Folengo’s Baldo

Pleased to see that the marvellous Baldus–a vague subterranean source of inspiration for the world’s wildest walking wisness–is getting a wider hairing. I’ve read chunks of the French translation and am looking forward to the English.

Seville safari

A journey through the remains of Expo 92. At least it hasn’t all been stolen, as tended to happen to unguarded buildings in Andalusia during the construction boom.

From cooked to raw in Almería

It would be Å vankmajer-nice to think that the wide-scale conversion of Spanish country restaurants into brothels is the logical, albeit unexpected consequence of a social craze for abandoning what is feared to be cultural in favour of what is assumed to be natural. However, the replacement of cooks by pimps means that we have not…

European action on Spanish institutional corruption

Check out this substantial bombshell being chucked at the Spanish establishment at all levels and in all territories for its collective refusal to confront (indeed for its participation in) the flagrant, widespread, long-term abuse of individual property rights. But will the threat of a Bulgarian-style loss of European funds to the common weal be sufficient…

Spanglish, an important new literary language

An interesting piece by the always interesting Ilan Stavans in a new French literary mag on the doormat describes briefly how in the States, with the success of Junot Díaz’s killer novel The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao and other stuff, Spanglish has moved from the rebellious, designed-to-be-misunderstood fringe to the mainstream. What we…

How a right-wing tree became a left-wing tree

Over at Crónica Verde, about the ongoing destruction by the Andalusian PSOE of the Doñana National Park. This is quite different from the abuse of natural space during the dictatorship because (all together now!) Franco was of the right, while Chaves is of the left, and the people’s friend to boot.

Left/right

Check out the excellent Mr Butler on how our “socialist” government is handing over, more or less for free, a substantial stake in a nominally Spanish energy business to a Russian oil business with allegedly major mafia participation in order to save a big construction company and hence rescue the domestic financial sector from overt…