The WHOLE Cookie Jar

This week's Camino a Ítaca looks back to a time when I realized that all that glitters is definitely not gold. Despite the face it puts on regarding individual rights, when they come up against entities too big to fail, we know who the winner will be. Click over to read the original in Spanish or read the English below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

I remember it like it was yesterday. There on the news stood the prime minister of the country at the time, Jose Luis Zapatero, smirking like a five-year-old who had just stolen a cookie when he thought his mother wasn’t looking. Next to him stood the president of BBVA, Francisco Gonzalez Rodriguez. His smile was much less naïve and read something along the lines of a cartoon villain. It was the crooked look of the stereotypical bad guy from an 80s movie that had not only stolen a cookie, but had in fact stolen the deed to the entire jar. It was that kind of smile. The two leaders were giving a news conference where they both talked of their shared desire and compromise to make the workplace more flexible, more humane. A shared goal to transform the workplace into a space that would enable working parents to better conciliate their work-life balance.

My Spanish at the time was much weaker than it is now and I turned to my wife to make sure that I was understanding everything correctly, but she had no time to help. She had just come home for a quick bite to eat before having to return to her job at one of Mr. Gonzalez’s bank branches. Even though her contract officially stated that her workday ended at 3pm, she, and the rest of her colleagues who had recently joined the bank were well aware of the fact that those who ‘went the extra mile’ would be the ones that would have their contracts renewed. Those who worked for the hours that they were paid for, well Francisco’s snide grin said it all.

I remember that moment so well because it was one of my first awakenings to the fact the hypocrisy that I had experienced my whole life in North America, was also well-entrenched on this side of the Atlantic. We could delude ourselves in the belief that our ‘western’ democracies valued people’s rights above all else, but when those rights came into conflict with the interests of entities that are ‘too big to fail’, deep down inside we know who the winner will always be.

Fast forward to the small print in today’s news and I see that the banks are once again planning to make people’s working lives easier to conciliate with their families. This time by asking them to stay home permanently. Conservative estimates say that perhaps more than 10,000 jobs are set be lost in a banking industry that is still making profits. Yet suggest that the industry be reigned in and pay back the loans they received from the government after the last crisis and you’re branded a communist by those who claim to be on another ‘side’. Criticize the left for renouncing to represent the workers, you’re told you’re aiding the fascists.

And here’s where those smiles get even broader. Rather than confronting the real problems of our day to day lives during this global pandemic, we’ve somehow stepped back in time. Back to 1936 with slogans like liberty or communism or ‘o me votais a mi o vuelve el franquismo’ (vote for me or the fascists are coming) and that’s just where they want us. Squabbling over peripheral social issues instead of effecting deep systemic reform all the while they’re busy stealing the cookie jars. 

'My' Side, 'Your' Side

In this week's Camino a Ítaca I look back at a surreal experience in deepest Arkansas and how some feel the past so strongly that they actually feel a living part of it. Click over to the original in Spanish or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The poor woman had obviously had way too much to drink, and judging how the regulars at the bar judiciously avoided her, it probably wasn’t the first time she found herself face down in an ashtray. We took the locals cue and continued to ignore her when she suddenly lurched over the bar, knocking some of the other clients bottles over in the process, and repeated what she had been slurring for the past half an hour, “You goddam Yankees stole my niggers! You bastards took away my slaves!”

I have to admit that I was a little confused. At first, I didn’t have a clue what she was raving on about, seeing as I am Canadian and all. But there we were, taking a break between sets at a gig in a bar in the southern state of Arkansas when I realized that the woman had obviously overheard my bandmate’s accent. An accent that distinctly marked him, to anyone who had seen any of the Hollywood gangster movies, as someone who had grown up in one of the boroughs of New York City. Hearing it, she had decided to direct her drunken rage at us.

One mystery solved, but I was still confused.  

