The Great Unravelling

"For a moment, it felt like we had won. The bad guys were relics. Fascism was a lesson Spanish schools didn't teach, and liberal democracy was what all the cool countries were wearing."

The Camino a Ítaca climbs the Statue of Liberty this week for a look around to see what is left of something precious that we once took for granted. It's not gone...yet. But it is clear that what we once thought immutable is nowhere near permanent. This week in both English and Spanish. Click over to read the unravelling in Sur in English here or a slightly shorter version (word count issues) in HOY in Spanish here. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The Age of Mean

Ages rise and rot, and this one smells like cheap cologne, pancake make-up and cold, hard cruelty. The Age of Reason left town long ago, probably hitchhiking with Elvis, and in its place slithers the Age of Mean—petty, ugly, and proud of it. Welcome to the golden era of the selfish, the crass, the smug boor with a megaphone and a middle finger raised to anything resembling decency. In this week's Camino a Ítaca, a long, bittersweet gaze back to when empathy wasn’t a punchline, and "love thy neighbor" wasn’t just another blunt object for hypocrites to swing at their enemies. This piece, apparently too radioactive for an English-reading audience, fell victim to the silent chokehold of self-censorship. The shadow of Musk looms large, its stench thick and suffocating, proof that even across the Atlantic, the game is rigged, and the referees have left the building.

As one rejection email advised: "Thank you for submitting this to the Post-Gazette. It's not an article we can use, partly because we favor a cooler, more humanistic style (not referring to people as "slithering," for example)..." 

But then one light shone out of the cowed darkness. Rabble.ca took at chance. Click over and see what the fuss was about.

Globalization and its Discontents

I've been called a lot of things in my life. My surname alone has had people thinking that I'm from a lost tribe to an island in Japan. In this week's Camino a Ítica, the way my name can cause consternation among some. Life on the peninsula is no longer so monochrome, or monotheistic. Click over to read the English version on page 22 of the PDF in SUR in English or in Spanish in the HOY. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The line between continents blurs up here, lost in the madness of these mountains—great, hulking beasts with snow-drenched peaks, their ridges twisting like the spine of some prehistoric leviathan sprawled between the Black and Caspian seas. Less a boundary between East and West than a stone-fisted barricade between the East and the even more bewildering East.

For centuries, they’ve loomed like bouncers at one of history’s rowdier saloons, keeping the Indo-Europeans and the rough-and-tumble Caucasian and Turkic tribes apart. The Russians and Persians have played tug-of-war over this place for generations, and yet, in one of history’s great absurdities, these crags somehow manage to carve Orthodox Christian Georgia and Armenia away from the Muslim-majority north—except for Azerbaijan, which juts into the Caspian like a defiant middle finger.

We had left the sleepy village of İlisu in Azerbaijan and were hiking toward Russia, following the glacial Kurmukh-chai River as it cut deeper into the mountains, pushing forward with the simple plan of going as far as we could until someone in a furry official-looking hat stopped us.

Along the way, we met a shepherd who greeted us in a singsong Azeri. When it became clear we understood nothing, his wizened, weathered face darkened with suspicion before he switched to the language of the empire, the tongue of the Tsars. Still, nothing. Our blank stares unsettled him.

How could we not speak Russian? To unravel this mystery, or perhaps to confirm we weren’t extraterrestrials, he pulled out an old bottle of homemade honey vodka, still stamped with the fading letters CCCP and poured us each a stiff drink. Through wild gestures and, eventually, song, we pieced together his bewilderment: that someone might not speak Russian simply did not compute. It was as if we had told him the sky was not, in fact, blue. This did not fit in with his worldview.

I was reminded of this the other day while out for cañas. I don’t even remember how the conversation started, but at some point, one of the older parishioners of the bar looked over and said, “What kind of name is that? Troy? I mean, what’s it short for?”

I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I told him it wasn’t short for anything, it was just Troy.

“Impossible! That’s no name. There’s no San Troy. It must be short for something, like… Troncio.”

In no mood to argue, I explained that it came from the tragic city of Priam and turned back to my drink. But he wasn’t finished.

