Spanish boots of Spanish leather – or what’s in a name?

Fashion is a funny thing. In the last couple of years I’ve watched styles I used to wear years ago come back into vogue. If I’d kept my student wardrobe I could be making a bomb now selling my old clothes as vintage. Who would have thought that they would come round again like that? 

Among this year’s returnees are desert boots. I remember a time when the well- dressed student had to have a pair of Levi’s – washed to the point where they were nicely faded but not going into holes – and a pair of desert boots on your feet. The former cost an arm and a leg but the latter were quite cheap. 

Nowadays, of course, you buy your Levi’s, still rather pricey, ready faded – stonewashed – and sometimes jeans, maybe not Levi’s but certainly other brands, come ready worn out with holes all over the place. And we won’t go into the trend among young men to wear their jeans hanging at half mast so that they look as if they would fall over if they started to run. If I get started on that I will find myself one day telling some young person to pull his trousers up and then I’ll look like an interfering old granny. 

But getting back to the desert boots, once the cheap footwear of students, we saw them in English shops earlier this year on sale for £70 or £80: a ridiculous price for shoes that you can’t really wear in the rain. In the sale in the Clark’s shoe shop in the A Laxe shopping centre here they are going for €69, another ridiculous price, but then, everything in that shoe shop is expensive here even when reduced. 

 And then we started spotting shops that were selling them for around €25 to €30 and we began to get interested. As the sales have progressed, we have seen prices tumbling further to €19.90 and even €15. And so we set off on a hunt for a pair for Phil, just for Phil in the first instance. 

Now, he’s always something of a problem child when it comes to buying shoes. His feet are just too big! English shoe shops cope reasonably well with size 10½ to 11 but even then it can be hard. Here in Spain, even though the population has grown taller on average in the last couple of generations, a continental size 46 is not often in demand. Consequently we have been round a number of shops, finding size 45 just a little too small but size 46 only available in red, bright green, grey or even purple. What respectable man tall enough to wear size 46 shoes is really going to want PURPLE shoes? 

On top of that Phil was being fussy. He wanted traditional style desert boots: i.e. sand or beige in colour, preferably the latter. 

Anyway, this morning we found a shop that had beige in a 45 and green in a 46. However, the helpful shop assistant promised to get us a beige pair in a 46 for this afternoon if we cared to go back. And, lo and behold, that is just what we did. A pair of beige desert boots for Phil and a pair of blue ones for me, because I am a much easier size to cater for and, besides, I quite liked the blue ones. Price €17.90 per pair. Not at all bad. 

In one of the shops we visited we asked what they call desert boots here. I was fully expecting something like “los desert”. Trainers become “los tenis” and basketball boots “los basket”, so it wasn’t too illogical an idea. The salesman in that particular shop said they are called “los kung-fu” because in the old kung-fu films the fighters used to carry them strung over their shoulders. Maybe so. I never watched kung-fu films so I really couldn’t say. I’m not convinced though. 

He then went on to tell us, in confidential tones, that the young people call them “los pisamierda” or “pisacaca”. That's more like it. This is a splendid example of what they call a portmanteau word, made up a verb and a noun together. A corkscrew is a “sacacorchas” – sacar = to pull out, corchas = corks. A tin-opener is an “abrelatas” – abrir = to open, latas = tins. My favourite is a “limpiaparabrisas” – limpiar = to clean, parabrisas = windscreen – and so we have a windscreen-wiper. 

This new one for my collection works in just the same way; pisar = to tread on, most people already know what mierda is and caca is just babytalk for the same thing. 

On the box, our pooh-stompers are called “Safari” but that’s just their posh name; I know what they are really called.