# Hispanic History and Traditions



## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 6, 2020)

Hello. If you have seen my prior posts you will know two things. First is that I am a verbose motherfucker who loves his historical comparisons. Second is that I am from Cadiz. These two things combined lead me to leave some autistic historical rants on my explanations, most of which are about Spain. I was starting to consider making proper explanations of certain events so I could link to them instead of repeating myself in “smaller” rants, but honestly I am lazy and also didn’t know this forum really did allow for this stuff. And then I saw this:



TaimuRadiu said:


> I can't be the only one who wants to hear more tales of the Spanish Civil War. Make a Deep Thoughts thread, maybe?



So yeah. That’s exactly what I’m doing here. Only I’m not just gonna quote the civil war, I do have a lot of stories from that, but I also have a lot of stories from other time periods, and I also have tales which happen over long periods of time including important notes during the civil war, such will be my first post outside of this OP itself as you’ll see. I am a “fuckup” connoisseur as it may, specially relating to military fuckups, so I hope you enjoy these tales of misfortune and general ineptitude as much as I do. Also, after consideration I decided to limit the area to hispanic countries. No real reason for it and "hispanic" is a pretty maleable term anyway but I thought it'd be fun that way. For the record at some point I wondered if I should just leave it open for ALL historical anecdotes so we could talk about some really funny military fuckups abroad but I decided that might be casting too wide a net, so if you want stories about your country make your own damned thread! Please do, some foreign historical fuckups are legendary. That aside, if you have good anecdotes about hispanic history, feel free to add them. If you want a specific event or tradition explained, feel free to ask, and basically just in general feel free to leave any input. Hell really I might update the OP to take out the area limit too if no one makes other threads and people want to add stories about foreign stuff.

As you’ll soon see the objective of this thread, at least for me, will be to leave some autistically detailed explanations of events and phenomena related to History in a slightly mocking tone, and my next post will exemplify why I am choosing this tone, I hope. So that said. I’ll be using the rest of this specific post to add links to each story with a 1 word or 1 sentence description for ease of navigation, which I am aware means I’m likely to double post unless someone manages to fit in a comment while I am uploading images and formatting, so excuse the double post, as I shall bid you adieu for now.



Spoiler: Links to the different stories







Carnaval de Cadiz:

Introduction: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/history-and-traditions-of-spain.72765/post-6859688
Structure: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/history-and-traditions-of-spain.72765/post-6859707
Prohibition: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/history-and-traditions-of-spain.72765/post-6859712
Pedro Muñoz Seca: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/history-and-traditions-of-spain.72765/post-6862107

Cadiz's Dialect: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/history-and-traditions-of-spain.72765/post-6869186

The Battle of Cerignola:

The French: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/history-and-traditions-of-spain.72765/post-6887606
The Spanish: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/history-and-traditions-of-spain.72765/post-6887689
The Battle: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/history-and-traditions-of-spain.72765/post-6918341
Recipe for Rosquillas de San Isidro: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/history-and-traditions-of-spain.72765/post-6931166

Chorizo, the Spiciest Sausage:
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/hispanic-history-and-traditions.72765/post-7007951

Olvera, first of the White Villages:

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/hispanic-history-and-traditions.72765/post-7039686
Cadiz and the Moors: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/hispanic-history-and-traditions.72765/post-7042290

Hispanic Relations in a Nutshell: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/hispanic-history-and-traditions.72765/post-7055567

Random Pics of Cádiz: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/hispanic-history-and-traditions.72765/post-7111022


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 6, 2020)

*The Carnaval of Cadiz:*





If you know about Spanish geography, you will know Cadiz is the southernmost province of Spain, being part of the Autonomous Community of Andalucía. If you also know your Spanish peoples, you’ll know people from Cadiz are funny. Yeah I’m not even gonna try to be subtle. We’re the buffoons to the court known as Spain. If there’s one thing everyone will immediately tell you about the Gaditanos it is that we make jokes. And you know what? They’re god damned right we do! And we take pride in being fools, damnit! It is our foremost right and duty to always leave you with a smile on your face or give you second hand embarrassment trying. And we don’t care if that makes us walking stereotypes, not so long as we can get a chuckle out of you every once in a while. So let me regale you with the tale of how this humble province chose to embrace the insanity and devote itself to humour with reckless abandon. Let me tell you the tale, of Carnaval.



Spoiler: Episode 1: Origins.







Carnaval as a bigger phenomenon is probably something all of you will know at least in passing, but let me please still describe its origins just in case. Back in the day, and by that I mean _really_ back during those times where people still hadn’t quite grasped the concept of writing. The Greeks lived in peace and harmony, wearing togas and eating yogurt from their amphorae in their agorae while philosophizing about the size of the pyramids and shit like that... Yeah ok I’m not being quite fair now am I. But you get my point, back in _those_ days, people got really fucking bored. And I have to say, I don’t know how they managed to do it. I mean they had yet to discover integral functions, or the number cero for that matter, so that whole “maths” deal needed a lot of work, they were in war 90% of the time, often over really stupid shit, and they had yet to even learn of celibacy as Christianity wasn’t a thing yet. How they even managed to rest enough to get bored I don’t know, but they sure found a way.

And so, these great thinkers of old put their legendary philosophical brains to the greatest task of all: How to not get bored. And as it turns out, the answer’s raves. Yeah apparently that’s the one universal constant throughout all of history, get a large enough group of people to be bored simultaneously and they will find a way to throw a really fucked up party. Ah, humanity, makes one shed a tear of pride.

The way the Greeks managed to justify such acts in their mind was to throw it in the name of some god or another, which was really just an excuse to get high and have sex. Bacanal for instance was the feast of baccus, who was later canonized as the god of wine as the Greeks tried to make him more “mainstream.” But who was originally the god of getting really fucking high with his acolytes dropping some hardcore poisonous hallucinogenic shit. Baccus was hard-fucking-core before he sold out! Lupercal was done in the name of Pan, god of bovines and sheppards, who was also known for dropping some hardcore parties. Saturnalia was done in the name of Saturn, who was the roman version of Zeus so, well he was known for having lots and lots of really kinky sex. Basically this shit was lit AF. Yeah you know how conservative groups every few generations keep trying to claim the youth is somehow uniquely depraved? Those guys did not read their history! People back in the day had no filter.

So anyway, later a certain little known group calling themselves the Catholic Church, yeah just a footnote in history you know, those guys, got to power. And they didn’t quite like this. People were quite surprised to find out their new overlords would find something abhorrent in partying like there’s no tomorrow. But I heard these guys liked heterosexual sex in the missionary position, so who knows what such a depraved mind would find kinky, maybe they just thought the parties were offensive due to not being lit enough.

And so after much debate on what the appropriate way to get high would be in the eyes of god, the Catholics decided prayer and meditation would be the only way to achieve true spirituality. And then they incorporated a lot of psychoactive substances to said prayers and started having visions and “virgin births”, proving once more than if you get a large enough group of people to be bored simultaneously for a sufficient amount of time, they’ll find the beauty of raves, every time without failure. But more importantly for us, the people in favour of the prior feasts found a way to fit them in this new canon. See, while the Catholics really, really didn’t like the idea of people going against their instructions leaflet, they were quite accepting of the idea of integrating other religions’ festivities and holydays into their own so long as sufficient change and justification was made. And so Saturnalia got renamed to Christmas. No I’m not kidding that’s why Christmas doesn’t align to the actual dates in the bible, because it’s not even celebrating Christ at all, they just fitted it best they could. And so, the feast of Don Carnal was codified.

You see. Carnal is a term meaning “of the flesh”, as in “the sins of the flesh”, and so, the excuse used to fit the feasts of old into the new regime was to put them right before Easter as the feast to the sins of the flesh, claiming it was OK because at the end a sacrifice was made, and just like Christ expunged humanity of its sins, the sacrifice made in his image would let god forgive the sins committed during the feast. And that’s how people got permission to rave like there’s no tomorrow for one week a year, with this new party being called Carnaval. Life finds a way.



Spoiler: Episode 1.1: Don Carnal







I can already hear you think “No fucking way that’s how that went.” Well. Let me recommend you some reading explaining it in detail through mythological metaphor. This reading is “El Libro del Buen Amor”, written in 1330 by Juan Ruiz best known for his title of Arcipreste de Hita. In one of the better known segments of said book, the Arcipreste describes Carnaval through the use of two mythological beings, Don Carnal, the living embodiment of Carnaval, and Doña Cuaresma, the living embodiment of Cuaresma. That being the religious festivity where catholics fast for 40 days. 40 days of fasting, 1 week of feasting. Eh I’d say it’s kinda worth it taking into account just how hardcore the feasting gets. There ain’t no one leaving Carnaval sober that I can tell you.



Spoiler: In Spanish



“Don Carnal, hombre mundano y amante de los placeres, es retado por doña Cuaresma a sostener una batalla que tendrá lugar al cabo de una semana; el reto ha sido lanzado el jueves anterior al día que hoy conocemos como Miércoles de ceniza. Una vez cumplido el plazo, don Carnal y su ejército de bueyes, cerdos, gallinas, becerros y cabras se enfrentan en campo abierto a doña Cuaresma y su legión de vegetales y mariscos. Luego de un día de confrontación más o menos aparejada y de que ambos contrincantes se han retirado a sus respectivas tiendas, don Carnal, fiel a sus excesos, decide celebrar un fastuoso banquete que le produce, tanto a él como a los suyos, una pesadez y un sueño incontrolables. Doña Cuaresma, aprovechando esta inmejorable situación, entra por la noche al cuartel de su enemigo y, sin dificultad alguna, lo somete y lo aprisiona. Desde el primer día de su vencimiento, el Miércoles de ceniza, el glotón de don Carnal es obligado a confesarse y a hacer penitencia de ayuno y abstinencia, mientras que, doña Cuaresma, triunfante, asea su casa, sus vestidos y su cuerpo y sale a la iglesia a convocar a los feligreses católicos para que participen en los ritos religiosos correspondientes: “dízeles que se conoscan e que les venga emiente / que son çeniza e tal tornarán ciertamente”. Don Carnal, por su parte, es sometido por un sacerdote a una dieta a base, entre otras delicias, de lechugas, lentejas y alcachofas. Trascurridos cuarenta días (la Cuaresma), cuando ya don Carnal comenzaba a estar verdaderamente arrepentido de su anterior forma de vida, un inesperado acceso de salud lo impulsa a burlar a don Ayuno en Domingo de Ramos y a escaparse de su celda; ya en libertad, reúne a sus beligerantes compañeros y decide tomar venganza de doña Cuaresma, quien, juzgando prudentemente la renovada fuerza acopiada por su enemigo, se atavía con su elegante ropa de viaje y, el Viernes Santo, ya muy entrada la noche, huye con dirección a Jerusalén. A la tarde siguiente, el Sábado de Gloria, don Carnal, al lado de su mejor aliado, don Amor, de don Almuerzo y de doña Merienda, entra por la ciudad sobre un carro musical que representa su avasallante victoria. El Domingo de Resurrección, un nuevo aire —un aire de abril—puede respirarse en cada rincón”.





Spoiler: In English



“Mister Carnal, mundane man and lover of pleasures, is challenged by Miss Cuaresma to a battle which will take place for a week; the challenge is sent the Thursday prior to the day we now know as Wednesday of Ashes. Once the time has come, Mister Carnal and his army of oxes, pigs, chickens, cows and goats fight in open field to Miss Cuaresma and her legion of vegetables and seafood. After a day the confrontation is approximate to a tie, and both contenders retreat to their private tents. Mister Carnal, truthful to his excesses, decides to celebrate a fatuous banquet which causes, to him and his kin, an incontrollable tiredness and slumber. Taking this chance, impossible to make better, Miss Cuaresma enters her enemy’s barracks and without hardship captures and imprisons them. From the first day of his imprisonment, Don Carnal the glutton is forced to confess and make penitence of fast and abstinence, whereas Doña Cuaresma, triumphant, cleans her home, her dresses and her body and goes to church to call upon the catholic parishioners to participate in the corresponding rites: “tell them to know each other and know quickly / that they are ashes and in that they will turn certainly.” Don Carnal, meanwhile, is subdued by a priest with a diet of, amongst other delights, cabbages, lentils and artichokes. These 40 days finished, when Mister Carnal started to be truly sorry of his prior lifestyle, an unexpected access of health pushes him to fool Mister Fasting on Palm Sunday and escape his cage; once free he puts together his belligerent partners and decides to take revenge on Miss Cuaresma, whom, judging prudently the new strength of her enemy, dresses with her most elegant travel clothes and, on Holy Friday, once night enters, flees to Jerusalem. The next afternoon, Glorious Saturday, Mister Carnal, alongside his best ally, miss Love, alongside Mister Lunch and Miss Snack, enters into the city in a musical chariot representing his unilateral victory. The Resurrection Sunday a new air –the air of April- can be breathed on all corners.”



Welcome to religious holydays, it’s all an excuse to get fucking hammered without anyone telling you shit for it and everyone knows it. And we’re ok with it! After all, it’s all OK if you confess and pray a few Ave Marías and Padre Nuestros next Sunday. Jesus said so! And to think the Protestants said the Catholics were sinful hypocrites. Now I don’t know where they could’ve gotten such crazy ideas. Though to be fair one of the first things Enrique VIII did after becoming the de facto religious authority of the Anglican Church was install a wine fountain on his palace, and the other was divorce his wife to marry his mistress. So I’d say pot met kettle.



If you please excuse me getting a bit philosophical here, I do find the massive amounts of hypocrisy involved in these traditions to be a bit reassuring, yet also a bit worrying. On the one hand it helps to remember that unlike in movies and games which love to depict certain factions as these unflinching puritanical soulless androids that cannot experience emotions outside of righteous fury and indignation, reality is far more complicated, and even the more extreme agents of the totalitarian regimes of old knew to look past certain excesses in the benefit of peace. Even the inquisition turned a blind eye to Carnaval, knowing full well their precious rules would be completely ignored. But on the other hand, the worrying part is, well, the acknowledgement that indeed even the inquisitors were reasonable people, at least to some degree. It’s why the more autistic side of STEM absolutely abhors any and all censorship, and has been fighting the social science’s social justice cult since they showed their ugly face during the science wars of the 90s. We all know the tale of Galileo Galilei and how the inquisition persecuted him for realizing the earth revolves around the sun. When it comes to freedom of speech, it ain’t Galileo we fear becoming. It’s the Commission of Inquisitors who judged him. They all were very accomplished, reasonable, wise men that had been trained extensively in multiple fields. And yet, their adherence to their so-called truth led them to stare evidence in the face and be so blinded by empty words they couldn’t even recognize it anymore. Censorship doesn’t just harm those that are censored, don’t forget that. There is no good side to it.





Spoiler: Episode 2: Cadiz.







And so it is time for us to avert our eyes to the little coastal town of Cadiz. Cadiz as some of you may know was quite a deal back in the day. It was in fact the first European settlement by the Phoenicians, being the first, and for some centuries largest, commercial port in Europe. This easily protected walled of peninsular city off the coast of Spain had quite a renown back then. And would have as much for centuries, even being the only port to have commerce with America during the early years, until the port was moved to Seville and Spanish politics assfucked its supply chain during the conflict between Liberals and Carlists and it just sort of slowly went to shit leaving only the impoverished husk you see today behind... Please give an F in the chat for this old glory.

Point is, Cadiz was quite large during the Roman Empire. But then that whole kerfuffle with the Goths happened and the west collapsed and the moors invaded. Yeah that was a bit of a fuckup. What many don’t know however is that while even during Moorish times Cadiz was quite an important trade node, only having faded out of importance for some years during the collapse, it still kept a lot of its older traditions during such times, and stayed mostly Christian. Which is part of why the Reconquista had it much easier to take over this otherwise extremely well defended (for the time) bastion while Granada, which had a much larger muslim population but was otherwise shitter in all ways, was such a pain in their arse. You see, the Moors were actually quite happy to have other religions living with them. No the reason wasn’t because they were tolerant and accepting, although they certainly were more tolerant than the Islamic movements that followed them, specially the Berber, as they’d come to find out the hard way when they called them for “help” and their “allies” wound up enslaving them and taking control. But the reason for this “tolerance” was because the laws of the Qur’an allowed them to abuse quite blatantly of any non-muslims under their rule, they were practically all slaves, and indeed most were just plain slaves, and they all had to pay more taxes than the Muslims to boot, which was good for the economy in the eyes of the Moors. They would however find out the hard way that slaves also got pretty uppity once a new political force came by promising them *FREEDOM!!!!!* Especially when said force also shares their religion. Christianity was not the only thing the people of Cadiz kept from the past however; they also kept some older traditions. I am of course talking about the feasts. Because there is no one getting us to stop partying!

You see, the reason there were so many feasts under so many gods during pagan times is that every city had their own patron god, which is why later once Catholics got into power every city instead had their own patron saint. Yes, btw, if you noticed, Santeria was nothing new, that’s just what Catholics had been doing from day 1 but with newer traditions. It’s funny how they got such a bad rap for being intolerant when in reality they were quite adept at not giving a shit. If anything the one thing they were extremely intolerant towards was protestants (and vice versa), which was more due to politics than anything. But that’s a tale for another day. What matters is that Cadiz kept its feast, its traditions, and its patron god... And what a god it was.



Spoiler: Episode 2.1: God Momo and Freedom of Speech







The patron god of Cadiz was Momo, a minor pagan deity known for his quick wit, comedic inclination and critical attitude. He is the minor god of writers and poets, the personification of sarcasm, mockery and ironic acuity, and was considered the demented spirit of criticism and humour. Basically, he was the Kiwi of mount Olympus, defending to his last breath the right to freedom of speech in all of its offensive, hilarious glory. According to the legend he was a son of Nix (the night) who was known for going around Olympus making dad jokes and poking fun at everyone, but if you know your Greek Mythos you know the gods didn’t quite take kindly to such lack of respect, so they declared him insane and banished him to the realm of mortals, where he roamed the land continuing his endless charade and pissing everyone off until he eventually found his place amongst people who understood him, here in Cadiz. As the picture above exemplifies he was always represented carrying a toy with a face in one hand and a mask in the other, which was supposed to represent his madness and constant devotion to the art of theatre. And indeed, he was the inspiration for the latter figure of the fool or buffoon. You see, I did not use those terms lightly in the introduction when referring to Cadiz’s place in Spain.

And Momo was certainly not chosen by chance, you see. The main theme all versions of Carnaval the world over had was that it was a week where everyone would wear a mask and all sins were forgiven. But, this is Cadiz we’re talking about, not only was it a very large commercial port, but it was also the gate to the least explored waters. Standing past the two Pillars of Hercules, it was the last port accessible before going into uncharted territories. People there back in the day, even amongst the lower classes, had enough money to afford most carnal pleasures at least once a year. As like in every other large port prostitutes were already readily available any normal day, and thanks to its access to uncharted waters they had open access to the more exotic materials and tastes, which also gave them good excuse to mask their more depraved ideas as foreign tradition. The people of Cadiz could access such debauchery every other day of the year, they didn’t need Carnaval for it, not that they didn’t use it anyway. But Momo gave them the perfect excuse to access the forbidden fruit. The one thing not even the richest man could afford back then, and not even the most powerful had access to, the ultimate pleasure. Freedom of Speech. They did also have massive orgies filled with hardcore drugs for many centuries though, but you know, that’s just the cherry on top of the cake.



And so for one week a year everything was fair game in Cadiz. Under the cover of their disguises the people of this great town took to making fun of everything and everyone. For one week a year nothing was sacred, nothing but humour. For one week a year everyone in the town was a fool, and they were free to play their part. For one week a year, while other cities gave themselves to their earthly desires, Cadiz was well and truly free. And knowing how hard this freedom was to find back in the day, and how much our ancestors had to fight for it, I can’t help but feel we have regressed somewhat by allowing such nonsense as “freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequence” and “the first amendment only impedes the state from discriminating against you” to enter into the political sphere. Yes, freedom of speech absolutely means freedom from consequence. That’s the whole damned point! And the good people of Cadiz knew it well. Under the mask, no one could tell who you were. Under the mask, you were no one. Everything said during Carnaval was said by God Momo. People were mere channels to his will. And no punishment could come to them. For Momo, alongside his servant Piti, would pay the price of such acts themselves at the end of the week. And all sins would be forgiven.



Spoiler: Episode 2.2: Piti the Witch and Paying the Price







And so, two figures mark Carnaval. Two effigies are built in their image. Both of them are sacrificed, burnt in a pyre, at the end of the feast. The first is God Momo, you already met him. The second is Piti the Witch. “Who is Piti?” You may ask. And that is a very good question indeed.

See, we certainly know where the pyres come from, as I said before, according to the rules of Carnaval set by the Catholic Church, a sacrifice must be made to cleanse the sins committed. The burning of the effigies is this sacrifice. Piti is our sacrificial goat, our way out of God’s punishment.

But, when it comes to the actual origin of this most blessed character, little is known about her. The Bruja Piti seems to appear on many legends, starting in the village of Trebujena sometime in the very early middle ages, being used as some kind of generic witch for local fairytales to get kids to behave. Everyone in the province of Cadiz at this point knows well her name, and what she means. But no source was able to tell me where she actually comes from. Speculation was all I could find.

Some argue that she was merely made specifically for Carnaval, and started appearing on the legends at a later date, some say she was already part of the local legends and was chosen for the pyre afterwards. Furthermore, it could be said that burning Momo would be enough to keep the church happy, so the question remains as to why she must burn too. Some argue this was because Momo couldn’t be the sacrifice in the eyes of the Church. You see, spirits like pagan gods are immortal of course, as such the church couldn’t accept one of them as a sacrifice. But according to that same rule such spirits always had mortal servants who channelled their will, the term for such servants being “witch.” As such it can be understood that by burning Piti the city is truly expelling Momo once the feast ends, at least until he comes back next year. Others say it had far less to do with pleasing the church, and far more to do, indeed, with pissing them off. As they argue that in fact Piti was chosen merely to make a mockery of the witch burnings performed by the Inquisition. After all, this was Carnaval, and if they had to make a sacrifice by burning an effigy in a pyre, what best than to hide in this final act one last insult straight to the church. You’d think pissing off the Catholics would be a bad idea, but there are recordings of multiple Chirigotas specifically mocking Jesus Christ himself in the style of “Life of Brian” even back in the Middle Ages. So a point can definitely be made that Cadiz found a way. Either way one thing is certain. The burning of Witch Piti must always be made marking the end of Carnaval, she is our sacrifice, and pays for our sin, much as Momo himself, so we can be forgiven.

And taking the blame certainly is Piti’s theme. If I had to describe her personality in few words, I’d say she’s a knowing villain for a good cause. She appears in all tales as the antagonist, taking the blame required to ensure kids learn to behave. She appears for Carnaval, ready to be offered to please the church. She always takes the blame and she does so with the widest of smiles. And nowadays most tales seem to at least on some degree acknowledge, she’s not so evil inside. No, this jolly old hag knows damned well what she’s doing. As I told you before, Carnaval is all about the mask. Everyone plays their part and Piti most of all, she may appear scary, but she does it for us. And so the crazed god and the good witch keep care of this old town. And that is why every year, when Carnaval starts, they appear on the balcony of the town hall, and we pay our respects. For we know deep inside, this is their feast. It is made in their honour, and to them we have much to thank.

Yeah, I wasn’t kidding when I said Carnaval is Cadiz’s true religion. I mean, we know they’re just tales and I haven’t met anyone who thinks there’s some supernatural element to it. But the level of devotion, tradition and reverence at display is certainly religious in nature, even if no faith is involved.






And it seems I must stop here for now, because I surpassed the character limit, and so I had to cut this into 2. Excuse me while I edit the second part.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 6, 2020)

Spoiler: Episode 3: Traditions and Formalities







But you might wonder, if Carnaval was such an important feast on almost all ex-roman territories, how come then it got so watered down in most places while others kept it strong, and how come Cadiz was allowed to continue under some of the more puritanical rulers, especially when they didn’t even try to disguise Momo as a saint, always using the name “Dios Momo” instead. Well, you see. The places that kept Carnaval mostly alive were almost all relatively rich port towns and their surrounding areas, and that is because it was harder to punish them. They had way more leverage when it came to economy and politics and unlike landlocked territories which at best would have to declare a land war they could instead take to using their boats to raid and inconvenience the crown over a much larger area. So it’s no wonder the crown realized fucking with them was a bad idea. On top of that, however, we must touch upon the first great moment of transformation suffered by the Carnaval of Cadiz, brought forth by the most unlikely source, the Turks.

You see as the Turks started expanding, and got to lower Italy, many Italian merchants fled westward to safer lands. And what safer lands that those of the Spanish Empire, the biggest and most powerful military force at the time, holding both the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and the largest area of expansion in the world. And so, the merchants found their new home in Cadiz, and brought their love for Carnaval with them. Many of the now iconic elements of Carnaval, specially certain kinds of masks, confetti and certain musical instruments were brought by them. And in exchange, the Italians got to learn about Momo, and enjoy their newfound right to tell even the Pope himself what they thought of his mismanagement and keep their head on their shoulders. Furthermore thanks to their knowledge of legalism and formalization the Italians brought to Cadiz the capacity to practice all year round, in the tradition now knows as “carnaval chico” (“small carnaval”) or “carnaval de los jartibles” (“carnaval of the tiresome”), which followed the same legal recourse fools and actors used back there to represent characters such as those of Italian Comedy, which here translated not only into having better representations thanks to added training but also into groups being able to release shorter interpretations anytime they want and practice as such their freedom of speech any day of the year while getting even some of the most authoritarian rulers to look the other way. And indeed just now one such group, lead by El Selu, one of the most well known currently living Chirigoteros, has taken to such tradition to mock the attitude of different groups of Spaniards during the Coronavirus pandemic.






And so, the true form of Carnaval was achieved, and Cadiz itself finally became the most devoted follower of the Church of Mockery. No scripture would ever be holier than a joke. From that day on here in this small Iberian province we take our humour quite seriously, religiously so, and no sin is greater than that of censorship. And we’ll be damned if we don’t defend this most holy tradition to the last man. For no god or king is greater than freedom of speech. In other words, yes, us Gaditanos are funny, or at least we try our hardest to be. For no prayer can ever satiate us the same way a good belly laugh does. And make no mistake. Carnaval isn’t just to mock your enemies. Far from it, everyone is fair game in Carnaval. If you can’t mock your own, and even yourself, you’re not doing it right. The point may be done through political figures as seen below:





But it’s not a political act. It’s about defending your right to piss people off, to say everything and anything no matter how heinous, and get a good laugh out of it. Momo isn’t just the god of “constructive criticism”, far from it, he is indeed also the spirit of unfair, unyielding and malintentioned critique. Nothing is sacred and nothing is safe. The only goal of a statement should be to make you chuckle in Carnaval, no humour is too dark and no event too soon. And if people get offended, as the religious puritans of neighbouring provinces do every other year, then all the better. For I may not agree with what some say under their disguise. But I will defend to the death their right to say it. That is the beauty and the horror of freedom of speech, it’s not just yours to perform, and it isn’t valid if not universally applied.

But I shall get off the pulprit of the Church of Momo now. I think I’ve already crossed the line into boring issues of the current times more than enough for today. Let me instead bore you with a list of the different kinds of acts you can find nowadays during Carnaval, in case anyone wanted the more technical side of things. If you’re expecting a joke, well every one of the following spoilers will contain a video of one such act so if you understand Spanish they will be there. But I will not blame you for skipping straight to the next part.



Spoiler: Episode 3.1: Chirigota.







The Chirigota might just be the most iconic part of Carnaval, they are a kind of humoristic Coplilla meant to parody the current state of society. They are our ode to clownworld so to speak, with a focus on satire. They are typically about current events but not necessarily so, as will showcase my chosen example, “Los Cruzados Mágicos”, from 1982, which is quite renowned nowadays.











Spoiler: Episode 3.2: Cuarteto.







The Cuarteto may not be as iconic as the Chirigota, but much like Soldier will never be as iconic as Heavy, that doesn’t mean it’s not one of, if not the most important part of Carnaval. Cuarteto means group of 4, so as you can imagine these acts involve between 3 to 5 actors combining singing with freestyle and parody interpretations, creating a whole representation not limited by the song itself. They are as such the most stylistically flexible element of this celebration, and they use that flexibility to be the most biting and offensive. Cuartetos are pure memeing front to back and that is precisely why, despite not being as much of a symbol of Carnaval as the Chirigota is, they are quite happy to be its humble core.











Spoiler: Episode 3.3: Romancero.







The Romanceros are the smallest representations, involving 1 or 2 people in disguises narrating the events surrounding the character they embody. They are one of the most common and easy to find events despite not taking part of the official contest, instead having their own separate contest. Generally they followed the metrics of the Romance, typical of Spanish literature as a whole, but other than that they are quite freeflow. I mean it’s really just 1 or 2 mofos memeing it up, nothing too weird.











Spoiler: Episode 3.4: Comparsa.







The Comparsa as a larger phenomenon is of course the core of all Carnaval. Comparsas are large musical groups which play on the streets, at least that’s the origin of the name and common theme. In Cadiz they entered as a classier version of the Chirigota in 1960 by the hand of Paco Alba. Compared to Chirigota’s style, closer to the Esperpento, the Comparsa is far more musical, following rules from Opera singing and more formal tones and rythms. And using 3 guitars instead of 2. They are generally larger in number too but that doesn’t matter too much. Point is, they forget a lot of the comedy in the search for more artistic endeavours and usually are more compromised and visceral as a result, which is why they aren’t as popular as the Chirigota but their fans are absolutely rabid when defending them. Either way Cadiz will never say no to laboured artistic expression so they have been well received as a phenomenon, even if most just tune out during that segment of the contest. Also the Spanish right wing absolutely fucking hates them and has tried repeatedly to censor them even during democracy, because boy does our right wing wish we forgot about what they did to us, and who backed them. And boy do they want us to stop prying at what they do behind closed doors to this very day... Seriously the PP are roughly as corrupt as the American Democrats, it’s kind of horrifying just how many corruption cases they keep getting tangled in to this very day. But Comparsas are all about uncovering the ugliest shit they can find, pointing at it, and proclaiming: “Look at it. Stare at that horror. And never let it hide from you again.” And they sure ain’t running out of material for the foreseeable future... Please 2023 bring us a right wing party that isn’t shit. Please.











Spoiler: Episode 3.5: Coro.







“Coro” just means “Choir” in Spanish. Yeah these are the least fun. They are literally just Choirs really. Nothing special to them except the theme, although some do incorporate jokes into their lyrics. But in general there’s nothing for me to elaborate on really. If some tune out during the Comparsas, the Choirs are the point a lot of people just go take a nap while they wait for the next fun part. Nothing wrong with them, they are still quite fun, but... Well they’re just fucking Choirs. Most people go to Carnaval for the jokes, not the high class artistic musical expression you know. But snobs fucking love them and they have been an integral part of Carnaval since time immemorial, so they’re here to stay, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Everyone needs a good nap after all.












Sadly, I must cut this tale again, as it seems I exceeded the character limit a second time. Excuse me while I post the third, and hopefully last, part.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 6, 2020)

Spoiler: Episode 4: Censoring Carnaval, a herculean task







While up to this point we have spoken of the boundless tolerance of the Catholic Church. Please do note the sarcasm in that statement. I think it is time we talk about the times some rulers attempted to restrict Carnaval or even censor it altogether. This is where the civil war comes into play. But long before that first 2 attempts to restrict Carnaval were made in the XVI century. More concretely as part of the larger laws of the “Constituciones Sinoidales” (1591) and “Estatutos del Seminario de Cádiz (1596), which did not ban Carnaval in any way, but ban the “religious” from participating on them, saying the parties were for the “seglares” (“seculars”). It should be noted that the name of these laws should tell you, they specifically applied to priests and formal charges of the church, the “seminaries”, so when they distinguish religious from secular they are not saying all catholics or “religious people” are banned, only priests, monks, nuns and higher ranks. Faith had nothing to do with it, as the purpose of these laws was to formalize the image of the church by adding protocols and restrictions to its formal representatives. It is notable that it took them until 1591 to ban priests from taking part of a celebration known for mocking the bible and including basically every sin known to man. It is more notable than we also have civil documents mocking the law for being ineffective as priests chose to ignore it anyway. Welcome to Cadiz. We didn’t run out of fucks. We never had them to begin with!



