PP senator Carlos Benet has said that Pavía entered Congress on a horse (during the 1874 coup), Tejero with a pistol (this is the 1981 coup that failed), while Zapatero arrived by suburban train (the reference is to the Al Qaeda train bombs before the elections two years ago). I don’t think Pavía actually went…
I had an interesting chat (ie I listened) with someone the other night about the social position of musicians in the Middle Ages. I didn’t really buy his idea of the musician as The Other–at least not in Spain–but what he told me about Moorish and Jewish musicians in Christian society (as opposed to, for…
Fernando Navarro suggests that both I and Joseph Townsend are wrong. The Spanish word for executioner, verdugo, he says, was applied originally to a rod cut green, verde, and used to administer beatings. If Townsend was wrong, then his confusion or that of his informer might have arisen if (a) executioners were clothed in, or…
A little more reading (Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, Hispano-Arabic Literature and the Early Provençal Lyrics) suggests (possibly unjustly) that Wallada was famous not so much for her poetry as for being the caliph’s daughter and having poetry written about her by Ibn Zaydun. It’s a shame that in our enthusiasm to find ancient heroines inoffensive…
I’ve bumped into a number of Moorish poet-princes, but I’d never heard of poet-princess Wallada bint al-Mustakfi (994-1091). There’s a sensible, sourced account (in Spanish) here, and then there’s this. I had my doubts about Wijdan al shommari, and thought I’d be able to nail him/her on the basis of his/her (?) version of a…
Most unfortunate that Tony Blair’s moderate Muslims mostly turned out to be cartoon psychos. Here’s another burst of frivolity, available in several locations, which, like Yasser Arafat, I take to be a spoof: Many of us celebrate what is known as April fool or, if it is translated literally, the “trick of April”. But how…
Of course it is the fault of those damn Muslims: The Marchenero is one of the oldest pouter breeds, and it is a breed that was developed in Spain in a period of time covering almost on thousand years. In order to understand the beginnings or ancient history, a brief history lesson is in order.…
European acceptance of Michael Moore’s new anti-Americanism has been greatly assisted by the loving detail with which he depicts the country he has invented, bursting with gun- and God-happy fatties and ruled over by a Semitic mafia. Here, from El Semanario Curioso, Histórico, Erudito, Comercial, Público y Económico, El Blasón de Cataluña (1842; cited in…
“The whole municipal district of Fuentes de Ebro found itself invaded by a terrible plague of locusts which covered all the irrigated and dry fields so that as far as the eye could see appeared to be dyed brown, since you couldn’t see the earth”
