United and Alternative Left membership drive increases party numbers to four (4)

I think that’s the subtext to the announcement of a “Reunió de l’Àrea de gais, lesbianes, bisexuals i transsexuals d’EUiA“. Other news just in: EUiA is holding a referendum on whether to introduce a republic; I and the barmaid at Bodega M have declared war on Scunthorpe. We are also addicted to Volare by Super…

French to Apaches: your Spanish allies are a load of big fanny girls

Or something along those lines. Jerry R Craddock clears up this and a number of other confusions in his excellent inaugural Disparatorio del suroeste. (Via Jesús Rodríguez Velasco). Galdós was politer in Trafalgar, but we all know what he meant. This one will run and run.

Trouble on board

Olympic torches on a Parisian bus reminded me of Josep Pla, smoking merrily away on oil tankers in the famous 1976 A fondo interview with Joaquín Soler Serrano: [Full video seems to have disappeared, so these are a couple of excerpts] Not having heard other recordings, I wonder whether don José wasn’t playing up the…

“My great uncle took the Spanish government into exile”

From the often superb BBC WWII site: As France fell my great uncle Ioannis (John) Colentzos was captain of a Greek freighter berthed in Bordeaux. He a did not wish to remain in the port as he was uncertain of what the outcome might be for his vessel once the Germans got there. Greece was…

Revealed: the brutal face of Spanish nationalism

Meet El Novio de la Muerte/Death’s Groom, back from the tomb (he wasn’t human anyway), and his angel-wolf Canute: Hear him sing “Agua de los ríos”: More here, including ¡how Canuto saved Death’s Groom from serpents! ¡the treasure and the skeleton’s ring! and ¡El Novio’s unfortunate relationship with the head of the bað̞a’xoθ paddleboat fleet!…

Latest Joan Saura joke

Apparently Mr Democratic Memory Save The Planet only wants to dig up mass graves because he thinks there may be water at the bottom.

The cha-cha-cha, a palm-broom dance?

Items: Shasha: worn-out palm-broom. (Pott, Doppelung (Reduplikation, Gemination) als eines der wichtigsten Bildungsmittel der Sprache, beleuchtet aus Sprachen aller Welttheile (1862)) Gananciosa took a new-palm broom, which she found in the house, and with scratching it, made a sound, that though it was hoarse and rough, agreed well enough with [Escalanta’s] patten… Rinconete and Cortadillo…

I met man who almost killed Orwell

Sez No Good Boyo: “If you’d known who he was, would you have killed him?” “Of course. He was fifth-columnist, Trotsky-Maxtonite traitor to worker class. My boys would have tattooed hammer and sickle on his head with bullets. We had many. Soviet economy strong.”

Every pig has its Martinmas

When Europa played over at Sant Andreu in November, the local Four Bar Squad, which has record, unveiled a banner showing another local saint, St Martin, in wolf costume slaughtering a pig dressed as one of Europa’s following (they believe they’re tigers, not pigs, but whatever): Sant Andreu duly murdered Europa 3-0. The return is…