The legal practicality of resurrection in Spain

People in Barcelona have started relating the apparently low mortality rate among Chinese residents to identity theft in the way they did in London a few years back, but we’re never going to get back to the good old days before forensic tools like DNA testing, finger printing and ubiquitous photography. There’s an entertaining story…

Torremolinos, Unesco World Heritage site?

BA’s Highlife mag goes lowlife: “After 40 years of mass tourism, Torremolinos continues to evolve and, away from the coast, it’s a bustling Andalucian town. The high-rise 1950s and 1960s hotels are now admired by fashionable architects. The campaign to make it a Unesco World Heritage site begins here.” I’ve been going to Benidorm for…

One less mullet

A tress stress law would have finished off ETA ages back.

Obscure Spanish footie team told to get rid of Cross of St George on alternative kit

Apparently it might incite violence. Particularly, one suspects, if the directors of the taxpayer-funded Permanent Seminar on International Migration and Foreigners (“an open space for Interculturality and Human Rights“) in Aragon attend home matches of SD Huesca, whose major achievement to date was fifth place in the Second Division in the 1950-1 season. Via Miguel…

Pujol, cacique

It’s not exactly a secret that Catalonia is currently run by spiteful, greedy, semi-literate buffoons, but our leaders’ protest re the Economist’s description of ex-regional president Jordi Pujol as a cacique should help to convince anyone still in doubt. The Oxford English Dictionary defines cacique thus: 2. In Spain or Latin America, a man who…

A dangerous lack of a sense of his own absurdity

I know a quite considerable number of clever, balanced Italians, and I also believe that there are millions more out there. Tragically none of them seem to show the slightest inclination to get involved in their country’s political process, which is left to people like Berlusconi, who, while not a new class of José Antonios…

The (Catalan) statute of autonomy imports wild parties

And I didn’t blink. Actually in this context it means something like “No one gives a toss about the Statute” and refers to the complete absence of the Catalan government during ongoing debates, about which indeed no one gives a toss, but which are still apparently broadcast live on two out of the four screens…

Valdesolation

El blog Ausente links to a piece by Rinzewind (which links etc etc) about Valdeluz. This is the settlement built in the desert outside Guadalajara and equipped with a high-speed train station in what appeared to be a corrupt development deal engineered by PP bigwigs Esperanza Aguirre and Álvarez Cascos with the blessing of PSOE…

Tripartit

The old ones are always the best ones. In the Dresden Files the Old Ones are demons, or dark gods who ruled the world before mankind. They were apparently banished from our reality. The Fifth Law of Magic prohibits the summoning of both the Old Ones, and their foot soldiers the Walkers, or Outsiders. In…