Some historical advice from an Irish perspective for Esperanza Aguirre on the pitfalls of attempting to demonstrate by symbolic means the virile and libertarian spirit of Madrid in the invented and regrettable conflict between it and doldrummed Barcelona.

A fragment from Italo Calvino’s quasi-17th century folk romance, Il visconte dimezzato/The cloven viscount, uses storks as a portent of battle. Several unconnected 2nd century Greek accounts might appear to do the same, perhaps particularly if one’s a lazy sod and doesn’t read anything but scraps of stuff on Google Books.

Bishop Gibson of Granada understands beatific bureaucracy but not tradition. Featuring a bad Vietnamese flamenco clip.

Fill in the gaps in this pasquinade on the voiceless velar fricative, which I found last night in Mesonero Romanos’ El antiguo Madrid:
En la plaza hay un cartel
Que nos dice en castellano
Que José, rey italiano,
Roba a España su dosel;
Y al leer este cartel,
Dijo una maja a su majo:
–Manolo, pon ahí abajo
Que me C….. en [...]

A not particularly serious assault on Prosper Mérimée.

Half roasted Frenchmen, some o’er Gratings Broil’d/Do mix with Spaniards in the Sea parboil’d;

Restif de la Bretonne goes one step beyond Shakespeare and says that poetry is the language of Gods and beasts, and that reason speaks in prose.

Blasco Ibáñez says that actually we have always thought “at all hours of the Mediterranean rim.”

(Even if they can’t make a decent paella.)

Between-wars texts about Zaragoza by Germans who appear never to have visited the place.

Proud English cock, limp Latin hen: the binary opposition of English and Spanish fowls as a metaphor for the contrast between growing British military might and declining Spanish power.

Kalebeul explained.

And an explanation of why “La gata sobre el tejado de zinc” is, in metallurgical-roofing terms, an inappropriate translation of “Cat on a hot tin roof”.

Our itinerary, and that of Polo Polo on his Viaje a España.

An etymological hop from kite-flying with Juan Marsé back to Concha Piquer’s greatest hit.

But where does the buck stop?

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

Dead space is newish horror survival game set on board a stricken interstellar mining ship. You play an engineer fighting a polymorphic, viral infestation which turns humans into grotesque alien monsters. Reviewing it Seth Schiesel asks:
When did fear become fun?
I’ve been thinking about that a lot as I’ve played Dead Space, the new, delectably [...]

Pleased to see that the marvellous Baldus–a vague subterranean source of inspiration for the world’s wildest walking wisness–is getting a wider hairing. I’ve read chunks of the French translation and am looking forward to the English.

Carles Miró has conducted a lightning dawn raid on the correspondence between the publisher Joan Sales and his star author Mercè Rodoreda. Sales on Terenci Moix, a late 20th century chat show lit celeb: “Young Moix is a sadoleninist, one of those who consider that today simple homosexuality is nothing but a joke, that anything [...]