In high school I once heard talk about a banned video called Faces of Death—purportedly a collection of actual human deaths caught on tape. It occurs to me that the people who talked up this video, if they are not now in prison, would appreciate Spanish television. Here in Spain you don’t have to track down a banned video called Faces of Death to see actual faces of death: you only have to turn on the news. On the news, just about anything goes. Blood stains on the sidewalk, corpses in smashed up cars, shootings recorded by security cameras—it’s all here. A recent story involved a woman who survived being stabbed in the back of the neck with a butcher knife. The reporter explained that her assailant had driven the blade so far in that the knife was still there, jammed deep in the (fully conscious) woman’s neck, when authorities arrived. The thing is, a viewer did not have to take the reporter’s word for it: as the woman was being escorted to the ambulance, cameramen got up close and personal, and there she was on television, a woman-with-a-butcher-knife-jammed-deep-in-her-neck being escorted to an ambulance.

Seems the only thing you can’t show on the news in Spain is the face of a minor. Even as the faces of adults are shown freely, no matter how brutalized or disfigured, the faces of children are routinely obscured with fuzzy pixels, no matter how innocuous the story in which they appear. You might say that, on the news at least, children are treated with more respect than dead, dying, or seriously maimed adults, which does make a certain biological sense, children being the future and whatnot, and does correspond with Spain’s reputation as a good place to be a kid. But if this fuzzy-pixel practice is meant to show reverence for the young, if it is meant to preserve and/or remind us of their innocence, it often misses the mark, at least for this viewer. A fuzzy-pixeled face can appear inhuman, androidish, alien. In a word, scary. Here’s what I look like with my face fuzzy-pixeled:

Granted, not many minors are severely bald, and most minors are cuter and more virtuous-looking to begin with. Still, the fact is that a dis-emfaced body–any dis-emfaced body–can be more than a little disturbing. Too, in the US we are accustomed to this fuzzy-pixel effect being used to mask private parts. So that an American watching Spanish news might be excused for wondering if a Spanish kid has a rear end, or worse, for a face.

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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 the Disnei Bar, in Segovia. The Spanish have been appropriating foreign words and doing as they like with them for centuries. Before you come down too hard on the Spanish for this, get all bent out of shape about spelling and pronunciation and so far, remember that Americans have done some appropriating, too. Consider the following photo, also from Segovia:

Look strangely familiar? It should. Walt Disney used this, Segovia’s Alcázar, as the model for Sleeping Beauty’s castle, which castle figures so prominently in the Disney logo.

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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 Sevilla you can find a bust that honors Cervantes:

This is the building behind the bust that honors Cervantes:

The building used to be a jail. In 1594, Cervantes was imprisoned there for having unpaid debts. Today the building makes a business of debt: it is a bank. Said bank is currently being renovated under the catchphrase “Restoring the Past.” A would-be writer might make note of all this, and apply it to his own ambitions in a manner he finds appropriate. He might also make note of what our friend John B.’s grandfather said when John B. told him he wanted to be a writer: You got to be dead to make a living, don’t you? As a writer?

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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 from northern Portugal. What first grabbed me here is the name of the wrestler on the right. I thought maybe Mr. Mahoney was trying to get away with something in a foreign land—the kind of thing I might be trying to get away with if I called myself “Huevos” Geer back home. If you didn’t happen to know that huevos is slang for balls, you might look up huevo in the dictionary, and find egg. While you might think me, Eggs Geer, a little odd, you wouldn’t necessarily think me presumptuous and vulgar. Likewise, a Portuguese looking up ball would find a reference to a spherical, sometimes-inflated piece of sports equipment. Insomuch as pro wrestling can be considered a sport, the name “Balls” might then be deemed appropriate in some not-entirely-accurate way, and yes, with a wink and a grin Balls Mahoney gets away with something he could not get away with back home, in the puritanical U.S. of A. So I was thinking, anyway. In fact, a little research reveals that Balls Mahoney goes by “Balls” in the States, too, at least on stage. He is, it seems, rather well known in the pro-wrestling world. So he’s not trying to get away with anything, after all. He’s just being himself. As for Rey Misterio…that translates as “Mystery King.”

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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.