Politics, the art of confusion

A borrowed verdict on the current public utterances of Spanish officials, and a suggestion that the Catalan national question may be about to be resolved in the same way it was in 1918-23.

The demolition of <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Columns'>Puig i Cadafalch's symbolic four columns</a> in 1928, CC from <a href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Catalunya-Barcelona-EnderrocamentColumnesMontjuic.jpg'>Wikimedia Commons</a>

The Lutheran conspiracy against Spain

With the Anglo-Saxon plot in tatters and Jewish machinations a non-starter, some strategic paranoia for Mr Zapatero. (Like: Is Mendelssohn’s Elijah a secret weapon of German subversion?)

I’m in yer country eating yer green shoots

It’s Pig’d over at Calculated Risk has a toothy smirk for the bailout which, for the usual reasons, we are not to call a bailout. Mr Artificial Turf confirms our opinion that Bordeaux is astonishingly good value compared to Barcelona. And it has real waves.

The storks of war

A fragment from Italo Calvino’s quasi-17th century folk romance, Il visconte dimezzato/The cloven viscount, uses storks as a portent of battle. Several unconnected 2nd century Greek accounts might appear to do the same, perhaps particularly if one’s a lazy sod and doesn’t read anything but scraps of stuff on Google Books.