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 […]

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.)

Sylvain Gouguenheim’s ‘“Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel” (Editions du Seuil), while not contending there is an ongoing clash of civilizations, makes the case that Islam was impermeable to much of Greek thought, that the Arab world’s initial translations of it to Latin were not so much the work of “Islam” but of Aramaeans and Christian Arabs, […]

I didn’t know they served frankfurters in Bocatta. Someone says it’s in Galicia. I hope no Galician bloggers are involved.

Coverage of the Barcelona water crisis in yesterday’s Vanguardia was a standard victimist litany:

Our consumption per capita is low compared to other cities.
We have reduced consumption per capita significantly
It is like SO unfair that we’re all going to have to roll around in sand to get clean this summer.

I think the comparative stats quoted are […]

German sausages commonly arouse Spanish bar owners to orthographical orgasm, but this is perhaps the most beautiful, and at first sight most puzzling spelling of Frankfurt in the peninsula:

No time to inquire her ancestry of the lady at this magnificent tapas bar in the Creueta del Coll park, Barcelona, but one suspects the Dread Hand […]

They don’t screw around with it like the brand marketeers do. Fact #6 from a good post by Ryan Opaz helps us understand why a sizeable proportion of new Spanish wine is toxic piss: “Oak aged wines that come in under 10euros/dollars/pounds are 9.9 times out of ten flavored with chips/oak slats/oak tea bags. ‘Aged […]

They think that patxaran is wine. (Link via JPQ)

A little experiment. Please tell me:

Bar / restaurant / hotel name
Street address, including number
Price (if there are different prices for bar/table/terrace, please specify)
Any other comments

Responses for as many establishments as you want:

Your email:

Bar name:

Bar address:

Café con leche price:

Comments:

This example of hostelries unable to spell their own name is rather interesting because of the two signs Bar Morrisson is clearly older than Bar Morryssom. Does this mark a decline in Spanish literacy–they used to be able to spell it–or are they merely trying to please various orthographical markets? (Background: Spanish speakers find it […]

The window display is so abundant that it’s difficult to see inside, so it might have been the butcher himself singing this morning in the shop at Asturias 47, Gracia, Barcelona.

Some British pubs take their French rather literally:

Fellow hippies will know that if you stack your chips right on the day of the winter solstice and then chant a magic spell, the sun’s rays will fall in such a way as to create a shadow image of pretty much whichever megalithic construction you fancy.

We’ve been outed by a couple of publications, so here’s the why/where/when for any readers of this blog who want to come along:
La Hermandad “Pippi Kortkjol” invita a amigos, compañeros, y luchadores de anteriores y actuales jornadas a participar en la Romería Tradicional de La Primera Sueca, que este año se realizará el día sábado […]

Mona:

(I once met a Tangier man who claimed to own a Barbary ape called Lisa, but let’s not go there, or here either.)
Copywriters have moved on since Darwin was alleged to have said, “It’s the best, science says so and I’m not lying”:

I use the sweet version of Anis del Mono in pastry cooking. Drinking […]

Blurb for show we went to by mistake yesterday at L’Antic Teatre:
The creation of the spectacle “Madamas Butterflys” takes as a point of item the Puccini’s opera, but not to recreate it but to penetrate into the behaviors that they lead to a spiritual death and its posterior renaissance. ” Madamas Butterflys ” it wants […]

Re this, some results. The comments in Dutch are grossly libellous, so don’t even try to translate them. I finally managed to get the mitre on my head–Spanish bishops don’t have much between their ears–but the only way the beard would stay on was to jam it over my nose with half of it in […]

This old bar in Badalona appears to be named after someone who doesn’t have a second surname or a business partner (there’s no room for a second word, so it can’t have been painted out) but who uses the conjunction anyway. I don’t see what’s wrong with being a brazen lover of conjunctions. They are […]

Leoncio Urabayen (La tierra humanizada, 1949) says that the dung beetle (escarabajo pelotero) is to a hive of bees as the pyramids are to the Empire State. This is unfair:

“The American Institute of Biological Sciences reports that dung beetles save the United States cattle industry an estimated US$380 million annually through burying above-ground livestock […]

It’s all about flowerpots, says D the photographer and cook. I think the Romans did something similar. So it’s definitely OK.

