A malfunction of the public address system produces a rather pleasing strobe:

At the end of this clip, a crude example of the wagon wheel effect, caused by what the brain, fooled by the camera, takes to be a succession of evenly spaced, identical Quercus ilex:

More educational train journeys here.

Being Barcelona Council’s corporativist scheme to marginalise private bike ownership and bike shops:

59euros is going round chaining random stuff to lampposts in protest at the council’s policy minimising facilities for non-council bikes and then removing perfectly roadworthy examples from the streets to make way for yet more council bikes and illegally parked motorbikes. Saltada Popular [...]

Shite so cheesy it’s amazing the BBC didn’t beat PBS to it:

(Yes, head cheese, but shite cheese or cheese shite, probably not.)

–¡Alfonso primero!
–¡Alfonso XIII!
Probably one of those time-space-specific things. Alfonso XIII strikes me as an infinitely superior as far as witless losers go, but I wasn’t there at the time.

I humbly draw your attention to a new minisite–fear of public shame may help me get round to doing it. Meanwhile the Barcelona historical almanac continues to progress, although the timeline and feed and various other stuff need fixing.

Expedición de Catalanes y Aragoneses al Oriente:
Fué batalla muy terrible y sangrienta, y duró mas el alcance y el matar, que el vencimiento; porque en siendo muerto el Duque, y empantanadas las primeras tropas de la caballería, hubo gran desorden en lo restante del exército enemigo, con que fué facil el rompelle. Ganada tan señalada [...]

Actually Ludwig Hilberseimer, Entwurf für eine Hochhausstadt/Design for a high-rise city (1924). Hitler exported idealistic architects rather than bombs to the US. Hilberseimer ran the Chicago planning department for a while, and they and other public institutions have spent the last ten years tearing down projects built by him and other Bauhaus luminaries.
Enthusiasm in [...]

Mr Driver emerges from his lair and, after a brief conversation re our respective employment, says, “There’s half an hour to go before we leave, so why don’t I show you round town?” A rather attractive blonde is left standing, but 50 yards later Mr Driver’s antennae tell him that a slightly less attractive blonde/brunette [...]

Whirling brooms sweep bits of newspaper into a vacuum zone under the truck, whence they are pumped to the bin:

Driving lesson:

“Carry on my wayward son,” snapped on the beach in San Adrián del Besós. Check the club blog. I don’t know who authored the lyrics.

It hasn’t rained very much in Barcelona for quite a long time. You can see the filth awaiting this Renfe train as it passes the Fecsa power station heading south over the Besós.

If learner drivers get subsidies in order that they may sooner screw up our living environment, why shouldn’t we cyclists get a new bike for free?
[
Patricia is apparently setting off shortly to cycle from Irún in the north to Tarifa in the south. Um, it's snowing all across the north at the moment.
I [...]

Mal aparcado posts photos of absurd and illegal parking. There are often so many cars and scooters parked on the pavements in Barcelona that the only place left to walk is the road. Barcelona shots include a nice one of three Mosso-mobiles illegally parked nose-to-tail to go snacking in a bar. Anecdote: The other day [...]

Nerpio is a truly astonishing place, something of a contemporary Las Hurdes, particularly on a Saturday night.

My feedreader’s having problems with diacritics, so LaVa says: El coche de Lady Di pudo haber chocado con otro “veh?culo grande”. Don’t think the Pharaoh of Alexandria’s tried that one yet.

Barcelona’s biggest flea market is relatively well policed, so most bikes and other stolen goods end up in unofficial markets on street corners across town. This rare bird, a lady’s Juncker originally purchased from Engelenwyck in Maastricht, was being sold this morning at the Encantes:

You can tell it’s stolen because while the the bike and [...]

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 [...]

A young Latino with a moderately loud blaster gets on at Sant Andreu. I’m trying to talk to people, so I’m grateful when a Latino security guard comes through the carriage just after Torre de Baró. He walks over to the young guy, taps him on the shoulder, motions him to turn UP the sound, [...]

I recently had lunch with a Huescan entrepreneur who sold his dad’s cows in the 50s to buy a car, but this is ridiculous.
[
Update: D confirms that Srecko Djordjevic is not an anagram of for example "jive jerks cod cord" and points out that he has form:

A man chopped his own penis off with a [...]

