What Catalan imperialists forget: all their dialects are simply dodgy Limousin, and all the territories they claim (Valencia, the Blearies, the gypsy quarter of Perpignan, several hamlets in Albania) are actually part of Greater Occitania. Quite what this adds to GNP is unclear, but ain’t it fun!
An amply dimensioned gypsy lady is vending six small cacti in pots and two bunches of cut chrysanths outside the municipal market building. An impeccably dressed faux-blonde pija approaches. –Three cactus for five euros! lovely flowers! three lovely cactus for five euros! lovely… –I want three cacti, that one, that one and that one. –That’ll…
Another view of Barcelona, this time the centrefold from the magazine Triunfo in September 1962. Other photos on pp35-53, of which I enjoyed this one, a sanitised reminder that we are witnessing the final phase in Barcelona’s transition from a small town surrounded by villages and fields and, latterly, monstrous slums, to a great city;…
Most southern European theorising re that poorly defined construct, Anglosaxonia, is corny racism dressed up as sociology or socialism or whatever. This, however, from one of my favourite reads, is amusing, if somewhat flawed: Lampedusa aroused in me the suspicion that the only country in which law and order are, pregonament, synonymous with civilisation and…
Exhibit 1 features Die Verdammte Spielerei and some blonde and was recorded in what will presumably be the Republic of Flanders by Monday. I suppose France will get Brussels. Exhibit 2 is Tango gitano, which “forms part of a group of field materials documenting Maria Garcia performing unaccompanied Spanish songs from Asturias, Spain on January…
This old bar in Badalona appears to be named after someone who doesn’t have a second surname or a business partner (there’s no room for a second word, so it can’t have been painted out) but who uses the conjunction anyway. I don’t see what’s wrong with being a brazen lover of conjunctions. They are…
A fine example of Spanish enthusiasm for the heavy metal umlaut, downstairs in the bus station in Hellín, Albacete. The -ado -> dipthongised -ao shift is common in Spanish dialects, and what you’ve got here in the last example is actually kind of diaeresis-ish. On my next visit I will communicate this information to the…
