Quiet mountain road, chilly evening. The Guardia Civil do an ID and vehicle document check and then ask us to get out. GC1 takes a couple of paces back, while GC2: OK, we’re going to do a thorough check of you and the car for estupi … estupe … estupefacientes. M, also happier with common…
Cool post over at Aentwaereps about the Antwerp singer, Willy van de Velde, who grew up above the Bernad family’s “Spanish shop”, took guitar lessons from Ilse Alfonso, and called himself El niño de San Andrés because it sounded cooler than something like That geezer from St Andrew’s. As Godzjumenas observes, there’s no direct trace…
Re “EL PALACIO DE CONGRESAOS DE BOLTAÑA”: congresado, da. (Del part. de congresar). 1. m. y f.coloq. Persona que se deja mandar a congresos. It’s still rare, but here’s an example: el candidato emite su mensaje a unos congresados pasivos, pero no se convierte, a la vez, en receptor del sentir y el parecer de…
“Once upon a time, your host applied to a graduate school and requested that he be considered for a position teaching Spanish as part of the aid package. He then discovered that they had a particularly effective strategy for figuring out just how good his Spanish really was: one morning, he received a call which…
The King has unblocked YouTube, but Moroccan bloggers could do with a hand in encouraging him to restore must-haves like GoogleEarth and LiveJournal. Bono is recording in Fez, and I’m sure he needs this kind of stuff too.
Bit of fratricidal jollity from Ángel Ganivet, Idearium español (1897): “Confronted with the spiritual ruin of Spain we must put a stone where our heart is and throw a million Spaniards to the wolves if we all do not wish to be thrown to the swine.” No national stereotypes, please. Just trying to think of…
AMA once told me they were A Good Thing because in the 1930s they gave unemployed men in Britain somewhere dry to stand. It seems that Tomás Salvador spent the Civil War hiding in them, reading.