COVER N. 780 - SPAIN

Postmark: Correos CTA Valencia 22.10.2026

Posted on the 22nd October;  Received on the 26st October 2026

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What a surprise.... I bet my friend Mr. Postman was as baffled as I when he saw the name on the address, which is so familiar to him that he never fails to deliver the letters even when it is incomplete or wrong....

All I can say is شكراً جزيلاً لكِ يا إيفا, hoping that google translate won't let me down.....

Languages are one of humanity's most precious treasures since they are the elementary fluid that binds together communities at local, regional or national level.

Learning one does not make you automatically a member of the particular community which uses it as the prevalent communication tool between its members, but it allows you to open a window into that same community, through which to observe, understand, compare and interact. 

As such, the more languages you are able to use, the richer you, as a person, are, for they grant you access to the idiom protected strongbox where communities keep their most priceless assets: books, songs, oral tradition.

Still, languages are so powerful a tool that they should invite one's constant scrutiny over their usage and impact, something people tend to forget, so many are the benefits of being privy to them.

Take English, the most obvious case, the modern day Esperanto... 

As the most spoken and published language in the world  it  makes it possible for billions to communicate all across the planet, and I, for one, could not have been happier for having learned it, since, as an example, it allows the posts in this blog to be potentially read by a lot more people than if they were written in Portuguese.

That said, its dominancy and the consequential cultural metastasizing it is prone to impart is something that really annoys me.

Portuguese is an extraordinary rich language (in truth, I believe all languages to be extremely rich, but let me say it this way for the argument's sake). We have time honoured Portuguese words for almost all the English words that I can think of, barring, obviously, neologisms associated with technology, for instance.

So why should anyone use such a utterly ugly word as "empoderado", a direct translation of "empowered", when one can just say "capacitado", which has always been used and means exactly the same? or "massivo", when the norm in Portuguese used to be "maciço", or use interjections such as "Ó meu Deus", the direct translation of  "Oh my God", when the formulation would at maximum be "Meu Deus", but any decent Portuguese would usually say "Ena pá" or "C'um caraças" or any other item of our extremely rich expletive catalogue.

And don't even get me started on the discomfort I feel when looking at supermarkets full of stuff to foist upon avid consumers marvelling at the prospect of celebrating a tradition that has absolutely nothing to do with them....Happy Halloween, everybody.... 

Anyway, I was really chuffed to get this  lovely letter from Eva,  and to learn, thanks to her outstanding knowledge of languages,  than my name in Arabic would transcribe into Portuguese as  Bidru Suaris. I even like the sound of it :-)!

Once again, the stamp Eva chose to use on this particular letter was judiciously chosen so as to be in accordance with its contents.

The B tariff stamp issued on 19APR2024 highlights the popular festivals of Moros y Cristianos - Moors and Christians - which are celebrated in Spain, particularly in the Valencian Community and Andalusia, commemorating the battles during the days of the Reconquista, which ended in the end of the15th century.

The stamp is illustrated with the silhouettes of a castle and a bridge, and the legend Festa Populares Moros y Cristianos and the name of the place where they take place, in Catalan and Spanish:  Alcoi/Alcoy (Alacant/Alicant). I couldn't identify the castle (Barxell, maybe?), but I suppose the bridge is meant to evoke  Alcoi's Pont de San Jordi (San Jorge Bridge), a famous Art Deco local landmark, dated of 1930.

Eva's letter was written in a postcard part of a fund raising campaign for helping homeless children in Morocco. The photo on it showing Bab Ruah, the Gate of the winds, in Tetuan, was taken by a 14 year old photographer, she tells me.

As usual, the stamp carries the postmark of the Automated Treatment Centre of Valencia (CTA Valencia).