“Before [1898], without a doubt, it was quixotic country, which thought of itself differently from what it really was,” Baroja wrote in 1927. “Before, in the period of adventures, Spain was led by Don Quixote. From now on, it would be directed by Sancho Panza.” (Via learned.english.dog, source?)
At a crucial moment in Spain’s fortunes, the bank restructuring fund (Fondo de Reestructuración Ordenada Bancaria, FROB) has come up with a lousily translated Powerpoint (h/t) explaining what’s being done. But anyone with half a brain can figure out what they’re trying to say (partly because it’s so bland, and unrevealing of the crucial numbers),…
Peter Harvey is suffering from that perennial Spanish problem–translation agencies that don’t pay the modest rates they promise. This blog enjoys dressing up but has no plans to become for the translation sector what el Cobrador del Frac is for the world at large: a debt collection agency which compensates for a deeply flawed legal…
One of Spain’s greatest 20th century plagiarists intertextualisers was the novelist Valle-Inclán. His gypsies are substantially borrowed from George of that name, but as far as I know it is only in the following passage from La corte de los milagros, a novel set in the period when Borrow was in Spain, that he refers…
African-ish bands have been the talk of Andalusian ports since Cervantes. In 1935 the carnival association Orquesta Senegalesa didn’t win any prizes with this song: Aquí está la Orquesta Senegalesa que tocamos las notas con gran limpieza, llegamos desde Londres en un tranvía a visitar la tierra de la alegría. Hemos visto mujeres a cual…
