It's OK to eat baby sheep (lamb), but not baby horses

Logo for the association of colt meat producers of Navarra.

PAMPLONA, Spain -- The logo at right is supposed to look like a horse, but not too much like a horse.

Probably the producers of colt meat, a local delicacy that costs around $6-$9 a pound here, don't want you thinking too much about the fact that you are eating a baby horse.

We Americans think of horses and dogs and cats as part of our family. So eating colts or kitties or puppies would be like cannibalism. (Although we have no problem eating lamb and veal, babies as well.)

Our notions are pretty strange, if you think about it. According to the local paper (this digital version is less detailed than the print version), there are 420 local farmers who produce about 75,000 pounds of meat a year from 2,000 colts. About 10% is consumed locally, and the rest is shipped to Catalonia (northeast Spain), Italy and the Middle East.

I can't wait to try it. I want to see if it is as good as the marinated donkey burger I had in China. Or the chocolate covered insects I had in Mexico. Mmmmmmm.

What?

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Inspirational kickoff to the academic year

Uxue Barkos, president of Navarra, and Alfonso Sánchez-Tabernero, rector of the University. (Photo by Manuel Castells for El Español, Navarra.com)

PAMPLONA, Spain -- Some of my colleagues here at the University of Navarra have been anxious  since local elections in May brought in a new crop of populist reformers whose rhetoric sounds radical to them.

They think the university could be a target for the newcomers, given that it is private, Catholic and relatively expensive (though about a fourth as expensive as a comparable university in the U.S.).

So the university's rector, Alfonso Sanchez-Tabernero, showed himself to be an able diplomat when he addressed an audience of close to 1,000 faculty, local officials, and students today with a message that said essentially: We are ready to cooperate with and collaborate with whoever the local officials are. He was telling his staff, in effect, calm down, already. Don't worry. We'll survive.

But he was also sending a collegial message to the new leaders of the province of Navarra, who were with him on the dais. Very astute, I thought. He is in the photo above with Uxue Barkos, new president of the province. Barkos is the leader of the Basque coaltion. Some of her group would like to see Navarra, a wealthy province that is about 25% Basque, unite with the adjacent Basque Country region. This could have economic, political and cultural implications, such as the languages taught in schools.

Academic terminology can be complicated

Some of the academic terminology here trips me up. At universities in Mexico, they said things one way. Here in Spain they say them differently.

Fortunately a friend of mine here, Prof. Samuel Negredo, has created an extensive Spanish-English glossary of academic terms. Some of the basics for me have been:

• "Students" in Mexico were "estudiantes" mainly, but here in Spain they are almost always referred to as "alumnos." 
• What we would call "alumni" here are called "antiguos alumnos" (old students) or "graduados" (graduates).  However I have sometimes seen and heard people here use the Latin plural "alumni" to refer to their graduates.
• Mexican professors often referred to their students as "chicos", or boys and girls. And they would even address the classes that way: "Buenos días, Chicos." I didn't feel right doing that. It seemed counterproductive when I wanted them to act as adults. So after asking around, I came up with an  equivalent of "Ladies and Gentlemen" -- "Damas y Caballeros." That's what I use here. I was told that "Señoras y Señores" sounded way too formal.
• "Grado" doesn't mean grade here but rather "major". To say "I am a journalism major in the Communication Department," you would say, "Estoy en el grado de periodismo de la Facultad de Comunicación." Those who are doing a bilingual major, with half their courses in English, are in the "grado bilingüe."
• A "grade" is una nota or una calificación.
• "Facultad", by the way, doesn't mean "faculty." It means "academic department". When you want to refer to "the faculty" you say "el profesorado", and the student body isn't "el cuerpo de alumnos" but rather the "alumnado".
• What we call a "course", as in "a math course," is called an "asignatura" here in Spain, but in Mexico it was called a "materia". All three words come from Latin and all refer to the same thing but have different roots. 
• And "curso" here is not a course but an "academic year". So we are in the "curso 2015-2016".
• Una "clase" here is a singular event. It refers to the class you taught yesterday or the class you are going to teach today. If we want to talk about the class of 2015, you say "generación" or "promoción" de 2015.

Flunk and pass

 If you "pass a course" you don't pasar, you "aprobar" la asignatura. It comes from the same Latin root as "approve." To fail is "reprobar", and someone who has failed is "un reprobado" (English "reprobate" comes from the same root but has a different meaning).

At Tec of Monterrey in Mexico, a "classroom" was a "sala" or if it was really big, a "salón". A classroom building was called "Las aulas 1" or 2 or 3, which was very confusing to me at first because here in Spain the big lecture halls are called "aulas". And the building that houses the aulas is called the "facultad" or faculty. Confusing, yes? I mean, confusing, no?