Jaume Fabre of La Vanguardia has spent his summer discovering what everyone else who had encountered the Real Academia Española already knew: that the racist term, guiri, used in Spain and in particular in Catalunya to denominate members of the Anglosphere and other post-Saxons and northern Slavs, probably originates in a word used by the…
I think that concrete bridges always look better when the water wearing away at them is vertically, as opposed to horizontally, incident. In the first photo, rain is falling on the bulldog’s bum at Glòries. Glòries is an intersection in at least two senses: it is the meeting point of Barcelona’s two great straight roads…
Barcelona’s dog racing stadium, the Canódromo, is an architectonic miracle–in the sense that it hasn’t yet fallen down–but the whole neighbourhood is worth a visit. For one thing it’s full of good local bars which, at this time of year, are principally inhabited by Peruvians and Ecuadorians who haven’t got a masia up in the…
Barcelona has been known for its Moorish thieves for at least 1200 years, and last night a friend had an encounter with a couple of Moroccan thieves, from which he fortunately escaped with property and person intact. Police say that roughly 80% of street robberies are committed by young North African males, and inevitably some…
Gisteren tijdens een wandeling kocht ik een Pirulo, een veelkleurig ijsje dat ik erg lekker vind. (Volgens mij hebben ze de naam gepikt van een Madrileense graffitioot, maar goed.) Toen ik het stokje schoonlikte ontdekte ik tot mijn grote verrassing de woorden “Pirulo Gratis”. Naar de winkel, en ja, nog eentje. De Pakistani aan het…
A pesar del racisme ritual en aquesta part del món – vegi L’Obsessió Antiamericana de Jean-François Revel (Barcelona: Proa, 2003) – les platges estan plenes d’anglosaxones. No obstant, sembla que alguna cosa estrany està passant en l’altre costat de l’aigua. El New York Times reporta qu’els francesos no van celebrar la diada del 14 de…
La Vanguardia (2003/06/27): Pujol recordó que la “presión demográfica tremenda” que sufre Catalunya con la llegada de 382.000 extranjeros entre 1996 y 2002 incide en el uso del catalán y añadió que “tenemos que resistir”… Per què hi ha immigrants (legals i il·legals) a Catalunya? Perquè els empresaris catalans necessiten una font barata de força…
