Strangers in paradise
Local village bars are great places to catch the zeitgeist on current affairs and the death of Robert Redford was hot off the press last night
Peter Edgerton
Friday, 19 September 2025, 11:41
It began with Robert Redford and ended with me feeling somewhat ashamed.
"Well, God rest his soul, he wasn't particularly handsome as far as I'm concerned."
The woman proffering this much-disputed opinion looked slightly guilty as she said it but was firm in her convictions.
"Paul Newman neither. But George Clooney, well now, that's a whole different story..."
Local village bars are great places to catch the zeitgeist on current affairs and the death of Robert Redford was hot off the press last night.
It wasn't long until I was pressed for a male perspective.
"And the most beautiful actress in the history of cinema, Pedro?"
"Well.. er.. hmm.. crumbs.. Ava Gardner, I think I'd have to say." Murmurs of approval rippled around the room as all present concurred with my judgement.
Then things took a discombobulating turn.
"But what about the wife of José Ramirez Gonzalez Perez Zambrana, the esteemed bullfighter from just north of Córdoba, Silvia Fernandez Jimenez García?" (I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist.).
Suddenly, I was lost. The whole conversation took a turn which, despite my thirty years residing in the heartlands of this wonderful country, left me blindsided. All I can say is that the next twenty minutes were a veritable tsunami of names that fell into one of two categories: the ones I'd never heard of (70%) or the ones that I had heard of but had no way of knowing if they were cyclists or philosophers (28%). I suspect they were making the other 2% up just to play with my foreign sensibilities.
In 1995, when I first stepped on this hallowed turf, two things occurred to me: this would be a lovely place to live and, if I decided to do just that, it would be imperative that I immerse myself in the local culture and offer as much as I could in return for the pleasure of being here.
Frankly, I've done my best but there are so many names and stories so deeply embedded in popular Spanish consciousness that if I spent the next thirty years locked in a room with a book called Spanish People Any Halfwit Should Be Aware Of, I think I'd fall short in any subsequent exam.
That's why I never mention, or try to explain, to my Spanish friends Coronation Street, Ant and Dec or Tommy Cooper. What would be the point? Nobody from this country should ever need to know or care about those things.
Robert Redford on the other hand, well everybody everywhere should care about him, whether they think he was handsome or not. All The President's Men is simply magnificent.
