I found this sign in Madrid. As any English-teacher-with-too-much-time-on-his-hands will tell you, “Fast Good” does not really work grammatically. It’s a pair of adjectives, and adjectives are in the world to modify nouns. Without a noun, an adjective doesn’t really have a job. It’s just sitting there on its butt. Seeing this sign, an English-teacher-with-too-much-time-on-his-hands might ask, What is fast and good? A fast good what? What the hell do they sell here, anyway? Ethical motorbikes? A Spaniard with a little knowledge of English, on the other hand, would probably know exactly what is sold here: fast food. How would they know that? Because of pronunciation issues. The sound the double-o makes in our “good” does not exist in Castilian, so Spaniards will often pronounce it “gude.” Meaning that “Fast Good,” on the lips of a Spaniard, can work as a twist on “fast food.” All of which is to say that in this establishment you can find fast food that, if there is truth in advertising, is good.

Incidentally, in Spain fast food of the Burger King sort is known as comida basura, or “trash food.” That’s two nouns, which shouldn’t really work either, but does. (Linguistically, at least. Digestively speaking, “trash food” maybe does not work so well.) Anyway, we do the same thing, with “junk food.”

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.

In Spain when people answer the phone they usually say Diga?, which means Speak? If you say Hola? when you answer the phone, you will throw things off completely. If you say Diga?, the caller will then properly identify himself. To properly identify himself, a Spaniard named Pedro will say, Soy Pedro, which means I am Pete. So that most telephone conversations, translated, begin like this:

Ring ring.

“Speak?”

“I am Pete. Hello.”

This I am Pete routine takes some getting used to. To an American, I am Pete can sound curious, like Pete is A) a talking toy whose next sentence will be something along the lines of “My favorite color is blue”; B) a man with identity issues practicing his prescribed affirmations; or C) simply a nutjob. But before we get to feeling all high and mighty, we might consider what we normally do in the States, which is to identify ourselves with an It’s Pete. If you do this in Spain (Es Pedro), you will throw things off completely—and rightly so. For Pete to say It is Pete just doesn’t make much sense. When Pete says It is Pete, he is referring to himself not only as an inanimate object, an it, but as an entity separate from himself. When Pete says It is Pete, he is referring to himself in the third person. Now who’s having an existential crisis?

Ring ring.

“Speak?”

“Hey. It’s Pete.”

? ? ?

“Hello? Anybody there? It’s Pete.”

“What is?”

“Huh? What’s what?”

“What is Pete?”

“Do who? It’s Pete. This is Pete.”

“This? What this? What is Pete?”

“Pete is a person. Calling you on the phone. Pete is me. I’m Pete.”

“You? You are Pete?”

“I am Pete.”

“Pete! Why didn’t you say so? What’s happening, bud? Have you been drinking?”

It’s not hard to imagine the who’s-on-first havoc we might wreak if we were to use the American It’s me identifier in Spain. (What is you?, etc.) In Spain a familiar will not say Es yo (It’s me) to identify himself. He will say Soy yo, which means I am me. Though I am me states the obvious, and sounds like the title of an especially awful self-help book, it is perfectly clear, and absolutely true, and may help explain why Spaniards are not especially prone to identity crises.

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.

This picture was taken up in Galicia, which has long been notorious as a hub for drug trafficking between South America and Europe. Because the Spanish legal system is so loopholey, drug traffickers have been known to become smug, even brazen. Still, it seems to me that this is just asking for trouble.

At first blush, this may look like a sign directing a driver to the local moron (by all appearances, a state-sponsored attraction). It is not. Although the Spanish word for “moron” is in fact a cognate, it is a cognate of a different stripe: imbécil. Anyway, don’t go around here asking for the local moron. You will look like an imbecile.

“SE ALQUILA” means “FOR RENT.” I’m considering this place: with the state of the dollar, it may be the only one I can afford. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but on past excursions abroad, if I happened across a few greenbacks I’d tucked away for the trip home, I couldn’t help being a little impressed by them. Dollars always looked solid, dependable. Not anymore.

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.

