An interesting proscription is to be found in the description of a Barcelona Easter week pageant in Joseph Townsend’s A Journey Through Spain in the Years 1786 and 1787: In the processions of the present day, practices which had crept in when chivalry prevailed, with all its wild conceits, practices inconsistent with sound morals, and…
Baron von Gizman (or whoever) threads his way round the that/which dilemma by using both on the No Kill I site. (No Kill I is a band thatwhich I have never heard, and thatwhich has been involved in a disturbing voodoo chicken situation.)
If history, culture, economics and a lack of soothing medication mean that Galicia is entitled to bits of Asturias and Castile & Leon, then Andalusia should hurry up and bang in a claim for the Baix Llobregat, Santa Coloma, and large parts of Barcelona.
‘“Bush is worse than Stalin” -Hitler’ gets 30 ghits while ‘“Bush is worse than Hitler” -Stalin’ gets 822. Is this because the people who make this kind of comparison (a) haven’t heard of Stalin; (b) think Stalin was uniquely awful, an ÃœberBusch; or (c) think Stalin was actually a nice guy with some bad press?…
When Philip IV (III of Aragon and Portugal) came to Barcelona for the first time, he paused at the Valdoncellas/Valldonzellas convent, which was then outside the city. There they dressed him up in rosa seca (surely more than dry rose), hat (Iberian, not Mexican), feathers and diamonds (from the finest of which hung a pearl…
From The Tatler, 1709: THIS is to give notice, That if any able bodied latine will enter into the Bonds of Matrimony with B[illegible] Pepin, the said Palatine shall be settled in a Freehold [of] 40s. per Annum in the County of Middlesex. I wonder if this is an in-joke, because 40 shillings isn’t very…
Middle class Catalan-speakers on their 5th post-prandial gin: – You know what Maragall wants?! – – Us all in a mass grave! The civil war finished in 1939.