Category: Orphaned

Peasants who don’t know how to cross themselves

Apparently we anglocabrones used to think that crossing oneself was prerequisite to being Spanish. Here’s Juan Goytisolo in La Guardia, a short story written in the early 1950s, partly available in GBS: From the window I saw a group of conscripts in parade dress. It was Sunday and the officers’ room was deserted. Its furniture…

More bad pronunciation in Andalusian schools

Re Erasmus students returning from Spain with an incomprehensible Andalusian accent, here’s Rafael Alberti learning how to tort proper at the dame’s school to which he has been sent following some inappropriate excretion chez the Sisters of Carmel: With Mrs Concha I learnt some Biblical History, being very impressed by Joseph, who was sold by…

Two dwarves

I’d write about tiny stockbrokers, Liliputian interior designers and pygmy chestnut vendors, but I’ve never met any. The only dwarf I’ve ever known (slightly) atoned for his main job in the midget porn industry with cameos in Disneyoid kiddies’ films. I would have liked to have been acquainted with A Rapetto, frustrated tenor soloist of…

Barcelona, la gran puta

The definite article is used to indicate that the object of one’s disapproval is a superlatively scaggy prostitute. In this case we’re talking Barcelona council, which has taken to impounding cars in dubious circumstances to make up its revenue shortfall: Local Marxist-Papists are not introduced to criticisms of their shameful heresy at school, but closer…

Don’t crap here, we’re full already

I’ve often flippantly wondered whether the taboo on excretion at holy sites so thoroughly documented by Michael Gilleland is the origin of the old joke about the antiquarian who locks his shop during absences to prevent folks depositing even more Dan Brown. Here’s Melchor de Santa Cruz de Dueñas’ take (Floresta española, 1574) on Mark…