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kalebeul anythingarian bubbles and troubles from the land of the fretting nun
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/ kalebeul / 2007 / 06 / 08 /

El niño de San Andrés

Cool post over at Aentwaereps about the Antwerp singer, Willy van de Velde, who grew up above the Bernad family’s “Spanish shop”, took guitar lessons from Ilse Alfonso, and called himself El niño de San Andrés because it sounded cooler than something like That geezer from St Andrew’s. As Godzjumenas observes, there’s no direct trace [...]

Literary feet

“En Santander. El pez y el reloj” in Los pueblos, ducking out of eternity and the meaning of life, Azorín is fetishising feet at the Cantabrian beach resort:
Little feet, arched and clad in elegant new shoes, are one of the most attractive features of a woman. I contemplate them all with the discretion with which [...]

Congresaos

Re “EL PALACIO DE CONGRESAOS DE BOLTAÑA”:
congresado, da.
(Del part. de congresar).

1. m. y f.coloq. Persona que se deja mandar a congresos.

It’s still rare, but here’s an example:
el candidato emite su mensaje a unos congresados pasivos, pero no se convierte, a la vez, en receptor del sentir y el parecer [...]

Barcelona. Shop no 1 is closed at 11:30, well within its normal opening hours. The iron street blinds are down and there’s no message posted, so I walk across town to shop no 2. Yes, no problem, pay now and we’ll confirm the delivery date in a moment. The call comes a couple of hours later:
- That model isn’t available right now.
- When will it be?
- We may be able to tell you later this month, so to save trouble why don’t you just buy this more expensive model?
- No thanks. I’ll be over later to get my money.
- Oh, we’ll have to see about that.
I tend to try to buy through foreign suppliers and I pray for the day when the Chinese will be running everything. Call me a racist, but it keeps me out of the loony bin.

It now seems that Iceland has defaulted, apparently believing Russia will be foolish enough to attempt to protect what’s left of its cod against ETA trawlers from Bilbao. Spain is not going down that road, at least not yet, but one of the more-quoted papers on the subject (De Paoli, Hoggarth & Saporta, Cost of sovereign debt) informs us that it did so thirteen times between 1500 and 1900. I rather liked this Punch item on steps towards a more united Europe, dated September 1 1860:

LATEST CLUB NEWS
SPAIN, put up by France and Austria, as a candidate for admission to the United European, has been blackballed by England, who declines to associate with an Uncertificated Insolvent. Spain is so frantic that she is half inclined to pay her debts, but will probably think twice over so rash an act.

The Dutch haven’t got any genuine armed forces, so they’re sending in the bailiffs to repossess office furniture from the Dutch Icesave, which has also done a runner.

Classic nimbyism, enabled by Spain’s lack of effective central government: Castilla y León has lots of wolves, but other communities which, according to ecologists, should in historical and biological terms have some, don’t want to take the overproduction. So they’re being shot. I don’t suppose we could airlift them to the outskirts of Reykjavik.


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