Franco’s Catalans

Apparently immigrants are being denied access to virtually all night bars in Barcelona’s popular Raval district. I’m an immigrant, and I’ve never had any problems getting in (getting out is a different story), so I guess El Periódico is using the same definition as one of my ex mother-in-laws: “You’re not an immigrant, you’re white!” Despite the beatings and the burnings, Spain’s nignogs don’t complain, which is why the Americans and British are clearly racists while it is equally clear that the Spanish were just having a little innocent fun with those damn Chinkies.

Code-swapping, rather than Gibraltar-Andalusian. This week’s instalment comments on the stateless national soap opera, maritime conflicts and confusions with Spain.

Yesterday the state-approved and -subsidised competition to Baldie Galactic was observed claiming that trencadís was yet more proof of the quite extraordinary originality of the Catalan mind, etc etc. Not so: it has been around for centuries, and any connoisseur of English cathedral windows will be familiar with my favourite application of break-it-and-mend-it–the new/non-sense created from jumbled shards of medieval glass at places like Wells and Winchester after the Puritans had smashed things up. Which isn’t in any sense to diminish the marvellous pique assiette undertaken by Josep Maria Jujol for old Mr Gaudy at Park Güell:

“Nosferatu in Bremen is essentially a flitting liminality … the German soul instinctively prefers twilight to daylight.” Way too many bloody Teutonic incorporeal materialist graffiteros lurking around on c/ Molist, Barcelona.