Empires, rulers and warfare – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

What’s so hard about answering an email?

–Hello. –Hello, is that the Department of Tourism? Yes? Hello, a week ago I sent you an email asking if this Friday you could let me and a group in to see the crypt of blah blah blah, and I was wondering whether this would still be possible. –Oh yes, I read the email. –So?…

Jingoistic poem celebrating the Battle of Vigo Bay (1702)

Half roasted Frenchmen, some o’er Gratings Broil’d/Do mix with Spaniards in the Sea parboil’d;

<a href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Vigo_bay_october_23_1702.jpg'>Zeeslag in de baai van Vigo</a>

The Nicaraguan and Spanish characters compared

Bizarrely honest or honestly bizarre?

Is the anglocabrón longing for sun, sangria and sex a new phenomenon?

Blasco Ibáñez says that actually we have always thought “at all hours of the Mediterranean rim.”

El gallito inglés / le coq anglais

Proud English cock, limp Latin hen: the binary opposition of English and Spanish fowls as a metaphor for the contrast between growing British military might and declining Spanish power.

Photo by <a href=http://www.drbizarre.net/post/el-gallito-ingles>Dr. Bizarre</a>, licence <a href=http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/mx/>CC 2.5 Mexico</a>

The lurch and fall of the Almería coast

Excerpts from Juan Goytisolo and Ramón Fernández Palmeral, with an epitaph from George Orwell.

Roddy Doyle’s niggers of Europe explained

Don’t claim national origins for yourselves without very carefully considering the possible consequences.

PP twice as corrupt as PSOE?

If you believe crap like the stat in this post we’ll have you certified.

Drunk and disorderly

A British soldier’s hazy recollections of civil war in Portugal.

The fundamental difference between Mussolini and Berlusconi

Is Silvio a cyborg?