Spoiler: Episode 4.1: ¡Con la Iglesia Hemos Topado!







The next incidents, those of the XVII century, are even more hilarious, as an untitled legal document from 1636 doesn’t ban Carnaval but instead references a court case (whose other records are now lost) trying to ban Carnaval which ended with the judge specifically proclaiming than no civil authority had the right to ban it. And a letter by General Mencos, on the 7th February 1652, bitching about Carnaval (or as he calls it, Carnestolendas), because it meant that workers refused to fix his boat but the navy refused to actually force them to work during this festivity. It should be noted that as his title implies, it was a warboat, and Spain was currently in the middle of a fairly bloody conflict, being said boat necessary for the war effort. But again, no fucks.

As a minor note, we also have records of a document accusing a priest by the name of Nicolás Aznar of having sex with Antonia Gil Morena during Carnaval. Which were serious accusations not just due to him being a priest but also because the accusations were made by Antonia’s husband. I haven’t found any document stating how the court case ended and it’s not very relevant but it’s still funny as hell taking into account the prior attempts at keeping priests from participating in Carnaval at all. Mofos were getting game while they were at it!

The XVIII century is where shit starts getting kind of real as the crown starts making laws attempting to ban Carnaval starting with the banning of masked balls in 1716, which was mostly ignored because in Cadiz Carnaval did not actually have any public masked balls before it and they were not gonna go bust people’s doors down to check for the private ones no matter how hard the king bitched about them, I mean so long as they weren’t too public, ‘cause the king could send in his troops (basically think the feds, but Spanish). Either way we just kinda got royal decrees telling us to stop every year or so and they were all ignored, with only minor concessions made in the form of rules restricting certain acts, mostly those related to hardcore drugs and acts of public indecency, and by public indecency I mean orgies on the streets and shit like that, not the puritanical sense of “indecency”. But everything went relatively ok until 1776. Which sadly was the year puritans all over the rest of Spain joined the crown in attempting to censor Cadiz, as there was a major scandal due to the combination of the writings describing the level of debauchery at display by visiting british twat Henry Swinburne and the fact that 2 different nun convents got caught having massive lesbian orgies involved hardcore drugs, those beings the Convento de Santa María and Convento de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria. I told you raves were the universal constant, I wasn’t kidding. Either way they got angry and tried to censor it once it had already ended and by next year the people of Cadiz just started anew as if nothing had happened, so nothing was ever actually accomplished. Because again, the amount of fucks Cadiz does not give about puritans is near infinite.







Next step in our historical route would be the Gabachos, the Napoleonic Army, which tried to invade Spain, and managed to invade all of Spain except for Cadiz, who resisted while under siege from 1810 to 1812. Meaning technically Napoleon never managed to invade all of Spain, the same way the communists haven’t technically ever managed to invade all of China because Taiwan still exists. They are our partners in being small yet surprisingly painful warts in the arse of tyranny and I salute those bastards for it. Anyway that’s a topic for another day. Important part is, the people of Cadiz actually did get a letter by the French forces trying to get them to stop mocking them in Carnaval. I don’t even know why they thought that would work but Cadiz was already under siege so you can imagine just how much they laughed at the letter. “I know we’re currently bombarding you but stop being so mean!” God, imagine being offended because the people of the town you’re currently besieging make a few songs mocking you. Ah who am I kidding? I’m surprised the Fanfarrones didn’t strike the white flag after being attacked with such vicious puns. God knows they’ve surrendered over less.



Spoiler: Episode 4.2: The Prohibition.







Anyway, that was followed by an attempt by the restored Spanish crown, who had totalitarian ambitions and no chill, to outright ban carnaval altogether the 20th of February 1816. And unlike prior years in which the people of Cadiz had at least tried to negotiate and hide their parties in ways that “technically” didn’t break the law, or which hid the times it broke it in private in ways that puritans might come to believe they’ve done something, this law was simply completely ignored altogether with the local lords rejecting to even enforce it at all, with the government of Cayetano Valdés even pushed back the prior legislation to allow for 6 publicly endorsed masked balls in retaliation. It should be noted that before the banning of Masked Balls in Cadiz there isn’t even a record of any publicly endorsed Masked Ball at all, they were purely private things, as I’ve explained before the actual public meat of Cadiz’s Carnaval is on the street representation. It’s meant to be sung and listened to, not danced to. Its theatre and comedic opera more than fucking balls. So they just went ahead and added shit we weren’t even doing before prohibition just to fuck with the king.

The next gobernor José Manso, the 30th January 1833 would also pass a Bando Municipal that was notable for adding new things that were now permitted, again without approval by the crown, and Pedro Nolasco on the 4th February 1834 would take it a step further and just very unsubtly remind people that masks had always been permitted and would stay that way after the crown tried to tell him to ban masks so they could persecute people using their own police force instead of trying to get the locals to do it like they had until now. (Again, if you need a point of comparison think of the local sheriffs telling the feds to fuck off and them sending the national guard to do the job instead, only Spanish.) And just as another level of “fuck you”, the governors of Cadiz also used their businesses to heavily influence the Carnaval of Isla Cristina and shape it to be in the same vein as Cadiz’s just to amplify the debauchery and mockery of the crown. Again, welcome to Cadiz mofos. Good luck trying to ban shit here. We don’t take kindly to autocrats. We want married gay men to defend their home with guns. Marihuana is still illegal though. The Moroccan drug trade has torn this city before so there’s no way we’re legalizing that shit for the foreseeable future. (As for guns, also heavily restricted, but we are working on it, with now both Podemos and Vox calling for a Spanish 2nd amendment. And some of the most vocal support from public figures has indeed come from Cadiz.) So you could say we’re about as libertarian as it gets in the peninsula. Which I know will hurt the little hearts of American Kiwis that have had encounters with me in the past and know I’m a filthy statist by their standards. Hey give us a break, we’re working our way forward from the legal framework left by a fascist dictatorship, it’s no wonder we’re a tad authoritarian compared with the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave!







And so from that point unto 1936 Carnaval went mostly unmolested. The drug consumption was heavily regulated as Carnaval still had to abide by criminal law, but for the most part “decency” laws went completely ignored. Although with time it was just slowly implemented that such acts should be done in private, so you know, Cadiz stopped being a lawless mad max scenario but it still basically turned the entire bloody city into a god damned festival and the organizations went unmolested and showed their devotion to mocking everyone freely without consequence. Also of note 1884 is when the contest started happening, marking the separation of “legal” and “illegal” groupings, which as I explained on the technical area doesn’t mean that the “illegals” are breaking the law, they just aren’t part of the official contest, which is why 1884 is known as the year when Carnaval was censored, which doesn’t come from “censorship” but the fact that it started implementing a “census” for the contest. I know it’s weird but that’s how old timey language worked. Then in 1936 a... Significant Emotional Event happened. You might have heard of it. See if it rings any bells: The Spanish Civil War. Yeeeah that one.

Btw if you’re wondering about the chosen image, that’s not from Cadiz. That’s Consuelo Martínez during Galicia’s Entroidos (Their version of Carnaval.) Here’s another pic so you can see her glorious steed:







Spoiler: Episode 4.3: Amanece, que no es poco.







1936 marked the beginning of the Spanish Civil war. And the nationalists realized beforehand Cadiz would be extremely important to them. No it wasn’t because of the great strength of this powerful province, in fact at this point Cadiz was already fairly impoverished. Quite simply, most of the nationalist army was the Legion of Africa, which started in Morocco. So they realized if they wanted to get to the peninsula they would need boats, and Cadiz had both the nearest port (and therefore easiest entry point) and a very large naval base with a decent fleet and capacity to make more boats. So before they declared war they made damned sure to control the province’s military. And so, despite being one of the more openly libertarian provinces, Cadiz fell nearly immediately at the beginning of the war. This had some good things, like the fact that the frontlines stayed fairly far from the city and so the area wasn’t bombed as much, though there were 2 bombings by the republicans at one point, they killed a total of 7 people, all of whom were civilians, and they didn’t even manage to get close to the naval base... Yeah that was quite pathetic. But this also had some very negative consequences. Especially because the nationalists didn’t take kindly to freedom of speech. Not in the slightest.

And so one of the first acts of the Nationalists in 1936 was the persecution and assassination of all Chirigoteros they knew had criticized the church or army in the past, including some very well known and beloved names such as Guillermo Crespillo Lavié, (Who by the way had also heavily criticized the left wing and had no known political affiliations, but was executed for criticizing the church on the Chirigota “Los Frailes.”) José Mejías Mejías, (Who again mostly just criticized the nepotism of both sides on the Chirigota for which he was executed, “Los Enchufistas de Un País Desconocido.”), Juan Ragel Jiménez, (Who was condemned of being “Compromised” for “Los Viejos Matatías.”) and many lesser known names. Others like Cañamaque managed to hide and avoid death in exchange for exile. I recommend the thesis “El Carnaval Silenciado. Golpe de estado, Guerra, Dictadura y Represión en el Febrero Gaditano (1936-1945)” by Santiago Moreno for more detailed information on the sheer level of asshurt at display by Franco’s subordinates here. I mean both sides murdered a lot of people due to political affiliation on the early years, in fact I’m already thinking of talking about one specific Gaditano who was executed by the anarchists at the beginning of the civil war. Because his final words were the most badass thing ever. But killing neutral people, who are also well known and beloved by the locals, just because they dared exercise their freedom of speech as recognized by the prior government to mock your allies on a festivity known for being a free for all of critique? That’s a whole new level of petty, on par with the CCP. I mean for god’s sake not even the Catholic Church’s most holy Inquisition fell this low. It takes an exceedingly thin skinned little bitch to be this repressive! Then again it’s easy to see why Franco wouldn’t want any jokes being made of him. He did have an excessively pale arse.

And so after waves of executions by the puritans attempting to censor this most holy of traditions, come February 5th 1937 Gobernador General Luís Valdés decried that due to the state of alarm caused by the war the feasts would be banned. Then he told the cops not to actually enforce said laws for private gatherings, and to only repress the public acts due to the political climate. Cementing that indeed the only reason his higher-ups told him to do it was because Hoes Mad. Which would be corroborated by the central party as the war ended in 1940 and they proclaimed:

“Suspendidas en años anteriores las fiestas del carnaval y no existiendo razones que aconsejen rectificar dicha decisión. Este Ministerio ha resuelto mantener y recordar a las Autoridades Dependientes de él, la prohibición absoluta de la celebración de tales fiestas. Madrid 12/1/1940. El Ministro de la Gobernación, *Serrano Súñer*.”

Which translated means:

“Banned in prior years the feasts of Carnaval, and finding no reason to rectify this decision. This ministry has resolved to uphold it and remember the Dependent Authorities of it, the absolute prohibition of the celebrations of such festivities. Madrid 12/1/1940. Ministry of Gobernance, Serrano Súñer.”

You know some would say that if you use the war as an excuse to ban festivities, and the war ends, you’d have good reason to rectify the decision. But of course we all know the war never had anything to do with it. Nor their ample excuses that they needed to ban the festivities to avoid them being “infiltrated” by “terrorist elements” hoping to add instability to the regime by subversive action abusing the liberties of this tradition. Franco simply had an exceedingly fragile ego, and an equally pale arse. And so until 1948 Carnaval was happily celebrated in Baches and Tascas, basically different types of bars and restaurants, while puritans were allowed to believe they had won as the streets stayed empty. That is in Cadiz Capital, as the rural areas simply chose to ignore Franco’s bullshit and simply celebrate their tradition in peace. Indeed a branch of my family lives in one such village and they were quite happy to recall how they didn’t even learn of the prohibition until they read the article “La fiesta de carnaval recupera lentamente sus raíces populares” by El País on the 5th of February 1978 celebrating the end of the prohibition. They actually had said article framed on a wall on one of their corridors as a way to remember such lunacy because they found it funny. Fucking kek. Imagine being so assmad at people having fun that you exercise the full weight of fascist persecution just to have most villages in the area completely ignore their duty to even inform the population that you banned anything. Man, that ass must be really pale.



Spoiler: Episode 4.3.1: The Palest of Asses.







Alright let me just add an aside mentioning why I keep talking about Franco’s pale ass. I will probably talk about the anthem on another post but suffice to say, under the republic the anthem was the Himno de Riego, and Franco changed it for the Royal March, which is the current anthem of Spain. Shit is, as the name implies, that’s a march that’s meant to be used by royal grenadiers on official routines. So it has no lyrics, because Franco and the absolutists before him had egos so fragile they ran to the first song they could find to take down the Himno de Riego and didn’t even bother checking if said song was ever meant to be an anthem. This is why the anthem of Spain has no lyrics. So people took to finding lyrics for it, and of course I mean lyrics that mocked these petty rulers for their asspain. The most common version nowadays starting with “Franco, Franco, que tiene el culo blanco, porque su mujer, lo lava con Ariel.” Translated “Franco, Franco, his ass is pale because his wife cleans it with Ariel.” (Ariel being a brand of detergent that started in 1967, not the little fucking mermaid.) I know you must say that is a childish lyric. You’d be right, it is well known amongst kids who find it funny. Adults almost never use it unless they’re drunk or being intentionally petty like I am right now. Shit is when getting info about this stuff I learned that a family member of a friend of mine from Madrid got mauled by 2 Guardias Civiles after a puritanical bitch accused him of teaching it to his children to spread it in school to “taint the image of the dictator.” And now, I have no idea if he actually did teach the fucking song to his kids. But I don’t care. If your entire ideology is so fragile that you need to beat a guy because some dumb hag accused him of teaching his children a dumb song about your leader’s pale arse. Then you’ve proven beyond reasonable doubt that your leader’s arse shone like the fucking vampires from that shitty movie trilogy. And I will keep mentioning it as much as possible during this comment and until I probably forget why I was doing it a week from now. I mean seriously I don’t care what your political ideology is. Freedom of Speech should be above it all, that is just the baseline when it comes to not being a piece of shit. And Franco truly was a gargantuan piece of shit.







That aside done with, Time to get back on track into 1947. Before that year some incidents happened with Carnaval being called “Fiestas de Invierno” (winter festival) by the local authorities in attempts to hide the fact that they were in fact not enforcing Franco’s will at all. Because even fascists knew damn well he was being a petty cunt. And I respect the hell out of there for that. Again, I don’t care about their ideology, they were able to go against their orders for the greater good and recognized the value of freedom of speech despite just how oppressive their higher-ups were and how high the price of so-called “treason” was. That for me already puts them above and beyond most people on both sides of the war. Takes a real man (or woman) to face that kind of bullshit and manage to protect something as obviously libertarian as Carnaval anyway. But most of the festivities still had to occur in private. However that year the Depósito de Minas de San Severiano went boom. It was a warehouse for explosives used in mining, doesn’t really matter. Point is, the civil governor Carlos María Rodríguez Valcárcel used this as an excuse to bring back Carnaval under the name of “Fiestas Típicas Gaditanas” claiming it would be needed to lift morale. And for the first time since the prohibition 10 years before, the authorities bit the bait and allowed Carnaval to come back... A bit.

The Fiestas Típicas were not like the prior Carnaval. Unlike religious authorities of the past, Franco’s Catholic allies were not from Cadiz, and took it upon themselves to scour every inch of the city in search for any acts of debauchery or especially god forbid a single passing joke about their beloved corpse-on-a-stick. The illegal formations became well and truly illegal with only the censored groups being allowed to act. Not that it stopped them from acting in Baches anyway. But they needed to keep people in the door looking out for any wild karens that may drop by. Although a good amount, more so on the later years, just took to singing on the streets like they had done in the past, especially the lyrics critical of the government and Catholics, just to fuck with those bastards. Though such pleasures were reserved for those athletic enough to outrun the Guardia Civil, who had been put on charge of chasing the Chirigoteros. Thankfuly until very recently the Guardia Civil had basically no standards, and specially back on the days of Franco, if a cop was intelligent and fit they’d very quickly be sent to the Guardia de Seguridad y Asalto or special units, so the people put in charge of actually stopping the Chirigoteros were a bunch of obese, lazy, stupid fucks too unfit to be put in charge of fucking TRAFFIC TICKETS, and on top of that most veterans, being locals, were quite happy to turn a blind eye, so it was only the recruits and karens with clubs that even tried to chase them. As you can probably imagine it is still legendary just how quickly that whole situation turned into a god damned parody of itself. Imagine a Tintin level cartoon depiction of incompetent policemen chasing around rascals for no real reason and you’d be quite close to what the real world situation devolved into. Just imagine, the world at large was going through WW2, Spain was filled with concentration camps as thousands were executed by corrupt cops for literally no reason or died of exhaustion as the mass graves filled with the innocent victims of fascist repression... And meanwhile here in Cadiz we had a bunch of karens and petty hitlers chasing the locals around for making parody songs while their own higher-ups just stared and chuckled. Clownworld finds a way.

And so while private Carnaval was still the same as always, public Carnaval was snuffed, edulcorated and heavily controlled. The censors scoured any and all lyrics for even the slightest critique, and even the most vacuous of indecencies, no swears, god forbid no naughty words and certainly nothing that could be considered sinful! They even censored a group that was merely talking about a fucking football match for using the word “Hazaña” (meaning “great deed”) to describe the victory of the Cadiz FC, due to it sounding like “Azaña”, the name of the last republican president. And to top it all off a few groups were specifically ordered to make anthems glorifying the dictatorship and the church, and the military made damned sure to come take good care that no one ever suggested anything provocative to a nun. Guess they didn’t want another scandal, I heard those nuns were up for anything those days!





And if you’ve ever even read of what happens when puritans do these things, you know damned well where this is going. Of course the first thing the censored groups took to creating was as much naughty shit as they could! Trying to get anything and everything past the census through metaphors and wordplay became the most practiced of sports in the whole city and no one would ever even consider not taking part of it! Most notably Juan Poce managed to pass into the main contest the Chirigota “Los Cristaleros” in 1960, which was in its entirety one giant metaphor for sex outside of marriage. And his group sure as shit got to sing it in Teatro Falla in front of Franco and his close circle for the main event. The fact that Poce was not executed probably means by that time they had gotten used to Cadiz being Spain’s fools. Good for them, it only took them 24 years to develop a sense of humour... But yeah if you think having people sent to concentration camps and an army of puritanical looneys scouring for any slight would discourage people from memeing it up, well, the Streissand Effect is a bitch.

And this fascination with double meanings and wordplay would come to bite Franco’s own blood soon enough, as one of the new introductions by the regime was that of a Queen of the Festivity, which would be decided by contest, and of course how weird Carmencita got elected first year. Carmencita being Carmen Martinez Bordiu, the granddaughter of mister pale arse himself, Franco. You see, of course under Franco nepotism was the only way up, and so his family would get everything and anything they wanted. And for many festivities that meant he’d parade his granddaughter like twitter cunts do with their “woke kids” these days. She would always be elected the bestest ever in any contest. And so when she was elected Queen of Carnav- I mean “the typical festivities” (Which is totally not Carnaval, that’s banned by law and we would never dare defy Franco here in Cadiz. We’re too busy being at awe of his pale arse for that.) the people of Cadiz took to giving her in recompense the new title of “La Nietísima” to point out this nepotism. See, it’s based on Franco’s own title, that of the “Generalísimo”, basically meaning “Commander in Chief.” They declared Carmen the “Granddaughter in Chief” to point out the obvious corruption in these contests and the fact she was being handled so many prices for literally no reason. Yeah the people of Cadiz REALLY took it upon themselves to see just how far they could sneak a good pun, and god damnit they snuck it really god damned far. As indeed the meaning flew completely under the radar and that title is how she is known to this day by most as it caught on as her title from then on being used publicly by newscasters even during the regime. Sure you’ll say getting an insulting word to stick to a little kid is petty as fuck but, well, “fat chance.” If anything with how easy and tempting they made it they should be happy we didn’t talk about her pale arse... Yeah ok I forced that one.







And so the party continued until the 15th of February 1977, which marked the first time the Fiestas Típicas had their name publicly (yet unofficially) changed to Carnaval, thanks to the transition back to democracy. To celebrate the posterior and finally official change of name the very next year on the 5th of Feburary 1978 the people of Cadiz made a fully up-to-standards Royal Funeral, complete with everyone dressed in full officially-correct French uniforms, carrying the coffins of the Fiestas Típicas with the plaque for which they would be remembered. “R.I.P ¡YA ERA HORA!” (“RIP. About time!”) And with utmost irreverence laid to rest the disguise carried by our most holy tradition, and celebrated its rebirth under its one true name. Carnaval.






And so, since then, the people of Cadiz once a year celebrate our Carnaval by making sure to take to task everyone and anyone, nothing shall be left unmocked, for no one should be safe from the prying eye of Momo. And we also still try to sneak as much double meanings as possible into the official contest and press despite not needing to anymore, no real reason to we just find it funny. And every year some religious collective or another gets bitchy than we mocked their favourite passage, or the feminists get a bit pissy that we made fun of some icon we didn’t even know they cared about, or my favourite instance is when foreign press see us in blackface and get assmad online about shit like this:






Reason I love that last one is that Blackface was never even that offensive here in Spain, in fact we do it every year when celebrating Christmas. Though in recent years the fringe left is starting to pull bullshit about it.





So there are 2 whole damned layers of cultural reasons for us to do it. Yet the oh-so-progressive media that always calls for us to protect the religious rites of the Jews and calls us bigoted for finding issues with the Muslim’s repression are quick to paint us as unholy demons for practicing not just our right to freedom of speech, but our most ancient and beloved cultural celebration. Some would say that is quite... _insensitive_ of them! Did I say “love” I meant I hate it with the burning passion of a thousand suns. Moving on.
(Also, that photo is the Pajes de Alcoy, and for the record, some of them are actually black. They still go in blackface too though, it's tradition damnit, your skintone doesn't mean you won't get the facepaint anyway.)







In conclusion, please excuse my audacity for a second. And let me make you this most flippant suggestion. That come Jueves Lardero you join us next year. And celebrate your freedom, or at least its veneer. As it seems speech these days is quite punishable. And that is something I find particularly abominable. There’s no need to travel, nor learn a new language. Just make your own songs, there’s no need for baggage. A few jokes, some good memes, just have a nice time. Get a disguise and a theme, and one or two rhymes. And if you get offensive, then all the better. But playing it safe is also accepted. As the point is to laugh, or at least to chuckle. Humour is sacred, everything else should buckle. Whatever your choice, I am fine in the end. After all I’m just another sped on the net. But I can’t help but feel it would fit us quite well. To be the ones to take Carnaval to the web. So consider it for now, you have until February. I’ll just wait over here, writing my next wall of spergery.


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## Mexican_Wizard_711 (Jul 6, 2020)

@EmuWarsVeteran 
Hey, my Spanish kiwi i have a few questions if you don't mind.

1. What do you guys think of your King? is he relevant?
2. Is Portugal basically the Iberian version of Canada?
3. Who is the biggest Spanish Lolcow?
4. What do you think of Latin American Kiwis like myself and others?
5. Do you dream of going to Burgerland?
6. Why are such a Doomer all the time?


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 6, 2020)

Mexican_Wizard_711 said:


> @EmuWarsVeteran
> Hey, my Spanish kiwi i have a few questions if you don't mind.
> 
> 1. What do you guys think of your King? is he relevant?
> ...



1-Current one (Felipe VI) is famous for being absolutely irrelevant. And honestly it's better that way, 'cause his father tried to be as relevant as possible for as long as possible (aka really tried not to allow democracy to come back, and even sacrificed our Saharaui brothers for international politics, but failed to stop the transition anyway, then used the propaganda machine to claim democracy happened thanks to him, despite his totalitarian ambitions) and is currently involved in multiple corruption cases involving Saudi and Chinese money... So honestly, and I say this as someone that doesn't really mind the idea of having a monarch that much, the less relevat they are the better. Felipe and Leticia are very blatantly going for the British model of being purely cosmetic, and woooo they better stick to it after just how much his papa fucked it up.

2-I... Don't know? Portugal is mostly just that one neighbor to our left that we've been fighting with for millenia but at this point they are one of our better allies so we just keep poking fun at each other in a friendly way. There is a federalist movement trying to create the Iberian Union, started in Portugal actually, dunno if it'll ever get anywhere. My opinion is depending on how it's implemented it could be an amazing idea or a horrid one, as with most political models it's all about execution. Either way they speak weird and their women have moustaches so fuck them.

3-Fuck that's a hard question. Can I just nominate all of Spain? Including myself. Jokes aside, probably someone in Vox. For those that don't know, Vox started as the non-corrupt alternative to the PP on the right wing... And then immediatelly allied with Esperanza Aguirre, the most corrupt politician of the PP. And now they've imploded, started eating each other, and gone full Alex Jones waving poorly photoshopped pictures while screaming about conspiracy theories in the bloody senate. So that whole party has quickly turned into lolcow central, much to my dismay 'cause even though I'm a leftie I really, really just want an honest right wing party to start fixing that side of the political spectrum. Like, our left is... Not perfect, but at least consistently less insane than the fucking freakshow I see outside of spain. But specially now that femenazi tendencies are popping up more and more in our media we need a sane right wing, and boy do we not have anything even remotely close to a sane right wing party. Except for the PNV but those guys only opperate withing Basque Country.

4-Latin America is our bloody offspring and rebelious or not we still love ya. No really, you even get a lot of advantages if you migrate here. It's easier for a latin american to get nationalization than it is for a european, and Cadiz specially has a lot of cultural and trade movements with iberoamerica. Vox hates you (except for argentina) 'cause they think all of iberoamerica is venezuela. But as I said, Vox is just... God. At one point they looked like they could be the saner alternative. It pains me so much how much they've gone to shit.

5-Not really. Mostly I just dream of finding a job. I don't care where... Well I'd rather it not be on an area that is currently on fire but you know. If it could be Spain all the better, I just like our healthcare, and climate, and culture, and low criminality... And not having things set on fire by black people. Point is, I've been to america as a tourist, and as a tourist it's fine. For staying there, no. I mean, they have some good things, 2 ammendment for instance. But also a lot of drawbacks. Either way if I don't find a job here I'll take it anywhere really.

6-It's not being a doomer if the world IS going to shit! Jokes aside. I don't know. I know I am a bit on the nihilistic side, but, I mean the world really is in a pretty bad state, and the past was even worse. I am glad at least we're getting less shit over time but fuck me we still have a lot to work on.


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## RichardMongler (Jul 7, 2020)

That was an incredible beginning to this thread. I'll admit I'm not even halfway through, but I commend you for the effortposts.

Any thoughts on José Antonio Primo de Rivera and Francisco Franco? What about the CNT-FAI? Have you read Homage to Catalonia?


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 7, 2020)

RichardMongler said:


> That was an incredible beginning to this thread. I'll admit I'm not even halfway through, but I commend you for the effortposts.
> 
> Any thoughts on José Antonio Primo de Rivera and Francisco Franco? What about the CNT-FAI? Have you read Homage to Catalonia?



Primo de Rivera is quite beloved to this day, at least down here, despite the collapse of his regime. He was actually fairly competent, probably one of the least stupid rulers spain's had (though that isn't that hard a feat really. Our rulers are a long list of looneys, morons and assholes.) but fascism always breeds nepotism and by god did his subordinates go full nepotism during his tenure. Which is why it ended how it did.

I think you will find my opinion on Franco quite clear when you get to part 4 of the tale of Carnaval. If Primo was arguably amongst the most benign fascist dictators, Franco was arguably the worst. He censored and erased beloved traditions, carved out past icons, killed countless spaniards, enslaved even more and was a genuinely awful ruler. Even worse he was an incompetent piece of shit to boot, causing economic depression and famine on a scale unprecedented in spain, and sold out a large portion of the country to boot, which is currently causing the humanitarian disaster area known as morocco. Hell he could be said to have also sold out europe as a whole by betraying the axis. Not that he was ever allied to them to begin with, he just used them for his own petty greed. He was a man of no morals and even less braincells and there is not a single good thing I can say about him. Hell even his choice of successor was awful, with Juan Carlos selling out the Saharauis to be butchered and opressed by moroccan imperialists for his failed experiment at totalitarianosm. Fuck, even his allies during the civil war had a lot of choice words about Paquito in the private messages that were found later. No one, and I mean no one, ever liked that cunt to begin with. They juat knew he was the only bastard slimy enough to keep the catholics, fallangists and monarchists from eating each other like the republicans did. And even then they debated wether or not to get him in until he had the backing of the fucking british. He deserves no respect.

CNT-FAI might just be the only organism in spanish history I hate even more than Franco. Their political maneuverings consistently forced the democrats to cede more power to the commies they claimed to hate, their poor attempt at seceding practically butchered the war effort, and even worse, soon after they broke out people were fleeing for the republican and fascist territories because despite the repubs slowly turning into another soviet russia and the nationalists making hitler look good the defense council of aragon quickly became the worst of the 3. Genuinely incredibly evil and incompetent people. I may be a leftie, and a federalist, but CNT FAI is a case fucking course on how not to do either of those things. My god did they suck arse.

I haven't read Homage to Catalonia. Guess I'll have to add it to the list of books to read when I got time.


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## byuu (Jul 7, 2020)

How do you guys see gypsies?
The rest of Europe shuns them but they seem to be a big part of Andalucian culture, e.g. the Flamenco.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 7, 2020)

garakfan69 said:


> How do you guys see gypsies?
> The rest of Europe shuns them but they seem to be a big part of Andalucian culture, e.g. the Flamenco.



Yeah we also hate them. They are indeed an important part of andalusian tradition and here most don't care about race anyway, as I said on prior posts, if you speak spanish and live in spain you have a bested interest in spain going well and therefore you ARE spanish, no matter where you were born or of whom, and we are happy to have you amongst our own. But gypsies aren't just a race. Or... Well some are.

See. There's 2 kinds of gypsies. Much like jews. Some really are just gypsies by birth but nothing more. Those are fine, no one cares. And indeed these were the main contingent before the EU which is why in old spanish culture gypsies were seen in a fairly positive light. But then as our frontiers reopened after the end of the regime, the "gitano rumanos" entered. That's the "romanian gypsies", being known that way because indeed most were romanian migrants, and those aren't just gypsies by race. They self isolate, have a ludicrously high criminality and are generally really bad people. So that is why we have now started shunning them as much as the balkans. Hell just ask anyone working in public healthcare or education and you'll see just how much they hate those cunts. Again, as with all races, if you integrate no one cares. But they don't integrate, so we care, a lot. Also gypsies have now started going full intersec femenazi so that has hurt their image a lot and people are really vocal about it.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 7, 2020)

*A Brief on Pedro Muñoz Seca:*





After so much criticism of the nationalist side, I feel it very appropiate I take a shit on the republicans now that I got the chance with the tale of a great spanish thinker from this most humble province of Cadiz. Pedro Muñoz Seca.

Born the 20th of February 1879 in El Puerto, not to be confused with El Muelle, which is a joke you won't get unless you know of Cadiz's nonesensical naming conventions. I'll have to explain those on another post. Pedro was a writer of the artistic current of the Novecentismo, which is my favourite artistic current by far, specially when it comes to architecture. He was quite renouned during the "Generación del 14", so much so that he was titled the "Fénix de los Ingenios del Siglo 20", which translates as the "Phoenix of the Wits of the 20th Century." This title was also a reference to his traditionalist views, as he was quite the reactionary in his more political writing.

