Holiday Season in Spain

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My local bar overlooks the Med.
It has a large terrace where you can sit and enjoy the views.
A full moon over the sea is spectacular.
There is a large selection of food on offer, fresh and well prepared.

Or you can simply have a few drinks and perhaps an ice cream to end the day.

There is no annoying music and the televisions are only put on for football.

A peaceful, tranquil place.

But for 2 months of the year the place is transformed.

This is what will happen tonight and every night until early September.
There will be a number of extended families that will shamble in and ask for a table for 10, or 12…..sometimes more.
The waiters will have to move tables around to accommodate them.

The typical family will consist of perhaps 6 adults, 4 miserable, gormless looking teenagers and a few toddlers, crying because they have been in the sun all day and are tired.

There is absolutely no point in insisting on one table for a large group of people.
If you are at one end of the table you can’t possibly talk to the people at the other end.
The teenagers will have their heads in their mobiles and will not talk anyway.

The chefs will be under pressure to serve a large number of dishes at the same time.
The quality of the food will not be at its best.

Far better to ask for a number of tables for 4 people and not be such a pain in the arse.

Drinks will arrive and the first thing that happens is the adults will scoop out any ice cubes.
You can’t risk catching anything from the water here.

The fact that the water in most places in Spain is equal to or even cleaner than you would get in the UK is lost on these people. As is the fact that the fingers that they are using to scoop out the ice cubes were recently up their noses or wiping their arses.

The more adventurous adults will order cocktails.
A bit ironic as most cocktails will have crushed ice.

The teenagers will ignore the glasses that they are given. They will drink straight from the bottle.

Food.
Pizzas for the teenagers and spaghetti bolognese for the toddlers, most of which will end up on the floor or table.

For the adults, something adventurous but obviously with chips.

Tortilla and chips.
Calamares Romana and chips.
Arroz a banda and chips.
Bacalao and chips (“This cod ain’t got no batter on it”)

Most of the food will go uneaten.
At least one glass or bottle will be dropped on the floor and smashed.
The small kids will have 2 mouthfuls of spaghetti before running around the terrace, shouting.
The adults will ignore them.
The surly teenagers, still trying to look cool in their sunglasses even though it’s 10pm, will not look up from their mobiles.

How can anyone enjoy a family holiday like this…. Why would anyone ever come back?

If you are going to visit Spain come out of season.
The weather is more tolerable.
But please, leave your fucking kids at home.

Nominated by: The Artful Cunter

52 thoughts on “Holiday Season in Spain”

  1. Ive only ever been once before. It reminded me of Whitley Bay but with Sunshine, and cheaper.

  2. Oi! Pedro! Dos sirvaysas fash a vor and an all day English breakfast with chips!

    None of that foreign muck. Kalispera.

    I fucking detest extended chav families abroad and go out of my way to avoid them.
    Usually as far out of town as possible, where the food and service are top notch and the staff really appreciate good manners and a decent tip.

  3. You don’t have to go all the way to Spain for a dining experience like that.

    Just try Wetherspoons.

  4. Sounds like going out to dinner with Wayne Rooney and family.

    “Eh Pedro, dey doo da alphabetti spaghetti la”.

    • The Chinese also do an alphabetti Spaghetti, LL. It comes in 5 gallon drums so you are assured of getting most of the letters.
      ㄚ口∪ 丹尺モ 丹ㄥㄥ 丹 ち卄口山モ尺 口下 匚∪れ匕ち !

  5. This nom is sardonically ironic in a way only a Brit could have written it with a straight face.

  6. Great nom.

    Genuine question:

    Are flick-knives still legal in Spain?

    Bought a couple whilst on holidays in the 1970s. One that flicks out the side, the other shoots out the front.

    Love the mechanisms.

    Occasionally bring them out when we have boring guests round who I got nothing in common with.

    They make excellent talking points.

    • Yes.
      You can buy knives in lots of places, including motorway service stations and some bars.

      They will have glass cabinets full of the things.
      Some fucking huge zombie knives too.

      Very useful if you have come out for the evening and forgotten your machete.

    • When we’ve had guests outstay their welcome I just look pointedly at my watch Shit-cake but hey, whatever works for you.

