If you ever travel to Spain by car, you will probably see some of huge bulls-like posts, just like this along the main roads. They used to be a billboard for an important liquor company from the south. They soon became so much a part of the landscape that when the government threatened to put them down there was such a public uproar that politicians changed their mind.

In the last few years it has become quite a fashionable icon. Many teenagers wear the Bull t-shirts or display its silhouette on cars.

However, not everybody feels represented by it, firstly because it was designed when Franco was ruler, secondly because they dislike bullfights and finally because it certainly represents the south more than the north, where I live.

So, it is in some ways a controversial image, and that's partly why I have chosen to bring it here today. It is my opinion that no object intending to represent the whole of Spain to an European audience could be, nowadays, free from controversy. It is controversy itself, along with its undeniable beauty, what makes this bull representative.

What my students think of the Osborne Bull