Indisputable proof that Gaudi was Portuguese

Sez our foreign correspondent of Bar Agujas d’Ouro in Estremoz, Portugal. Its radical eclecticism picknmixery suggests the architect may have mistakenly interpreted the lack of aesthetic coordination in many cathedrals and other large, old, respectable buildings as the result of a synchronic design choice rather than the typical diachronic process in which committees regret the…

Avui switches to English

Best writing there for ages, too: Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in /var/www/vhosts/avui.cat/httpdocs/inc/layout_main.php on line 1233 Fatal error: Call to a member function FetchNextObject() on a non-object in /var/www/vhosts/avui.cat/httpdocs/inc/layout_main.php on line 1238

Weird shit guarantee

Mr Wu has added our Weird Shit Guaranteeâ„¢ to the Baldie Tours FAQs in response to a suggestion from some New Jersey clients following a conversation with a rather unusual street-organ performer. It may deter as many as it attracts, but what the hell.

Video of sheep near the Bielsa tunnel

Photo 7 on this page shows a lamb being carried by refugees from villages on the Spanish side of the central Pyrenees as the Stalinist-led 43rd Division prepared its famous last stand–the Bielsa Pocket/la Bolsa de Bielsa–against Franco’s advancing Navarrans in spring 1938. Bielsa was completely shattered by the latter’s artillery, but the scorched earth…

The madness of King George, authorised for all pubics

The Spanish DVD is poorly produced but this error was probably planned: George finds sanity through lunacy, monarchy through dethronement. The film is as fine in its own way as the original play was, and Nigel Hawthorne is divine. Handel was George I and II, not III, but period films normally inflict far greater musical…

Sblood Spaniard you get no wall here

Samuel Johnson reports on making acquaintance with London in 1737 that In the last age, when my mother lived in London, there were two sets of people, those who gave the wall, and those who took it; the peaceable and the quarrelsome. When I returned to Lichfield, after having been in London, my mother asked…

Zaragoza Council’s pubic lighting experiment

Over at Carles Miró’s place. There’s a bit of it around in Anglocabronia, and machine-generated fakevertising sites (insert James Joyce joke here) are getting into pubic light, as in “Two inches, three, four, five and just the twirled pubic lamp shades teen of jake tickled his bulky route pocketing.” Good porn lighting must be worth…

General strike, July 15

The usuals are flooding us with mail calling on us to halt work in Spain next month in order to remind politicians that it is their solemn duty to provide each and every one of us with a mansion, a fast car, and a ready-rolled joint. Bet that strikes terror into the Chinese.