continuity (Rosa, Estéban).
In the Spanish guignol tradition, names can also delineate character – Agrado tries to make life agreeable for others, Huma Rojo is red smoke, a hollow illusion, and Niña is an adult with a child’s personality.
Even if you have to watch it with English subtitles, watch it!
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