Update: This is my flowerpot, actually a glazed Moroccan cookpot (you put the meat on the bottom and the veg on top). D says I may need to drill a whole in the top using […]

In Gracia, on the corner of Fraternitat and Tordera.
From outside it used to appear a filthy hole, with an elderly couple behind the bar and a couple of clients ripe for the taxidermist. Inside, round to the right, was a secret dining area, with yellow walls, a couple of exceptionally bad paintings, and the cheery […]

Demanding a paella of the Moderates, in today’s entry over at the new libro verde. Sequel: a week later, with defeat imminent, the same people sang, “Now it’s us in the frying pan.” (The 1843 Jamancia, from jamar, to eat, is one of Barcelona’s forgotten revolutions. Only a fool or a saint would attempt to […]

The name is actually rather interesting. There’s a rule in standard Spanish that says that y is substituted by e before words beginning with i or hi, except when y forms the beginning of an exclamation or question, and except before words beginning with y or hie. However, I’ve never heard of a corresponding rule […]

The Catalan public authorities have a well-publicised horror of signs using Spanish, but the language police don’t seem to have found this one yet, which, in an exemplary display of bilingualism, has the name in both standard Spanish (Los Cuñados, The Siblings-in-Law) and one of the southern dialects (Los Cuñaos):

I’ve always kind of wondered whether this is kind of tribute to blue jeans/bleu de Gênes, but I’ve never had the courage to ask, mainly because if I’m wrong they’re going to think I’m fucking crazy.

Ooh, wouldn’t one like to be on the committee of geologists and historians advising which villages (French only, of course: what else is the EU about?) get to be added to the list of champagne producers! Although you’ve got to be slightly crazy to drink some of the donkey piss turned out by the French, […]

Re new figures on the consequences of binge drinking in England: J&A tell that the performance of the British in Andorra since the 80s has been so impressive that the first test performed on all subjects of HM admitted to hospital there is a liver scan.

“The main reason you like my boyfriend is because he feeds you large quantities of grilled lamb, and the main reason my dog likes you is because you give her the bones.” Can’t see what’s wrong with that. I hope my eyes don’t go as dazed and watery as the dog’s.

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 […]

Charles Butler is doing some really interesting work down in Jaén. Check out the interview he did with an enterprising manufacturer called José Vico in Orcera. Orcera is a macho, conservative town that I once found to be distinctly scary, but Mr Vico is marketing a range of personal care products including a “lip balm, […]

The rotten greens and browns and the fetid flesh lighting at Mokkabon, Ghent have something of a Zola drowning about them. Tutors at the local bad drawing school are doubtless deluged with impressions of its decaying woodwork and mirrors. The coffee is good, and to the delight of exactly half the party the rather lovely […]

Over at Michael Gilleland’s place. I am laid low by village water, which comes out of the hill unpurified, which is fine, but which ravages stomachs lacking the correct ecology of flora and fauna, which is tough on me and even tougher on the porcelain. Beware the great god Fart under such circumstances.

For a while it sounded like Morse machine being boiled alive, something which probably hasn’t happened for quite a long time, and for sure it’s a terrible thing to be doing anyway. (You may need to turn up the sound. I’m using YouTube and accepting its lack of editing facilities because, like various other […]

A rebujito is a dry sherry (manzanilla, fino) or occasionally a white wine to which fizz (lemonades, …) has been added, typically in a ratio of 1:2, in order to give you a head-start on the alcohol. This is the lite version of whichever British drink it is that has you knock back a third […]

El Niño de Tetuán singing fandangos (MP3s or him and a superb selection of others). We’re probably talking early 1930s, but I don’t know where–Seville or Jerez seems more likely than Tetuan :-):
A esa liebre no tirarle
cazaores de la sierra
a esa liebra no tirarle
porque está haciendo en la tierra
madriguera pa ser madre
y es sagrao lo […]

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 […]

Genetic data doesn’t actually suggest that the Turks brought it with them and then rebranded themselves as Etruscans in order to sell into European markets.

Someone must be able to do better than this.

This is the anjova (Pomatomus saltatrix) caught off Galicia. According to Europa Press, fisherman Pablo Oliver got in touch with the Spanish National Research Council/Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas and the Institute of Oceanography/Instituto Oceanográfico to tell them of his discovery and to enquire as to why this fish was in waters outside its known […]

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 […]