Spain has been different for slightly longer than I thought

I always thought (and I think most people think) that “Spain is different” originated in the 1960s during Manuel Fraga’s period as promotor of beaches, bullfights and bars, but in fact it’s older, although not earth-shakingly so: this PDF booklet celebrating 75 years of paradors dates it to 1955 (and says that the systematic promotion…

Catalan Beat writer

I know it’s stupid, but when Catalan writers refer to the “el Beat Ramon Llull”, I always think of Mr Llull as a saintly motorcyclist rather than an almost saintly (beat = “blessed”) medieval scholar. (Llull is notorious for having bought a Moor in order to learn Arabic and then worked him so hard that…

Voodoo Dracula

Originally the thing we’re doing on the 18th was going to be a straightforward ((intro + song) * 15) kind of arrangement, but madness kicked in about a fortnight ago. First it was going to a kind of medieval morality thing (there’s a good Catalan play along these lines), with Death killing everybody, including the…

Hassidic reggae

If Stamford Hill used the web & went to concerts, then I’d love to know what they made of this man (via Savage Minds).

Patriarch of Antioch: Franks are jugulators

No word on the Berbers in Paul of Aleppo, The travels of Macarius Patriarch of Antioch – Part Two, London: The Oriental Translation Fund, 1836: At this festival of Easter, an imperial ordinance was sent forth by the Emperor, on the subject of killing meat; for from Wallachia, Moldavia, and the country of the Cossacks,…

“Catalan separatists out to appease Berber jugulators”

Christmas has come early for ultra-nutty separatists, Plataforma per Catalunya (PxC), after a fortune teller said on telly that they had purchased the winning number in the big seasonal lottery. However, the calls they’re apparently getting from mini-lot repurchasers all over Spain (sorry, “the Spanish state”–IRA-speak rules…) will of course not persuade them to take…

Interactional multilingualism in C16th Valencia

The claim by jokers like Jordi Bilbeny that whatever contains the odd Catalanism must have been written by a Catalan is obviously and completely ridiculous because it ignores a basic truth of the Mediterranean littoral: that multilingual jostling and experimentation has been going on here for as long as people have had horses, boats and…

Phonics

I can’t remember learning to read texts or music, so phonics means little to me. I do remember that different headteachers made us learn to write with different styles, with the result that my handwriting is completely illegible (“That’s not a signature,” stormed my first bank manager, “do a better one!”). Were it not for…