What had this woman been drinking that would lead her to believe that something that had happened more than a century ago was somehow a personal affront to her? What kind of selfish narcissism allowed her to believe that a historical event that happened so long ago was the main cause of her problems? What kind of substances had she ingested that would lead her to think that she was an actual combatant in a long dead war? Worse yet, what kind of person would want to identify with something as abhorrent and horrendous as slavery? Yet there she was, floundering like a fish in the growing pool of spilt beer on top of the bar. Something had drastically failed along her path.

She’s not alone in her lostness. Just a few months ago we saw enraged masses waving Nazi flags assaulting the US capitol building. A flag that symbolizes an ideology that half a million of their forefathers died fighting against. A flag that represents the nightmarish horrors of places like Auschwitz and Dachau. A flag they now called their own. Turn on the TV and you’ll see LGTBQ protestors proudly wearing Che Guevarra t-shirts, identifying themselves with a regime that would have had them sent to labour camps, and perhaps even executed for their orientation. We see nostalgic neocommunists tweet on their iPhones about the need to do away with private property before settling down to watch Netflix in a second flat that their parents’ bought. Closer to home here in Spain, politicians and their acolytes talk of winners and losers of a war that was fought generations ago. A civil war in which there were only losers among the masses. Yet, there is still talk of ‘your’ side and ‘mine’, as if their coiffed hair had suffered the lice of the trenches. As if I'm somehow a member of a side simply because I don't agree with you?

Ideals from the past can obviously be supported, just as they can be rejected. But to claim ownership of these, to somehow assert ones membership as part of something long past seems as delusional as that poor woman wriggling in that pool of cigarette butts and stale beer on that bar in lost Arkansas.

One of 'Ours'

Is he one of 'ours'?

This week's Camino a Ítaca takes me back on tour. Back to the days when I literally lived on the road and then zooms to the present and questions just how the regional government sees its citizen. Are you one of 'ours' or not? You can click over and read the original in Spanish or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

When I think back to it, it must have been quite the sight. There, in the oil-stained corner of a gas station parking lot, were four long-haired fifteen-year-olds trying their best to play African American music from the 1950s. The Blues had originated 3,000kms away in Mississippi, but here were four young kids trying their best, playing for tips in northern Canada. The music might not have been the best, but something must have worked, because the owner asked us to come back and even gave us some money for doing it and I’ve been playing music professionally ever since.

Music has its ups and down. I’ve had the pleasure to play for thousands of people on some nights, only to play for two drunks the next in some small town in the middle of Nebraska. One day it’s encores and congratulations and the next is a beer bottle thrown at you because you don’t play any country music. It was thanks to my guitar that I first crossed the Atlantic and got my first taste of European life. It was with a band that I first came to Spain back in the early 90s and first realized that it was a place that I would one day like to settle. It’s also from behind my guitar that I have explored remoter corners of Extremadura, from Talarrubias to Pinofranqueado.

I’ve been lucky enough to play with some of those who helped create that music from Mississippi and am thankful to have had the chance to record in some of the great temples of music, like Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland deep in the bowels of the village in New York City. It was a fun ride until one day, the music died.

It happened almost overnight. As the pandemic set in, mini tours and festival bookings from France to the Algarve vanished. A few brave souls have tried to resuscitate our moribund cultural scene, but as you look out from the distant stage to see white masks sitting two meters apart, unable to get a drink, dance or even go to the bathroom, it just doesn’t feel the same. Besides, how can you plan an entire tour when you don’t even know if you’ll be able to leave your house?

Like others, I was glad to see that the Junta then offered a grant to try and help those who had seen their livelihoods disappear and I sent in my application too. In reply, I got a letter saying that I needed a certificate proving that indeed I was an artist. In today’s world where everything can be seen on Facebook, including each and every mistake you make on stage, this seemed a bit Kafkaesque. That said, I suppose it wasn’t as bad as those poor souls who are something declared dead by the administration when they are, in fact, very much alive and kicking. I then read the fine print a little closer and the story morphed into something more sinister, a story more akin to something by Mario Puzo. Not only did I have to prove that I was in fact a musician, but that proof had to be in relation to the regional administration. It didn’t matter if you had played two hundred gigs that year, if you hadn’t worked for them, better luck next time.

