Jurramachos Carnival in Montanchez, Spain

@Jorge Armestar

Think Venetian masks and then turn it into a B-rate horror film and you've got the fiercely independent Carnival in Montanchez, Extremadura, Spain. Writing for the Calgary Herald, click over for the deep dive into the fun.

Useful Dupes

In this week's Camino a Ítaca that time I stumbled into a war in Yemen. The Houthis are now playing into the hands of the Iranians and making their population suffer even more. Click over to read the original version in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The disembodied voice on the other end of the crackly line was definitely nervous. “Troy, I need to know where you are right now.” It was my boss and while we had a good relationship, the question seemed a bit intrusive, seeing as I was on holiday during a semester break.

“I’m up in Sa’dah, near the border with Saudi Arabia,” I reluctantly replied. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he quickly answered. “You need to get the hell out of there as soon as possible and return here to the capital, Sana’a. A war has just broken out between the government and a rebel group. Get on the road as fast as you can before it is closed or gets bombed!”

Living and working in Yemen always had its surprises. It’s a country that is almost as heavily armed as the United States per capita. Men openly carry taped up, battered machine guns in the streets and everyone wears a long dagger in their belt, but a full-blown war was taking things to a completely new level.

Just the day before we had visited the region’s largest open-air arms market. It was filled with men trying out Kalashnikovs, bazookas, Spanish handguns, heavy artillery and even tanks. It was one stop shopping for the rebellion that was taking place around us.

That phone call was just over 20 years ago in 2003. A small group of Zaydi fundamentalists, Ansar Allah or as they are more commonly known, the Houthis, took up arms against the longstanding strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Fighting never ceased and they continued to seize more territory until, in 2015, they captured the capital, Sana'a, and deposed Saleh's successor, Abdrabbo Mansur Hadi, who ended up in exile in Saudi Arabia.

A year later, Riyadh lead oan international coalition, which included neighboring states like the United Arab Emirates, to restore Hadi to power. Since then, this Saudi coalition and the Iranian-backed Houthis have been waging a proxy war between the regional superpowers.

But all this was until October 7^th and the Hamas war crimes in Israel and the subsequent genocidal invasion of Gaza by the Israelis. Seizing on the overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause locally, the Houthis began attacking Israeli-linked shipping vessels in the Bab al-Mandab strait and the Red Sea seaway that leads to the Suez Canal, thus threatening a substantial percentage of global ocean transport.

And then the tomahawk missiles began to rain down.

In retaliation to these attacks, US and British forces began hitting the Houthi forces with airstrikes and it’s the Yemeni people who once again suffer at the hands of outside forces.

Before the war in Gaza, Yemen was considered one of, if not the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. According to the UN, 4.5 million people have been displaced, while 24.1 million people, 80% of the population, are in need of humanitarian aid.

The last thing the country needs is to be drawn into an increasingly volatile conflict in the region. The first and immediate step that needs to be taken before the whole region is drawn into a wider scale war is a lasting cease fire 2000kms away in Gaza.

Lifting the Veil

The long Christmas season here in Spain is finally over and this week's Camino a Ítaca looks at stories and myth, the differences between them and who believes what. Click over to read the original artcile in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

Some Africans say that God made man because he liked to hear a story. And like God, we all like to hear them. But just when does a story make the mysterious journey and turn into myth?

People will believe something if they want to and will readily grab onto stories other people are telling if they like what they hear and it fits in with their worldview.

Take what just about everyone in Spain is celebrating today, the Three Wise Men. The myth is well known but the origin of the story is quite a bit more opaque. After all, they are only mentioned in one of the four gospels and Matthew doesn’t even reference how many there were, nor were any names given. The story ends there with the gold, frankincense and myrrh, with subsequent traditions embellishing the narrative.

It wasn’t sometime until around the 8^th century that they were assigned a number because of the presents they brought to the party, given names and subsequently birth places and therefore race. Their supposed relics were taken from Constantinople to Milan to where they have been since the 12^th century in their bling gold box in the ominous cathedral in Cologne.

But what happens when that myth is altered or even challenged? How does that change the narrative? A sterile polemic arose in Caceres the other day when the PSOE denounced that the town hall’s Christmas card had literally been whitewashed, with the removal of Balthazar.

It was imagined that the PP’s reliance on the ultra right was to blame for the removal. The polemic, however, was short lived when it was revealed that the very same image had been used the previous year when they were in power. By then it didn’t matter, the controversy was served.

But was the story so hard to believe?

The convenient alliances between myth and authority unravel the often delicate balance between enlightenment and indoctrination. Was it a message of intention?

The president of Extremadura herself once said that the neofacsist party dehumanized immigrants, of course that was moments before completely going against her sworn word and forming a coalition with them. Perhaps the openly xenophobic party that insists on the Christian roots of Europe was trying to Europeanize the roots of Christianity.

It has been the modus operandi of far-right movements across the world to take stories, manipulate them and turn them into myth. Then their takes are flogged to a conservative base that has been scientifically proven to hold more misperceptions and to be less able than others to distinguish (political) truths from falsehoods.

Take the violent assault on the American Capitol building. The world watched it live on TV, yet the right have now taken the story and turned in into a myth that it was just an exuberant crowd wanting a guided tour of the building. Or the even more disquieting attempts in places as diverse as Argentina and here in Spain to mythologize their bloody, criminal dictators as misunderstood benefactors.

Myths can serve a purpose and can be reinvented. This as long as they are understood as children eventually learn about the kings, that it’s just that a myth, not reality.