Well, it's time for the annual State of the Blog address. That's right, Inside Europe: Iberian Notes had its first birthday on February 8. We started off on our old, unlamented Homestead site on Feb. 8, 2002, and switched over to Blogger at the beginning of November. Patrick Crozier of Transport Blog helped us with the technical details of getting the new site set up. We had around 6700 page views in December and about 8200 in January, giving us around 59,000 page views on the two sites through January 31.

We've been blogrolled by such heavy hitters as InstaPundit and Little Green Footballs, as well as by many other quality blogs, including (just a few) Dr. Weevil, Samizdata, Silflay Hraka, Ibidem, Cinderella Bloggerfeller, Craig Schamp, Travelling Shoes, and Buscaraons. We're so cool that Andrew Sullivan linked to us once. We also think we've been partially influential in the founding of several other European-American blogs, which we're proud of.

Enough patting ourselves on the back. What does the future hold for Iberian Notes? First, a rededication to discussing all things Spanish. We've been talking about the war almost exclusively for the past couple of weeks; we've been trying to fill you in on Spanish government actions and popular attitudes, but we've been stuck on that subject for a while. I guess that's the main thing people are thinking about now. Second, no attempts to change style or attitude. I think my stuff works best when it's just me talking instead of when I put on airs, so I'm just going to be myself and not worry about whether I'm too extremist (Me? Too extremist? You wanna see extremist, buddy, I can show you extremist) or too impolite or too opinionated. Third, I'm afraid, no Antonio for the foreseeable future. He's taking care of his mom. I saw him last week and I'll see him tomorrow, and some of the things I've written are things I discussed with him, but he'll contribute again when he's good and ready and not busy or stressed. Fourth, I have no plans to stop blogging anytime soon.

Here's a limerick we wrote for our first month's commemoration:

As bloggers we now have a chance
To go public with all of our rants
The blog doesn't feed us
The people don't read us
But at least we can make fun of France.