Month: May 2007

Creative cartography

I rather like the idea of going up the M6 one day and finding an elephant where Manchester used to be.

Ignore them and they’ll go away?

Against all the considerable odds, in November the new anti-nationalist party, Ciutadans, won three seats in the regional assembly. So how much time was devoted to it by the nationalist-run regional telly station in January? Six seconds.

Gerald Brenan’s children

Unusually, the Spanish entry is more complete than the English one, mentioning the numerous illegitimates he fathered in Yegen, so numerous, in fact, that it is said that he resisted returning for fear of finding more. Was their omission from South from Granada an editorial decision, or was that just the way the upper classes…

Entire editorial team disappears in Bermuda Triangle

Papel Continuo: Noticias del Mundo was the Spanish version of the American shambloid, Weekly World News. Issue 41 announced that whole office was off to the Caribbean to investigate some weird stuff, and it was the last to appear. Check out Vampire Child, The Man With 12,310 Children, and The Woman With Three Brains here.

Battle of Almanza

Bye, bye, Spain examines the bizarre nationalist obsession with some obscure and complex dynastic conflict some centuries back. Two facts only are worth remembering about Almansa: (i) once upon a time an English general with a French army beat a French general with an English one before its walls, and (ii) they sell rather nice…

Real live caganer crapping in a field

Off the other evening to see Chelsea-Liverpool on a big screen in a village bar in another valley. Coming down from the pass on an old walled stone track, I turn a corner and there’s a flock of goats nibbling the hedges. In the middle of the path, the cloth-capped ruddy-faced goatherd in classic caganero…