Tag: kaleboel

The famous Galician bluefish, climate change and my arse

This is the anjova (Pomatomus saltatrix) caught off Galicia. According to Europa Press, fisherman Pablo Oliver got in touch with the Spanish National Research Council/Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas and the Institute of Oceanography/Instituto Oceanográfico to tell them of his discovery and to enquire as to why this fish was in waters outside its known…

Drug checkpoint

Quiet mountain road, chilly evening. The Guardia Civil do an ID and vehicle document check and then ask us to get out. GC1 takes a couple of paces back, while GC2: OK, we’re going to do a thorough check of you and the car for estupi … estupe … estupefacientes. M, also happier with common…

El niño de San Andrés

Cool post over at Aentwaereps about the Antwerp singer, Willy van de Velde, who grew up above the Bernad family’s “Spanish shop”, took guitar lessons from Ilse Alfonso, and called himself El niño de San Andrés because it sounded cooler than something like That geezer from St Andrew’s. As Godzjumenas observes, there’s no direct trace…

Literary feet

“En Santander. El pez y el reloj” in Los pueblos, ducking out of eternity and the meaning of life, Azorín is fetishising feet at the Cantabrian beach resort: Little feet, arched and clad in elegant new shoes, are one of the most attractive features of a woman. I contemplate them all with the discretion with…
“Little feet, arched and clad in new, elegant shoes, are one of the most attractive aspects of a woman...”

Congresaos

Re “EL PALACIO DE CONGRESAOS DE BOLTAÑA”: congresado, da. (Del part. de congresar). 1. m. y f.coloq. Persona que se deja mandar a congresos. It’s still rare, but here’s an example: el candidato emite su mensaje a unos congresados pasivos, pero no se convierte, a la vez, en receptor del sentir y el parecer de…

Syndicated stuff

Should be more interesting now. Whereas previously it included a small fixed list of blogs, now it takes items I fancied from a much wider range.

Flamenco genres excluded from the Royal Academy’s dictionary

Deep breath: tangos, milongas, guajiras, rumbas, vidalitas, colombianas, cantiñas, bamberas, bandolás, cabales, campanilleros, canasteras, cartageneras, fandangos, garrotín, jabegotes, levanticas, marianas, mirabrás, murcianas, nanas, romances, romeras, saetas, tonás, tarantos, villancicos, zambras and zapateados. Check out Luis Carlos Díaz Salgado’s excellent rant over at A&C.

Testing interviewees for language fluency

“Once upon a time, your host applied to a graduate school and requested that he be considered for a position teaching Spanish as part of the aid package. He then discovered that they had a particularly effective strategy for figuring out just how good his Spanish really was: one morning, he received a call which…

Serbs barter cows for penises

I recently had lunch with a Huescan entrepreneur who sold his dad’s cows in the 50s to buy a car, but this is ridiculous. [ Update: D confirms that Srecko Djordjevic is not an anagram of for example “jive jerks cod cord” and points out that he has form: A man chopped his own penis…

Moroccan censorship

The King has unblocked YouTube, but Moroccan bloggers could do with a hand in encouraging him to restore must-haves like GoogleEarth and LiveJournal. Bono is recording in Fez, and I’m sure he needs this kind of stuff too.