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.

Lex Luthor's Kryptonite

In this week's Camino a Ítaca a look into whether they have found a way to pierce the shield of lies and fabrications. Have they found the kryptonite to fight the far right cordyseps? Click over to read the original version published in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

Once it seemed an impossibility. Since the phenomenon first raised its evil orange head, it looked like there was no stopping it. There was seemingly no way to halt its progress and it quickly metastasized. It showed no known weaknesses. It was a political ebola virus that rendered its victims like zombies. It was a far right-wing cordyceps that seemed to take over people’s minds and make them immune and even reactionary towards truth, reason, facts and plain old decency.

No one really believed it had a chance at first. Even those from the party he recently chose to invade didn’t believe it at first. Robert Kagan, an influential member of the Republican party at the very beginning once wrote, “This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes, but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac 'tapping into’ popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party – out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear – falling into line behind him.” The orange cordyceps had found a host and there was no stopping its growth.

Trump himself once boasted, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" And he seemed to not have been exaggerating. He’s been liable of sexual assault, yet the Christian right in the country see him as a saviour of the faith. He has now been convicted on 34 felony counts for paying hush money to a porn star for a fling they had and instigated a violent attack on the Capitol building resulting in the deaths of police officers, yet the party that once claimed it was the party of Law and Order still blindly support him. And on top of that, there are many, but many more possible convictions in the wings. The cordyceps was invincible.

That is until a tired, yet overly proud old man decided, or more likely, was convinced to step aside and Trump’s kryptonite was discovered. Up until then, the left and the reasonable right had always attempted to combat his barrage of mistruths, distortions and all and out lies with cold hard facts. But as his mentor Goebbels once stated, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Those immune to the orange virus had been fighting it with antiquated methods. They were following outmoded rules of engagement that civil society once held true. This far right monster needed a new line of attack.

The recent Democratic congress demonstrated that the counter narrative doesn’t necessarily consist of trying to disprove their constant lies, but more taking their own words and exposing them to harsh light of day and truth. These people are ‘weird’. It is not normal to want to ban books. It is not normal to desire a theocracy, it is not normal to wish for the end of democracy. It’s plain weird.

And the new tact seems to be working. They have found their Achille’s heel. Now if only those still uninfected here in Spain take note and learn how to turn the tide.

The (mascaraed) Wolves from Little Red Riding Hood

Revisionism at its worst in today's Camino a Ítaca. Thinly veiled genocidal thoughts from those that would happily liquidate those that think differently. The American right takes a scary turn as they praise one of the most bloody dictatorships of the 20th century here in Spain. Click over to read the originally published version in Spanish in the HOY, or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The phrase on X (formerly Twitter) was equal parts dangerous and threatening. Its reckless ignorance and skewed revisionism instantly sent chills up the spines of anyone who values freedom and democracy. It instantly evoked violent images of people being lined up against pockmarked walls and being shot or being thrown out of helicopters over the sea.

“Basically, America is going to need a Protestant Franco.”

The world ‘fascist’ gets thrown around a lot these days. Not since the dictator died peacefully in his sleep or his political progeny founded the beginnings of the PP has the word been so in vogue. Its use to label what is going on in the growing far right movements around the world could even, at times, be described as overuse. For some it has become a kneejerk epithet for anyone holding conservative views, thus diluting its real meaning in its overemployment. Well, that is until it isn’t and is used to accurately depict something.

It seems the alt-right in the United States has found a new (for them) symbol. They now extol in the brutal, long-ruling Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco. The man who worked with like-minded fascist dictators like Hitler and Mussolini to overthrow a democratically elected government and murdered more than a hundred thousand innocent civilians whose only crime was that they ‘thought differently’.

If anyone, here is a man who can accurately be labeled as a fascist and has now become a sort of prototype of the type of government that the far right would like to install in the United States and elsewhere. He has become an avatar of religious authoritarianism and their model for confronting the left in the United States and around the world.

But these elegies are not coming out of the dank, dark corners of the deep internet from nostalgic forty-year-old trolls who still live their parents and have never had a girlfriend. This outright praise for authoritarianism and pure fascism is coming from none other than one of the candidates for vice president of the United States, J.D. Vance.

Trump’s smarmy looking running mate, who has the distinct air of one of those preachers who are caught fellating strangers in truck stops, recently provided a blurb and praise for a book called ‘Unhumans’. It’s a conspiratorial screed that argues that leftists don’t deserve the status of human beings — that they are, as the title says, unhumans — and that they are waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent, which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped. And the man who supports these ideas could be an eighty-year-old heart attack away from being the most powerful man in the world.