Since I began living here, I’d always heard that quien hizo la ley hizo la trampa (literally those who make the laws know how to break them) but I never knew that it was also quien hace la ley certifica la trampa (those who make the law, certify the way to get around them).

The Cilice of Education

In this week's Camino a Ítaca we return to the trail of education and the challenges the kids face here in Extremadura, Spain. A place where 'no pain, no gain' is the way forward in learning. You can click over and read the original published in Spanish or read the English version below. (PDF en Castellano abajo)

I grew up in a staunchly monolingual part of a country that is officially bilingual. Even though I’m from a lost city out on the Canadian prairies, 3,000 kilometers from French-speaking Quebec, every single package has to be in both languages. With this in mind, my mother sent my brother and I to one of the public immersion schools in the city where we spent our mornings enveloped in the language of Voltaire while the world the surrounded the school sounded more like Margaret Atwood.

I remember opening the doors to the school and being shifted into an alternative reality. A world that contrasted sharply from the generalized prudish austerity of the Canadian prairies. It was a place where smartly dressed teachers from distant Montreal and even further off Bordeaux melded methodologies from both sides of the Atlantic.

I can’t help but compare my childhood commute to school with the lovely walk I have with my kids every morning here in Caceres, Spain. Here we walk past renaissance palaces to the soundscape of storks or swifts, depending on the season. A sharp contrast from my memories of shoveling half a meter of snow in minus thirty weather just to get to the sidewalk.

The contrasts don’t end there though. Schooling is quite different here, even if the education laws are similar, at least on paper. I remember having exams every semester or so when I was in school, but here one of my daughters sometimes has two, three and even four a week. Being from a different culture, I began asking what other parents thought and was alarmed at what I heard. While most seemed to agree that this incessant testing was excessive, some commented on the fact that the children might as well get used to it now, because as they advanced through the system things would only get worse. Powerful words like horrendous, terrible and suffering resounded and were some of the most common that I heard as we talking about this. Keep in mind, all of this when referring to the education of our children. I then became frightened for a moment. Did so many share the idea that children were meant to suffer? Was there some sort of psychopathic COVID side effect running rampant in society? Was there really a widespread desire to see kids suffer?

I then thought about it further and then realized that there actually might be some truth in what they were saying. In a region where around 30% (low-balling) will face a public exam that will determine their future, being good at taking exams isn’t just another life skill, it is the life skill. Forget actual learning, disregard interiorizing information and revision and don’t even consider learning by doing. The game here is to memorize, spit and forget. That’s how you get ahead and the sooner you learn how, the better. The platitudes you hear about the need to 'make an effort' really has nothing to do with actual learning and in fact translates into a view that one needs to suffer in order to learn. The prevailing concept of education is that it equates with suffering and penance. The alarm I heard wasn’t really a question of sadism, but actually a grumble of discontent and a rattle of resignation and surrender.

 The Spanish government can change the education law ten times more, but until it is capable of actually implementing the modern methodologies, complete with the key competences found in it, this prevailing view of the need to suffer will be passed on to yet another generation.

Jailing Songbirds

The bins are burning in Barcelona again (remind me to get into the replacement business there) for, what on the surface has been sold as a freedom of speech issue. And while freedom of speech does play a significant role in the case of a rapper sent to prison, his right to an opinion is eclipsed and sullied with the violence he espouses. This week's Camino a Ítaca looks at the need for free speech and those that I love listening to who have long demanded it. You can read the originally published piece here in Spanish or the English below. (version en castellano en PDF tambien abajo)

Rap just never did it for me. The ethereal sound of Johnny Hodges soloing over a Duke Ellington melody, the frantic fretboard work of Buddy Guy, the earnest exhortation to 'respect yourself' from Mavis Staples or the slick groove of Nile Rodger's Le Freak are all examples of Black music that I couldn't even conceive of life without. Rap though, just never resonated with me. I can appreciate it from a sociological perspective and recognize the undeniably crucial role that it has played in the black community throughout its ongoing struggle, but it just doesn't hit me the same way as Billie Holiday rasping about strange fruit swinging from the trees in the southern breeze.

