Luvvies

The socialists in Madrid are bitching full time after being slaughtered in the regional and municipal elections. Miguel Sebastián, Zapatero’s disastrous choice as mayoral candidate, has announced his resignation. “What’s he resigning from?” enquires senior national colleague, the excellent Alfonso Guerra, “what was he?” Fellow loser in the regionals, Rafael Simancas: “I’m staying on because…

Wolves/pigs

Bit of fratricidal jollity from Ángel Ganivet, Idearium español (1897): “Confronted with the spiritual ruin of Spain we must put a stone where our heart is and throw a million Spaniards to the wolves if we all do not wish to be thrown to the swine.” No national stereotypes, please. Just trying to think of…

Disappearance of Galician wolf-man explained

Manuel Blanco Romasanta (1809-?) was born Manuela because everyone thought he was a girl, and things went downhill from then on. After his wife died he became a travelling salesman of human fat and, when the law finally took an interest, he went on a CANNIBAL RAMPAGE, TEARING APART and DEVOURING nine innocents before being…

Ralph Forte and the Valentine’s Day Massacre

Mmax says that, on February 14 1929, his great-uncle, Ralph Forte, was listening to Chicago police radio from the offices of AP when he heard some slightly unusual news from North Clark Street. Apparently Mr Forte had just fled Italy after writing an article entitled “Everyone obeys Mussolini except the cats”. Can his welcome in…

Not me

Captain Al Cohol (via Papel Continuo; more superheroes) has nothing to do with Al Pernales. I’d hate to think how long it is since I was last ravaged by a bare

Wild thing

Picked up the two-month-old Beast of Bages this afternoon from a farm where she was in imminent danger of being eaten by hunting dogs. She’s still too shy for photos, but has already assaulted one of the neighbours and climbed all over the bookcases, so here (MP3, 4.93MB), by way of welcome, is a snipped…

More pussy pics

Despite the fact my language of choice is that of a far better empire, Kaleboel comes in at no 839 on the list of “more than 10,000” participants in la blogosfera hispana, as calculated by Bitacoras.com. The infinitely superior Puerta del Sol–also in English–is down at 843, presumably because Jonathan doesn’t include as many pictures…

The fox and the cat, Mallorcan style

Belated congratulations to blogger/journalist Pere Marí, now being sociocultural for El Diario de Mallorca. He had an interesting piece last month on the 70th anniversary of Balearic publishing dynasty, Editorial Moll, which I can’t link to because of DdeM’s moronic policy of redirecting everything to their front page. Anyway, the news from current boss, Francesc…

Cats vs porcupines: Gramsci’s view

Mistress Puss has departed for the hill, so it’s time for another beast to abuse, kill and eat the 5-6cm American (they’re actually African) cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) which are displacing their smaller German cousins here and which crawl upstairs every time the sewers flood or the bar downstairs runs out of tortilla. A farmer I…