Water crisis

But not in Pedralbes: If only shots were that cheap at my local.

A heathen named Guiri

“The Mahávansa and the Rájaratnákari state, that the king Walakanabhaya, or according to the latter work, Deveny Paetissa, caused the temple of a heathen named Girrie (doubtless Giri) to be destroyed, and caused to be constructed upon its site twelve temples consecrated to Sákya, which communicated with each other; and in the midst of which…

Sales of Catalan-language fiction in English translation on Amazon

Ferran Mascarell said a couple of months back that Frankfurt perseguia tres objectius: millorar la presència de la literatura catalana en el món, entendre el paper fonamental de l’edició catalana amb els seus cinc segles d’història al darrere i ensenyar al món l’existència d’una cultura forta, plena i integral. El primer objectiu suposo que ha…

Bar Morryssom

This example of hostelries unable to spell their own name is rather interesting because of the two signs Bar Morrisson is clearly older than Bar Morryssom. Does this mark a decline in Spanish literacy–they used to be able to spell it–or are they merely trying to please various orthographical markets? (Background: Spanish speakers find it…

Professor Blumenbach of Göttingen’s views on beauty in women

T Bell, MD, Kalogynomia, or the laws of female beauty (1821): Professor Blumenbach of Göttingen, whose profound science and perfect impartiality no one can doubt, does not hesitate to say, that the English are the most beautiful people on the globe. Nor is this wonderful when we consider that ENGLAND, perhaps exclusively, presents the combination…

Apparent gender confusion in French “native-speakers”

It is slightly strange that this should surprise anyone, since Romance languages are notorious for their variation in the attribution of gender to nouns (Latin neuter -> almost universally Romance masculine, but you then get swaps, and doubling ups, and all kinds of mayhem in the various modern languages/dialects). One wonders whether the regional background…

Birthday pics

Thanks all for kind wishes. Cake under attack from fish: Afterwards I got to go walkies, and chose one of the old junkie trails to Can Tunis, made vaguely notorious in rather different form (before they built the freaking motorway and destroyed the old port and beaches) in Juli Vallmitjana’s interesting (he helped Picasso get…

Etymology of Montjuïc/Mountjoy/Montjoie

“Jewish mountain” is currently hot favourite in Barcelona council offices because it is believed that this will attract well-off tourists from New York and Israel. Joan Amades says that at the end of the C19th, local sailors referred to gardens of St Bertrand as fossa del jueu, “the Jewish grave”, and indeed there were Jewish…

Catalan government censors Montjuïc castle from Google Earth

I was wondering where it (and another landmark which I will post here as soon as I remember which it was) had gone to. Stefan Geens has the low-down, as usual. The ICC is on the mountain, so it’s not like they can have been unaware of it. Does this have something to do with…