Spaniards use them on a daily basis, but often don’t know the first thing about their origins. They get angry and exclaim “me cago en la mar” (I shit in the sea), they do something clumsy and exclaim “llevo una torrija encima” (I’m walking around with a fried slice of milk-soaked bread on my head).

They even say things like “pollas en vinagre,” which is particularly difficult to explain to a foreigner, as it could be translated as pickled dicks. 

The average Spanish speaker from the Iberian peninsula may not stop to reflect on some of the expressions that come out of his or her mouth, but to other people, some of these idioms can be truly shocking.

This is precisely what happened 10 years ago to Héloïse Guerrier, who graduated in Hispanic studies in Paris, moved to Spain, and now co-runs a comic book publishing house called Astiberri. 

“I was fascinated by those phrases, which, taken out of their original context, or to the ears of a foreigner, sound so very outlandish. They really knocked me out,” she recalls.

So she decided to explore their origins and put her findings down in a book, with illustrations by David Sánchez, an author of comic books.

“When you stop to think carefully about the words that make up these idioms, you realize there is a major leap from the literal meaning to the figurative meaning, and that’s where it gets funny,” she says.

That was the genesis for Con dos huevos (or, With two eggs), a hard-to-classify book that combines etymological curiosities with hilarious images depicting some of the absurd situations created by Spain’s popular language.

Con dos huevos did not manage to cover it all, however. “Since a lot of expressions were left out, we decided to put together a second collection of uproarious expressions, Cagando leches [Shitting milks].”

"It seems to me that colloquial expressions in Spanish are rather more crude and forceful”

Read more here.