But one thing is not to like it and another is to be sent to court for it.

Cities are burning at night in Spain for the words of an artist. An artist who has been sent to prison for praising terrorists and inciting violence, messages that clearly have no place in a modern democracy. What I can't understand though is that he has also been found guilty and fined for insulting a medieval idea, for insulting the 'crown'. It's something straight out of a Monty Python sketch or Mel Brooks movie, and would be as comical, if it wasn't so serious. Apparently it still is good to be the king and heaven forbid that one of his subjects were to question his divine right. If a hereditary job title wasn't atavistic enough, fining someone for the equivalent of scribbling on the bathroom walls is antediluvian. It's as absurd as taking a necromancer to court because they gave you the wrong lottery numbers or your pyromancer because she gave you the wrong job advice. It's a blind leap into a very dark past.

Paraphrasing Salman Rushdie, a man who knows a thing or two about medieval beliefs impinging on his freedoms, he once wrote that creativity not only needs freedom in order to thrive, but the very assumption of freedom. If an artist worries about whether or not they will be thrown in jail for their work in the future, then they are not free today. If there is a climate of fear regarding what you can do, create or say, then their art will not be shaped and determined by their talents but by fear.

Censorship is on the rise, and it's not only coming from fanciful crowns, conservative judiciaries or turbaned islamofascists. Interest groups, faith groups, gender warriors, anti-bull fighting lobbies, and safe-zone universities are all guilty of attempting to sanitize discussion and thought by censoring it completely. And for what? For fear of offending somebody, for fear of saying that Thor's hammer only exists in Marvel movies, for fear of hurting someone's feelings? This self-censorship not only stifles creativity but also drives loonier ideas into fetid, dark corners, allowing them to mutate and multiply rather than be exposed to the blinding light of truth and reason. If what the rapper said was indeed untrue, confront it with facts, not with excessive fines and prison sentences.

Blasphemy, elves, insults to the crown and those that wear them belong in fairy tales and have no place in modern legal codes. I may not like rap, but it's looking like we need to listen to the great man from Jamaica and Get Up and Stand Up, otherwise Sam Cooke's promised change will never come.

Bares, qué lugares

Empty streets with closed bars, Caceres, Spain

The Camino a Ítaca has been circling for weeks now, waiting for the city's plague status to be lifted. Cities and towns across the region, shut off from each other in order to try and stop the spread. One of the measures that has been taken is a complete shutdown of the restaurant and bar industry. You can feel their absence in the streets. Click over to read the original version in Spanish or read the English version below. (PDF version en castellano abajo)

I was completely baffled by them. No matter how hard I tried, I simply could not figure out how they were made. These mysterious, round, yellow creations that I had never seen before anywhere else in all my travels. Yet here in Spain, they were everywhere. How was it possible that the rest of the world didn't know about these secrets? There they were. Lined up under the steamy glass next to an entire host of other things that I was also entirely unfamiliar with, but needed to try. I spoke no Spanish at the time and hand gestures didn't help me find out more. What they could do though was get me another caña (little beer) and hopefully another slice of mystifying tortilla that accompanied every beer.

Here in Spain we take them for granted. They are on almost every other street corner, there is always one nearby when you need them and it's a simple fact that the Spanish do them better than anywhere else in the world. There simply is nothing like the Spanish bar in the rest of the world. Sure, you might see the word 'tapas' on the streets of Tel Aviv, Toronto or even Tokyo, but I guarantee that, no matter how hard they try, it just isn't going to be the same experience. That's because, even if the bar's owners are from Badajoz, or have learned from the best in Granada, it's the society around them that can't figure them out. How they intertwine with out daily lives. The word 'bar' might be a cognate in many different languages. It might be spelt the same and even sound similar, but the Spanish bar is in a league of its own.

