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sorry to have created this confusion - I wrote ages ago and failed to post it ... my first thought was that it was PULOS , an old name for Pylos, which gave me winning (up) over (upside down) + the masculine in Spanish - that's why I didn't think it was thematic. But I have grasped the McCall Smith bit now. Quite a work-out this but clever - kudos to Picaroon.

Yes, I'd been tempted by the ??los possibility, prospero.
I enjoyed the puzzle too - very neat.

That was tough until proverbial dropped. Didn't help that I had 'compend' for 2d...

unhappy with my answer to 16d -- when i apply the transformation, the square which intersects 22 makes no sense... can someone illuminate?

subtly - it was my last but one also - the drink is conventional crossword solution - the substitute is far eastern and it's a cheeat because wikipedia says the small bit is antiquated.

Just about there. Can anyone confirm that the penultimate letter of 11ac is the same as the penultimate letter of 8dn?

yes-s

This was quite a challenge, largely because of a lack of familiarity with the substitutions. But a neat theme, and good fun.

16d confused me too because I have a 5 letter drink and if I replace the 3 letter small bit with the 3 letter big bit I am a letter short. Googling for alternative 2 letter small bit got me nowhere. Maybe I'm on the wrong track but the wordplay works with the 2 letter version.

The 2-letter version is what appears in Chambers, but not the 3-letter version.