Like Antonio Navarro he was steering with his mouth when detained. Apparently Chang-hyun Choi is going round the world, so presumably his brothel and beer budget is bigger than Antonio’s.
(A kind correspondent points out the practice of bed racing in Germany. However, and surprisingly, given the sophistication of the German car industry, these are [...]

Full points to Mr Antonio Navarro, who wanted nothing more than a peaceful beer in a brothel. (Via Absurd Diari) (I am saving my commas for a more appreciative audience.)

Improvised Spanish village street sign.

Andrew Scull digs up and burns Foucault in the TLS:
Foucault’s account of the medieval period fares no better in the light of modern scholarship. Its central image is of “the ship of fools”, laden with its cargo of mad souls in search of their reason, floating down the liminal spaces of feudal Europe. It is [...]

The internet cafe I’m working from won’t let me see the video, but apparently it features the glistening thighs of Jeroen, chief engineer at the excellent Bike-Tech in Gracia.

Great Lord Bus SL, from Cerdanyola del Vallès. Great lords may travel by palanquin, phaeton or Pullman, as well as on occasion by tumbril, but they don’t do buses, even when visiting casinos.

Not many people know this, but apparently (background) he went up to his host Patijn and demanded something that better reflected France’s phenomenal contribution to European society. “What kind of thing had you got in mind?” asked the mayor. “Well,” said Chirac, who had noted with envy the PR points scored by Mitterrand with the [...]

Dave has kindly sent me the URL of the online version of a superb book packed with brilliant photos, The story of the Tour de France by Bill and Carol McGann, who in their spare time run Torelli, a Californian racing gear import business. Dave liked the blinding of Honoré Barthélémy story quoted in the [...]

The excellent Catavino is upset that the authorities want to tarmac over 100 hectares of vineyards in the Duero. I’m a bit more blasé: the Spanish only buy their own product because the Chinese don’t make it cheaper, and I cherish little hope for green open spaces in a country where the most popular form [...]

RMF over at Fum i estalzí has the lowdown, with before and after pics, on the death of a camel (or is it a dromedary?) at Ataturk International Airport. Grey Wolf would not have been chuffed. (More on Google in English.)

I’m not a big fan of his writing, but this is cool. Once somewhere similar I used to walk to work to burn off beer and pizza reserves and ended up going cross-country, cross ditch and thru hedge, to avoid car-bound colleagues who would stop and ask if I was OK.

Hadn’t seen this one.

We get round Barcelona faster than most motorists and we’re in much better physical condition to be nasty to nasty people, break off their wing mirrors and spit through their windows. The fat, useless coppers are the one’s who ride scooters, so update your stereotypes, Dani Sirera.

Thanks to the still blog-less Dave for the link.

There’s a piece on Barcelona pickpockets by Laura Nicolás over at Avui (MT English here–don’t worry, they’re not actually stealing postmen). I don’t often use the metro, but my impression is that the police are considerably over-exaggerating their success, and that the problem is actually increasing.
Metro Line 5 isn’t hugely popular with thieves, but the [...]

I’ve cycled south from Albacete via Yeste twice. On both occasions it would have been really nice to have had a direct road or track from Parolis / Parolix to Los Arroyos, but there just isn’t one, whatever all the maps say. The road from Miller up to the sierra does exist, but those extra [...]

I rather like Barcelona’s pneumatic waste disposal systems, mainly for the pretentious reason that they provide a principally non-organic analogue to the principally organic waste systems wandering around upstairs on their hind legs. Although pneumatic systems are still to be seen, whooshing bundles of banknotes away from our grubby mitts in supermarkets and banks, they [...]

Apparently not, but I don’t like it one bit.

Ray Girvan has found a rather special car lease site. I particularly enjoyed her robust views on the FT. If only she’d start doing bikes.

I did my first Follow The Baldie wheelchair outing the other day without anyone getting killed or alarmingly drunk. I think this makes me the first walking provider in Catalonia to cater for this market, and all without a cent of public money. (I used this The Ramblers limited mobility info as a starting point [...]

I once cycled over the Dutch border into Germany wearing a ballgown and was quite fiercely stoned by small children, so this study by Ian Walker may not provide a panacea to our problems.