This is one reason why large numbers of Romanian shepherds, shearers and others are ending up in Spain. There’s an interesting collection of info here (beware stupid music and cursor) dealing with the history and organisation of transhumance in Spain. While the sheepway infrastructure still exists in the Balkans, lorry transport, improved roads and the…
The crazy European regulation making it illegal to leave carcasses in the high mountains has led to reports of starving vultures attacking and killing large live stock in several parts of Spain. Now one of Nick‘s wolfmen has sent news of several hundred griffon vultures from the Pyrenees having sought alimentary asylum in Holland, in…
The sheep and goats above have just arrived back in Plan from low pastures to spend the summer in the mountains, rather like schoolchildren coming back from a language exchange. Joaquín Costa’s Colectivismo agrario en España (1898), available in full on Corde, contains a number of accounts of communal herding arrangements in the Pyrenees: The…
I recently had lunch with a Huescan entrepreneur who sold his dad’s cows in the 50s to buy a car, but this is ridiculous. [ Update: D confirms that Srecko Djordjevic is not an anagram of for example “jive jerks cod cord” and points out that he has form: A man chopped his own penis…
Bit of fratricidal jollity from Ángel Ganivet, Idearium español (1897): “Confronted with the spiritual ruin of Spain we must put a stone where our heart is and throw a million Spaniards to the wolves if we all do not wish to be thrown to the swine.” No national stereotypes, please. Just trying to think of…
Asturias is not Spain, or at least not in Bray, Co Wicklow, and bottom right are the toys thrown out of his pram by the author in order to underline his point. For those who doubt that I took the photo in Ireland, here are two more of a microwave designed by Korean anthropologists for…
Sorry. [ Alberto Lázaro has researched the effects of Francoist censorship on a number English-speaking authors, and there’s a good piece by him on Joyce here. He recounts Joyce’s trials elsewhere and then quotes testimony from the novelist Gonzalo Torrente Ballester and the translator Joaquím Mallafré as to the impediments placed in the way of…
What is the connection (if any) between the symbol on this house in Sin, Huesca, and that of the Día supermarket chain? ( Sin really does exist. Here’s the sign: One would obviously like to live in it, at least for a while, but owners are reluctant to sell. )
