The Nay of the Chacoli

The Basque provinces demand observance of protected geographical status for their lousy wine, but Burgos fights back with a costly study centre project that will prove that they make lousy wine too. ¡Viva la crisis!

Alboraya Council’s tinker books

The reforms of the Council of Trent led to parishes registering in five books–quinque libri–the baptisms, confirmations, communions, marriages, deaths and excommunications celebrated there. Quinquilleros, hojalateros and other itinerant pot-breakers and -menders were nominally Catholic but frowned on and frequently persecuted by the establishment, so it’s good to see the Ajuntament de Alboraya drawing them…

Pinochet, the last man up?

Apparently he’s made his way along a secret passage from Hell and is lying in wait in the San José mine. BoyNamedSue says the cage will jam in the shaft and Jack Straw will release him.

Modifications to Slovak language law

Bulbul on spasmodic change in another ethno-polity which gets a kick from auto-strangulation. At least Mishima didn’t manage to drag the whole of Japanese society into his heroic belly-op.