He was most acclaimed for starting the literary and comedic current known as "astracán" or "astracanada", which was based on the british "nonesense" comedic current and emphasized the combination of dry with with the use of purely nonesensical elements for comedic effect. For those that don't know of said current, basically think "Monty Python" as they are indeed the most famous version of such current, basically this guy was the spanish version of them. And so he devoted his life to the most honourable profession, making people laugh. With satirical and often times purely comedic works of art.

But I labelled this "A Brief" for good reason, and indeed my intention here isn't so much to perform a literary analysis of this genius, a task for which I am greatly illsuited. As it is instead to showcase his last moment of glory, and indeed his last moment on this earth.

You see, if you saw that date you know where this is going, the Spanish Civil War is coming, and what a looming presence it is... Before it he was quite controversial due to his views, as most of his literary contemporaries were more on the left leaning side of things, specially in Cadiz, Barcelona and Madrid where he worked, but it was all good intentioned critique and jest, and he was a part of that. It was a good time despite the political issues and our comedians flourished greatly despite the autistic slapfights. But that would all come to an end as the unthinkable occurred, and the country was cleaved in two one more time.

Pedro was in Barcelona for the premiere of "La Tonta del Rizo" when the war declaration occurred, and the anarchosyndicalists captured him and his wife, under the accusation of spreading Monarchic and Catholic thought. For said accusations he'd be judged by a "Popular Tribunal" in Paracuellos del Jarama (Madrid) and declared guilty on the 28th November 1936. For such "heinous" acts, his exercice of freedom of thought and expression, he would be sent to die by firing squad that very day.

But he would get the last laugh in the end, as once againts the wall, as was customary, he was allowed his last words. And he chose not to waste them on family or politics as many others had, instead leaving his own executors one last gift: "Podéis quitarme mi hacienda, mi patria, mi fortuna, mi vida. Pero hay una cosa que no podéis quitarme. ¡El miedo que tengo ahora mismo!" Translated: "You can take my home, my fatherland, my fortune, my life. But there's one thing you'll never be able to take from me. The fear I got right now!" And so one of the greatest thinkers and comedians of our time stared death in the face, and embraced her with a laugh.


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## Oglooger (Jul 7, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> Primo de Rivera is quite beloved to this day, at least down here, despite the collapse of his regime. He was actually fairly competent, probably one of the least stupid rulers spain's had (though that isn't that hard a feat really. Our rulers are a long list of looneys, morons and assholes.) but fascism always breeds nepotism and by god did his subordinates go full nepotism during his tenure. Which is why it ended how it did.


I remember passing by the Falangue flag and thinking it looks pretty cool, I remember trying to translate some parts of his speech into English to pass the time, but I had a hard time doing so; I can't tell if it's because of the difference between Mexican and Spaniard spanish, my Spanish degrading from being exposed to spanglish by puerto ricans or a mixture of both.



Spoiler: I just really like these, feel like it could apply to America today.



Ha llegado para nosotros el momento mas temido que esperado de regoger las ansias, de antender el clamoroso requerimiento de cuantos amanto a la patria, no nos queda otro solución  que liberarla de los profesionales de la politica. Este movimiento es de hombres; El que no siente la masculinidad  completamente caracterizada, que esperen en un rincon, sin pertubar los dias buenos que para la patria preparamos.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 7, 2020)

Oglooger said:


> I remember passing by the Falangue flag and thinking it looks pretty cool, I remember trying to translate some parts of his speech into English to pass the time, but I had a hard time doing so; I can't tell if it's because of the difference between Mexican and Spaniard spanish, my Spanish degrading from being exposed to spanglish by puerto ricans or a mixture of both.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



It's probably all of the above plus the fact spanish spanish has also changed considerably over time. Hell in some areas south americans preserve old spanish words we stopped using. Feels weird sometimes. Also for non-spanish speaking kiwis.



Spoiler: translation



It has come for us the moment, more feared than awaited, of collecting our cravings, of listening to the clamorous requirement of those who, loving our homeland, see no other sollution than to free it from the professional politicians. This movement is of men; those who do not feel masculinity completely characterized can await in a corner, without perturbing the good days that for our homeland we prepare.



Yeah the falange was redpill central in many ways, and wasn't all bad, specially taking into account the currents of the time. Sadly they went off the deep end, as most reactionary movements tend to do. "He who fights monsters" as the saying goes.



Spoiler: context



For those lacking context. I may do a more thorough analysis later, but for the time being: basically at this point most of spain was run by deep state oligarchs, that made even current american oligarchs look like they aren't THAT corrupt by comparison. The king was rapidly becoming useless, the colonies were just a lost cause altogether which had fucked with national spirit considerably, and far from trying to make it less shit the 2 main parties had resorted to inflamatory rhetoric to stir shit up in their mafia style attempt at keeping their power. So as you can imagine most were unhappy, and the army most of all. So since Primo was the king's right hand man, beloved by the army and had proven to be an extremely competent and charismatic leader, the king funded the fallange and endorsed a coup against himself by Primo in an attempt to get the army to power.

The idea was simple: armymen are disciplined. Therefore they will not be as corrupt as their predecessors, therefore Primo can fix the country and prop it up so we can figure out what to do from there. The regime was always meant as a temporary sollution to a seemingly permanent problem. Sadly... Turns out the army was a lot more corrupt that they expected, and the fallange near instantly fell upon the same traps as the prior system and ate irself up, so while Primo himself was a pretty good leader and did manage to fix multiple issues, well, his regime plummeted way earlier than expected and he was exiled in some really bad terms. But that's spain for ya. We're barely less self-immolating than the Balkans, honestly it's a fucking wonder we didn't split ages ago.


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## Oglooger (Jul 7, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> It has come for us the moment, more feared than awaited, of collecting our cravings, of listening to the clamorous requirement of those who, loving our homeland, see no other sollution than to free it from the professional politicians. This movement is of men; those who do not feel masculinity completely characterized can await in a corner, without perturbing the good days that for our homeland we prepare.


lol my translation was more stiff because I was trying to find American equivalents.


Spoiler: My translation I did on phone while bored at work



The time most feared has come into action, the great need that comes with loving this nation, where there is no other solution but to liberate her from career politicians.
This movement is of men, those who not feel their manhood completely characterized within themselves can wait in the corner, as to not disturb the great days ahead that we are making for the homeland.


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## Medical Hawaii (Jul 7, 2020)

¡Qué interesante hilo! Recientemente he estado buscando más información sobre España, ya que el español que yo aprendía era latinoamericano y por consiguiente las culturas hispanohablantes de latinoamerica, también. 

Especialmente me interesa mucho el acento castellano-- Eres de Cadiz, ¿sí? Si no recuerdo mal, se usa el "ceceo" acá,  ¿verdad? ¿Ósea el español andaluz?

-----------
What an interesting thread! I've been trying to learn more about Spain recently since the Spanish I've learned is largely Latin-American, and consequently, so are the cultures I've been exposed to along the way.  I'm especially interested in the Castilian accent; you said you're from Cadiz...If I recall correctly, the "ceceo" accent is employed there, right?


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 8, 2020)

*Cadiz’s Insanity:*





I already wanted to talk about this topic but was pushing it back, but since this brought it up:



Medical Hawaii said:


> ¡Qué interesante hilo! Recientemente he estado buscando más información sobre España, ya que el español que yo aprendía era latinoamericano y por consiguiente las culturas hispanohablantes de latinoamerica, también.
> 
> Especialmente me interesa mucho el acento castellano-- Eres de Cadiz, ¿sí? Si no recuerdo mal, se usa el "ceceo" acá, ¿verdad? ¿Ósea el español andaluz?
> 
> ...




Let me tell you about the tale of Cadiz’s love hate relationship with language. That being that we love to talk but everyone else hates when we do. And the first step on our trip into “why are we still here, just to suffer” land begins with: What Cadiz are you talking about there?



Spoiler: How Many Cadizs Are There?







You see. Cadiz is the name of the Province of Cadiz, in the south of Spain. But it is also the name of the capital city of said province, and the municipio in which it resides, and the name of the circumscripción in which said province is. Now up to here it’s not that weird, Seville and Madrid both have the same issues, with Madrid also being a Comunidad Autonómica to boot... But then within the city Cadiz is also the name of the Casco Antiguo of Cadiz, which is actually what the locals call Cadiz most of the time. Prompting the ever so infamous “Ojú Shiquillo! Pero si eso sta en Cái!” Comment at people asking for directions to things that are within that area of the city while they’re on “Extramuros.” (The area outside the old town’s walls.) Which always leaves people thinking “Well. Where the fuck am I then?” Answer is Cadiz of course... Just not THAT Cadiz. And on top of that bit of insanity Cadiz is also the name of a specific area within the old town and “Ciudad de Cadiz” is the name of a gym, which is actually within the Zona Franca, in Extramuros. Because we hate making sense around here it seems. And that’s before taking into account the multiple American Cities called Cadiz. Because of course we’d drop a few of those instead of getting new names!

This also causes another issue with language. For the purposes of simplicity within the forum I’ve been using “Gaditano” as the name for people of the Province of Cadiz, which is technically the legal definition of that term, but of course as with all of Spain we have terms for people of specific cities, like Jerezano for Jerez. Well, people born on the city of Cadiz aren’t necessarily called Gaditanos, people who are born specifically on the Casco Antiguo of Cadiz are Gaditanos, the people of Puertatierra (the residential part of Extramuros, called that way for containing the old gates of the walls of Cadiz, called Puerta Tierra) are called Bedouins. Why would they be called Bedouins you may ask? Well, the area of Extramuros looked like this before the buildings were set on it:





And Bedouin means “desert dweller”, so when people started settling on that area around the 15th century they started being called that as a joke, and it just kinda stuck basically. Yeah I wasn’t kidding when I said Cadiz’s entire culture is based around jokes most of the time, we just always did that kinda shit and the rest of Spain had to learn to ignore the insanity and let us do our thing.



But you may be wondering why this is important when it comes to your question. Well:



Spoiler: What Even Is Language Anyway?



When it comes to accent you might have seen this map floating around:





(As a side note. What this map marks as “north” is typically called “dialectos romances” while “south” is referred to as “dialectos meridionales”, due to northern dialects coming from romance tongues other than castillian while southern dialects are a mixture of castillian and Mediterranean ("southern") tongues. Don’t know why the map didn’t get it right.)

Which marks Cadiz as using the same dialect as the rest of southern Andalusia, ceceo. And that is true... For Cadiz Province. But Cadiz City actually mostly uses seseo like northern Andalusia. Why? Because fuck us that’s why. However this other map which marks southern Andalusia as using “illo” while northern Andalusia uses the Castillian “ito” actually does apply to both Cadiz’s as Cadiz City also indeed uses “illo.”





And indeed Cadiz City just seems to have its own dialect which even the rest of Cadiz province finds odd. And even has its own words altogether. The most important feature of this dialect is that we just kinda eat sounds for no reason. For instance as I wrote before, “Cadiz” is usually pronounced “Cái.” Another very famous example is “Chiquillo”, which is sometimes pronounced “Shiquillo” but most times is just shortened to “illo” or “quillo”, because fuck even pronouncing words that large I guess. To showcase this phenomenon let me please use a video, as it is easier to listen to than to explain:






And the video introduces us to the reason why Cadiz has such a fucking weird way of speaking. You see, while Cadiz province is a heavily rural area on the style of Texas, Cadiz city is, and has been since time immemorial, an industrial and commercial port, which sadly lost its relevance when the crown moved most of its functions to Seville due to corrupt bullshit, but to this day still receives a good amount of trade and tourism from all over the world. So while Cadiz Province just slowly advances culture through interactions with the rest of Andalusia and Cadiz City, the city itself is also influenced by the rest of the sodding planet, specially the Mediterranean and Caribbean.

Indeed one of the biggest influences in Cadiz’s mannerism is the Italian Merchants which migrated here due to Ottoman expansion and in turn Cadiz has also influenced and been influenced by the Caribbean, having that same stereotype of “talking too much and too fast” as they do. Which is the other thing everyone knows about our dialect.



Accents done with, let’s get to the other interesting part of this, words. Because that’s another round of what the fuck even is going on here and why is everyone insane.



Spoiler: Why Words?



The video linked on the prior spoiler starts touching upon this indeed, and that is the fact that Cadiz just has its own dictionary too, and it is hard to manoeuvre without it. This was exemplified with this beautiful comedic tale called “Euskera Fácil, Gaditano Dificil”, which narrates the harrowing misadventure of a Basque private investigator trying his hardest to understand what has gone wrong with this town.



Spoiler: Euskera Fácil, Gaditano Dificil



Me llamo Mikel Gorriarán, llevo 15 días en Cádiz y me estoy, o me están volviendo loco.

Os contaré mi historia. Soy investigador privado y he venido a Cádiz a resolver un caso simple. Pero la verdad es que a cada día que pasa se vuelve más complicado. Tan sólo se trataba de descubrir al amante de la mujer de un alto mandatario vasco; comprenderán ustedes por tanto que no dé su nombre, además porque me debo al secreto profesional.

En principio no tenía muchas pistas. Sólo sabía que el hombre en cuestión era de Cádiz, se llamaba Manuel Ramírez, que trabajaba en el Puerto de Cádiz y que le conocían con el alias de picha. Así que el individuo en cuestión debía estar bien dotado, ya que además del amante de la mujer del político, eran conocidas sus correrías por el Puerto de Bilbao. También usaba otro sobrenombre: “quillo”.

Con estas pistas, tomé el avión hasta Madrid y de allí enlacé con el tren hasta Cádiz. Llegué a la estación, cogí un taxi y mientras iba camino del hotel, intenté entablar conversación con el taxista. La cosa quedó en eso, en el intento. Porque que yo sepa una conversación es entre dos o más personas, pero el taxista no me daba opción ya que hablaba por los codos, y de modo ininteligible. Lo hacía de forma sumamente apresurada y las pocas palabras que podía cazar al vuelo estaban incompletas. Quise preguntarle por el puerto, pero sabiendo que su respuesta no la entendería, lo dejé para mejor ocasión.

Llegué al hotel “Playa Victoria”, y como mi interés era buscar al tal Manuel Ramírez, en principio consulté la guía telefónica de la ciudad; pero como presumía aquí habían demasiados Ramírez. En mi tierra hubiera sido muy fácil. Así que opté por buscar pistas en su lugar de trabajo. Salí a la calle y pregunté por el puerto. Un señor muy amable me dijo que lo mejor era coger el autobús de los Comes, pero que para eso tenía que ir a Cádiz.

Aquello me desconcertó. ¿Dónde estaba yo?. Empecé a atar cabos. Efectivamente cuando llegué a la terminal de la estación no ponía Cádiz, sino Cortadura. Y además recuerdo que en el trayecto di unas cabezadas; y claro en ese intervalo pudo haber algún enlace, o algo, no sé. Lo cierto es que yo no me encontraba en Cádiz. Pero no debía estar muy lejos.

Paré un taxi y con gesto decidido le dije al taxista que me llevara a Cádiz. El me contestó con ¿a Cádiz a donde?. Y le contesté algo enfadado que a Cádiz, joder, a Cádiz; de una puta vez quiero llegar a Cádiz.

Ya luego el taxista con mucha paciencia y muy despacito me explicó que donde yo estaba era Cádiz, pero no era Cádiz. A ver si lo explico bien. Resulta que la gente de aquí le llaman Cádiz a la parte antigua y desde unas murallas para adelante le llaman Puerta Tierra. Así es que en realidad yo estaba en Cádiz, pero en Puerta Tierra. No sé si lo expliqué bien, pero yo ya lo he entendido.

Llegué por fin a la estación de los autobuses de Comes, pedí un billete para el puerto y me subí al autobús correspondiente. El trayecto fue relativamente corto, si acaso 30 minutos; pero la verdad es que yo creía que Cádiz era más pequeño. Sin duda me habían informado mal. Y además mi trabajo aquí se complicaba, puesto que habría que buscar en una ciudad más grande de lo que pensaba.

Pero mis sorpresas no habían acabado. Llegado a la estación terminal pregunté por el puerto. Mi interlocutor me miró con mal gesto y me dijo que esto era El Puerto. Yo no entendía nada. Ese hombre enfadado y yo no veía barcos por ningún sitio.

La verdad es que el hombre tuvo más paciencia que el santo Job. Me fue explicando poco a poco que aquello era El Puerto de Santa María, pero que por todo el mundo (todo el mundo menos yo) era conocido por El Puerto. Y además me dijo que eso no era Cádiz, que Cádiz estaba allí enfrente. Que El Puerto es un pueblo de Cádiz y que si lo que quería era ir al puerto de Cádiz que cogiera el vaporcito y me dejaría allí mismo.

Total, antes lo de Cádiz, que no era Cádiz que era Puertatierra y ahora que El Puerto es un pueblo de Cádiz y, entonces digo yo ¿cómo le llaman al puerto, al de los barcos, al puerto de siempre?

Subí por fin al que le llaman Vaporcito de El Puerto, que para que lo sepan ustedes no es un barco de vapor. No, porque aquí en Cádiz o donde coño esté ahora, no le llaman a las cosas por su nombre. Si, le llaman vaporcito; pero en realidad es un barco que va a gasoil.

Y llegué por fin al puerto de Cádiz, que aquí lo llaman “el muelle”. Una gracia que me ha costado gran perdida de tiempo y de dinero, que además no sé como justificar ante mi cliente, porque me temo que no me va a creer; y tampoco quiero darle muchas explicaciones porque seguro que voy a ser objeto de burlas.

Bien, obviaré todos estos inconvenientes y pasaré a la acción. De siempre las mejores informaciones se consiguen en los bares, así que me acerqué al bar más próximo al puerto (perdón al “muelle”), uno que se llama “Lucero” y pedí un tubo (de cerveza, se entiende) pero el camarero no lo entendió. Yo más o menos le expliqué lo que quería y él con aire de suficiencia me dijo: “Ah, usted lo que quiere es un bó“. Joder, no sabía yo que también tenían un idioma particular los gaditanos.

Me acomodé en la barra del bar y puse la oreja atenta a lo que allí se cocía. Me acerqué la cerveza a los labios, tomé un trago largo y de pronto escuché la palabra mágica: “Picha”.

¡Dios!, por fin la suerte me vino de cara. Casi no podía creérmelo. Me atoré con la cerveza, me puse perdido, pero merecía la pena. Había encontrado a la persona que estaba buscando. Bendita suerte la mía. Con disimulo me acerqué a los dos hombres que charlaban de un tema que no comprendía, pero tenía que ver con la música y con los coros. Y con un jurado, que por lo visto no tenía ni idea. Gente, sin duda muy creyente. Aunque mal hablada eso sí, se escapaban de vez en cuando, demasiado de cuando en cuando, palabras mal sonantes, que no creo deban reproducirse aquí. Pero, a mí lo que me interesaba era que uno de ellos fuera “el picha”. Y para asegurarme que ese era el tipo que buscaba, pedí otro bó y pegué la oreja a la conversación.

Efectivamente, a lo largo de la conversación, uno de ellos: un tipo bajito (1,65 no más) moreno, 40 años, delgado, que no tenía ni media bofetada, era llamado constantemente “picha” por su compañero de conversación. Jo, pensé, Dios le da pañuelos a quien no tiene nariz. No sé si lo captan ustedes. Porque aquel tipo se estaba trajinando a la mujer de mi cliente. Y aunque esté mal decirlo, porque yo soy un profesional, es una hembra de bandera. No me extraña que a ese tipo le dijeran “el picha”, porque sin duda era lo único bueno que tendría.

Bueno bueno, que me desvío de la trama. Había dado con el individuo, eso era lo importante. Esperé tranquilamente a que acabaran la conversación y seguí al “picha” con la idea de abordarlo sólo y sin testigos. Y ocurrió un caso hasta ahora inédito en mi dilatada carrera. Se encontró con un amigo suyo y al saludarlo le dijo: ¿que pasa PICHA?. Y el otro le contestó: muy bien PICHA, ¿y tú?

Sí, efectivamente; había dos individuos con el mismo alias. Y a decir verdad, este segundo tipo tenía mejor planta de amante que el escuchimizado de antes. Pero en esto de la investigación nunca se puede descartar a ningún sospechoso. Lo malo de todo esto es que ahora tendría que doblar mis esfuerzos y hacer seguimientos alternativos, para comprobar cual de ellos era el verdadero amante.

Opto en principio por seguir a este último ya que le veo con mejor planta, pero sin descartar, como buen profesional que soy, al tipo escuchimizado. El individuo toma un autobús y allí entabla conversación con un conocido suyo al que llama “quillo”. ¡Dios! Esto se complica a cada paso. Ahora tengo a dos “pichas” y a un “quillo”. Mi instinto de detective me dice que estoy siguiendo una pista falsa. Empezaré de nuevo; así que vuelvo al bar del “muelle” y le pregunto al camarero que si conoce a un tal Manuel Ramírez que trabaja en el puerto. Me dice que con esos datos no le suena y que además El Puerto le queda algo lejos. Caigo entonces en la cuenta y rectifico diciéndole que donde trabaja es el “muelle”. No cae. Le digo entonces que le conocen con el apodo de “picha” y también con el de “quillo”. El tipo del bar se carcajea en mi cara. Y me aclara que aquí todo el mundo es “picha” y “quillo”. La poli, sin duda, aquí lo tiene complicado.

Te estás luciendo Mikel, me digo para mí. Otra cagada. No obstante el camarero me dice que pregunte por “Paco el bigote” que en el muelle es el que contrata a los estibadores. Después de darle todos los datos de que disponía sobre el tal Manuel Ramírez: que según tenía entendido trabajaba en el muelle y que durante seis meses trabajó en el Puerto de Bilbao (lo de los apodos los omití, porque con el cachondeo del camarero ya tuve bastante) aquel me contestó de mala gana, que ya no trabaja allí. Que según tenía entendido ahora trabajaba en la Residencia. Yo le pregunté que ¿en cuál residencia?. Él contestó, con menos ganas que antes, que en cuál iba a ser, joé, pues en la Residencia. Era ya tarde; y como la verdad, había conseguido bastante información, volví al hotel, a comer. Lo de la residencia lo dejaría para la tarde.

Pensé que era buena idea tomar un pescado para el almuerzo, que aquí lo habría de haber bueno con tanta costa. Así que le pregunté al camarero que si tenía pescado. El me contestó que tenía unas “zapatillas mu fresquitas”. A mí sinceramente me importaba un pimiento lo que se calzaba el fulano. Yo lo que quería era comer, y además no sé a qué venía aquello de las zapatillas. El tipo me estaba vacilando o tendría a medias una zapatería con algún cuñado y me hacía la propaganda. Obvié el comentario e insistí en lo del pescado, pero el camarero volvió con lo de las zapatillas fresquitas. Puse mala cara y el camarero debió de notarlo, ya que inmediatamente me aclaró que así le llaman aquí a las doradas. Gente rara esta de Cádiz. No hay Dios que los entienda con lo que corren hablando, las palabras que las pronuncian a medias y para colmo le cambian el nombre a las cosas. Luego dicen que el euskera es difícil.

No, euskera fácil, gaditano difícil.

Después de una pequeña siesta reparadora, volví a la faena. Tendría que averiguar a qué residencia en cuestión se refería “Paco el bigote”. Deduje sin duda de que tenía que ser muy conocida, por la forma en que el susodicho me dijo: ”cual va a ser, joé, pues la residencia”. Perspicaz que es uno.

En la misma recepción del hotel me dieron la información que necesitaba. La Residencia estaba a 100 metros del hotel. Un paseo siempre vendría bien; pero llevaba cierto tiempo andando y no encontré ninguna residencia. Pregunté a un transeúnte y me contestó que me la había pasado, que estaba a dos bocacalles. Así que volví sobre mis pasos, pero yo no encontré ninguna Residencia. Y debía estar allí. Volví a preguntar. ¿Por favor la Residencia? Pues eso que tiene usted delante. Pero… ¡eso es UN HOSPITAL!. Aquí le decimos la Residencia, me contestó la señora y se quedó tan pancha y de camino me echó una mirada como diciendo, pareces tonto.

Bien, a partir de ahora no volveré a caer en estas artimañas. Porque para mí estaba claro que había algún tipo de complot, y entre todos los gaditanos intentaban marearme con nombres equivocados a cosas que solo pueden tener un nombre.

Investigué en el hospital y saqué un dato importantísimo. Allí trabajaba desde hacía dos meses un tal Manuel Ramírez que estuvo cierto tiempo en Bilbao, según todo ello me confirmó un celador de la Residencia. No pudo decirme su dirección concreta, aunque me dijo que vivía por la Plaza de Toros.

Iba, a pesar de la cantidad de datos “incorrectos”, cercando al sospechoso. Dar con la Plaza de Toros sería tarea simple.

Eso pensé, pero hasta el día de hoy (y llevo quince días aquí) no he conseguido dar con ella. Y tiene que estar ahí, porque una Plaza de Toros es una Plaza de Toros, y a eso no le pueden cambiar el nombre. Y además a todo el que le pregunto me dice que “dos calles más pallá” o una “mijita más palante”. Luego eso confirma mi teoría: hay una Plaza de Toros. Todos me hablan de ella, pero yo no la encuentro. Me estoy, o me están volviendo loco.

Definitivamente dejo el caso. Y como dicen los de aquí, me juannajo.



Which I won’t try to translate to English because, well honestly, if you don’t understand Spanish you won’t find it funny anyway. Same reason why I don’t bother translating the prior video, the point of the video is to show the accent, that can’t be translated. Well that and I must now point if you only listened to it that if you actually watch it you’ll see on the bottom of the screen words pop up every once in a while, so for South Americans reading this, whenever a word pops up there, that’s because not even the rest of Andalusia uses those words, typically some parts of Cadiz Province do, because we mix somewhat, but everyone else just has as little idea as you do as to what the fuck we’re saying. Actually sometimes you might have a better idea than they do thanks to the Caribbean trade. So, there are multiple factors here about why people just talk this way around here. Let’s try to unpack them:

The video already mentioned the first issue, which is English. You see, being a commercial port, Cadiz had a lot of sea trade, which in Europe means you gotta know English. This became specially relevant however when the USA formed, because while Spain was trying to move all trade to Seville, the USA said “yeah nah” and realized that going through Seville meant a longer route for no benefit, so they used Cadiz when entering into the Mediterranean instead. So American English became a major influence in Cadiz. However, the lower classes were still as unilingual as the rest of Spain, so instead of being a normal influence, it just kind of gave us a broken version of American English as interpreted by someone with no idea of actual American English which was inserted into the vocabulary. Giving us some gems as:

“Chumino”, pronounced “shumino”, meaning “cunt”, as in female genitalia, not used as the insult, comes from “show me now”, which is what American sailors screamed at prostitutes from their boats to get them to lift their skirts.

“Malaje”, used for “aggressive” or “humourless” comes from “maladies.” I don’t think this one needs further explanation.

“Guachisnai” means “foreigner”, coming from “what’s your name?” For the record I’ve never seen it used in a negative tone. Usually just in jest. I guess it comes with having so much migration and tourism that us Gaditanos just never really cared about race. I mean, Spaniards in general always cared more about nationality and politics than race, but Cadiz just didn’t give a single shit to begin with. The whole damned town’s a genetic blender we can’t really afford to care. Well that and as the tale of Carnaval should showcase we just never gave a single flying fuck about most things anyway.

“Jambá” comes from “Jazz Band” and is used for small musical groups.

Another factor of course is the words we just made up on our own, and names of places that aren’t official but everyone uses for no reason. I’ll just add the ones from the tale spoilered before:

“Picha” and “Chocho” (dick and cunt respectively), alongside “quillo/illo” and “quilla/illa” are used here for males and females respectively the same way a brit uses “mate” or an aussie “cunt.”

“El Puerto” (“the Docks”) is how we refer to “El Puerto de Santa María”, the nearest village (which has currently sprawled into a suburbian area), to ask for the docks you must refer to the “Muelle” (“pier”), although sometimes if people realize you’re not from here they’ll realize what’s going on and ask “what dock”, this is also exhacerbated by the fact that our dock is cut in half by the bay, so if your destination claims to be the Dock but it’s the half on the other side you must ask for “Navantia”, which is the name of the company that controls said half of the dock and how everyone knows the area.

“Vaporcito” meaning “Little Steamboat” was the name of a small steamboat that went from Cadiz to El Puerto (the village), sadly the boat broke so now it’s been changed for a modern replica using gasoline, which we still call “Vaporcito” anyway.

“Bó” being the word used for a “tubo” is just one of many cases of Gaditanos just eating sounds.

“La Residencia” is the name of a hospital which long, long ago was a residence. It also originally had another name but at that time it was the only residence, so people just didn’t give a shit.

“Zapatillas” (meaning “sports shoes”) is how we call the Dorada, a kind of fish, ‘cause it looks like a shoe. Well it doesn’t really look a lot like a shoe, but people call it that way anyway.

“Plaza de Toros” as with “La Residencia” is a plaza, which at some point had in it a bullfighting arena. Long, LONG ago, indeed Cadiz was the first province capital in Spain to take down its arena. (The reason being that bullfighting is done in Jerez, the biggest village of Cadiz Province, so they just saw no reason to keep it with how logistically painful it was to bring the bulls all the way here. Specially because bullfighting never had much of a public here in Cadiz, we’re a fishing, industrial and commerce dock town, bullfighting is more of a thing on farming areas. So it wasn’t really economically viable to keep it.) Point is, after it was taken down we just still called the plaza that, while our maps keep having the original name on it, despite no one actually using or even knowing said name.

Finally “Juannajo” means “to surrender”, and that seems to be a word that comes from the Caribbean actually, being the name of some bird from over there. So I’m guessing it came via sea trade. No one really knows for sure.

For more info on our dictionary, let me link you the Cadizpedia a website devoted to trying to make sense of what the fuck is going on with language here. ‘Cause apparently we needed one.



And so I think we can all agree, Cadiz’s dialect is just fucking weird. But if you think that’s bad, take a look at Gibraltar! Those mofos mix Cadiz City’s dialect with London’s british on a roughly 1:1 ratio to create a sort of messed up Spanglish known as “llanito” that’s just a fucking joy to stare at.

Let me first rearchive here the video I linked on the Wuhan Coronavirus thread:





Your browser is not able to display this video.

















And now link some other examples from the media:
















As you can see, that's a whole new can of worms. Bet you didn't know how deep this rabbit hole went!


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## Lemmingwise (Jul 8, 2020)

1. It's a basic bitch question, but what do you think about bullfighting? Without knowing anything about societal climate, I expect marxists/feminists to be up in arms about them and winning in expunging it slowly.
2. Is the meme of Dutch elders living out retirement in spain true? Do you see them? What do people think of them?
3. Why is italian olive oil better?
4. I learned to make spanish tortilla's. Very delicious. Are there other non-touristy (paella) spanish dishes that are good?

Still have to read 80% of what you wrote but it'll be worth it.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 8, 2020)

Lemmingwise said:


> 1. It's a basic bitch question, but what do you think about bullfighting? Without knowing anything about societal climate, I expect marxists/feminists to be up in arms about them and winning in expunging it slowly.
> 2. Is the meme of Dutch elders living out retirement in spain true? Do you see them? What do people think of them?
> 3. Why is italian olive oil better?
> 4. I learned to make spanish tortilla's. Very delicious. Are there other non-touristy (paella) spanish dishes that are good?
> ...



1-Bullfighting isn't going away for the foreseeable future. Spain has many marxists on Catalonia and the media (which is a monopoly controlled by a catatalonian entity, A3media. But take into account that Catalonia is extremely different from the rest of spain, as exemplified with the current political debate, where the media tried to push for LGBTQUNTUABGI agenda and were met head on by the government releasing what is essentially the TERF manifesto coming from the government, then reeing and lobbying when people criticized them and being met with Pablo Iglesias and Pedro Sanchez directly stating freedom of speech is innalienable and they will not cave in to demands for censorship.

