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.)

Area 51

 

The deserts of Nevada

This week's Camino a Ítaca stretches back 20 years and rides the highways that line the deserts of Nevada. Wondering what went wrong and why few things will genuninely change. Read the English version below or click over to the original in Spanish in el Hoy. Tambien se puede ver el original en castellano abajo en PDF.

The highway that connects the 700kms (400+ miles) between Reno, Nevada and the gambling capital of the world, Las Vegas, runs through some of the bleakest desert in the world. Towns with names like Indian Springs or Amargosa Valley dot the flatness but only get noticed if the one traffic light in town makes you come to a stop.

This lonely highway also happens to run parallel to one of the country’s most sensitive military areas, the Nellis Air Force Range, affectionately known to sci-fi movie fans as Area 51. A place that seems to a magnet for UFOs and perhaps more precisely, those who are prone to seeing them. A place that the CIA only recently admitted to even existing.

I spent my 20s travelling the highways, big and small, of the United States as an itinerant musician. Sometimes we played more than 200 shows a year and rarely stayed more than one night in each place. The lines that traced well-thumbed Rand & McNallys became familiar faces outside the moving picture window.

Nights started late in Vegas, at least for those of us who worked off of the Strip in dives where the bartenders, dealers and strippers from downtown came to unwind and let their hard-earned tips down when they had finished their late-night shift. I was sitting outside between sets, catching some fresh air as the dawn began to light up the horizon. The lights of the strip continued to blaze somewhere behind me, throwing strange shadows into the darkness, when a man sat down beside me. By the way he spoke, he was obviously at the end of his evening.

“Where are you from?” he asked between drags of his cigarette, “you don’t sound like you’re from around here.” I told him I was from Canada and he stopped for a long second and thought. “Where 'bouts is that?” he puzzled as he drained his plastic cup of whiskey. This wasn’t the first time this had happened to me while living there and it wouldn’t be the last. My answer was usually something along the lines of, “somewhere pretty big just north of Montana.”

His eyes remained on the horizon and then said, “In just a couple hours, I’ll be flying an Apache out over that desert. What I wonder is if the desert looks the same over there in Iraq where I’m headed in two weeks?” We sat and watched the sun grow stronger in silence until I had to go back in and start the next set.

I never managed to exactly figure out Americans during my years there. It's a place so vast and wide, a place they have tried their best to homogenize with their cut and paste strip malls and replicated restaurants, but iremains a place where the spirit of the people persist in being violently independent. It seemed unbelievable that someone who had the skills to fly complex aircraft wasn’t be able to locate their neighbour to the north. Often, in conversations with university-educated people the floor would sometimes drop out from under you without prior warning. Conversations would turn very sideways when they told you that they needed their automatic weapons to defend themselves against the government. The very same government that controlled those Apache helicopters.

It seems inevitable to smirk this week. The bogeyman lost and for hundreds of hours, Spanish TV forgot the skyrocketing deaths and the stasi-like manoeuvres by the government to control the media. The Orange Monster had been defeated and everything would be good for awhile.

We may have regained some civility in international discourse and the armies of fact checkers may be looking for work, but area 51 is going nowhere. Bookshelves may return to the White House, but the view out the window won't really change. Before long, more sad men and women will watching the horizon, taking their last drink, before shipping out to another ‘intervention’. 

One of Us

My bit on the ongoing creep of 'one of us' thought here in Spain and around the world in the next stage of the Camino a Ítaca. Read the English below or click over to the original published in el Hoy. Tambien se puede ver el original en castellano abajo en PDF.

I have to admit that I didn’t even know that something like Eurovision even existed until I had actually lived in Spain for a few years. When I did finally discover it though, it was like a revelation. It was as if I had discovered the secret root of all of the stereotypes propagated for the past thirty years about the ‘old continent’ in Hollywood movies and TV. You had everything to choose from, morose Germans dressed in black bouncing away totechno beats, angry-looking yet somehow friendly Finns, playing actual instruments, growling over a death metal dirge and at least one retro-traditional, uncomfortable looking outfit that has not actually been seen in its home country in at least 150 years. I had found the secret source of inspiration that comedians like Mike Meyers and Sacha Baron Cohen had been drawing from without ever having to move from their sofas.  

My discovery came long after Eurovision was popular enough to launch the careers of singers like Spain’s own Julio Iglesias or give bands like ABBA the chance to change the meaning of Waterloo forever. It was at the turn of the century and just before the massive shift towards songs in English took over the competition. A move that turned the once popular show into something that now vaguely resembles cruise ship entertainment with unfamiliar accents trying to sing vaguely familiar sounding words. But even still, there is something endearing about Byelorussian Butterflies, bearded drag queens from Austria and transgendered women dressed as birds from Israel. It was all so exotically European that I felt like the Griswolds discovering an mysterious continent from my own sofa.

But wait, Israel? Had I missed something? Wasn’t this competition about Europe? I’ve seen the Caucasus from the southern side, crossed through the Urals and sailed across the Bosphorous and am pretty sure that, no matter how strong their lobbies are, Israel is at least a thousand kilometres south of Istanbul. They can be guests along with Morocco, Australia and other countries beyond the continent, but by definition, they can never be one of us.

