They wear their balls as a tie, shit in the sea and throw their house out the window: these are Spanish at the peak of colloquialism. Héloïse Guerrier, who studied Hispanic in Paris and then moved to Spain, decided to explore the origins of outlandish sounding spanish phrases of which there are plenty and put her findings down in the book Con dos huevos (With two balls), underpinned with illustrations by David Sánchez.
“I was struck by the surrealist, almost unsettling side of some idioms, if you take them literally,” says the author.
We are talking about expressions like “tener los cojones de corbata” (to wear your balls as a necktie) or the expression “pollas en vinagre,” (dicks in vinegar) which is one of Guerrier’s favorites.
“It’s true it sounds quite bad, but the truth is, it has nothing to do with male genitals!” she reveals. The “pollas” in question are actually a type of bird also known as “gallineta,” which is pickled in some parts of Spain.
[I shit on the milk]
“No tengo el chichi para farolillos”
But even they ran into the odd expression that was impossible to convey in images, such as “No tengo el chichi para farolillos,” a phrase that was coined by television screenwriters and which roughly means “this is the wrong moment for that,” but literally says “my pussy is not in the mood for Chinese lanterns.”
[To be inside a garlic]
[A fish should fuck you]
The above mentioned expressions and drawings are taken from the book ‘Con dos huevos’ by Héloïse Guerrier and David Sánchez. Mono.kultur does not wish nor intend to offend anyone in any manner.
