Cruise companies don’t appear to regard original copy as an important differentiating factor.

Molly Greene describes the complex anarchy that existed between the collapse of the Mediterranean powers and the entry of northern fleets.

The Auken report to the European Parliament may be above to be scuppered by a conspiracy between Spain’s two principal mafias.

Depending on how the bathymetric data is rendered. Over at Ogle Earth.

Lunch topics:

Marianism and genital iconography, as in The Virgin Mary is a hairy vagina. Conclusion: this one smells of red herring–she actually belongs to the sun.
The inability of “artists” to fit a proper fanny and a proper face into the same screen. The three best known forerunners of Bob Guccione-style gynaecology, Courbet’s stilled life Origin [...]

So they’ve posted a report alleging Sir John Moore’s defeat by the weather, 200 years ago. It’s snowing a bit in Spain at the moment, but no signs of it turning into a repeat of 1829-30, when the Ebro froze, 1835-6, when eggs froze in their shells in Palencia, 1836-7, when it snowed on the [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Ah, he was a party man! David says that Africa stops in Murcia. It’s all relative, I guess.

Josep Pla, El quadern gris, November 6 1918:
Coromina and my brother–a chemistry student–get entangled in an endless discussion about science. Coromina attacks–to my great surprise–my brother’s rooted conviction of the absolute priority of science in any system of human knowledge. Like all anti-rationalists, Coromina creates beautiful, brilliant phrases: he says, for example, that the discovery [...]

César-Javier Palacios reports on the cyclist, shot dead by a hunter who mistook him for a boar.
When in death’s dark vale loud singing usually suffices to drive off hell’s hunters. Hunters know this too. In his romance, Count Arnaldos, hungry hawk in hand, falls prey to a sailor (love, glory or death, true or trickster? [...]

It now seems that Iceland has defaulted, apparently believing Russia will be foolish enough to attempt to protect what’s left of its cod against ETA trawlers from Bilbao. Spain is not going down that road, at least not yet, but one of the more-quoted papers on the subject (De Paoli, Hoggarth & Saporta, Cost of [...]

When the original cathedral was consecrated in 1058, it was dedicated to the Holy Cross and to St Eulalia, who on February 12 303 was put in a barrel lined with knives or glass, rolled down the hill out of Roman Barcelona, and unbreasted, crucified and decapitated near one of my favourite bars, whereupon a [...]

“Spanish climatological records reveal that in the Cold Triangle [ie Teruel, Molina de Aragón and Calamocha] there have been numerous episodes … with temperatures below -25ºC at less than 200km from the mild Mediterranean as the crow flies. [This is one demonstration of the fact] that Spain has climates, not a climate.” (Aupí, Guía del [...]

On Thursday February 29 1912, the 300-tonne Restless Rock of Tandil, Buenos Aires plunged from its extraordinary state of hillside equilibrium to a granite trinity below. The residents rebuilt it last year, and it now pulls almost as many tourists as Swanmore Pond. Unfortunately, Cairo’s cliff-edgers built on sand.

Some old photos over at the NOAA library, some new ones here. Not much of that any more. Farmed tuna doesn’t sound particularly attractive. I suppose we could always keep one in the bath.

A popular photography course, copied from a neighbourhood magazine produced by Alejandro Pérez, an enterprising Nou Barris estate agent, encountered on this walk:

I imagine the Bayeux Tapestry was planned in similar fashion.

José M Camarero@ABC: En principio, la mayoría no pensaba que lo que ardía era precisamente un avión incendiado… Pero fue la caravana de ambulancias que pasaba por delante de sus casas, en la autovía M-14, la que les puso en alerta. «Esto me huele mal», llegó a decir Manuel a su mujer. «Aquí ha pasado [...]

Re the War of Jackson’s Sneer, Colin Davies notes the presence of trolls in Spain but suggests they have still not discovered the woods and grottoes of the Royal Academy. Not so: it’s just that the RAE, for reasons that are logical but probably doomed, calls them trol.
If their behaviour is anything like that [...]

Code-swapping, rather than Gibraltar-Andalusian. This week’s instalment comments on the stateless national soap opera, maritime conflicts and confusions with Spain.