Gabo and the drunks
On Tuesday at five I do a reading in the library of the University of Cartagena – whose most famous alumnus was Gabriel García Márquez – and learn from one of the Profs that there is a crypt in the… Read More
Thunderstorms and a dead dog alibi
Tuesday 4.30 a.m. William is outside the hotel with the pick-up truck for the return journey to Cartagena. This time I get to sit in the front. I must have earned the privilege somehow, or else he is… Read More
Cartagena, the Inquisition and slavery, all in a day
On my second evening in Cartagena I take a stroll around the old walled city, which despite its colonial style and nostalgic elegance is sadly heading in the same direction as every other tourist destination in the… Read More
Ricardo Blanco’s Blog
- A tsunami of starlingsI have written about this before. Driving from Palau to Castelló, across the Aiguamolls, a tsunami of starlings unfurls in the sky, and I am encompassed by their path. They wheel and return, settle in a paddock behind... Read More
- Damnable Brexit“This may be the last stage of imperialism – having appropriated everything else from its colonies, the dead empire appropriates the pain of those it has oppressed.” Fintan O’Toole, Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain Ricardo... Read More
- OaxacaWhat does Oaxaca hold in store for me? According to Mesoamerican tradition, which pays homage to Ometeotl, God of Duality, paradise has already been granted to the human race, but to accede to it personal effort is required.... Read More
- A thousand spidersIt was not that I knew her particularly well, but she knew my wife, and found it opportune to tell me, or wanted to tell someone, which is more or less the same thing, but maybe not. In any... Read More
- CloudsAs we walk the coastal path, east from Roses around the Cap de Creus, I notice that the sky is doing that thing again, the thing it does around these parts, as though clouds were instruments in a... Read More
Ricardo Blanco, Citizen of Nowhere