Where else can you find sleepy red eyes ruminating over the first cup of coffee of the day elbow to elbow with someone with even redder eyes having the last drink before going to bed. Remember those stale, rancid peanuts that you were lucky to get when having a beer in Los Angeles? What about when you stepped off that bus in some small town in Holland and were hungry and the only thing you could find was a soulless vending machine? How about that glass of terrible wine you ordered in Berlin that cost you more than a bottle would here? Where do you turn after a dip in the sea or one of the natural swimming pools around the region? That civilized chiringuito of course.

Now, the streets have turned quiet. I see people shivering, huddled in corners with take out coffees, quickly getting their caffeine fix in silence. These very words, once read and commented on at the bar now glare at you from an omnipresent screen. More and more pensioners no longer bother to get dressed and go for their walk because there is no tertulia at the finish line.

So many lives and so much life has been lost to the pandemic. Those corners are emptying and with them a way of life. Because the bar is something more than just a place to get a drink. Look closely at the streets without them and what do you see? Just another hive of people, on repeat, going from their desks to their screens at home. Next stop: Socks with sandals and warm beer.

 

Groundhog Day

For close to 10 years I crisscrossed the land, playing the Blues in just about any place that would have us. I came to know our American brothers quite well and love them dearly. This week's Camino a Ítaca looks back and hopefully is wrong about the way forward. You can click over and read the original version here in Spanish (tambien se puede ver la version en castellano abajo en PDF) or read the English version below. 

So, it's finally over. After four years of seeing the name fester like a wound on every other page of the newspapers and after 1,500 days of listening to his name mangled and mispronounced on foreign television, it's finally come to an end. Trump and his particular brand of vileness has been ushered out of the White House and will once again return to being associated with real estate scams, bankrupt companies, failed business ventures, reality TV, porn stars and pedophiles. The failed Big Brother Washington edition experiment has come to a screeching trainwreck finish with its winner, or should I say loser, absconding in the dark of night. Leaving the cleaning crew the difficult job of trying to get rid of the stench of four years' worth of takeout food before the Biden's move back in. It's a reek that will linger over the country while making its way overseas for some time to come now.

From afar it seems almost incomprehensible. How was it possible that such an obvious huckster was able to cheat and lie his way into the most powerful position on earth? How could such a large percentage of the noble American public be duped into believing such an obvious snake oil salesman straight out of a cheap Western movie?

The answer may be simpler than you think.

It just might be that they felt that they had nowhere else to turn. On two of the most recent occasions they had indeed voted for the 'nice guy'. The one with the charming smile, the model family and who possessed the uncanny ability to form complete sentences. In the 90s they had tried it with Clinton and then after the debacle with the Texan, they gave it another try with Saint Obama. They deposited their vote with all of their, excuse the pun, hope and what did they get in return? Nothing.

After the punishing Regan-Bush Sr. years, the Democratic party saw the writing on the wall and completely turned its back on their traditional, working class power base and decided to get in bed with where the real power lie, big business. Those very people you now see, shouting out, correctly pronouncing the orange beast's name and insisting that the election was stolen used to be Democratic voters. In the 90s they saw with their own eyes Bill Clinton give the keys to the executive bathroom to the big tech companies, eviscerate what little welfare existed and then repeal banking regulations that had held the banks in check. They then watched while Obama bailed out the banks that started the great recession while starting seven new wars, and what happened? He got the Nobel Peace prize. The supposedly progressive party had accomplished things that conservatives could only dream of doing. This is why Hillary Clinton lost to an orange clown. The people felt they had nowhere to turn. Just watch as what little hope turns to more bitterness as the 78-year-old Washington lifer in fact, brings things 'back to normal'. It's a stark warning to governments around the world, start actually listening to and working for the people or the next Trump might not be so dumb.

