Eurotopia–a Europe consisting of a host of regional statelets–is actually 15 years old, and was produced by historian Henk Wesseling on request of beer magnate Freddy Heineken as a systematic response to the gradual decline in the efficacy of large (multi-)nation-states. He’s not proposing new, mini-nation states as desired by the less crazy Cataloonies, and…
Or, as La Vanguardia has it, “El presunto parricida de su madre…“. I thought Eve had left the Garden of patriarchal vocabulary, or maybe this is just what happens when you’re paid by the word.
Surreal quote in this doc on personal adoptive languages, a typically absurd Belgian scheme to avoid civil war, appropriate EU funds, and inflict a tactical defeat on the Anglo-Saxons by having the Flemish learn French and the Walloons learn Dutch, instead of just letting everyone get on with their English classes: “An Le Nouail Marlière…
A flamencocrat says goodbye. I thought nation branding was the kind of thing undertaken only by scoundrels like Tony Blair and Andrei Zhdanov, both of whom were capable of presenting their villainy with slightly more tact.
I think that’s the subtext to the announcement of a “Reunió de l’Àrea de gais, lesbianes, bisexuals i transsexuals d’EUiA“. Other news just in: EUiA is holding a referendum on whether to introduce a republic; I and the barmaid at Bodega M have declared war on Scunthorpe. We are also addicted to Volare by Super…
Or something along those lines. Jerry R Craddock clears up this and a number of other confusions in his excellent inaugural Disparatorio del suroeste. (Via Jesús Rodríguez Velasco). Galdós was politer in Trafalgar, but we all know what he meant. This one will run and run.
Olympic torches on a Parisian bus reminded me of Josep Pla, smoking merrily away on oil tankers in the famous 1976 A fondo interview with Joaquín Soler Serrano: [Full video seems to have disappeared, so these are a couple of excerpts] Not having heard other recordings, I wonder whether don José wasn’t playing up the…
Meet El Novio de la Muerte/Death’s Groom, back from the tomb (he wasn’t human anyway), and his angel-wolf Canute: Hear him sing “Agua de los ríos”: More here, including ¡how Canuto saved Death’s Groom from serpents! ¡the treasure and the skeleton’s ring! and ¡El Novio’s unfortunate relationship with the head of the bað̞a’xoθ paddleboat fleet!…
I rather liked this interview with Andalusian import ethnomusicologist Gerard/Gerhard Steingress. Spaniards cheerfully call each other Nazis all the time, but when an Austrian uses the word it carries rather more weight. It will be interesting to see whether institutions down south continue to publish his work. Google him (with the h)–he’s distinctly more impressive…