Platform for the Language

A Barcelona news-stand operator talks about Catalan after being stickered by the language vigilantes.

Eye and Hand of Fatima on gypsy door in Perpignan

Efforts have been made to erase a sticker of a member of the Incredible Hulk clan. Superimposed on the wooden cross of the door, what a formidable Trinity that would have been! (Anglocabrones often say the eye belongs to Providence. Whatever.) Sometimes the Eye and the Hand are combined in one icon, as in this…

Reconstruction of Puerta Osario, Seville

Sevillanadas has photoshopped back into place one of the Moorish city’s gates, demolished in 1868 by the same man who restored it twenty years earlier following a serious bout of generalised brotherly hate. Will it now be rebuilt?

The decline of the Spanish race

Another sentimental tango from from Tio de la Tiza and the Bebabouched Moors demonstrates a firmly-rooted belief in 1891 Cadiz in the Decadence of the Nation, even before the disaster of 1898 and its long aftermath exacerbated the gulf between a diligently managed press and wild popular fears: Una inocente niña llorando estaba y con…

Borderline nonsense language in Cádiz carnival

Daisy chaining: Cadiz declined after the War of Independence against the French and suffered the final blow with the loss of the last colonies in 1898, but, if it never achieved the notoriety of Barcelona, it was still an interesting mix of people. Here’s one of my favourite songs, from one of carnival’s great personalities,…

Patron saint of Barcelona swapped because of climate change?

When the original cathedral was consecrated in 1058, it was dedicated to the Holy Cross and to St Eulalia, who on February 12 303 was put in a barrel lined with knives or glass, rolled down the hill out of Roman Barcelona, and unbreasted, crucified and decapitated near one of my favourite bars, whereupon a…