Someone commented that penícula is probably not a gypsy neologism for a film dealing with the sorrows of life but a childish l/n swap, the fruit of orthographical panic caused by a relatively unfamiliar word. Although we’re clearly dealing with a different level of literary accomplishment, I suggest that Finalcial Times falls into the same…
Another sentimental tango from from Tio de la Tiza and the Bebabouched Moors demonstrates a firmly-rooted belief in 1891 Cadiz in the Decadence of the Nation, even before the disaster of 1898 and its long aftermath exacerbated the gulf between a diligently managed press and wild popular fears: Una inocente niña llorando estaba y con…
Here. Just about to become completely useless, as work started on tearing up the medieval town from Urquianona more or less via Bilbao and the Plaza del Ángel to the Plaza Antonio López. The Barceloneta bullring is still there (closed 1924), the port has real boats, the basilica of the Merced and the cathedral face…
Daisy chaining: Cadiz declined after the War of Independence against the French and suffered the final blow with the loss of the last colonies in 1898, but, if it never achieved the notoriety of Barcelona, it was still an interesting mix of people. Here’s one of my favourite songs, from one of carnival’s great personalities,…
African-ish bands have been the talk of Andalusian ports since Cervantes. In 1935 the carnival association Orquesta Senegalesa didn’t win any prizes with this song: Aquí está la Orquesta Senegalesa que tocamos las notas con gran limpieza, llegamos desde Londres en un tranvía a visitar la tierra de la alegría. Hemos visto mujeres a cual…
Via EFDL, El Plagio Literario. Quim Monzó, Luis Racionero and Lucía Etxebarría apparently see themselves as practicians of intertextuality rather than plagiarists. But surely virtually no Spanish readers will have read or even heard of their sources, Courrier International, Gilbert Murray and Antonio Colinas. And so, if they don’t indicate their debt for such an…
Siegfried Anton den Boer/Siegfried Andre Den Boer Kramer/Anthony van den Boer/Tony Ronald/Tonny Ronald etc, born Arnhem 1941/1943/1944, permanently resident in Barcelona from 1959/1960, recording nevertheless in Holland in Dutch and German until 1963, either has the best or the worst memory in the world. Here’s his 1971 summer hit, Help!, in Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXzQrIdR0xw … and…
CASE SOLVED: IN DECEMBER 2008 THE VALENCIAN GOVERNMENT STOPPED GIVING THIS SUBJECT IN ENGLISH Just seen on CNN+, a Valencian teacher teaching central government’s controversial new Educación para la Ciudadanía. In Spanglish, as required by her bosses. So the first words she writes on the blackboard are “Education for the Citizenship and Human Rights”. Even…
Deogolwulf has translated the Grand Inquisitor’s Mein politisches Testament: In the internal arrangement of the empire, the nationalities gained a position which was bound to be expressed by the selection and in the activity of public officials from the lowest rank to the highest. In a state thus arranged, it is for natural reasons difficult…
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