I just read Beth Marie Kosir’s interesting paper on the British codpiece and thought I’d have a quick look through some Spanish stuff. The Hispanic bragueta (I guess it comes from the French braguette, which is actually not a combination of baguette and bragas, “knickers”) seems to have been used first (in the late 15th…
Death row / Fila de la muerte by Pedro Patricio Escobal sounds like a good read. I’d also know more about football trainer, Mr Petland, who apparently engineered some kind of “English revolution” in Madrid and in the Basque country.
Every night Africans try to climb over the razor-wire fences into Spain’s North African colonies; some don’t make it, and are robbed, raped, murdered by Moroccan “security” forces. Real Madrid employs some phenomenally well-paid Brazilians. El País’ homepage this afternoon.
I bumped into El Gran Picasso in a bar down south and thought stories of his epic exploits in Vegas must have been exaggerated, but no. Star juggler Dick Franco recalls the guys–principally Europe-based–who showed him the way: One of the first was El Gran Picasso, who I met in November 1974 as he was…
It was only after dumping her that he remembered that the tickets for Trent Bridge were on her credit card. (It’s becoming increasingly difficult to buy beer off Pakistani street vendors without getting into Flintoff vs Wasim discussions. Last night a single can cost me €1 and a 10 minute lecture on reverse swing in…
When I went back to live in Ingerland a few years ago, it took a month before I felt I knew what was going on in meetings where people used new expressions like “the dog’s bollocks” and “a load of arse”. This time I’m preparing my trip and today I discovered that England spin bowler…
Boris Johnson this morning has in his slightly misty sights the new species of pissed ladette, profane, belly-flaunting, swigging shots of cocktail from brightly coloured and cunningly marketed bottles, and sweeping the streets in terrifying gangs. For all the problems created by 24-hour drinking in Barcelona (the old town is full of well-established illegal bars…
It’s a funny old world in which the celebration of states’ primary ethnic identity passes without comment while people are falling over themselves to ban poor old Chief Illiniwek.