I’m now doing most of my work from locked-down government machines in rural internet centres, which means using online applications for almost everything. I used to be reasonably good with stuff like Premiere, but, though tool-blaming is bad manners, I can’t get online video editor Jumpcut to very much useful, even fades being beyond my [...]

The EU says that you have to take animal carcasses found in the high mountains down to the bottom, truck them half-way across Spain to an abattoir to make sure they’re really dead, and then, to stop the vultures starving to death, you are allowed to bring them all the way back and leave them [...]

Apparently the four corners of a square reel used in this Huesca village in hemp yarn production represent four horses bound for France. I wonder which horses these were: those that awaited the Duke of Calabria, when he sought with three others to flee the court of King Ferdinand of Aragon, or others? (If folksy [...]

Check out the extraordinary selection of animal-love videos on sale at Guirilandia’s local Chinese supermarket in Barcelona.

By my almost-neighbour EJH, who, having discovered Daniela’s 120 tits, seems to have stopped posting.

Check out these wonderful cylinder recordings at the Donald C Davidson Library at UCSB.

Amando de Miguel says it owes its name to the colour of Capuchin friars’ habits, both concrete and abstract–apparently they were notorious sybarites. I find the colour hypothesis slightly unconvincing, but it’s confirmed here. Evidence of their bizarre taste in this serendipitous find, a description by Nathaniel Parker Willis (Summer cruise in the Mediterranean on [...]

Would those who say that we should hang on to a few Francos because it was how things were, weren’t it, say the same of images of Marx? I’m something a fan of the Roman custom of leaving statue torsos intact and swapping heads as each dictator came and went.

Transhumance is in the air, so here’s a smutty song from a commie from Zaragoza:
Los pastores se van, se van,
Los pastores lloran, lloran:
¡ay de mí, pobre pastora!
¿con quién follarás tú ahora?
Rejigged:
The shepherds are going, they’re going again,
The shepherds are weeping, they’re wailing this strain:
“Alas, alack, oh Phyllis my dear,
Who will you fuck now you’re in [...]

There’s some excellent decorative stonework in the posher parts of Barcelona’s Eixample, but the Italians are in a different league.

Guirilandia has translated one of the most inappropriate flyers ever.

A post by Mr Millán reminds me that a couple of weeks ago I received flyers for the new combine, Uniliber, from a bookseller in Bilbao. Here’s a head-to-head with its competitor, Abe Books/IberLibro, for a few second-hand books I want. I’ve gone for the cheapest each time and have excluded postal costs because, unlike [...]

Here, via Papel Continuo.

Cowslips
My old camera was stolen last summer by Chicago baggage handlers, but thanks to a handy tip from Pep L I’ve now acquired a ridiculously cheap Panasonic TZ1 with 10x OZ and am going to start posting photos again here, using Picasa for storage and Online Image Editor for online image editing (other editors either [...]

If only this had been written by an engineer and not a novelist.

Improvised Spanish village street sign.

Of no interest, except to Christian socialists, who may wonder if Mr Jesus was behind the distribution of supplies to strikers:
OROTAVA, September 17 1934. (By telegraph.)- The Orotava Valley agricultural organisation continues the general strike begun August 31 past without an accord having been feasible thus far. The civil governor has kept the organisation’s offices [...]

I’d rather like to buy or borrow a copy. Talk to me.

Over at señorita Charlotte’s place, with a brilliant review, at least if you speak Dutch, which ends “Trevor is THE man to take you along and have you experience all the ins & outs of real Catalan (country) life.” If only I dared to write that kind of thing

Re a reference@Amando de Miguel: that the expressions are interchangeable (“Capulino frotó suavemente el respaldo de una silla; acarició después el metal de un llavero, por expresa recomendación de Juana. Y sonrió.”, or here for the English) suggests that Frazer was wrong to point to iron’s novelty as the source of its taboo status. Intriguingly, [...]