“Impossible! Troya would be female, and you have a beard!”

I tried to steer the conversation toward football or jamón, safe topics, national pillars, but no. He was deep in the trenches now, determined to restore order to a world where all proper names must have a saintly origin or at least a good Catholic ring to them.

Finally, he delivered his verdict. “You need a real proper name.” He thought for a moment, then grinned over his half empty glass of Veterano. “Something like… Manolo.”

“Sí, Manolo!” A name as sturdy as a pair of alpargatas, as dependable as a midday siesta. The matter was settled and he ordered another drink.

I nodded and accepted my fate. After all, at least he didn’t suggest Jesús.

Imagine if I had told him my surname?

What Is, Isn't?

JD Vance comes to Europe

Poor Chicken Little, after everyone ignored the little guy for so long, saying he was exaggerating, that what the fascists were saying was only electioneering, peanuts for the gallery, not to be take seriously...
And then came Vance to Europe to let everyone know that they are playing for keeps. Not only are they dismantling the little saftey net built over the decades in the United States, but that they want the same for Europe too. In this week's Camino a Ítaca a Japanese kitsune fable. When will the enchanted be able to see the foxes for what they are? Will it be too late? Click over to read the originally published version in Spanish the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The landscape unfurled like an ancient scroll painting, revealing a world cloaked in the pristine silence of winter as a farmer named Tadahiro, one of those sturdy tillers of the soil who formed the backbone of feudal Japan, was walking home. The snow in Hokkaido is unlike anywhere on earth— it falls in a blanket so thick that it seems to muffle the very air, as if the gods themselves had hushed the world.

Then to his wonderment, through the settling snow came the most magnificent parade he had ever witnessed. The lantern-bearers came first, their paper lights casting pools of golden radiance across the whiteness. Behind them processioned ranks of samurai in silk hakama, their sword hilts gleaming. Musicians followed, their flutes sending haunting notes into the winter air. The gifts came next - lacquered boxes bound with silk, their contents worth more than a farmer would see in a thousand lifetimes. And there, at the heart of this splendor, moved the bride herself, her wedding kimono so fine it seemed to float above the snow.

As Tadahiro let this assembly pass, his old friend Taro happened upon the scene. What followed was one of those moments when reality itself seems to split along its seams. For where Tadahiro saw nobility and splendor, Taro saw only a troupe of foxes, padding through the snow with twigs in their mouths.

"Have you lost your senses?" Taro demanded and then mumbled something, watching his friend bow deeply to what appeared to be nothing more than common forest creatures. "They're only foxes!"

Taro’s harsh words acted like a spell-breaking charm. In an instant, the magnificent procession dissolved like melting snow, leaving only a line of foxes trotting through the snow, carrying nothing but sticks that Tadahiro's enchanted mind had transformed into all the trappings of a noble wedding.

Japanese kitsune legends remind us that sometimes the veil between worlds is as thin as a snowflake, and reality itself might depend entirely on who is doing the looking.

These mischievous foxes still have the power to enchant. Just recently, the branches in their mouths spelt out in enormous letters a headline in the Economist, “Spain shows Europe how to keep up with America’s economy.” It then ranked it the best performing economy of the OECD based on performance in the last year. 

Yet even though the Economist isn’t precisely known as radically left-leaning, enchanted right-wing commenters steadfastly believed the pablum spooned to them by the Spanish conservative press. They assured that the country had banned private property and was two small steps away from becoming a bankrupt Maoist dictatorship.

Their confirmation bias simply wouldn’t allow them to see the foxes for what they were. They weren’t seeing a cadre of billionaires and their evil minions openly moving to gut the Welfare State. Instead of seeing things like Milei’s chainsaw for what it is, a tool designed to take away their pensions, socialized medicine and education and do away with limits on working hours and minimum wages, they saw a magic wand that was going to make them too wealthy and upwardly mobile. Just like hardworking Abascal and his patriot friends.

Just what did Taro mumble that broke the spell?

San Cristóbal in Montánchez, Spain

Castillo de Montánchez

Longform read published in the February issue of Perceptive Travel Magazine. (click over)
A family trip to a curious festival where the blessed are not the meek, but in fact their modes of transport.