This is because, well, here is my political compass:





And I am not even close to a minority, indeed I am on the moderate side, with most lefties going way far on the "nationalism" and "liberalism" side and way less far on the "progress" side. The biggest bastions of leftism, specially southern andalusia, are the most libertarian areas of spain by far. So while Marxism has done a slow encroach, we've been consistently more resilient to it than the rest of the globe, with the left pushing for infighting as soon as it's spotted. Indeed Errejon tried to take over PODEMOS through corrupt means to push for marxist femenazism and the result was that he and his affiliates were bloody purged from the party with a hefty rise on national libertarianism, so Podemos sure as shit ain't gonna be pushing for that bullshit and they are the most relevant far left party, so the fight is already on.

As for the issue of bullfighting, animal associations have managed to get some push in the past and made a lot of noise. But most people know better than to actually ban it, it'd piss off both the right and the libertarians, whoever did it would be politically dead. That said, they probably will keep getting slight restrictions. Personally, I don't like bullfighting and don't go to see it, and I wish we implemented that bloodless version that was tried in south america so the whole ethical debate would be over. But taking into account Kosher Slaughter is still a thing if someone tries to tell me Bullfighting is too heinous to be permitted I'mma have a lot of words for them and none of them will be friendly. Bullfighting isn't a simple case of animal abuse and it is a sensitive topic. I ain't gonna focus on that shit while we got way bigger issues to focus on, like how corrupt our politicians are.

2-oooh yes. Costa del Sol is the are with the 2nd highest migrant population in Spain, after Catalonia, and on Costa del Sol the biggest migrant group is european retirees (not just dutch, we got germans, brits, poles, croats, it gets old in the west you can find them here, hell a canadian retiree just got famous during corona and I personally know multiple burgerland retirees) and Cadiz is smack dab on Costa del Sol so, believe me, I've seen a lot of them. Quite nice people too. Western Old Folks are genuinely just some of the most laid back and gentle souls out there.

3-Wanna start a war, motherfucker?!

4-a lot. I'd recommend not looking by "spanish" and instead going by region. 'Cause the best dishes are always regional. My favourite gotta be Patatas Bravas (the version without tomato or alioli. Those 2 things are bullshit catalonian additions to scam tourists!) But galician dishes with octopus are also fantastic. Basically anything with Pimentón is great really. If you want cold soups we got Gazpacho, Salmorejo and Ajoblanco, which are all just amazing. Specially Salmorejo. If you plan on coming here Lechazo is just absolutely incredible but that needs to be done in an Horno de Leña to be good. Much like the myriad meat cuts, such as secreto, those are just mouthwatering but you can't do them at home unless you got a REALLY fancy kitchen. And there's also the potajes such as migas, fabada, cocido, callos, ropavieja, etc. Which are quite nice.

Glad to know you're enjoying it!


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## Medical Hawaii (Jul 10, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> *Cadiz’s Insanity:*
> 
> View attachment 1435156
> 
> ...


Wow, thanks for all the info!  And I thought Latin American Spanish had a lot of regional variation, haha. Always figured if I were to ever go to Spain that I could follow the "c" --> "th" after i & e rule, but it looks like I might be better off just focusing on speaking as clearly as possible instead of focusing on the "lisp" part of the dialect!  
Funnily enough, when I first started to watch more Spanish programs to better my comprehension skills and help imitate the style of talking, most of the Netflix offerings were actually from Spain, and I found myself doing a sort of "ceceo"--lisping everything!  Needless to say, it sounded very out of place in my classes and got me quite a few looks!


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## Stoneheart (Jul 10, 2020)

why are there so many antisemitic town and village names in spain?
also why is your food so much worse than the food in Portugal?
also also why is spain so expensive? its worse than most other holiday destinations but just a bit cheaper than the equally bad Italy.


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## Biden's Chosen (Jul 10, 2020)

Stoneheart said:


> why are there so many antisemitic town and village names in spain?


Like which?


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 10, 2020)

Stoneheart said:


> why are there so many antisemitic town and village names in spain?
> also why is your food so much worse than the food in Portugal?
> also also why is spain so expensive? its worse than most other holiday destinations but just a bit cheaper than the equally bad Italy.



-Because fuck them that's why. Jokes aside, the Jews tried to fuck over the Spaniards repeatedly back during the reconquista, trying to use how divided the various christian factions were to take control of them. Needless to say, people took exception to that, and while once Castille got to power they were generally tollerated so long as they stayed in the jeweries or simply integrated and abandoned their faith, before that a lot of lords made a good name for themselves by slaughtering jewish tribes. I must admit you germans made them all look like chumps in the end though, daymn.

-That's some major talk right there buddy!

-Because you krauts keep going to the expensive places! Catalonia and the Balears are expensive as fuck, and shit to boot, 'cause they don't need to get better. Meanwhile poor Galicia is cheap as fuck and amazing to boot but people just ignore it! And here in andalusia we're much better than levante and relatively affordable but get less tourism, not that we can really be sad about the amount of tourism we get, it's more than alright.

(EDIT: Actually it seems you caught onto that fact as this year andalusia is experiencing considerably higher tourism than Catalonia and Balears, so that changed. Well done! Poor Galicia's still alone though.) 



Trump's Chosen said:


> Like which?



The most famous was "Castrillo Matajudios", "Jewkiller Town", which after ample international outrage wound up changing its name, and hilariously chose "Castrillo Mota de Judios", translated "Town of the Jewish Taint." Which ain't much better!

But yeah can't remember them now but there is a LOT of antisemitic town names over here. I mean really, every year in the Carnaval de Villanueba they lynch the Peropalo, a figure in the shape of a jewish man, conmemorating the genocide of 1391, the names are just the tip of the iceberg.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Jul 10, 2020)

One thing I'd like to know: is there a Spanish tradition which doesn't involve cruelty to animals?


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 10, 2020)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> One thing I'd like to know: is there a Spanish tradition which doesn't involve cruelty to animals?



Carnaval, las Fallas, la Tomatina, las Uvas, Cuaresma, Semana Santa, and actually most traditions. At least if you don't count cruelty to humans as cruelty to animals... 'cause most our our traditions are not good for your health.

We do have a lot traditions that can be debatably said to involve cruelty to animals, like San Fermin, San Martin, etc. But to be fair that is a very small proportion of our traditions, we have just kept alive way more traditions than most areas, specially 'cause every region got its own.


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## Stoneheart (Jul 10, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> -That's some major talk right there buddy!


Francesinha are just the best



EmuWarsVeteran said:


> -Because you krauts keep going to the expensive places! Catalonia and the Balears are expensive as fuck, and shit to boot, 'cause they don't need to get better. Meanwhile poor Galicia is cheap as fuck and amazing to boot but people just ignore it! And here in andalusia we're much better than levante and relatively affordable but get less tourism, not that we can really be sad about the amount of tourism we get, it's more than alright.


Croatia is closer, has superb beaches and you can have a feast and get super drunk for 20€.

Malaga is not as nice.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 10, 2020)

Stoneheart said:


> Francesinha are just the best
> 
> 
> Croatia is closer, has superb beaches and you can have a feast and get super drunk for 20€.
> ...



Ok you got me on both. Francesinha are amazing enough that even I am willing to overlook their name. And I haven't been in Croatia, but I heard many good things. I henceforth must admit defeat.


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## Stoneheart (Jul 10, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> And I haven't been in Croatia, but I heard many good things.


they speak german everywhere, they have the nicest water, alot of nice islands, very predictable weather, the food is very good and you can get austrian deserts in most places.


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## Imperial Citizen (Jul 10, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> -Because fuck them that's why. Jokes aside, the Jews tried to fuck over the Spaniards repeatedly back during the reconquista, trying to use how divided the various christian factions were to take control of them. Needless to say, people took exception to that, and while once Castille got to power they were generally tollerated so long as they stayed in the jeweries or simply integrated and abandoned their faith, before that a lot of lords made a good name for themselves by slaughtering jewish tribes. I must admit you germans made them all look like chumps in the end though, daymn.


How would the Jews try to take over christian factions? Wouldn't they have to be in the Church to have influence over them? I knew that some of the kings protected them because of the moneylending, so was the taking control of them just a way to ride out the reconquista without getting killed?


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## DeadFish (Jul 10, 2020)

Thank you for writing this. It was fun, informative and a positive work compared the current shit show called the daily news.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 10, 2020)

*The Battle of Cerignola. Part 1:*






So, I think it’s time we talk about one of the most crucial times in Spanish History, the time of Los Tercios, and the Spanish dominance of the entire sodding west, which most agree could be counted as starting with Seminara and Cerignola in 1503 and ending 140 years later, in Rocroi. And what better way to start that one of the battles that signalled the beginning of this period, and the beginning of the end for feudalism as it was known. The Battle of Cerignola, aka Agincourt 2.0. I chose this battle not just due to its symbolic importance though, but also because as I will discuss later, the battle itself taught some very important lessons to a very important man, being possibly the very reason why the Tercios looked like they did. Also, I must admit I really love this battle for a separate reason. Said reason being it was a massive fucking shitshow of incompetence on the French side. So let’s all laugh at the croissants for a bit, shall we?



Spoiler: Past and Preparations







In 1501 the French monarch Louis XII broke the Treaty of Granada, which according to who you ask was either entirely unexpected or completely expected. Knowing my opinion on France you might know what side I fall in, but I must say, while I fall within that side I do not do it due to hubris or vile towards the gabachos, but because to be honest. That treaty was shite!



Spoiler: A very Poorly Written Treaty







The treaty of Granada was written by Louis XII, or most likely his advisors because god knows he wasn’t the brightest... Then again that might explain why it was so incompetent. And ratified by the Catholic Kings the 11th of November 1500. Hilariously enough this treaty didn’t even get to the Pope for actual confirmation until June 1501, yet first incident that could be considered its first rupture had already happened on March of that year. So I am not kidding or exaggerating here when I say the treaty was exceedingly shit.

So let’s first see what it was so I can explain why it was so stupid. At its core the treaty was an attempt by Louis to, well, survive. See, he had ascended to the throne on the 7th of April 1498, and as the Second Italian War started in 1499 his position seemed to be quite unstable. France was still supposed to be one of the big boys, don’t get me wrong, and at this time seemed to dominate Western European politics and warfare, with the brits dodging it by virtue of being better at sea. But Spain was quickly turning into a near existential threat, as we will discuss on the epilogue, and the Ottomans were making quick progress on land the Baguettes had sworn to protect.

And so, using their mutual war with the Turks as an excuse, Louis hoped to secure a military alliance with the Spaniards so as to consolidate his position, and hopefully send the Spanish and Ottomans into a collision course that would cripple both, giving him a chance to restore French Supremacy. He would not however get his wish, and he can thank whoever drafted this glorified patch of asswipes for it. Let’s therefore now explain what the treaty established, so we can see how it failed at everything and nearly ensured the coming war.


Louis XII renounced to Cerdaña and Rosellón, and Fernando of Aragon renounced to his claim on Montpellier, this was to ensure neither side had claims left on any territory currently owned by the other.
Both armies swore to participate on the conquest of Sicilia Citerior, France on the north and Spain on the south, against the Turks.
Once conquered, Sicilia Citerior would be divided between both sides equally, with Fernando getting Apulia and Calabria, the southern provinces, while Louis got Abruzzo and Terra di Lavoro to the north.
This treaty would be kept secret until the French Army arrived in Rome.
Doesn’t seem so bad, now does it? Just an equal distribution of territories and military alliance against a foe they were both planning to eliminate anyway. Right. Let me point you to the names used for the Provinces, and indeed the fact that there’s only 4 of them. Sicily had gone on to have 12 provinces since Alfonso I, it had long stopped using the system implemented by the document, and indeed the old distribution was ill defined, with provinces having claims to overlapping territories due to being at war when that system was used, meaning by trying to fraction Sicily the old way instead of using the provinces that currently existed the treaty ensured France and Spain would now have territorial disputes over said areas. On top of that the treaty also didn’t take into account the local economics, putting frontiers with heavy taxation on areas which currently depended on each other for things like food and wood, giving the local lords all the more reason to try to push for said claims in an attempt to move the frontier to shapes that better fit their needs, to the detriment of the other side. Which is exactly what happened, until the French Army officially broke the treaty when called upon to move said frontier by force against the wishes of the Spanish lords when the dispute got too heated, causing the Spanish to respond with a war declaration.






I am not kidding here when I say that not signing anything would’ve genuinely made it less likely that the situation would develop into open war, because at the time they were both Catholics, and the Holy See was somewhat peckish about Casus Beli, so were it not for the conflict between the petty lords on Italian provinces, both sides would’ve had less reason to actually fight each other, meaning that following the natural distribution, which is to say whoever takes land from the Turks keeps whatever land they took, would’ve actually prevented the war. Do you now understand why this treaty was objectively, hilariously incompetently written? Honestly my only question is how the fuck no one spotted the bloody issue before both sides had already signed it!



And so, things got a little bit heated and there was a tad of a kerfuffle involving a lot of very angry men with long sticks poking each other. I mean, this was the middle ages, everything eventually led to angry men poking each other back then.



Spoiler: The Filler Arc







As the conflict started the Duke of Nemours forced Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, aka el Gran Capitán to retreat into the city of Barletta, and Gonzalo is the key figure in this tale. Indeed, in later posts you’ll come to know his name quite well, as he was the man who came to design the Tercios and define warfare in Europe for the next 140 years, but at this point in time he was just a very proficient and innovative Andalusian general. Gonzalo had earned the unofficial title of el Gran Capitán (meaning the “Great Captain”), given to him by his men, by managing to both be seen by the lower ranks as “one of their own” due to his extensive military background and pragmatic views, yet also manage to consistently make his superiors, even the Catholic Kings themselves, listen to reason and follow his advice, which probably had to do with the fact that he was part of the family of Fernando de Aragón and had known him since they were kids. But also was due to his undeniable charisma and capacity to explain even the more complex issues with relative ease. He was quite an interesting man from an early age, coming from a fairly humble branch of an extremely noble family, he was a warrior by birth, being counted amongst the greatest knights at the service of the Maestre of the Order of Santiago, the most important Spanish knightly order, and he had certainly taken notes during his time serving the order, having learned to read and write at an early age it seems he was as much of a scholar as he was a fighter, having been the author of documents recounting his experiences on the field of battle and extrapolating his conclusions long before he’d finally come to relevance within the Spanish Court. He understood war in a way few of even the most veteran generals could, and understood his men, both lowly and highborn, even better.

But back to our tale, from Barletta el Gran Capitán waged guerrilla warfare against the French, which they found exceedingly annoying. For those that don’t know, Spain has always been extremely proficient at Guerrilla, since the time of the pre-roman Iberians and all throughout the Reconquista the combination of frontline armies with extensive guerrillas had been how Spaniards saw war, and indeed those same tactics would manifest even as late as the Spanish Civil war, just with an ever-increasing amount of firepower involved. And these tactics would come to be extremely efficient in the Italian conflicts, due to the similar geography. The French on the other side, like a large segment of Europe, still thought war was far more organized, and that armies should march in, banners up, in bright uniforms. Thinking guerrilla was meant more for peasants, barbarians and lower ranks. So the Baguettes left a long trail of exasperated documents criticizing the Spaniards for their “barbarism”, which mostly prompted their rivals to laugh their ass off and keep doing it with the reassurance that they were indeed inflicting sufficient damage. I mean really I don’t know what they expected. “Oh yeah sorry we didn’t realize our tactics were dishonourable, we’ll just go use yours, which we know will leave us at a disadvantage, so we don’t offend you anymore!” Fucking kek.

On top of that there were multiple incidents of Spanish and French knights fighting in singular duels during this early period, as el Gran Capitán was biding his time waiting for reinforcements to come. The most famous of said duels took place the 21st of September 1502, involving 11 knights of either side, ending with a death, a surrender and 9 gravely wounded on the French side and only 1 surrender and 2 gravely wounded amongst the Spanish. Hah!

Suffice to say, the French were not accustomed to clownworld, and clownworld is exactly what the Spanish were best at, which they used to great advantage during the larger part of the conflict in preparation for the frontlines to finally crash.



And finally, on the spring of 1503, reinforcements came and the Spanish could finally push on. To advance as quickly as possible el Gran Capitán ordered the knights to ferry the infantry on their horses and push the carts around, this was met with protests by the cavalry, but he shut them by being the first to do so, which for the time was seen as a fairly fucking obscene act, but that’s how he got his god damned name, he didn’t give a shit about appearances. And thanks to the added mobility the Spanish got to Ceriñola with ample time to prepare their defences against the French counter-attack, getting to digging a trench and erecting a palisade. And so by the time the Duque of Nemours arrived he found the village had already been occupied and fortified, and the Spanish had planned the coming battle in advance.





Spoiler: Meet the Armies







(That is the actual map of the battle btw.)

And so, let’s finish this little introduction with a good old fashioned ROLE CALL! YAAAY! Honestly, I can’t be the only one that finds the way armies are made and the gear the soldiers use to be one of the most interesting ways of dissecting the mentality of a certain faction within its era. Often times I’d say what people relied on for actual combat is the most telling part of their philosophy. Even to this day, how much weight they give to planes, artillery, support weapons and the like can tell you quite a bit about our now greatly standardized militaries.

But let’s stop the brainfarting and get onto it. On the right corner, a heavyweight champion, fighting to maintain its title as king of Western European Warfare, which it has kept since the end of the Hundred Years’ War, the old glory with the white flag!



Spoiler: France (And Switzerland, And The Balkans)!







The French practically sneered at the idea of infantry ever being as important as cavalry, and this was an understandable mistake, they counted with what was at the time considered the best heavy cavalry in the world, the gendarmes, and the great effect they had in the Hundred Years’ War was undeniable.



Spoiler: The Gendarmes







The Gendarmes were the biggest fish in the pond, the most well trained, disciplined, armed and armoured cavalrymen of their time, up to this point they had answered to the initial introduction of handcannons by making their armour even thicker, which had worked for them pretty well so far. They were the heaviest lancers, using the impressive size and muscle the Western European Horses had acquired through years of selective breeding to carry at impressive speeds a full suit of White Armour and Shaffron, they were for all intents and purposes the medieval equivalent of a heavy tank, and much like the Tiger in WW2 they made up for their outrageous cost not just with exceedingly good battle results but also the impressive psychological toll their mere sight imposed on the enemy.

The Gendarmes were essentially considered the epitome of what Europe meant, they were so manly that they could all wear skirts and hourglass figure armour and still look badass. (No seriously they wore that and it is hilarious and I love it.) So rich that they could go to war with the most ridiculous bling around despite their number. And so noble that tales of their deeds on the style of Arthurian Legends plagued pop culture at the time. The Gendarmes were the image of the European feudal system. They were the rulers and champions of the strongest factions within the old continent. They WERE Europe.

I did start the prologue by warning you this tale was plagued by French incompetence... Let it be known that, as always, I mean the incompetence of their leaders, not their soldiers.



The Baguettes had to admit however that as much as they’d want to send nothing but large masses of armoured horsemen to war they needed to supplement that with at least some infantry, mostly because of the need for ranged weaponry and cost, which is why they also brought some light infantry.



Spoiler: Light Infantry







French “Light Infantry” was made up of a combination of crossbowmen and pikemen, with the last just standing behind the first waiting for any flankers while their ranged comrades tried to help the war effort with projectiles. They were poorly trained peasants with very little gear of extremely poor quality and only about as much armour as they managed to loot, which wasn’t much because the noblemen got dibs on the loot first too, so it’s more like what they managed to hide. In general, they were expected to “weaken” the enemy by raining projectiles on them, but even their noblemen didn’t expect them to be anything other than a distraction and a way to dispatch other light infantry with pikes sometimes.



The French however, despite their utmost irreverence towards their own infantry, at least seemed clever enough to catch on to the fact that the rest of Europe was starting to bring more of it, specially Spain, and it seemed to work, which is why they asked their friends, the Swiss, for a few mercenaries. The Swiss of course being at the time considered the masters of heavy infantry warfare thanks to their Pike Squares.



Spoiler: The Swiss Pikes







The Pike Square as implemented by the Swiss was a mixture of heavy and light pikes, only difference being the amount of armour, rank and experience, which placed the “coseletes” (armoured pikemen) up front (to protect against projectiles) and gave them support by “picas secas” (unarmoured pikemen) and Halberdiers, the role of this last element being to come forward and break enemy formation when two pike blocks collided. I will explain these tactics in more detail in a future post, at least I hope to get to that anyway, so suffice to say, this was the standard tactics for the time, and indeed the same used by the German Landsknechts. Just a big ol’ block of pointy sticks with support of heavy infantry with shorter weapons that slowly got close to the enemy until they could sandwich them against something and decimate them. A horrifying yet awe inspiring, extremely disciplined, slow moving, uncaring machine that ate men and shat out gore.



That aside, while the Fanfarrones sneered at skirmishers, thinking such “dishonour” to be for lesser men, well, they knew damned well lesser men would be needed to win the god damned war, and as with the Swiss they simply left the tactics they couldn’t stomach to professionals, in this case a certain caste of mercenary horsemen typical of the Balkans.



Spoiler: The Stradiots







Stradiots were the opposite of the Swiss Pikemen in many ways. These mercenaries from the Balkans were a type of light cavalry that learned quite a bit from fighting Turks and Mongols, and took pride in their capacity to flank the enemy and harass ranged troops with great efficiency, they used hit and run tactics, usually carrying ranged weaponry (although not necessarily), to exploit any break in enemy lines and were the predecessor of the now fabled Hussars, although they had considerably less training and renown than their later counterparts. I should also specify that I mean Early Stradiots. As lated indeed they abandoned their ranged weapons got a bit more armour and well basically became proto-Hussars until indeed they were replaced by the Hussars altogether, but that wouldn’t happen until the rise of gunpowder which was about to happen but, well, this battle is historically recognized as the moment where shit changed, so, it hadn’t done so just yet. But it was coming...



Finally I should mention the artillery. Although as you’ll see it took very little part in this battle.



Spoiler: The Guns







The French had the superior artillery by far. And indeed were at the forefront of land artillery manufacturing at the time. They had started using horse artillery, while other armies used mules to carry the guns, and started doing so indeed because they had equipped their cannons with permanent wheels and had started to use mobile artillery pieces that could use hit-and-run tactics. Because of course the French managed to get their cannons to spend most of the battle fleeing... Jokes aside, their guns had the superior range by far, although their projectiles tended to carry less mass than those of other countries, as they had started to think of artillery as a mobile support force, which would come to help them greatly once Napoleon took charge.







And so for this battle report Brettonnia’s army list looked like:

-3000 Light Infantry.

-3000 Swiss Pikes.

-1500 Stradiots.

-2000 Gendarmes.

-26 Artillery Pieces.

Or in other words. Practically the very definition of a basic bitch standard army made by a “meta” worshipping twat. Although, to be fair, the French and Swiss practically invented the fucking meta, so insert “we were doing it before it was cool” meme here for hipster points. Either way, with 9500 men plus artillery and support, and such a strong combo of heavy infantry and heavy cavalry, considering the strategies of the time the Fanfarrones really did have reason to feel real good about this conflict, they had superiority of numbers, armour, and training. Pity they didn’t take into account one little innovation that the Spanish just so happened to bring today...



And it seems my verbosity has exceeded even my predictions and I am now faced with having to cut this spoiler in two. See you on the next part! Hopefully.



Click here for the continuation.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 10, 2020)

*The Battle of Cerignola. Part 2:



*

(That is the actual map of the battle btw.)



Spoiler: Meet the Armies (Continuation)



And on the left corner, fresh out of the Reconquista, the new rising star that finally put an end to the reign of the Moorish kings on the west, ready to crusade anew and find America by pure fucking accident!



Spoiler: Spain (And The Holy Roman Empire)!







Ah what to say about Spain. Many things actually. To understand Spain it’s best we look at the Balkans and vice versa. I like to explain the situation of Spain as what the Balkans would be had they managed to unify, for many reasons. The Arabic influence in our culture is very similar, the amount of different cultures and factions is pretty much the same, it’s just that here they’re “regionalists” while there they’re “nationalists”, essentially, change “Ottoman” for “Moor”, “Eastern Roman Empire” for “Western Roman Empire” and “Slavic” for “Celtic” and it’s the exact same fucking thing. Only difference is our kings somehow managed to keep the whole damned thing together. Sometimes I wonder just how fucking powerful the Balkans would’ve become had they managed the same feat... And then I remember, that’s probably precisely why the surrounding factions put so much effort into ensuring it’d never happen, seems after they managed to chain us they decided they’d rather make sure there were no repeats. But, point is, some of those reasons apply here greatly, as indeed Spanish military tactics are much closer to those seen on the Balkans than to those found on the rest of Western Europe. Just in a much, much larger scale.

This of course means a great reliance on skirmishers, light infantry and cavalry, with a larger proportion of ranged troops and indeed a general disregard for the shock cavalry tactics that had up to this point defined the battlefield. It wasn’t so much that they had no heavy cavalry, as we’ll see they did have some, but it was considerably lighter than the French and much, much lower in number, with most of the weight going to the infantry.



Spoiler: The Coronelías







So let’s indeed start by mentioning said Infantry. The Coronelía was the fresh new unit el Gran Capitán had cooked up, and soon after this conflict he’d use them as a base for the new Tercios. Indeed technically the Tercios were just a bunch of Coronelías put together, the organization never disbanded it just got grouped. Either way, more on that another time, as today the Tercios are just an embryonic idea that has yet to mature.

The Coronelías were quite interesting. You may have noticed that the French had standardized their military units into Gendarmes and auxiliaries, while the Swiss did the same into Pikemen and auxiliaries. This was the common way to see war at the time, a very “Roman Legion-esque” way of handling unit formations by focusing on one aspect and getting the rest either from untrained militias or just foreign mercenaries. Spain couldn’t quite do this right from the start, it had too many regions each of which did whatever the fuck it wanted. Almogavars, Ginetes, Crossbowmen, Empavesados, you fucking name it if it existed some part of Spain was gonna use it, and refuse vehemently to adapt to the others unless there was a very good technological reason to do so, so trying to get people to organize in Spain was... Well it was a lost cause really.

And yet the Coronelía kinda put a partial end to that. Don’t get me wrong, they still got some very disparate units, but this new military method quite simply embraced that fact, adapted to it, and made sure it stopped being a weakness. What the Coronelía did to weaponize Spain’s clown world approach to warfare was separate the troops into 2 halves which in turn were divided into 2 quarters each.

The first division was between melee troops and ranged troops. Shouldn’t be too hard to guess what the difference was, and it said each unit should hopefully carry 50% of each. This is the first and most vital difference between Spanish infantry and those of everyone else. In essence, Spain’s model to Infantry as codified by the Coronelias could best be described as a Heavy version of Light Infantry, which is to say, usually it was Light Infantry units that had such a distribution of ranged to melee troops, this formation arising from the need to have pikemen babysitting the archers due to flankers, but the actual “Heavy Infantry” formations were the purely melee solid blocks of Pikemen with shorter melee weapons as support. Ironically enough, despite the Tercios coming to be known due to being massive pike formations, the biggest innovation they carried is the fact that in fact it had a much lower proportion of pikemen than other armies, and for all intents and purposes used the “Light Infantry” template as the base for its more professional core, whereas everyone else discarded such formations as lowly and meant for untrained cannon fodder. And turning so-called cannon fodder into the core of its armies might as well be the best description of what Spain did in a way... Kind of fitting I guess.

Then it separated melee troops between Pikemen and everything else. Pikemen were of course necessary to stop Cavalry and flankers, and would with time become the bigger part of the melee troops, but at the time it didn’t quite matter too much if they were the most, just that they were at least half. As for everything else, typically these were called the “Escudados”, “shield bearers”, because most of them carried shields, like the most famous version, the Rodeleros. However pretty much any melee troop that wasn’t a pikeman fell into this range, Empavesados (Typical of Galicia.) still used gear “a la Romana” (meaning “on the style of the roman legion”, as in they literally still used a rectangular shield and fucking javelin long past the point where gunpowder was fucking common, long live those ballsy motherfuckers), Halberdiers (Typical of, well, rich people, really.) used, well, halberds, the Montanteros, (near exclusively German, and indeed there is no recording of a single Iberian Montantero, but there is of Montanteros working for the Tercios, typically Landsknechts that decided to join the Spanish units.) used motherfucking Greatswords, etc. The organization said this group should, well, exist, but be less than half of the melee troops. The reasoning being that they were useful to harass other infantry and break frontlines of pikeblocks, but weren’t as vital as the pikemen. With time this prediction would prove right as their number greatly diminished in comparison with the pikemen.

Finally, the ranged troops were divided between skirmishers, which went around the sides, and ranged troops which went up front. The skirmishers using faster firing but weaker weapons, while the ranged troops used the big guns. Which again he argued should be at least 50% skirmishers, but still having a good amount of ranged troops. Which once more would prove to be the best god damned prediction he could’ve fucking made, as while the roles were quite ill defined the skirmishers consistently outnumbered the ranged troops pretty much every single time from that point on. That said, you may want some examples of the difference between skirmishers and ranged troops, you know, to understand it a bit better. And the answer is “it’s fucking complicated buddy”, originally, before gundpowder, the point was the dardos would be the skirmishers (note, “dardo” roughly translates as “dart” but at that point wasn’t just the term for short javelins, I’ll go into more details with the Ginetes. But for now just think of javelins), while crossbows were for ranged troops. As gunpowder was introduced “shotguns” (what at the time was called a shotgun) were skirmishers while the crossbow kept its place as the ranged troop weapon, and this was the configuration during this battle btw, later on the crossbows got replaced by the arquebus, which started the longest period where the definitions of “arquebus” and “shotgun” got progressively more incomprehensible until “shotgun” simply stopped being used as a term as the difference became simply between different length and calibre of arquebus, which later led to the arquebus being the skirmisher gun while muskets took the place as ranged weapon, until the musket crowned itself king of warfare leading to the dissolution of the Tercios as Napoleonic Warfare took over. Confused yet? Good, so is everyone else. Old timey early attempts at standardization were a fucking mess.

But when it came to ranged weapons, I must mention, as I said before this battle happened exactly as Crossbowmen were still considered the ranged troops and Shotgunners the skirmishers. And indeed el Gran Capitán had lobbied for further implementation of Shotgunners as they had in the past fallen behind the number of Crossbowmen simply because people had more experience with Crossbows and it would not be until after his reforms during and after this war when the crown got more control over the types of missile weapons in their armies by directly supplying the ammo with the soldier’s pay. So again, it was about to happen, just not quite there yet.

But the point is made, unlike prior attempts at professionalizing part of the military, this system was quite flexible, not just allowing, like most, for most lords to simply use for their retinues whatever they wanted, which had resulted in most of them doing the exact same fucking thing on each country, but instead implementing a system that ensured a variety of weapons per unit by organizing the troops each region sent in ways that combined their strengths, allowing for the full professionalization of even the lowest ranks of infantry while also embracing the insane diversity of tools they were given, turning it from a weakness which drove prior generals to madness due to the lack of standardization into one of the biggest strengths of the Spanish military, as the pseudo-standardization allowed it to adapt quickly to most situations while also resulting in units which weren’t an amorphous mess of local tactics poorly stitched together, as they had been in the past.

This also allowed Spain to indeed standardize and professionalize it’s whole military apparatus, which is why the Tercios are nowadays called the “first modern military”, they weren’t quite different from the Landsknechts when it came to bureaucracy, indeed they copied their system when it came to establishing pay and duties, but they applied it universally instead of just to mercenary contingents, and came to fully nationalize the military branch of the government.

