Mind Your Language | 7 December 2002

I was last in Zaragoza when my husband was bribed by a drugs company to make the sacrifice of attending a conference in a luxury hotel. I was on my own. It was hot and dusty, the dustier for the demolition of a neighbourhood of a seedy but engaging character around ‘El Tubo’ (east of Calle Alfonso I, if you know it). So I stopped to ease a blister on my foot and take a glass of horchata, a drink I’ve mentioned before. It wasn’t quite as relaxing as it might have been because in the heladeria was a lunatic at a table shouting threateningly at anyone near, or even at anyone who wasn’t. But while avoiding eye-contact I had the leisure to note that the horchata had an appellation contr