John Chappell must have stayed up in conservative, nationalist Gracia if he had a quiet night. We were with friends on Carretera de Sans, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many Spanish flags. Delicious detail: two young ladies, their prodigious assets barely concealed, beating up a violent pimp-ish type and immediately seducing some rather better-looking escorts on their way to Plaza de España. Another, on Providencia in Gracia: notice outside a bar reading “Andavan la selecció”.

Couple of wrong ‘uns in Graham Keeley’s post (via The Expat Leper) over at the UK’s leading idiot shoutbox (eg Franco didn’t ban regional languages; the only people to recognise his government in 1936, apart from Graham, were Adolf and Benito, with the Vatican following in 1937 and Britain and France in 1939) but he’s got the mood right: regional nationalism is losing support rapidly, rather as the paramilitaries did in Northern Ireland once everyone started watching East Enders and sharing cheap flights with their deadliest enemies.

So, any chance of a rapid end to all that government-subsidised “Catalonia is not Spain” sloganising? Probably not–TV3’s 3/24 service was keeping quiet at 7 this morning about celebrations in Barcelona, but had a fascinating feature on some obscure folk singer who can’t actually sing but isn’t bad on the castagnets. But if non-sectarian affection for a Spanish state based on equal opportunities for all takes hold, then you’ve got to fancy UPyD’s chances of doing something interesting in the Basque elections. The history and fate of both the PP and the PSOE are too deeply entwined with those of regionalist and centralist repression for either to make any convincing claim to that electorate, whatever Esperanza Aguirre thinks.

[Declaration of interest: I lost a tenner on Germany.]

Categories: Ball-playing, Les bourgeois, Theatre

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