Late C19th Spanish quasi-realism sometimes reads more like Flashman than Zola. Here is a fairly random translation of a not entirely random excerpt from Un viaje de novios, a fine romance (mashed potato plot and all) written by minor aristocrat Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921) during a stay in Vichy and published in 1881: The strange…
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…