A foreign baby-trading story in the papers the other day was greeted with general horror. Here then is a Barcelona court statement dated 1946/12/2 and quoted in Paco Villar’s 1997 Historia y Leyenda del Barrio Chino (1900-1992): On the 30th of July, 1945, the accused, Carmen G, 21 years of age, gave birth to a…
There was a big discussion at choir last night about the frightful quality of semen in Barcelona. That’s not an infrequent topic of conversation, but this time it was at least partly based on quantitative evidence, namely a new comparative study by a local reproductive health institute. The first deranged hypothesis was of a correlation…
El Diario de Mexico says that, once the six Brits (thanks, Andy) make it out of the Central American cave in which they’re currently gravely prejudicing Mexican national security while waiting for low tide, they’re going to be turned over to the country’s immigration service. I’m not sure whether that means they’ll be sent back…
This is for the whistle-playing smack addict who nearly broke my eggs this morning: King Jaume II … forbade pimps, prostitutes, the crippled and lame, the blind, those with foul diseases, and those who lacked a hand, arm, or foot to enter and loiter around the plaza of Santa Ana in Barcelona. In 1322, furthermore,…
Barcelona council has released a couple of specimens of “native” ducks into the city’s parks and is contemplating a similar campaign involving squirrels. The ducks have been operated on to stop them fleeing to suburbs without Chinese restaurants, but in general this is good stuff. Right? Wait a minute: [Sustainability Tsar Imma Mayol] explained that…
Don King hedged his political bets pretty well this time round, with contributions going to Dick Gephardt, George W and Carol Moseley Braun. He is not always so diplomatic. A couple of years ago I went to the ICA to see an Israeli film about orthodox culture. There was a bomb scare just before it…
… are going from bad to worse. First there was the defeat of a tawdry bunch of Manchester liberals by a rabble of saucepan- and mobile-wielding Marxists. Then 70K kids left behind 20 tons of rubbish in a couple of Seville suburbs during an impromptu spring party – organised by phone. And now a colleague’s…