How many penguins can you fit in the Generalitat de Cataloonia’s London embassy?

The Emperor Wu says that small office space is fetching around €650/m² pa on Fleet Street at the moment, so €37,200 pa is probably buying the separatists 50-60m²’s worth of plural reality and national character. It’s an encouraging sign of faith in the underlying strength of the Spanish economy that its regions are expanding such facilities at a time when, for example, the British Foreign Office is doing all it can to get yet more pinko wastrels to take up amateur gardening in Galicia. On the other hand, 60m² doesn’t seem very big for a nation whose male pitch and putt team rules the world. Neither is the location particularly convenient for Whitehall or the City–what do people do in Fleet Street now?–but I suppose if you acquired a mattress and fridge it would make a nice bachelor pad.

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Comments

  1. “Pinko wastrel” Is that me??

    The British Embassy has just closed its [part-time] consulate in Vigo. And the one in Bilbao, I believe.

  2. Political pinkos don’t read the DT. We facial
    pinkos do, though less and less. Anyway, the GS has been abandoned.

  3. The Generalitat has just announced that ordinary operating costs are to be reduced by 25%. I suppose that means that the London embassy will be gone by Christmas. Not exactly a great example of forward thinking.

  4. Was that directed at me? You can call it what you like. I’m just saying that it’s a little disingenuous to say “Cataloonia was the spelling used by the Generalitat during the absurd Catalan culture programme at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year” when ‘Cataloonia’ was merely the name of one exhibition at the event.

    I should think that ‘Catalonia’, ‘Catalunya’ or perhaps ‘Katalonien’ were probably used more frequently.

  5. I thought it was to sound like ‘carTOON’. I agree, though, it was silly.

    I called it disingenuous because I thought you were being thoroughly dishonourable. If it was merely dishonest then I take that back :-)

  6. After the alleged one-million-men march July 10 last year the question about the penguins gains a whole new dimension and now demands to be answered definitively.

    Taking a ratio of 9 penguins per square meter (depends a bit on the species, but let’s say they were of the bigger and thus more important kind, as befits) the office of the Generalitat in London (taking the optimistic upper end of 60 m²) can hold some 540 penguins.

    That is, not counting any obstacles such as tables, chairs, 15×5 meters senyeres, trash cans, barrels of blood of Wilfred the Hairy, (do they have computers?) and the occasional ACN journalist.

    540 penguins according to commonly acceptable standards, 1134 if we let the Guardia Urbana of Barcelona do the count, and 1620 if Ã’mnium Cultural has its say.

    How many of them speak Catalan will never be determined. Already the total number of Catalan speakers ranges (according to what nationalist source you use) between 6.5 million (Matthew Tree) and 12 million (Saül Gordillo). So never mind a few birds.

    Whatever the number, if you allow me a personal comment, I’d have the Catalans join the penguins to Madagascar any day now.

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