Hot Stuff

A Mediterranean winter can be colder than you’d imagine but the summer usually exceeds expectations and what you get between June and September - and sometimes into October - is un verano caluroso – a hot summer.

a Mediterranean summer can exceed expectations

Using the adjective caliente paints another picture, though, because un verano caliente is more likely to be a summer of political or social unrest.

Comer caliente means to have a hot meal, but to make a decision en caliente implies to make it in the heat of the moment while pillar en caliente is to catch someone red-handed. 

A repeated caliente, caliente matches our warm...  and is the clue you’re given when you’re getting closer to something you’re looking for or trying to guess.

In the modern acceptance of being or looking sexy and generally er... up for it (in other words the hot stuff of the past) caliente corresponds to hot. 

In the days when the subject was cloaked in euphemisms, it was described as picante, implying racy or risqué, and easily pinned down as piquant.  This, incidentally, is the word to use for hot food that owes hotness to seasoning, not temperature.

Hot water is agua caliente but a hot debate would be un debate acalorado and hot temper is mucho genio, which isn’t necessarily the same as bad temper – mal genio, while to get into hot water is meterse en un lío.

When the sun is hot, we describe it as sol fuerte but if it is burning hot it becomes un sol abrasador or un sol de justicia, apparently a reminder of times when prisoners were deliberately put to work in the blazing sun.

Weather requires caluroso: tiempo caluroso but a person who is hot and bothered because of circumstances or weather is described as sofocado, agobiado.

Calurosa and cálido tend to be interchangeable and can be used for warm although warm water is generally agua tibia or agua templada and never agua calurosa.  On the other hand, the warm sun of a Spanish winter is un sol suave.

Anyone mopping their brow gasps how hot I am – ¡qué calor tengo!  This state of prostration dispenses with either of the to be verbs, and is instead conveyed by tener - to have. If remarking on the weather rather than oneself, it is necessary to use hacer, literally to make: ¡qué calor hace! - how hot it is!

When it's hot it’s often sultry - bochornoso and you’ll also meet the noun bochorno although you’ll still tend to translate it as an English adjective, since ¡qué bochorno! – how sultry! is easier on the tongue than what sultriness!

Another definition for bochorno/bochornoso is embarrassment/embarrassing or shame/shameful but they don't suit a sultry female.  She would once have invited several adjectives - seductora, perhaps, or hechicera (bewitching) – although caliente suffices nowadays.

The verb calentar - to heat, heat up is suitable for coffee, bath-water or a political crisis: en el otoño se va a calentar la situacíon política – the political situation is going to heat up in the autumn.

You hear estar caliente, tener fiebre, tener la temperature alta when someone has a temperature, while the reflexive calentarse is often synonymous with to bother and the obvious to get hot and bothered. 

Curiously enough in a language that hypes on hyperbole, when to overheat refers to a car engine, the translation remains calentarse: siempre se calienta en verano – it always overheats in summer.

Harder to guess at is the hot-sounding una calentura, another example of the way a translation can turn a word inside out, inside-out because una calentura corresponds to the hot-lipped hatefulness of a cold sore.

... but a Mediterranean winter can be colder than you'd expect

It's only natural

La naturaleza isn’t a bad translation for nature, particularly the woods, trees, birds and bees type of Nature that comes equipped with a capital letter. 

By and large, the Spanish do not treat Nature with the reverence and awe of northern Europeans.  This could have something to do with the fact that for people who live on the land - and off it – Nature has always been more of an adversary than an ally.

Those able to usually make the quickest possible getaway from rural life although - rather like the Estuary for the self-exiled Essex-born - they later regard it through a haze of inaccurate nostalgia.



Inaccurate nostalgia for the Thames estuary



You might encounter the odd reference to Mother Nature – Madre Naturaleza but this pagan old lady tends to be a foreign immigrant although the Spanish are as fond as we are of citing human nature – la naturaleza humana as an explanation for weakness, self-indulgence and downright nastiness.

Naturaleza also describes the nature that is a characteristic: la naturaleza del problema - the nature of the problem.

When nature implies character the Spanish prefer carácter, so our he’s ill-natured becomes tiene mal carácter but on the more pleasant side, he’s good-natured is tiene buen carácter. 

As so often happens with Spanish mood and mien, it is necessary to have your nature and not be it, so you’ll find yourself using tener – to have.

Naturaleza combines with muerta – dead for the grim-sounding naturaleza muerta featuring dead game or Constance Spry flower arrangements. 



Unremarkable objects to be found in any kitchen



Nevertheless, a classic Spanish still life painting usually concentrated on the utensils, food, fruit and the other unremarkable objects found in the store room or larder – bodega of any home, and accordingly acquired the name of un bodegón. 

To paint from life, however, is pintar del natural and although this has now cropped up where you might not have expected, natural generally poses few headaches.

It’s natural can be translated as es natural or even es normal but the slightly argumentative it’s only natural becomes a slightly dogmatic no puede ser de otra manera (literally it couldn’t be otherwise).

Natural usually obliges, so a natural blonde is una rubia natural but this doesn’t always happen and a natural dancer is una bailarina nata, literally a born dancer.

Leche natural and agua natural mean that milk or water are at room temperature regardless of their purity while food described as al natural is prepared very simply without flavourings or additions.

Zumo natural is fresh, pure fruit juice and this usage has entered the speech of English-speakers living in Spain who now ask for natural fruit juice in English too. 

Natural also means originating or born in: mi suegra era natural de Cuenca – my mother-in-law was from Cuenca but when applied to looks, make-up, dress or manner it conveys simplicity and lack of pretension.

So if you’re ever in a position to meet one, you might eventually pronounce the duchess was very natural – la duquesa era muy natural although a Spaniard would just as soon say la duquesa era muy sencilla, literally easy, simple, normal. 

Another option would be la duquesa era muy llana although possibly that makes her sound less duchess-y and like someone who calls a spade a spade.

The plural Naturales is the way pupils – always eager to eliminate unnecessary verbiage - refer to Ciencias Naturales but Nature Study is Estudio de la Historia Natural.

Unnatural used to be a popular verdict for anything that went against the grain and in Spanish you can choose between anti-natural, no natural, perverso, anormal or afectado. 

The adverb naturalmente corresponds to naturally: naturalmente le gusta Cuenca – naturally she likes Cuenca.  It also helps to keep you afloat during uninspiring conversations and naturalmente… naturalmente… interspersed with the occasional claro… claro… allows you to sound not only sympathetic and empathetic but fluent, too.

Un naturalista is a nudist and natura looks as though it should fit in somewhere but curiously never crops up in day-to-day conversation.  A quick flip though a Spanish-English dictionary may explain why, since the sole definition for natura is nothing more and nothing less than genitals.