Spanish town advertises a clitoris festival after a Google Translate mishap

Grelo, if you haven’t heard, is a leafy green vegetable that resembles spinach. In As Pontes, in the north of Spain, grelo grows in abundance, serving as one of the main ingredients for all of the town’s delicious food. They love grelo so much in As Pontes that they hold a festival every year: the “feria de grelo,” where the best grelo is conferred upon and selected by a panel of grelo enthusiasts.

Unfortunately, in As Pontes the predominant language is Galician. That wouldn’t be unfortunate, really, but it is because Galician isn’t Castilian Spanish. Some festivalgoers spoke only Castilian Spanish, and that required the festival runners to write a Castilian Spanish version of their ad copy on their website, and—whoops—they used Google Translate. Via The Guardian:

The translated announcement read: “The clitoris is one of the typical products of Galician cuisine. Since 1981 … the festival has made the clitoris one of the star products of its local gastronomy.”

Town hall spokesman Monserrat Garcia was NOT AT ALL happy with Google after the incident, telling The Local, “It’s a very serious error on the part of Google and we are thinking about making an official complaint for Google to properly recognize the Galician language so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.”

Classic move, blaming Google translate. I remember my high school Spanish class fondly.

Michael Rosen is a reporter for Fusion based out of Oakland.