      I’m a bit surprised you got the knives back through airport security. I did a job at the police station at Heathrow one day when they were still at the top of the east ramp to the Bath Road. A copper had a one-piece metal tool which was plainly a knuckle duster with a 4″ doubled-edged blade on one end. He had taken it off an arrival who when asked told him he used it to remove apple cores. Once when I was working at Birmingham airpot in the early nineties after a plane arrived from Germany a 9mm pistol and a box of ammunition were found abandoned in a gent’s loo in the terminal. As far as I know they never did find out who had tried to smuggle it in and lost his nerve finally.

      • I can only assume, Arfur, that airport security was more relaxed in the 1970s. Especially that pertaining to holiday makers travelling between Spain and Britain.

        Only time I had a problem with UK customs was importing a bunch of porn mags obtained during a trip to Germany.

      • Fuhrer’s Fraulein’s or Housewives of Hamburg?

        ……er.. asking for Cunt Engine.

    • My dad brought me back a hand made Teledo steel flicknife back in 1973.
      He trusted me, bless him.

  7. 2 months of the year you get to enjoy watching wildlife masquerading as human beings

    Cheap holidays advertised in the Sun newspaper will be purchased by Sun readers, you are welcome TAC

  8. Couldn’t do with all that nonsense. I’d only complain. Best staying away. Could just about put up with watching it on YNC.com and have the pleasure of seeing other people’s pleasure ruined, similar aboard aircraft, I’ve never had the misfortune of. A quiet pleasant life for me everytime.

  9. What a cracking nom Artful!
    Covered it all perfectly, except perhaps for the usual attempted piss-take of the waiters – whose English will be far better than their fucking attempts at any Spanish. It was a real pleasure to read.
    But Geordie is also right, you can get the same experience in many places in the good ‘ole UK.
    Roll on an out-of-season break (the locals are glad to entertain such folk)

    • On Tuesday I went to a new Spanish restaurant which had recently opened just 100 meters from my home.

      I think that the chef has had a brainstorm as there it was on the menu…. Apple crumble.

      His attempt to lure some British actually worked.
      There was a table of four English people close to ours.

      Unfortunately the waiters were not taught how Apple crumble is pronounced in English.
      They couldn’t understand.
      They relied on the punters pointing to it on the menu.

      “Ah! App-ley Croom-bley…. en seguida”

      It turned out to be apple tart anyway, no crumble at all but very nice nonetheless.

      • The more forested Basque regions were always my favourite stops for food and…er..other refreshments when tramping round europe in an artic early 2k’s.

        I loved shipping in and out San Sebastian after many a torrid perigrination of the hairpins on the Pyrenees. The food is beyond awesome in that region.

  10. Hey Artful, is your corner of Spain being affected by these tourism protests?

    I have seen a few on some of the islands and in Barcelona where they spayed tourists with water pistols and started chanting at them to go home. I get the concerns about locals being priced out and high rents etc but then you see the signs of ‘tourists out, refugees welcome’ and well any sympathy quickly evaporates. I imagine Barcelona is pretty liberal and a lot of the country is still split along the political lines of the civil war and Franco era?

    • Sorry sprayed not spayed, they are not being sterilized, although some fucking well should be.

    • It’s a bit daft protesting about an industry that your entire economy is based on.

      A more sensible approach would be to restrict the sale of properties to foreigners.

      Spain would be fucked without tourism.

  11. @art….the majority only go for the big hot ball in the sky don’t they 😎…take that away and you’d be left in peace on your terrace more often 👍… don’t forget with climate boiling now imminent the Costas will be deserted in favour of Blackpool and Rhyl… enjoy the tranquility with your cerveza 🍺

    • This has been the most disappointing summer that I have known.

      Yes it’s nice and warm, but cooler than past years.
      Windy during most days.
      Daytime temperatures half a dozen degrees less than you would expect during the day and a marked drop at night.

      There has been no rain for months, obviously down to climate change.

      I believe that it has been pissing it down in the UK, also obviously down to climate change.

      • AC, I’ve never been to Spain and I don’t have any kids, but I think I know exactly how you feel.

    • A Spanish climate would, in the UK, be beyond endurance and the deeply entrenched overpopulation problems here would soon manifest more starkly than we’re currently witnessing. The cold here keeps these festering tensions on a tight leash.

