Lack of (satisfactory) indexes and ToCs in Spanish non-fiction

This is still a major problem, even from authors and publishers that appear to take themselves seriously, and even though automatic generation is now pretty good. Is it evidence of (a) the continued importance of rote learning, as over critical appraisal, in Spanish universities, or (b) the realisation, hundreds of years ago, that digitised search…

Elementos de geografía física

From the Diario de Barcelona, quoted in Manuel Martínez de Morentin, Estudios filológicos (1857): —¿Qué se entiende por España? —Una Nacion como otra cualquiera, pero con la particularidad de haber de todo menos españoles. —¿En qué climas se halla? —En tres; frio, caliente y templado: en invierno es cuando regularmente se siente el frio, lo…

Catalan cannibal song

Demanding a paella of the Moderates, in today’s entry over at the new libro verde. Sequel: a week later, with defeat imminent, the same people sang, “Now it’s us in the frying pan.” (The 1843 Jamancia, from jamar, to eat, is one of Barcelona’s forgotten revolutions. Only a fool or a saint would attempt to…

Narcissists

One reason to get away from downtown Barcelona, which has become a drunken take on Disney World. Spain seems quite happy to be Europe’s Florida. (Dear Gallic lesbians living in my downstairs: this is not a sexuality thing.)

Pigmobile

I hope hambulancia wins the Spanish Correctors’ Union’s photo competition.

Long shot of new scrapers on Barcelona’s northern shore

Taken towards the end of this walk, it demonstrates some of the impact of the speculative development programmed by Barcelona’s eco-warrior council over the past five years. If I could do rather more advanced wheelies on my Batavus Tripper I would post aerial shots of the dramatic shifts in the shoreline as a consequence of…

Verdict on the Barcelona live music scene

“Much has been said on the subject but it is still a little known fact outside of Barcelona that it’s music scene is seriously ill. Years of neglect, conservatism and lack of investment has left this supposedly cultured modern city with a big hole where it’s grass roots live music scene should be. You’d expect,…

Common sense is the least common of the senses

Xavi C wonders if the phrase is Jaume Balmes‘s. Mark Twain is often blamed for the English version, but Allan Cunningham in Paul Jones (1826, via GBS) has a peasant observe that “common sense is the rarest sense of a'” and Descartes writes at the beginning of his Methóde that “Le bon sens est la…