BEFORE setting off to a new destination, it can be helpful to learn some local phrases to use while abroad.

Spain is expecting one of the busiest, and hottest summers yet and visitors may want to express just how hot the weather is.

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However, one simple expression should be avoided.

City Lit’s head of school for culture and communication Claudio Guasti has warned against using ‘Estoy caliente’

Its literal translation of ‘I am hot’ in English, actually means ‘I am aroused’ in Spanish.

The proper expression is ‘tengo calor.’ Although this translates to ‘I have heat’, in Spanish it’s the proper way to express you are hot!

Saying ‘soy cálida/cálido’ would also be incorrect as it refers to someone’s personality, like being a warm or kind person, not your physical temperature.

You can use the word caliente in other situations though, Gausti explained to the paper Liverpool Echo.

For example “me gustaría un té caliente”, meaning “I would like a hot tea”, is appropriate. 

Similarly saying something like “el café está muy caliente”, meaning “the coffee is very hot”, is also okay.

Gausti said another common language mistake is people saying they’re pregnant in Spanish, when they really mean they are embarrassed. 

“Lots of Spanish words sound very similar to their English translation, for example, café for coffee, tren for train, or plato for plate,” he said.

“It can be easy when following this pattern to assume the word ’embarazada’ might mean ’embarrassed’, but it actually means ‘pregnant’, which could raise a few eyebrows and cause a few smirks if used in the wrong context. To really say you are feeling embarrassed or sheepish, say ‘estoy avergonzado/a’.”

Gausti also warned against saying ‘hasta la vista’ a term meaning ‘until I see you again’ which gained popularity through Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character using the phrase in Terminator 2.

He confirmed Spanish speakers never use this term, and instead recommends using ‘hasta luego’ or ‘adios’, which mean ‘see you later’ and ‘goodbye.’

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AFTER Guillermo Varela’s Austrian girlfriend told him his cooking was so delicious he needed to share it, he started to upload his Spanish recipes online.

Varela had been cooking for her and their friends while living in Berlin, homesick for his country’s cuisine.

Beginning with just 600 followers, his mouth-watering recipes for tortilla, paella, croquettes, Russian salad and octopus à feira, have enticed more than 330,000 followers and millions of views since. 

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Under the handle Cooking from Spain, Varela shares his instructional cooking videos with added flair, including jokes, and background information on the recipes, like fun anecdotes, or the background origins of the dishes he’s cooking.

In his video about Russian salad, he shares the controversy surrounding the origin of its name, which he claims is ‘as Spanish as my Spanish accent in English.’

At the beginning he thought making the quick 40-second videos would be easy, but had to teach himself editing, and he would end up spending four to five hours over the entire process. 

While studying for his degree in Industrial Engineering at the University of Vigo, in his hometown, Vaerla discovered his true passion was cooking, when he’d come home after class and make lunch for his family. 

He’s since started a newsletter writing about gastronomy and a YouTube channel, hoping to share Spain’s iconic dishes with a global audience. 

Vaerla said Spanish cuisine isn’t as well-known.

“It’s our fault. Many times, we’ve tried to take advantage of tourists and scam them instead of selling our cuisine well. In other countries, they use their cuisine as a showcase for the world,” he told El Paìs. 

“It’s unacceptable that a tourist leaves with the idea that a calamari sandwich is the scam they sell you in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor.”

READ MORE: SPANISH RECIPE: Andalucian Fish Casserole (Cazuela de Pescado)

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SPAIN’s Police have recovered an ancient Roman funeral artefact stolen from a Bulgarian museum more than two decades ago.

The 2nd-century Roman funerary stele depicting a Thracian horseman was stolen in May 1996 from the Razgard City Museum.

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Art history professor at the University of Grenoble in France, Djamila Fellague, discovered the piece up for sale in Spain on a well-known auction website based in the Netherlands, in August last year.

The expert in funerary architecture and sculpture contacted the Spanish police to report the sale.

The police saw that the funerary stele had been registered by the Bulgarian authorities on Interpol and set out to locate the current owner, also involving the Dutch authorities.

During the investigation, it was discovered, the piece had been acquired by the current owner in 2020 and had previously come from a private collection at the since-closed Biblical and Oriental Museum in León since 2010. Those items had belonged to a French collector who died in 2023. 

The current owner was finally located, and he voluntarily handed it over to the police, stating he was unaware it was originally stolen. 

A ceremony was held at the Bulgarian Embassy in Spain, and the piece was finally back in the hands of Bulgaria. 

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