Egil

Unlike the hairdressers of Clonycavan and Croghan, Egil ( “an ugly, irritable, brooding individual … deaf, often lost his balance, went blind, suffered from chronically cold feet, endured headaches and experienced bouts of lethargy … unusual disfigurements of his skull and facial features”) was clearly a trombonist

Traitors to the language

Everyone always knew that the previous, “moderate”, nationalist government was engaged in a campaign to remove, step-by-step, Spanish and its users from public life. However, due to its clannish habits, strategic smoking guns were scarce. Now a bunch of illegally-funded, Stasi-like surveys and reports have been found in government house providing information on “traitors” and…

Takeovers

So will La Caixa ask Montilla for its money back if Gas Natural fails to get Endesa or ends up paying more than bargained for? (e.on’s bid mini-site includes the revelation in the Discurso de Dr. Wulf H. Bernotat that they have a programme called on.top. If German-based concerns want to appear international, then maybe…

Carnival in court

Here, from 1957, is Cádiz Renfe’s stationmaster using the regional Information and Tourism-crat to get a carnival club to change the title of their mini-show from “The Stationmaster and His Subordinates” to “Infernal Train Emigrants”. Here‘s an equally hilarious case from 2004, in which the mayoress and assistant of Archidona (Málaga) obtain a court order…

Plastered? Stone wall covering in Spanish vernacular architecture

Andoni Alonso, Inaki Arzoz, and Nicanor Ursua don’t provide sources for any of their often startling claims in this piece on “neo-vernacular” architecture in Navarre, so there’s no way of checking up on their thesis that Franco was responsible for the destruction of 75% of what they refer to as “genuine vernacular architecture”, damaging “profoundly…

A village called Sin

Shame Guy Bellamy (A village called Sin) wrote about Compton Sinton instead of Sín, Huesca.

Off-topic

“For brevity, all references to plaintiff’s current name will be shortened to ‘I am the Beast’.” (Via MM)