Number No Longer in Service

This week's Camino a Ítaca asks whatever happened to good 'ol fashioned miracles? It seems that the dead no longer walk and the seas no longer part. But hell, that doesn't stop people from asking. All this and more is explored in my soon-to-be-published book. Stories Left in Stone. Trails and Traces in Cáceres, Spain. Click over to read the originally published piece in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

What ever happened to good old-fashioned miracles? Those shock and awe events that convinced the otherwise cynical to put aside their previous beliefs and embrace a new faith. And by this I don’t necessarily mean the kind that are written about on papyrus and which create religious dogma, like Palestinians walking on water, bearded men driving motorways through the Red Sea, raising the dead or even talking donkeys (Numbers 22:21-39). I suppose that these feats use up a lot of spiritual energy and can only happen every other millennia or so.

I was thinking more along the lines of more recent wonders. Like those mysterious women who appear to young girls in the countryside surrounding places like Fatima and Lourdes. Are children too engrossed in their screens to notice gossamer floating ladies anymore or are they too protected to allow strange apparitions to approach them? Or maybe it’s the socialists who are to blame for their absence. After all, these kinds of miracles always seemed to appear to the humble and illiterate. Perhaps the steady increase of standards of living and near complete literacy rate have something to do with the recent dearth of levitating maidens in grottos.

Then there are the Virgins that once lay hidden in the fields, forests and mountains across the land. Why haven’t any of them appeared to shepherds and the like in the past 500 years? I recently wrote a travel book on the province of Caceres that is coming out on Tuesday that explores these mysteries and asks some of these questions. Have they all been discovered? Will there be no more supernatural events like Gil Cordero’s sacred cow? And if they do appear, would the church be able to useAznar’s law and register the surrounding land as their own without any need ofland deeds or even proof?

All this makes you wonder, is the Christian God still in the miracle business? Or is he busy ensuring that millstones get hung around the necks of pedophile priests before drowning then in the depths of the sea?

One thing is for sure, it is not for the lack of the faithful trying to get the big guy in the sky’s attention. Here in Spain the calendar year is jam packed with Virgins getting carried around the country. From an outsider’s perspective, these Marianist images seem to serve as local telephone operators for the faithful with a direct line to a more distant divine. Interlocuters that intercede and relay people’s prayers to God. They act as perceptible go-betweens with the Almighty while providing a convenient out when prayers aren’t answered.

Here in Caceres, the local Virgin and 'honorary mayor' is being paraded around town to celebrate its centenary of canonical coronation and you can imagine they prayers being asked. I imagine big prayers like peace in the Middle East are directed straight to the Big Man while more local affairs are left to the Virgin. Perhaps a stop to the carcinogenic mine? Decent rail service? A government that seriously invests in public health so that ‘miracle’ cure prayers can be answered?

Whatever the case, *I just came here to talk about my book.

*a phrase that became famous in Spain when a well known writer got terribly angry on a TV program and said this.

A Ship Made of Paper

An unforeseen health scare and stay in the hospital in today's Camino a Ítaca. Public healthcare systems around the world are under attack and without extreme vigilence, many countries could soon wind up like the United States. All's it takes is a vote in the right direction. Click over to read originally published version in Spanish or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

We were looking out the wide picture windows when my friend Jill turned to me and said, “It’s like we’re on an ocean liner but instead of the sea we’re sailing across dehesa and golden steppe.” And it was true the modernist building sort of projected itself over the savannah-like landscape towards the fringe of blueish mountains in the distance.

The view was extraordinarily beautiful, but the situation certainly wasn’t. I had been admitted to the new hospital in Caceres with something rather serious and painful and I had been taking refuge for several days in my incredible view from the area where you would have expected to see another patient’s bed as I awaited the results of test after test. The thoroughness and professionality of the entire staff was truly remarkable. The camaraderie and the general care was outstanding. Their pride in their work showed in every little thing they did.

“I immediately fell in love with this landscape on the train ride in more than thirty years ago,” Jill recalled, “it’s as far away from my northern English moors that you can get, but it still gave me a similar peace.” And I knew exactly what she meant, the view outside the window was an entirely different landscape from that I grew up with seeing the great plains of Canada running off towards the immense pine forests that crowd the skirts of the Rocky Mountains, but there was some sort of symbiosis between the three open landscapes.

Spain does so many things well, from its gastronomy, to sport, to its tolerance and generosity. There are so many things that this country can be proud of. But perhaps one of its most impressive achievements is something that many simply take for granted: its healthcare system. Spain punches above its weight in many things, like its patrimony and tourism, but it’s its healthcare system that few, if any country can challenge.

And that’s what confuses me.

So much national indignation is immediately raised when there is a perceived slight towards an institution the nation cherishes, like when someone abroad throws chorizo inwith their paella. But where is this damaged pride, this generalized outrage at the clear and ongoing attempts to dismantle the public healthcare system?

It takes a special kind of evil to provoke conflicts and sell arms to each side, privatize access to water or sabotage public healthcare systems, but I hope there is an even more special place in purgatory designated for public officials who deliberately underfund public institutions to justify their gradual privatization.

But how do they get away with this?

Simple really. People don’t necessarily vote in their own interests. They lead more with their identity and their desire to be associated with an elite who can afford private care. It’s intertwined with that instinctual conservative aversion to the word public, to the idea that someone they believe ‘inferior’ to them can actually enjoy the same rights.

Jill and I both knew about the disaster that continual cutbacks and privatization brought about in our respective countries. It’s time to make the healthcare system the new paella and defend it with the same energy and zeal.