You could be forgiven for thinking that Spanish cinema was in decent shape.

Million Dollar Baby: Two hours of this followed by 15 minutes of this. Please don't click if you plan to see MDB.
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University language students in the UK are apparently an endangered species, with the only rise in numbers coming with students of Spanish and (for reasons I'm not clear about) Portuguese. On a related subject, perhaps some kind soul would like to buy this new book for me. "Did you know," as the New Statesman review says, "that the word 'Semitic', as a family of languages which includes Hebrew, stems from the name Shem, second son of Noah, and was not applied linguistically until 1781? Or that Sumerian, an extinct Semitic language, had a special dialect for use only by women? Or that the clay patties on which these languages were written have survived only because they were baked in the fires started by Alexander the Great's conquering soldiers?" Well, no I didn't. But I'm glad I do now.
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On Feb 11, ANECA, the organization responsible for implementing the reforms to the Spanish university system, passed a resolution to divide language and literature teaching at Spanish universities into the following categories:

1. Lenguas y culturas del Estado español
a. Lengua española y sus literaturas
b. Lengua y literatura catalanas
c. Lengua y literatura gallegas
d. Lengua y literatura vascas
e. Lengua y literatura asturianas
2. Lenguas y culturas modernas
3. Lenguas y culturas orientales
4. Lenguas y culturas clásicas
5. Lingüística teórica y aplicada
6. Estudios literarios

"Lengua y literatura en inglés" is nowhere to be seen, which is perhaps strange given the way the world is today (whether you agree with it or not). It has been subsumed, I suppose, under "Lenguas y culturas modernas". Now I'm all for pluralism. But isn't it strange to have a degree called "Asturian Language and Literature" and not one called, for example, "Language and Literature in English"? The English department where I teach at Madrid's Complutense University has prepared a manifesto which sets out our views on the matter, starting with the fact that almost half of the people studying in the Philology department at the Complutense are studying English - considerably more than are studying even Spanish philology. They would like to have a degree called "Language and Literature in English", but if this goes through, that won't be an option for them. If you are interested in seeing and perhaps signing the manifesto, then send a comment to PdS Blog with your e-mail address in the following form - "jack at hotmail dot com" - and I'll send you the manifesto (in Spanish).

And while we're on philology, and to show that I'm a pluralist, here's someone who thinks that Francis Bacon wrote Don Quixote.
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"El español," he wrote, "es demasiado importante para dejarlo en manos de los españoles." Cuban novelist and long-time exile in London Guillermo Cabrera Infante has died in Charing Cross Hospital. Here he is enjoying one of his beloved cigars in 1989 with Fernando de Szyszlo, Octavio Paz, Damián Bayón and Mario Vargas Llosa. This is the one he'll best be remembered by.
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A bunch of policeman from Madrid have made a "Calendar Girls"-style calendar to raise money for tsunami relief. I'd say this represents a pretty strong challenge to the Antonio Banderas, sexy macho male stereotype. Apart from the guy with the sunglasses. 
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That's it, then. Never have so few voted for something so little understood. Now let's see whether the rest of Europe follows. Apparently the King forgot to show his ID card before voting. I wonder if this will make any changes to the world of such mindless bureaucracy we've made?
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...for this extended absence. I'm working on the next issue of PdS. Normal service will be resumed over the next few days.

Speaking of which, I've been reading Adam Feinstein's biography of Pablo Neruda, Pablo Neruda: a Passion for Life. It's good stuff. Feinstein tells again the tale of what happened when Pinochet's soldiers turned up at Neruda's house soon after Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973:

“A bus loaded with helmeted soldiers had arrived at Isla Negra late at night and ordered everyone out of the house. Neruda was in bed upstairs. From his bedroom window, he could see the soldiers, holding lanterns, examining the trees and plants in the garden. It must have been the most miserable experience to see the military, whom he loathed, invading what he thought of as the closest place to pradaise on earth (…) The commander of the unit asked for Neruda. They told him where he was and he went up cautiously, his weapon in his hand. Then something extraordinary occurred. The young soldier suddenly found himself face to face with Neruda, and this disconcerted him. Neruda looked at him and said: ‘Look around – there’s only one thing of danger for you here – poetry.’ The soldier removed his helmet, respectfully, muttered ‘Forgive me, Señor Neruda,’ and withdrew, taking his soldiers with him. They had not broken anything in the house.”

