The last time the issue came up, my dad rated Percy Shaw as one of the 20th century’s most under-appreciated inventors, on the grounds that his cat’s eye road studs have saved more lives on British roads than any other single measure. Ojos de gato or tachas reflectantes are not (widely) used on Spanish highways,…
More traditional building for Colin Davies: Real stone is expensive and makes it hard to plug holes and to plaster, so in Spain@Disney you stick (pre)machined chunks or carpet tile-type stuff onto the concrete prefab with glue. Chorus: Cladding imitates but also improves on reality.
The sun dog is seen above reborn, having previously mysteriously died at the end of the solar year: While its soul wanders the underworld, its old and weary body is barbecued and consumed in dark hovels by fearful peasants: I’ve forgotten who it was who believed the Old Testament was originally written in English, or…
Pleased to see that the marvellous Baldus–a vague subterranean source of inspiration for the world’s wildest walking wisness–is getting a wider hairing. I’ve read chunks of the French translation and am looking forward to the English.
Classic nimbyism, enabled by Spain’s lack of effective central government: Castilla y León has lots of wolves, but other communities which, according to ecologists, should in historical and biological terms have some, don’t want to take the overproduction. So they’re being shot. I don’t suppose we could airlift them to the outskirts of Reykjavik.
“Spanish climatological records reveal that in the Cold Triangle [ie Teruel, Molina de Aragón and Calamocha] there have been numerous episodes … with temperatures below -25ºC at less than 200km from the mild Mediterranean as the crow flies. [This is one demonstration of the fact] that Spain has climates, not a climate.” (Aupí, Guía del…
Up at what was originally a Civil War AA battery on Torre de la Rovira: In the early 1940s the installations were adopted and adapted by immigrant squatters who built 110 shanty dwellings, known as Los Cañones, on the steep slopes and in the old quarries around them. I believe these homes were demolished around…
“I think the sherry trade could learn a lot from their cousins in Portugal. But of course that’s only if the sherry trade sees any benefit in visitors to their bodegas. I often wonder if they really do.” It’s the old Spanish paradox of shops whose owners seem prepared to go to quite extraordinary lengths…
