Against all the considerable odds, in November the new anti-nationalist party, Ciutadans, won three seats in the regional assembly. So how much time was devoted to it by the nationalist-run regional telly station in January? Six seconds.
Sorry but it’s the only photo of Sarkozy I could find this morning. And who says a spider won’t rule France one day? This sounds like a chimpanzees’ charter.
Papel Continuo: Noticias del Mundo was the Spanish version of the American shambloid, Weekly World News. Issue 41 announced that whole office was off to the Caribbean to investigate some weird stuff, and it was the last to appear. Check out Vampire Child, The Man With 12,310 Children, and The Woman With Three Brains here.
Transhumance is in the air, so here’s a smutty song from a commie from Zaragoza: Los pastores se van, se van, Los pastores lloran, lloran: ¡ay de mí, pobre pastora! ¿con quién follarás tú ahora? Rejigged: The shepherds are going, they’re going again, The shepherds are weeping, they’re wailing this strain: “Alas, alack, oh Phyllis…
Fabio Montermini’s excellent granny, who says in dialect (no army or navy in sight), “I can’t speak dialect and never have,” reminded me of a hilarious moment the other night during a meet-the-people TV show featuring the not so excellent Mariano Rajoy, struggling leader of the allegedly non-nationalist Partido Popular. Why, asked some poor mum…
To take a stage version of a mad Ukrainian novel to Edinburgh this summer (budget here). If I had the money, the time and the talent, I’d try to buy myself the part of Junkie.
I guess Esterella is a play on Esther, as in Lambrechts, and the Spanish estrella, star. The obvious connection is in the Sephardi community, but it would be interesting to know why Russian immigrant Charly Schleimovitz thought this stage name would work for his client and wife, the Antwerp nightingale, the Belgian Zarah Leander. Godzjumenas…
Whoever runs Fabirol‘s website tells us on a page re a museum near Zaragoza called La casa del gaitero, Bagpiper House in corporate speak, that in Aragon gaitero can be used to describe any popular musician. What would an equivalent lowest-common-denominator term be in the English-speaking world? “Artiste” misses the instrument component and, frequently, the…