The stuff of legend. But there's also this, about Neruda's first wife:

"Despite the fact that Maruca had become very weak towards the end of her pregnancy, Neruda continued to party as wildly as ever".

And this:

"While Maruca spent hours lovingly and dutifully singing lullabies in Dutch to her sick baby daughter, Neruda was secretly meeting his new love, Delia del Carril..."

Their child later died. What a great guy (though he did do some great things). Like millions of others, I've always enjoyed Neruda's love poetry, but I'm not sure I can respect it any more after reading this. I was talking last week to a wise friend who tells me that you have to be somewhat selfish if you are going to achieve your personal ambitions. Well, it sounds like Neruda had learned that lesson early on, as he set about turning his life into the epic story it eventually became.
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PdS Blog is pleased to announce that it has finally found a way of showing a picture of Penélope Cruz that also ties in with recent posts. This is because, Variety reveals today, she will feature in the next Pedro Almodóvar (see below) film. It will be one of the following: Volver, (literally, Return), a generational comedy about three women who travel from southern Spain to Madrid in search of a better life; and La tempestad soñada (literally, Dreamt Storm), a lyrical drama. And it will be in Spanish, even though everyone's waiting for the first Almodóvar film in English. So there you are. (To counteract the Penélope effect, click here.)

Meanwhile, far away from showbiz, Martin Amis goes to Colombia. (via Blogdex.)
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... is the first of its kind - a comprehensive review of the latest in Spanish-language publishing - written in English." That's what it says about itself. Looks interesting.
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"The Spanish Film Academy's problem with Almodóvar is starting to look personal", wrote PdS Blog a week ago. Well, it's only dinner party chat material really, but this arrived today from the El Deseo press office: Debido a los crecientes rumores, queremos confirmar desde EL DESEO que tanto Agustín como Pedro Almodóvar solicitaron su baja definitiva de la Academia de las Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas de España a finales de diciembre de 2004. (Pedro and his producer brother Agustín have resigned from the Academy.) El motivo fundamental es el desacuerdo con el sistema de votación, así como otros aspectos que rigen el funcionamiento de la Academia, tales como la falta de información en cuanto a número de participantes en las distintas votaciones. (Because they don't agree with the Academy's voting system and "other aspects" of the way the Academy is run.)

So basically Spain's greatest living film director is no longer a member of the Spanish Film Academy. Habitually snubbed by them down the years during the Goya Awards, Almodóvar didn't win anything for La mala educacíon last week - and if this latest news explains that, or if that explains this latest news, then things are in a sorry state indeed. You heard it here first (in English, at least.)
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This old chap has just woken up in a wonderful Spanish documentary called El cielo gira by Mercedes Álvarez (spot the deliberate error in the headline in the link), which has just won a prize at the Rotterdam Film Festival. He is one of the 14 people who still lived in the village of Aldealseñor, near Soria, when the film was shot: the leisurely, poetic and multi-layered documentary traces a year in the life of the town, which will shortly cease to exist as a living population. The film emphasizes the isolation of the village from the modern world whilst stressing its deep connections with the larger cycles of time: it begins with an old lady pointing out dinosaur footprints, moves through the Roman invasion of the area - after which many locals famously committed suicide rather than submit to Roman rule - and ends with fighter planes flying overhead, destination Iraq. But the "overheard" conversations are the best part. "One day," one old guy muses, "they'll put men on the moon". (Incredible that anyone in the West is still saying that, but there it is.) But wisdom abounds, too: an early scene has two guys digging their own graves in the cemetery (they have a lot of time on their hands in Aldealseñor). "Up to the last minute," one of them reflects, "you think you’re going to live forever". It's terrific stuff: the best films being made in Spain these days are documentaries.
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The Madrid attacks of March 11 2004 are commemorated in a potent documentary film called Todos íbamos en este tren (We Were All on That Train), which consists of 24 short pieces offering different perspectives on the tragedy. It is showing in only one cinema in the capital, and that cinema is in the barrio of Vallecas, far from the city centre, but close to where one of the trains was blown up. I saw the film at six o'clock tonight - and I was the only person in there. In theory it's good and necessary to remember tragedies - but the thought struck me, as I sat there alone, that perhaps nobody, least of all those close to the victims, actually wants to. See it if you can.