“If they’re Moors, how come they don’t speak Muslim?”

“Welcome to Alosa.com. There is absolutely nothing here to see or do. Have a nice day. Goodbye.”

On being discovered taking a leak up the wall of a Renaissance palace following the historic 1-1 draw against Barcelona: “It’s ma hus!”

Free weekend in Andorra for best buttocks.

Drifter massacred locusts

“the number of interested people in having an Open Content Arabic Encyclopedia doesn’t reflect the number of Arabic people over the Internet”

I always liked the bit in Qathafi’s Green Book where it says, “It is an undisputed fact that both man and woman are human beings.” This photo over at Ammar Ibrahim’s suggests that the latter may be only partially acknowledged in Syria - or it may just be their spelling. “Hier is the factory” is [...]

Karim’s got photos, more photos, even more photos and video of the Tunisian tornado and storms 10 days ago. I challenge you to find that on Google News.

The phonetic rebranding of Kaleboel.

“We put with the low ones when to a leñero and small player of stature we called dwarf to him. And with that they have the great ears when a soccer player of ample earpieces puts a goal to us and we called orejudos to them. ” More here.

“I’m French, I feel Basque and Navarran, and people say I’ve got a Labortano mentality,” says Andrés Diharassarry Organbide, mayor and native of Urdax in Spain and ex-councillor over the border. The stress doesn’t look like it’s getting to him.

Valencian minister Rafael Blasco wants to bang through a law that, citing the basic right of all humans to golf and sustainability, gives him the exclusive right to build housing estates wherever he likes, and the golf course may get finished one day. (Levante article & editorial, via Libro de Notas)

Forget sects offering free painting lessons or the passionate revivalism of the Catalan communists: deranged Spain is already moving en masse into herbs, says Trapo.

Everyone and our auntie is reporting on the popularity of the new mafia studies course in Rome. Any suggestions as to which will be the first Spanish university to offer a degree in enchufismo?

Terminus Café next to Barbastro bus station is said to have closed before any of its few clients managed to implement the sign’s suggestion. Barbastro was the birthplace of the founder of Opus Dei, so it was always going to be tough.

Unfortunately this Barcelona café doesn’t actually sell sugar-rich voodoo figurines of Bush, Kerry, or Scandinavian bridesmaids’ roommates.

San Francisco wants out but Spain’s too expensive, says SFGate.

Bitneriáceo is an excellent puzzle blog. This looks easy, but I’m still foxed.

In which I suggest that an old Spanish slang word has nothing at all to do with Dutch pirates but instead adds weight to David Kleinecke’s generally discarded South American etymology of the word “pidgin”.

Enschede aan Zee -> French developer’s Flash CV in English and French. Why, tho, does his blog say “Copyright 2004 Microsoft Corporation”?

“I’d never f**king heard ‘Y Viva Espana’,” says Geraint Watkins.

OK, it’s not the same as being instapunditted or slashdotted, but the link from here to here is still good for a few hits.

More uses for a scissors than distinguished Viennese-Albertan dialect experts think.

Yet another fascinating case from the Limbe magistrates, Cameroon.

From the Washington Post: “Asked to respond to reports that Arafat is brain-dead, [French foreign minister Michel] Barnier replied, ‘I wouldn’t say that.’”

How people are finding us. (But why?)

Translation of the farewell poem recovered from the murderer of Theo van Gogh.

“Some parliamentarians have also argued that the use of English can be confusing and that it may not be immediately clear whether Swissmint manufactures coins or sweets.”

Just received six calls from Gas Natural’s telemarketing department, the first cold and the rest increasingly warm. Basically, the woman refused to accept that I was not interested in the Christmas special offer and kept calling back. If there’s no law against this, then there should be soon, because it seems to be regarded as [...]

This seemed to me an interesting view of the media-meets-multiple-state-man scenario we’re now in:

The public left-wing aggression, organised via mobiles, that I think most people accept was crucial in the Spanish elections this year is often taken as having been the first successful application of flash mobbing to politics. Dheera Sujan, in Gods and Monsters: the Saffronisation of India, a programme on the Dutch International Service, suggests that [...]

The 4th International’s Peter Symon cloning conspiracy, exposed:

De Telegraaf draws a link between the murders of Pim Fortuyn and, this morning in Amsterdam, of Dutch polemicist and director, Theo van Gogh: their deaths are separated by 911 days, as were New York and Madrid. He was shot and stabbed to death by a man with double Moroccan and Dutch nationality, an associate [...]

John Chappell of Iberian Notes is on TV3 from 11:30 this morning, chewing up liberals, Europeans and all manner of junk (but no real meat, please). Wotchit.