This week I've been in the Cabo de Gata-Níjar, a National Park smothering the most eastern, southern part of Spain. Still relatively empty, still very wild and impossibly arid. My language is slow and broken and awful, but it's interesting to note how much you absorb when forced to use it, just how many words you can pick up like empty snail shells; the small villages there often contained very little English, or none at all.