Why?

Why is it the Palacio Real, but the Real Armeria and the Real Farmacia? (I know, I'm missing accents in there, I'll come back and put them in later.)

Also, two new phrases that I learned: venta al mayor (wholesale) and enhorabuena (expecting). The first was written on signs in many of the businesses around Tirso de Molina, where I stayed in Madrid. Wholesale fashion storefronts abounded. The second I read in a gossipy magazine insert in the Saturday edition of ABC. Which also happened to feature blurbs about two of the few non-royal, non-mainstream sporting Spaniards whose names I recognize: Fran and Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez. Er, not that the enhorabuena came up in the context of those two, but for someone else whose name I did not recognize.

Book to look for: Ghosts of Spain by Giles Someone.

Huh?

What is a gatito parvulo? The words are spoken by a character in Josh Lanyon and Laura Bambach's Mexican Heat. The speaker is Spanish, but is undercover as a Mexican drug lord. [Which begs the question -- did they think about the fact that the two are not interchangeable?] Anyway, the only definition I could find of 'parvulo' was 'nursery school'. Does it have some other colloquial meaning that I'm missing? Because that really doesn't make sense as a nickname (to me). Of course, some of the other Spanish used didn't make much sense either. Ex: mi amigo grande del amor (my big friend of love?) and 'comprender', when asking "understood", which probably ought to be 'comprendes'.

Another question: are madre dios and madre mios colloquialisms or exceptions to the gender/number rule? I would think madre mia, and madre de dios would be grammatically correct. No?

ETA: okay, I found two other definitions: 1) de corta edad; or 2) inocente o ignorante. Well, the last isn't flattering and wouldn't work so much as an endearment, but since the speaker was referring to a younger man, the first definition could apply. It still doesn't work for me -- in part because, hello, accent needed over the a, and also because the spelling makes me think of parvo, a viral disease that can kill dogs.