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.

Carnaval de Cadiz:

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:

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

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.

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.

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.

“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”.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

EmuWarsVeteran · Jul 6, 2020

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

EmuWarsVeteran · Jul 6, 2020

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!

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.

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:

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.

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.

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?

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?
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?

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.

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?

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.

garakfan69 · 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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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?

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?

-----------
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?

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?

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:

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.

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.

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:

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!

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.

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?

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

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!

Medical Hawaii · Jul 10, 2020

EmuWarsVeteran said:
Cadiz’s Insanity:

View attachment 1435156

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

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?

View attachment 1435157

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:

View attachment 1435160

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:

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

View attachment 1435161

(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.”

View attachment 1435162

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.

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.

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:

View attachment 1435173

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!

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!

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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