Monthly Archives: May 2008

Gaycelona versus Gayxample – does Graham Keeley ever know what he’s talking about?

As seen in this fluff piece by the Guardian’s Man In Spain for nice hotels under €100 in Barcelona:

Hotel California

Great value for money considering its locaton around the corner from La Rambla. The California offers decent, clean rooms and markets itself as gay friendly, though this is more subtly played than in hotels like Axel, in the “Gaycelona” district of Barcelona.

As any fule know, the so-called gay district is called ‘Gayxample’ from the Eixample neighbourhood. It seems that Graham Keeley’s articles either consist of reheating AP and El País stories or churning out ignorant tosh. Has no one at the Guardian yet noticed that while Keeley is filing tons more stories on Spain than there used to be, they are predominantly ripped off or simply inaccurate? Maybe it’s reading Flat Earth News but this guy is really beginning to annoy me.

Guardian, sort it out!

P.S. I was going to say that Graham Keeley doesn’t know his arse from his elbow but I suspect that I’d have been picked up for bad taste. So I didn’t.

Nightmare in Cerdanyola

I had a dream last night that I received some sort of prize from the communist mayor of Cerdanyola. I think it was for coming 1st in a treasure hunt.

But after I had a chat with him, I realised that in fact he was none other than Federico Jiménez Losantos, former communist, right-wing shock jock and utterly mad conspiracy theorist. Also, he only had one hand.

It was an imagery-laden dream and while not exactly terrifying (I had won first place, after all), I can’t help but wonder what the significance might be of having Losantos talk to me in my sleep, in Catalan.