War – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

Spain, invisible; leaders, dumb

Normal furrow resumed.

Rammed earth/pisé wall (left) reinforced with lime mortar cladding (right) at Ouzilly-Vignolles, Moncontour, France. Yeah, I went cycling.

On the other hand…

Why the mob may want to consider murder and mayhem. With apologies to the Archpriest of Hita.

One problem with escraches

There’s also this phenomenon called Iche.

Fixing the rootless cosmopolitans

Most of the people I know regard themselves as left-wing, so I’ve heard this form of apocalyptic xenophobia more from guys with curious haircuts than from guys who have dispensed with the razor guard altogether. Mein Kampf etc are familiar but I don’t really know the “left” national-socialist equivalents. Here, however, is the Stalinist machine…

Amusing neighbourhood battle for control of public resources

Old guard horticulturalist-hippies versus arriviste mums-with-babes-hanging-off-their-tits, at stake a substantial villa and gardens near Park Güell and corresponding state subsidies. Let the death threats commence! Younger and stony-broker, I briefly contemplated the cloister, sacred or secular (Dutch prisons were pretty good back then). With retreats genuinely isolated from public-spirited humans increasingly hard to find, I…

Unusual duelling weapons

Of sausages, sugarcandy, daggers on helmets, sharp-bladed collars, pills, and billiard balls, with a note on zombie destruction.

Hammer horror!

Why the guillotine should not be Spain’s tumbril-filler in the coming revolution.

Manga monster in a Tarragona wood

Pity you can’t see it from the motorway. Or perhaps not. (H/t Abandonalia)

The new geography of X is not Y

Berlin is not Bonn, Bonn was not Weimar.

¡España británica!

Why impose disastrous Spanish policies on thriving Gibraltar when British colonisation of Spain would have so many advantages?