Walk search tool at followthebaldie.com

The Emperor Wu is very pleased with his new toy. Now all that needs to happen is for someone else to enter all the walks we actually do and correct the details of the ones already in there. The purpose of this kind of stuff is to enable inclusion of walks and similar activities run…

Prostitution in 16th century Rome

There was a lot of it: Mirá, hay putas graciosas más que hermosas, y putas que son putas antes que mochachas, hay putas apasionadas, putas estregadas, afeitadas, putas esclarecidas, putas reputadas, reprobadas, hay putas mozárabes de Zocodover, putas carceveras: hay putas de cabo de ronda, putas ursianas, putas güelfas, gibelinas, putas injuinas, putas de rapalo…

New great mosque for Barcelona in historic building on Tibidabo

Three South Asian-British professionals (down from four last time, one having fallen to feminine wiles in the intervening biennium) emerge blinking from the forest at the end of this walk. My God, says one looking down, is that a mosque? And then remembers seeing a photo of it during his physics degree: The idea seems…

Spanish funeral service

Spanish insurers Fiatc have a fairly grisly reputation for health provision care in general. Here‘s how they deal with you once you’re dead: “When we arrived at the crematorium we were taken in through the rear entrance, down a long corridor, where we passed someone else laying in a coffin, a woman walking down the…

In praise of toads

George Sandford has left a fascinating comment on this post, which deals with an amusing 19th century literary-historical hoax–purported correspondence between Ferdinand the Catholic and an esoteric global selection of fellow-monarchs. George is family of the alleged editor, Brother Antonio the Goth, and thus of the Christian clan kidnapped by the Moors when they invaded…

Pentecostal woes

Today in 1565 the True Cross was taken and dipped in the sea in order to assuage the great drought. Doesn’t look like that’s going to be needed this year after all. (Kalebeul’s History of Barcelona now does moveable feasts, although not quite in the way it would like. It is also unsure to do…

Barcelona monument mistranslates Celan, misrepresents the Holocaust

The monument is a quality marble tomb round about where the sea gate was, on which Habsburg general Josep Moragues’ head hung in a cage for 12 years from 1715-1727, his body having previously been quartered on the Ramblas. This for surrendering on a Bourbon pardon at the end of the War of the Spanish…

Outrageous anti-clerical comment of the week

–Uncle, I’ve decided to get baptised and celebrate my first communion next week. Will you be there? –Only if you buy yourself a buttplug. I’m not that easily shocked, but etc etc