The far right here in Spain know that to show such outright support for the caudillo is still, on the majority, politically noxious. They are still at the stage of being wolves in sheep’s clothing even if you can easily see their ears. But support like this from principal figures from the right from the most powerful country on earth could embolden them beyond simply revoking historical memory laws where they used to govern. The question is, can’t everybody see the wolves?

The Prosecutor vs. the Felon

In this week's Camino a Ítaca we divert our gaze away from Spain to across the Atlantic to matters that will have global implications. The irony of it all supercedes anything writers can produce. Click over to read the originally published version in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo) 

It’s a situation that would supersede the great Oscar Wilde’s ironic capabilities and one which would perhaps leave the gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson at a loss for words due to its inherent absurdity.

But after Biden’s slow motion car crash into forced retirement, the United States is now faced with a situation where a Black woman candidate is infinitely more viable than two white men: the incumbent and his ex-president opponent.

A woman who for years as a public prosecutor put criminals like her opponent in prison now stands a very good chance of becoming the next President of the United States and by proxy, of the free world. And the underlying irony is what she represents, precisely everything that her opponent, the convicted felon fears.

It is sad that there are people who cannot and/or will not allow themselves to be convinced by logic but here we have a woman with an exemplary public record standing against a convicted criminal.

Her opponent is a man whose supporters innocuously believe will somehow maintain and defend their Christian values, yet willingly overlook the reality. This is a predator who has often boasted about how his popularity enabled him to freely grope women’s genitals and who has been convicted of paying hush money to a porn star for an affair they had. And then on top of that, someone who has been convicted, not simply accused, of sexual assault.

They also fervently believe that this shyster is some sort of wizard with money management, yet forget or ignore that he has had to file for bankruptcy…six times. Despite all this, his cult followers continue to light candles for this exposed used car salesman.

They seem to be willing to overlook all of this to support someone who will defend that deep down conservative fear that someone somewhere they consider inferior to themselves is unjustly being treated as their equal.

The thing is, much more that the coddled billionaire who inherited his wealth, Kamala Harris is a much more accurate representation of what the United States is today. She is the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants. Yet in the mind of the American public, Harris’s Blackness wins out; her South Indian ethnicity demoted to a secondary, apolitical category.

Her blended family aligns with modern America: she is a stepmother to the children of her spouse; she does not seem to have a relationship to the long-suffering wifedom that plagued the last female candidate, Hillary Clinton. 

It contrasts so sharply with her bigoted opponent. It’s easy to forget that his political career began with a campaign to convince the public that Obama was not born in the United States. This past week has seen him awkwardly trying to figure out how to hate Harris from scratch when it seems likely that any of his infamous slanderous slogans will somehow fly back in his face.

Faced with all of these incongruities, I’m reminded of the 19th century escaped American slave, Frederick Douglass’ words when speaking about the fourth of July under slavery. “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.”

If that’s what it takes, then so be it.

Ode to Reason

This week's Camino a Ítaca asks if such a thing exists as fascist children's literature. A few trolls came out their lairs and found me on this piece. Their comments are hallucinatory, if a bit frightening. Click over to read the originally published piece in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

Do fascists read? And if they do, do they read things like poetry? They more than likely reread speeches by Hitler, Mussolini and our local Gallego contingent but do they venture much further? We all know they have a particular penchant for banning books and even organizing barbeques over them on special occasions. Worse yet, they even have an unfortunate history of murdering those who write them and dumping them in mass graves. But do they actually read them?

We know that they certainly don’t like many poets. Just after the civil war ended a fascist triumphant wrote about some of Spain’s greatest poets in the ABC, “Alberti, Cernuda, Miguel Hernández, Altolaguirre, en el verso, son los tristes Homeros de una Ilíada de derrotas. Porque sólo fulge el soneto como un diamante cuando lo talla una espada victoriosa...son unos poemas de laboratorio, sin fuerza ni hermosura, equívocos, cobardes y llorones.”

("Alberti, Cernuda, Miguel Hernández, Altolaguirre, in verse, are the sad Homers of an Iliad of defeats. Because the sonnet only shines like a diamond when it is cut by a victorious sword...they are laboratory poems, without strength or beauty, equivocal, cowardly and weeping.")

So if they do read, the question is what do they read? What kind of stories do they read to their children? Are their children’s books about typical things like sharing, helping others and learning to work within a community or are they more about feeding the weakest members of society to the wicked witch and then selling their repossessed homes to international vulture investment funds?

