Spanishtirar de la manta
Meaning: to reveal a secret or expose something hidden; to blow the lid off a situation.
Literally: To pull the blanket
Example: “Un empleado tiró de la manta y aparecieron las facturas falsas.” — One employee blew the lid off, and the fake invoices came to light.
English equivalent: To blow the lid off
Equivalents in other languages
English: blow the lid off
Origin: Pulling off the blanket uncovers what was hidden under it. The phrase is often linked to the Inquisition: in Spanish churches the sambenitos (penitential tunics) of the condemned were hung up with their names, and in Tudela a large cloth reproducing them hung in the collegiate church. The historian Manuel Peña Díaz counts tirar de la manta among the expressions surviving from Inquisition vocabulary, but no source proves the phrase was born there.
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