Jennifer Longhurst
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There are always hordes of people standing, bemused, and looking up at the façade of the Escuelas Menores.
Trying to see that flipping frog.
If you are the first person in your group to see it, you are guaranteed good luck all year. Or possibly just in your exams - there are different versions. Buy a lottery ticket anyway, if it's you.
:-)
But if you can't see it, and someone finally points it out to you, you can't believe that there is so much of a fuss made about it. Especially when it actually doesn't look like a frog at all, just a shapeless lump of plasticine on top of the skull.
TIP 1: If you want to find it yourself, stop reading now, because at the end I'm going to tell you where it is, in TIP 4. (But actually, tips 2, 3 and 5 are worth reading . . .)
TIP 2: You can buy wooden frogs, ceramic frogs, fluffy frogs, plastic frogs and probably hand-knitted-by-an-old-lady frogs in the tourist shops in the Rua Mayor.
TIP 3: Remember what the philosopher Unamuno said. Well, you probably can't remember because you don't know that he said it in the first place. :-) But he, a distinguished Salamanca resident and Professor, said: "It's not that they can see the frog, it's that they can see nothing BUT the frog".
In other words stop, turn around, and admire the whole of the little square, an architectural gem in its own right, never mind that flipping amphibian!
TIP 4: So where is it then?
Look straight ahead, then to the right - there is a column. About half way up there is a sort of overhang of the column, and there you will see three skulls - said to represent the dead children of Queen Isabel. The left-hand skull has a shapeless lump on it.
That's it. That's the famous frog.
TIP 5: Much more fun to go to the New Cathedral, built in 16th-18th centuries, and find the carving of an astronaut, and of a dragon eating an ice-cream cone. :-)
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