The "Fish-Man" of Liérganes, a legend from the North of Spain. Francisco de la Vega was born in Liérganes (Cantabria, North of Spain) in the middle of the seventeenth century. He was famous in the village since he was a child because of his extraordinary ability to swim. When he was sixteen, his mother sent him to Bilbao, a nearby city in the Basque Country, to learn the trade of carpenter. On the eve of the day of St. John (23 June) in 1674 he went to swim in the sea with other carpenters and swam until he disappeared. His friends thought he would come back, because he was an amazing swimmer, but that didn’t happen. In the end, they told his family that the rough Cantabrian Sea had “swallowed” him. Five years later, some fishermen in Cádiz (Andalusia, South of Spain) saw an aquatic being while they were fishing. They were surprised and afraid at the same time. The rumour spread quickly in the city and the fishermen thought about the best way to capture that creature. They used baits of meat and bread and big fishing nets and, after a few days, they managed to catch him. They were astonished at what they saw: he was a young man, tall and corpulent, with pale skin and red hair, but he had scales from the throat to the belly and on his back and he also had his fingers joined by a membrane. He didn’t speak but he roared like an animal. He was taken to a convent and stayed there for a while. He was interrogated by several language experts for three weeks and finally he could say a word: “Liérganes”. In the beginning that word didn’t make sense for them but, fortunately, in the convent there was a man from Santander, a city in Cantabria, and he confirmed that the word corresponded to a village from his region. Some messengers went there to look for information and they knew about the disappearance of Francisco in Bilbao five years earlier. When they returned to the convent and told the news, they decided to take him to Liérganes. As soon as he arrived in the village, he went directly to his mother’s house and his family recognized him immediately. Since then, he never showed any gesture of joy and spent his days in silence, eating raw meat and fish and lying face down on the floor. He wasn’t interested in anyone or anything. One day, two years later, he run towards the river, shouting desperately. Some farmers tried to stop him but he could escape from them and jump into the river, where he started to swim at high speed and disappeared. He was never found again.

Description of the painting "Happiness" by Paul Gauguin “Happiness” was painted by Paul Gauguin in 1892. It’s an oil on canvas and we can contemplate it in the Orsay Museum in Paris. He painted it during his first trip to Tahiti, where he went looking for a primitive way of life, and that is what this painting shows. In the foreground we can see a big red dog and two seated women wearing typical Tahitian dresses. One of them is playing the flute and the other one is listening carefully while staring to the viewer. Behind them there is a tree and a river, which separates those women from three others, who are worshiping an idol in the background. I would say that the “happiness” of the title comes from the subject, of course, but also from the masterful choice of colour by Gauguin. He uses specific colours with great skill (especially warm ones like red, yellow and orange) to provide the image a joyful environment. To sum up, this is a striking painting, really expressive, and it definitely doesn’t leave me cold. I’d love to have it in my living room because it’s colourful, optimistic and it makes me feel calm.

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao was built between 1993 and 1997 and was designed by the Canadian architect Frank Gehry. Bilbao was an important industrial city during the ‘60s and the ‘70s, with lots of factories (the most famous was the Blast Furnace of Biscay) and shipyards, but in the ‘80s it began its change: the industry was shuttled down bit by bit and it became a completely different city over the following decade, clean and free of pollution. The building is located beside the estuary, in one of those places destined to industry in the past. The Museum houses an important collection of contemporary art that is visited by more than one million people each year. It has definitely promoted tourism and contributed to improve the image and the economy of the city. I love this building because of its design: it’s one of the most amazing works of Deconstructivism in the world. It is full of movement, because of its curved lines, and it looks different depending on where it is contemplated: from the estuary it looks like a ship (it’s a tribute to the city) but from above it looks like a rose. In addition to this, the main material of the building (titanium panels) is perfect to reflect the special light of Bilbao and corresponds perfectly to its sky.

Frida Khalo, my favourite painter Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter who lived in the first half of the 20th century. Her work was influenced by her health problems: she suffered from poliomyelitis and in addition she had an accident when the little bus in which she was travelling crashed with a trolley and her back and pelvis broke. Because of that she underwent more than thirty surgeries during her life and she had to stay long periods of time in bed, from where she painted lots of her paintings. She painted over two hundred works, most of them self-portraits, in which she reflected her suffering, her pain and the different difficulties she found in her life. Her style was influenced by her husband Diego Rivera and other muralists of Mexican popular art from those years but it went further: she developed a unique, personal and metaphoric style. During her life some art critics said that her paintings belonged to the surrealism movement, but she always rejected their opinions by saying that she never painted dreams but her reality. I love her work because of her style and her use of the colour and the folk Mexican elements, but above all because she tells us about her interesting biography and transmits her stormy feelings in a direct way. Some people think that part of her paintings are hard to see, especially the miscarriages’ ones, but in my opinion they are all meaningful, powerful and extremely expressive.