And so Spanish infantry, despite having a similar composition and strategy to the “light infantry” everyone else used, was treated for all other intents and purposes as their “heavy infantry” and managed to fill the role of both to near perfection, giving rise to the massive Tercios simply by combination of units for larger battles. And this system, originally made by el Gran Capitán merely as a way to simplify and organize Spanish units in a manner that palliated its biggest weaknesses, accidentally came to redefine warfare for a god damned century and a half, and would have enormous implications for the social structure as a whole.

Don’t you hate when you try to organize your army and accidentally destroy feudalism. Jeez. World’s just gone crazy huh.



But of course infantry was not the only tool in Spain’s arsenal, at least not yet, because as always rich fucks wanted to go around in horses being fancy and shit. So of course we have to talk about the Cavalry.



Spoiler: The Celadas







The Spanish men-at-arms, (aka Gendarme-equivalents) could be as armoured as the Gendarmes, but nearly never actually were. Instead the immense majority were demilancers. For those that don’t know, look at the picture at the beginning of this segment, it is the representation of the celada’s gear at the time. As you can see, demilancers used unarmoured horses, shorter and lighter lances, and “3/4ths” armour, which was basically the same as the gendarme’s full armour but ending the leg armour on the frontal upper leg. Again, some implemented full armour, el Gran Capitán himself being one of them, some used bigger lances, some (the immense minority) even had a shaffron. But there were also some that used even less armour, and indeed that’s what later would lead to the repopularization of “half armour” as used by the Winged motherfucking Hussars. Basically it was a bit ill defined, but in general Spanish celadas were consistently shitter than French Gendarmes.

And this had two reasons. First is that Spanish Doctrine was not as favourable to heavy cavalry as European Doctrine. El Gran Capitán himself repeatedly stated in his writings that cavalry was at its best chasing ranged troops around, destroying supply lines, and harassing support and artillery. And he was famous for saying the biggest weight of cavalry when fighting blocks of melee infantry shouldn’t be, as the European heavy cavalrymen tried, breaking the line, but instead getting in and causing as much damage as possible once the line had been broken by the infantry. Quite simply, el Gran Capitán and multiple of his contemporaries directly warned against the use of heavy cavalry charges like the ones the Gendarmes hoped to accomplish. Which of course left the question: Why bother armouring that much if you don’t plan to smash yourself against the enemy line? And as it turns out the answer is “yeah, there’s not that much of a reason, huh.”

Second of course was loot. Much like every other military non-noble Spanish Armymen appropriated a large amount of their gear by looting. However, while light infantry was near starved due to getting last dibs under the hierarchal system of other countries, the Coronelías admitted the infantry as part of the professional core. Meaning they comparatively got a lot more loot. And more loot for the infantry means less loot for the cavalry, which in turn couldn’t sell that loot for money, meaning they were a bit starved when it came to gear. And horse armour was really fucking expensive! But that’s the issue with Heavy Tanks ain’t it. Too much buck for that bang.

This by the way is why the French were so exasperated with Spanish raiders during the war. They knew damned well their supply lines would be ambushed, they always were. But it was typically delinquents, scouts and other lowborn scum doing the dirty job while knights prepared for the big battle, meanwhile Spaniards just sent full blown highborn demilancers in heavy armour to sneak around and fuck them up, which French caravan guards were definitely not ready to face. Of course taking into account Spain’s long and storied history with Guerrilla Warfare they should’ve known our nobles could indeed sneak, but that is until you consider the archetypal noble knight’s folly, they were very good at putting themselves on the enemy’s skin and considering what they’d do, but they sucked at actually understanding what their enemy would do. All sympathy, but no empathy. This could indeed be considered the biggest weakness of the French Army, being the driving factor behind most of the incompetence plaguing its leaders. They were so used to fighting the British and other Central European Powers they eventually convinced themselves everyone shared their values and tactics. And boy would such arrogance come to bite them in the ass soon enough.



But despite heavy cavalry being used by Spain as glorified light cavalry with a bit more armour, they still had their light cavalry too, because as I mentioned during the infantry segment, Spain just doesn’t do standard, apparently.



Spoiler: The Ginetes







First of I must point out, I probably already triggered a lot of Spanish speakers on this forum by using the “G”, so let me explain. Ginete is how it was written at the time, long after that as Spanish grammar changed the term became Jinete, but by that point this specific kind of troop was extinct, and instead the term was being used for all light cavalry indistinctly, so technically this troop is called Ginete, and is a distinct word from the term Jinete, which is much broader. I know that’s confusing as all hell but welcome to fucking history motherfuckers.

That done with, the Ginetes were also referred to as “Caballos Ligeros”, “Light Horses” due to being, well, Light Cavalry, and indeed they pretty much just filled that whole damned role for Spain. You might wonder then if this means they were comparable to the Stradiots, since I mentioned so much the comparisons between the Balkans and the Peninsula. And yes they god damned are!

Indeed they come from the exact same fucking thing, that is to say they were light cavalry built upon tactics learned from the Muslims and meant to harass supply lines and flanks without seeing much real combat. And indeed later down the line they would eventually be replaced by the Estradiotes, that being the Spanish term for a Stradiot, once they became half armor wearing pseudo-Hussars. There were a few differences though of course, starting with status. Where the Stradiots were mercenaries, the Ginetes were part of Andalusian lower nobility, typically Hidalgos. You might be wondering then if this means the most famous Hidalgo of all, Don Quijote de la Mancha, was a Ginete. And yes he god damned was. How can we know?

The shield. Ginetes were defined by the shield they used, and it was a very particular shield, a cured leather Adarga, also known as a “heart shaped” shield. This was a kind of shield introduced into the peninsula by the moors, used by the Ginetes due to its light weight and large area. This would by the way be why they were eventually replaced by the Estradiotes, as at that point the only real difference between the two was the kind of shield and the Adarga had long since stopped being as useful as it had been in the past due to the advances in gunpowder weaponry. On top of this, of course, Ginetes used unarmoured horses and a sword. They could then carry a variety of other weapons such as maces, axes or warhammers, and varying degrees of armour, with most wearing little armour, but some getting as far as half armour or even further, though those cases were oddities. Finally, Ginetes used the dardo. Let’s talk about that one.



Spoiler: JUST CHUCK IT!







Dardo at the time was just the Spanish word for any and all long pointy sticks with normal heads. Spears, lances, javelins and short javelins were all referred to as dardo. But not halberds or other polearms with weird heads. You may wonder why. Well, I will get into Spain’s history with thrown spears and javelins in the future, hopefully, but suffice it to say since long before the Romans Iberians loved chucking spears at shit, and they kept this tradition alive for the longest time. This however led to a very... Liberal interpretation on what could be thrown. This is best exemplified by how French scholars who saw Spanish troops in battle tried to explain it, as they came to distinguish between “Javelins”, those being spear-like weapons that were designed specifically to be used as throwing weapons, and the “Grosse Javelin De L’Espagne”, translated as “Fat Spanish Javelin”, which were any kind of dardo which they were fairly sure wasn’t designed to be thrown, but was in the hands of one of the kinds of Spanish Troops which they knew would indeed chuck it eventually.

And yes, by the way, we do in fact have multiple recorded historical instances of knights throwing their heavy lances at the enemy. Because it seems it doesn’t matter how heavy or unwieldy the pole is, if it can be chucked it’s only a matter of time before it gets chucked. No exceptions. Sometimes I wonder if the reason Spaniards used halberd heads on pikes from the beginning while some experimented with simpler designs at first was just to make sure they were not added to the list of “dardos” and wound up getting thrown at the enemy before a charge.



So, when the documents say they carried one or more dardos as main weapon, it becomes a bit hard to know if it is specifically meant to be a spear or they might be carrying short javelins around. And indeed early records depict Ginetes as carrying practically all kinds of dardos, from copying Almogavar tactics with the Semperferrum (Short Iberian javelin made entirely out of metal, without a wooden shaft.) to carrying lances. But it does seem that with time they settled on the spear and stopped throwing it without good cause, turning into standard light cavalry. Which is exactly what happened to the Stradiots, (Except with bows instead of just javelins) until the Ginetes got replaced by them. Funny how that goes, huh.



And with this there is only one last player to be mentioned for this battle. I mentioned before the Spaniards had to wait for reinforcements due to severe numerical inferiority and lack of gear. Said reinforcements came in the shape of a company of mercenaries from germany, you might’ve heard of those like them...



Spoiler: The Landsknechts







The Landsknechts, or as the Spanish called them “Lansequenetes”, were a kind of mercenary band born in germany and derived from the political mess of the Holy Roman Empire. They were for all intents and purposes equal to the Swiss, with heavy infantry formations in the shape of large pike squares. Later down the line the Lansequenetes would learn from the Spanish and come to basically use units which were very similar to the Tercio albeit smaller and better armed, for which they’d combine their pikes with ranged weaponry, but at the time they were mostly just heavy pikes. But they were the damned best at it! Or at least that’s what everyone except the Swiss said, and really. Who cares about what the Swiss think? Either way, compared with the Swiss their doppelsöldner (Non-pikemen elite troops, called that way because their pay was twice that of normal men.) were more varied, sometimes using greatswords instead of just halberds, which would later become their icon in pop culture, despite the fact that they were in fact an oddity. Eh, can’t blame pop culture for that one, giant motherfucking swords are badass as shit, and the Landsknechts really were bloody badass. But of course you knew that already, they were krauts! Say what you will but Germans manage to make war look obscenely cool like no one else does.



Finally we get to artillery, and if the French sneered at infantry, it was artillery that the Spaniards sneered at. I mean, they knew of the efficiency of artillery at the time, they just didn’t trust their own artillery, and with good reason.



Spoiler: The Guns







Spanish artillery was, quite frankly, shit. That’s not to say Spain didn’t know how to make good cannons, oh quite the opposite, it made some of the best heavy artillery pieces the world over. But the good shit got sent to the fleet, and the second priority were the naval forts, and stationary defences on towns and land forts were the third, it was SIEGE artillery after all, not FIELD artillery, so the actual armies were left with whatever shit they could get their hands on, except on coastal battles, where Spain made ample use of naval artillery support. As a result Spanish soldiers nicknamed their artillery pieces “Espantaburracos” (Donkey Scarer, “donkey” in this case being used as an insult instead of referring to the animal, the word to refer to the animal without insulting is “burro”, “burraco” is always a pejorative.) because they tended to be outdated, cheap, light, already worn out glorified firecrackers with little to no precision, poor range, no standardization leading to poor understanding by their operators and generally just really subpar results compared with the rest of Europe, specially France. Indeed between malfunctions due to the material and malfunctions due to the aforementioned lack of standardization leading to catastrophic bouts of incompetence Spanish Artillerymen earned a reputation for being just one step away from blowing themselves up. So yeah, Spanish artillery was quite literally considered a bad joke amongst its fellow soldiers, which will be very important just as the battle begins.







So let’s now get into the numbers involved in Karl Fran- I mean el Gran Capitán’s army list.

-1000 Ginetes, led by Próspero Colonna and Pedro de Paz.

-2000 Infantry in Coronelías, led by Pedro Navarro, Francisco Pizarro and García de Paredes.

-2000 Landsknechts, whose leaders’ names I couldn’t find.

-700 Men-At-Arms, led by Fabricio Colonna and Diego de Mendoza.

-13 Artillery Pieces.

(By the way. Can you tell that the sources I got most intel from were focused on the Spanish side of the war? Yeah couldn’t find much from the French, probably because of the language barrier.)

So that makes for 5700 men and 13 cannons, meaning they were outnumbered considerably. Even worse the Cavalry was completely outmatched too, and it seemed most of the battle would be defined by the Infantry, which also had a much larger “light infantry” component when compared to the French counterpart due to the reliance on the hybrid system for their core unit. The Spaniards however counted with 2 advantages, the first was having prepared the terrain in advance, they were playing on their field. The second was the implementation of shotgunners amongst the ranks of the Coronelías, compared with the French Light Infantry’s reliance exclusively on Crossbows and Pikes. Would they prove decisive for this battle? If you haven’t been catching onto the heavy foreshadowing up to this point you might be braindead. Of course they did!



And so, the armies faced each other, and the French felt quite good about themselves. The Spaniards may not have reason to feel as good, but they knew what they were getting into, this is precisely why they had waited for the Landsknechts to get there. And they had utilized that time to plan the next battle in detail. All they needed was to not fuck it up.



Spoiler: But of course...







Hey. Remember how I said on other threads that ever stating out loud “just don’t fuck it up” was basically considered the very definition of “jinxing it” in Spain? Yeah so... Time I tell you why Artillery would not matter at all for this battle.

On the French side, the battle occurred before their artillery could get there, so it literally took no part on it at all, it just never even made it to the field of battle, and was later captured by the Spaniards after they crushed the main army. Woops, spoilers.

As for Spanish Artillery. When they tried to shoot the cannons for the first time one of the artillerymen accidentally dropped his wick unto the powder keg and blew the entire group up, taking them all out of combat. Upon seeing the giant ball of fire behind his lines and understanding what had happened as the battle was about to begin el Gran Capitán decided to proclaim “¡Buen Anuncio! ¡Estas son las luminarias de la Victoria!”, “Good Omen! Those are the luminaries of victory!” which most interpret as a fairly successful attempt at heightening the morale of his soldiers by taking their minds off of the handicap. But I like to think they were so fucking used to their cannons being completely useless that he just said it as the god damned punchline to the continuous joke that was Spanish Artillery at the time.



And with that, let me cut this story here for now, as I fear I’m definitely going to have to cut this one in two too, on the next part we will talk about the battle at large and what followed it. So I hope you join me in this tale of misadventure and horror as the military tactics that had come to define an era crashed frontally against those that would come to define the next with results that would come to scar both sides, albeit for very different reasons.



Click here to read about the battle.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 10, 2020)

Imperial Citizen said:


> How would the Jews try to take over christian factions? Wouldn't they have to be in the Church to have influence over them? I knew that some of the kings protected them because of the moneylending, so was the taking control of them just a way to ride out the reconquista without getting killed?



At the time many of the petty lords were mercenaries, and spanish lords came from many different european powers whom they had ties to. Certain jewish tribes got caught repeatedly using these two factors to lie and pay certain lords to unknowingly attack the troops of others to cause added conflict amongst the Christian side, mostly hoping to fuck over the larger factions for profit. Do take into account at that time they had not yet been declared heretics and the official strategy due to european laws for most spanish lords (although admittedly not all) was to let them live and do commerce with them when needed. But after they got caught that strategy changed very quickly. And after Spain unified and they yet again got fucking caught repeatedly trying to destabilize the region and trigger the crypto-muslims into calling for holy war again, well, the purge was declared on their stupid asses. I for one have no fucking pity for them. You don't just keep poking that bear and get away with it. Do take into account conversion meant immediate pardon, indeed the inquisition wouldn't even exist until after the purge, and was only created because of all the fucking cryptos commiting acts of terrorism. All they had to do to not get killed was not provoke the spanish, and they did the very opposite of that, constantly, without any possible reason to or anything to gain from it! Is it really a fucking wonder spain is considered one of the most antisemitic countries to this day? I have a very good idea why, we had to deal with the hook nosed fucks! No wonder poland is second on the list. When everyone that deals with a group for a long period of time winds up calling for genocyde against them, maybe there's a fucking reason why, and it's about damned time americans get the point 'cause they're doing the same shit to you right fucking now.


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## Miss Misery (Jul 10, 2020)

Why are Spaniards (read: Catalans) into poop jokes?

Edit: @EmuWarsVeteran, I was referring to Caga Tio and El Caganer. So maybe I meant Catalan Christmas poop jokes?


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## Imperial Citizen (Jul 10, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> All they had to do to not get killed was not provoke the spanish, and they did the very opposite of that, constantly, without any possible reason to or anything to gain from it!


Oh there would a very good reason to keep the Christians fighting each other; prevent them from killing your tribe. Both the Muslims and the Christians want you dead or converted. And when the holy book that you all three share repeatedly states that bad things happen to Jews if they lose their identity, no shit that they are going do whatever they can to survive.

Though I am surprised that you claim that Spain is one of the most antisemitic countries in Europe. Any time Europe and antisemitism is mentioned it’s always Eastern Europe, Germany, France or the Brits. My guess is that any antisemitism has a lot to do with the reconquista fuckery than it has to do with the 6 million?


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 10, 2020)

Plastic Inevitable said:


> Why are Spaniards (read: Catalans) into poop jokes?



Man fuck if I know. They're weird.



Imperial Citizen said:


> Oh there would a very good reason to keep the Christians fighting each other; prevent them from killing your tribe. Both the Muslims and the Christians want you dead or converted. And when the holy book that you all three share repeatedly states that bad things happen to Jews if they lose their identity, no shit that they are going do whatever they can to survive.
> 
> Though I am surprised that you claim that Spain is one of the most antisemitic countries in Europe. Any time Europe and antisemitism is mentioned it’s always Eastern Europe, Germany, France or the Brits. My guess is that any antisemitism has a lot to do with the reconquista fuckery than it has to do with the 6 million?



Conversion was a much better deal than what everyone else, including the jews, offered. And again, at first the spaniards only wanted the moors out and were as ok with the jews as everyone else (read: enough to tollerate them but certainly nowhere near enough to like them) by the end though? Look at it this way: after centuries of slavery, war and terrorism by the cryptos the Moors got an offer: integrate or be expelled, and the ones that didn't take it were sent straight to morocco, where they quickly found out they were considered the wrong denomination of muslims and their "fellow believers in allah" would turn out to be far more violent than the christians were. And yet the jews despite having been as opressed as the christians under the moors and not being an open part in the war didn't get the same offer, they instead got "convert or die". All I'm saying is, when even the moors got enough good will to be sent back home, when the same faction that has proven such near infinite patience sees a jew and immediately goes "KILL MURDER SLAUGHTER ERRADICATE EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE!!!!" Maybe it's because the damned jews really did manage to piss them off far more than the fucking muslims in the end.

As for spain being antisemitic, it ain't me saying it. It's USA universities in a study financed by the ADL. Can't remember when it was but I remember they proclaimed 76% of spanish population was antisemitic, followed by rhe poles with 75. Now admittedly I don't actually think spain is the most antisemitic country, and was saying it more in jest because I find such study hilarious, specially because I'm fairly sure there's some (ejem muslim ejem) countries that would score near 100% (ejem palestine ejem),  but yeah the ADL has been waging war on spain for our supposed antisemitism for years now, every few years they come back with the propaganda.


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## Non-Threatening Niall (Jul 11, 2020)

I've always found it amusing that you southern Spaniards pronounce things like "estación" as "etsación".



Oglooger said:


> I remember passing by the Falangue flag and thinking it looks pretty cool,



Say what you will about the Francoist rule, their branding game (as is common with authoritarian regimes) was on point:


Fig. 11 was the *social assistance* logo. Can't get much more based than that.


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## Maskull (Jul 11, 2020)

What's the likelihood that the Basque and Catalans will someday get their way and split Spain in three?


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## Oglooger (Jul 11, 2020)

friends o' niall said:


> I've always found it amusing that you southern Spaniards pronounce things like "estación" as "etsación".


How the fuck can you even pronounce talking like that? and I thought the Barcelonan lisp or my regional accent being sing-songy is bad


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 11, 2020)

friends o' niall said:


> I've always found it amusing that you southern Spaniards pronounce things like "estación" as "etsación".
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Well that's a new one. The pronounciation I mean. As for the francoist logom sadly you're wrong. Oh I don't mean those logos weren't badass, but they were all from prior falangist movements. Or at least the badass parts were. Except maybe fig 11 I haven't seen that one before and you're damned right it's based. As for the logos actually added by franco:




"So let's just grab the busiest version of the spanish shield, and then add even more weird and unnecessary details. Make the crown unnecessarily ridiculous too, no don't actually search for a version with historical reasoning just sprinkly bollocks on it. I'm going for "seizures" as a motif. And make the eagle substantially uglier, I want spikes all over it. Oh and don't forget to add the background details in red so they're only barely visible, no need for an outline to make then apparent I'd rather people can barely even tell how the flag's supposed to look."



"Oh what's that we're restoring the borbons? I know. Grab the last monarchic shield and then smack evey authoritarkan simbol you can find on it. Yeah I want them to remember: no democracy bitches. I'm sure foreign powers won't pressure the king into adding that shit as soon as I'm dead. Oh also add them all in red this time too so they can't be seen well when against the flag,  which is how they'll be most of the time. In fact modify the collar so its red too, let's see how long they take before they spot that one, and change the lion back to red so it looks uglier. Yeah I'm still fucking with people for no reason."



Maskull said:


> What's the likelihood that the Basque and Catalans will someday get their way and split Spain in three?



'Bout as good as my chance of winning the lottery, and I don't play...


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## Maskull (Jul 11, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> 'Bout as good as my chance of winning the lottery, and I don't play...


I'm sure they'll continue to do their damnedest. As foreigner my view is that there's enough external investment in the nation for the rest of the world to never allow disintegration. 

I've read plenty of Spanish and Basque literature. Most recently published was written decades before I was born and I know near nothing about the current landscape of your national literature. If you know who would you say are the predominant voices in fiction writing and poetry today?


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 11, 2020)

Maskull said:


> I'm sure they'll continue to do their damnedest. As foreigner my view is that there's enough external investment in the nation for the rest of the world to never allow disintegration.
> 
> I've read plenty of Spanish and Basque literature. Most recently published was written decades before I was born and I know near nothing about the current landscape of your national literature. If you know who would you say are the predominant voices in fiction writing and poetry today?



TODAY? I'd say fucking pewdiepie. He sure is known by more spaniards than any given currently alive authors.

Jokes aside. Personally my book backlog is fucking filled with foreign stuff, and I know the one of most spaniards I know is too. We have some really good translators so for the most part the most influential authors in spain are the same as internationally. As for spanish authors, I've heard a lot about Perez-Reberte and Aramburu, but to be honest current spanish literature is kinda garbage nowadays, as is most international literature if I'm honest. Most of our good writers either go for songs, comedy, comics or videogames. The book market's just gone to hell as it has in most areas. We are really good at songs, comedy, comics and videogames though, and decent at cinematography (though A3 Media's corruption has fucked that over a tad.)


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## Non-Threatening Niall (Jul 11, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> Well that's a new one. The pronounciation I mean.


Welp, that's how accents work innit? You're not supposed to notice your own, that's your spergy foreign listener's job


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## No. 7 cat (Jul 11, 2020)

It is notable that even after govt moved from PP to the Socialists, there was exactly no substantive change for Catalan separatists, going nowhere, insofar as I can see.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 12, 2020)

UnimportantFarmer said:


> It is notable that even after govt moved from PP to the Socialists, there was exactly no substantive change for Catalan separatists, going nowhere, insofar as I can see.



Funny thing about Spain. Allowing a territory to leave would involve changing the constitution. Meaning the current government would need to propose the measure in congress, get 70% approval, then resign, have an ellection process, and have the new government corroborate the change with 70% approval rating.

Now, every actually representative referendum in catalonia has shown less than 50% of catalonians want to secede to begin with when shit actually gets serious. So... You think anyone's even gonna try to pull the pin on that grenade? No they fucking ain't. Catalonia sure as shit ain't going.


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## RichardMongler (Jul 13, 2020)

I love this thread. 

Do you have any favorite Spanish bands or musicians? 

Me: Ñu, Mägo de Oz, Barón Rojo, Ángeles del Infierno, Santa, Bruque, Banzai, Éxodo, Panzer, Soziedad Alkoholika, Estirpe Imperial, División 250, Decibelios and a few others.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 14, 2020)

RichardMongler said:


> I love this thread.
> 
> Do you have any favorite Spanish bands or musicians?
> 
> Me: Ñu, Mägo de Oz, Barón Rojo, Ángeles del Infierno, Santa, Bruque, Banzai, Éxodo, Panzer, Soziedad Alkoholika, Estirpe Imperial, División 250, Decibelios and a few others.



I must admit 2 things when it comes to music.
1-I'm one of those hypsters whose favourite groups are old as shit.
2-I'm the most basic of basic bitches when it comes to music.
So feel free to judge me for this but...

I must immediately admit my favourite group would have to be Fito y los Fitipaldis and La Quinta Estación. (Specially with "Soldadito Marinero and El Sol No Regresa respectively being some of my favourite songs by far.) Which is an extreme oldfag normie choice, but you know. I'm a music fudd. Aside from that, of course, just look at Carnaval, and specially Chirigotas, like the one from El Selu and I just listen to that all year long as I admitted on that part of the thread. That done with, I must recomend Alex O'Dogerty, for other comedic songs. And I am definitely not biased because he's from Cadiz! Ejem. No but for real he's amazing. And finally, and not requoting the ones you already mentioned (Mago de Oz ftw!), time to dive head first into "god how can you be so basic", with Melendi, Dani Martín, Morat, Juanes, La Oreja de Van Gogh, Amarat, El Canto del Loco and probably 5 billion other popular artists that will absolutely pop up as soon as you search any top 100 songs in spain for any given year. Yeah I know, depicable. But for real my taste in music can best be summed up as "anything other than Regaetton and the shit from Eurovisión/Operación Triunfo" and most of my favourite songs are a long list of jokes set to a beat so I am definitely not someone that should be trusted with music recommendations.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 15, 2020)

*The Battle of Ceriñola, Part 3. The Battle:*






So where did we leave this? Oh yes. The Spanish literally walked into Cerignola and took it without opposition then reinforced the fuck out of the village by building an artificial river and palisade and the French arrived and did not like it. Because it was their village being taken. Or so they thought, I mean Cerignola was Italian but Italy had broken to shit and back by this point and wouldn’t rebuild until some years later so no one cared what they thought.



Spoiler: The Battle







And so, as the French looked over the battlefield, I must imagine first question was where the hell their artillery was, seeing as how shelling a fortified position was quite tempting indeed. This must’ve been when they were informed that the artillery, alongside most of their supplies, had gotten their wheels stuck in the mud and would not arrive in time for the battle. Yeah because leaving your cannons behind is a great idea when assaulting an entrenched position! Thankfully the Spanish artillerymen were so kind as to even the playing field on that aspect by blowing themselves up as soon as they saw their enemies. So hey, seems no one gets to dick around with big metal balls today! I still can’t get over the fact that both sides simultaneously started by fucking it up on the artillery front in technically unique but functionally identical ways. Just. Beautiful. And so the Cheese Munchers got to doing an overview of the battle.



Spoiler: Chorizo Sourkraut







The Spaniards had let their Ginetes loose on the flanks and ordered everyone else to form a battleline on the palisades except for their men-at-arms which waited on the rear for a chance to strike, separated in 2 groups, one for each flank. Also, depending on who you ask the Landsknechts are like fucking Schrodinger’s Cat. Some say they were with the men-at-arms in the rear while others say they formed a block in the middle with both Spanish light infantry contingents at their sides. Documents do say there were 2 light infantry contingents and 1 landsknecht contingent and that the landsknechts carried only melee weapons. So my best guess is they were put as the middle of the pike block, with the Spanish pikes covering the flanks, which due to the size of their formation would put them “at the rear” of the infantry block, which is where the men-at-arms were too, more or less. But that’s just me trying to interpret the conflicting intel and it’s honestly not that important. Either way we know they started near the rear and ended in the middle of the frontline, so that’s all that we need to know. Oh and we can’t forget there was also the smouldering remains of the artillery lying at the left of the heavy cavalry, yeah that helped a lot, ehem. Either way, this was a pretty common defensive strategy, just cover the front line with ranged weapons, second line (even if possibly deformed) with pikes, leave the knights behind ready to act when needed and send out the light cav to be an annoyance at the enemy’s sides. Really nothing fancy, but hey, if it works it works.







And I can imagine this is exactly when Louis of Ars, second in command of Duke Nemours, looked at his superior and said “hey chief, so-“ wait no I gotta make him more French. “Mon Commandant, je suis avoir flashbacks. Hon, hon.” To which the Duke seemingly answered “Not every battle against a clearly inferior, ranged weapon focused enemy can turn into god damned Agincourt! Hon, hon.” To which Louis answered “Cette cest appelé préfiguration, milord.” Sadly somehow Louis lost that discussion. Btw I’m going to call the Duke Nemours by his title for this whole tale because he was also called Louis. This was medieval France, they were all called Louis. Except the ones that wanted to be fancy by using the German spelling, Ludwig. Seriously they all had the same damned name.



Spoiler: Chocolate Croissant







On the positive side, the French also had Schrodinger’s Cat fighting for them. In this case the Stradiots. You see, most agree they had a big block of Sweedish Pike at the center with French Infantry to their left and Gendarmes to the right. This made generally a good amount of sense, they needed to focus their heavy cav on one flank if they wished to plow through the frontline, and spreading their light infantry in 2 sides wouldn’t have the defensive value it offered the Spanish, so keeping it together added some cohesion. But then we get to the Stradiots. And there are 3 different accounts. Some say they were on the left completely alone, some say they were on the right with the Gendarmes, and some say they were on both sides, having been divided in 2 to protect the flanks. It wasn’t uncommon to add light cav to heavy cav to fill out numbers if needed, so I can’t actually even tell which one is most likely. But I do think the third would make more sense. Since the times of the romans people had used light cav to counter light cav, and as we’ll see that’s the tactic the Stradiots used once the battle started, so it seems most likely they were positioned for it. But that’s just my guess and I am just a nerd with no formal military training so I doubt my battlefield experience on the 41st millennium gives me any authority on this. So it could be that they simply switched to that tactic at the start of the battle. Either way, again, nothing fancy, but it works. Certainly no 4D chess moves involved in this particular battle.







Either way, the battle started as the light infantry on both sides started exchanging ranged projectiles and the Stradiots utilized one of the most tried and tested light cav strategies since the times of the roman Equites by triggering the Ginetes and then running for it, prompting both side’s light cav to stop mattering for this battle as they spent the rest of the day chasing each other somewhere along the French rear and would only come back to pick off fleeing soldiers once the battle ended. I told you their position wouldn’t matter too much.



Spoiler: The Duke 







This was of course just the normal start to any battle. (Including the utter failure from the artillery.) And so, Duke Nemours told the Gendarmes to lower their visors, couch their lances, pull up their frilly stockings and charge against the Spanish flank. The plan may have been crude and blatant, but it was sound. Sure, the French had to deal with a moat and palisade. But their armor was reinforced, at this point being able to stand against any projectile they had encountered with little losses. All they needed to do was get into melee and the Spanish would be fucked five ways to Sunday. By any measure they had encountered before this point, the French had just won. The Spanish simply never stood a chance.

Sadly for the French, the new Spanish Espingardas (A type of shotgun. Yes I know the name is also used for a type of light artillery piece, which btw did not even exist by this point, but it got its name from the prior type of shotgun which is what we’re referring to now. Again, welcome to old timey names, they sucked even more than modern names.) had a lot more kick than any weapon the Gendarmes had encountered before. Indeed they had enough kick to reliably pierce even their reinforced plate armour. And thanks to El Gran Capitán’s lobbying they had just been amassed for the occasion. So, the first charge quickly encountered that the return fire was a lot more spicy than they expected and were forced to retreat.

This is what many would call a teaching moment. They had made a mistake and paid dearly, it was time to think about what had happened and reconsider their options. The Duke did so, and seemingly decided it must’ve been luck, ordering a second charge. The result was the same. The Gendarmes, prior glory of Europe, most well trained and geared knights in the realm, were pushed back by a buncha serfs with guns. Having seemingly lost his mind at this realization the Duke then decided to press on by adding the infantry, ordering infantry and cavalry to combine their forces and march into the Spanish flank, hoping the pikemen would offer sufficient cover for what remained of his Gendarmes. They did not, and as the losses piled up Duke Nemours was added to the list, as a Spanish Espingardero hit him in the chest, and killed him instantly.







