It’s barrel-scraping time when the comments over at El país are smarter than the article. Check out Dienekes for a bit of common sense.

A journey through the remains of Expo 92. At least it hasn’t all been stolen, as tended to happen to unguarded buildings in Andalusia during the construction boom.

It would be Å vankmajer-nice to think that the wide-scale conversion of Spanish country restaurants into brothels is the logical, albeit unexpected consequence of a social craze for abandoning what is feared to be cultural in favour of what is assumed to be natural. However, the replacement of cooks by pimps means that we have not [...]

Newland v Horsman, 1681: “thereupon Dalmasie appealed to a superior Court; then Dalmasie removed the Appeal on Pretence of Preventing several Appeals; the Master finding his Freight lodged so that he could not have it till the Cause was heard in the highest Court, which was not like to be in some Years Time, comes [...]

Check out this substantial bombshell being chucked at the Spanish establishment at all levels and in all territories for its collective refusal to confront (indeed for its participation in) the flagrant, widespread, long-term abuse of individual property rights. But will the threat of a Bulgarian-style loss of European funds to the common weal be sufficient [...]

Over at Crónica Verde, about the ongoing destruction by the Andalusian PSOE of the Doñana National Park. This is quite different from the abuse of natural space during the dictatorship because (all together now!) Franco was of the right, while Chaves is of the left, and the people’s friend to boot.

Other old media may be bolder liars, but you can always rely on ABC for the grossest cheese, as in this drooling retrowank re Felipe González’s new bit. How can you write a thing like that, even if it is a double entendre? Or am I just too much of a curious puritan?

I thought ETA’s man on the run had lost it when he went AWOL from a Subject Nation of an Evil Empire with generally excellent weather to a Subject Nation of an Evil Empire where it never bloody stops raining, just in time for winter. But then it started snowing across northern Spain, and even [...]

Check out the excellent Mr Butler on how our “socialist” government is handing over, more or less for free, a substantial stake in a nominally Spanish energy business to a Russian oil business with allegedly major mafia participation in order to save a big construction company and hence rescue the domestic financial sector from overt [...]

IT a profession for generally peaceful, libertarian innovators sans frontières? Not in Andalusia, where they’re demonstrating with the ultimate goal of excluding those without the correct government diploma. The OECD wants flexible labour markets. Spain wants guilds. Yet I’m sure this kind of thing must happen somewhere else–Gordimer would surely have had some if there’d [...]

CC says that Telva says that Jaume Plensa is simply panting to design some sets for Verdi’s Macbetch. I blame Telva’s legions of copy editors this time–they get Toulouse wrong too–but there’s no reason why not: “So this is the story of Lady Macbitch and her husband. The Queen stimulates herself with the props of [...]

Geo-sensitive porn chat ads cope as well with multi-key characters as the average wanker. I doubt not that Cornell University is a chattering of cheeky chicas, but at this time of year the weather’s rather better in Cornellá, Barcelona. Not that I’m in Cornellà, but you get the picture, and if you don’t then I [...]

For a long time I’ve avoided the centre of town, where the keywords are minuscule and mediocre, but even in quieter districts it’s difficult to find a decent traditional menu for a sensible price. Ca la Flor (Secretari Coloma 10, metro Joanic) is just the job: €8.50 for three generous home-cooked courses with free-flowing booze, [...]

PATIO ANDALUZ, conde del asalto 120, PRESENTS SPANISH FOLKLORE if you want to see the come along BEAUTIFUL GIRL’S will sing an dance for you… slow prices. A human adboard, but no pictures of US sailors sloping off into alleys with Spanish prostitutes on the 6th Fleet’s historic visit in 1952, although Bagdad was the [...]

Increasingly huge on the net, but whose script/voice is it? (Via Josep Tarrés. More on “Funiculì, funiculà” some other day.)

Seven years on and Spanish barmen still haven’t learned to love those damn eros ueros:

Perhaps the shame this induces will send Trichet cap in hand to Threadneedle Street to apply to the Old Lady for admission. Perhaps not.
(Thanks to El Ciruco, who is holding out for more than a share in Google Ads)

BA’s Highlife mag goes lowlife: “After 40 years of mass tourism, Torremolinos continues to evolve and, away from the coast, it’s a bustling Andalucian town. The high-rise 1950s and 1960s hotels are now admired by fashionable architects. The campaign to make it a Unesco World Heritage site begins here.” I’ve been going to Benidorm for [...]

A tress stress law would have finished off ETA ages back.

“Kraus was perfectly capable of using ‘feuilletonism’ without anti-Semitic undertones.”

And I didn’t blink. Actually in this context it means something like “No one gives a toss about the Statute” and refers to the complete absence of the Catalan government during ongoing debates, about which indeed no one gives a toss, but which are still apparently broadcast live on two out of the four screens [...]