He let us in . The lights were on in the living-room, now that the day had darkened, and my eyes were dazzled for a moment by rays from the glass ornaments which flashed back from every open space. There were angels on the buffet wearing robes striped like peppermint rock; and in an alcove there was a Madonna with a gold face and a gold halo and a blue robe. On a sideboard on a gold stand stood a navy-blue goblet large enough to hold at least four bottles of wine, with a gold trellis curled around the bowl on which pink roses grew and green ivy. There were mauve storks on the bookshelves and red swans and blue fish. Black girls in scarlet dresses held green candle sconces, and shining down on all this was a chandelier which might have been made out of sugar icing hung with pale blue, pink and yellow blossoms.
Her dressing table gleamed with them: mirrors and power-jars and ash-trays and bowls for safety pins. “They brighten the darkest day,? she said. There was a very large double-bed as curlicued as the glass. ?I am especially attached to Venice,’ she explained,’because I began my real career there, and my travels. I have always been very fond of travel. It’s a great grief to me that my travels now are curtailed
From the book “Travels with my aunt” by Graham Greene.

Barcelona’s bustling, tree-lined Ramblas boulevard is a boisterous fusion of noise, colour and activity. Herds of pedestrians push their way past the squeaking menageries at the exotic birds stalls and the bright, sweet smelling flower stalls.Circles of spectators form around dancing, juggling and fire-eating street entertainers. Human statues stand silent watch as a teenage Moroccan bag-snatchers weave through the crowds and, at the port end, a handful of dumpy, cheap prostitutes pitch for business.
I know no other city where a single street is so important. From sex shops and souvenir stalls to the opera house and, in La Boqueria, the best fresh food market in Spain, Las Ramblas caters _ in one way or another- for the most elemental desires of life.
This is where Barcelona celebrates, protests and riots. Built over the course of a stinking stream once known as the Cagalell – the Stream of Shit – it is, more importantly, where Barcelona meets itself.
From the book “Gosths of Spain” by Giles Tremlett

Folklore, death and hard-edged politics overtook a village where local businesses closed down for the day. There were pipes and drums and dancing girls in long red skirts and white blouses carrying long hoops decorated with ribbons. A male dancer performed a neat, austere and highly acrobatic dance – the aurresku – full of on-the -spot turns and impressively high kicks in front of the coffin. There were also angry speeches and denunciations of Madrid. It all ended with the surprising, high-pitched sound of women ululating and the turning over by angry radicals of a radio reporter’s car. I do not recall any masked men this time. But at another funeral in Solaruze – this time for an ETA gunwoman shot by the army sergeant she had tried to kill when he stopped his car at a traffic light – masked characters appeared with a huge banner bearing the axe and serpent of ETA.
From the book “Ghosts of Spain” by Giles Tremlett

A separate door might then open and a swarm of slightly older, crawling infants appear through it. The crawlers would be shepherded this way or that like a gaggle of slow-moving geese. If they had to go upstairs, they tackled the staircase like professional climbers determined to conquer Mount Everest, a mass of bobbing, well-padded bottoms heading for the peak.
And so it went on. A couple of hundred children aged between zero and six, all encaseds in neat, green-and -white checked gingham pinafores, came here every day. Some started at 8. a. m. and were given breakfast. One of most starling things about these children’s was the tweeness which some were dresses. We had spotted the specialist children’s shops full of powder-blue boys’ outfits and pink girl’s outfits before coming parents ourselves.
But it was when a delicate, powder-blue, knitted.cotton, ribboned baby suit arrived from an acquaintance who was not only meant to be a prominent feminist but also a Socialist minister, that we realised this was just not fashion for 1950 nostalgists. At the nursery school and in the park, we would see parents who looked and dressed like us, parading children dressed in elaborate knickerbockers, smocked dresses, sashes, bows, Peter Pan collars, pin-tucks or matching knickers and bloomers. Often these children would come in matched pairs, their clothes identical or, if boy and girl, made of the same material. The occasional family of three of four kids might be identified by the fact that they were all, despite the age spread, wearing the same clothes, just in different sizes.
From the book “Ghosts of Spain” by Giles Tremlett

It may be a massive eyesore, but spread those tourists out horizontally – the way they have done in Marbella or , further down, the coast from Benidorm in Torrevieja and numerous other spots – and they go on for ever. If Benidorm, with its twenty-four square miles and 12.3 kilometres of coastline really does account for 5 per cent of foreign holidaymakers (38.000 hotel rooms of some 700.000) in Spain, then, in theory, the rest could be plonked on an island the size of, say, Ibiza. Alternatively, more of them could still be shovelled into little Benidorm – where buildings land is by no means all used up.
Benidorm’s beach is still beautiful. But now you have ti hire a top-floor suite at the Bali if you want to appreciate just how majestic those twin curves of gold are. Most visitors are left to glimpse it through a thickt of buildings. The beach is cleaned every night by machines which churn up and filter the sand. This system is now used all over Spain. A reecnt newspaper report tells how a woman who fell asleep on a beach was swallowed up by one of the machines. A sign in one, older, beachside hotel overshadowed by the Bali, reminded me thet Benidorm’s reputation for the cheap and shoddy would never quite go. ?Clients are reminded that reception has a special thinner available to help you remove grease or tat from your feet’, it read.
From the book “Ghosts of Spain” by Giles Tremlett.

It is shortly before 7.00 a.m. on a cool Madrid spring morning. The traffic is still just a purr, though it will soon be a rumble and some time after that, the usual riot of horns, ambulance sirens and roaring motorbike exhausts. This should be a small moment of peace in what must be one of Europe’s noisiest cities. a helicopter, however, has spent the past fifteen minutes poised noisily at roof-top level just a block down our street. The wide-open well of our six-storey apartment block is acting as a sound box that amplifies the relentless chugging and clattering. Sleep in our top floor apartmenmt seems, under this circumstances, impossible. I lie in bed worrying about whether the helicopter – which does this every few weeks – will wake the children. It is not as thogu they went to bed early, even thogh they have school today. One of them, a seven-year-old, got out of bed to take a phone call at 10 p.m. last night. It was another seven-year-old, excitedly inviting him to a birthday party at the weekend. Madrid boasts that it is a party town, a city that never sleeps. But does this really have to aplly to the under eights?
From the book “Ghosts of Spain” by Giles Tremlett

Dervla pushed the bar of soap under her T-shirt and washed her armpits. She was just beginning to get used to showering in her underwear, it had felt very uncomfortable on the first morning and rather silly, like being on a school trip and insisting on undressing under the covers. The alternative, however , meant exposing herself her naked body full frontal to the viewing millions, and Dervla had absolutely no intention of doing that. She had watched enough reality TV to know what the producers liked most and took great care as she lathered under her arms. It would be extremely easy to inadvertenly pull up her vest and expose her breasts and she knew that behind the two way mirrors in the shower cubicle wall a live cameraman was watching, waiting for her to do just that. One flash would be all that was required and her tits would be hanging around somewhere on the Internet till the en of the time.
From the book ‘Dead famous’ by Ben Elton