sábado, 8 de abril de 2023

THE GUARDIAN US



My daughter Laura, a teacher in San Francisco, has urged me today to read The Guardian US; she is partial to it. I did and she is right. A good newspaper. I have read several of its articles and pieces of news and one, especially, caught my eye: Alex Needham´s "Notoriously Cruel: Should we cancel Picasso?" I enjoyed the piece but cannot judge it because I am no art critic. But something drew my attention, something that, I bet, no one has noticed. It´s a small detail, but very tale-telling. It appears in the line: "We have the vampire, the Andalucían macho..." Notice? It is not "Andalucian" but "Andalucían" which cannot be a typo at all.  It should be "Andalusian", of course. Also, the word "macho", included in English dictionaries, echoes Spanish men, and Spanish culture. Mr. Needham did not write "macho andaluz", no, he wrote "Andalucían macho"... and added a written accent (´) to his misspelt word. Stereotypes die hard, if ever, and any man from Spain will always be a "macho man", whatever that may mean, even if men are losing the feminist battle here, and rightly so. 

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