Samaranch

Check out Liga Loca on silent minutes and Manuel Stimulo on how “a stupid communist French idea about promoting peace among nations through sports events in which their citizens would participate as amateur idiots [was transformed] into a powerhouse steamtrain of propaganda for competition, professionalism, the Triumph of the Will, battering the weak into submission,…

Congolese children singing the anthem of Athletic

Some corner of a foreign football pitch that is for ever Bilbao, and I hope they got fed afterwards: The original strikes me as thoroughly Teutonic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ns2rkb3Wb8 Let’s not kid ourselves any longer: everything interesting, from nachos to nationalism, was invented by the Germans. Fortunately they tend to be generous about using the proceeds to…

Revealed: the brutal face of Spanish nationalism

Meet El Novio de la Muerte/Death’s Groom, back from the tomb (he wasn’t human anyway), and his angel-wolf Canute: Hear him sing “Agua de los ríos”: More here, including ¡how Canuto saved Death’s Groom from serpents! ¡the treasure and the skeleton’s ring! and ¡El Novio’s unfortunate relationship with the head of the bað̞a’xoθ paddleboat fleet!…

Oldest nation

Some classic PP fuckwittery (PSOE guys keep this kind of stuff private) here from Luis Suárez Fernández, who wants to defend the thesis that Spanish nationalism is not nationalism. Duh. Beats me anyway why commentators think they can come up with something smarter on the subject than PJ O’Rourke‘s notorious contribution (via John Chappell).

Graves in Galician

Carlos Ferrera notes the bizarre preoccupations of Galician nationalist and regional deputy, Bieito Lobeira: If some catastrophe were to occur today that would lead to the partial or total eradication of human life from the part of the planet which it is our fortune to occupy, with all probability future archaelogical studies of funerary remains…