We’ve been outed by a couple of publications, so here’s the why/where/when for any readers of this blog who want to come along:
La Hermandad “Pippi Kortkjol” invita a amigos, compañeros, y luchadores de anteriores y actuales jornadas a participar en la Romería Tradicional de La Primera Sueca, que este año se realizará el día sábado [...]

Whirling brooms sweep bits of newspaper into a vacuum zone under the truck, whence they are pumped to the bin:

Driving lesson:

Tom has been having the standard problems you get when you photograph the police in a country suffering from separatist and religious terrorism. My maddest such encounter recently: I took a family group into the (public) ground floor of the Barcelona council offices on Pl Bonsuccés to look at the gegants. No problem, but when [...]

All is well and good in the house of Huaira.net and other quackshops in Barcelona in general and Gracia in particular, where Latins have rhythm, Africans have tribes and, of course, Yankeelandia has racists. This Brit admits to a tweak of vergüenza ajena.

Pilates Reformer sounds interesting: an obscure religion in which the biblical figure [...]

Ángel Palomino, Carta abierta a una sueca (1974) lists various types of Swedish girls, whose presence on the Spanish costas in the 1960s was crucial in many Seat 600 purchase decisions: “suecas suecas, suecas inglesas, suecas francesas, suecas alemanas, incluso españolas. Que a su vez se subdividen en diversas clases: la sueca veinteañera y cimbreada, [...]

The Catalan government has announced that it is setting up special schools for immigrants and other nignogs in response to the concerns of Catalan-speaking parents, who can’t see the point of enforcing Catalan in schools since the policy (a) has little positive effect on those not inclined to use it, and (b) by including couldn’t-care-less [...]

The Dutch magazine Elsevier has made available digitalised versions of its early output. Here is Henri van Booven, reporting on a train trip to Spain in 1906:
Madrid is, like The Hague, a city where the majority of people have little or nothing to do. We Madrilenians don’t need to work, say the inhabitants, they’re [...]

I love taking tourists to the massive Chinese distribution centres in towns around Barcelona (check ChinaCity.es if you need help understanding the future of Spanish manufacturing), which sell wholesale to all comers with roughly 50€ in their pocket and reasonably impressive tax documentation. Here are some mannequins from San Adrián, People’s Republic of China:

The assumption [...]

Thanks to Dave For titty, which had somehow escaped my notice.

Just to the right of the dedication to Tony and Ingrid, dated 2006, are the faint remains of a similar one to Toni and Ana, dated 2004. What will 2008 bring?

He claimed to be travelling around Britain and submitted his travel expenses based on fares listed in a British railway guide. A slight difficulty was that he did not understand the pre-decimal system of currency used in Britain, expressed in pounds, shillings and pence. He was unable to make sense of the British monetary system, [...]

“Carry on my wayward son,” snapped on the beach in San Adrián del Besós. Check the club blog. I don’t know who authored the lyrics.

Two South Asian gents photographing each other on the shore just short of Badalona. The younger man wore “traditional” baggy trousers, the older even more traditional “Manchesters”.

The other day I did a libertarian Raval tour with a particularly dangerous Californian sociologist, and we got onto Orwell’s apparent incapacity to see the most recent civil war as anything but a class conflict betrayed. This despite ethnic-based stuff like the vicious mini-civil war between Catalan fascists associated with Estat Català and self-described communist [...]

Mona:

(I once met a Tangier man who claimed to own a Barbary ape called Lisa, but let’s not go there, or here either.)
Copywriters have moved on since Darwin was alleged to have said, “It’s the best, science says so and I’m not lying”:

I use the sweet version of Anis del Mono in pastry cooking. Drinking [...]

It hasn’t rained very much in Barcelona for quite a long time. You can see the filth awaiting this Renfe train as it passes the Fecsa power station heading south over the Besós.

Found whilst burning a pile of flyers. Maybe Soulside will tell us if this was a conscious tribute to the rock-dotted “n” in “This is Spinal Tap”.

From Manuel Fraga’s dreadful Nuevos diálogos, found yesterday on the street (it’s becoming a habit):
An old French song reminds us that “the pleasure of love only lasts a moment, while the sorrow of love lasts for ever.”
A pragmatic English take, probably also old:
What’s the difference between love and herpes?
Herpes is for ever.
You kind of wonder [...]

“Las holas del mar”: whoosh, ¡hola!, whoosh, ¡hola!
This is quite a common one, even for native speakers.

Blurb for show we went to by mistake yesterday at L’Antic Teatre:
The creation of the spectacle “Madamas Butterflys” takes as a point of item the Puccini’s opera, but not to recreate it but to penetrate into the behaviors that they lead to a spiritual death and its posterior renaissance. ” Madamas Butterflys ” it wants [...]

In a ruined house on one of the variants of this walk.

So does this mean they’ve ruled out coalitions with the “moderate” nationalists after the elections? Or are they convinced they’re going to lose/get an absolute majority, so it doesn’t matter anyway? Or is it just Sirera farting around?

This of course is to be taken in jest. As is this.

The famous “Kiss of death” memorial sculpture in Poble Nou cemetery, photo by the excellent izarbeltza, regularly visited on one of these Barcelona walks:

A more earthy interpretation, from a Chinese shop, also in Barcelona:

Two elderly ladies have just met for the first time and are sounding each other out:
A: My dog is so intelligent it stands by the door and woofs whenever it wants to go out and have a poo.
B: My cat is so intelligent it comes in at five o’clock in the morning and jumps on [...]

I think the laugh/laughter thing is probably quite a hard mistake for non-natives to spot. I am consciously aware of about as much grammar as is your dog’s posterior end, so don’t ask me to explain why it’s wrong. (From CaixaForum’s exhibition.)

I’ll try to video the festive song installation on the building of the (thriving) neighbourhood association when the rain stops.

I’m pretty sure the balconies of the building opposite have aluminosis, a structural weakness arising from the irresponsible use of aluminous cement in situations exposed to high temperatures and low humidity (see eg the trials of Mr Harvey). The Barcelona area has suffered particularly from building collapses caused by this. I have tried to be [...]