Tell me what you want, what you really really want...

No-one who uses public transport in the Spanish capital can have failed to have noticed the vast number of posters like the one above, adorning bus shelters and metro stations, from Barajas to Valdecarros and beyond.

A smiling child holding a piece of paper emblazoned with the Comunidad de Madrid's new slogan to promote their bilingual state schools: YES, WE WANT.

Presumably echoing Barack Obama's much-copied YES WE CAN (without the comma).

But, hang on... something looks funny here... er...

Isn't that... wrong?

I mean... you can end a sentence yes you can (without to) because can is a modal verb.

But YES WE WANT (with or without a comma)
is just  plain WRONG.

Unless it is followed by "to"... or a pronoun, or a noun.

As in "Yes, you're right, we at ad agency Adsolut didn't want to hire a professional translator".

Did none of these evidently monolingual admen (or indeed women) ever hear Dr Who sidekick Billie Piper (eyes down) and her 1998 number one hit "Because We Want To"?

Of course the simplest way of answering a question such as "Do you really think it is worth holding the Comunidad de Madrid up to national and international ridicule for the sake of saving a few bob on translators' fees?" is "Yes we do! There's no such thing as bad publicity!" (Not to be confused with bad advertising, please take note!)

One of the things that makes this blooper all the more amazing (apart from the fact that a glaring grammatical mistake is being used to promote bilingual schools... a bit like using a bout of food poisoning to promote a restaurant) is that the Comunidad President - one Esperanza Aguirre, as seen earlier on these pages - does actually speak English fairly well.

Excellently, in fact, when compared to almost any other Spanish politician.

Of course it wasn't long before the bloggers and the British and American media picked up on the story.

* Daily Telegraph (UK)

* LA - Madrid Files (US)
* The Web of Language (US)
* CampoPulse (Gibraltar)
* An Offshore Account (Spain)
* Ayudation (Spain)
* Don't Confuse The Narrator (Spain)
* Notes from Spain (Spain)
* Living La Vida Loca (Spain.. nothing to do with Ricky "Loca" Martin, thankfully)

The story even made it to Russia!
*Никогда не стой на месте (Russia)