Rajoy and the Sephardim

It is of course consonant with the amiable relationship between non-Hitlerian Spanish fascism (leftist progressivists too, but perhaps less) and the ~1492 diaspora – see Primo de Rivera, Ernesto Giménez Caballero, and the dictatorial decree of December 20 1924 which enabled the heroic labours of Ángel Sanz Briz. But there’s an amusing hypothesis that it…

The Sultan’s organ, and other stuff

There’s a good organ miscellania page here. The Sultan and I anecdote was one of the few useful pieces of information I knew as a child. The Spanish connection lies in the Novelda rock organ, of which more here, and the information that “Spanish organs of the 18th century include a number of mischievous sound…

Ernesto Giménez Caballero and Catalan totalitarianism

It’s a commonplace that essential similarities exist between the programmes of the Catalan left and the Spanish extreme right (I’m thinking in particular of ERC and the various Falangist splinters): an apparently psychotic obsession with the nation and its symbols, a determination to impose an all-powerful state, and a willingness (nay, a desire) to use…

Bullfighting and Germanic imperialism

As you know, Barcelona city council this week held a symbolic debate on whether to condemn bullfighting. During it, according to El Periódico (free registration), local conservative Javier Basso defended the “noble spectacle of the dance of bull and man” from harassment by “imperialistic cultures” like the “Anglo-Saxon and Germanic”. “Bullfights are part of our…