Seville safari

A journey through the remains of Expo 92. At least it hasn’t all been stolen, as tended to happen to unguarded buildings in Andalusia during the construction boom.

How a right-wing tree became a left-wing tree

Over at Crónica Verde, about the ongoing destruction by the Andalusian PSOE of the Doñana National Park. This is quite different from the abuse of natural space during the dictatorship because (all together now!) Franco was of the right, while Chaves is of the left, and the people’s friend to boot.

Nerd riot

IT a profession for generally peaceful, libertarian innovators sans frontières? Not in Andalusia, where they’re demonstrating with the ultimate goal of excluding those without the correct government diploma. The OECD wants flexible labour markets. Spain wants guilds. Yet I’m sure this kind of thing must happen somewhere else–Gordimer would surely have had some if there’d…

Paronamic views

More modern standard Andalusian from El Ciruco: You may fantasise about him blogging here, but someone would have to pay the shelf space for his photo collection.

Sarkotraficante

Le blog du Chì, one year ago, on TF1’s enthusiasm for the apoplectic dwarf who substituted him as opium of the peephole. Another favourite mystification, from El Ciruco:

Phoney Spanish gypsy dancers at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York?

The Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901 is now remembered mainly for the assassination of McKinley by a Polish-American anarchist follower of Emma Goldman. However it was yet another triumph for Thomas A Edison, Inc and its electric chairs, X-ray machines (McKinley might have survived had an Edison X-ray machine been allowed to locate the…

Spain, la gran puta

There are various explanations of Spanish anti-Americanism. The post-colonial hypothesis is popular: Spain is bitter about its loss of empire, its defeat in 1898, its not being invited to the G-whatever. An alternative hypothesis is that anti-Americanism is frustration arising from the idea that an implicit bilateral dollars-for-favours deal has been violated. In Luis Berlanga,…

Peasants who don’t know how to cross themselves

Apparently we anglocabrones used to think that crossing oneself was prerequisite to being Spanish. Here’s Juan Goytisolo in La Guardia, a short story written in the early 1950s, partly available in GBS: From the window I saw a group of conscripts in parade dress. It was Sunday and the officers’ room was deserted. Its furniture…

More bad pronunciation in Andalusian schools

Re Erasmus students returning from Spain with an incomprehensible Andalusian accent, here’s Rafael Alberti learning how to tort proper at the dame’s school to which he has been sent following some inappropriate excretion chez the Sisters of Carmel: With Mrs Concha I learnt some Biblical History, being very impressed by Joseph, who was sold by…

Reconstruction of Puerta Osario, Seville

Sevillanadas has photoshopped back into place one of the Moorish city’s gates, demolished in 1868 by the same man who restored it twenty years earlier following a serious bout of generalised brotherly hate. Will it now be rebuilt?