The census of Floridablanca is considered the first Spanish census of population usinf modern statistics techniques. The total population counted was 10,268,110 with an average density of 22.7 hab/km2. It was produced under the reign of Charles III, between 1785 and 1787. Note, the relatively low density of Madrid and surprisingly, Pontevedra with the highest density.
I love the photobook by Jordi Bernadó called Welcome to Espaiñ. Bernadó paints a surreal, superficial and satirical view of Spanish landscapes, often reminicent of the American mid-west.
Humourous and audacious his images get the viewer inside an unreal, or too real, spanish landscape. Fiction becomes true and reality blurs into phantasmagorical. Bernadó’s eye and acumen reveal the anecdotical in each photograph and a non-recognizable gaze of Spain comes out. It’s a different Spain. It’s Calderón de la Barca (La vida es sueño), Goya, Cervantes, Gondry…it’s an architect’s vision and pun, a great traveller’s look on his country. After portraying the most important urban settlements worldwide and being internationally featured, Bernadó hit the mark with his homeland. Ymag
Although Orsen Welles died in California, his ashes are buried in an old well covered by flowers, within the rural property of his friend the retired bullfighter Antonio Ordonez, in Ronda, Spain, where he spent many months. Photo from here
One of the last acts of the Spanish Civil War was the evacuation from the port of Alicante of 2,683 republicans on board the British coal-ship, the Stanbrook. This was the last ship to leave Spain before the end of the Spanish Civil War, and was captained by a Welshman Archibald Dickson. Dickson was the only captain of the numerous ships in the harbour to brave the Nazi blockade. Thousands more people trying desperately to escape were left stranded. awaiting their fate at the hands of Franco’s army. The ship was dreadfully overcrowded and survivors remember the fear of the u-boats during the crossing to Oran, Algeria. When they arrived, the French authorities refused Dickson permission to moor, but had to relent when he threatened to crash into the harborside. The refugees had to wait three months before they were allowed to disembark, from where they were taken to a concentration camp (in the pre-Nazi sense of the word) where many would die. Dickson died several months after the evacuation when the Stanbrook was hit by a torpedo from a u-boat.
La Cucaracha has this graphic contemporary account of the situation in Alicante, though there is no mention of the Stanbrook.
Around 50.000 refugees, Republican soldiers and officials, leftist intellectuals, writers, artists, often with their families, are arriving in Valencia and Alicante. Rumors are that French ships, or even the Republican fleet, will take the refugees to safety.
Casado and his family are taken aboard the British battle cruiser Galeata, but most refugees are stuck in the ports.
15.000 refugees are on the pier of the port in Alicante. The pier is so crowded, that in some parts there is no place to sit down, the people standing for hours, not able to move back or forth. Italian troops occupy the city, except the port . Many refugees have lost all hope and commit suicide, some army officers point their guns to themselves and shoot, other using knifes or razor blades to open their pulse veins. One soldier cuts his own throat in the midst of the crowd.
Then a battle ship is entering the port, bringing movement into the masses on the port. The promised ships? But it is a Fascist battle ship, ordering over loudspeakers to clear the port in 30 Minutes and surrender to the waiting troops at the port entrance. Everybody still carrying weapons will be shot dead on the spot. Nobody moves. After 30 minutes the machine guns of the ship fire warning shots over the heads of the refugees. Now they move, dropping their weapons and often also their belongings into the sea. These people know they are standing on the black lists of the Fascists, that they will be most certainly killed. A second wave of suicides take place, some people jump into the water and drown. Leftist journalist Eduardo de Guzman describes later a scene he witnessed: Mariano Vinuales, commissar of the 28th Division, and Maximo Franco, commander of the 12th brigade, each others left hand in a firm grip, shoot themselves in the head. They fall slowly to the ground, still holding their hands. Somebody next to Guzman says: “Soon we will envy the dead!”.
The Fascists at the port entrance divide the refugees into three groups: men, women and children. Around 200 men are killed, the other men are brought to the concentration camp at Albatera, where torturing and more killing takes place.
I love this page Etymologically Speaking…with its curious list origins of English, French, German and Spanish words. Shame he or she hasn’t written any more.
This is what it says about cerveza:
This term, which means “beer” in Spanish, originally came from the medieval French word cervoise. For its part, the French term origianlly stemmed from the Gallo-Roman (that is, ancient French-Latin dialect) word cerevisia, which was used in honor of Ceres, the Roman goddess of the harvest. It is interesting to note that just about the time that the Spanish were adopting the term cerveza (aroung 1482), the French started to drop cervoise in favor of the term biere– from the Germanic term Bier (from the Latin biber, “to drink”), which was the term that was more popular in northern Europe, where the climate was more favorable to the production of the grains that were used to make the beverage. [(A footnote: the reader might be wondering what term was used in Spain before the adoption of cerveza. Before 1482, the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula had used the completely-unrelated ancient Iberian word ceria or celia, meaning "fermented wheat.")(Footnote #2: The English term ale comes from the Scandinavian term for beer, oel. Although oel collectively refers to all types of beer, you beer purists out there know that the English term ale came to refer only to beer produced using the "top" fermentation process. Beer produced using the "bottom" fermentation process is called lager.)].