When, where and How

This week's Camino a Ítaca looks at my passionate desire to be able to get back on the camino to Ítaca, or anywhere else for that matter. A desire to get back to some semblance of normalcy, to be able to move about and travel without fear and not dread the virus. Give me that jab as soon as possible, just tell me when, where and how. You can read the originally posted version in Spanish here or the English version below. También puede ver un pdf de la versión en español si se desplaza hacia abajo.

I could just barely see the fading evening light glinting off of the Caspian through the window. The table was set for guests with sweets, tea and sugar cubes that, as is custom in the region, are held under your tongue as you sip your unsweetened tea. My student and I were just about to explore the intricacies of English verbs when she noticed the time and asked if we could take a short pause. With that said, she nonchalantly rolled up her sleeve, reached over to a nearby table and grabbed an elastic band and then wrapped it tightly around her arm while holding one of the ends in her teeth. In order to somehow dissimulate my unease, I picked up my tea and practiced my tea drinking technique while I watched her pick up a needle and a vial of something and then slowly yet methodically, and with an obviously practiced manner, stick it in her arm. In a moment it was over and she put her tools back and turned to me, “Where were we?”

She noticed my surprise and apologized, “Sorry, but my doctor told me that I had to take my antibiotics regularly.” My face must have betrayed my startlement, and she went on, “That's right, in the West you normally take pills but during the USSR we usually took medicine like this and who can trust nurses these days. Like everyone else in the country, they will either want a bribe or who knows what they will shoot you up with.” It was true, the country had done a complete 180 and gone from Soviet-style communism to a particular totalitarian neofascism. Trust was in short supply, both sides had failed them. The poor Azeris like my student had suffered through two opposite yet equally dystopian regimes and could no longer trust anyone, driving them to the point where people were self-injecting themselves out of fear and distrust.

Think back to when you first heard the word Pfizer? Throw in words like Oxford and Moderna and your memory will jog back at least seven or eight month ago to when the first glimmer of hope of a vaccine appeared. Hope we might finally overcome this dreadful pandemic. Seven or eight months to prepare for one of the most complicated operations of our time. And yet, where are the vaccines? Trust in the vaccine you say? I don't know about you, but I would like it on a boat, with a goat, in the rain, on a train, in a box, with a fox, in a house, with a mouse, here or there, it in my eye, under my fingernail and even under my tongue if need be, but please make it available.

The inability to roll out this vaccine quickly and efficiently verges on criminal negligence. Partisan questions can be raised about whether the lockdowns were strict enough or if they were enacted in time, but no one, absolutely no one in their right mind can question the desperate need to get these vaccines into people as quickly as possible. If it takes McDonald's style drive-thru's like in Israel, so be it and if our leaders are too incompetent, too useless to do it, give it to me and, like my student, I'll take a chance.

Christmas Tales

Bir Ali, Yemen

Different places, different times, different Christmases. This week's Camino a Ítaca goes back to the beaches along the coast of Yemen in search of the Three Wisest of Men. Click over to the original piece in Spanish or read the English version below. Tambien se puede ver el original en castellano abajo en PDF.

Fingers of white sand scratched up the black, volcanic mountains flanking the half-moon bay. The sharp contrast gave the impression of an inverted black and white photograph of snow-capped mountains. Dun desert scrub extended beyond the lifeless bastions of rock and framed the image, making it seem even more like an old print from time gone by. Down below on the beach, a pair of unaccompanied camels plodded along the shore as the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Aden rolled out towards Somalia and the horn of Africa 300kms away across the strait.  

It was Christmas Eve and we were camping outside the tiny fishing village of Bir Ali on the near virgin coast of Yemen in hopes that the wild dolphins that frequent the bay would make an appearance while we were snorkeling.  

It was a reverse pilgrimage of sorts, the inverse of the scene that you see in so many homes at this time of year. This is because, according to local lore, one of history’s great enigmas began here. Those one-hit-wonder pop stars of classical antiquity that get only a brief, obscure mention in one of the gospels, yet whose image can be seen trotting towards miniature mangers all over the world. It was from this corner of Arabia Felix, that one of the Three Wise Men began his journey.  

