Latino News in London – two birds, one free newspaper

 Since returning from Buenos Aires there’s no doubt that my Spanish has taken a turn for the worse. As last’s week foray into the world of casual cookery conversation proved, I need a little practice.

While in Argentina I had visions of coming home and moving in with a house of Spanish people. In reality, I moved in with my British friend in a nice flat in North London, and my Spanish ability hasn’t exactly soared….

But yesterday I stumbled across the Latino Times, a free newspaper available on my doorstep. It’s a great paper for practising Spanish as its pages are peppered with small ‘habla ingles?’ boxes (just in case you hadn’t grasped the full implications of the on-going FARC conlict in spanish…).

I really like it as a mix of Latin American news as well as news from around the UK. Its ‘affairs’ aren’t that ‘current’ – the paper comes out twice a week – but it’s still good practice for both my news and spanish language skills.

So what’s in the paper this week? Colombia features heavily, with President Juan Manuel Santos trying to resolve long-standing land disputes. The government is hoping to return stolen land to its displaced population. It’s been huge problem since the early ‘90s and Colombia now has the world’s second biggest internally displaced population after Sudan according to the UN.

Ecuador is also making records: The country has made it into the Guinness book of records for collecting the most plastic bottles for recycling in a fifteen day period. Almost two million bottles were collected at a value of $31,000, some of which will go towards sustainability projects in Yasuni national park.

Ecuador is well known for its commitment to sustainability being the first country to enshrine environmental rights in its constitution. This Guardian article is a good discussion of the history (I’m afraid Latino Times doesn’t cover everything…)

Reading in spanish is always a great way to practice. Hopefully by page ten I'll be 100% fluent. I'll let you know how that goes...