It may come as a
surprise to discover that the
English and Spanish words used to describe the size of the area in which you live
do not translate exactly, as you can see in the
Venn diagram above.
I realised this when a student once described
Fuenlabrada, a
suburb of Madrid that counts
Fernando Torres among its sons, as
a village.
Which I thought was strange, as
Fuenlabrada has a
shopping mall containing many popular chain stores right next to its train station.
Sometime later I realised that the student must have been
literally translating the Spanish word "
pueblo" into English, unaware of any cultural differences.
The notion of "
mi pueblo" seems to be
deeply ingrained into the Spanish
psyche, many residents of Madrid speak fondly of returning to their "
pueblo" in Asturias, Extremadura, Galicia or wherever during the Easter or summer holidays... and
those whose families have always resided in the capital often feel
a little sad that they do not have recourse to a countryside retreat, even going so far as to purchase one of their own - or have one built! - when finances permit.
The fiestas of San Isidro in the Spanish capital would not be complete without a few roadside stalls boasting
chorizo sausages from "
mi pueblo", even though the actual location of these sausage farms is usually shrouded in mystery.
To an Anglophone, the notion of a
village usually conjures up images of
isolated rural communities either at home or abroad. People
living off the land in
a small clutch of farmhouses where
everybody knows everybody else and where
the church and / or the
one pub or
bar is the beating heart of the community.
Or was.
The most iconic internationally known village is probably
the small Gaulish village in the Asterix comic books. Yet in their Spanish translation, the village was not translated as "pueblo" but as
"aldea".
So
aldea seems to be smaller than
pueblo, but both appear to be what would equate to
villages in English. Nonetheless, some
pueblos - such as the aforementioned Fuenlabrada - would also be considered
towns in the UK... and bigger than a town would be a city. Traditionally, city status was only
bestowed upon areas blessed with a cathedral, although this is no longer a requirement. More details on what makes a city a city - in Britain at least - can be found
here.
Of course, the word
pueblo does have an entirely different - yet inextricably connected - meaning, that of the
people... more often than not the
working classes or the
common people.
When
Diana, Princess of Wales (and not "
Lady D." or even "Laddie Dee" as many non-native speakers appear to erroneously call her) was tragically
killed in a car crash in Paris,
Tony Blair referred to her as "
the people's princess", which in Spanish became
la princesa del pueblo which - to my ears at least - made her sound like some kind of
fallera or queen of the village fiestas.
Which inevitably leads us to the
Village People, the trailblazing
disco band from the 1970s who hailed from
Greenwich Village, then
THE gay neighbourhood of New York City.
Which of course was
part of a city and
not a real village at all.