"The sweep before us was more than 180 degrees. The savannah, some 1300 feet below, rolled off into the far-off confines of the horizon and was fringed with the blueish humpbacks of breaching sierras. The checkerboard of holm oak trees that made up the dehesas pixelated the undulating topography of differing shades of green and parched beige. White specks of small villages broke up the scene like tiny errors on a tactile screen."

The Gulf of Fragile Masculinity

It has begun, even on this side of the Atlantic. The pernicious slide into self-censorship has started to happen in the press. Lately I have been publishing my Camino a Ítaca articles in Spanish, as always, in the HOY but have also been publishing them in English in the SUR in English. But it seems that this week's was a step too far for the outlet in English and they decided not to publish it. 
True, it could be for other reasons, but unfortunately it seems clear that it was done not to rock the boat, precisely when the boat desperately needs to be shaken up. I'm afraid it's not coming, it's already here. Click over to see the Spanish version in the HOY, who were brave enough to publish it or read the longer, condemned piece in English below.

Rising up in the southeastern corner of Türkiye, the toothy Zagros mountains briefly zigzag like the hose of a hookah pipe down the partition dividing the Kurdish lands of Iran and Iraq. They then cleave through the eminent domain of the Ayatollahs until the chain withers out in the barren deserts bordering one of the world’s most vital sea passages, the Strait of Hormuz. From its southern flanks the arid plains of Marvdasht unroll like a dusty Persian carpet that blankets some of the most ancient settlements known to humankind.

Some 60kms to the northeast of Shiraz, a series of broken columns rise out of these plains, standing as a mute testament to the transience of imperial ambition. The pulse of history once beat here in Persepolis. The Achaemenid Empire ruled an estimated 44% of the population on Earth. Hollywoodized rulers like Cyrus the Great, Darius and Xerxes issued decrees from these ruins that were felt as far away as modern-day Crimea, Afghanistan and Somaliland.

Today only the wind polishes the bas-reliefs that lead up the grand stairway to the empty audience hall. Sumptuously robed figures from 23 nations are depicted bringing precious gifts in tribute to the absolute despot. Elaborate yet subjugated ambassadors frozen in stone while contributing the wealth of their nations to a deified foreign ruler. A ruler that himself would be subjugated in 330 BCE by another apotheotic King. A ruler named Alexander.

Fast forward to today and we see the return ofsupposed Roman salutes. There are rumors of gigantic orange phallus sightings around the world. Romanesque fetishes, erected in tribute to an autocrat promising a return to expansionism and greatness, no matter the conflicting reports given by the prostitutes and pornstars he paid off.

From the Casa Rosada to the Via Appia and the Calles Genova and, of course, Bambu, far right leaders and wannabe autocratical satraps are falling over themselves for the privilege to climb the White House steps and kiss the ring.

These sycophants will do anything to indulge the petulant tangerine tyrant, even if it means eschewing their national interests amidst his threats of protectionism and raised tariffs. They share a religious conviction that the Orange Clown’s return is a victory against wokeness and the perceived ills of empathy and political correctness. For them, only he can put the genie back in the bottle and time warp the West back 70 years to when everyone knew their place.

Back to a time when you could openly mock the disabled, when the only ‘good’ immigrant was one that didn’t dream of a day off, when women had to get their husband’s permission to get a passport and bled to death from coat hanger injuries in dark back rooms. A return to when it was socially acceptable to expound racist views and a time when the past was narrated as a single story complete with good white guys and bad dark guys.

But genies are non-returnable. Freedom once tasted isn’t so easily relinquished. The decent majority will realize that this movement wasn’t in fact about the price of eggs, but something much more sinister and this crass episode will just become another Darius in the dust.

