How Japan saw Europe (or at least how one artist did)

 Japanese pictorial map of Europe from the year 1932.

Fish and chips? Spain's Jews are the origin

 

[Illustration: Leonardo Berbesi]

"The history of the dish begins with the persecution of the Jews in the Iberian Peninsula, during the 16th century.

Many of them ended up in England, taking the fried fish with them. It was a Sephardic dish that they used to eat on Fridays.

The secret was the use of oil, which sealed the flavours, made the flour crispy and the fish very tasty.

To those islanders accustomed to lard, frying in oil seemed revolutionary…’ Later we read: ‘…A Jewish fishmonger who emigrated from Eastern Europe, named Joseph Malin, was the first to come up with the idea, in 1860, of putting fried fish and potatoes together in his store in [London's] East End…"

Found at BoT but original source is here.

6 years ago today: Video: My latest interview with ABC TV (Australia)...

6 years ago today I spoke to ABCTV (Australia) about the Barcelona terror attacks. Driven by fanatical religious extremists, a white van zig-zagged down Las Ramblas. Fourteen people were killed and more than 100 injured.

Standing in a Spanish Doorway: Video: My latest interview with ABC TV (Australia)...I talked via Skype to host Fauziah Ibrahim about the Barcelona terror attacks of 17 August 2017....

Standing in a Spanish Doorway: "You Hated Spain" (Reposted)

Standing in a Spanish Doorway: "You Hated Spain": (Ted Hughes, below) [A poem by Ted Hughes, which I dedicate to my twin-brother Matt (a poet)

Yet another ⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review of my latest book

 

Thanks for your very complimentary words, Andrew M...

"I found Brett's very personal account of his travels through Spain a moving and very rewarding read. 

His affection for the country and its peoples shines through and his encounters with the people he meets on his travels avoid caricature and shallow conclusions. 

He is clearly still discovering aspects of the country he loves and enjoying the opportunity to complete the picture."

[Read the full Amazon reader review here.]

"Salvador Dalí’s Rare 1969 Illustrations for “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Rediscovered and Resurrected"

 

       "Two masters of the fanciful and philosophical, together..."

"For more than half a century, this unusual yet organic cross-pollination of genius remained an almost mythic artifact, reserved for collectors and scholars...

Random House commissioned surrealist kingpin Salvador Dalí (May 11, 1904–January 23, 1989) to illustrate the Carroll classic for a small, exclusive edition of their book-of-the-month series. Dalí created twelve heliogravures — a frontispiece, which he signed in every copy from the edition, and one illustration for each chapter of the book."

Read more and see more of the wonderful illustrations at source here.

"Constructed Views: Stone Cut"

A captivating short documentary on Etsuro Sotoo, the Japanese immigrant stone cutter who ended up being a chief supervisor at the Sagrada Familia cathedral (still under construction) in Barcelona.

https://www.nowness.com/series/constructed-views/stone-cut-la-sagrada-familia

Video: Launching my book "Slow Travels in Unsung Spain" in Barcelona

Reading two short extracts and doing a Q and A session with an audience at Fahrenheit 451, an independent bookshop in Barcelona. Gary Gibson from Blanquerna Ramon Llull University kindly introduced me.

20 Ways to Divide Europe according to overly simplistic stereotypes...

 

Spain smuggling rubbish into Morocco

[ABDELHAK SENNA/AFP via Getty Images]

[ABDELHAK SENNA/AFP via Getty Images]

[Pic: ABDELHAK SENNA/AFP via Getty Images]

Moroccan politicians are discussing how to stop their country being a dumping ground for Spain and Global North rubbish.

This follows revelations that eight people in Spain are being investigated for trafficking 5,700 tons of plastic waste to Morocco.

Read more from source here.

Launch of my latest book (in Barcelona)

I'm happy to say I'll be launching my non-fiction book,

"Slow Travels in Unsung Spain" at this unique independent bookshop:
Fahrenheit 451

(C/- de la Ribera, 8, [El Born] BARCELONA 

[Metro: Barceloneta] 

Friday, 3Oth June, 7.00-8.00PM.

We'd love to see you there!

(Look inside the book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NJG91W7/ )

A coincidence?

