The first of the myriad anglosajón peculiarities that would bedevil, confound and exasperate Julio Camba in his 15 months as London correspondent for El Mundo revealed itself when a porter tried to help the young Spanish journalist with his luggage as he arrived at Victoria station in December 1910.
“The worker grabbed my suitcase and shouted, so I started to shout, too,” he wrote shortly afterwards. “Given that I’m Spanish, I shouted much more than he did and, finally, he shut up.” Camba swiftly concluded that, unlike their Spanish, French and Italian neighbours, the English were not given to passionate outbursts. Or passion. Or, indeed, outbursts.