As Time Goes By

With just days before the freely elected orange Himler assumes the most powerful office on earth to disassemble the world order from inside, the Camino a Ítaca takes a look back at how eight decades of anti-Nazi propaganda on the silver screen have proven to be no match for the masses of disinformation fed to all through their tiny screens. What was once bad is now good and what was once evil is now accepted. The hundreds of thousands who lost their lives fighting these extreme righ-wing ideals now sleep uneasily as the very real threat of fascism returns. This time not by violence and force, but mire insidiously by fake news and misinformation. Click over to read the published versions both in Spanish in the HOY and in English in the SUR in English. (castellano abajo)

I’m starting to suspect that everything that comes out of Hollywood isn’t quite real. I’ve been there on many occasions, seen the white letters up on the hillside and tripped over the junkies on Hollywood and Vine. So, I know that the place in fact exists. It’s what it has produced that I am no longer certain of.

I’m picturing Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn climbing the cliffs of Navarone. Or maybe something lighter when Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson make a Luftwaffe colonel’s life impossibly complicated as they try to escape.

We don’t even have to reach so far back to find more films on the same theme. We’ve seen Stephen Spielberg direct Liam Neeson in a most harrowing film about a terrible list and Tom Hanks searching for Private Ryan. Or perhaps more recently, Christoph Waltz’s unparalleled quiet, yet menacing depiction of pure raw evil. One that might even approach the heinous malevolence of someone like Reinhard Heydrich in Tarantino’s inglourious remake.

For eighty years Hollywood has churned out constant reminders of the monumental struggle that took place in the 30s and 40s. All are, in their own fashion, depictions of a time when things were remarkably black and white. The false Hollywood narrative of cowboys and indians temporarily replaced by something more easily digestible. On one side we had people fighting for supposed freedom and democracy. While on the other, supporters of authoritarian regimes who had no compunction about sending millions of people who didn’t fit into their mold to their deaths in purpose-built extermination camps from Fuerteventura to Rivesaltes to Birkenau. Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito’s defeat and the subsequent freeing of the concentration camps have flooded our screens ever since.

In Spain however it would take another 40 years. Franco was never toppled He died peacefully in bed with his death marking the beginning of the end to perhaps Europe’s longest dictatorships. At last, the good guys had beaten the baddies and fascism seemed to have finally been put to rest.

But then something happened. It came back.                                 

Four years ago the world watched a violent mob try overturn a free and fair election. Nazi flags were seen flying in the Capitol building of a country that lost 400,000 plus lives fighting the very ideology invading its legislative core. Worse yet, the coup attempt’s leader, Donald Trump, has now been reelected. In Italy, an open supporter of Mussolini now runs the country. At the same time, in the cradles of the most atrocious crimes of the 20^th century, Germany has seen a surge in support for the far right, while in Austria Nazi supporters may form a government.

In Spain, young people blithely sing fascist songs on school outings while more and more women look back fondly on a dark period when they had next to no rights. Regime apologists now sit in all levels of government and in attempts to whitewash the past, the traditional right has joined them in attempts to repeal laws reminding us of past horrors.

In a world where Mayor Stasser has become the good guy and Rick Blaine the bad, you no longer need dystopian movies, just pay attention. Please Sam, don’t play it again.

Marco Polo and the Three Wise Men

The Three Wise Men woken by an angel Maestre Gislebertus, h. 1130

In an age when American culture seems to permeate and even obliterate traditions around the world, it's refreshing to local traditions hold strong against the ceaseless tide. Here in Spain they have incorportated Santa Claus and the mass consumerism of America into their Christmas season, but the main event is still the Three Kings Day (Epiphany). The thing is, as with many aspects of Christianity, the Spanish have really turned it into a nativist narrative (the legends of Santiago or Saint James and the pagan inspired Virgin cults). In this week's Camino a Ítaca, a reminder that the foundational myths of the faith looked East before looking West. Click over to the version published in English in Sur in English (PDF p.16) or the Spanish version in the HOY. 

Modern-day Tehran tumbles out of the Elburz mountains like an unspooling roll of chimerical fabric. It starts out fresh and clean but as its splendor runs out, it becomes dustier and more frayed at the edges as it loses altitude and peters out on the doorstep of Kavir, the Great Salt Desert. In a question of 30kms the metropolis plunges 600m down from the modern, wealthy mountain heights in the north, through the dense smog that perennially chokes the megacity and then fades into the humbler, haphazard developments and villages it has swallowed up along the fringes of the desert.

