Javier Marías gets it wrong

In any dispute between Javier Marías and José María Aznar I would ordinarily expect to side with the former, but cannot help feeling his latest sally puts him in the wrong.

The background is a speech given by Aznar at the University of Columbia in New York in which he described Muammar Gaddafi as an 'extravagant friend'. Admittedly, this does sound an odd collocation in English. Presumably what Aznar was trying to convey was the idea of Gaddafi being an outlandish, or eccentric, or unpredictable friend, not that he is spendthrift. Ordinarily if one heard that so-and-so has an 'extravagant friend' one would assume that the friend is fond of lavish spending. To this extent I have some sympathy with Marías when he writes in El País:

..."extravagant" no significa nunca "extravagante" en español, sino siempre "despilfarrador", "dispendioso" o "derrochador". Es lo que se llama, en traducción, un "falso amigo" clásico.

 ...which in English could be translated as:

..."extravagant" never means "extravagante" in Spanish; rather it always means "spendthrift", "wasteful" or "prodigal". It is what is known in translation as a classic "false friend".

The problem is that in his eagerness to lampoon Aznar, Marías goes too far the other way.

Exhibit A for the defence comes from the Concise Oxford Spanish Dictionary 2005.

extravagant /ɪk'strævəgənt/ adjetivo  

1. (lavish, wasteful) ‹person› derrochador, despilfarrador;
   ‹lifestyle› de lujo

2. ‹claim/notions› insólito;
   ‹praise/compliments› exagerado, desmesurado;
   ‹behavior/dress/gesture› extravagante

Concise Oxford Spanish Dictionary © 2005 Oxford University Press

So it seems 'extravagant' does sometimes mean the same as 'extravagante', at least when it refers to someone's behaviour, dress or gesture (Aznar was presumably referring to Gaddafi's behaviour).

Exhibit B for the defence is from the British National Corpus. Many of the examples it gives of 'extravagant' could be replaced by 'spendthrift' with no difference in meaning, but not all:

His extravagant action, his grace, his poise and his enthusiasm combine to produce a perfect jumping machine, and people soon realise that they are watching something exceptional.

Marías is right to poke fun at Aznar for his dreadful English, but he does his own argument no favours by over-egging the pudding.