Re: spanish keys

[Richard Stallman]

    Something like this has been reported on gnu.emacs.help before.  The
    solution was reported to move the mouse pointer out of the Emacs
    window and back in.

That isn't a solution, just a workaround.  What we really need to do
is fix the bug.

    The tilde key by itself does nothing.  Pressing the tilde key followed
    by an n, for example, will generate the correct key: ñ.  After a
    while, however, pressing the tilde key will result in the <dead-tilde>
    key.  Which is usually undefined.

This could be a useful clue.  I suspect the bug relates to the code in
xterm.c that handles composition in X11.