  12. Nah not for me
    I’ll just just sit in me back garden getting burnt red in the sun in between it pissing down!

  13. Well the Beaus love Spain, and we`ll all be over to visit you soon, Artful …

    Along with Mr Beau (also called Sam), we`ll be bringing some of the kiddies:
    Akim, Bim, Colum, Dum, Gazee, Gum, Ho, Jum, Lim, Mum, Plassee, Rain, Ram, Tur & little Ah. Here`s a recent piccy …

    https://cdn4.picryl.com/photo/1941/01/01/siloam-greene-county-georgia-classroom-in-a-negro-school-1024.jpg

    Get those watermelon slices on that terrace barbie now, and see you soon!

    🍉

    • Sad news for you Sam.

      With fuck all rain for months the muddy water holes which your lovely family rely on are now several day’s walk away.

      Best to stay at home.

      Please.

  14. The Monglish abroad. I’m sometimes ashamed to be of the same nationality but at the same time relieved that we have nothing else In common.

    • I sadly see it all the time when in France. Oi how much ect. FFS make an effort, no wonder everyone hates us.

  15. Was in Spain during the euro finals, was in a bar in benidorm when we lost, kicked off a bit but what the fuck when you are half pissed and the ladies are semi naked

  16. It’s utterly beyond me why
    English people go abroad and seek out places that serve English food, pots of English tea, etc.

    If it’s just for the heat, why not hire Firth Ricksons furnace and a sunbed for a week?

    Hey presto, all the pleasures of English cuisine combined with the warmth of foreign climes, and no queues at airports, either.

  18. I used to be like Phileas Fogg without the fruity moustache, travelling the world, so many places to visit..

    Now I see my folly of my ways, I could of saved a fortune by just biding my time, and just visiting London..

    Experience all third world cultures in under a week.

    Hourly knife fights, shitting in public,calls to prayers 5 times a day.
    Low food hygiene standards, foreign language’s on every corner, terrible driving.

    And now with the added bonus thanks to Rodney starmer, you don’t have to leave your own country to be a second rate citizen..

  19. It reminds me of the time I and the Mrs went to Femes in Lanzerotte. Table of English women, all high maintenance asked for a salad with cheese. Fuck me you should have heard them, this is goats cheese? Duh, where is the grass that said cows graze on. The fucking whole island is volcanic. Dozy fucking tarts. I and the Mrs were ashamed to be English that day.

    I doing my best told the waiter to chinga los putas. Made him and the chef laugh though. Still kicking off on the coach moaning about the goats cheese, I always try and be polite and talk to any locals I interact with and tip as well. I hope I have the Spanish right, I told the waiter fuck the whores in Spanish. No doubt others will tell me what I should have said.

    • You instructed the waiter to physically fuck the women.

      Chingar is the verb ‘to fuck’ but usually only heard in South America.

      Follar is the equivalent in Spain, but the phrase “Folla las putas” (las, not los as you are referring to more than one female) is still an instruction.

      “A la mierda con las putas tontas” would have been better.

      “Fuck the stupid bitches”.

      Now write it out 100 times.

  20. I tried abroad and didn’t like it.

    I never renewed my passport and probably never will.

    Barcelona can’t hold a candle to Stockport in terms of culture, architecture and cuisine.

  21. Ps

    While Artie depicts a idyllic picture of him sat at the bar overlooking the Med,
    He doesn’t mention

    Stray cats and dogs
    Mosquito and flies
    Undercrackers stuck up your arse with sweat.
    Sunburn
    And dust.

  22. PPS
    I’m never ashamed to be English.
    Ignorance is bliss and I’m as ignorant as it comes.

    Brits behaving badly abroad is traditional.

    We aren’t allowed to shoot the natives any more mores the pity but being rude to them is still allowed.

    Hast thee any Bisto?
    Fuck off you Spanish cunt.

    • Do you still wear socks and sandals for special occasions if you don’t go abroad anymore Miserable?

      I hope at least you thoroughly embarrassed Mrs M and the kids while you could.

      • I despise sandals LL.

        For hippies and religious types.
        I wear either Adidas campus or Adidas originals on holidays.

        I DO like to embarrass my family and will go out of my way to do so.

        I’m not willing to attempt to speak foreign lingo or eat foreign muck.

        Nor am I willing to pretend to like the scenery.

        I don’t like beaches
        I don’t like hot weather
        And I don’t like foreigners.

        Michael Palin can rest easy.

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