An expedition to examine the remains of Moorish castles and drink village wine on the Albacete-Jaén borders means that things will be fairly quiet around here until perhaps September 5, when last minute preparations will commence for the launch of a revolutionary new communications model at the Albacete Fair.
The Feria de Albacete is not only [...]

A young Latino with a moderately loud blaster gets on at Sant Andreu. I’m trying to talk to people, so I’m grateful when a Latino security guard comes through the carriage just after Torre de Baró. He walks over to the young guy, taps him on the shoulder, motions him to turn UP the sound, [...]

When I think of here I always think of the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company and unexploited sponsorship angles, but that’s not Clive Davis‘ fault.

MM has kindly mailed the story of an illegal from Mali found climbing one of the Sierra Nevada’s major peaks in flipflops. Jorge Rodríguez’z story in El País, plagiarised by Elizabeth Nash for The Independent, has Anthony Braxton Tony Brascons making the same journey in reverse undertaken in sandals by Judar Pasha, who they describe [...]

Charles Butler is doing some really interesting work down in Jaén. Check out the interview he did with an enterprising manufacturer called José Vico in Orcera. Orcera is a macho, conservative town that I once found to be distinctly scary, but Mr Vico is marketing a range of personal care products including a “lip balm, [...]

To get away from British Spanish music would be a plausible explanation. Here two famous examples, a cover of George Formby’s Lancashire toreador and of Mike Read’s The Spaniard wot blighted my life:

I actually love them, but don’t tell.

The other night reading the C18th Motteux translation of Quixote “by several hands” in a cheap American edition without date or attribution. The passage where they free and are then beaten by galley slaves has this:
They also eas’d Sancho of his upper coat, and left him in his doublet.
The translator or editor leaves a [...]

It’s difficult to conceive of figures with blue eyes and blond hair populating Gustav de Smeet’s Amsterdam. I think this is actually an Amsterdam as it might have been re-imagined by the considerable numbers of people of Mediterranean descent who live there and in the other great ports along that coast.

The Sagrada Familia is significantly [...]

In the salon:

In a flat:

All still from Gent, where I was several weeks ago.

Or is it a smiley? Does Ratzinger regard ecclesiastical ecstasy as a theologically acceptable substitute for communion wine? I think not.

Some people in Barcelona attract your attention by calling “Éo” There’s a French example of this in Margueritte’s La garçonne (1922).
14yo Monique is being seduced into lesbian shenanigans by her freethinking friend, Elisabeth. Aunt Sylvestre comes looking for them. “Hého!” cries Monique, and the storm passes. The activities of Monique and Elisabeth are wholly unrelated [...]

I wonder whether they automatically cheapen moveable objects:

… and add value to stationary ones:

Following an exposition on a walk the other week of the various types of arch, a small girl enquired, “So are eyebrows to stop your head caving in?”

Low, horizontal view into a shop window just up from Mokkabon, with a serendipitous reflection of the façade of the building opposite and some Martian doodling top left. It reminded me of a Russian neo-folk piece from the 1920s I saw ages ago featuring Caucasian horsemen chasing across a rug of brightly coloured, irregular horizontal [...]

Any kind of reader would be nice, but this is special: I’m trying to get hold of a book by Miguel Villanueva, El carnaval de Cádiz durante la Segunda República (1931-1936). Ensayo sobre un carnaval atrevido. I’ve tried without success to contact the publishers, Fundación Viprén, as well as Viprén itself, and, although the book [...]

Such was the worldwide stir caused by my revelation that the Sweeney Todd story is at least a century older than previously thought that I know many of you will be impatient to read this new story of sinister stylists across the water. It’s from a French tutor, Méthode rationnelle suivant pas à pas [...]

The rotten greens and browns and the fetid flesh lighting at Mokkabon, Ghent have something of a Zola drowning about them. Tutors at the local bad drawing school are doubtless deluged with impressions of its decaying woodwork and mirrors. The coffee is good, and to the delight of exactly half the party the rather lovely [...]

The university tower:

The convent church over at the Spanish castle district:

A rather superior old folks’ home:

I’m a bit ambivalent about straight lines. Flying into Amsterdam the order below makes me want to weep, but I wouldn’t mind living in the third of these.

The vaguely freaky New York Press is dropping massage parlours and foreign language specialists and taking a $1M revenue hit. Barcelona’s conservative daily, La Vanguardia, shows no signs of so doing.

Manuel Fraga goes into a bar, walks up to a man eating tripe, punches him in the face, and starts eating the tripe himself.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” cries the man. “I paid for that!”
“Fuck off and die,” snarls Fraga, “los callos son míos.”
(The Salvador Dalí version of this has a hyphen [...]

Neither man nor beast, was this what Kafka had in mind? This cartoon by the great James Ensor of the once great resort of Oostende is in the Gent Fine Arts Museum, which I most enjoyed. Dutch art is generally speaking familiar, but cross the border and there’s a whole new collective of ne’er-do-wells requiring [...]

Below the Burcht at Leiden:

… and on a Gent lamp post:

Faced with global warming, Dutch civic Canutes are off somewhere else contemplating amongst other engineering wonders the construction of (a) a great new channel to sea to prevent flooding from upstream on the major rivers, and (b) a megalopolis to the East to house the [...]

Follow a donkey and you will find your village. Follow a goat and you will fall off a cliff.

LP: I wanted to see what he looked like.

This is a crucial element in what remains of French realist writing in the 1920s and 30s, which, for this reason and others, was more popular than praised. Based on some reading and no maths, I would venture that in a book of (x + y) pages (not counting the open letter of support from [...]

… is probably not what whatsername was thinking of when she did this decorative ceramic chez LP@Barcelona. (Frau Antje was the stereotype Dutch girl used by the Dutch Dairy Organisation/Nederlandse Zuivel Organisatie to sell its products into Germany from the 60s to the 80s, and now once more. The parody by Sebastian Krüger in Der [...]

I think this is meant to be Mr Krueger, guarding over the roof of a block of flats in Sant Gervasi, Barcelona. Scared?