In one of these towns, now engulfed by the metastasizing capital, still stands the ancient caravanserai stop of Rayy. A place where a young Italian named Marco Polo just might have passed through in the XIII century enroute with his destiny with the great Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan.

Further along the Silk Road in Saveh (or Kashan depending on your transliteration), the Genovese youngster encountered a square building housing three sepultures, each boasting an unblemished corpse complete with hipster beards and stylized hair. He asked around but no one was able to tell him who these incorruptible Methuselah were.

It was another three-day journey until he found out that they were three ‘kings’ who had set out from the East to worship a prophet in Judea. With them they carried the classical bling of the day, Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh. These gifts were in fact chosen to ascertain whether the prophet was a God, an earthly King, or a Physician. If he took the Gold, then he would be your typical Bourbon or Windsor, that is to say an earthly king. If he fancied the Incense he was a God and if he was after the mysterious Myrrh he was a Healer.

After conferring with Herod, these magi finally found the baby prophet. The youngest went in first and found the child apparently just like himself. The middle one entered next, and like the first, he found the prophet seemingly of his own age. Lastly, the eldest went in and wouldn’t you know it, the same happened to him. To clear up this circus trick they agreed to go in together and to their surprise found a baby that was just thirteen days old. Amazed by the miracle, they presented their gifts and in a truly trinitarian move, the child took all three. In return, the child gave them a small, closed box.

We know curiosity kills cats, and the same might be said for camels. The three kings couldn’t wait to get home to open the box and when they finally did, they only found a small stone. In their disappointment, they tossed the stone into a well only to be surprised by a flame bursting up and creating the everlasting light that would become the foundation of another of the monotheistic faiths, Zoroastrianism.

With so many of its followers xenophobically insisting on their faith being the basis of the West, Polo’s account serves as just another reminder that Christianity was not only born in the near East but once looked further in that direction in its foundational stories.

Chapter 5 - The Crack Between Portugal and Spain

Sierra Fría - Valencia de Alcántara © Fátima Gibello

Chapter 5 begins...

"As you leave the tiny village of Las Huertas de Cansa, a jagged grey shark fin rises out of a patchwork of changing green. The bluff cuts across the horizon like a megalithic dorsal fin of craggy granite, making the way seem impassable until a chink in its sharp, serrated teeth appears and allows the two-lane highway to slip through. Trees and undergrowth, like willows and birch, that wouldn’t look out of place in the milder Atlantic regions of the country, cluster around the multiple courses of water. These sculpt the valleys and feed into the Rivera Avid while, higher up, cluster pines embroider the hills. The Sierra Fría, in the western reaches of the province of Cáceres, is a colossal rock formation you feel instinctively drawn to. It’s a prehistoric landmark, the kind that resounds somewhere deep down in our DNA, somehow answering our evolutionary needs and desires for resource-rich environments that promise food, shelter, comfort, and, of course, beauty. Juanma was definitely right; it was more than impressive, but standing at its feet, it seemed more like a wall than a hike."

"This is La Raya, the sometimes-imaginary rift that marks the border between Spain and Portugal. This geological singularity has been attracting people since the hominids that spread out of Africa to leave their mark in places like the Maltravieso cave. In their wake they left a rich trove of prehistoric graffiti and dolmens around the province. Out here, hidden among these stratified rock folds, like the cave in Cáceres, you find art from some of the first Europeans. And the chain in front of us is the westernmost stop in the province along the Prehistoric RockArt Trails."

"A shiny blue EU sign welcoming you to Portugal stands among a past that has since been left behind. The derelict border post that once registered everyone’s coming and going between countries is now a hollow shell of broken windows and tattered posters announcing bullfights on both sides of the border. The abandoned buildings of what used to be a hard border stand disused and moldering by the sides of the road. Stark reminders of how unnecessary they are between countries that share so much in common. Just up the highway on the Spanish side we found the trailhead to the four-hundred-metre, well-marked trail up to the paintings. You have to hop over the guardrail to access the well-marked trail, complete with an information panel at the bottom, but thankfully traffic was light."

