Restores the power of speech to stricken Andalusians.

Some historical advice from an Irish perspective for Esperanza Aguirre on the pitfalls of attempting to demonstrate by symbolic means the virile and libertarian spirit of Madrid in the invented and regrettable conflict between it and doldrummed Barcelona.

Peter Mandelson on how fortunate we are that the European Commission is unelected, remote, unaccountable, and a major bureaucracy.

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

In response to confusion in the markets re Spain’s constitutional arrangements and the size and distribution of its public debt, kaleBirthday has, remarkably, gained the consent of the Catalan, Spanish and EU administrations to conduct a binding poll on the future of the troubled region. Vote now or forever hold your peace.

The Spanish, making progress with a backlog of untranslated English snowclones?

Hasta luego Edgar León, but what’s the real solution?

With an excerpt from a plea for more state funding by the Bostonian Western Rail-road, in which we are given to understand that snow is not necessarily a bad thing.

Galen is an indispensable early source for historians of the walnut, the hazelnut, the testicle, and so forth, but this does not explain why galen is used in Swedish to describe a disturbed person.

A Google Maps/Le Figaro mashup.

A fragment from Italo Calvino’s quasi-17th century folk romance, Il visconte dimezzato/The cloven viscount, uses storks as a portent of battle. Several unconnected 2nd century Greek accounts might appear to do the same, perhaps particularly if one’s a lazy sod and doesn’t read anything but scraps of stuff on Google Books.

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.

How would you describe the relationship of the Slav Francisco with his mother?

Why and how the 17th century Portuguese tropical medicine specialist, Aleixo de Abreu, tried to prevent proles from reading his cure for scurvy.

And of a great British pub landlord, Juan from Málaga.

Scratch a libertarian and you’ll discover a totalitarian, so keep scratching.

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

On this day in 1466, one Juan Sort, aged 70, was beheaded for the misappropriation of public funds. Millet is said by the auditors to have stolen around 30 million and has fessed to around 10%, but has not been anywhere near a prison, and indeed seems to think that by looking old and grey [...]

Desultory bar philosophising on the socio-economic function of Secret Santa.

Is it a personal hiperandalucismo, or is there somewhere in Málaga where everyone speaks like this?