The right’s out on another freemasonry scare. The kind of paranoia popularised by Franco’s official historian (whose work is often quite as bad as anything produced by the left-wing historians who came to power in the 80s) and his mates may explain why at least three people try to run me down every time I…
A friend once impressively tried to play the trombone in a London cab, but the prize goes to the small lottery kiosk containing a middle-aged woman several sizes larger who was dreamily squeezing away at her accordeon this afternoon. Her dog was crammed in there as well.
I’ve been having problems with some vowels recently, so I wish this kind of stuff was available for more languages. The doggies and birdies are particularly welcome. (I once worked for an insufferably conservative company with a phenomenally rear-end approach to corporate comms. One day it was discovered that, rather than wait for the official…
According to Colin Davies it rains thrice as much in the winter in Galicia as in Manchester, but he still looks remarkably cheerful and Thoughts from Galicia is a great read. Per Svensson sounds like a man I could do with talking to right now: his Fundación Instituto de Propietarios Extranjeros is there to fight…
I’ve never really thought of myself as a tourist guide, but the guilds do and they want to close people like me down. I’ll bet they made up half the scam stories, but I could identify with the Russian guide who allegedly mistook the Sant Adrià power station for the Sagrada Família.
The Guardian got a “panel of experts” to take a look at the Wikipedia. Here’s what Mark Kurlansky, author of The Basque History of the World, said about the Basque people entry: It says: “Aquitanians spoke a language which is proven beyond doubt to be akin to Basque.” I am not familiar with the Aquitaine…
The Spanish parliament recently decided that stutterers could no longer be turned away by public employers. Dutch commenters at FOK! think that thousands will now die as stutterers take over air traffic control and the police, while Blonchi hopes that the Spanish lisp will finally be abolished.
A little more reading (Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, Hispano-Arabic Literature and the Early Provençal Lyrics) suggests (possibly unjustly) that Wallada was famous not so much for her poetry as for being the caliph’s daughter and having poetry written about her by Ibn Zaydun. It’s a shame that in our enthusiasm to find ancient heroines inoffensive…
I’ve bumped into a number of Moorish poet-princes, but I’d never heard of poet-princess Wallada bint al-Mustakfi (994-1091). There’s a sensible, sourced account (in Spanish) here, and then there’s this. I had my doubts about Wijdan al shommari, and thought I’d be able to nail him/her on the basis of his/her (?) version of a…