"In less than half an hour we came to a slight alcove in the rock with all of Portugal spread out in front of us. Portugal is a country of supernatural pageantry, as the Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago describes it in “The Sermon of the Fishes” in his travel book, Journey to Portugal, and this view proved his words true. We were standing on a rock shelf big enough to accommodate several families. The alcove itself didn’t offer much protection from the elements, but it would have been very easily defended as you could see anyone or anything coming for miles around. The 974-metre Sierra Fría across the valley was scarred by forest fires and was sliced up in cross-sections by fire cuts. The northern slope is Spanish, while the southern slope falls away into Portugal with a thicker fire cut drawing the line that divides the two."

"The sun was bright and half of the rock shelf fell in the shade, making it difficult to adjust our eyes to the contrast. My eyes were drawn into the deepest recess in the rock and there I saw the first motif, looking like a stitched-up reddish wound on the rock face. Down below it I also made out other symbols, though these were less clear. The brutal onslaught of seven thousand summers had taken their toll on the paintings, but many were still clearly visible. I scanned the rock for more, sometimes mistaking irregular patterns of iron ore left behind by eons of dripping water that had stained the fissures and cracks in the rock for paintings. Neon green lichen covered honeycombed sections of the rock in the shadier areas, adding another hue to the pallet of reds and greys."

"What you can’t do with these paintings is disassociate them from their surroundings. Without the setting and the landscape that surrounds them, they lose context. The handprints on the cave were not only symbols but symbols that had been placed in a specific place. The oldest handprints in the deepest reaches of the Maltravieso cave were not put there because someone happened to be passing by. There was a specific purpose. Up here on this rocky outcrop, the same was true. The artists had chosen to leave their mark here, for the sights or even for the sound, but it had been a conscious choice. No matter the exact meaning, what I understood is that beauty was equally important to them."

Excerpt from Stories Left in Stone, Trails and Traces in Cáceres, Spain by Troy Nahumko published by the University of Alberta Press

Photographs by Juan Carlos Jiménez Durán

The Ice Cream Man

This ain't John Brim's seminal Ice Cream Man and perhaps little more of David Lee Roth's take on it. In this week's Camino a Ítaca Christmas and what it means for the oldest city in the world. Will it turn into a Turkish colony? Will the Israelis make a huge land grab or simply annex it? Will it become Kabul-West? Will the Kurds finally get a 'promised land'? Will the Ice Cream man still be around? Click over to read the Spanish version in the HOY or the English. If not, the original unedited piece below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

It took place just down a covered corridor that was sporadically lit by what seemed like bullet holes in the tin roof. In my memory, it was the scene that most represents Christmas. By that I don’t mean the conical medieval torture device by day and notional Christmas tree at night that vitiate each and every main square across the peninsula. Nor do I mean the anodyne motifs that line every street in the country that so ineffectually attempt to put a secular face on these generous annual donations from our municipal coffers to the Ebenezers of Iberdrola.

Here, where the chiaroscuro lane met the wide square, layers of history rose up in front of you like a millefeuille pastry. At ground level, the remains of an ancient Aramaean temple to Hadad-Ramman could be deciphered in the walled courtyard. From there, a series of Roman pillars supported a colonnade leading to a semi-ruined entranceway that the Romans had built after they assimilated Hadad with their own deity of thunder, Jupiter. And there in the centre of the square stood the Byzantine remains of an enormous church that had been dedicated to John the Baptist until the Caliph al-Walid I converted it into a temple that is still known as the Umayyad Mosque.

In the transitions you could palpably envision ancient Semitic rites being adopted into the Roman solstice of Saturnalia. In the air hung memories of the smell of the acrid papyrus smoke from the fundamentalist Christian bonfires as they consciously turned their backs on the accumulated knowledge of the classical world by implementing their dark, fatalistic vision of monotheism and thus monothought.

Then came the mark of the subsequent version of zealous believers, equally convinced that their new prophet was the sole interpreter of their celestial dictator’s whims, even if their coat of whitewash left the Christan murals in the church, and the myths that accompanied them, disfigured but visible. All this at the gates of a bustling market that displayed all the tenets of the rampant consumerism that Christmas now entails.