After being captured by the English in 1708 during the War of the Spanish Succession, Menorca became, with the occasional break, an English possession. until it was finally ceded back to Spain under the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. The British influence can still be seen in some of the architecture with elements such as sash windows. known locally as boinders. Another English influence is gin. It was initially produced to satisfy the demands of British troops but eventually the local population took a taste to it, modifying the drink slightly with their own infusion of Mediterranean herbs. Today it is both popular as a drink and as a sign of their cultural identity. Xoriguer (meaning Kestrel) is the most popular brand.
Menorquí, a variant of Catalan, still retains a few English loan words from the occupation such as “grevi” (gravy - sauce), “xumaquer” (shoemaker), the aforesaid “boinder”, xoc” (chak) and “sarg” (bully) from sergeant, who no doubt used to throw their weight around. I was told by a Menorcan friend that when she was a little girl she used to play a game of cards with her grandmother, one of the rules of which involved having to count to ten in English in a Menorcan accent.
The town of Ea, in Vizcaya, the Basque Country, holds the honour of being the shortest place name in Spain. The town takes its name from the river which runs through it.
Anís del Mono is the trade-mark of a classic Spanish anisette liqueur, the name meaning “The Monkey’s Anisette.” The drink is strongly flavoured with aniseed, and is often taken in coffee as a cajarillo de anis. It is distilled in Badalona, next to Barcelona, in its beachside factory. The iconic bottle design features the face of a monkey-like Charles Darwin, used since 1902. It is unsure whether the original idea was to discredit Darwin or just take advantage of the ensuing contemporary debate.
La primera defiende que Bosch, notario y afamado empresario, aprovechó el debate que suscitaban las teorías de Darwin para publicitar su marca como la más evolucionada; otros defienden que se buscaba desacreditar al científico. Sea como fuera, lo cierto es que la visita a la fábrica del Anís refinado Vicente Bosch, más conocido como Anís del Mono, deja hoy un muy buen sabor de boca. El Pais
Note: Anis del mono was originally produced in 1904 under the trade-mark name Anís del Juliano or “Julian’s Anisette.”
A number of Spanish artists have paid testament to the superb design of the bottle.
Juan Gris painted this work in 1914 entitled Anis del Mono.
And Picasso painted in 1915 Bottle of Anís del Mono, Wineglass and Playing Card
Characters in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Hills Like White Elephants drink and discuss Anís del Toro—’Bull’s Anisette’, clearly the bullfight-loving Hemingway’s pun or joke on the original.
The girl looked at the bead curtain. ‘They’ve painted something on it,’ she said. ‘What does it say?’
‘Anis del Toro. It’s a drink.’
‘Could we try it?’
The man called ‘Listen’ through the curtain. The woman came out from the bar.
‘Four reales.’ ‘We want two Anis del Toro.’
‘With water?’
‘Do you want it with water?’
‘I don’t know,’ the girl said. ‘Is it good with water?’
‘It’s all right.’
‘You want them with water?’ asked the woman.
‘Yes, with water.’
‘It tastes like liquorice,’ the girl said and put the glass down.
‘That’s the way with everything.’
‘Yes,’ said the girl. ‘Everything tastes of liquorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.’
Mojácar used to be a town of around 6,000 people in as far back as 1870. It maintained this number of inhabitants until round about 1900 when, slowly, numbers began to fall, speeding its descent in the 1930s. Through the various local vicissitudes of the drop in the local water-table, the end of the de-forestation, a peculiar plague of locusts in 1901, the end of the mines in the 1920s and the troubled times of the Civil War, the area in general eventually became depopulated with mass emigrations to Barcelona, Algeria, Germany and even Argentina, and Mojácar itself began its long descent into what was, by 1960, a moribund village of just 600 souls. Read complete post on Spanish Shilling
Paddy Woodworth on the Basque Country
Paddy Woodworth is an Irish reporter who has lived and worked in the Basque Country. His book The Basque Country: a cultural history, was described by the Irish Times as a terrific modern introduction to the Basque Country… succeeds in showing us the complexities of the Basque struggle for identity”
Here’s an the introduction from his book from his website.
“The Basque Country has had more than its fair share of stereotypes thrust upon it. The Basques have sometimes resisted this typecasting, but they have not been shy about making their own contributions, some as extravagant as any foreigner’s, to stock images of their homeland.
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Tomato trek I thought this cartoon strip was amusing. “Since a tomato leaves its branch of the plant in one of the hundreds of greenhouses from Almeria, until a consumer in Madrid take it into its meal, the price “grows” by 500% respect to the price given to the farmer”.
The roots of flamenco Interesting article in The Guardian on the roots of flamenco.
Forget the Hollywood image – flamenco has deep-rooted social and political resonances that cross culture and genre Read
Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, (Poza de la Sal, March 14, 1928), the great Spanish naturalist and broadcaster, died 30 years ago today. He was killed in a helicopter accident while filming in Alaska on his birthday March 14, 1980. He was an expert in falconry and animal behavior and spent many years studying wolves, but [...]
I came across this rather harrowing photo in a book review of Historie de l’ours dans les Pyrénées in El Pireneo Digital. It was taken in 1928 after a hunt in Urdós, Valle de Aspe across the border in France. In 1935, some 200 bears still survived in the Pyrenees and Pre-Pyrenees. The last bear [...]
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I enjoyed this potted history of Mojácar:
Paddy Woodworth i