When I’m in Barcelona we often go and have a Sunday lunchtime beer on a bar terrace near Park Güell, ethnic Andalusian with scatterings of La Mancha and the Maghreb. The other day there was a new guy, well-dressed, which is uncommon here, and reading El país, which is even less usual. I’ve never heard [...]

This is the anarchist serial killer who, according to a good series of articles by Josep Maria Sòria in La Vanguardia in 2003,

in April 1936 shot dead Miquel Badia. (To be fair, Badia had it coming, as he himself acknowledged: failed regicide, fascist bootboy and strikebreaker for “our caudillo” Francesc Macià, head of security under [...]

Some walkers want to have a look round a ruined factory, so conversation must be made with the security guard. He is truncheoning around with a muscular, aggressive, sleek-haired pup and a peaceful older bitch–Heinz 57 varieties with some dominant sheepdog:
–Good morning, that’s a fine-looking pup you’ve got there. He’s going to be a monster [...]

When Europa played over at Sant Andreu in November, the local Four Bar Squad, which has record, unveiled a banner showing another local saint, St Martin, in wolf costume slaughtering a pig dressed as one of Europa’s following (they believe they’re tigers, not pigs, but whatever):

Sant Andreu duly murdered Europa 3-0. The return is this [...]

These bloody bears, they come over here and everything get’s changed just to suit them. Do bears shit in woods? Yes, and they’ve no right. They don’t belong here. Signed, A Dog.

(In Catalan gossos = dogs, while ossos = bears. There, that’s ruined it.)

Ángel Palomino, Carta abierta a una sueca (1974) lists various types of Swedish girls, whose presence on the Spanish costas in the 1960s was crucial in many Seat 600 purchase decisions: “suecas suecas, suecas inglesas, suecas francesas, suecas alemanas, incluso españolas. Que a su vez se subdividen en diversas clases: la sueca veinteañera y cimbreada, [...]

Just to the right of the dedication to Tony and Ingrid, dated 2006, are the faint remains of a similar one to Toni and Ana, dated 2004. What will 2008 bring?

The famous “Kiss of death” memorial sculpture in Poble Nou cemetery, photo by the excellent izarbeltza, regularly visited on one of these Barcelona walks:

A more earthy interpretation, from a Chinese shop, also in Barcelona:

Walking down the escalator at Fontana metro, I pass a undistinguished-looking middle-aged woman just as she skilfully inserts her hand into the bag of the girl standing, unaware, on the step below her. I grip her arm and say, Gotcha. Oh no, she says, it’s my daughter, but you’re right to do it: there are [...]

I guess one of us should apologise to Maurice Sendak.

An expedition to examine the remains of Moorish castles and drink village wine on the Albacete-Jaén borders means that things will be fairly quiet around here until perhaps September 5, when last minute preparations will commence for the launch of a revolutionary new communications model at the Albacete Fair.
The Feria de Albacete is not only [...]

Such was the worldwide stir caused by my revelation that the Sweeney Todd story is at least a century older than previously thought that I know many of you will be impatient to read this new story of sinister stylists across the water. It’s from a French tutor, Méthode rationnelle suivant pas à pas [...]

The crazy European regulation making it illegal to leave carcasses in the high mountains has led to reports of starving vultures attacking and killing large live stock in several parts of Spain. Now one of Nick’s wolfmen has sent news of several hundred griffon vultures from the Pyrenees having sought alimentary asylum in Holland, in [...]

Quiet mountain road, chilly evening. The Guardia Civil do an ID and vehicle document check and then ask us to get out. GC1 takes a couple of paces back, while
GC2: OK, we’re going to do a thorough check of you and the car for estupi … estupe … estupefacientes.
M, also happier with common parlance: Estupi [...]

The socialists in Madrid are bitching full time after being slaughtered in the regional and municipal elections. Miguel Sebastián, Zapatero’s disastrous choice as mayoral candidate, has announced his resignation. “What’s he resigning from?” enquires senior national colleague, the excellent Alfonso Guerra, “what was he?” Fellow loser in the regionals, Rafael Simancas: “I’m staying on because [...]

Bit of fratricidal jollity from Ángel Ganivet, Idearium español (1897): “Confronted with the spiritual ruin of Spain we must put a stone where our heart is and throw a million Spaniards to the wolves if we all do not wish to be thrown to the swine.” No national stereotypes, please. Just trying to think of [...]

Manuel Blanco Romasanta (1809-?) was born Manuela because everyone thought he was a girl, and things went downhill from then on. After his wife died he became a travelling salesman of human fat and, when the law finally took an interest, he went on a CANNIBAL RAMPAGE, TEARING APART and DEVOURING nine innocents before being [...]

By my almost-neighbour EJH, who, having discovered Daniela’s 120 tits, seems to have stopped posting.