I was ordering a pistachio ice cream, just steps away from where Saul of Tarsus fell off his horse, when I realized that the seller wasn’t just giving me the ice cream but was just about to give me his phone number. Here I was in an Islamic country and I was being openly hit on by another man.

But this was a country that defied stereotypes. Just a few blocks away, while music rang out from shops in the Armenian neighborhood, I had seen more exposed flesh than you would in Ibiza. The booksellers in the souq were also doing brisk business. The Assad regime would drop barrel bombs and wipe out entire neighborhoods if you were against them, but under Bashar’s rule there was a razor thin veneer of stability. Like Saddam and Muammar before him, he was the only deity the people had to fear and obey.

Now the deposed dictator lives among empty vodka bottles in freezing Moscow as Russia’s Mediterranean colony takes on a distinct Turkish flavor under the expansionist and increasingly Islamist Erdogan. The big question now is, will you be able to say Merry Christmas here next year?

Love Actually

War on Christmas concentration camp

It's the big loooong weekend here in Spain, the equivalent of their Thanksgiving travelwise, and even though the season started a long time ago, it seems like Christmas is in the air. Company parties are out in full force and the streets are filled with holiday shoppers (if you're looking for the perfect give, try gifting my new book). The onslaught of the Christmas seasons also means that the annual wingefest has started up again as the false flags are raised everywhere in search of the mythical 'War on Christmas'. This week's Camino a Ítaca looks at how the queen of false flag warfare here in Spain launched the most recent attack on an nonexistent enemy. Click over to the originally published version in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

It’s something that in all of my wandering I can honestly say that I have never ever heard expressed by anyone, at least outside of Japan. It’s something so freakishly unlikely that I would sooner expect someone to say that they enjoyed chewing on broken glass or that they spent their leisure time getting unnecessary root canals done.

But profess to this?

True, the phrase might be heard in the context of someone referring to others, but certainly not themselves. Most likely when someone wants something but can’t get it that day or disparagingly regarding people they employ. But never have I heard someone regretfully utter the phrase, “I have too many holidays.”

There isn’t, nor has there ever been, a popular movement to reduce the number of holidays we have long fought for. It doesn’t take the ghost of Christmas past to remind us that holidays weren’t willingly offered to workers, but something fought for.

And it’s with these truisms in mind that I wonder, just where is this ‘War on Christmas’ that the far right fervently claims is underway? Exactly where are these barbarian hordes that are ripping down the millions upon millions of LED lights that illuminate each and every city, town and village from Malaga to La Coruña? Where are the general strikes and throngs of laborers demanding to be able to work on the 25^th? Just where are these leftwing lunatics who supposedly want to get rid of Christmas?

Yet even with a complete and total lack of evidence, every year we are subject to the same high-pitched whine coming from the right side of your screen. It grates on the ear like that of a squeaky door or, more accurately, a spoiled child who has something taken away from it. In their imaginary persecution, they throw themselves on their self-constructed pyres of immolation, rend their garments and claim that they are being attacked for their beliefs.

In a startingly candid admission of their long-entrenched privilege, those who once delightedly immolated heretics and used the pear of anguish on blasphemers whinge that less and less people use the word Christmas these days. Their lament is that they no longer control the narrative. They bewail that their creation myth is no longer rammed down the throats as fact to unsuspecting children in schools, even if nativity scenes are near ubiquitous throughout the country.

The divorcee mayor of Madrid, who happily supports the genocide happening to Muslims and Christians alike in Gaza, recently alleged that Christmas was being cancelled. Dressed in her American romcom Christmas sweater, she bemoaned things like the fact that scientists who have nothing to do with the Christian tradition are now using terms like BCE and CE, thus, as she sees it, depriving Christians their god given right to place their stamp on recorded history.

Much as the Romans surely grieved when their beloved Saturnalia was replaced by the anemic Christian celebration, complete with its festive imagery of a tortured man, relinquishing privilege is never easy. Opportunistic politicians like Ayuso will always try and create false flag polemics where none exist.

So, whatever you are celebrating as the solstice rolls around, enjoy your holidays and Merry Christmas.