An English Village in Spain
January 9th, 2008
Download audio file (gibralter.mp3)
Luis: So It is like you see it and it is like on a stage. Something is not working here. I mean an English village should be cloudy, should be foggy, should be… not this starkly blue sky.
Mark: This is Gibraltar?
Luis: This is Gibraltar.
Mark: What is the situation there?
Luis: It is a British colony in south Spain.. It is a British colony in Europe. It is a colony of a European country in another European country.
Mark: And the people in Gibraltar; they don’t want to be Spanish and they don’t want to be British? They want to be independent?
Luis: They want to be independent.
Mark: Right. And they speak English?
Luis: They speak English with a very strong Andalucian accent. A very strong south Spanish accent and the slang they use is Spanish.
Mark: How many people?
Luis: A few thousand.
Mark: A few thousand. Wow! What an interesting place.
Luis: A weird place. Kind of surrealistic actually.
Mark: Right. An English village with the wrong-coloured sky.
Luis: (laughs) To me this is the most surrealistic part of the place because one doesn’t match the other. It is not working. You are missing the clouds, the fog, the…
Here are some questions in present simple tense.
1. Should an English village be cloudy?
2. Is Gibralar a British colony?
3. Is it in Spain?
4. Do the people in Gibraltar speak English?
5. What kind of slang do they use?
6. How many people are there on the island?
7. Do they want to be independent?
Here are some answers.
1. According to Luis, yes, it should.
2. Yes, it is.
3. Luis says it is in Spain. It is an island off the coast of mainland Spain like Majorca.
4. Yes, they do.
5. They use Andalusian (Spanish) slang.
6. There are a few thousand.
7. Yes, they do.