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…
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…
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…
Étienne Cabet‘s Voyage en Icarie (excerpt) is his novelised idealisation of Napoleonic nationalist totalitarianism: if not exactly a New Jerusalem, then certainly a New Paris, built around a New Seine, designed by its dictator, the Icar. This book and its hype led hundreds of families, mainly French, principally artesans (sez James Chastain) to doom and…
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 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…
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…
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