I got to Spain for the first time when I won a scholarship for a summer language and culture course. One day I started talking to a guard of our campus, and once he knew I’d left my little daughter with my parents, he winked at me and tapped his cheek with his palm. Like this:
This gesture in the context of that conversation meant: "Well, you are impudent, you’re travelling alone, and left the child with your parents."
The expression itself sounds like this:
tener mucha cara / tener cara – to want too much, to be impudent, to have a nerve
It has a lot of variants just because the word cara (face) has a lot of synonyms. In modern Spanish, the word cara is often substituted by morro (a snout, an animal's face) or jeta (a person’s face, very vulgar):
¡Qué morro! – What a cheek!
Este tío tiene mucha jeta – This guy has a nerve.
There is quite a figural expression –
Esta persona tiene un morro que se lo pisa – This person is too selfish/self-centered (has a snout that he/she steps on)
Previously, derivatives of the word “cara” were very popular.:
¡Qué descaro! – What an impudence!
¡Qué desfachatez! – What an impudence! (facha is a synonym of cara).
However, both of these words are already old-fashioned for spoken language.
And the phrase "He's got some nerve!" can be expressed by the future tense, ¿Tendrá cara?
Another meaning of the word cara – side:
La cara A del vinilo – Vinyl side A
La moneda tiene dos caras: cara y cruz – The coin has two faces: heads and tails
The word cara forms many colloquial expressions, like:
Echar en cara – reproach
Decírmelo a la cara – say it to my face
Plantar cara a alguien – challenge someone
Dar la cara – take responsibility for one's actions
Se le cae la cara de vergüenza – be very embarrassed
It also forms useful combinations:
cara de pocos amigos / cara de vinagre – unfriendly facial expression
cara larga – sad face
cara de póquer – poker face
cara o cruz – heads or tails
Finally,
Al mal tiempo, buena cara – this is a proverb, "What can't be cured, must be endured", and is used quite often in Spanish.