According to Colin Davies it rains thrice as much in the winter in Galicia as in Manchester, but he still looks remarkably cheerful and Thoughts from Galicia is a great read. Per Svensson sounds like a man I could do with talking to right now: his Fundación Instituto de Propietarios Extranjeros is there to fight…
The Guardian got a “panel of experts” to take a look at the Wikipedia. Here’s what Mark Kurlansky, author of The Basque History of the World, said about the Basque people entry: It says: “Aquitanians spoke a language which is proven beyond doubt to be akin to Basque.” I am not familiar with the Aquitaine…
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…
Re a post by Amando de Miguel in his interesting, if fairly Pleistocene, language column for Libertad Digital, I’ve compiled a little table of hits over time from Mark Davies’ corpus for several Spanish versions of the Great Satan (no hits in there for el Gran Satanás unfortunately). I’ve omitted USA = América because I’m…
I hate the flag-waving and military parades around October 12, particularly when accompanied by the sight of the Spanish prime minister and king embracing a man who clearly regards himself as the next Latin American Mussolini. In it had been left to the church, the ceremony might have been rather different. Here’s part of a…
Nineteenth century nationalism and anti-Papism made it easy to forget the extent of Spanish influence in the Low Countries during the sixteenth century. Much of this influence was literary, with translations and localisations of Spanish classics appearing rapidly and serving as models for several generations of Dutch authors, but Iberia’s greatest gift to the Provinces–like…
It doesn’t seem to show on Amazon, and it has little to do with Spain, but I’d like briefly to recommend most highly Antoon Aukes’ Second Line. 100 Years of New Orleans Drumming (the website is also his). Antoon is amongst other things a tapdancer, but don’t let that put you off.
Someone has been trying recently & kindly to hammer into my thick skull the nature and depth of early Irish ties with Iberia. Here’s a bleeding chunk from a piece called The City of the Tribes: Italian Memories in an Irish Port in a recently cited James Joyce anthology (Occasional, Critical, and Political Writings): The…
Were Zapatero to read the Bible as thoroughly as we Carpathian Independents, he’d be in a better position to understand the significance of the first photo-album of his glorious Alliance of Civilisations: the crowds sent to die in a desert in connivance with Morocco, the stigmata on the hands of those who make it over…