Speaking as a trombonist, I wonder whether the lack of anchovies in the Bay of Biscay, noted by Nick Lloyd, isn’t almost entirely due to alterations in sea temperature. I don’t think other variables altered greatly and this winter was the coldest for a long time, so maybe they just went some place warmer, like…
I haven’t seen cockfighting in Spain, but to judge by this report there’s still a fair amount of it about. Here, however, the authorities are trying to stamp it out, while in Cuba they’re running the show: Police operation in the farming district of Las Mercedes SANTIAGO DE CUBA, February 12 (Antonio Alonso, in collaboration…
Since the publication of Memories of Hell in 1978, radical trade union leader Enric Marco has represented for many the suffering Spanish prisoners underwent in Nazi camps. Now it turns out (via Teresa Amat) that, like “Binjamin Wilkomirski” (although he lacks Bruno Grossjean’s research skills and literary bent), he made up the concentration camp experiences…
Towards the end of part 2 of Quixote, Sancho Panza is hailed by a German pilgrim who turns out to be Ricote, a Morisco from Sancho’s village. Ricote was driven out of Spain by religious persecution and has spent his exile in France, Italy, and Germany, near Augsburg, where I found we might live with…
“A [Manx (via Mithridates)] game in which one boy gave a back as in leap- frog, the other boys then leapt over him four times– fore and aft and from each side—each calling out as he did so, spanish fly. The process was then repeated, varied by the cry ‘tip on the bot, spanish fly,’…
There’s already been plenty of comment on the determined attempt by Jacques Chirac and other European nationalists to kick themselves once again in the goolies, this time over Google Print’s fiendish plot to Anglicise the world. One of the many fine non-English texts available through GP and so far undiscovered by Mr Chirac is Otto…
I had a re-run of the old Iraq drunken brawl the other night with a left-wing journalist, who said basically that democracy would never work there and (after a couple more beers) did not work anywhere else, particularly not in Britain, because it’s just not the kind of thing humans are good at. This peculiarly…
Crocodiles have no tongue; frogs have half, because it’s backwards, attached at the front and free at the back; men have one, the best of all, because with it they speak all languages and imitate every animal, as the philosopher Archidamos said; sea foxes [raposas marinas] have two, as I have said; women have three, because they talk with their mouth and with their fingers and heart, and their tongues are rough and sharp, like those of cats and leopards.
Via We Are Free Morphemes: A Cheshire man sail’d into Spain, To trade for merchandise; When he arrived from the main A Spaniard him espies, A Spaniard him espies. The rest is here.