They do tout their Christianity often, so perhaps the bible is high up on their reading list. But if you look closely at their rhetoric, it has a much more Old Testament vibe to it, more about supporting genocides and persecuting the ‘other’, than the Sermon on the Mount.

So how do they express themselves culturally?

We know that they have a particular penchant for jingoistic, Wagnerian marches, awkwardly goosestepping through squares, forming pogroms, organizing masses in front of Ferraz and villainizing MENAs, but other than that, what are their cultural representations beyond nazi salutes and mass executions?

In Caceres it seems that they have a thing against the renowned poet and children’s literature writer, Gloria Fuertes. Gone are the days of lining writers they don’t like against walls, shooting them and dumping them in unmarked graves, so now they have resorted to different measures.

The far right have taken orders from Madrid and decided to make things uncomfortable for the PP beyond the regional level and have moved their battle to the town halls where they have influence. In Caceres they have presented a motion to change the name of a central children’s playground from Gloria Fuertes to a curious substitute.

Rather than choosing Primode Rivera or any other of the leaders from their fascist pantheon, they have proposed naming if after the princess Leanor, the granddaughter of the man who ultimately betrayed them and went against the caudillo’s wishes and transitioned Spain from being a fascist theocracy to a modern European constitutional monarchy.

In doing so they once again prove that they have absolutely no recipes for bettering the lives of the citizens of the country they claim to love so dearly. All the while wasting the time and energy of the government on matters that might resound with a small portion of their electorate but in the end matter nothing to the general public.

The Tyranny of the Tale

In this week's Camino a Ítaca a look at how narrative and storytelling can influence the way people think and even make them overlook facts. Click over to read the originally published piece in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

If you heard the phrase ‘Having been said and said and said’ or ‘Beyond seven mountains, beyond seven forests’ or ‘Once in the old days when tigers smoked’ it probably wouldn’t mean anything to you. In fact, the phrase itself might not even make sense.

But if you change these set phrases slightly to ‘once upon a time’, suddenly an entire world blossoms. Our minds open up and instantly get ready for a cortisol (encouraging attentiveness) and oxytocin (encouraging connection) boost. Upon hearing those words, our instinctual pattern-seeking minds make themselves ready for a tale.

Story lulls. It pushes us into the realm of imagination and it encourages the listener to overlook and even ignore facts. Details are sometimes amplified and at times muted or erased and apparent irrelevancies can be integrated or thinned.

As the writer Yuval Noah Harari has described it, “Homo sapiens is a storytelling animal that thinks in stories rather than in numbers or graphs, and believes that the universe itself works like a story, replete with heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions, climaxes and happy endings.” In essence we are persuaded more by story than by statistics; we recall facts, even if they are dubious, longer and are more apt to believe them if they are embedded in narrative.

The far right have come to understand this human trait and now weave grotesque fictional tales across the global political landscape. Truth no longer matters and political messages are now couched in fables, complete with good and bad guys and epic battles between biblical good and evil.

Faced with policy failure or even a complete lack of policy in most cases, the far right have adopted George Bush Jr’s political strategist’s infamous approach. Karl Rove called it the Sheherazade strategy. A chimera that goes like this. When you have nothing to say, and nothing to lose, start telling stories.

But not just any story.

They create stories so fabulous, so spellbinding and yet so untrue, that Sheherazade’s sheik, or in our case, the voting public forgets all about the actual truth and sink into the tale.

With stories, there is no longer any need to bother with the truth. A look back to the recent debate between Trump and a tired Biden highlights this. Trump has long been a used snake oil salesman, a shyster and a con artist, but during the debate he didn’t even pretend to bother with the truth. Fact checkers have shown that he told a lie every ninety seconds during the debate. And as these lies were camouflaged in story, his followers believe.

It's a strategy that has been adopted by the far right here in Spain and has led to their success in entering regional governments like here in Extremadura and which may even lead to a democratically elected Vichy 2.0 government in France tomorrow.

It is pointless for democrats to fight fake facts, or true but cynically twisted facts, with other facts. The new stories we need to tell are not just the corrections of fake stories, they need to be new visions. Visions that create hope rather than the distortions and lies on sale from the ultra right.

Fiesta of Futility

It's summer fiesta season here in Spain and in today's Camino a Ítaca we look one of the most widely extended fiestas takes place, the Fiesta of Futility, the 'oposiciones'. Click over to read the originally published piece in Spanish in the HOY the originally published piece in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

It’s that time of year again. It’s when every town in the region gears up for their summer festivals. And today one of the only festivals that encompasses the entire autonomous community will take place. It’s the biannual, or in this case annual, Sisyphean fiesta of futility.

