Someone commented that penícula is probably not a gypsy neologism for a film dealing with the sorrows of life but a childish l/n swap, the fruit of orthographical panic caused by a relatively unfamiliar word. Although we’re clearly dealing with a different level of literary accomplishment, I suggest that Finalcial Times falls into the same [...]

Another sentimental tango from from Tio de la Tiza and the Bebabouched Moors demonstrates a firmly-rooted belief in 1891 Cadiz in the Decadence of the Nation, even before the disaster of 1898 and its long aftermath exacerbated the gulf between a diligently managed press and wild popular fears:
Una inocente niña llorando estaba
y con acento [...]

Here. Just about to become completely useless, as work started on tearing up the medieval town from Urquianona more or less via Bilbao and the Plaza del Ángel to the Plaza Antonio López. The Barceloneta bullring is still there (closed 1924), the port has real boats, the basilica of the Merced and the cathedral face [...]

Daisy chaining: Cadiz declined after the War of Independence against the French and suffered the final blow with the loss of the last colonies in 1898, but, if it never achieved the notoriety of Barcelona, it was still an interesting mix of people. Here’s one of my favourite songs, from one of carnival’s great personalities, [...]

African-ish bands have been the talk of Andalusian ports since Cervantes. In 1935 the carnival association Orquesta Senegalesa didn’t win any prizes with this song:
Aquí está la Orquesta Senegalesa
que tocamos las notas con gran limpieza,
llegamos desde Londres en un tranvía
a visitar la tierra de la alegría.
Hemos visto mujeres a cual más bellas
y un vino blanco [...]

Via EFDL, El Plagio Literario. Quim Monzó, Luis Racionero and Lucía Etxebarría apparently see themselves as practicians of intertextuality rather than plagiarists, but that’s surely from their perspective.
Surely virtually no Spanish readers will have read or even heard of their sources, Courrier International, Gilbert Murray and Antonio Colinas. And so, surely, virtually all Spanish [...]

Siegfried Anton den Boer/Siegfried Andre Den Boer Kramer/Anthony van den Boer/Tony Ronald/Tonny Ronald etc, born Arnhem 1941/1943/1944, permanently resident in Barcelona from 1959/1960, recording nevertheless in Holland in Dutch and German until 1963, either has the best or the worst memory in the world. Here’s his 1971 summer hit, Help!, in Spanish:

… and in English [...]

Valencia wants to screw Zapatero, so it’s giving the new compulsory citizenship course in Spanglish.

Deogolwulf has translated the Grand Inquisitor’s Mein politisches Testament:
In the internal arrangement of the empire, the nationalities gained a position which was bound to be expressed by the selection and in the activity of public officials from the lowest rank to the highest. In a state thus arranged, it is for natural reasons difficult to [...]

And, judging by the envious comments on Facebook, possibly the first in Southeast Asia:

One of the mysteries of globalisation is that I spend quite a lot of time at the moment writing for Chinese exporters. The first foreign I learnt as a kid was fragments of Cantonese. Maybe I’ll get a chance to check out [...]

This house is God’s, esta casa es de Dios:

Similar phrases using the Caló vocabularly of Iberian Romani dialect are to be found on and in many other houses in the gypsy quarter of Gracia, Barcelona (on a variant of this walk).
The most common off- and online chat stopgap is Undibel siñela jucar, which George [...]

Para el heladero de una plaza graciense. Lo acaban de echar y no tiene alternativa ni papeles para buscar en el circuito normal. Lleva año y medio aquí y habla bien español (y nepalí). El y un par de familiares que he conocido son muy amables, y me parece buena persona. Preguntas/ideas aquí.

Ah! “Oranges, golden oranges of Spain, the daughters of the sun!” on a promo disc intermediated by David Noades.
The campaign was, according to this auction site, actually late 1960s and featured some revolting children and serving suggestions on the inside cover and some rather alarming dwarves on the outside:

… but here anyway is Arturo Barea, [...]

A friend looking for a childbirth course in one of Spain’s lonelier regions said that ghitting parto and the name of the county capital only ghot veterinary sites. I tried to replicate, and discovered that the municipal authorities can’t spell the name of their principal natural attraction, the Cantabrian brown bear, or oso parto [...]

Tully, Letters written during a ten years’ residence at the court of Tripoli (1819):
June 12 1788
To you, my dear friend, who are always alive to the beauties and effects of nature, I cannot omit describing what an extraordinary impression an eclipse makes on the uninformed part of the inhabitants of Barbary. Of this we had [...]

A variety of views on the dreadful fate of the Larbi-Cherif sisters: Bad things happen to slags. It is an anti-Muslim plot. The Zionists are behind it. The British are racists. Ironic really, given that Al Arabiya is a tool of American imperialism.

When the original cathedral was consecrated in 1058, it was dedicated to the Holy Cross and to St Eulalia, who on February 12 303 was put in a barrel lined with knives or glass, rolled down the hill out of Roman Barcelona, and unbreasted, crucified and decapitated near one of my favourite bars, whereupon a [...]

“Spanish climatological records reveal that in the Cold Triangle [ie Teruel, Molina de Aragón and Calamocha] there have been numerous episodes … with temperatures below -25ºC at less than 200km from the mild Mediterranean as the crow flies. [This is one demonstration of the fact] that Spain has climates, not a climate.” (Aupí, Guía del [...]

On Thursday February 29 1912, the 300-tonne Restless Rock of Tandil, Buenos Aires plunged from its extraordinary state of hillside equilibrium to a granite trinity below. The residents rebuilt it last year, and it now pulls almost as many tourists as Swanmore Pond. Unfortunately, Cairo’s cliff-edgers built on sand.

Calle Ferran de Barcelona, invierno de 1911. La calle se distingue por su concurrencia y por la ininterrumpida presencia de tiendas y escaparates. Nos encontramos sin duda en una de las calles más animadas de la ciudad y al parecer vía predilecta de tiendas de gran prestigio: nos cruzamos con la pastelería Massana [Mr Massana [...]