Introduction

In the early 1970s I went on vacation to Galicia, Spain. On the thirty-four hour train journey from Bern, Switzerland, to La Coruña I got into conversation with a Spaniard. He was very knowledgeable about Spanish literature and recommended to me the writings of Cela; this was the first time that I had heard of this author.

Many years later, in late 1989, a headline in the arts pages of a newspaper caught my attention: “The Nobel Prize for Literature goes to Camilo José Cela.” This prompted me, finally, to acquaint myself with his  works. Typical of his style is La Colmena, a novel peppered with colloquial and slang expressions. As I read it, I felt the need for a reference for English speakers that dealt comprehensively with such Spanish terms, so I began to jot down words. From these beginnings I developed this dictionary of commonly used Spanish expressions that are often difficult to find in standard dictionaries. My sources have been  as diverse as the expressions themselves: Nobel Prize–winning authors and Juan Pérez (the man in the street), professors and students, contemporary and classical literature, dictionaries, movies, and  newspapers from across the Spanish-speaking world.
The Big Red Book of Spanish Idioms is a comprehensive reference designed to open up the world of idiomatic Spanish to English-speaking learners, including students, travelers, and language-lovers, who have an  intermediate or advanced level of understanding of Spanish. The dictionary contains a broad collection of over 4,000 commonly used idiomatic and colloquial expressions in Spanish and almost 8,000 English  translations. Particular care has been taken to match like with like, so that Spanish idioms are matched with idiomatic English expressions of a similar tone or register. This feature also makes the dictionary a  particularly helpful reference for Spanish-speaking learners of English.