At this point the French and now Swiss had endured a terrible toll and the French command chain was nearly nonexistent. So leadership fell upon Colonel Chaudieu, leader of the Swiss Pikemen. This was the one chance they had to free themselves of the folly of the Duke. At this point retreating would mean the battle would come to be remembered in infamy for their defeat at the hands of such seemingly insignificant opponent, but if Chaudieu could only forget his pride an ordered retreat could still salvage most of his men and ensure the French could regroup and think about how this shifted their strategy moving forward. It was the sensible thing to do. It was the right thing to do.



Spoiler: The Colonel







Sadly, far from learning from his predecessor’s mistake Chaudieu seemingly shared on his insanity, ordering 3 more charges of combined cavalry and infantry, this time directly against the middle of the Spanish frontline, one directly after the other as each failed, deliberately taking away his own army’s capacity to regroup and recover in some deranged attempt to sandwich his men between the enemy and their own damned pride. This lunacy seemingly being fuelled by the hole the Swiss managed to tear into the center of the Spanish palisade on the first assault. Sadly for them however the Landsknechts had been immediately ordered to cover the hole as the Spanish infantry took to the flanks to continue the rain of projectiles, and so, far from managing to tear into the ranged underbelly of the Spanish force, the French were thrown at the meatgrinder of German heavy infantry, a wall of pikes standing beside them and any chance of victory. Instead of managing to open a wound, they merely railroaded themselves into the worst spot they could ever be in.



Spoiler: The Slaughter







If you excuse my bad philosophical wanking. This is for me the biggest fuckup of the whole affair. Nemours lost his marbles, that’s for sure, but to some degree it made sense. He was a lord whose lands had been invaded and he could not predict the Spanish ranged weaponry would be as devastating as it was, even the Spaniards were surprised at just how horrifyingly effective it turned out to be. So the shock could easily have made him loose his sense of strategy. But after 2 failed charges and a repelled march Nemour’s death was the point at which the French needed to hold back, organize, and prepare an organized retreat. Doing so would’ve prevented a significant number of casualties, not just in combat but while fleeing, and while their honour would be tainted greatly by such a turn of events, at least they could prepare to defend the next village, and if they played their cards right stop Spanish advances on their lands for a considerable amount of time while their command tried to adapt to the situation. I mean, the French royalty was definitively unprepared for the technological advances needed to stop Spain, so it wasn’t gonna work, but they couldn’t know that.

And command falling upon a mercenary was the perfect chance for this. Now, don’t get me wrong, Swiss and German mercenaries had reputations to uphold, they weren’t cowardly or turncoats by any measure. Hell even the Almogavars, which were practically glorified Vikings, had a strong sense of loyalty once they gave their word. But mercenaries did tend to have much cooler heads that the nobles. They certainly had standards, but they weren’t fighting for their own lands, and so, they could keep their cool for longer and could be trusted to tell their lords when shit really wasn’t gonna work out for them. Even if they then proceeded to fight anyway if said lord gave the order. They were soldiers through and through, and some of the damned best. But the Colonel, far from protecting his side’s interest to the best of his ability, demonstrated absolutely no sense of tactics.

By the time command got to him his troops’ morale was broken, his best soldiers had been laid to waste without even getting to melee range of the enemy, his heavy pikemen had endured losses while the Landsknecht’s hadn’t even entered combat at all, the Stradiots had seen the situation and fled, giving the Ginetes a chance to start harassing his ranged troops, and his Gendarmes were practically in shock at a situation they could not possibly fight against. The Duke had started with a good advantage at first, yes, but by the time he died his entire army had been beaten and the Spanish handcannons had proven to be gamechanging. The French might’ve still had numerical superiority, but they were losing hard and it didn’t seem like that situation could be amended at that point. And yet, the Colonel simply ordered his troops to form a giant block to protect what was left of the Gendarmes and march directly against the front of the palisade, literally turning his men into meatshields, and pushed them not just once but three times without a break to squeeze against the opening they managed to make in the outer wall under the desperate delusion that maybe, just maybe, if he broke the Germans the rest of the army would fall after them.

And to be fair... It could be that breaking the Landsknecht would turn the tide once more. Although I don’t think so. Do take into account that the Spanish pikes stood by the German’s sides ready to plug any holes and yet didn’t get to see combat at all, and neither did the men-at-arms which were also awaiting orders. So I’d say the Spanish could hold even if the Landsknechts fell. But we’ll never know, because the Germans didn’t even come close to showing weakness. They plugged the hole in the palisades with a wall of pikes and kept their Doppelsöldners at the ready to stomp any Gendarmes and Swiss Halberdiers that might escape the wrath of the handcannoneers. Their line didn’t even move a single bloody inch. They were for all intents and purposes as solid as the literal walls around them, if not more. They simply couldn’t break to begin with, so we’ll never even get any documents narrating the doubts any Spaniard might’ve had, any decision they might’ve taken if the Germans fell. Because they never had to make that question to begin with.







And so, the Swiss literally marched over the corpses of their comrades straight into a wall of death for hours on end as the Gendarmes got picked out by the Spanish before they could even threaten their frontline, until finally Chaudieu found his demise by the hand of another Espingardero and the army broke. And by that point, an organized retreat was a damned near impossibility. The Swiss admirably managed to execute it, but everybody else just broke and ran for it. Had they kept their pikes at the ready and gone slowly el Gran Capitán would’ve had to consider the possible losses in chasing them.

But instead they basically tore their own lines open and gave the Spanish Celadas and Ginetes the perfect chance to weave in-between them hunting important targets while cutting anyone unlucky enough to be close to their path. And so it was, as El Gran Capitán, seeing this opportunity, decided to ensure the French couldn’t regroup by ordering the men-at-arms and returning Ginetes to hunt down the Gendarmes and cause as much damage as possible at their path. Causing even more losses the cavalry simply weaved amongst the enemy slashing at anyone unfortunate enough to be close to their path while they chased any armoured or otherwise notorious target they could find. Only the Swiss, thanks to their discipline and use of pikes, escaped their wrath, no mercy was shown.







From the beginning of the assault this wasn’t a fight, it was a fucking slaughter, just a one-sided massacre where one of the sides might as well have counted as unarmed civilians. Had someone been this brutal when crushing their enemies in modern times they would be staring at a war tribunal for it. But back in these days getting captured only got you an even more fucked up execution, so El Gran Capitán was called a hero instead. Some might want to ponder on the ethical implications of this. I’d say when seen in context the Spaniards did what was expected of soldiers at the time. This was common practice in most wars, and the French had no reason to expect anything less. They certainly wouldn’t have shown mercy had the tides turned. But as we’ll see in the last part, it seems El Gran Capitán would be the first to realize just how much more death than normal had been inflicted, and come to lament it, soon enough.

For now, let’s talk about the cold numbers. The battle took nearly 24 hours, from one morning to the next. On that time, reports of the dead on the French side vary in number, with the upper limit in the 5000, but either way most agree the majority of Gendarmes lost their lives, saving only a small contingent led by Louis of Ars which managed to escape, with the lowest casualties coming from the Stradiots that for the most part just legged it as soon as shit turned ugly. On the Spanish side the number is somewhere in the few hundreds, including the self immolating artillerymen. What was supposed to be a one sided victory by the French therefore turned into the exact opposite scenario, something that would be repeated in other battles like Bicoca, as they were forced to learn the hard way that technological advancements had just rendered their ways of combat worthless. War would never be the same, and the political implications of this shift would only become more and more apparent with time.



For now, I will leave this tale here and talk about the aftermath on the next post. The battle is over. Leaving behind a result that left both sides scarred. It is time to tend to the dead, and attempt to understand the implications of such dreadful resolution. See you on the next part.


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## Pitere pit (Jul 17, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> Funny thing about Spain. Allowing a territory to leave would involve changing the constitution. Meaning the current government would need to propose the measure in congress, get 70% approval, then resign, have an ellection process, and have the new government corroborate the change with 70% approval rating.
> 
> Now, every actually representative referendum in catalonia has shown less than 50% of catalonians want to secede to begin with when shit actually gets serious. So... You think anyone's even gonna try to pull the pin on that grenade? No they fucking ain't. Catalonia sure as shit ain't going.


Minor powerlever fellow Spaniard, my aunt and uncle lived in Girona, the region with the highest support of independence in Catalonia, my aunt told me that this is just corruption, pure Spaniard tradition at its finest involving the Pujol family and muh Russian mafia.
Moving on. Can I talk about some Madrid's traditions? I hope it doesn't bother you.
One of the biggest parties in Madrid is San Isidro on May 15th. We party a lot on carnivals and we eat barquillos and rosquillas. Here is the recipe of the latter, there are three kinds.



Also, we are proud of our drinking water, so fresh from the tap that we cum when we drink a sip.
Enough Madrid's sperging, here is a video of an Iberian lynx hunting a rabbit. It was near extinction but now its population grew that it is considered an endangered species, is not so much but we are in the right path, I think.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 17, 2020)

Pitere pit said:


> Minor powerlever fellow Spaniard, my aunt and uncle lived in Girona, the region with the highest support of independence in Catalonia, my aunt told me that this is just corruption, pure Spaniard tradition at its finest involving the Pujol family and muh Russian mafia.
> Moving on. Can I talk about some Madrid's traditions? I hope it doesn't bother you.
> One of the biggest parties in Madrid is San Isidro on May 15th. We party a lot on carnivals and we eat barquillos and rosquillas. Here is the recipe of the latter, there are three kinds.
> 
> ...



Of course it doesn't bother me, extra intel from other kiwis is exactly what I was hoping for.

The lynx will be safe enough if we keep on this path, and thankfully at least down south people care about the environment.

Well anyone except the PP cares anyway. No seriously the Andalusian PP just tried to revive Aznar's law labeling ecologically important areas as "Suelos de Oportunidad" and selling them for building shit. Thankfully even Vox got pissed off about that one so it's unlikely to actually manage to pass the vote, but jesus christ on a bicicle that's fucked up.

Either way, I'm hoping we manage to take it a step forward and bring back the Ibex too. And for those that don't get the reference... I'll explain Spain's Frankenstein moment on a future post


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 28, 2020)

Hello everyone and excuse my little hiatus there. I will compensate with a bit of a guided route through a very interesting set of villages soon enough, but for now. Let me get back on schedule by ignoring the prior schedule, leaving Ceriñola behind for now, and talking about what really matters to most of you. Some good old Spanish Cuisine! Today we're talking about Chorizo!

*Chorizo, The Spiciest Sausage:*



Spoiler: Really Early History






Nowadays if you ever ask a filthy blasted horrid* north american or british normie *(note the seething vile) where sausages come from, they will immediately say "Germany", and they would be fucking wrong and bad and should be ashamed of themselves. Ejem. Truth is, no one really knows where the fuck our beloved stuffed guts come from. If there's one thing everyone agrees is it's somewhere in the mediterranean, with the greeks and phoenicians being the largest propagators of such culinary arts, but really there is no clear answer. Either way, sausages were one of the most important tools in the expansion of mediterranean civilization in its early stage. And no, I'm not kidding here.
.

You may question why phalic foodstuffs would be so important to the early game, but that is because you are looking at it from a post-refrigerator meta, where weiners have become more of a meme food than anything. You see, early on our little tech tree, one of the most important factors for resource node control was, well, actually being able to feed that resource node. This is why coastal towns became so dominant, as fishing and seatrade helped greatly. Sausages however allowed for a new tactic which allowed for civilizations to reach inner land tribes, meat preservation. With this new tech the empires that had previously gotten stuck along the bodies of water could finally trade and interact with forest and mountain civs, greatly expanding commerce. Furthermore, this allowed merchants to sell meat at much larger distances and in much larger quantities, as it didn't rot as quickly. This is why the greeks and specially phoenicians came to fucking love the culinary dick jokes. For their traveling-merchant-based playstyles they were bloody gamechanging!

And this is also why as soon as the Phoenicians introduced them into the Iberian peninsula Spain declared its unconditional love for the bloody things. And we never stopped loving them. As neither has most of god damned europe, as indeed sausages are one of the most common biproducts of butchers and most regions have their own specialties. They are great! And not just because they look like cocks.





Spoiler: Spices






But of course you might be a bit concerned about how would sausages help with preserving meat. After all, they don't seem to last that much longer than regular meat nowadays. With the ever-popular frankfurt so abused in british and USA territories being more of a marketting gimmick to sell literal waste as food to unsuspecting customers. Well that's because as salt stopped being used to preserve meat sausages stopped being that much of a tool of preservation and became more of a traditional foodstuff. Originally however, they were the easiest way to cure meat, and indeed sausages are the first form of meat curation in recorded history. And while many areas now just do regular sausages with no curation Spain never forgot that fact, indeed while we also have a lot of "regular" sausages, in spain the most common form of sausages are cured sausages, or as they are called here, "Embutidos" (which literally translates as "stuffed") and embutidos are indeed one of the most well known and beloved parts of Spanish cuisine. So it was just a matter of time before I had to mention them!

Embutidos all have a few things in common, with one exception. In another post to be done whenever I get around to it I'll talk about Jamón Serrano. Jamón Serrano is cured ham, and as such follows none of the rules of other spanish embutidos as indeed it's not an embutido at all but got lumped into the category mostly because it's used the same way as other embutidos, has similar taste and really there's no other category widely used in spain where we can put it so who gives a shit about technicalities. But point is, every other embutido follows the same pattern:
-They're a sausage.
-They're cured.
-They're spicy.

This last point of course is precisely because of the spices used for curing and to make sure the cured meat doesn't taste like... Well, beef jerky, whod've fucking thunk huh. Salt is technically enough to cure meat. But who the fuck uses only salt to cure meat? Savages that's whom. Savages with no sense of taste, apreciation for good food or love of spices... Or in other words. _The British and North Americans. _(Note the seething vile again.) And boy do we have a LOT of Spices in Spain. We sure love that shit and thankfully we taught such appreciation for flavor to our south american brothers before the british could get to them. Imagine a world were south americans got their cuisine from the anglicans? Sends shivers down my fucking spine. Such a wealth of flavour wasted pushing bland shit. No seriously I've visited britain multiple times in the past and it's a pretty good place, quite relaxed outside of the big cities, shit weather but no one is perfect. But god damnit. The lack of flavor in the food. It hurt my soul. You brits may be great at surviving. But you don't know how to live!

Session of shitting on bongland over, time to get back on track. As much as Spainish food includes a ton of random herbs, you might be surprised to learn where we get the most important spices from. Peppers! Despite the late inclussion of these veggies originaries of america, peppers quickly and surely became the undisputed kings of Spanish foodstuffs about as soon as columbus made a landing and boy is there a good reason for that. Shit's fine AF. And aside from peppers in general being just a great fucking condiment that everyone should add to everything ever, when dried and crushed they make some of the nicest, most tasty spices around. It's just wonderful. This group of spices is called "Pimentón" in Spain, (with different denominations and methods of classifications being distinguished, most commonly "pimentón picante" vs "pimentón dulce" to separate the spicy stuff from the mild), South Americans refer to it as Pimentón in some countries and Paprika in others, with the USA using Paprika too, as well as poland (for some reason), and then the central europeans and British prove my point about their lack of fucking spices by just using the term "pepper", which they also use for pimienta, and pimientos, and like 30 other different spices with no care for denominations. I swear to god this shit hurts my soul. So little taste. So fucking bland. Every time I come near england I turn into Gordon Ramsay.





Spoiler: Chorizo Brotherhood






And so, Chorizo is for all intents and purposes just a sausage with salt and paprika. And this simple concoction as such might be the best metaphor for hispanic brotherhood, the perfect union of Mediterranean technique with Iberoamerican ingredients to create a dish as iconic as it is tasty. It's perfect and I love it and if you have any appreciation for good cuisine you will too damnit. Chorizo's origin is messy and disputed, but one thing's for sure, it started somewhere in the caribean when someone decided to add a good amount of taste to their sausages before curing. Yeah that's really about it, no fancy backstory or legend nor any famous inventor behind it, just a buncha bored colonists said "you know what? I'mma see if I can add spice to this shit" and they could. That's how the best cuisine comes about anyway. Look at celebratory dishes linked to legends. Fucking STUFFED TURKEYS is what you get out of following that shit. No thanks, traditions are best enjoyed by throwing tomatoes at each other, not cooking bland shit! People always claiming our traditions make no sense. Well at least they're enjoyable!

And so, let me please illustrate how to make the best Chorizo you've ever fucking tasted in your live within the confines of your own home. And please, don't forget to cook it properly and enjoy eating it. You know what? I don't have enough space here, so I'll do a "how to cook meat like you're supposed to" post later, for those uncultured swines that don't yet know how to do it. Like the British. No I'm still not over that god damnit you can keep Gibraltar for as long as you want but at least get them to teach you some real fucking cooking! Just as a spoiler, if you're cooking meat, and you're either boiling it (broth doesn't count as meat!) or using a microwave, fucking do the world a favor and kill yourself.





Spoiler: The Recipe






The first thing you need to make good Chorizo is pork meat. What pork meat? I don't fucking care. Only important part here is it's pork (Yes I've seen people make chorizo out of other animals, and they were lunatics so don't copy those god damned savages. What are you, a fucking muslim?! Then use fucking pork damnit! And if you are, well then get a proper religion already and stop fucking goats! Although wild boar chorizo is also acceptable, as indeed a wild boar is just an angry pig. But fuck beef, horse, deer and all that other bullshit, use pig!) Here you gotta take into account that generally, if say you use just pure loin for the meat, which is a very fat-less cut, you'd need a ratio of 2 grams of pure pork fat for every 8 grams of pure loin. If you add very little fat you can still do Lomo Embuchado, which is another kind of Embutido, but then you have to cure it differently and aren't making chorizo. And if you add too little meat you'll just make a spicy tocino sausage, which hey if you wanna make spicy tocino sausages that's ok too but it's not fucking chorizo, and also lasts far less than regular chorizo. Do take into account that the meat will shrink as it is cured, that's why we add so much of it by comparison it ain't got nothing to do with caloric intake. So if you're gonna experiment, do take into account you'll need way more meat than you'll eventually see in the sausage. Either way this ratio can be broken by using fattier cuts like Lagarto or Secreto, and many regions of both Spain and Iberoamerica use specific cuts like carne magra or shit like that, but that shit's more expensive so that depends on how much of a snob you wanna be about your chorizo, and taking into account how much spice we're gonna add you won't notice it on your first times, so leave the better cuts for when you've already gotten accustomed to chorizo and can taste the difference under all that flavor. Your taste will be what determines what the best chorizo is for you, so once you got the gist you can experiment freely until you have the perfect mix, this ain't an exact science here we're doing art, meat art, with pork. Like a white man!

Next up, guts. Yeah we're making a sausage so get some nice guts to fill up. This time it doesn't matter what animal they come from, different guts will give you different widths and slightly different tastes so it's still preferrable you go for pigs and traditional recipes tend to be quite strict about it, but everything goes here really, this time it's more up to what you want to do than wether or not it's technically still chorizo, it will be. Guts are mostly just for casing no need to get pesky with that shit.

Then, we get to the spice! And here is where shit gets odd. Some things are universal when it comes to chorizo. That is of course salt, which is needed for curing, (a spoonfull per 800 grams), paprika (I'm using the english name for your benefit, believe me it hurts to do so, but I know some get weird about accents.) a bit of garlic (generally 2 teeth for every 800 grams), and that's about it. But even at this point I've added the first point of contention, paprika. Every area likes it different. For instance in León, a northern province of spain where _they're pansy bastards with no balls_, they like to add a bit of mild paprika to an otherwise white sausage, here down south much like our american brothers we go heavy with the spicy stuff. No sense in making chorizo if it doesn't leave your mouth burning damnit! Overall, add to taste, but if it ain't red by the end of it, well the northerners will still call it chorizo.* But they'll be wrong!* Also if you dare make the chorizo red by adding food coloring instead of paprika I'm going to find you, and I'm going to kill you. You've been warned.

Other than that nearly everywhere adds a glass of white wine to the real thing, but wineless versions are also made for kids. Personally, I must say, wine makes it considerably better and it's not enough alcohol to matter even for kids so I recommend you ignore that Karen shite and go with the real deal. And aside from that, you can add species at your own taste. Again, northern castillian provinces seem to just hate the idea of fun so they like it basic, much like their personalities. But here down south and in best america it is quite common to add comino, pimienta, orégano and/or whatever each region has as its most commonly used spice(s), so go wild with that shit you can't go wrong, it's all tasty as fuck anyway and as I hope I've made apparent, the best chorizo for you will only be the best for you, this is a personal endeavor, so don't let others dictate your taste, even if we'll judge you greatly for it. Even shit that seems not to fit winds up tasting great sometimes, my family likes using a combination of dry garlic, laurel and pimienta as seasoning for rices and I added it to chorizo once, I must say, it still worked fine. Hell there's even onion chorizo out there, and it is damned good if I do say so myself. So add shit freely, worst thing you can be here is bland.

Either way, recipe over, time for the elaboration.





Spoiler: curation and consumption






First up, you gotta make the blend for the chorizo. This is a long and arduous process with very detailed description of complex steps requiring milimetric precission... I can't keep a straight face. Get ready for this shit. Step 1, mince the fucking meat. Step 2, mix everything up and season to taste. Step 3, leave for a day to rest. Step 4, stuff the sausage. Step 5, time to cure the fuck out of it! Yeah, as you can see, this ain't no chemistry. Every recipe comes with cuantities for their preferred chorizo, but don't think they are a hard metric, just make a nice spicy blend of red porky goodness and stuff those guts until they're bursting with flavor. When meat cures it looses size so don't be scared to fill it properly. Length also doesn't matter, some like them smal, specially the ones that make them really spicy (even by southern metrics of spicy) while others like to make "horseshoe" chorizo by literally turning a whole gut into a single gargantuan meatsausage. As Babish said, it's not the amount of meat, it's how you treat it.

Curing meat however really is a long, weird and hard prospect, I will leave the USDA regulations down there because I couldn't possibly explain it all, but generally, curing is just a kind of drying. It requires a cold dry place to hang the meat. If its wet forget about it, same thing if it's warm. Cold+dry+hanging. If you can get fancy in an isolated place like a cabin you can add smoke for some degree of microbial protection, but if you're on the city you'll have to make-do with not having insects around to begin with. Really, good hygiene goes a long way as with everything related to food. Then just leave it to dry. How long? Well that depends on ambiental conditions, even more, it depends on what kind of chorizo you're even making. For tender chorizo, the kind best used for grilling, you need it to still be juicy, so a few days is enough, for dry chorizo, you need to dry until it's lost at least 35% of its weight. At which point it will be safe to consume without cooking, although it can be cooked anyway.

During this period mold will probably grow. If it is any color other than white you fucked it up or the climate was shit, to the bin with it. If it's white it can be furry or dusty. If it's furry, it's also bad, if it's not too expanded you can try to cut it before it penetrates the skin, if it's taken too large an area bin it. If the mold is white and dusty then good job, that's penicilin, it's exactly what we were hoping and it will protect the skin from microbes, you did it, you made chorizo.

If there's no mold at all it can still be good but it will depend on the microbes, so if when cooking it smells weird, or you notice a weird taste, to the bin, but if not it's fine. But this is extremely weird anyway. And so, you just created one of the best ingredients known to man, you can eat it, you can cook it, you can add it to broth, sandwiches, fucking salad I don't care. You finally got your god damned phalic spicy meatstuff, it's great either way. So enjoy!



External links with added info:
USDA regulations on meat curation
The Wikipedia of Embutido
One Recipe
Another Recipe


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 29, 2020)

I decided to change the OP and title to allow for related territories other than spain itself to get in. Honestly, I don't even know why I restricted it to spain to begin with and the thread seems dead without me anyway so roll the fun!

For the record in case of doubt as to what counts as hispanic. According to spanish inmigration law that's the iberian peninsula, ecuatorial guinea, the philipines, Iberoamerica (From texas/florida to argentina) and the sefradi jews. And Morocco is conspicuously absent from the list because they're assholes and keep having military dick wavings with us. (Moroccans are OK, except for all the drug lords and terrorists. But Morocco is a blasted shithole.) So I'm sticking to that, but if you got any country that can count by virtue of having been a colony or territory at some point and wanna add it, then I'm ok with it. Really I won't bitch much about added fun, no matter where it comes from.


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## ToroidalBoat (Jul 31, 2020)

I miss those fried bananas that are a thing in Puerto Rico.

Also the sound of coquí frogs.


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## Shadfan666xxx000 (Jul 31, 2020)

So which Latin American country is most favored by Spain? I know they're all your babies but every parent picks favorites and I'm sure a port city would have a strong opinion.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 31, 2020)

Shadfan666xxx000 said:


> So which Latin American country is most favored by Spain? I know they're all your babies but every parent picks favorites and I'm sure a port city would have a strong opinion.



Well believe it or not we really don't have a favourite. But that's mostly because if there's one constant in Spain it's we can't agree on anything. Every region/political trend got its favourite instead. And with provinces doing their own trade deals at that level, favoritism has been blatant, but it's far from uniform.

Cadiz got a lot of brotherhood with the caribbean, we were twin ports back in the day and share a lot of culture. Republicans got a debt with Mexico, who alongside Canada stood by them before even the europeans realized what was going down. Extreme right wingers fucking worship Argentina... I don't think I need to explain why. Catalonians are always going on about bolivia, ya know 'cause independence. Catalonians are really fucking mono-thematic like that. Murcia is just really into catholithism and traditions but Mexico pissed them off during the civil war so they mostly just flipflop between love and hate for them based on what topic they're talking about. Dominican Republic is favoured by Navarra and Euskadiz (the 2 basque communities), I don't know exactly why I'm not too up to date on basque history. (Though it might just be default. Really there's no one that dislikes the dominicans. Most small countries got no dislike by most... well except vox.) And of course the one thing we all agree on is fuck the current Venezuelan government. Fuck even most commies think it's time someone kicks them out of office and puts some real democracy in place. So hey, at least we agree on something!

Also Vox (the extreme far right party, born in Euskadi although now rejected by its birthplace) seems to be under the impression than Iberoamerica is just 2 countries, Argentina and "Venezuela and things like it", and as such hate everything except Argentina. But don't worry we all know Vox is fucking insane after they started going to congress with photoshopped pics screeching about conspiracy theories, which is why they're getting rejected now. Euskadiz had early elections because electoral law is another thing we can't get our autonomous communities to agree on. So that's why we got early results from them. But galicia also did that and the same thing happened. They're on the way out like the little hitlers they are. Can you believe back on the early days they seemed like the sane alternative to the PP. Oh how the tides turned...


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## TaimuRadiu (Jul 31, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> I decided to change the OP and title to allow for related territories other than spain itself to get in. Honestly, I don't even know why I restricted it to spain to begin with and the thread seems dead without me anyway so roll the fun!
> 
> For the record in case of doubt as to what counts as hispanic. According to spanish inmigration law that's the iberian peninsula, ecuatorial guinea, the philipines, Iberoamerica (From texas/florida to argentina) and the sefradi jews. And Morocco is conspicuously absent from the list because they're assholes and keep having military dick wavings with us. (Moroccans are OK, except for all the drug lords and terrorists. But Morocco is a blasted shithole.) So I'm sticking to that, but if you got any country that can count by virtue of having been a colony or territory at some point and wanna add it, then I'm ok with it. Really I won't bitch much about added fun, no matter where it comes from.


Is there anything interesting about Equatorial Guinea? It seems you hardly ever hear about it on the world stage. I guess they had one of those shitty african dictators? The only "interesting" thing I know about it is that when Chinese engineers went thru Africa on a Belt and Road initiative type tour they repaired the national shortwave station.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 31, 2020)

TaimuRadiu said:


> Is there anything interesting about Equatorial Guinea? It seems you hardly ever hear about it on the world stage. I guess they had one of those shitty african dictators? The only "interesting" thing I know about it is that when Chinese engineers went thru Africa on a Belt and Road initiative type tour they repaired the national shortwave station.



They're basically Afrifan Switzerland. No really. The colonial wars saw some internal infighting but since spain reaffirmed control they just fought the political war with no actual war, and either used Spain's neutrality in conflicts to be neutral too or (as with the spanish civil war) used their distance as excuse to stay neutral from conflicts spain got itself in. This got them their own native "king" earlier than most colonies and in exchange for being "technically spanish" they remained near fully independent. So they mostly just did their thing even under "technically spanish" rule and once they got their full independence thanks to the UN they just proceeded to "technically" join the african union but remain neutral in every fucking thing said union debates, conflict they join, or just everything. The most they did was send volunteers to franco they seriously never gave a shit. And I love them for it. I mean, thanks to that they've managed to remain far more prosperous and peaceful than everyone around them and survive the most fucked up conflicts in human history despite their small size. They basically won by mastering the art of not giving a shit. Even the belt and road. They accepted some help but never more than they could chew and have as such managed to both use china (and not make it look like they directly oppose them) while not actually allying china or ever giving them a real foothold. They seriously just managed to embody the "I have no strong views one way or the other" meme. And it's great.


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## Big Bad Wart (Jul 31, 2020)

Only heard of the city of Cádiz because of the soccer player El mágico gonzáles so I wanted to know is soccer big in the Cádiz province or is there another sport that dominates?


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 31, 2020)

Gunt.Inc said:


> Only heard of the city of Cádiz because of the soccer player El mágico gonzáles so I wanted to know is soccer big in the Cádiz province or is there another sport that dominates?



Soccer is the most famous sport by far. Which is hilarious because the Cadiz FC is notorious for being one of the worst teams in every spanish league. But I guess that's Cadiz for you. We are still here just to suffer. Not that I suffer when football fans suffer because they are insufferable assholes so if anything I'd rather they kept loosing every match they play. God knows football victory celebrations suck.


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## Niggaplease (Jul 31, 2020)

can anyone explain the reason why Mexican men equate brief eye contact with I'm down to fuck?


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## Big Bad Wart (Jul 31, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> Soccer is the most famous sport by far. Which is hilarious because the Cadiz FC is notorious for being one of the worst teams in every spanish league. But I guess that's Cadiz for you. We are still here just to suffer. Not that I suffer when football fans suffer because they are insufferable assholes so if anything I'd rather they kept loosing every match they play. God knows football victory celebrations suck.



Yea last I heard about them they where in the lowest divisions of the La Liga. Moving on from that what is the influence of Arabic culture in the province Cádiz considering it so close to morocco I assume it must have been one of the primary places Islamic culture seeped into the Iberian peninsula.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Jul 31, 2020)

Gunt.Inc said:


> Yea last I heard about them they where in the lowest divisions of the La Liga. Moving on from that what is the influence of Arabic culture in the province Cádiz considering it so close to morocco I assume it must have been one of the primary places Islamic culture seeped into the Iberian peninsula.



Hahahahaha nooooooo. Not at all actually. Granada was the islamic beachhead. Cadiz was fairly vehemently christian. Even during its time under islamic rule most of the population refused to convert and the guerrillas dominated most of the mountainrange so be careful about saying Cadiz was a center for Arabic culture around here, people take damned pride in having fought for every single mile every single day until aid came and the "bandolero" guerrilla culture never went away. This is because of how developped the walled city was already before the muslims came and just how good of a defensive feature the mountainrange was. On top of being some really steep mountains they hold some of the densest forests of Spain. So they were always Guerrilla Paradise. So with the locals against them the moors had it quite hard to really control the area. Having to limit themselves to the castles without really having much power over the actual terrain. Most of andalusia is far more islamic than Cadiz. Most ruins in Cadiz City are from the roman/phoenician era.

That said. La Serranía, the mountainrange on Cadiz Province, was the catholic controlled part of the border with granada, being one of the most active areas of exchange and did seep with islamic influence in the same way the crusader states did on the middle east. This summer I'm going to the "pueblos blancos" of said area, already went to one, and will be explaining their culture with pictures on this very thread, I'm already preparing the first writing, so I won't get too elaborate here so as not to spoil. But let's just say the influence is palpable. So while it didn't spread as much as it did from Granada and Seville, which are the historically notorious centers of moorish culture, currently still filled with buildings which were reformed after the Reconquista but still hold plenty of arabic details, Cadiz Province still does have quite a few details left. Just not nearly as famous and far less influential. And we do have quite a few moroccan migrants. The ones that aren't part of the drug cartels are great. The ones that are part of the drug cartels give them a really bad name though... Yeah Andalusia's biggest source of drugs is Morocco so let's just say that wound is heavily hampering our relations currently. Honestly I'm fairly sure most wouldn't even care about the Pateras if it wasn't for all the trafficking.

