Voices en Español

Just a round-up of random items related to Spain…

I guest blogged this week over at Notes from Spain about Pan de Vino, a bread made out of wine. Sounds almost biblical, don’t you think? Anyway it’s being developed by a Spanish winery and a single slice of the purple-hued bread supposedly will have all of the benefits of two copas de vino without any of the side effects. I’ll drink to that.    [Click here to see a photo of it.]

Neat twist on the traditional travel guide: Ruba.com. Regular folks, like you and I, upload our favorite travel photos, creating a visual travel guide which is then put on display online. Each photo has a brief, one paragraph description of the location. It’s a lot like Flickr, but with a travel focus and it’s a nice way to explore your next vacation destination without leaving home. There are already several of these Ruba travel guides for different parts of Spain, such as Asturias, Costa del Sol, the Canary Islands, etc. Below is one entitled “Moorish Architecture in Spain: 800 Years of Domination.” (Click on the box below to see the photos.)

A quirky movie called “The Limits of Control” arrives in movie theaters this weekend. I read the New York Times review and still don’t understand what the heck this movie is about. It was filmed entirely in Spain, so it might be fun to try to spot the landmarks or figure out where exactly various scenes were filmed. The movie was directed by Jim Jarmusch and stars indie film favorites Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Gael García Bernal and John Hurt, so if you’re into art house movies, this might be your kind of entertainment.

The following video clip is an odd scene between the lead character, -who doesn’t have a name but is called “Lone Man” in the film credits-, and the always reliably bizarre Tilda Swinton. Her “Usted no habla español, ¿verdad?” made me chuckle, for some reason.

A different clip of the Lone Man with another character is more promising. Although we’re watching the clip out of context, it seems to make more sense as a stand-alone scene and it has got a bit of humor, thanks to the always reliably amusing Bill Murray.