Underbelly

 I was recounting our trip to Spain to our bud Sean.  Somehow I felt it apposite to explain how he guys sat in the front seat, the ladies i...

The Thracian is easily confused with the Hoplomachus Information panel in the Roman ampitheatre at Mérida , Spain.  Those of you still...

[Updated with a better crop of the picture]. It's a graffiti from wall about two streets away from Great Mosque at Córdoba in Spai...

In Bohumil Hrabal's novel I Served the King of England , there's the story (I'm working from memory here) of how the Emperor...

Thought experiment: how would the world look different today if the Latin America had been settled by Catalunyans instead of Castilians?

At the Sephardic House Jewish museum in Córdoba: --How many Jews are there in Spain today? --Oh, about 30,000. --Where are they? --Mad...

"When we were ruled by Franco we had money in the banco." Etc., but it ends with Felipe (i.e., Gonzalez?) who left office 16 ...

"It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764,as I sat musing amid the ruins of the capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singin...

sS We beguiled the time yesterday puzzling over El Greco's Burial of Count Orgaz in the San We beguiled the time yesterday puzzling ...

So I'm sitting here in Segovia listening to the thunder and to the wind whipping the canvas awning and what have we learned today, chil...

Random street notes from Madrid: Bookstores.  Others go to pub crawls and bullfights. I wind up in bookstores and I still don't get i...

I checked in at the Prado in Madrid today for the first time in 17 years and found myself spending more time than I might have expected in ...

In Spain, where the bottled blood orange juice from the Corte Inglese tastes like it just hopped off the tree.  Must be it doesn't ship...