Distovagal

Today I had the chance to browse through one of my old books, "Ajedrez brillante" (Brilliant chess) by Máximo Borrell, which I bought for a few cents more than twenty years ago. I found this ad in page 93. It is about some kind of medicine. Distovagal: estabilizador del equilibrio emocional. (Distovagal: stabilizer of emotional balance).

Vertical chess

My friend Jordi emailed me some pictures taken in a rural holiday home somewhere in Catalonia. There was this nice wall chess. Not very practical for playing but enjoyable as a piece of art.

Karpov - Kasparov, Valencia 2009

We are almost there. In a few days, Karpov and Kasparov will be playing again. This rivalry that takes us to the eighties when some of us learned to love chess. The event will take place in Valencia, Spain, a city which is advertising itself as the cradle of modern chess.

This nice poster by JM Arce reminds me of the design and style of the seventies, rather than the eighties. I own a few books which show a similar frontpage fashion. For more info on the match, see www.matchkarpovkasparov.com .

Checkmate to your sight problems

A friend sent me this fine example of chess-related advertising. "Check mate to your sight problems" reads the ad on the window shop. There is also a real chess set beside it. Funny that the chessmen aren't glasses or contact lenses or similar. It is just chess in all its purity. Well spotted.

The Monarchs of Strategy

This is an autopromotion ad that appeared in the Spanish pop-science magazine Muy Interesante in 2006. It is advertising a special edition dedicated to ths Catholic Monarchs; Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. Their marriage was instrumental in merging both kingdoms and creating the biggest empire of their time.

King and Queen are represented as the equivalent chess pieces, on top of a chessboard whose shape is in the form of a map of Spain. It is actually the current map of Spain, as when they got married in 1469 there were 5 Kingdoms in the territory of the Iberian peninsula. Apart from Castile and Aragon, there were Portugal, who has remained independent, Granada the last Muslim kingdom in Western Europe, conquered by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492 and Navarre, annexed by Ferdinand in 1512.

A significant milestone for the history of chess happened in Spain at that time. In this era of transition from the Middle to the Modern Age, chess was living its own transition from old to modern rules. In this context, Lucena published one of the oldest chess books in Salamanca in 1497.

Spanish royal family

Spanish frame from the humor weekly magazine "El Jueves" (The Thursday).

King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía appear as King and Queen, Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia are bishops, the King's daughters (Infantas) Elena and Cristina are Knights and their husbands Marichalar and Urdangarín are the Rooks.

This was published after it was unveiled the King would have his 8th grandchild. And the joke goes like:

"Okay, now you can stop having children. We are just enough for chess"

Spanish radio station ad on a newspaper (2006).

This is a double-page ad I scanned somehow (you can see the line). Funny that a radio station advertises itself in a newspaper, you may say. The reason may be that Cadena SER belongs to PRISA, a media group that contains, among others, the influential "El País" newspaper and television channels such as "Canal +" and "Cuatro".

There is no other reference to the game of chess, apart from the image. In which there is a huge black King (which supposedly represents SER) and three small pawns, one of them fallen. In a way, we could say this is a Freudian image. The fact that the winner is the Black side draws my attention as it breaks a convention, the white-black contrast as a representation of the good-evil dichotomy.

For the sake of completeness, I include the text even if it has nothing to do with chess.

Gana la radio. Gana la Ser.
4.896.000 oyentes diarios.
[...] en 2006 la SER es la radio más escuchada de España. Así lo confirman los datos oficiales del Estudio General de Medios (EGM) correspondientes al primer trimestre del año. La radio gana en oyentes y la SER vuelve a ganar. a Enhorabuena a nuestros competidores y a los 4.896.000 oyentes que hacen que la SER esté siempre un paso por delante. Pase lo que pase.

The radio wins. SER wins.
4,896,000 daily listeners.
[...] in 2006, SER is the most listened radio Station in Spain. The official data of the Media General Study (EGM) confirm so. There are more radio listeners than ever and SER wins again. Congratulations to our competitors and to those 4,896,000 listeners of ours that make SER to be, always, one step ahead. No matter what happens.

On the right side, close to the faraway pawn, you will see the logo of "Cadena SER". On the bottom you can see the logo of the Quixote year (which was actually 2005), and the reference to the EGM.