Drinking, driving, cursing.

At Giseno, Lago di Como.

Assuming RW’s liver survives the test.

A British soldier’s hazy recollections of civil war in Portugal.

Where are the heaving (crowds of) drunks of yesteryear?

A Spanish wine company is struggling with machinery and branding.

Check out the excellent Justin’s review over at Catavino, which I can second, having got moderately wasted there on a cycle trip. (I don’t link much to Catavino because I have a basic distrust of wine reviews: if you liked it that much, how come you can remember anything about it?)

Click through to post view.

African-ish bands have been the talk of Andalusian ports since Cervantes. In 1935 the carnival association Orquesta Senegalesa didn’t win any prizes with this song:
Aquí está la Orquesta Senegalesa
que tocamos las notas con gran limpieza,
llegamos desde Londres en un tranvía
a visitar la tierra de la alegría.
Hemos visto mujeres a cual más bellas
y un vino blanco [...]

And, judging by the envious comments on Facebook, possibly the first in Southeast Asia:

One of the mysteries of globalisation is that I spend quite a lot of time at the moment writing for Chinese exporters. The first foreign I learnt as a kid was fragments of Cantonese. Maybe I’ll get a chance to check out [...]

Ah! “Oranges, golden oranges of Spain, the daughters of the sun!” on a promo disc intermediated by David Noades.
The campaign was, according to this auction site, actually late 1960s and featured some revolting children and serving suggestions on the inside cover and some rather alarming dwarves on the outside:

… but here anyway is Arturo Barea, [...]

Processing is underway into diverse preserves of the considerable quantities of blackberries and figs gathered this afternoon with la Primitiva Hermandad de la Primera Sueca on a variant of this walk. Some of the blackberries are being turned into liquor, and I found this whilst fishing around for a more unsuitable recipe:
A very laughable story [...]

“Velen verzeggen Schiedam, maar sluiten dadelijk een verbond met Barcelona.” Is it about drinkers swearing by Dutch gin/jenever, only to turn to Spanish wine and brandy?

Bar Los Baskos on Ramelleres, Barcelona:

The interior is a curious clash of old CNT/anarchist graphics with neo-fascist skinhead children. I’m not particularly fond of the one or the other, but I quite like the bar. I suppose, not being Spanish, that I could buy it and turn it into a Hayek shrine. Not sure how [...]

“I think the sherry trade could learn a lot from their cousins in Portugal. But of course that’s only if the sherry trade sees any benefit in visitors to their bodegas. I often wonder if they really do.” It’s the old Spanish paradox of shops whose owners seem prepared to go to quite extraordinary lengths [...]

B forgot one in the freezer. I quite like the redesign. Opening it was mildly implosive, nothing like as interesting as a butane canister explosion.

Re John Chappell’s smack toddler, here’s Thomas COW from Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland singing “Bottle take effect” by Jim Reeves:

There’s a photo out there somewhere of my father helping me drink Guinness out of a bottle, aged 3. I think we’ll be able to pull statute of limitations on that one.
(Via Clinton McClung [...]

Our entrance is barred by a little man with a beret and a moustache:
–You know this isn’t a bar?
–Of course!
–No problem then, I’ll get the landlady.
Later, in conversation with the landlady:
–Aren’t you worried by the EU ban on making your own vermouth?
–If this isn’t a bar then why the fuck would we be making our [...]

The mayor of Agón, Aragón, “sick of extreme nationalism”, on the transfer of water from the Ebro to Barcelona. The underlying point being made by him and others in this, the latest episode in the Iberian Water Wars, is actually fair enough: aware of declining water resources, Barcelona’s “eco-warrior” council planned for unsustainable growth in [...]

Wood ants descending rapidly en masse from a Quercus ilex on Montseny at the onset of a sharp shower:

Having spent several decades standing under trees waiting for the rain to stop, it is my firm belief that small ants do not flee from the rain as do big ones, although their level of activity [...]