To put the prawn in, to turn the ham over, to take the cat to the water, to pee outside the pot... Spanish is brimming with popular expressions whose meaning has little or nothing to do with the words that form them, and which are imprinted in the mind like colorful, vivid, and raw postcards.

Héloïse Guerrier and David Sánchez examine a new batch of surprising, hilarious, or hurtful idioms that Teresa de Jesús would surely have loved.

Graphically, each expression is literally illustrated. In this way, these colloquialisms, formed by simple terms, often linked to the register of food or sexuality, acquire an unexpected visual poetry. Decontextualized and taken literally, they become surreal, absurd, almost disturbing.

Furthermore, the authors delve into the origin of language. Each idiom is thoroughly dissected in an attempt to decipher its etymology, its how and its why: what was the initial use of such an idiom, in what context it was used, or how it has evolved over time. A way to discover a language and its roots through its most colloquial expressions. 

The texts in No tengo el chichi para farolillos are translated into English and French. The definition of each idiom is translated into both languages, as foreign readers – expatriates, tourists, or students of the Cervantine language – often encounter these set expressions, idioms, or turns of phrase that can leave them perplexed. And with the purpose of highlighting this sense of strangeness in discovering a language, echoing the illustrations in a game of mirrors, each expression is also translated literally: to shit on someone’s teeth (cagarse en las muelas de alguien), to go to another neighbourhood (irse al otro barrio), to give the crouton (dar el tostón) ...

In short, an illustrated glossary aimed at both native speakers curious about the most surreal expressions of their own language, and foreigners struggling with such prolific jargon.