I continue to think “mystifications” is a better translation than “hoaxes” of mixtificaciones. Gerald Howson in The flamencos of Cadiz Bay writes of a 1950s carnaval pregonero preaching against the use of “mixtifications, modernisms and orfeonic banalities” in carnival songs. He wouldn’t have liked Silvester Paradox either.
In some cases the frequency of Anglo-Saxon surnames is related more to the descendants left behind by old British mining concessions than to current emigration of retired Anglo-Saxons to the Andalusian coast.
In Spain it’s a cubana, a Cuban, the Uruguayans call it una paja rusa, a Russian wank (not to be confused with a Russian mountain, una montaña rusa, which is a big dipper in the nicest of senses), while José João Dias Almeida’s excellent dictionary of Portuguese argot (calaõ) and idiom informs us that his…
Gerry Studds was, as far as I know, the only Portuguese-speaking member of the US Congress. His name always made me think of that bit in “My old man’s a dustman” which goes “He wears gor-blimey trousers/With the studs sewn down the back.” Googling I find “He wears cor-blimey trousers/And he lives in a council…
Translator Carlos Ferrero quotes bit of a piece called Aprender a ser libre (Learning to be free) by Jorge Edwards, whose work had the singular distinction of being banned by both the Castro and Pinochet dictatorships: I recall a Venezuelan poet of Arab origins who was contracting as a translator in North Korea. The documents…
I’ve cycled south from Albacete via Yeste twice. On both occasions it would have been really nice to have had a direct road or track from Parolis / Parolix to Los Arroyos, but there just isn’t one, whatever all the maps say. The road from Miller up to the sierra does exist, but those extra…
