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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Tully, Letters written during a ten years’ residence at the court of Tripoli (1819): June 12 1788 To you, my dear friend, who are always alive to the beauties and effects of nature, I cannot omit describing what an extraordinary impression an eclipse makes on the uninformed part of the inhabitants of Barbary. Of this…
When the original cathedral was consecrated in 1058, it was dedicated to the Holy Cross and to St Eulalia, who on February 12 303 was put in a barrel lined with knives or glass, rolled down the hill out of Roman Barcelona, and unbreasted, crucified and decapitated near one of my favourite bars, whereupon a…
Re yesterday’s post on the Santa Majestat in Caldes de Montbui, here’s some anti-Catholic propaganda from the time of George Borrow, taken from the The life of Ramon Monsalvatge: On the 8th of December, 1832, I was sent from the convent of Sabadell to that of my native town, Olot, to study philosophy. I continued…