We may take people to drink rum and smoke cigars and weep softly to sentimental tropical music, but we don’t actually go to Cuba. Honest. Not yet. (Thanks, RF)
Wikipedia suggests that H’Angus the Monkey (cartoon) may have been voted mayor first time by local gamblers attracted by the high odds against him. Stuart Drummond failed to honour his “free bananas” pledge, but was re-elected. On this walk.
“‘Mexico vs. Spain,’ the first scene, shows the rejected Mexican suitor, in a jealous rage, watching the love-making between Carlos, the Spaniard, his hated rival, and the beautiful senorita. With drawn stiletto, he pounces upon the Don, but the senorita seizes his arm, thus saving her lover from a horrible death. After a terrific hand-to-hand…
From the baldie: Some unusual Neolithic rock paintings. Apparently the locals used to take tourists to visit them and, to improve their colour and line, throw buckets of water over them. Once almost everything had been washed away, the authorities acted with characteristic firmness, building a 4m wall-with-spikes around the complex. The locals now explain…
The action sometimes turned a shade Bulgarian during the Granada Wars–at least that’s what one infers from Diego Hurtado de Mendoza in this extract from Guerra de Granada (paras introduced for legibility): Wounded by two poisoned arrows, Don Alonso [de Aguilar] fought until he fell, disabled by the poison used among hunters since ancient times.…
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…
Lovely phrase, something along the lines of “lavish in life, eager in death”, used here to describe the Spanish, although you will doubtless recall similar elsewhere. It’s from the discourse by the Count of Portalegre which rounds off the BBG edition of Guerra de Granada, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza‘s chronicle of the disastrous rural uprisings…
Bye, bye, Spain examines the bizarre nationalist obsession with some obscure and complex dynastic conflict some centuries back. Two facts only are worth remembering about Almansa: (i) once upon a time an English general with a French army beat a French general with an English one before its walls, and (ii) they sell rather nice…
If we take it as axiomatic that books with blue and pink covers are published by nutters, then McClaine Lee’s book will contain few surprises. However, a bit of Nostra-madness does no harm, surely.