This is Manuel Irurita, regionalist-traditionalist head of the diocese of Barcelona, and one of 8,352 citizens disposed of by, or to the complete indifference of, the Republican authorities in Catalonia during the Civil War for fear that their political and religious beliefs might not be fully compatible with certain contemporary notions of liberty and progress.…
Silly me: I thought you were meant to paint fascist graffiti on fascist memorials. There must be some branding issue. (The definition I use is roughly the same as the American Heritage one: statist + nationalist + anticonstitutionalist.)
Seeing hordes of plump Barcelonans engaged in public Tai-chi–imagine Jackie Chan on lard–and reading of the dreadful internal purges inflicted by Johannes Itten–who seems to have believed himself a Tibetan monk–on Bauhaus students before the parties started, I remembered that I was going to translate a bit more Aub’s Campo cerrado. So here, at top…
Stalin apologist Rafael Poch has published an article in La Vanguardia which belittles, falsifies, misrepresents the Normandy landings. That’s a common line here, where quite large numbers of people still believe that Stalin (substitute Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Companys etc as you will) was a benevolent (although misunderstood) genius. All’s quiet on the domestic front…
There’s so much dreadful journalism in Catalonia that it’s a great relief to read Xavier Rius, head hontxo over at e-noticies.com. Here’s a slightly abridged version of a piece by him: Of all the initiatives presented by ERC [the Catalan separatists] to obtain forgiveness for the sin of having formed a pact with the PSC…
Barcelona often prefers myth to history. Someone once told me with tears in his eyes how, after Franco arrived in Barcelona, his grandfather had been dragged out of bed one morning and taken to the Plaça Sant Felip Neri. There, he and some others had been given guns and forced to shoot their neighbours. Why,…
A lot of people here get extremely pissed off about Hispanidad Day, today, October 12th. Since it was the Romans, not the Spanish, who assigned this name to the bit of the world before the sun sets, and since every true Catalan knows that the man who set foot on a Caribbean beach on October…
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