Mmax says that, on February 14 1929, his great-uncle, Ralph Forte, was listening to Chicago police radio from the offices of AP when he heard some slightly unusual news from North Clark Street.
Apparently Mr Forte had just fled Italy after writing an article entitled “Everyone obeys Mussolini except the cats”. Can his welcome in [...]

Captain Al Cohol (via Papel Continuo; more superheroes) has nothing to do with Al Pernales. I’d hate to think how long it is since I was last ravaged by a bare

Picked up the two-month-old Beast of Bages this afternoon from a farm where she was in imminent danger of being eaten by hunting dogs. She’s still too shy for photos, but has already assaulted one of the neighbours and climbed all over the bookcases, so here (MP3, 4.93MB), by way of welcome, is a snipped [...]

Despite the fact my language of choice is that of a far better empire, Kaleboel comes in at no 839 on the list of “more than 10,000″ participants in la blogosfera hispana, as calculated by Bitacoras.com. The infinitely superior Puerta del Sol–also in English–is down at 843, presumably because Jonathan doesn’t include as many pictures [...]

Belated congratulations to blogger/journalist Pere Marí, now being sociocultural for El Diario de Mallorca. He had an interesting piece last month on the 70th anniversary of Balearic publishing dynasty, Editorial Moll, which I can’t link to because of DdeM’s moronic policy of redirecting everything to their front page. Anyway, the news from current boss, Francesc [...]

Mistress Puss has departed for the hill, so it’s time for another beast to abuse, kill and eat the 5-6cm American (they’re actually African) cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) which are displacing their smaller German cousins here and which crawl upstairs every time the sewers flood or the bar downstairs runs out of tortilla. A farmer I [...]

There is no sound quite as revolting as an ex-street cat on heat and with ferocious nasal congestion licking its posterior end, and the smell is not exactly Scandinavian pine either. Jimmy Rushing on his 1944 recording of Harvard blues sings
I don’t keep dogs or women in my room
but omits mention of pussy, which is [...]

I haven’t seen anything in the Japanese press, but this Straits Times story is a giggle anyway. According to the ST, Japanese pundits were expecting to concentrate on one thing when Mr Jenkins stepped off his flight in Jakarta:

The quote in all the obits for OED superhero Robert Burchfield is his description of English as “a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib”. Even if French dogs did like accordions as much as their masters are alleged to, it would do little to encourage the terminally oppressed Quebec [...]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a highly talented Somali immigrant who started as a cleaning lady and, although still only in her mid-30s, was elected last time round to the lower chamber of the Dutch parliament on a VVD (liberal-right) ticket. She has been threatened frequently since being elected for describing Islam as a backward religion, [...]

If I’d been running Homeland Security yesterday I’d have arrested every grubby fruit vendor I could find. To my knowledge no US president has ever been shot or blown up on July 4th but, as Doctor Zebra notes,

In the Middle Ages anyone of any commercial talent (and his/her mum) had visions and stored some human bones in the new toilet chapel extension of the pig shed nave of the temple next to that handy spring holy source on the hillside. Here, extracted by moderately cunning device from Amazon, is the relevant part of the ToC of Eileen Gardiner’s (not completely exhaustive) Medieval Visions of Heaven and Hell: A Sourcebook:

The kinky Murcian waiters clique is anxious to watch rude muscles bulge and divine blood flow in Mel’s Pash and will not be making an appearance today, which means that we need not fear interruption as, for a change, we get random with some really boring stuff.

This afternoon round the back the cat took a chunk out of a monk with San Francesco d’Apussy delusions. Here, then, are two gateposts from a small estate over the back of Collserola:

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

Bad news for Basque neo-Nazi thugs hoping to meet in remote places with Catalan wuzzocks: you may get eaten by a wolf. Examination of dead sheep and of mounds of poo - yep, that’s the romance of life as a forestry agent - suggests that there’s a young Italian male specimen loose in the Cadí-Moixeró [...]

But the cat isn’t interested.

Says a Western Yugur proverb. I don’t know if it works in reverse, but I note that the cat (who one of these days will require a name) is already asleep.

Reports the Chicago Tribune:
New Lenox’s newest cop barks, or at least understands, only a foreign tongue. So when canine officer Bear joined the force five months ago, his partner, Officer John Conroy, learned to give commands to the Czech born and bred German shepherd in his native language. “It is a bit of a twist,” [...]

Bad news: the cat has become a coke addict and has taken up snooker.

The cat has learnt how to play football. She can do sideways passes and penalty shootouts with a pencil stub and we’re now working on basic cocaine technique.

In a country in which even traffic wardens carry guns, both ERC, the party of disgraced politico Carod-Rovira, and its youth wing, JERC, like to refer to ETA as an armed organisation. Why this vagueness? A wolf and a sheep are both mammals, but it seems to me important to be able to distinguish between [...]