Off-location, but too exquisitely grisly to omit:
In September, when the 13th of 27 condemned men was hanged, the rope snapped and the prisoner landed on the floor and shouted: “God saved me!”
He lay on the ground praying and shouting while prison guards and the hangman discussed whether there had been divine intervention and the execution [...]

It’s not that much more expensive to fly to Rio than to Madrid, so maybe Mr Quintanilla knows something we don’t about continental drift.

Re this: I met some Senegalese olive pickers in Jaén two winters ago living in disused pigsties next to a marvellous ranch. We didn’t discuss religion.

That’s the word from a friend at TVC on this. I’m sure construction magnates with well-filled safes the public will enjoy it immensely.

My favourite bodega, offering Polonium tapas at €2.10 a plate, geddit?! (That’s enough of that.)

From William Pulleyn’s The Etymological Compendium, Or, Portfolio of Origins and Inventions (1830), via Google Book Search:
It is generally believed, that Cards were invented for the amusement of one of the early kings of the line of Bourbon; but this belief is erroneous. Who the man was that invented these instruments of amusement and folly [...]

GA Sala of Brompton says in Notes and queries in 1874 that “the Spaniards … have not yet arrived at the stage of excusing [bullfighting] on the score that it makes the beef tender. This idea seems borrowed from the old story … about whipping pigs to death. ‘Carne de Toreo’–bull-fighting beef–is usually looked upon [...]

Or was, early this morning, a six-foot tranny (6’6” if you include the shiny red plastic booties) in yesterday’s beard (black, of course), fishnets, and a rather fetching little gingham number, conversing with loved ones far away as she traipsed home. (Tranny trips.)

Zazie@Cocanha has scanned extracts from two versions of the highly amusing Cartas d’el Rei D. Fernando, O Catholico, a varios reis e principes do mundo, e suas respostas: colligidas e commentadas por Fr. Antonio Tarfan de los Godos, Commendador na Ordem de S. João de Jerusalem: the first bunch from a manuscript in the collection [...]

A bunch of deranged Catalanista xenophobes are campaigning to drive out “foreign” Christmas symbols. Don’t anyone tell them that in Holland Santa Claus is believed to be a Spanish bishop or that current research suggests that Jesus was actually a teddy bear.

The hilarious case (via Malaprensa) of Pedro J Soriano, Alicante policeman, trade unionist, and columnist for Las Provincias in Valencia, who plagiarised an article published on Orsai by Hernán Casciari without having the faintest as to what it meant, and who, when interviewed alla Ali G by Casciari (check the magnificent recording), said the equivalent [...]

Item 000174 from Passe-Partout, the University of Lausanne’s International Bank of Printers’ Ornaments

Anyone know if they’re online anywhere? I’m interested in the Floncel anecdote, which I believe is on page 24. Talk to me here and be forever blessed.

The excellent Catavino is upset that the authorities want to tarmac over 100 hectares of vineyards in the Duero. I’m a bit more blasé: the Spanish only buy their own product because the Chinese don’t make it cheaper, and I cherish little hope for green open spaces in a country where the most popular form [...]

This Nasreddin Hodja story (via Ray Girvan) reminds me of the custom in at least one particularly poor part of England in the early 20th century of having the man in the cornershop slice one’s bread with the ham knife in order to add taste.

Regret the error includes an item from the Denver Post:
Because of an editor’s error, a sentence on page 8D on Tuesday in a story about Rockies prospect Hector Gomez buying a bus was changed from “On the back he put ‘Los Peloteros’ which in Spanish means ‘The Ballplayers’” to “he put ‘Los Plotters’ which in [...]

RMF over at Fum i estalzí has the lowdown, with before and after pics, on the death of a camel (or is it a dromedary?) at Ataturk International Airport. Grey Wolf would not have been chuffed. (More on Google in English.)

Nodier was a distinguished bibliophile and member of the Académie Française who ran the library at the Parisian Arsenal, which, according to Musset, was where romanticism set up shop. (Émile de Girardin says in Mme de Girardin that Hugo, like everyone else, fell in love with Mrs and called her Notre-Dame de l’Arsenal.) His novel [...]

Interesting that a “left-wing” government has chickened out of time-share nationalising second and third homes in the mountains and along the coast, where the market is more difficult for tenants than in the cities.

“Eñe rrepresenta balore ma elebao de tradision ispanika y primero kaeremo mueto ante ke asetar bejasione a simbolo ke a sio korason bibifikante de istoria epañola unibersa,” and so forth, via JPQ, and without apologies to whoever wrote what may be the original.

Revealed at the Guadalajara fair, via JA Millán:

Barcepundit has caught Julio Valdeón Blanco in El Mundo plagiarising Julie Bosman in the NY Times. Julio’s narrative style is characterised by his brilliant use of language, unless it was he who wrote his Wikipedia profile. (PS Whatever happened to Rafael Ramos? Nothing, of course!)

I’m not a big fan of his writing, but this is cool. Once somewhere similar I used to walk to work to burn off beer and pizza reserves and ended up going cross-country, cross ditch and thru hedge, to avoid car-bound colleagues who would stop and ask if I was OK.

Check the curious items and documents starting p591, including payments to “blak Margaret” and the precept granting “the Earl and Lord of Little Egypt” the power “to hang and punish all Egyptians within the Kingdome of Scotland.”

Thomas Wright’s 1857 Dictionary of obsolete and provincial English says it is an inferior alicant wine, and used as a general term for all Spanish reds (ie from tinto), which seems somewhat at odds with his quote from Ward’s diary (16×2): “I drank tent with Mr. Hartman. It is a very sweet and a luscious [...]

Excellent news that the Catalan skating federation has become a member of the South American body. Maybe they’ll fuck off on the same boat as the nation of Breogan.

Amusing that Stanley Payne believes that “the Left has had a super-legitimacy complex, as if it had the right to govern… In this way the Spanish Left does not accept the fact that it might lose, it does not accept any adversaries.” I had understood that since the 2004 elections this belief was the property [...]

From a piece by Cecil Eby on the not particularly lovely time had by the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in the Civil War:
In their time off, the recruits prowled the city; they sampled the local conac [sic], said to have been blended from equal parts of rancid olive oil and low-octane gasoline; and they bought the [...]

An amusing and completely credible post from Avui. Meanwhile Tío Lele has confirmed via a spokesman that he is completely happy with this, the final version of his corporate website. Apparently its brutal emptiness is a metaphor for the intangible aspects of making do without the brand. I still think it would have been nice [...]

I’ve been merrily dilettanting away recently with a couple of literary robberies and forgeries, so it’s good to see that Zazie over at cocanha found a really great one.
What he has are extracts from a book published in 1842 in Porto, Portugal under the promising title, Cartas d’el Rei Don Fernando, O Catholico, a varios [...]

Noted the other day in the speech of a couple of elderly working class immigrants from Cádiz in the Poblenou district of Barcelona. Ceceo (the characteristic Andalusian lisp which assimilates /s/ and /θ/ to [θ]) has traditionally been considered socially inferior to seseo (assimilation to [s], associated particularly with Seville and New World dialects), as [...]

Instead of having to forge the special card issued to Genuine Researchers, anyone can now get into archives pertaining to the Ministry of Culture with a passport or other state ID. Edmund Lester Pearson’s old librarian ( “No person younger than 20 years … is on any pretext to enter the Library. Be suspicious of [...]

I guess I thought this photo was freaky–chicken being stuffed in machine?–but there are quite a few chicken fax services out there. Kentucky Fried Chicken Fax in Peoria, Illinois also does buffalo wings, but no porcine pinions.