Well I'm afraid you may have to! I've lived here for 12 years and never heard the word Cuca.
As this is an 'British' Ex pat site, why not just have said 'cockroach'?

Me too. I beat you by one year and I've never heard it. Never seen one either.

"Cockies" is how they were affectionately known amongst expats in Tenerife.

They were rife out there. I used to help out in a bar and during the night when I cleared the rubbish into the bins it was like walking on a gravel driveway, crunch, crunch, crunch.

They seemed particular partial to the beer slops.
Almost everywhere was fumigated on a regular basis, but still they kept on coming.
Bloody monsters they were and they would occasionally fly and settle on someone scaring the living crap out of them.

Solution is very simple actually.
Go and live high up in the mountains, you'll never see a one up there.

Ahh. You've answered part of my question! We are 600 metres up. So something does kill them. Cold! maybe you could use Spray on dry ice! Little bleeders would hate that!

I had heard that to kill 'roaches you put down yeast and sugar. They eat it, and this ferments in the moisture inside them, producing carbon dioxide under pressure, which because of their hard exoskeleton makes them explode.

Anyone know if it's true ?

Haven't got any so I can't try it.

Spain is a large country and I only know a tiny part of it. Where I live the Spanish, English and assorted foreigners call them Cucas. Mercadona sells a spray that kills them called Cucal which fly off the shelves when it's summer, especially a hot and sticky one.

The council spray the drains every summer to kill them, too many of them would kill their Spanish tourist industry because they hate them as much as we do.

Every major Spanish fiesta procession I've seen will have a group dressed as Cucarachas, there's even a famous song about them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOFRu5Jx3Fc

Not sure about your line of thinking there, but I imagine it will get them so well p!ssed and comatosed that catching them will be a piece of cake.

Probably goes along with my previous post regarding their softspot for beer slops leaving them laid out helpless on the paths by the thousand and getting crushed underfoot.

It was that that stirred the memory.

On the urbanisation I lived on, a few years before we went there, they had had a huge number living in the drains, some bbright spark decided that a liberal dosing with strong bleach was the best cure, so they lifted a lid and poured it down, withing a few minutes the urbanisation was overun by cockroaches, coming from every drain and everywhere. It didn't kill them, but at least the residents were all aware of the problem, and called the council

Ah,the old Aguafuerte trick.
Cure for a million and one evils.
Bet it gave the drains a good clean out as well.

When we moved here we were overrun with roaches (what's Cucas??) and when we used to go away for a month or so we would come back to a bath full of roach Sh**, Various roach body parts and a couple of dozen scurriers.
We were convinced that the previous owners sold because of them. This went on for 2 years with various Spanish products being tried and tested with little or no success. Finally talking to an Italian, we were told of a miraculous product which we managed to get hold of. It cost about 18 Euros for a small tube. It was necessary to place a small drop in the corners of the rooms and anywhere the roaches might go. It worked a dream within a week we had no more, even outside. It has been 3 yrs now and we are still Cucharacha free. I still place a couple of drops at the side of the door every 6months or so but have only seen dead woodlice.
We have had a large centipede 6 inches long in the bathroom which I caught and let go in the garden. I read up on them and it seems they are particularly nasty so I should have bumped it off.............