A summary of the Spanish interview in the U is For… Podcast
All my posts this season are “inspired by” a letter of the alphabet!

In this week’s Podcast, our topic word was Unlucky, and we talked about superstitions, which bring either bad or good luck. When better than Friday 13th?

We began with the Black Cat: and its association with good or bad luck. In England you might see a black cat on a good luck greeting card, but in Spain they are generally connected with bad luck, possibly because people relate them to witches. The origins are unclear, or rather there are many different theories, but it seems to change from country to country.

Miguel Ángel suggests that we created superstitions to provide hope and as a way to banish our fears or ward off the Gods punishing us, in that they give us a sense of control, or at least we can blame things on what we choose to believe are pre-ordained rules.

Moving on, in England the traditional unlucky day is Friday 13th, possibly related to the 13 people at the Last Supper, and Good Friday, so coming from a Christian perspective. In Spain, it is Tuesday 13th. There is a phrase which is en martes ni te cases ni embarques, (don’t get married or get on a boat on a Tuesday) so it’s seen as a cursed day, though no number 13 is mentioned. Perhaps they added the 13 to limit the number of unlucky Tuesdays!

Another point was what we say when someone sneezes: Bless you, in English, and Jesús, in Spanish, or Salud, which is wishing someone good health. In all the cases, the idea is that a sneeze is an expulsion of something bad from inside you, and so a blessing follows.

Stepping in poo is another good luck superstition in Spain. Possibly it comes from the fact that it was used as fertilizer, which was a good thing for farmers, but as Miguel Ángel points out, maybe it was just because it’s a bit unfortunate coming home with poo on your shoe, so invent a story that actually it’s good luck! And there is also the nuance of it happening by accident, not on purpose, otherwise everyone would be doing it. He suggests maybe town councils are taking away our chance for good luck by cleaning it up!

We talked a little about amulets, for example horseshoes and a rabbit’s foot, which as Miguel Ángel points out, is definitely not lucky for the rabbit, if it’s had its foot cut off. Wearing yellow is unlucky according to the Spanish tradition, which supposedly comes from Moliiere and a performance where he wore yellow and died on stage, (which is untrue; it possibly comes from bullfighting, and the yellow of the inside of the cape, which would be the last thing a bullfighter saw if he had been gored by the bull.) There are also many personal superstitions related to this. In sport, Samaranch, former President of the IOC, purportedly carried chestnuts in his pocket for luck, and Tamberi, an Italian high jumper, often has one side of his face shaved and one bearded, and different shoes, which I’m guessing must be some kind of superstition and not just a fashion choice… but I may be wrong! Football is also mentioned as an example of a sport where superstitions are rife, like coming onto the field with your right foot. When it is a sport which involves facing off against another team, in which luck is perhaps more of a factor than in individual sports like athletics, perhaps superstitions are more common.

Is opening an umbrella indoors only bad luck because you could take someone’s eye out? Is leaving scissors open bad luck for the danger of cutting yourself, or for another reason? In Spain it’s seen as bad luck, even if you are alone.

Basically anything we want to believe may bring us good luck, or bad luck, is valid, and why not? If we adopt personal good luck charms because maybe one day we had a success while wearing a pink shirt, and that pink shirt becomes an amulet, where’s the harm? Relying on it as gospel can be harmful; using it to make us feel better is harmless.

Anyway, I’m off to buy a Christmas lottery ticket. It has to end in a 4. Why? Because.

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U is For…