It’s a claim that becomes all the more plausible if you consider the fact that this is one of the few places in the world that produces two of their three gifts, frankincense and myrrh. Rather than coming to us though, we had come to them. With what, I wasn’t so sure. 

In between swims I decided to climb up the craggy stones and see for myself just what was left of this biblical port that used to serve three different continents. Just a few years before, amphorae dating back to the first century that had sunk with one of the trade ships that ran from here to Africa, India and beyond had been found out on the reef. The draw of the story kept me going. 

Archaeology though, even on such an amateur level, is never easy and even more difficult in a country so beset with inner conflict, war and strife. Unless we found some more amphorae, goods like wine were impossible to find and the few cans of warm Heineken that we had managed to find on the black market looked like they had fallen off of the back of a truck, both literally and metaphorically. Bir Ali’s days as a major centre of trade between continents were long behind it. 

I finally reached the top and found nothing. Unless it was buried away under the sand, any real trace of what once was had disappeared. Their trail, and story, ended here. 

Years later I would find myself once again face to face with the kings, or at least their remains, this time in Cologne, Germany. Though their tale began in Yemen, it wasn’t until much later that they were ‘rediscovered’ in Europe in the fourteenth century and then go on to become central to so many Christmas carols, mantels and children’s wish lists. 

It was then, amidst the heaving Christmas crowds jostling to get a glimpse of the ornate golden coffer of bones, that the epiphany came to me. It’s not the facts that necessarily matter. It’s not necessarily even what actually happened. It’s the story and the power they have to keep us dreaming and rolling on. 

The True Doctrine

Conservatism's new defender, Isabel Ayuso

As 2020 limps to its end I see swarms of bats surrounding the frog symposiums that are advising the worm conventicle in the great corner of mud. The end may be near,  but end well it won't. This week's Camino a Ítaca looks at the fall of the Great Cheeto and steaming pile of excrement he leaves behind. Click over to read the originally published Spanish version or read the English version below. Tambien se puede ver el original en castellano abajo en PDF.

The heathens are at the gates. Their sordid encampments line the defensive walls of long-standing institutions, from the gluttonous streets of Washington to el Pazo de Meiras, el Palacio de la Zarzuela and the banks of the rio Cinca. Their long-planned assault will leave no one, born or unborn, unscathed and no establishment untouched. Segregatedmadrasas run by smarmy Opus Dei sycophants are frantically looking for new sponsors and are beefing up security. Even in the Sierra de Madrid, surveillance has had to be stepped up at the Prince of Vallecas’ retreat in Galapagar.

Gente de bien in their desperation have been seen fleeing across the Pyrenees en route to Switzerland with their passports and bank books held firmly between clenched teeth. Those without the means or Swiss bank accounts are being rallied to take up arms in their stead to do battle in each new sortie of the culture wars.

With the impending fall of Christendom's greatest defender of conservative ideals, the twice divorced reality TV star with a penchant for pornstars, a great howl of grief has been heard across the conservative world.

In between shock, disbelief and outright delusion, rallies are being held in Atlanta, Warsaw, Budapest, Downing Street and la calle Bambú in support of the man who once proudly boasted that if Ivanka wasn’t his own daughter that he’d perhaps be dating her. Like it or not, conservatism's greatest champion since Henry Kissinger and his network of friendly dictatorships on the ‘right’ side of the political spectrum is going to have to tell the movers how to pack up his vast collection of remote controls and take-out menus.

Things look grim and losing the election might turn out to be the least of Trump’s worries. Calls have been put in to the self-exiled former King of Spain about the best 'clubs' with dinner service in Abu Dhabi and tentative hotel reservations have been made in Riyadh in case the FBI come knocking. This season of the most crass Reality Show the world has ever known is coming to an end.

The smoking detritus of the global political landscape left in his oily wake reminds us where he’s taken us. A legacy that leaves a world in which we see ideas that once would have been called outright lunacy, now debated and even considered, rebranded as alternative facts.

