English in Madrid

Source:  Brett Jordan on Unsplash The Pied Piper of Hamelin  Robert Browning - 1812-1889  I   Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,  By famous Hanover city;  The river Weser, deep and wide,  Washes its wall on the southern side;  A pleasanter spot you never spied;  But, when begins my ditty,  Almost five hundred years ago,  To see the townsfolk suffer so  From vermin, was a pity.  II   Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats,  And bit the babies in the cradles,  And ate the cheeses out of the vats,  And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladle's,  Split open the kegs of salted sprats,  Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,  And even spoiled the women's chats  By drowning their speaking  With shrieking and squeaking  In fifty different sharps and flats.  III  At last the people in a body  To the town hall came flocking:  "'Tis clear," cried they, 'our Mayor's a noddy;  And as for our Corporation--shocking  To think we buy gowns lined with ermine 

Source:  Hansjörg Keller on Unsplash Spain to trial four-day week in response to Covid pandemic - will the UK do the same?   Under plans backed by the country's treasury, firms who cut their week to 32 hours with no loss of pay will get financial backing from the government.  The pilot, which is set to cost the country €50million (£44million), could be rolled out further if successful . Íñigo Errejón, the leader of, Más País, confirmed on Thursday that the country's finance ministry had accepted the plan.  "The eight hour working day was unrealistic a century ago," he said, responding to criticism.  Maria Alvarez, a businesswoman and founder of the 4 Day Week Campaign in Spain, said the pilot represented "a sensible idea that should be in every government's toolbox coming out of this crisis". "What this pilot reveals is that the four-day week has never been a moonshot . Quite the opposite ," she said.  UK based think-tank Auton

Source: my Instagram Spain freezes in MINUS 25C weather as the country sees lowest temperatures for two decades  Spain is struggling to return to normality three days after 30-hour-long record snowfall that was hardened by record-low temperatures  Temperatures on Monday evening plummeted , reaching as low as minus 25.4 degrees Celcius in Bello, Spain  Big freeze has complicated efforts to clear countless roads and streets blocked by ice, snow and fallen trees Spain has shivered through its coldest night in at least two decades amid a record-breaking cold snap that blanketed Madrid in snow, closed the city’s main airport, and buried roads in snow and ice.  Temperatures plummeted to as low as 25.4 degrees Celsius in the town of Bello, located in a mountainous region to the east of Madrid known as the Spanish Siberia, the country's weather agency AEMT reported .  In Madrid, the temperatures fell to minus 10.8 degrees Celsius, the lowest level in half a century, with the cap