In the gardens of the Royal Alcázar of Seville stands a simple, unadorned column with a short, poignant inscription written in Spanish: ‘The city of Seville to its poet-king Almutamid ibn Abbad, on the 9th century of his sad exile, 7 September 1091, Rachab 384’. Centuries after the city was re-taken by the Christians during…
In 1898, Spain and America entered a three-month war that ended with the Spanish Empire’s defeat and relinquishing of all of its remaining Pacific and American holdings – namely Cuba and the Philippines – after its defeat. For the Philippines, the war arguably marked the beginning of the path to becoming the nation it is…
A strange question, to ask if gods abandoned us. After all, many people in Europe today stopped believing in God at all. To speak of gods is then even stranger. It seems to point to pagan religions gone from Europe for a millennium or more, if we do not count some odd cults, whose efforts…
Latin is often regarded as dead as any language can be. Stories, poetry, love letters, simple daily correspondence: everything in this tongue seems to belong to a vanished past, thither behind us, a vestige of a civilisation long begone. We postmoderns would rather go and look for Latin inside dusty tomes at far shelves of…
Otto von Habsburg, the son of the last Austro-Hungarian Emperor Karl I, died in his estate in the Bavarian town of Pöcking on 4th July. Undeniably, whom Europe lost is a man noble not only by lineage, but foremost by deeds and spirit. Politically active from the 1930s, he became one of the early proponents…