An etymological hop from kite-flying with Juan Marsé back to Concha Piquer’s greatest hit.

If phone companies don’t provide window stickers, Pakistani shopkeepers may have a go themselves.

By Ramon Vila & Marta Cuatrecasas

Will the pigeon get the cat’s food, or will the cat get the pigeon?

They’re not necessarily for pedestrians.

The pros of walking to Barcelona Airport.

Sensational video from Gracia district.

Broadly illustrative of how we got where we are, with a joke at the end.

Or what to do when those boring old marble columns get in the way of your new staircase.

According to this list. As a popular destination, Barcelona has two in the top ten, Hostal Windsor and Hostal Abrevadero. A friend tells me that the proportion being fired in the sector substantially exceeds official figures for the drop in tourists. My money’s on the cockroaches to survive.

RMF over at Fum i estalzi quotes Josep Pla (”Notaries live in central locations and tend to occupy spacious apartments with very high ceilings”) and links to a business listings map of Barcelona notaries. I suppose if you hacked the streetview feature you could check out the high ceilings bit.

A special offer on meat balls with cuttlefish will have to do until the wheel of fortune creaks in their direction.

Over at Charles Svoboda’s blog for Abusos Urbanísticos No. Its anonymous British lawyer author concludes that
The hope is that the authorities will use [the hiatus caused by the bust] to introduce laws and controls that will respect European norms including the rights to private property, the protection of the environment, public contracts, etc. and to [...]

A pun on Never say never again on Gracia’s only SWP bodega (one of the proprietors claims to have known Yigael Gluckstein) may be suggesting that may be no imminent solution to the problem of bearded nutters rocketing their neighbours and then moaning about the response.
In other graffiti today, the anarchist nutters in the lovely [...]

Check out this piece by Nicholas Mead on the thorough screwing the impoverished Carmel district of Barcelona is receiving from the socialist council in alliance with developers. It’s ironic that many of the same socialists jumped up and down with glee when local lad Juan Marsé won some writing prize or other. One can safely [...]

The Google Earth version of ancient Rome is a bit like a collection of faked-up trainspotters’ notebooks. Until they find some way of populating it with exfoliant opera, our best bet as responsible amateur social historians is the porn industry:
European production company Daring Media Group will release its first movie, Roma, in October at the [...]

BA’s Highlife mag goes lowlife: “After 40 years of mass tourism, Torremolinos continues to evolve and, away from the coast, it’s a bustling Andalucian town. The high-rise 1950s and 1960s hotels are now admired by fashionable architects. The campaign to make it a Unesco World Heritage site begins here.” I’ve been going to Benidorm for [...]

El blog Ausente links to a piece by Rinzewind (which links etc etc) about Valdeluz. This is the settlement built in the desert outside Guadalajara and equipped with a high-speed train station in what appeared to be a corrupt development deal engineered by PP bigwigs Esperanza Aguirre and Álvarez Cascos with the blessing of PSOE [...]

Sevillanadas has photoshopped back into place one of the Moorish city’s gates, demolished in 1868 by the same man who restored it twenty years earlier following a serious bout of generalised brotherly hate. Will it now be rebuilt?

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 [...]