Fraternal greetings to someone else who has alighted in Barcelona and started using the Oreneta tag. I’m the one on a bicycle: no boat yet.

Village bullfighting is far more exciting and beautiful than the formalised crap on offer in big rings like Barcelona’s Monumental, but if the photo above gives some idea of the upside, the downside involves stuff like dwarf bullfighters cutting fillets off animals as they race past because they’re too short to plunge the sword in [...]

(Via LL)

It turns out that an occasional commenter here has a blog of his own, From Catalonia to Caledonia, in which, from a Catalan nationalist perspective, he whinges about the Spanish, the English, ungrateful immigrants and stuff. However, his family turns out to contain the odd cockatoo cuckoo too:
My parents are just another example of this. [...]

‘It is said that on inaugurating the great ENSIDESA steel concern, Franco exclaimed, “And to think that this cost nothing more than two kilos of paper…”‘ (Manuel Ortínez, Una vida entre burgesos. Memòries (1993)) How can people still get so worked up about a vulgar thief?

James Howell, Epistolae Ho-Elianae: Familiar Letters, Domestic and Forren (1688, on GBS):
There is a Tradition, that there were divers Mines of Gold in Ages pass’d amongst those Mountains; and the Shepherds kept Goats then, having made a small Fire of Rosemary-Shrubs with other combustible stuff, to warm themselves, this Fire grew along, and grew so [...]

– I haven’t brought the component I need. I’ll come back tomorrow, but I’ll bill you now for today.
– But you haven’t done anything.
– Sorry, company policy.
– OK, give me the bad news.
– Right, that’s 20€ travel and one hour’s labour @ 35€, 55€ plus VAT.
– But you’ve only been here five minutes.
– Sorry, company [...]

The normal spelling in Spanish bars is donuts or doughnuts, but there’s bound to be some kind of market for cojones de perro in a place with as liberal tastes as Barcelona.

Just out of interest, I emailed an advertiser on Loquo.com similar to this one. He has replied:
Thanks for your email and it is my gladness to hearing from you.I am Gandy [...],the owner of the house you are making enquiry of.Actually I resided in the house with my family,such as my wife and my only [...]

It’s been done before, but here’s soundman, producer, director Luis Jimenez (if he really was any of these, and not a mere video-ripper) in footage of Maria La Sabina:

Letters of Alexander Von Humboldt to Varnhagen Von Ense (GBS):
On the 9th of June, 1839, Varnhagen writes in his diary: “Humboldt agrees with me in the assertion made by me at different times, that too much cannot be inferred from the silence of the historians. He refers to three highly important and undeniable facts, which [...]

That’s the view of La Vanguardia, Barcelona’s quality paper. Barcelona is trying to promote its new biomedical research centre, but the University of Barcelona, the city’s best, is way down at number 94 in the European rankings. Maybe some decent public education would be in order.

Mr. T. was struck with the number of lunaticks confined in the several provinces of Spain:

Identical flats are apparently available for rent in various world cities.

Ah, Spanish engineering in the 1860s! Since the factory only turned out two billiard tables a week, it’s difficult to see how they would have got round to satisfying the demands of smaller establishments with this kind of device, but never mind.

Just found in a cabinet in an uninhabited house in the central Pyrenees: a concealed drawer that doesn’t appear to have been touched since the 1960s. Contents: a will from 1818; pages dealing with testaments torn a reprint of a revised (1930s?) version of the Spanish 1888-9 Civil Code, including annotations detailing regional variations (in [...]

“The Basque type is, amongst all the human races, that which is most different from quadrupeds. The posture of the head and the form of the jaw is in the Basque the least animal of all in existence.” Telesforo de Aranzadi, ¿Existe una raza euskara? Sus caracteres antropológicos. San Sebastián, Imprenta de la Provincia, 1905 [...]

“The main reason you like my boyfriend is because he feeds you large quantities of grilled lamb, and the main reason my dog likes you is because you give her the bones.” Can’t see what’s wrong with that. I hope my eyes don’t go as dazed and watery as the dog’s.

Jacques Brel’s appearance suggests that he shares substantial quantities of DNA with George Formby and Francis the Talking Mule. His scripts are even stranger:

I’m doing a little something for an NGO and it’s boring the tits off of me.

Some Friday morning cheer from Dubin & Monaco in a recording by Xavier Cugat, one of Hitler’s more unlikely faves:

Perhaps the prototype for the behijabbed suicide who asks, “Does my bomb look big in this?” Perhaps not.
Lina Romay, the sensational Catalan horror-porn star of films by the great Catalan director, Jess Franco, chose her stage [...]