Either way. Next big writing essay I'll talk about Olvera. And you'll start getting a taste of what the villages got to show and how the christians handled living with leftover moorish populations while at war with granada. Which is surprisingly more peaceful and progressive than people think. Although Olvera having been one of the earliest casstles to be conquered by the christians means we'll only really get one of the viewpoints there. For the other side you gotta get more towards Malaga, the spanish province that was on the southern border of what was called Granada at the time. (Not to be confused with the Province of Granada which was the capital of the kingdom of Granada. Because of course.)


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Aug 2, 2020)

*The White Villages, Olvera Part 1:*








Spoiler: Introduction



Cádiz contains in its region most of the area known as the "Serranía de Ronda", most commonly known as simply "La Serranía", which was the eastern border between the Christian forces and the Kingdom of Granada during the latter part of the Reconquista. (For those that don't know, Granada was the first and last bastion of the Moors, and they sure managed to hold onto it way past the point at which the rest of the peninsula had been rebuilt under the banners of the christian kingdoms. This region nowadays isn't as well known, but its influence can definitely be felt in Spanish Culture, just look for any product labelled as "Serrano", that means the technique originated from this region, such products include most famously fucking _JAMÓN SERRANO_, which might be the most well known icon of Spanish culture. And boy do we take pride on that! Cádiz Province got a lot of history! But back on track, part of why this region was a border for so long, is just how utterly fucked up the terrain of the mountainrange which gives it its name (Sierra literally means "mountainrange", a "Serranía" is the feudal term for an administrative area which is in a mountainrange. "Serranía de Ronda" just means "Mountainous Lordship of Ronda" roughly translated, with Ronda being the largest settlement on the area. Well, it was at the time anyway.) which as I mentioned on other posts basically makes it Guerrilla Paradise. It's seriously downright inscrutable, which guerrillas, militias, bandoleros and other such groups used to great effect in practically all conflicts within the area, and against both the Moors and the French after them. By the way if you're wondering what happened during the Civil War, the border was never even close to the Serranía and they had no industrial relevance so they were mostly left alone by everyone and decided it was better that way, giving refuge to republican guerrillas but officially surrendering to the fracoists so as to avoid any conflict being brought to the villages themselves, so they saw no fighting for a change.





This map with the chronology of the reconquista should explain how long the Serranía spent being a wartorn area officially. And even before that for reasons I'll explain more on the next post (about Chipiona) Cadiz's lower classes and guerrillas were far more vehement and violent about the resistance of moorish occupation than the rest of Andalusia, specially on the mountainrange. They got a lot of pride on resisting the moors for ages! And within said mountainrange reside the "Pueblos Blancos", "White Villages", known that way due to being, well, white. This color comes from the use of quicklime to protect buildings, which originally was done everywhere in Andalusia, since the times of the Romans at least, but the White Villages just kept doing it long past the time at which everyone else stopped, and nowadays in reference while quicklime isn't used anymore they still paint their buildings white anyway, because the white villages care very deeply about their customs and history, and no sane man would ever tell them to stop honoring them. Unless they're suicidal anyway. They've earned their right to be left alone through fire and blood, no one can deny that. So in this new series of posts we'll be exploring said villages, starting with Olvera. Because that's the first I've revisited. Here's another map of the Serranía's conflicts for reference:





Hey wanna guess how "Castille" earned its fucking name? Every one of those black icons is either a minor castle or a fortified town, and the red are the major castles. This by the way is why the Spanish Republicans used the mural crown for the shield, as Castille had used it as its heraldric crown before joining with León. The crown of castille was built in stone! This is why in many heraldric shields you see "de mi sale la paz" (peace comes from me) surrounding a castle. They really were the best way to ensure peace at the time, and the south knew it well.





Spoiler: Castle and Area







What even is vertigo? Hah! Sadly when looked down from the top the camera doesn't display properly just how high it is, as the background seems closer than IRL, which is more noticeable on the reverse pic from the top of the keep. For reference just look at the trees' size and that should tell you the distance. And yes, all of those green dots are Olive Trees, those aren't small bushes.





Olvera for the most part is just a pretty normal village, at least by Spanish metrics of "normality" which involves some good fucking ankles! I'd say the amount of Olive Trees should tell you what their biggest business is, they got Oil Presses for days. The castle itself is specifically called "El Castillo Árabe" (The Arab Castle) because there was an arabic fortress there originally, but every feature seems to indicate it was razed to the ground and completely rebuilt in 1327 After Alfonso XI captured it from Ibrahim-ibn-Utman of the Nazarís. It is part of a large series of castles around the mountainrange which have direct view of one another. This is not only due to their value defending the mountainrange, but also betrays their use as a communications array. You know that image from Lord of the Rings?






That ain't fantasy. It's not there anymore but that big fat keep originally had a bigass fireplace to warn neighboring regions of enemy troop movement. And while the fireplaces were dismantled with time, we still got a lot of small towers in the middle of buttfuck nowhere which were links on the chain where the bigger castles couldn't see each other. We'll hopefully see some of them closer this summer, but I don't have pics today. This is why the castle was directly built on the mountaintop. While defense is also definitely a factor, any old hill does for that, and hills have some of the largest castles precisely because of the added space and proximity to better lands, the economic side of nation building is what determines the capital, not so much the defense. But when it comes to a proper border in the middle ages, you need to be pretty fucking tall to control a large area and be able to communicate through a large distance, and so, just take a look at that height!





And the whole damned village is already on a steep angle! This is just the last jump up! I feel sorry for the ankles of whoever had to climb that routinely. Oh and btw before anyone asks, yes I did try to find the Hassassin's Tomb the Moors clearly had to leave right there while I was at it. Sadly I don't have eagle vission so I couldn't find it. But if you just go take a drill to that bit right there I'm sure you'll find some kind of Eden Artifact.





And it's not even like it would go against the traditions of the area! Local Legend says the Moors couldn't take everything with them when they went away and collapsed the catacombs of their castle before going hoping to reopen them when they could retake Olvera. And it is typical for kids to go treasure hunting on the castle in search for the legendary lost riches. Of course this is just local legend and any (chocolate) "riches" were left by their parents, much like Santa Claus, but kids are happy and it's cute. I'm still saying that shit's too perfect not to be some kinda exit door though. Just gotta find the entrance! Jokes aside, the Nazarís weren't sent away packing after an assault, they surrendered during a siege and were allowed to peacefully collect their things and leave for Granada, and the archeologists haven't found shit, so the legend's probably bollocks, but come on that opening is so glaringly obvious!





The rest of the village's as such sadly not that interesting outside of location and aesthetics, outside of the church which we'll see later, but here's some panoramic shows anyway because damn is it beautiful.



Spoiler: Olvera in all its glory


















If you're wondering why that old map shows so much less houses than the photos, it's of course because the town's grown since its feudal state, here's the map of the growth:









Spoiler: Inner Keep and Various Artifacts



But let's actually get inside the castle! Honestly, not much is left, most has been moved to various museums all over the place, but we still got some old glories awaiting for us like this black virgin:





There's plenty of black christs and virgins around Spain, most are just products of the african missions brought back home after being expelled by local lords and foreign powers during the colonial era, some are instead just wooden christs and virgins which turned black due to aging of the materials. Due to painting and garb it seems obvious this one is of the first kind, although not much is known. And yes, the baby is just a plastic "replica" (a toy, yes, they used a toy, it's hilarious) after the original baby disappeared (probably stolen), and it's very obvious just how fake it is. Apparently they never bothered fixing it because they have no pic or living person who remembers how it's meant to look so it'd be equally fake anyway, and Cadiz's both impoverished enough to care about how much it'd cost and an area with enough of a tradition of humour to not give a shit how it looks. Viva la guasa!





On the other hand this one sure as shit ain't fake. It's the most typical archeological dig, a good ol' hunk a' junka! The shape's gone all weird due to rust and being buried but it doesn't seem originally improperly shaped (that weird top seems like it was a symetric pattern before rust obliterated it) and between that and the amount of metal used to make a proper, fitted full plate that means this was probably done for a lord or noble, sadly by the time archeologists got to it it had been in the ground for a while and water had done a number on it, so it's practically worthless even as an archeological piece, as there are much better examples being kept in proper museums with more guards. I still like it though.





I was originally gonna call it "old reliable" but let's assume it, this shit'd break if I sneezed at it too close. I'm sure there's some kind of philosophical diatribe about aging to be inserted here, but honestly I'm just happy there's still some remainder to be archived even if it's so broken. Any intel on our ancestors is appreciated, and that does include the Moors, even if they weren't kind to this region. The rest of the display sadly is in similar state, this is no proper museum, and I have less comments about it, so let me just dump the pics here.



Spoiler: other random crap



















































I got closer pics of every decoration independently if you want them, but I'm leaving them for a second post because I don't wanna murder the server by overloading a post this much. Either way as you can see outside of the christian banner, which uses a variation on the priorly mentioned motto to change it for "art comes from me", a reference to the treasure hunting I also mentioned, most is just random arabic shit they found on the original castle and kept around because it had less value than the stuff sent to museums. If anyone can interpret those things better you're free to try I haven't found shit so outside of the text filled rugs I'm fairly sure that's just literally an asortment of decorative crap with no more uses or deeper meaning. Outside of that the castle's biggest feature are the fucking stairs. Seriously the original guards must've had athletics maxed out, god damn!



Spoiler: Vertigo Simulator 1327















If you're wondering where that last stair into the abyss leads to, that's the warehouse. Back before refrigerators were a thing people needed a cool place to place their food, so they just dug a hole straight into the mountain and hollowed it out. Sadly the inside's just a big square room with an arched roof so there was nothing important there. But it made for a nice break after so many fucking stairs! That done with, well, here's a nice little decorated water canal they got. Looks cool but it was done at a later point so it has no real significance or historical value other than that. It's very nice though.








As a small bonus, here's a pretty cool invention of the time, a Saetera. Although this one's pretty mishapen and eroded. Saeteras (literally meaning "holes for the crossbow bolts") were one of the most blatant differences between christian and muslim castles, being built by christians all over their walls but not muslims. And I'm sure almost all of you (with the exception of any history nerd) will be wondering why the hell this would be so important.





Well as you can see these holes are shorter and fatter than regular arrow slits, because they were specifically meant to be used by crossbowmen. The top cross allowed the archer to shoot far away, letting the weapon pivot left and right and using the top slit for vision. The lower round hole allowed the crossbow better movility for aiming at closer opponents. And thing is, the Moors specifically used bows, and no crossbows, because the qur'an has verses based around the use of bows, saying "when firing a bow it's allah that aims for you", so they considered them holy weapons, and considered crossbows some kind of heresy. The Spanish Christians on the other hand started favouring the crossbow about as soon as it was invented, this is mostly because it is indeed a very good weapon, and while at the time areas like britain were still favoring the longbow, after centuries of war northern spain literally considered everyone, from the lowest peasant to the highest noble, a member of the militia, which would later be ratified through the "right of universal hidalguia", which literally proclaimed everyone born on the northern kingdoms part of lower nobility. Everyone, and I mean everyone was trained on not just operating but also maintaining their weaponry from birth, and that includes women practicing with spears, hatchets and maces as they were expected to defend their homestead or even towns if no males were available, which the "knights of the hatchet" did much later for Tortosa, being the first all-female knightly order as it was created to honour such feat. A buncha peasant ladies literally expelled a whole damned yihad on their own! As such Spain had much less issue adapting to such weaponry, and as a result the crossbow was just naturally adopted due to the simple fact that if you knew how to use and maintain your tools it was better than a bow.





Because of this by the time of the second half of the reconquista bows were seen as hunting tools for nobles, crossbows had earned the mocking name of "Christian Bow", and were one of the two ranged weapons used by the militias, the other being javelins which we already talked about on the tales about Cerignola. The use of ranged weapons as such became one of the most glaring differences between the two forces, and this shaped the holes in their walls, and because changing the holes on the walls of castles was near impossible without just tearing them down at that point in time, this became one of the most telling differences between castles which were built (or torn down and rebuilt) by the christians and those built by the moors and left alone by the christians. Since as we'll see Christian and Moorish culture had merged so much by the end of the Reconquista that outside of language and religion nearly everything was exactly the same. With the moors having notoriously christian facets which their african allies would come to resent when they interacted with them, and the christians having notoriously arabic facets which the Anglicans and French would use to demonize Spain when they came into conflict. But use of crossbows, farming of pork for food, and wether swords should be curved or straight were some of the most crucial points at which christian and islamic forces had irreconcilable views. Fucking kek. Imagine centuries of warfare between two of the most viciously opposed factions in human history resulting in them only being distinguishable by wether they used scimitars or arming swords due to the centuries of coexistence. I guess that's the best indicator no matter how radically minded we really are all humans underneath in the end. So remember, whenever you hate someone, you just need to tear their skin off! ... Wait no.





So, with the castle finished, let me just dump all the letters for my fellow Hispanohablantes to enjoy and possibly translate at their leasure, because honestly I am fairly sure I'm running out of space on this post and also have so much more info to dump on future posts.





I mean really, I haven't spoken of how the arabs were treated under christian rules, the changes to cuture seen from the interaction between the factions, and we haven't even explored the damned church!





So I guess this means this needs to be another multipart series after all. Hope you enjoyed this snippet of information, and until next time, remember...





No matter how much you hate your neighbor, don't tear their skin off.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Aug 2, 2020)

*Cádiz and the Moors:*





I think it's time I take a small detour to talk about a small but poinient fact which will be made more and more apparent as we travel through the province of Cádiz. The Islamic forces weren't kind to Cádiz. Far from it. And it left scars.



Spoiler: Getting Conquered







The Moors first landed in the peninsula in 710. Their first landing point was Gibraltar. Which is technically not Cádiz province but sure seems like it. This btw was the founding of the Colony of Gibraltar. Before this point no one had settled there. Which makes the claims of current Gibraltar government hilarious. (For those that don't know Gibraltar's Gov has a serious inferiority complex and it's obvious.) And even then they quickly went back home to northern africa as it was just a scout force, and was not met with friendly locals.

The Moors did however use this scouting to asses the Visigoth's strengths, and would come back in 711 and conquer Seville. Establishing their first colony in Spain, which was later joined by Murcia as the second colony. From there they moved up the Guadalquivir river until they managed to connect the two coasts, establishing what would later become Granada as their supply chain's entry point and establishing Cordoba as their new capital.

This will sound pretty meaningless but I've actually given you the biggest reason why you should start realizing how the Islamic occupation of Cádiz would go... Let me give you a more graphic hint:





That's a map of the Guadalquivir river. Which they used on their westward conquest. And let me add a map of Spanish Provinces so you can get a clearer picture.





See what's going on there? Cádiz didn't get conquered. It got surrounded and sandwiched.

By 717 the Moors had arrived in france and all of Levante had fallen. By 800 the Asturians had started the Reconquista and the northern kingdoms had been established. Wanna know how much it took for Cádiz to fall in the meantime?

Well. That is harder to say. Because the moors didn't keep good records. For reasons we'll talk about later. But if you check online wikipedia and every other page that copied it says 711. Are they right? HAHAHAHAHA FUCK NO. They didn't even manage to conquer Algeciras, the bay Gibraltar is a part of, until 712. Until 713 they didn't launch raids to conquer the other coastal towns in Cadiz province. And we don't even have a date for when the mountainrange fell at all.

As for the Capital. This is a harder deal. Because Cádiz capital at this point wasn't even a single city. The city was later joined by artificial land bridges, but at this point it was 3 separate islands. We know they established a small outpost in Cerro del Moro, which is an area on the larger island (although now it's a peninsula but you get my point) outside of the city walls, in 711, but there is no document establishing when they managed to enter the actual walls of the city on said island, and nor do we have any intel on the other two regions. But we do know one thing. We know when they broke the last of the small islands.

You see. They gave that island a name and a legend. The name was "_Sanam Qādis", _The Idol of Cadiz, because they claimed it contained a large pillar-like structure which caused the Gibraltar Strait to be as hard to maneuver as it was. More on that later. And they did record when the island was invaded, razed and the pillar toppled. This was done by Abd-al-Mumin, in 1145. Marking the last christian settlement on Cádiz Province to fall to them. Fuckers got to france in 8 years but it took them 434 to break Cádiz. And I find a bit of irony here. Cádiz returned to christian control in 1264. And while 119 years is a lot of time and more back in that day, after 4 centuries of survival it almost makes it feel like it lost the battle at the last second. It sure put a good fight anyway. No one can deny that.

And you might think such great feat would be a one of a kind legend. But Cádiz wasn't alone, not even close, we have remnants of similar city-states left from the Visigoths surviving until the invasion of the Almohades. Sadly of most we know even less than Sanam Qadis, because the Almohades burned the prior Moor's castles and libraries too, they were invading them too after all, so they broke most of our records. Kind of horrifying to know we know more about our prehistory than about our period under islamic occupation, but that does tell you the situation we were in. The biggest of this city states we absolutely know about though... Because it was Medina Sidonia. You might wonder why Medina Sidonia is so important. Well... At the time of the Visigoths Medina Sidonia had surpassed Cadiz in wealth and become the seat of power... For the bishop of Betica (the south of spain), and the Bishop kept opperating from the castle of Medina Sidonia until it was infiltrated through treason by the Almohades and everyone inside was slaughtered. Yes, that's right, while the moors were occupying cadiz, the fucking CHRISTIAN BISHOP was still opperating in blatant rebellion within a city-state against their will. And Napoleon centuries later thought beating madrid would be enough to bend spain to his will. HAH! We don't surrender, fuckers! Not till the very last man drops dead.

This bragging isn't entirely sincere on my part however. Part of the reason why a part of Cádiz survived so long was mere political maneuvering. It just wasn't worth invading. You might wonder why then they bothered besieging it so late. Reason is because Abd-al-Mumin wasn't a Moor. He was an Almohade who was conquering the Moors and this move proved valuable to him for Propaganda. More on that later. But despite the relative coexistence based on Cádiz being worth less than what it'd take to break it. (Naval blockades back in the day were much harder than nowadays and for those days the walls were top notch.) We know a bit less about the reason other city states survived, the bishopry of Medina Sidonia simply did so by having one of the best damned castles of its time, that and probably support by guerrillas, castles become much harder to assault when your supply chain gets immediately assfucked as soon as you land even close. But you get the point, to some degree The early Moorish denominations simply didn't much care about cleaning up every single damned enclave within their borders, but the Almohades sure as shit did, they needed to clean every single bit of bordergore, and raze to the ground every seat of power than resisted them. So Abd caused massive amounts of destruction for muslims and christians alike, leaving a path of death and suffering at his wake. Hilariously enough he was later remembered as one of the better rulers once put in context... But point here is, for 434 years the province was filled with city-states that were fed by and gave protection and rhetorical support to an untold amount of guerrillas which opperated with the sole purpose of ending occupation. 434 fucking years of constant war. You can imagine the kind of scars that shit left.

Between that and the mountains, you can imagine Cádiz Province gave the moors quite a hard fucking time. And thing is. They gave it a hard time in return. The moors didn't ever trust this province with any degree of power outside of the needed due to the importance of the port of Cádiz (bigger island), which was reduced from its former glory into a purely military port to support their navy, the locals were always treated harshly and with an iron fist. And honestly I can't blame them, it's not like the locals were making it any easier. But as you can imagine this didn't help their propaganda none. While on other regions they were embraced more readily, for the people of Cádiz they were never anything other than invaders. Peace would never enter their mind as a solution, just a temporary state until they got stronger enough to go back to raiding the invaders. Until eventually they did manage to expell them. But hey, I'll give this to the muslims, it took us only 5 years of the same tactics to push back the baguettes, and they didn't even manage to break Cádiz at all, so if anything, at least the muslims get the prize of proving they were far more resilient than their european counterparts, cheers for that!





Spoiler: but how







Let's talk climate. The strait of Gibraltar may look short, and it is. But it's also the border between two tectonic plates, and while on the surface the rumbling of the two plates colliding is rarely felt, the vibrations make the waves on the area particularly horrendous. On top of that, the strait is the path between the mediterranean and the atlantic, which makes its short distance a detriment, as it maximizes the height of the tides going in and out. And indeed the change of temperature between the two bodies of water also makes currents significantly worse in the strait than in either of them. To top it off even the atmosphere hates the strait, with infamously bad winds due to the climate difference. Basically, the strait of Gibraltar is THE harshest and most unforgiving climate the romans encountered before reaching scotland.

Because of this all early mediterranean civilizations had some kind of myth about this region. The most famous being the Pillars of Hercules, which British scholars later claimed was about 2 mountains, one of which being their newly conquered colony of Gibraltar, ejem, but most scholars before and nowadays agreed was in reference to the 2 main pillars at the gates of the phoenician temple in Cádiz. The Moors similarly blamed the poor climate on the idol of Cádiz, and even the christians after them would come to claim a legendary statue of muhammad built on Cádiz was the cause of it, and claimed they fixed it by slaying it god of war style. Which they probably coppied from the toppling of the pillar by our pal Abd. No I'm nor kidding and it's hilarious. Seems only thing everyone agreed on is that one port town in the middle of buttfuck nowhere was to blame for it somehow!

And let's now talk about said city. Founded by the Phoenicians Cádiz is to this day the oldest city still standing in Europe. It was the first european port in recorded history. And remained one of the most important ports in the mediterranean until the fall of the western roman empire. During that time Cádiz province had villages which deeply specialized on specific trades and industries, such as wine for Chipiona. Using the ease of connection to the central hub of Cádiz from the coast to grow considerably.

So basically, while the coast of Levante and the river Guadalquivir were relatively less protected, at this point in time the coasts of Cádiz were filled with people in walled cities who were more than ready to defend their land.

This should tell you why Granada was so important. While it is true than military waves, which cared deeply about time before landing, had to go through the strait, well not only was the strait tretcherous but arable land near the coast was mostly occupied by people who would absolutely put up a fight. Seville did put up a fight at first but at that time it was a river town which depended on its enemies not reaching it to survive, so it was a softer target, and sending supplies from Magreb to Murcia or Granada may be longer, but it was much, much easier and more reliable. And so, the Granada-Seville axis became the most important node of Moorish conquest. They didn't just come straight up like an arrow, they made a little interconnected loop to keep their supplies safe. Btw if you're wondering why Granada was favored over Murcia. That was due to infighting amongst the Moors it had nothing to do with climate.





Spoiler: speak of the devil...







And infighting is the next point. I've been referring to all Islamic forces as Moors so far. But while that is the generic term most used, there were a ton of movements that came up from africa. And most weren't friendly towards the prior movements. Hell even the Berber which were first called for aid as allies quickly betrayed their former masters and took control. And guess where said movements started their military campaigns? With the Granada-Seville axis now reinforced by the Arabs and Cádiz's fights turning it into an underbelly, they all targeted our beloved province first. Divide to win after all, what better that striking an already divided area.

And while nearly all islamic movements slowly turned more accepting, when they came from africa most of them came in a purging mood. Always having fights were they demonized the current moors for not being radical enough in their aplication of islamic law. So while by the time they got upwards they had softened a bit, Cádiz always got them at their most violent and puritanical.

Add to that the internal conflicts in Al-Andalus, and how those impeded specialized towns like the ones Cádiz province had seen in the past and you can see how the period of Muslim occupation for Cádiz was one of bloodshed, repression and conflict. The moors did not make a good impression.

So what about the Christians? As we'll see in Chipiona's post, the Reconquista is literally called Cádiz's renaissance by the villages. While early Sevillian government was as bad as Seville always is, as soon as Cádiz got independence (at the province level from seville, not at the country level from Spain) the new Capital focused on rebuilding the roman trade routes, the villages managed to rebuild their prior specializations and focus on what they did best, and the region quickly became one of the richest and most influential in Spain, which it would be until the Borbon monarchs choked it in their attempt to return to totalitarianism centuries later. Cádiz's government during the reconquista and until after the totalitarian vs liberal conflicts was one marked by this focus on commerce, early adoption of foreign scholars, and proto-liberal values. It was a golden age, much like it had a golden age before the moors came. As such, comparisons make their occupation look even worse. Quite simply, they did not win us over, not in the slightest.





Spoiler: Arab vs Arabic







That said. Don't think we have anything against Arabs. Precisely because of said Liberal tendencies Cádiz has always had the most racial mix and higher number of migrants. And nowadays it's hard to live here and not be friends with at least a few recent migrants from north africa.

Cádiz has always been pro-integration and if there's one thing all spaniards know, is good people can have very bad leadership. Ironically enough while Cádiz is the last place in Andalucía I'd go to learn about arabic culture, it is the first in order to learn about actual arabs.

This is a trend I talked about on other threads. Although there I referred to rural areas vs cities. It's funny really. In america Texas has the most integration between blacks and whites, despite being seen as the most racist. Meanwhike the west coast is always going on about acceptance and diversity. But they have the highest disparity, and when they meet actual racial minorities, they often find what they have to say offensive.

Here in spain same things happen. Catalonia always talks about being accepting and progressive, but whenever they meet actual migrants they get offended, because spoiler alert, african migrants are bipedal fucking redpill dispensers, mofos don't have a filter. Meanwhile ol' rural andalusia with its fame for being catholic and regressive is the area with the least racial disparity and most actual integration.

And yes we definitely criticize african governments more than the catalonians. But the migrants are the first to do so! Why do you think they migrated?! It's cause they didn't like it back home! Cadiz has the same aspect. If you find discrimination in andalusia it's always the ultracatholic lobbies of Seville and Cordoba doint it, ironically despite being the areas with the most pride in their moorish legacy, they seem to have the most animosity towards the arabs, although even there it is rare. In cadiz outside of cerro del moro you won't find a single person having ill will towards north africans. Fuck it's near impossible to be raised here and not have 2nd generation migrants as classmates. And only reason Cerro del Moro sees more racism is due to the gang warfare between the moroccan druglords and romanian gypsies, and honestly romanian gypsis are racists towards all "payos" (non-gypsies) anyway. So yeah... once more. Those more willing to criticize the culture are the most accepting towards the individual.  Seems like a trend nowadays.



Hope you enjoyed this little aside. And excuse my weird philosophical diarrhea near the end, just a topic I find fascinating because it seems to betray human thought process.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Aug 4, 2020)

Hey! Well this thread died a tad. Don't worry I got more to come. But first a sneak peak, and face reveal...





Oh the humanity! Seems the pagans from old Gadir were nazi sympathizers! Hehehehehehehehe.

In case the post about Olvera didn't make it obvious. With the push for national tourism some friends from the workplace have come to Cadiz this summer and I'm acting as amateur guide for them, and using the pics to show you the beauty of this province.

So it seems they're OK with carrying a birb picture around for pics. I was originally gonna show it first on the Chipiona part, but when I saw that nice Swastika on the roman mosaic (or maybe it was a tessela? I'll check when I actually explain it) I just had to use it. God that's hilarious.


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## John Titor (Aug 4, 2020)

Siestas: good idea the rest of the world should adopt or something that makes sense only in Spain?


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Aug 4, 2020)

John Titor said:


> Siestas: good idea the rest of the world should adopt or something that makes sense only in Spain?



It makes sense to rest for a bit after lunch. Because digestion is a thing. And guess what? Everyone does it to one degree or another. Siesta is literally just the spanish term for "nap" everything else is just myth. They're neither something that just makes sense in spain nor something special spain invented, it's just napping after eating. Literally everyone has at least some degree of a meal break for digestion.

Only reason Spain got linked to Siestas like it did was Franco. And the reason was his mismanagement. During the civil war Franco decided to apply german time, which Spain still applies, simultaneously moving the time two hours and applying daylight savings for the first time. Because of this people's change in timetable caused a lot of sleeping problem, which spaniards still have to this day due to the poor daylight hours because we haven't yet turned back the timetable btw. So to fix it instead of being a reasonable ruler and turning back to spanish time he made Siesta mandatory to fix the sleeping issues. This did not help btw and the psychological issues it caused are legendary. But yeah. It wasn't some ancient tradition, it was just a bad patch for a worse idea that we need to fix already.


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## Oglooger (Aug 4, 2020)




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## EmuWarsVeteran (Aug 4, 2020)

Oglooger said:


> View attachment 1495677



Hah! As if! It's never too many for ol' spain! Plus you think your bickering gets bad? During the 1st republic spain had the cantonal wars. I'll get into that in a future post I guess, but to summarize. Spain tried to go federal, mostly because even we knew we didn't stand each other anymore. But that went bad because the government was met with a subset of "federalists" who wanted to use the federation movement to just split up entirely and stop being a country. And they got pretty fuckig violent about it. The north specially but down south Seville and Murcia (calling itself cartagena) did too.

This thankfully was smashed by the republicans so we didn't split. Wanna know how many countries spain would've split into had the cantonalists won? One for every province. That's 50 countries, 50 fucking separate countries just counting "core territories" (not counting the colonies and african territories which would've certainly split on their own terms)

So yeah. You think we left too many kids outside? We got too many kids inside is the real issue! And provinces have been the core administrative element of spain until democracy created the autonomous communities, that's why we got so many single province communities. And some of us want to split from our autonomies (most notably leon, though they want to carry 2 more provinces with them) so yeah... if anything the amount of bickering going around in the americas is solid proof y'all are just like your momma. We're proud of ya.


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## Oglooger (Aug 4, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> Hah! As if! It's never too many for ol' spain! Plus you think your bickering gets bad? During the 1st republic spain had the cantonal wars. I'll get into that in a future post I guess, but to summarize. Spain tried to go federal, mostly because even we knew we didn't stand each other anymore. But that went bad because the government was met with a subset of "federalists" who wanted to use the federation movement to just split up entirely and stop being a country. And they got pretty fuckig violent about it. The north specially but down south Seville and Murcia (calling itself cartagena) did too.
> 
> This thankfully was smashed by the republicans so we didn't split. Wanna know how many countries spain would've split into had the cantonalists won? One for every province. That's 50 countries, 50 fucking separate countries just counting "core territories" (not counting the colonies and african territories which would've certainly split on their own terms)
> 
> So yeah. You think we left too many kids outside? We got too many kids inside is the real issue! And provinces have been the core administrative element of spain until democracy created the autonomous communities, that's why we got so many single province communities. And some of us want to split from our autonomies (most notably leon, though they want to carry 2 more provinces with them) so yeah... if anything the amount of bickering going around in the americas is solid proof y'all are just like your momma. We're proud of ya.


If only Emperor Agustin didn't die and we stayed an Empire, you would have less children to deal with. then again most of central America doesn't show up in that meme and I guess it's because they're still embarrassed over starting a war over fucking futbol


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Aug 4, 2020)

Oglooger said:


> If only Emperor Agustin didn't die and we stayed an Empire, you would have less children to deal with. then again most of central America doesn't show up in that meme and I guess it's because they're still embarrassed over starting a war over fucking futbol



Eh. No need to be ashamed of that. The Italians started a war over a fucking bucket. And the HRE's troops once slaughtered themselves and fled from no one because their cavalry got drunk. I assure you, humans have a near infinite capacity to declare war for the dumbest fucking reasons.



Spoiler: i'm not kidding and that makes it better


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## Big Bad Wart (Aug 5, 2020)

Oglooger said:


> they're still embarrassed over starting a war over fucking futbol


That was El Salvador and Honduras and mostly had to do with immigration IIRC ,but either way Its weird always seeing Salvadorans partnering up with Hondurans considering the countries have had tensions at their borders for a while.


