Restores the power of speech to stricken Andalusians.

It’s Pig’d over at Calculated Risk has a toothy smirk for the bailout which, for the usual reasons, we are not to call a bailout.
Mr Artificial Turf confirms our opinion that Bordeaux is astonishingly good value compared to Barcelona. And it has real waves.

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

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

Nearsightedness is increasing, and there aren’t many other reasonable explanations.

Is Mr Barbecue Bunny’s sardonic grin pre- or post-mortem?

It’s not what you steal, it’s the way that you steal it.

Don’t believe the wine pundits.

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

And it’s free.

Take Goig Heroin Elixir:

From La Vanguardia anno 1912. Their current principal source of immoral earnings, apart from editorial-related state subsidy and tax-(ahem-)efficient paid-for journalism, is, of course, brothel advertising. I seem to recall it worked out at around €1M pa, but now most things do. The first ever front page of this then conservative, Catholic [...]

Debating at lunch how long it would be before we’re all eating grass soup (sopa de golf on the costas), we progressed to the devil’s cookbook, and someone mentioned the 16th century colonial chronicler, Bernardino de Sahagún.
Back when Bernardino was booking the cooks Mictlan was where dead Aztecs lived–way up north, probably in New [...]

Spanish insurers Fiatc have a fairly grisly reputation for health provision care in general. Here’s how they deal with you once you’re dead: “When we arrived at the crematorium we were taken in through the rear entrance, down a long corridor, where we passed someone else laying in a coffin, a woman walking down the [...]

Samir over at View from Fez says that around 100 kids die annually from scorpion bites in Morocco. They’re quite common in Spain too. Here’s one in the gardens of Can Ferrero in Barcelona’s Zona Franca district that scared the hell out of me:

Stricken by Barcelona belly, I’ve been trying out this 19th century cholera cure. It’s better with rice, but I’m still surprised more people didn’t die. (Sublimated sulphur is used by modern-day lepers, says the chemist, so that wasn’t a problem.)

“We print this recipe, not out of self-interest, since we are giving it away free, being inspired solely by the conviction that we have of its efficacy and to see if we can be of assistance to our fellow men.”

Usually when the Olympics come to town there’s a big clean-up, during which junkies with little muscles get kicked out to make way for junkies with big muscles. That’s what happened in Barcelona in 92, but from this op-ed piece by Costas Iordanidis in Kathimerini it sounds like the Greek government is not having it [...]

I caught the first train out of town this morning to go and inspect what a certain farmer has in the fields round the the back (large sections of horse skeleton) before the man rose from his slumbers. Sitting across the carriage from me was an attractive woman, and at the next stop a drunk [...]

This excerpt from a court statement made on 1928/1/11 is taken from Paco Villar’s Historia y Leyenda del Barrio Chino (1997):

Here. Now all I need to do is stop the cat vomiting on the kitchen table.