Caretasió

Check out the excellent Quiosquero on how Catalan is actually Chinese.

Enterprising Romanian gypsy beggar

Crouched on the street with the usual placard. A granny passes: –5 cents, for the love of God! –Sorry, no. –Well then let me give you a lucky gypsy kiss! (Leaps up and embraces the granny, despite her protests.) –Oh all right then. Wait, I want to give you 20 cents. –Thanks, I’ve already got…

Barcelona, la gran puta

The definite article is used to indicate that the object of one’s disapproval is a superlatively scaggy prostitute. In this case we’re talking Barcelona council, which has taken to impounding cars in dubious circumstances to make up its revenue shortfall: Local Marxist-Papists are not introduced to criticisms of their shameful heresy at school, but closer…

Reconstruction of Puerta Osario, Seville

Sevillanadas has photoshopped back into place one of the Moorish city’s gates, demolished in 1868 by the same man who restored it twenty years earlier following a serious bout of generalised brotherly hate. Will it now be rebuilt?

“El AVE cotiza al alza en el down jones de los transportes”

Francesc Peirón and his Vanguardia editors don’t know the name of the world’s most famous stock market index. “Down Jones” is used jokingly for “Dow Jones” when the market is falling (it’s up this morning) and in suppressing the Legitimate National Aspirations of the Welsh Race (we have none).

Teaching standard variants of Spanish

Carlos Muñoz of the Institut Libre Marie Haps in Brussels laments (a) the decline in prestige and airtime within Spain suffered by the standard, educated, Madrilenian accent of Spanish, and (b) the lack of phonetic consistency exhibited by model speakers of the more specifically regional accents which have to a certain extent replaced it. He…

Recession rations

Debating at lunch how long it would be before we’re all eating grass soup (sopa de golf on the costas), we progressed to the devil’s cookbook, and someone mentioned the 16th century colonial chronicler, Bernardino de Sahagún. Back when Bernardino was booking the cooks Mictlan was where dead Aztecs lived–way up north, probably in New…

New piano shopping Calvary

Barcelona. Shop no 1 is closed at 11:30, well within its normal opening hours. The iron street blinds are down and there’s no message posted, so I walk across town to shop no 2. Yes, no problem, pay now and we’ll confirm the delivery date in a moment. The call comes a couple of hours…

Weal chop

“Txuletón estilo vasco” is the original in this restaurant in the Eixample/Ensanche, Barcelona, so it’s not a wreal chop for these hungry times, nor a flogging and amputation SM dish, but a Pickwickian morsel: “Well,” said Mr. Weller, “… Ain’t you a goin’ to sign it?”“That ‘s the difficulty,” said Sam; “I don’t know what…