The reason I write is that I was trying to book a new restaurant in Pontevedra which has just joined my favourite restaurant group – Nove Grupo Gastronómico Galicia For a moment I could not work out why a restaurant in Pontevedra would be called Eirado da Firewood, and also, I had never heard of the square where it was supposedly located, the Praça da Wood – and then I suddenly realised…..

Lazy person that I am, I have ‘Google translate’ set up on my computer, which looks at each web page and automatically decides if it needs translation. It is a great piece of software and usually makes pretty accurate translations. Unfortunately in this case it was a bit over eager, and changed the name of the restaurant from it’s original Eirado da Leña.

So, as you have no doubt deduced the word ‘leña’ (pronounced len-ya) comes to mean wood, or firewood, although it does have another commonly used meaning that might help you the next time you visit Galicia. If you find yourself in a bread shop looking for a nice crusty loaf, you can simply ask for ‘pan de leña’, which as we now know means literally ‘bread of the wood’. Of course the meaning in this context is bread from a wood-fired oven (although I rather suspect that very few bread shops actually use wood-fired ovens these days)…… Another gem of useless information.