Apparently the four corners of a square reel used in this Huesca village in hemp yarn production represent four horses bound for France. I wonder which horses these were: those that awaited the Duke of Calabria, when he sought with three others to flee the court of King Ferdinand of Aragon, or others? (If folksy…
Currently doing a bit of literary translation out of one very strange dialect into another, and here’s something not so completely different: a basic grammar of Chistabín, the well-preserved (whatever that means) dialect spoken in the Chistau valley in northern Huesca. There’s a small lexicon, sorry, lesico. I like words like agila (águila in Spanish)…
There’s a disgraceful tendency to write about the über-rural province of Huesca as if all the brains drained from it a long time ago. No more, for it has just held a cutting-edge event dealing with the latest in media and technology. Shame the only blog post I’ve seen–from Mariano Gistaín–is of two people fixing…
Andoni Alonso, Inaki Arzoz, and Nicanor Ursua don’t provide sources for any of their often startling claims in this piece on “neo-vernacular” architecture in Navarre, so there’s no way of checking up on their thesis that Franco was responsible for the destruction of 75% of what they refer to as “genuine vernacular architecture”, damaging “profoundly…
Apparently (PDF) the regional government has just splashed out €1.5M on a poster campaign on London tubes and buses, timed to coincide with the World Travel Market. After a minor scandal involving English texts written by our tourism chief’s 8-year-old son–this is a family-oriented place–the copywriting for the new campaign has been outsourced to an…
Apparently (via Onze Taal) a Serbian village is changing its name from Smrdić (“old and dirty”) to Izvor (“spring”). Said Smilja Kostic: “All the young people used to leave the village because they were ashamed to live in a place with such a name.” This seems to me dubious reasoning: despite its tempting name, there…
Moving house, so orders may take longer until mid-February - mail me first if in doubt. Shop deliveries free on foot in Leeds LS1-8 & LS13. Dismiss