Madrid, The Fascist Riviera

In this week's Camino a ÍtacaCamino a Ítaca a look at the recent Fascist Fest in Madrid, where the Spanish capital was momentarily converted into Neofascism ground zero. Click over to read the original version in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The only pictures that were missing were those of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Darth Vader. The rest were a literal who’s who of the global fachosphere. It was an event that promised performances by the horsemen and, surprisingly enough women, of the looming illiberal apocalypse.

Well known fascists like the seriously unhinged president of Argentina, Javier Mieli, the grand dame of France’s ultraconservatives, Marie Le Pen, a televised appearance by Italy’s Mussolini admiring prime minister, Georgia Meloni, the Islamophobic Zionist and Minister of Diaspora Affairs of Israel, Amichai Chikli, the contingent from neighbouring Portugal represented by Chega’s leader Andre Ventura, who’s proposed measures are a specific confinement plan for Roma communities and their local host, the man who has never had a job outside the public administration, Santiago Abascal all would be on hand to share their neofascist ideas and hatred of liberal, Western democracy.

It was an event that promised to make the Palacio de Vistalegre in Madrid ground zero for the different neofascist movements from around the world. Each with their own specific holy book under their arms, from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the Trump authorized Bible, the Torah, el Cantar de Mio Cid and Mein Kampf, they networked with the likeminded.

You might wonder what might draw people with such disparate ideas, from outright Holocaust deniers with staunch Zionists on the same stage. But while they might differ on certain ideas, what they all share is a common, deeply held belief that some people are inherently better than others.

Whether they be Abascal’s illusory Hispanic race, or Chikli’s chosen people with a land deed granted them directly from a celestial sky god, each movement depends on a scapegoat for their existence. Many of them may not even support anything, or at least have any coherent proposals, but what they all share is the idea that ‘the other’ is to blame for all the world’s problems. They promise that life would be better if it just weren’t for that marginalized community, be they Muslims, homosexuals and transexuals, scientists, atheists, Roma, and yes, even Jews. And we know where that once led, except for the holocaust deniers of course.

What would bring someone to actually support such unpleasant, toxic views is hard to fathom, that is until I spoke to one of their supporters and they explained  their reasoning and new found faith. This was someone who had traditionally been on the left, but felt that they no longer represented him.

The left had abandoned their central purpose of improving worker’s rights, reducing workdays, increasing pay, bettering education and health care and instead had embraced the cultural wars on issues that really only affected a very small minority of people and had no effect on him. Life was not getting better and in fact was getting worse. With the cost of living almost doubling, life and become a struggle.

It was then that he said the most chilling thing. “If the economy and life isn’t getting any better for me, I don’t want to see it getting better for anyone and that’s why I support them.”

Now are nihilistic words the horsemen can definitely feed off of.

Little Sailors on Leave

In this week's Camino a Ítaca, a look at a piece of Spain that is in flux. Not-so-slight shifts in social contexts, yet some adherence to the norm. Click over to read the originally published version in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo) 

Personally, I miss the little sailor suits. They are one of those small pieces of disappearing Spain, like bares de toda la vida, that are quietly slipping away as tastes evolve. While I’m sure the parents were somewhat well meaning, but the years of therapy provoked by looking back on those photos surely tells a different story.

When I first arrived here in Extremadura I remember being baffled by the little white suits with mariner capes in all the springtime shop windows. I asked myself, why were they selling little sailors costumes here in this landlocked region so far away from the sea? Was it some sort of noncoastal yearning for the ocean?

And then communion season began. The weekend streets were flooded with those suits from the shop windows. Crowds of young boys looking like little sailors on leave, anxiously trying not to get dirty, tacitly obeyed their smartly dressed parents drinking cañas (little beers). The little girls looked even more uncomfortable, dressed in impossible looking wedding dresses that made climbing stairs and even sitting down at the restaurant difficult.

Then I remember the polemic that was raised when a travel writer from the New York Times wrote that children in Spain looked like colorized photographs from the past for the way that they were dressed. The uproar and indignation was akin to chorizogate when the British chef, Jamie Oliver put chorizo in his paellas. Yet when you looked around, you had to admit that the Times writer wasn’t entirely off the mark in her observation.

But tastes change and styles evolve. The sailors on leave are far and few between these days. Now on the streets it seems that the style has moved more towards the smart casual style favored by peperinos at their summer rallies. Little neocayetanos with pastel colored shirts and light sports jackets, sometimes even with the sleeves rolled up, look much more comfortable, preppy with just a hint of modernity.

The girls however haven’t been lucky enough to undergo the 2.0 makeover. Their dresses have only become more ornate, if possible, somewhat disturbingly making them seem even more like underaged brides.

But beyond the ornate ostentatiousness of it all, what remains a mystery to someone like me from outside is why they even do it at all? I have yet to hear a child say they actually enjoy catechesis and the borderline abuse of being told that their friend’s two mommies will spend eternity in a vat of boiling sulfur in purgatory. In fact, what I more often hear is that they never want to go to another mass again. From the outside it seems like some sort of twisted revenge on the part of the parents. If I had to suffer through this, you do too.

It would be consistent if these people were in fact believers, initiating their children into the catholic faith, but the overwhelming majority will not set foot in a church again until the next funeral. In a way, making fun of true believers. According to the CIS, less than 19% of the population declare themselves as practicing Catholics yet almost 50% of Spanish kids will take the first communion.

Blessed indeed are the incoherent.