On the same day that the neighbouring region's new ultra right culture Minister is installed,...at a cafe in a coastal town in Catalonia a Black man is refused service by a waiter who racially insults him. 

Anaïs Nin started her famous diary in Barcelona?

 

"In Barcelona I didn't have the impression that the absence of my father was definitive. I thought it could come at any moment. We saw his family, his parents, his grandmother...It was his homeland...".

A blog (in Catalan) on the childhood of the great writer in Barcelona.

Spanish Government Complaint Box Causes Boomerang Effect (from October 2013.)

Standing in a Spanish Doorway: Spanish Government Complaint Box Causes Boomerang ...: "The Spanish Minister of Employment and Social Security,Fátima Bañez, has launched a “complaint box” to combat workplace fraud.   ...

"Spain Welcomes Springtime With ‘Maya’ Girls"

"The festivity of the Maya comes from pagan rites and dates from the medieval age, appearing in ancient documents. It takes place every year in the beginning of May and celebrates the beginning of the spring. 

Girls between 7 and 11 years old are chosen as “Maya” and should sit still, serious and quiet for a couple of hours in altars on the street decorated with flowers and plants and afterwards they walk to the church with their family where they attend a ceremony. 

(All photos by Daniel Ochoa de Olza/AP Photo)" Source here.

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"Demand for Garraf's international schools is growing..."

News video of the school where my wife Paula teaches.

(Of course, not all the students/families there are "foreigners" because there's plenty of local Catalan/Spanish kids too.)

"These days the educational centers are already thinking about the pre-registration periods for the next school year starting in September, including the international schools in the region. These are private centers that are noticing a notable increase in demand, from families who want to send their children to school in an educational system different from the one designed by the Catalan administration. The arrival of new foreign families in Garraf is one of the factors that explain this increase."

"A cursed woman:" Jordi Corominas i Julián: Clotilde Cerdà en Mujeres Malditas

Jordi Corominas i Julián: Clotilde Cerdà en Mujeres Malditas: "A  biography of Clotilde Cerdà, multifaceted and [relatively] unknown." You can listen to it at the link above.

"Clotilde Cerdà (1861-1926) was a child prodigy, world-famous harpist, anti-slavery activist and defender of women's rights. Everything indicates that the author of the "Ensanche", Ildefons Cerdà, was not her biological father."

Let them read

The Second Spanish Republic led pedagogical missions to 7,000 towns and villages, creating 5,522 libraries with more than 600,000 books.

DRAGON: Alejandra Pizarnik / ‘I write against fear’

DRAGON: Alejandra Pizarnik / ‘I write against fear’: Alejandra Pizarnik Alejandra Pizarnik: ‘I write against fear’ Fifty years after she took her own life at age 36, Argentina pays tribute to ...

"Cubism was born in Africa" – Pablo Picasso

 

On April 8, 1973, Pablo Picasso put down the brush for the last time. 50 years later, the Spanish painter leaves behind an abundant body of work, rich in tens of thousands of paintings, engravings,...

In the early 1900s, in Europe, the era of colonial expansion was in full swing and tribal art still interested only avant-gardists such as Henri Matisse or André Derain, founders of Fauvism. Before being caught up in African know-how, Picasso first set out to discover Catalan primitive art. 

He made "a journey to the depths of Catalonia, where he discovered a medieval Iberian creation that strongly affected his technique," says Juliette Pozzo, in charge of Pablo Picasso's personal collection at the Musée national Picasso-Paris...

Negro art? Don't know! ", quipped Pablo Picasso to an art critic in 1920, in his own tone without laughter. The Iberian artist, born in 1881 in Malaga, Spain, nevertheless collected African, Oceanic, Hispanic and more broadly, extra-Western art objects. This is in any case what testifies the finds in his private collection and the images of his workshops, full of statuettes, tools, ornaments, masks, totems ...

Picasso was an experimental painter, both one of the most acclaimed and the most criticized of modern art, "for his ultra misogynistic side and very violent towards women," says Olivia Marsaud, head of visual arts at the French Institute of Senegal. 

A little prodigy of drawing from the age of 14 who "could have been one of the greatest classical artists of the twentieth century," says Gilles Plazy, one of his biographers."

Read more from source here.