Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital of Chiapas, is not one of Mexico’s great colonial cities loaded with old-style charm and historic architecture, traditional images to provide an irresistible draw to tourists – much to its regret. Every so often, Chiapas’ politicians and state officials – nearly all of whom live in Tuxtla – express a vague annoyance […]
The European Union is an unlovable institution. For a quick rundown of all its faults, try Larry Elliott’s analysis in the link at the end of this paragraph. However, in the current campaign/whatever you want to call it in Britain, this has almost become beside the point – what matters are the actual alternatives, yes or […]
Remember the End of the World? Three years ago, in December 2012, you couldn’t avoid it. Every media outlet in the world had at least some half-garbled report about how the ancient Mayans had some prophecy that their calendar would end on 21 December 2012, and that this would mean a global finale. The History and […]
Catch Cuba while it’s still there, people say… Get a taste of the island and its revolutionary quirks before the opening-up of relations with the USA sweeps all its strange tropical-Soviet otherworldliness away, and it becomes just like any other country, like… (what? In this part of the world, maybe, the Dominican Republic, that shining success story). Cuba […]
Mexico is a paradoxical country, where people can at times be brusque, sharp, smart-alecky, but more often show an elaborate, amiable courtesy. México es un país paradójico, donde la gente a veces puede ser brusca, acérbica, listilla, pero más a menudo te tratan con una cortesía elaborada. In the Colonia Condesa, a district […]
Tapas: Spain’s foremost modern culinary export, leaving paella for dust, copied from Tokyo to Toronto via many other places in between. An old tradition perfectly suited to modern habits, ideal for grazing, eating on the hoof, informal with none of that restaurant fuss. So much so there are now umpteen books on how to do […]
You first see it as you come down a long slope, rising up ahead of you out of the sunflower fields of Andalusia like a CGI-created palace in some post-Tolkien fantasy movie. Closer up, its gleaming maroon-and-white domes and eight strange towers have a look that’s more a mix of local Andaluz baroque, Buddhist stupas, […]
There are places everybody’s heard of, so everybody goes to, and others that you discover just by accident. Recently, without ever really having planned it, I found myself spending a week in Écija. Where is Écija? It’s in the middle of the dusty plains of Andalusia, roughly halfway between Seville and Córdoba. Mention it to […]
In ancient mythology the Strait of Messina between Sicily and mainland Italy was the home of Scylla and Charybdis, two fearsome monsters of the kind the Greeks loved to come up with – both were female, and both, at least in several versions of their story, had previously been renowned beauties, who were turned into scabrous horrors […]
Ruddy-black slices of sausage stand neatly piled up across plate after plate on long tables, in a sports hall on a Saturday morning in mid-March. Around 10am little groups of four or five people take their seats at one end of each table, and arrange their papers, and their forks. They have work to do, […]
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