The art of lying is nothing new to politics and politicians. Nevertheless, Trump’s incorporation of the dictatorial, thuggish technique of doubling down on lies when confronted and then threatening his accusers with veiled violence is something new to press conferences outside of Pyongyang. And it works.

It’s a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed around the world. Admirers copy his tweets into Google translate and paste them into local contexts, railing against those who then challenge them. Chats from high-ranking ex-military officials openly discussing killing off 26 millionreds, children included, barely register a blip in the media in the post-Trump world. Opponents are now enemies and are to be dealt with accordingly.

Meanwhile, strategists working for the opposite side of the spectrum plot to create Orwellian Ministries of Truth in supposed attempts to stop the ‘fake news’ of their opponents.

Paraphrasing Ambrose Beirce at the beginning of the last century, there are those who are enamoured of existing evils and those who wish to replace those evils with others. The genie is out of the bottle and with the brutal bleeding hangover no one remembers where the instructions are to put it back in.

Pastel a-la Celaá

Crucifixes in classrooms

Next stop on the Camino a Ítaca is a look at how you can indeed have your cake and eat it too...as long as you 'believe'. You can read the English below or click over to the original in Spanish. You can also find the Spanish version in  PDF format at the bottom of the page. Tambien se puede ver el original en castellano abajo en PDF.

I’ve always loved proverbs. Like linguistic snapshots, they are able to say more than a thousand words in so few. It also intrigues me that many languages tell their stories in similar refrains. In both Spanish and English we search for needles in haystacks, look for worms early in the morning and recognize that it’s always best to have a bird in hand than many beyond your reach.

It therefore came as quite a surprise then to me when I couldn’t find a satisfying Spanish equivalent to the English proverb, ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it too.’ A metaphor we have all wished for at some time in our lives.

I searched for sometime until I finally found something similar yet that meant the direct opposite. It’s a saying that suggests that you can in fact have your cake and eat it too. The proverb is, ‘la escuela concertada,’ also known as private schools that are financed with public funds. That curious Spanish institution, or better said, hangover from darker times that freely allocates public funds to institutions that, in their majority, answer to a foreign city-state. Schools that gladly take the money given to them by the state yet who reluctantly, and at times directly refuse to abide by rest of the rules and regulations dictated by Spanish law.

The ninety-seventh odd change to the Education law has brought religion and its place in schools to the forefront once again. A revolution complete with beastly scenes in parliament of deputies shouting ‘freedom’, somewhat ironically demonstrating our Darwinian linage with apes. Simians protesting that their rights will somehow be infringed upon by the supposed threats to their ‘cake’ and their ‘right’ to segregated schools that concur with their values.  

But what about the rights of the kids?

Parents may choose the tell their children that the world is flat or that the virus doesn’t exist. The state however cannot classify children as Catholic, Muslim or Jewish, just as it would be absurd to see them classified as Socialists, Monarchists or Real Madridists. Children are children and balanced, equal access to quality education is their right.

The cognitive dissonance that must reverberate in some of the kids’ heads must be extreme. In one class they learn about the millions of years that it has taken for different species to evolve, only to be told in another that the earth was created in six days with a sky god taking a siesta on the seventh? In one class they learn that men and women have equal rights, yet in the next they find that women were fashioned from the rib of a man and should be submissive in learning and to their husbands. It’s the equivalent of going from astronomy class to astrology or from chemistry to alchemy class.

Then there are the supposedly distinct values that these private fiefdoms espouse. Schools funded by the state should focus on the values that are encompassed in the constitution and not be the source of fear and abuse. Telling children that their friend, aunt or neighbor will spend eternity broiling in a lake of fire for being non-believers or loving whoever they want is child abuse. Twisted cruelty like this is for some reason permissible in other temples, but it cannot be in temples of learning.

The Spanish education system is grievously flawed, but running away from its defects and creating splinter groups helps no one. It’s time to extract imaginary problems from the debate and focus on real, tangible change because no se debe querer estar en misa y repicando. (be in mass and ringing the bells at the same time. My closest translation.)