In The Garlic by Valerie Collins and Theresa O'Shea
Valerie lives in Barcelona and Theresa near Málaga, but at the end of the 90s they 'met' over the Internet and soon became fast friends, writing colleagues and, finally, co-authors.
The idea for In the Garlic, which is written in a handy A-Z format, came in the middle of the Spain boom in the early Noughties. They were tired of seeing website after website, book after book, treating Spain as if it was a chore to be got through. They wanted to tell it as it is, but with a sense of fun and playfulness, informed by their experiences and research and by their unsentimental fondness for the country. So they chose to illuminate the mysteries of all sorts of diverse words, institutions and occupations, taxes, foodstuffs, swear words, languages, characters, customs and expressions that make Spain, well, Spain..They like to think of the book as a mosaic.
Between them they have lived in Spain for a combined total of over 50 years. Valerie was born and brought up in Manchester, UK. She has lived in Barcelona since 1973, working as a translator, editor and writer. Valerie’s late husband was a Catalan lawyer with an eccentric family from the rag-trade town of Terrassa, and she has two multilingual sons at university. Theresa lives in a small village east of Málaga. She worked as a TEFL teacher and Director of Studies in Santiago de Compostela, Figueres (Girona) and Málaga, before becoming a full-time freelance writer. Her husband is from a Cordobese familia (muy) numerosa, and her late father-in-law, an ex-army colonel, boasted the dubious distinction of having rubbed shoulders with Franco.
Check out Teresa's blog and go to http://www.inthegarlic.com/ to enjoy a taster of the book.