Just found in a cabinet in an uninhabited house in the central Pyrenees: a concealed drawer that doesn’t appear to have been touched since the 1960s. Contents: a will from 1818; pages dealing with testaments torn a reprint of a revised (1930s?) version of the Spanish 1888-9 Civil Code, including annotations detailing regional variations (in…
“The Basque type is, amongst all the human races, that which is most different from quadrupeds. The posture of the head and the form of the jaw is in the Basque the least animal of all in existence.” Telesforo de Aranzadi, ¿Existe una raza euskara? Sus caracteres antropológicos. San Sebastián, Imprenta de la Provincia, 1905…
“The main reason you like my boyfriend is because he feeds you large quantities of grilled lamb, and the main reason my dog likes you is because you give her the bones.” Can’t see what’s wrong with that. I hope my eyes don’t go as dazed and watery as the dog’s.
Jacques Brel’s appearance suggests that he shares substantial quantities of DNA with George Formby and Francis the Talking Mule. His scripts are even stranger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DYoiG4-9p8 I’m doing a little something for an NGO and it’s boring the tits off of me.
Some Friday morning cheer from Dubin & Monaco in a recording by Xavier Cugat, one of Hitler’s more unlikely faves: Perhaps the prototype for the behijabbed suicide who asks, “Does my bomb look big in this?” Perhaps not. Lina Romay, the sensational Catalan horror-porn star of films by the great Catalan director, Jess Franco, chose…
Manuel Capdevila occasionally comments here but now has his own blog, Revised Catalonia History, whose goal is to remedy what he believes is the deliberate obfuscation of the Glorious History of the Catalan Nation and its Contribution to Civilisation and create a correct, Catalan-centric view. One of his early claims is that the English paper…
Emanuel del Mar, Nuevo guía para la conversacion, en español é inglés (1839, via GBS): Una golondrina no hace verano. One swallow does not make spring. Both spring and summer are used in both languages, but you’d kind of expect northward migration to take swallows to Spain in spring and then England in summer. Perhaps…
The other night I stayed with a neo-peasant Catalan hippy couple living in a grace and favour masia in the hills, for which you and I and anyone else without the requisite ethnic badge would probably have to lay down something in the region of €750K. The guy, son of Andalusian barkeepers, agreed that affection…
Over on eBay, via the ever-vigilant Xavi Caballé. Burning is the most suitable fate for paper dictionaries now digitalised, but it seems a bit silly to spend 30€ (inc p&p) acquiring them on eBay for this end.
Shop deliveries free on foot in Leeds LS1-8 & LS13. Dismiss