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## Dom Cruise (Aug 6, 2020)

I always found it interesting how even the Catholic Church understood that you have to let people blow off some steam on occasion.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Aug 6, 2020)

Dom Cruise said:


> I always found it interesting how even the Catholic Church understood that you have to let people blow off some steam on occasion.



It's kinda easy to understand once you take into account what the catholics were. Original christians were extremely prone to infighting and that's why the more violent groups caused as much damage as they did to the pagans, as this infighting caused the extreme puritans to get into the forefront and pagan attempts at repression made it far worse.

Then when it was obvious the christians would win, the roman emperors struck a deal with the catholics, which were at the time one of the least repressive groups, even using the tale of lucifer to condemn puritanism (lucifer's original sin wasn't hubris per say, but refusing to obey humanity, humanity in said tale being a stand in for secular authorities. Do note that the luciferians were a denomination of christian known for being extremists before the catholics used this tale to condemn them as devil worshippers and purge them.)

Essentially. The whole damned point of the catholic church's very birth was to temper the christian and convert the pagans more peacefully in an attempt to salvage the roman empire. Sadly it didn't work but they did make it less extreme than it would've been. Which is saying something.

Then during the dark ages reading latin is a skill only priests have in the west. Giving the catholics power to just lie their asses off shamelessly. They would use this power to great lengths. Shit is. Priests originally didn't really have the job of spreading the word of god, shit during the pagans there wasn't even a true unified word of god! The whole damned point of religion was to keep people complacent. And I mean this both in the negative way and the positive. Most rural priests spent most of their time being glorified psychologists that listened to the endless insane ravings of the villagers and got them to stop fucking each other over then told them to pray for that sweet placebo effect. Early catholic church basically was a scam, and knew it, and was OK with it, 'cause all they really cared was societal powerstruggles, not any skydaddy's commandments. This is precisely why the orthodox church to the east was far more puritanical and repressive, 'cause the byzantines still could read, so the orthodox couldn't just lie their ass off.

You may wonder then what happened to make puritanism resurge so brutaly. Well some priests translated the damned holy book and used the printing press to get everyone to read it! Yeah the catholics had a good gig till the protestants fucked it up. Now don't get me wrong the catholics were corrupt as fuck by that point. But for instance even at the height of cryptomuslim cults in spain the inquisition had a pretty good record of still finding people innocent or straight up getting them to repent without killing them. They didn't get truly fucked up until they clashed with the protestants in the netherlands, that's when they got people burnin' and can you blame them? The protestants literally tried to purge all catholics before spain got control of the area! Not only that witch hunters routinely purged other denominations of protestants over the stupidest interpretations of passages!

The printing press was great but when people found out just how much time the catholics had spent lying their asses off shamelessly they went off the fucking rockers. And the protestant reformation of the catholic church brought forth some of the most repressive and puritanical traditions followed nowadays by the catholics church itself. That's when things went south.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Aug 12, 2020)

Hello again! Sorry for abandoning this thread for so long. I've been having a busy time. But let me make up for it with some pics from my favourite part of Cadiz. That being the Cadiz, Cadiz (Cadiz) which is part of Cadiz in Cadiz. And if you haven't seen my post about Cadiz's dialect, the old part of the old town within the capital city of the province of Cadiz, which is also part of the municipality of Cadiz.

I hope that wasn't too much of a headache, and you can enjoy this pics. They might even make you understand why so many great artists and thinkers fell in love with this old hag of a town. The years may not have been kind to our Tacita de Plata. But she still shines.



Spoiler: view from the belltower



The New Cathedral's Belltower is tall as fuck, which makes climbing its heavily angled and irregular spiral ramp a pain in the arse, and a bigger pain in the heels. But you can bet your bottom dollar the views make it all worth it.

















As a small aside. You might notice that straight roads are the exception in the old part of Cadiz, and the layout is quite snakey and filled with crosses and curves. You may think this is just a sign of the age. Well, it's not. Cadiz was designed in a deliberately obtuse fashion. Why? The wind. As I mentioned on prior posts the strait is notoriously windy. To combat this the architects of Cadiz over the ages limited the number of straight roads, and only used them on angles they knew the wind would be lesser anyway. Even then Cadiz is a windy town, but had they not done it this way we'd now be like the upper part of Medina Sidonia, which makes most seasons feel like huricane season. More on that when we talk about Medina Sidonia. It's another old glory of this great province.





Spoiler: parks and rec



Cadiz ain't got many parks. We honestly need more. But... Well ya know. We don't have the space. Thankfully with the new artificial island moving part of the port away we'll have a new comercial part on the bay side, which will include a new park. Here's hoping it's nice and green!























That tree by the way is a Drago. And might be the best icon for old Cadiz you'll get. It's fat, short (for a tree) and stout. In another place it wouldn't even be remarkable at all. But it's bloody ancient, it's seen and overcome everything for centuries on end, and still dominates the area strong and proud as can be. We love our little tree over here. Even gave its name to the first public highschool.





Spoiler: random streets, buildings and statues



I'd spend all day taking pics of every crevice of our old lady and never get tired. But you probably would. So let me just dump a few.
















Btw that's the statue to Simon Bolivar, and the plaza is named after him. More on that later.










And that one's to Francisco de Miranda. One of the precursors of american independence... I'mma make a point about this on the next spoiler.


















Spoiler: about american independence



You might have wondered why spain would honor some of the greatest figures in iberoamerican independence with statues like this:




Celebrating loosing a war certainly seems odd... there are a few things you need to understand however. Yes, Cadiz is sad our children had to break appart. But we're not sad that they did. We're sad they HAD TO. You see. There was a time when spain didn't routinely set itself on fire. I know, that must feel so wrong. How can spain not constantly try to destroy itself?

Well you see. Under the Trastamara and Hasburgs, spain had plenty of internal conflict. For instance Cadiz and Seville never saw eye to eye, and they never will. But the system was decentralized, a pseudo-meritocracy had driven the reconquista, and for the most part the crown allowed local interests to shift and act as they wanted. This was a pretty good gig and add to that the generally progressive (for the time) values they fostered (being crucial exponents of the arts and sciences and making some heavy advances in banning slavery, torture and even certain forms of imprisonment... again, for the time) they were quite beloved despite everything. Excwpt by the catalonians... no seriously catalonian independence started as a movement against Aragon before spain was formed and it has never taken a break. It's fucking tiresome that's for sure.

But then the war of succession came and we got stuck with the Borbons. Fun fact. Every single branch of the Borbon family has ended in bloody revolution, INCLUDING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Yeah the Borbons weren't good. Not one bit. They were the very antithesis of what the house of Trastamara had imparted on spain. And as a result what followed was a long list of internal conflicts in which the crowned tried to go totalitarian and spain said no. It was these conflicts that pissed off the colonies just as much as they pissed off the locals.

In spain this caused the Constitutionalist movement, and later Liberal movement. In america it caused both of those and the separatist movement. And for a while it seemed like they would win. Like spain would become a liberal constitutional monarchy and the colonies would be happy to consider themselves spanish once more. And indeed in Cadiz the courts managed to force Fernando VII to follow the promises he made in exile during the napoleonic invasion and instate both a senate and a constitution. It seemed like a bright future and America was happy to take part of it. Hell, some of Spain's founding fathers are iberoamericans...





And then Fernando VII managed to get suppot by the Holy League and declared war on himself, massacred the Liberals, cut off Cadiz's supply lines dooming it to poverty in retaliation and the Colonies broke away as the constitutionalist conflicts erupted in the peninsula.

So no. We'll never think of Iberoamerica as the enemy. We're just sad we couldn't succeed back home like they did at the other side of the ocean. ¡Libertad o Muerte!


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Aug 13, 2020)

*EDIT: I CLICKED POST BY ACCIDENT, THIS POST IS UNFINISHED, CONSIDERABLY SO, CHECKING IT RIGHT NOW IS JUST SPOILING YOURSELF FOR WHEN IT WILL HAVE ACTUAL PICS, I AM SORRY, I WILL TAKE AWAY THIS MESSAGE WHEN I EDIT IT, FUCK.*

*Phoenician Gadir, Introduction:*

So. I guess it's time we talk a bit about the earliest known point in hispanic history. The Bronze Age. Before the Bronze age we have some archeological digs, I'll put pics of the artifacts on another post (because I want to visit a certain site to take pictures before that), but spoiler alert, it's just a buncha random normal ass prehistoric shite. Before the phoenicians landed in the Iberian Peninsula the Tartessos were the people occupying this area:





And yes btw I know that hole down there might look cursed as fuck, but do take into account the reason the peninsula now looks like it does is a massive amount of sedimentation from multiple rivers on that area, which is why it's mostly marisma, it did look like that in the bronze age, cursed as balls. Same thing about Portugal's "mouth" being suddently wide and long as shit, the river got thinner with time but in that era it had some GIRTH before it got covered with mud. But the point is, while the tartessos have left us artifacts indicating knowledge of some basic architecture, religious cult and a decent amount of decorative objects indicating they were fairly ok technologically for their time, well, they didn't know how to write for shit and sucked at drawing, so all we know about them is what others say, and that didn't happen until after the phoenicians arrived, for obvious reasons, so we don't know much. But then the phoenicians arrived!



Spoiler: The Economy



You might wonder then, what the fuck did the people of Tyre loose in the butt end of the mediterranean to make the trek all the way there and leave a fucking city to boot! Well, answer's a two part issue. The first issue was tin. You see, the Bronze age wasn't called that way for nothing, Bronze turned out to be a really good metal, but it required two components, copper and tin. Cyprus literally means "the island of copper" so that should tell you, there was quite a surplus of that shit. Tin?





See the issue there? There was almost no fucking tin in the mediterranean, and culture just found out it had an extreme value. This by the way is why the iron age changed shit so hard, it's not that iron was better than bronze, it wasn't until they discovered how to make good steel alloys, but the issue of tin scarcity was a massive bump on the economies of the bronze age. And so the Phoenicians, avid explorers and merchants as they were, went looking for it. And found it, in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, Spain (and Britain.) This as you can imagine was great news for them, but they did need a colony to control that trade route. Hence, Gadir! Our beautiful town was born. There was however a second reason, and that's quite simply the Phoenicians started to have some issues back home. Tyre was known as the most beautiful city at the time, its white buildings covering the island, filled with tapestries of vibrant colors. This did mean there was many people that wanted a chunk of it. Before this point however the Phoenicians had survived quite well through a mixture of sheer naval power and the simple fact they were quite good at making alliances with the local peoples. But Tyre's local peoples started to eat its smaller neighboring cities, the empires started getting big, the big empires started to think about commercially excluding other empires in a form of economic warfare, they started looking at Phoenicia as if it was a giant fucking steak, and the Phoenicians started to realize, either they managed to find some allies outside of they were gonna get fucked for real. And so, they took the leap:





First to Numidia and then to Iberia, they went from leaving behind some cities to making some real empires, well not in the formal sense but... More on that later. In Numidia, Carthage became the center of commerce for the middle mediterranean, in Iberia and "morocco", Gadir quickly made a large impact and started spawning cities on the area and having a serious control of the strait. And for a while, shit looked really good for the Phoenicians. They got a ton of reinforcements thanks to the integration of local peoples like the Tartessos, they managed to control a lot more Tin, Gadir just straight up controlled all commerce outside of the mediterranean, getting a cut of exploration attempts, bringing in a shitton of riches in return, and then Tyre declined and Carthage decided to become independent... And attack its former allies.





Spoiler: Phoenician Command Structure



*INSERT IMAGE HERE*

And it's time we talk about how the Phoenicians did things, Phoenicians like many civilizations of old were theocratic monarchies, with the temple and palace having prominence within their cities. Aside from that, however, phoenicians are best described as an oligarchal technocracy. And I know well how absolutely fucking crazy that sounds for the era. So let me explain. While phoenician cities had a hierarchy, this wasn't a formal hierarchy, quite simply, each phoenician city was for all intents and purposes independent, what designated which one would be more prominent was simply their control of the trade routes, which was mostly dependant on which got richer at the time, this is why despite Carthage not being the first colony of its area it took control of it so easily, it simply had a very good location and a better source of food. And while Gadir was the first of its area, only reason it also became the center and "capital" of the region was indeed it's good location and extremely good economy thanks to its astoundingly large surpluss of food due to the practices of Almadraba, Salazón and Garum.



Spoiler: Almadraba Salazón and Garum







The Almadraba is a fishing technique with nets, which takes advantage of migratory paths and sea currents to essentially "herd" the fish, making use of multiple small boats with nets, until a large amount of them are trapped within the center of the circle of boats. Then the larger net (which can be pulled by 2 or more of said boats and on top of which they've been "herded", is slowly raised.

Nowadays this is used because it has comparable yields to far more destructive fishing techniques like Trawling while also allowing fishermen to, before pulling the net off the water, go into it to take out specimens which are too young, which are then freed to paliate environmental damage. So it is essentially one of the best fishing techniques by far if you actually care about not fucking up the sea floor or overhunting the species. But it is used by so few countries (Spain, Italy and Morocco) because, well, this NEEDS the sea currents and migratory paths to cause the fish banks to be concentrated and stunned in a way that lets us herd them into an obvious trap. There's only 2 places in the mediterranean this happens (the strait of Gibraltar and Italy) and while the strait of Denmark would also allow it, it's climate's so busted that it makes it not worth spending so much time with boats in a circle around the net. As for areas outside of europe... Well. They're idiots. What sometimes countries just don't do what's best for them. It can be that simple.

Either way, point is. At the time they didn't much care for conservation, but its biggest bonus was that, as I said before, it has yields comparable to fucking Trawling, in prehistoric times. A similar technique would not be invented for millenia. Just think about that for a second. This technique was discovered by the Tartessos, because the strait is seriously utterly busted when it comes to migratory paths and sea currents. And it stayed with Gades and the surrounding villages until it joined Rome, and even then the Italians didn't manage to get nearly the yields of the strait. Because it's fucking busted. But the Tartessos didn't manage to get the best use out of this technique until the Phoenicians came. Why?

Salazon. The Tartessos only used Almadraba to fish, as in, in normal proportions. Their trade was based on metals (specially gold, silver and tin), fish was just food. But the Phoenicians knew how to preserve the fish and sell it. Salazon was done by cleaning the fish, taking out its guts, and then piling the gutted fish carcasses on a giant clay bucket in the ground alongside massive amounts of salt by layers (one layer of fish, one layer of salt) until the whole bucket topped out, then letting it dry. It's kind of like prehistoric beef jerky. Phoenicians did this because it both let them have non-perishable (as non perishable as it could be for the time) food for their travels and supplies to sell. The weird taste was quite useful for diplomacy. And so. In Gades these two techniques combined to cause a massive economic shift for the whole mediterranean. I'm not kidding here. The sheer quantity of fish Gades was able to export literally redefined meditereanean trade for years to come. And the Romans once they conquered the region would even help it get more busted by founding Baelo Claudia, a major city, just to practice even more fishing. And this is the first time we see the amount of famines drastically reduced all over the mare nostrum. Many theorize indeed this is precisely why another event like the Bronze Age collapse stopped being possible until the fall of the Roman Empire. But that's not all! This is also why the cities around Gades could afford to specialize so early in time. Chipiona focussed exclussively on being a wine producing colony, and yet despite that never saw famine until the moors cut the trade of the region when they invaded it due to their infighting. Again. This economic shift was absolutely drastic for its time. And there is no better showcase of this that *drumroll* garum.

Garum was a food technique exclusive to Gadir and under the romans the province of Gades. And the way it was discovered explains why. You see, Gadir had many of the cubetas ("clay buckets") previously mentioned for Salazon. Each being as tall as a human. Well, one day while filling them someone got so tired of dealing with the guts they started to pile them on one such bucket to be taken out later. But they forgot to actually take them out for some reason. By the point someone noticed, the guts were fermenting, and so, curiosity got the best of them.

Yeah that's right Almadraba literally allowed Gades to fish so much it could fill a whole cubeta with just the discarded guts. That is why Garum stayed with the region. No other would reach such astonishing quantity. And so, Garum was born. Garum is best defined as making cheese out of fish guts. It consisted on filling one of the buckets with guts, (the bucket was alternated, no one really knows why but speculation is it was used as a way to clean them because of the fermentation), the pile of guts was then fermented, and after a while salted to stop the fermentation. So far if you use milk instead of guts you would get cheese. But here is where it changes. As instead of pressing the concoction they just added a lot more salt and let it dry. The result was a sort of paste that is speculated to be kind of like Avecrem pills but with guts instead of chicken broth...

If you're thinking this is absolutely horrendous and disgusting. Probably was! Sadly we can't 100% know because the specifics were lost after the Moors razed the ports and couldn't be recovered by Alfonso X "the Wise" (the Castillian king that reconquered Cádiz), but every attempt at remaking it so far has certainly been quite foul for our standards. Of course the fact that we don't know what fungy they used for inoculation leaves open the possibility that we are doing it wrong, others say we just don't know what it was used for, as some claim it was meant to be used as a salty gummy treat while others claim it was indeed used like Avecrem pills, to make soup. Others simply say reason it is foul to us is because it is indeed foul, and people's standards back then were fucking weird. Either way the phoenicians used it for diplomacy as it was considered a very tasty treat and even during roman times it would be labelled a delicacy and reach impressive prices. So either we're doing it wrong or our ancestors were fucking weird, probably both.



On top of this, Phoenician city-states did not discriminate between each other and the other kingdoms, indeed they didn't even have racial identity at all, to the point where all corpses found in Gadir are mixed race between Tartessos and Phoenician, they just didn't care, if a local city wanted to become "Phoenician" it could just do it, if a Phoenician city-state wanted to break away, it could just go and do it too, there was no solid bond between them, only a common culture and interests. Hence why they got such a renoun as being merchants, for them economy was the basis of civilization in a way, since economy was the only tie keeping them together.

Then the separation between Palace and Temple. The Palace was occupied by the King, who was considered outside of regular hierarchy. The King's only duty was to appoint officials. The Official's only duty was to ensure the correct functioning of the city, mostly its urban planing and army. The Temple controlled everything else, being a place of religion, social gathering and economy. The priests were considered equal to the officials and independent from the king, and opperated exactly like the guilds which would be popularized later. The temples were markets and places of craftsmanship all in one, how you showed you were "favored by the gods" was just by being good at your job, and the hierarchy amongst priests was beholden to a near academic system of power, essentially a priest became respected by being able to teach others how to be better craftsmen/fishermen/whatever. Then under the priests and officials was the uninitiated part of the middle class, that being craftsmen and merchants that hadn't managed to become priests, and then the lowest were the servants. You might notice for all intents and purposes the system has no solid barriers, nothing keeping people from becoming "nobles", and no sense of "citizenship", although officials were directly designated by the king so nepotism was strong, but hey, only obstacle to being king was being designated by the prior king or priests (if the king didn't leave a successor) so technically even the lowest serf could rise to power. Quite open minded for the fucking bronze age.





Spoiler: Until the Carthage Nation Attacked



But If you read that spoiler you might notice one very large issue with this system. If there's nothing binding the city states together, and nothing keeping anyone from becoming king of a city-state. And the mixture of local customs caused phoenician cities to adopt considerably different traditions, making some of them drift appart... What happens if an external force decides to eat them? Tyre found the hard way, as it was integrated by Persia and sent to war against its own children, loosing its identity by force. As it turns out, while we can sit here and discuss the relative morality of such a system for its time, well, its one issue is when all your neighbors are blobbing as massive ravenous empires willing and able to take your land by force, being the one fucking happy go lucky craftsman on the room that likes to sell them shit only gets you impaled, and worst of all they'll probably use the lances you sold them to do so.

Carthage saw with horror persian expansion, and decided it had to do something about it. And so, it created a stronger hierarchy, copied the ties between cities from the neighboring empires, and decided to annex or conquer every phoenician city state around it, going on the warpath. If they accepted peace, they'd be made to change their way of government to fit their new lords, if they didn't, they'd get burned and repopulated. Either way it was time for them to pay taxes and tides. Carthage would not tollerate an event like that of Tyre happening to it, even if it had to turn into the very thing it wanted to stop. And so, Carthage quite quickly conquered its own neighbors, all of north africa and the Iberian Peninsula. Gadir despite its size knew better than to stand in the way, and was integrated. Many of its children did not, and were butchered and invaded. Gadir would hold a grudge for it. Indeed what followed Carthage in Iberia was far from pretty, as the Tartessos had very varied opinions of their new masters, Gadir itself was contempt to simply take control again through economic warfare against Medina-Sidonia, which Carthage designated as the new capital after conquering it by force. And Iberian Guerrillas with support by local lords became a pain in Carthage's ass until it lost control during the Punic Wars. If you've seen the rest of the thread you might notice a common theme about Hispanic Guerrillas being a pain in everyone's ass. Believe me, there's a reason spain had a militia-based army until the civil war. Guerrillas have been Iberia's answer to invaders since the fucking stone age, it's in our blood. I mean hell, Iberia didn't even have much against Carthage, they were still mostly phoenician and relatively good rulers, but fuck anyone who thinks it can conquer Spain and not get ambushed by local assholes every other hour on the hour as is tradition.





And then the Punic Wars happened. During the second punic war Gadir was the last standing Punic Bastion after the fall of Hispania Ulterior, being surrounded by Escipión the African, and defended with the help of Magón Barca. Ironically enough despite Carthage having tried to sabotage it through Medina-Sidonia, Gadir would prove a ridiculous degree of loyalty and ferocity against the Romans, managing to push them back where literally everyone else failed and despite a great cost to itself. However, shortly after the Romans managed to outsmart Carthage in a very interesting and unexpected way. How so? With kindness. Gadir was given an offer. The offer was to join rome as a Federated City. Being a Federated City meant that it would have to pay taxes and swear allegiance to Rome, and give it military support when needed. But in exchange it would recover control of the area and surrounding villages under the newly formed province it was a part of, and would be allowed to keep its customs, traditions and form of government, and so would the cities within said province, hell it would even recover the part of its identity it lost or had to hide due to the prior invasion by Carthage. This was an offer it couldn't refuse, hell, not only was it better than its current deal, it was also the only way to protect its neighbors too. And let's assume it, it wasn't just better than what Carthage offered. It was better than what anyone else at the time would offer them, many would say it was better than any offer Gadir had any right to expect. And so, it willingly and happily surrendered, and would prove a very valuable and loyal part of the Republic and later Empire until its collapse. I mean there still were plenty of guerrillas harassing the roman troops every god damned day. But you know, it doesn't matter how much we like you, you invade Spain you know what's coming, it's only fair.



But Roman Gades is a tale for another day, so let's now focus our attention on all the artifacts, interesting facts ruins and funny little dingies that fill our museums and hearts from the Punic time. Let me just add, Rome gets a very bad name nowadays as it's been relentlessly demonized by modern politics. But honestly, the fact it was willing to make these kinds of offers after learning of local politics, and Gadir was far from the first federated city within the Imperium, is a very clear sign of how it managed to conquer so much territory. Rome was a product of its time, sure, but for its time, it was better than nearly all of its contemporaries. It often won with a deal what it couldn't win with a sword, and allowed foreign culture and tradition to survive under its protection where it could do so without causing internal conflicts due to identity. Compared with any other empire, it was very generous despite its corruption. And this really explains quite well why peoples like the Tartessos were more than happy to integrate into it. Sure, Carthage was more similar than Rome to Gadir in terms of culture. But it treated it with distrust and sabottage even after they surrendered without conflict, meanwhile Rome despite the great cost of their defeat by the hands of the city surrendered its already conquered land, freed the captured slaves and allowed Gadir and its newly established province to rebuild in peace and become one of the most prosperous and powerful areas in the mediterranean without reservations or any internal attacks, simply because it realized the benefits of such an approach. It was simply a better ruler. And in a way, one could say the Phoenician lifestyle and culture was never meant to be imperialistic anyway, Carthage was more of a pipe dream, and in many ways a twisted shadow of its former self, and by the end of the Punic Wars had lost most of the systems of government it supposedly wanted to protect anyway. Under rome however, Gadir, under its new name of Gades, managed to become the last region to preserve Phoenician culture and society, although it would be slowly and peacefuly Romanized as is natural after integration. It's somewhat funny, really. The Punic era started because of Carthage's fear of loosing its identity after the annexation of Tyre by Persia. And yet, the reason said identity, along that of the Tartessos, survived in the end was the peaceful annexation of Gadir by Rome, betraying Carthage. There's some kind of lesson there I'm sure, but I think I've already gone off the deep end enough for today, so let's get to the trinkets.



Spoiler: Cloned Cities



TALK ABOUT HOW THE PHOENICIANS PLANNED THEIR CITIES


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## Dom Cruise (Aug 13, 2020)

EmuWarsVeteran said:


> It's kinda easy to understand once you take into account what the catholics were. Original christians were extremely prone to infighting and that's why the more violent groups caused as much damage as they did to the pagans, as this infighting caused the extreme puritans to get into the forefront and pagan attempts at repression made it far worse.
> 
> Then when it was obvious the christians would win, the roman emperors struck a deal with the catholics, which were at the time one of the least repressive groups, even using the tale of lucifer to condemn puritanism (lucifer's original sin wasn't hubris per say, but refusing to obey humanity, humanity in said tale being a stand in for secular authorities. Do note that the luciferians were a denomination of christian known for being extremists before the catholics used this tale to condemn them as devil worshippers and purge them.)
> 
> ...



It's interesting how leaps in information technology cause such social upheavals, first it was the printing press, then it was television and now it's happening currently with the internet.


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## Ahriman (Aug 15, 2020)

4 pages and you haven't mentioned _Penitente_? come on, man.

Blasphemous is a fantastic game and it showcases everything good about old Spanish catholic-medieval culture. And everyone should play it, especially with the newly added Spanish dubs for maximum immersion.


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## EmuWarsVeteran (Aug 15, 2020)

Ahriman said:


> View attachment 1521450
> 
> 4 pages and you haven't mentioned _Penitente_? come on, man.
> 
> Blasphemous is a fantastic game and it showcases everything good about old Spanish catholic-medieval culture. And everyone should play it, especially with the newly added Spanish dubs for maximum immersion.



Believe it or not, when going to the white villages and cathedrals I've been taking pics of all that stufff and was already preparing to go balls deep into it when I was done with all the classical age stuff. It's really interesting, both 'cause of the traditions spain maintained while everyone else forgot and because of the differences between the spanish catholics and the other catholic churches (yeah fun fact, the catholic church's technically a conglomerate of 23 different churches, and even then the rules of each of those vary wildly by episcopado (the local council of bishops in charge of each region/country).Also while I'm at it. Blasphemous is the best fucking metroidvania out there. Everyone go play it.

Just as a small teaser. As cities grew the combination of poor sewage separation with the large amount of animals living in said cities (and therefore animal feces getting into the water) caused many plagues. Add to that the silk trade bringing in some new bacteria from the other side of the world island, and you get a recipy for utter horror. Then one must realize one last thing, microbial theory didn't exist yet. Back in that day, people thought diseases were caused by "spirits", even the scientists. Not because of any needed faith but because it just seemed like that back when they didn't have microscopes. And while scientists had noticed that these spirits didn't have much to do with those described in holy texts, most people had no idea.

As you can imagine this combination was a recipy for really cookie beliefs to gain relevance. As the pope was completely overwhelmed and told the priests to just ignore the sick and dying as he mass blessed everything, without effect, the priests in large parts just ignored this papal order, defying the supposed papal infalibility for the first time, schollars were reduced to bureaucrats as the "plague doctors" just blindly tested shit and sent data to the real doctors, who were completely flaberghasted by the situation, and the civil authorities for the most part just... closed the cities in an attempt at quarantine, and left entire areas to die horribly and slowly, as it was deemed that once the plague had arrived, it had already won.

And so, many denominations had many different ideas. Some went on a good old witchhunt, and purged their neighbors, others decided to get with the schedule and expell the jews, others called for war against the muslims, some just commited suicide. What they all had in common is they believed god had gotten really pissed off with humanity, may be the end times, may just be some pent up agression, but what they knew was, God was out of mercy. He demanded blood. He demanded suffering. And he was gonna get it one way or the other. The Penitents were one of these denominations. Except they both knew that suicide was a sin, and inflicting suffering on others is too. So what's a good christian to do then? Well, the catholic church, and specially its spanish branch, glorified martyrdom. It was the only path to sainthood after all. And that cross they used, now, that had a man in it. A pure man. A good man. Who suffered. So that others may be saved. And so, the Penitents were convinced, the only path to the salvation of humanity, was for good, devoted christians to willingly and by their own hand suffer the worst torments they could inflict. And quickly turned the flagellum (and many other instruments of torture now banned due to their cruelty) unto themselves. As they essentially believed that once you were being "judged by spirits", you were done and could only find salvation in the afterlife, but if you inflicted enough suffering into yourself, you might just keep it from spreading, or if you hadn't been judged but wanted to help those that had, there was only one way. Good demanded pain. God demanded blood. Penitence was the only path to salvation. The flock could only be saved if its sheep were willing to take the blame for the acts of everyone else. This didn't help things much, actually the combination of going everywhere barefoot, regularly opening wounds in their own flesh, and regularly migrating to heavily afflicted areas to convert the local population just made things worse. But all they noticed is that they were indeed suffering and dying, and the plagues were slowing down (due to the massive depopulation and immunization... but they didn't know this last part), and so, they became convinced that it was their duty to protect humanity from judgement, by suffering.

Thankfully the cofradias of nowadays are much tamer. Their flagellum leaves some marks but they banned the serrated versions of old so at least they don't destroy their own backs, only some go barefoot, the other instruments of torture have been banned altogether, and they only inflict pain unto themselves on specific ceremonies around certain dates (mostly easter) and in general knowledge of microbial theory quenched the cookier believers. But the cofradias are still quite fanatic, and having to stop the processions when it rains to protect the pasos (the statues they carry) has made it so if secular authorities try to interfere when it doesn't rain they are about to find the hard way they have no authority in the acts of god. (Which has even been used as a plot point in comedies because the cofrades' stubborness is legendary.) And indeed during corona it took a lot of convincing by the episcopado towards the believers to agree to push the celebrations back, and no one agreed to outright ban it (we just don't know when we'll get around to it...) and even then some tried to do it while in quarantine. Because aside from the obvious value culturally and religiously of such celebration, many still believe, if spain stops celebrating easter... Y Pestis is coming back, with a vengeance.

Edit: I for one am quite happy we kept the penitents and not the other, crazier denominations. And while I'd rather not see the crazier beliefs come back again, I'm glad the ceremonies stayed in their tame version. Not only are they cool as fuck, but, Penitents are probably one of the most well intentioned movements in our history. Sure, it's easy to paint them as crazy pale priests lascerating themselves while raving about sins, as movies often do. But when you take into account their absolute lack of ill will towards others, and why they became convinced of such beliefs... You know, most of the people were making those suspected of being sinful. I'd say it takes a good person to decide pardon can only be found within oneself. Even if their method was less than ideal.

Edit: yes I know I said teaser and then... yeah. I need to learn to contain myself. But believe it or not there's still a ton more to explain. And I haven't even show the pics! Here have one of a paso for a taste.





That's "el santo entierro" btw. Every paso got a name and represents something different. What they got in common is there's always 2. A christ and a virgin. Here's what they use to carry it:


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## Montalbane (Apr 18, 2021)

Necroing the shit out of this thread, but it has been great so far. 
I have a question tho. 
What is the general opinion onCNT-FAI? 
Or a quick breakdown not written by a deranged bugman. 
Because online I only found glowing praise of it, the only criticism being homophobia and not fighting the government too. 
As if starting a second front during a civil war, with no support, is a smart idea. 
Also lots of denial of the atrocities they commited because "They were necessary to free the prole from the catholic psykers keeping them chained" which I personally translated into "Fuck you and your religion dad, I'm 32 but still edgy." 

Sorry if off topic, delete if need be.


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