An anti-intellectual French horticultural fable.

But what was Rosa Díez actually trying to say before she so expertly inserted foot into mouth?

The precedents for, and some possible implications of, the Catalanisation of Barcelona’s cinemas. Plus some crowd-pleasing video of the Quebec language police in action. (Allez! Allez! Allez! And the hell with the economy!) All in somewhat fevered response to an article by Martin Dahms in the Tages-Anzeiger.

A Portuguese menagerie of sozzledness.

Or was the Second Anglo-Afghan War actually fought in the Pyrenees?

Bishop Gibson of Granada understands beatific bureaucracy but not tradition. Featuring a bad Vietnamese flamenco clip.

Fill in the gaps in this pasquinade on the voiceless velar fricative, which I found last night in Mesonero Romanos’ El antiguo Madrid:
En la plaza hay un cartel
Que nos dice en castellano
Que José, rey italiano,
Roba a España su dosel;
Y al leer este cartel,
Dijo una maja a su majo:
–Manolo, pon ahí abajo
Que me C….. en [...]

Or rather, how my grandfather seems to have been named after a minor railway station.

A not particularly serious assault on Prosper Mérimée.

Blasco Ibáñez says that actually we have always thought “at all hours of the Mediterranean rim.”

Between-wars texts about Zaragoza by Germans who appear never to have visited the place.

Serious separatists will drive on the left, in Vic, starting Sunday.

A drunk-sounding Peacock Band playing accordions, bones, and mouth organs in a pub in Chelsworth, Suffolk the early 1970s.

Party political prejudice, or yet more historical memory bollocks?

Both white and black men prohibited from ambulant advertising.

And an explanation of why “La gata sobre el tejado de zinc” is, in metallurgical-roofing terms, an inappropriate translation of “Cat on a hot tin roof”.

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

From saviour to saved to savoury: the de-/remystification of bodily imperfection.

I wondered here whether pew-beating as a means of reliving medieval pogroms was a nineteenth century invented tradition. It was a rather naive question, and confirmation that the practice was already popular in Barcelona in 1848 is to be found in this Libro Verde entry for today, Holy Wednesday.

A British soldier’s hazy recollections of civil war in Portugal.