The problem with Catalan “philologist” and “historian” Jordi Bilbeny being a 24-carrot burro is that when he occasionally says something half sensible no one listens. The conspiracy theory which rules Bilbeny’s life is that guys like Columbus and Cervantes were really Catalan, but that a powerful group destroyed all the evidence and then disappeared without [...]

Lord Frederic Hamilton, Here, There And Everywhere (1921): “The Briton contrives an ugly town in which you can live in reasonable health and comfort; the Spaniard fashions a most picturesque city in which you are extremely like to die.”

Chávez’s anti-gringo rhetoric forms the basis of his appeal, but new evidence (which may gull the gullible and disturb yet the already disturbed) suggests that the guiri–the Spanish gringo–may have actually originated in what should perhaps be renamed the República Guiriana. Here’s Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo in Historia general y natural de las Indias (1535) [...]

The last time I was in Caracas a general parked his tank outside the national assembly building and the chamber maid died of cholera. Things haven’t improved since, and Hugo Chávez’s infant daughter has just thrown a spanner in the works of the historic Bonaire invasion project by telling him to drop everything else until [...]

I already knew that Sant Pau in Sant Pol de Mar (walk) was a damn fine restaurant (Carme Ruscalleda has just bagged her third Michelin star). What I didn’t know is that, since April Fool’s 2004, aeroplane-averse Japanese have been able to patronise a replica in Tokyo. I hereby offer to fix their English in [...]

One pragmatic reason for creating and disseminating a standard language is to increase the political punch of speakers. Still, it’s going to be a while before Aragonese (English .doc here) overtakes Turkish. (I haven’t got time to check it, but I’ll bet the Turkish claim is flawed.)

Opus is Opus Dei (“God’s Work” / “Obra de Dios”), the sect started by Barbastro priest Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer. Popular belief in their influence–I’d say they’re Spain’s masons, except that folks are convinced the masons are also out to get them–has given rise to jokes, like the one about the well-connected bank with a [...]

“Spain (from the Latin term for Ass Pain) is a small, mountainous country in southern Yurp ruled by a gigantic animated marble statue of Generalissimo Francisco Franco and populated by dwarves, halflings and tunos.”/ “Polaquia is currently ruled by a moustache called Carod Rovira, with support from Pasqual Maragall and Malonda, the town drunk.” Check [...]

I know it’s banned in English, but it seems perfectly natural to me, just as natural as wetting one’s whistle: if it don’t rain it won’t grow, and the road to the kebab shop is awash with Blairite pub extensions.
Gordonio, a medical treatise published in 1495, is against drinking between meals but recommends they [...]

I was just curious why only the occasional guy has stuff in Spanish, and the FAQs don’t explain. I guess it’s about speaking to victims’ families, officialdom and soon-to-be ex-colleagues, most of whom will be English-speaking. Sometimes the English is so strange (“somebody find Void”, “Into your hands Oh Lord, I commence my spirit”) that [...]

If the council’s going to ban the western Mediterranean’s take on the Smurf, the caganer, then as good socialists and advocates of a complete separation of church and state they should surely ban the whole damn Nativity scene. You’re not going to convince me that having a quiet poo behind Mayor Clos’ limo is more [...]

In I always get my sin, a new book by ex-Heineken boss, Maarten Rijkens (via Onze Taal) . Natashka over at Dunglish.nl has more. Is Dunglish funnier than Spanglish because Dutch and English are so close or because Dutch speakers are happier on thin ice?

The Dutch Association Against Swearing is about to go bankrupt.

Des von Bladet links to the story of Anna and Ulf Ström, who have cycled all the way from sunny Sweden to snappy Spain and say that poor Spanish road-planning has sometimes forced them to cycle on motorways. Contractors are actually obliged to build service roads along at least one side of motorways if there [...]

Giving stuff away to illegals as a commercial gimmick is a terrible thing to do. When I meet illegals crossing from France, I ask them whether they’ve got cash and want to go to a bar, and if the answer’s no I push them into a ravine. It’s the capitalist way, and they’ve got to [...]

Litus posted a little mood piece a year ago on his blog. Antoni Ibàñez / TdQ, “writer”, who’s on Litus blogroll, copied it, published it in a book, and went round reciting it and telling the world how happy he was with his prize (everyone gets prizes here). The fragment has disappeared from his site [...]

Mouse Hunter has another useful neologism: tun, as in “stay tunned”. It refers to the large casks used to hold beverages and is the alcoholic sibling of “stay cool”. (I don’t know what getting tunned is like in Tunisia, but the last time I tried it that side of the water I didn’t get [...]

“Nannies make your kids speak funny” (via LanguageNews)

(It’s still here, and I use it, still being transitional.) The feed from Après moi le deluge has stopped displaying, and I don’t know why. I scraped Language Hat, because he’d started putting everything in the title field. Or something. If he doesn’t like it, I’ll sue him. Try scraping JA Millán’s and his code [...]

That’ll teach them to eat their greens, sez Heartless Harry from next-door. (Story)

Sounds like the citizenry is onto us.