It’s a fiesta that reenacts the Greek myth where Sisyphus was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down again, incessantly having to repeat this pointless task for eternity in Hades.

In what is perhaps the biggest waste of time and energy that this country ever produces, today thousands of opositores for education will sit their meaningless exam in the hope of securing one of the few plazas on offer this year.

And it makes no sense at all.

Yet it’s something so accepted by the educational community that these exams are something akin to the sun rising in the East, something immutable, unchangeable and permanent.

Yet in few other country in the world do public systems choose their teachers in this manner. In other countries, like my native Canada, teachers are chosen on their merit and their ability to teach, not their ability to memorize 69 topics on various subjects, many of which have absolutely nothing to do with teaching.

In other countries teachers apply for jobs just as they would any other job and they are hired if the school considers them the right fit for the job or not. And after a trial period, and as with other jobs, if they aren’t the right fit, they are asked to leave.

Yet here in Spain teachers aren’t chosen on their merits or their abilities as teachers. They are chosen on their ability to memorize this enormous list. If you take a secondary English teacher for example, some of the more useless topics include the history of the Norman conquest, the socioeconomic development of Great Britain in the XVIII century and the historical evolution of the United States.

This means that the person chosen to teach our children may have been able to memorize the names of every president of the United States but may only have a tenuous understanding of things like second language acquisition theory, how to motivate teenagers or even have the vocation for teaching. Yet, once they pass the exam they have a job for life. It’s like the administration is at odds with itself, not trusting their own universities to train their prospective teachers adequately.

Even if they do pass the impracticable exam, they may not even get a position and the boulder rolls down the hill. Rather than devoting their time and energy on training, mentoring, class planning and working to become better professionals, these poor Sisypheans are doomed to return to studying the useless topics for their next opportunity at the exam and may lose a decade or more of time which could have been better employed at becoming better teachers. 

If the administration is truly interested in bettering our education system, it’s time to stop obsessing about the curriculum and take a deep look at how those who impart it are chosen.

Up to Here!

In this week's Camino a ÍtacaCamino a Ítaca a look at how a hard, rightwing shift in UK politics robbed me of a democratic right. Click over to read the original version published in Spanish in HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo) 

It was a proto neofascist that took away my right to vote tomorrow. It was an opportunistic self-serving buffoon, a charlatan, a fraudster, a Perses of politics whose rhetoric eventually robbed me of the right to democratically express myself in the place that I live…and strangely enough it wasn’t the fellow clown and recently convicted felon, Donald Trump, who deprived me of that.

As a dual UK/Canadian citizen, I once was able to vote in the European elections here in Spain. But that was before the little island fell off the continent and was swept into the rightwing populist sea. That was a time before Nigel Farange and the far right populism of UKIP wormed their way into the heart of traditional British conservatism. Once there, they yanked the party so far to the right that they eventually pushed the country off the precipice in the absurd and senseless harikari known as Brexit.

The country now lies shattered, a mere shadow of what it used to be. Every single lie that was promised has proven to be untrue. The far right’s dream of divesting itself from Europe and its health regulations has led to disasters like unrestricted water companies dumping thousands of tons of raw sewage in the waters around Britain’s most popular beaches. After following the siren song of the far right, the country is now literally surrounded in shit.

Unlike the far right in the United Kingdom, ultra parties on the continent know that openly stating they plan to leave the European Union would be very unpopular among voters, especially in a very pro-Europe Spain. They also regret that the coup d’états staged by their forebearers are now unfashionable.

Their new strategy is more insidious. Like a cancer eating its host, they now plan to destroy the system from inside. And if polls can be trusted, it looks like a large percentage of voters are willing to give them their chance to do so.

These polls have also come as a surprise to the more center right parties like the PP. As they see their support hemorrhaging away to the right, like the Tories in the UK, they have chosen to harden their message and adopt some of the hardline rhetoric of the fascists. We hear more and more about the dangers of the ‘other’, ecolocuras, giving precedence to national law over European law and traditional families and less and less about solidarity, economic union and workers’ rights.

The wolf is at the door and Feijoo has even gone so far as to say that he would be open to forming alliances with Meloni’s group in the EU parliament, as she somehow isn’t like the other far right parties. The president of the European Commission and head of the EPP, Ursula von der Leyen, has also retracted the red lines she once had about forming alliances with the far right.

The choice is stark but clear tomorrow. A decision between whether to dismantle Europe and those who will form alliances with them or more Europe. A vote for the latter means clean water, and for the former, like the British, we’ll be up to our necks in shit.

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.