You wouldn’t want to set  West Side Story in Puente Genil. Too many Marias.  “Maria, Maria, I just met thirty-eight girls named Maria”…it  just doesn’t ring right. In one of my classes, four of the seven female  students are named María. In this class surnames come in handy. We  have a María del Mar Seco, a María Cabello, a María Espejo, and a  María Cabeza. It so happens that each of these surnames also works  as a Spanish noun or adjective, and as a part-time student of Spanish  I can’t help translating them into English. As an example, María  del Mar Seco: “María del Mar” translates as a lovely “Mary of  the Sea,” but when we take “Seco,” or “dry,” into account,  we may get to wondering what her parents were smoking when they christened  her “Mary of the Dry Sea.” Of course, to María del Mar Seco’s  Spanish friends, “María del Mar Seco” does not mean “Mary of  the Dry Sea”—it is simply the name of their friend. Likewise with  María Cabello, which translates as “Mary Hair”; María Cabeza,  or “Mary Head”; and María Espejo, or “Mary  Mirror.” When I joked that maybe these three should get together and  open a beauty salon, nobody laughed—not because it’s an inane joke,  which of course it is, but because in the context of people called María,  “Cabello,” “Cabeza” and “Espejo” are names, not things.  Same goes for my colleagues Dolores Reina (Pains Queen), Inmaculada  Cejas (Immaculate Eyebrows), Isabel Mata (Elizabeth Kills), and Francisco  Gordo (Fat Francis).

Don’t think this kind of  thing can’t happen on your side of the Atlantic. It does. Say you  have a friend named Mary Brown. You don’t consider the color brown  every time her name comes up—you think of your friend Mary Brown,  who may be as white as a shark belly. There are a lot of Smiths in America,  in fact millions of Smiths in America, who do not work in smithies.

If you require celebrity examples  to validate things, consider these: Jack Black is not black at all.  He’s pretty damn white. When I say “George Bush,” a lot of things  may come to mind, but probably not plant matter, unless you’re looking  for something to compare his gray matter to.

As for Spanish celebrities,  “Antonio Banderas” means “Anthony Flags,” and “Paz Vega”  translates as “Peace Riverbank.” Miss Vega’s parents may be hippies—like  say the parents of the American girl I knew named “Sunshine,” who  was one of the most disagreeable people I’ve ever met—but they may  just as well be accountants. Way back when, the Penélope Cruz and Tom  Cruise affair presented a curious juxtaposition: their surnames sound  the same, but hers means “cross,” as in the thing Jesus Christ was  nailed to, and his may be taken to mean “to hunt for women,” as  in the kind of behavior that, we are told, nailed Jesus Christ to a  cross. No wonder it didn’t work out.

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.

This is Santiago, also known as Saint James. In Spain he came to be called “Santiago Matamoros,” or “Santiago the Moorslayer.” If it helps, you can think of him as a sort of sponsor of the Crusades, like say McDonald’s and the Olympics. In this picture, taken at the cathedral in Compostela, we see Santiago in action—slaying a Moor. Only we can’t really see the slain Moor, not very well, because in recent years the Church has taken to hiding him with flowers. This might be called revisionist history. It’s not entirely clear whose sensitivities the flowers are meant to protect. The fact is, a lot of Moors were slain in the name of Santiago. And of course the Moors slew people, too. A lot of people. Maybe the Church has decided that all this slaying business is not very Christian, and means to bury it. If that’s the case, here’s hoping the Church doesn’t stop here, with a few flowers. Hard as it may be to believe, people around the world still get into slaying each other.

We certainly can’t say the flowers are there to protect visitors from graphic images of violence. If you want graphic images of violence, go to church. To wit, this shot from the cathedral in Segovia:

Even a doubter can’t help being moved by some of the Catholic iconography. The images do tend to drive the point home, to really tell the story. Which was of course the point of iconography in the first place: to tell the story to people who could not read, or did not understand Latin. Today most everybody in Spain can read, but, as perhaps in your country, not very many people do. So really it makes sense to keep the iconography around. Or it would make sense, if anybody still went to church. In fact not many people do. After forty years of Franco, who did some pretty nasty things in the name of God, church kind of lost its appeal.

Church-related holidays and parties, on the other hand, have not lost their appeal. In Andalucía every other week brings a day or two off to celebrate one saint or another. Generally these holidays don’t involve actually going to church to celebrate the saint; generally they involve getting together with friends and family to eat and drink and sing and dance. Some feast days present a curious blend of the Christian and the pagan—of rosary rubbing and wine chugging. As an example:

This caravan is taking part in the festival of Rocío, an annual springtime pilgrimage to the town of Almonte, where resides the Virgin of Rocío. Some pilgrims make the journey on horse-back, others travel by horse-and-buggy, but most opt for the fusion pictured here: big covered wagons and major horsepower. Why the big covered wagons? Why not just take a car? That’s simple: with a big covered wagon, the festivities can begin en route. In a big covered wagon, a large group of family and friends can eat and drink and sing and dance—which is, for a lot of people, the point of going to see the Virgin of Rocío.

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.