Ian Llorens has found the solution to Spain’s constitutional crisis. Unfortunately he also wants to ban sombreros on the Ramblas. Ian, if Catalonia ain’t Spain then it must be Mexico, so get over it. (Ian links to Andrew Minh, who has discovered an “international fetish model” called Eric Blare. We’ll try to keep George Orwell [...]

Apparently (PDF) the regional government has just splashed out €1.5M on a poster campaign on London tubes and buses, timed to coincide with the World Travel Market. After a minor scandal involving English texts written by our tourism chief’s 8-year-old son–this is a family-oriented place–the copywriting for the new campaign has been outsourced to an [...]

Messrs Corea and King have probably by now forgiven some youthful stumbles and my funk trombone career is about to be relaunched, so I’ve started taking a slightly greater interest in stages. There are lots of interesting ones round here, but I like the ones on this Cordoba University site (via Libro de notas) even [...]

Hordes of otherwise quite sensible people here spend acres of time (makes sense to me) worrying about whether their sacred language is being polluted by others. Francisco de Sales Mayo was so generous as to extend his concern to Caló, which he claimed had suffered adulteration at the hands of the authors of early nineteenth [...]

Check some great photos by David Bryan of a tornado off Castelldefels, south of Barcelona.

Starting in July 1936, the totalitarian left began a systematic campaign to exterminate the clergy, and some 2,500 (this number is off the top of my head) were murdered in Catalonia alone. Buenaventura Durruti is the leader most closely identified with this slaughter, but he had his weaker moments. Here’s a précis of a piece [...]

I was going on the other day about Meteoclimatic. Well here’s another good resource: a climate atlas of the Iberian peninsula. The cartographers at the UAB’s Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications have already got a global land cover, elevation and political boundary project up and running, and a fish and coastal base and [...]

David Luna, Dawn Lerman, and Laura A Peracchio sound like they’ve started something interesting in Structural Constraints in Codeswitched Advertising (via Scribal Terror). This approach, and the relaxed and integrationist attitude of the Brazilian goverment towards { Portuguese + Spanish = Portuñol}, seem more constructive than calling Spanglish “a hybrid and ugly-sounding monster” or persecuting [...]

Rather disturbed to see that Open Source Media has an office manager.

A sympathetic friend will be away for the weekend of the Barcelona summit and would be delighted to let you have his seafront pad, featuring Burmese sculpture, a monstrous brothel-type water feature, and a rather small Porsche. Price: €5K.

Alex Mayrhofer’s gazetteer, used in the previous post, has a cool homophone feature which helps you distinguish between, for example, Swanmore, Hampshire (what’s with the Aireborough, Alex?), UK and Sāwan Maira, Pakistan. Impressive as the South Downs may seem after a heavy night, Alex’s 3D landscaping reminds one that pub crawls on the North West [...]

Apparently (via Onze Taal) a Serbian village is changing its name from Smrdić (“old and dirty”) to Izvor (“spring”). Said Smilja Kostic: “All the young people used to leave the village because they were ashamed to live in a place with such a name.” This seems to me dubious reasoning: despite its tempting name, there [...]

Shame about the site, but go and see the gorgeous, steel-hulled, 3-masted Belem from Nantes if you’re down on the Moll de la Fusta in Barcelona harbour. It’s infinitely preferable to all the white cuboids being refitted in dry dock further up.
The Belem counts among previous owners the 2nd Duke of Westminster who, while [...]

Following on from my favourite sangoma (if ancestors are virtual, why haven’t they got websites?), here’s a denunciation of our favourite crucifee, read up a rainy mountain this weekend:
Doncs, mira primer ab falsos miracles
com són tots los pobles per ell alterats.
Rompent de la llei los grans tabernacles,
als nostres rabins ha fet grans obstacles,
als seus prometent [...]

A very good friend has just told me that she has received a calling and is about to start her witch-doctor training. I know a bit about southern African spirit mediums and Catalan clairvoyants, but I’ve never really hung out with witchdoctors.
The first really good account of this kind of stuff is Evans-Pritchard’s 1937 Witchcraft, [...]

For all the current aping by Catalan hypernationalist Josep Lluís Carod-Rovira of Gerry Adams’ sniper chic, and the corresponding romanticisation of IRA-Sinn Fein by Catalan fascists, Irish nationalism has in the past often been closer to Spanish conservative nationalism and fascism than to the tradition of atheistic, centralist republicanism represented by Carod and his followers. [...]

If you thought Davie Blunkett was corrupt, then try José Montilla. Montilla is boss of the Catalan socialist party, ex-mayor of Barcelona-fringe ghetto-town Cornellà, and an efficient guy with a previously spotless reputation, so Zapatero must have had few qualms about making him industry minister and general Catalan gofer/hitman.
The bad news is that last [...]

Peru’s trying to extradite him from Chile for “falsedad ideologica”, which I guess you could translate as “ideological insincerity”. He’s a politician, for xrissake.

Sarkozy’s going to need to look for some soon, but I fear that the current Parisian definition is the guy with the newest fridge. The earliest mention I’ve found here also floats in on a wave of urban violence:
It is in the anxious and transforming 15th century that we begin to discover forms that appear [...]