Let's play! I really enjoy playing games. I prefer doing it with other people, much more than playing alone. When I was a child I used to play for hours in the street with my friends. We played skipping rope, hide and seek, tag, French skipping, cops and robbers… Nowadays I prefer more relaxed games, especially card ones, but I also like playing other kind of games like Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, Rummikub, Scrabble, domino… I’d love to have the opportunity to play with my family every week, but that is impossible for me because we live far away. When we are together, on holidays, we spend lots of time playing a card game called “mus”, very popular in Spain. It’s really funny and we enjoy ourselves a lot. I think adults don’t dedicate enough time to play in today’s society and it seems it’s not important for us anymore, but by playing we improve our social relations, learn how to work in teams, respect the opponents, stimulate our creativity and, above everything, we have fun. So… let’s play!

How to play Trivial Pursuit Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which you have to show your general knowledge. This game can be played as individuals, from two to six people, or in teams if there are more than six people who want to play. For this game you need the Trivial’s board with different colour boxes, the playing tokens with six slots for the wedges, a die and the flash cards with questions and answers. There are six categories of questions, each one related to one colour (the colours on the boxes): Geography (blue), Science and Nature (green), Sports (orange), shows, cinema , TV (pink), Art and Literature (brown) and History (yellow). The game starts on the centre of the board. A person or team rolls the die and move the token the spaces indicated on the die. If they answer correctly the question of that box, they keep rolling the die and answering more questions until they say a wrong answer. Next, the other person or team continues rolling the die and doing the same process. The objective of the game is to get the six wedges of the six questions categories. You can get one by answering correctly the question on a “pie box” (these are special boxes with an image of the token with a wedge in it). The first person or team in getting the six wedges has to move to the centre of the board. Then the opponent chooses a category (without looking at the card before) and asks a question from that category. If the answer is correct, that person or team wins the game. If not, they have to roll again during the next turn and try to answer a different question when they get into the centre box again. ** I never thought that writing the instructions for a board game was so difficult... Thanks in advance for your help!

Is it really important to be physically attractive? Nowadays people spend a lot of time and money to be physically attractive: they buy flashy clothes and jewels, go to the hairdresser’s very often, use make up, try to get fit going to the gym… However, is it the main conditioning factor to make a good impression to the others? On the one hand, it’s true that first impressions are conditioned by physical appearance most of the time, so we have to be careful to with it, especially if we have to do a job interview or we are thinking about dating someone we are really interested in. On the other hand, being attractive is not everything. Our personality and our behavior play an essential role in making a good impression and, although it takes more time to people to know them than to see how we look like, they show who we really are, which is decisive. To sum up, being physically attractive is important in our today’s society but it is worthless if we don’t have more qualities to offer.

Bilbao deserves a visit! Bilbao is a great destination for a weekend break. It’s located on the northern coast of Spain, in the Basque Country, and it takes one hour by plane to get there from Madrid. It’s a small city, perfect to get around it on foot (many streets in the downtown have been turned into pedestrian areas) or by bike (you can rent a municipal one and tour the whole city using bike lanes). One of the most popular places to visit is Mount Artxanda, because there is a beautiful view of the city from there and it’s an amazing place to take a stroll. The Guggenheim Museum is very well-known, but I strongly recommend also visiting the Fine Arts Museum where interesting exhibitions are held very often. Talking about music, there is an important classical music festival that is organised every year in March. Apart from cultural events, Bilbao has extraordinary restaurants with delicious food, especially fish dishes. Many people enjoy going to the bars and trying the famous “pintxos”, little tasty works of art. The best season to go to this city is summer, because the weather doesn’t get very hot. Although the favourite Spanish destinations for visitors are beaches in Andalusia, Mediterranean coast and the Canary and Balearic Islands, the north coast deserves a visit too. If you are thinking on coming to Spain, give it a chance!

Email to the secretary of a Book Club Dear secretary, I’m writing to recommend one of my favourite books for this year’s Book Club readers: “Outlander”, by Diana Gabaldon, an American writer. It was published in 1991 and was her first novel. It’s really difficult to say what the genre of this book is because, in my opinion, it’s a mixture of different genres: you can find history, adventure, romance and a bit of science-fiction or mystery in it. The story is mainly set in Scotland in different periods of time and the plot tells us about Claire Randall, an English nurse who goes to Scotland with her husband on a second honeymoon after the end of the Second World War. She accidentally passes through a circle of stones and travels back in time to the eighteenth century, to the clans’ era. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes history, battles, political intrigues and passionate love stories. When people start reading it, they usually can’t put it down. Most of them continue with the rest of the saga (the author is currently writing the ninth book). Best regards, Virginia