One of us, a phrase that’s increasingly heard in these dark days of identity politics. Times when groups from both extremes of the spectrum gather around a diaphanous concept of shared identity while inflating differences between one of us and lo nuestro (ours) from those who don’t belong to the tribe. It’s a much darker nationalism than the spandex outfits of Eurovision. I’ve never shared the aversion that many Spaniards have for their flag, but I do have to admit that some of the flag waving last Monday carried portents of danger ahead.

What do people waving fascist flags really want? A return…but a return to what? Are the the poor souls floating across the Mediterranean an invasion designed to steal their jobs and weaken their healthcare? Or is it that a fellow ‘patriot’ is outsourcing them? Is the evil-empire Soros gang really coming to implant chips in our brains, burn down churches and eviscerate ‘our’ religion? Or is the bronze-age faith really something as European as the Israeli women dressed as birds? Something about as much ‘ours’ as Ralph Lauren, ironed Levis and made-in-China flags.

The next time lo nuestro comes up, take a minute to reflect on just how ‘ours’ it really is.

Bring on the Buddha

Christ the king, Swiebodzin, Poland

This week's Camino a Ítaca reflects on giant Buddha's and takes us to a frozen, muddy field in western Poland to see a Marvel-inspired Jesus. Read the original Spanish piece here or the English below. Tambien se puede ver el original en castellano abajo en PDF.

I first caught a glimpse of it beyond the dormant fields and stands of naked poplar trees as the train sped towards its birthplace in neighbouring Germany. It was a speck of rare whiteness that contrasted with the perennial grey that blots out the sun during the long northern European winters. The barrenness of the landscape seemed indecent, almost obscene without a white blanket, but since the climate began to change, only rarely do the fields get dusted in white.  

An hour earlier we had escaped the acrid, coal-flavoured air of Poznan for the fresher, albeit bitingly cold wind of the small town of Swiebodzin in western Poland. Our goal was to get a closer look at that white speck. The idea was hatched the previous evening over a dinner of Ukrainian pierogis and wine from La Mancha. We were going to take an hour-long train ride out into the Polish countryside and look deeper into the national psyche.

It was a good thing I had spotted that speck from the train because as we stepped off into the cold, there were no indications telling us which way to go and no one to ask on the deserted streets. We crossed over the tracks and headed in the general direction towards what I thought I had seen. After all, if it really was as big as they say, it should be easy enough to spot.

Smaller towns here are mostly made up of detached homes interspersed with Chruszczowka  or soviet-style apartment blocks. Outside the main squares though, finding a bar or cafeteria to ask for directions and a fortifying nip is almost mission impossible.

A break in the trees on the left and across a muddy field, there it was. A 400 tonne statue, perched on a man-made mound and standing in a familiar pose, arms outstretched as if to embrace the Tesco supermarket across the road.

This was no Christ the Redeemer. The Girl from Ipanema definitely didn’t come to mind and the sounds I heard in my head were more like martial Wagnerian marches. Its gargantuan,  chiselled and squarish body, combined wth the slight scowl on its face, didn’t exactly radiate peace. It's look gave off something else, like the hint of a warning. The only identifying mark beyond its stance was the three-metre-high gold lamé crown festooned with crosses. This Christ wasn’t patterned after El Greco, Raphael or even Warner Sallman’s 20^th century kitsch, this is more Marvel comics.

But that’s exactly why we had come. The odds of a St. Paul in Damascus moment for either of the non-believing brothers were slim if not impossible from the start. We were pilgrims of another sort. We had come precisely to see why someone would spend millions of euros to build, what is contentiously, the tallest statue of Christ in the world. A giant elephant with its back turned to the main motorway to Berlin in what amounted to the middle of nowhere.

The only other soul around was a man on the other side of the road selling fireworks in the lead up to New Year’s Eve. So, as we sheltered from the wind eating our sandwiches we had luckily packed, I reflected on the recently announced news that Caceres was soon be home of a giant Buddha. Road to Damascus moments or their equivalent Bodhisattva’s will surely be few but what about hipsters making pilgrimages from Lisbon, Madrid and beyond? One thing’s for sure, they’ll be able to find a bar on their way.

Pan Sin Gracia

The Camino a Ítaca loops back to an article I wrote years ago retelling a story my father-in-law once told me about the bread that was meant to keep them going. This fuses with stories of immigrants who have settled in this land of emigrants and the bread that binds it all together. Click over to the original article in Spanish or read the English below. Tambien se puede ver el original en castellano abajo en PDF.

If there’s one thing us guiris (foreigners) are good for, it’s for a laugh now and then. Our near extra-terrestrial habits like wearing socks with sandals, tossing chorizo into paellas, sleeping without Persian blinds, our foreign accents or insisting on voting for people instead of parties and then having the gall to expect them to comply with their promises, not only raise an eyebrow or two amongst the locals but at times can cause sidesplitting humour. And in moments like these, we could all use a few more chuckles.

Over the summer, this newspaper ran a series of interviews with people who were born outside of the region. In these they asked about our lives as immigrants to a land that unfortunately seems to be condemned to export people. In the testimonials many of us coincided in how comfortable we feel here but one of the comments that most surprised the local population was a repeated lament on the appalling quality of the bread that you find here (given the excellent quality of the food). I guess it could be, as some suggest, that we simply aren’t used to it or that it isn’t anything close to the bread of our childhoods…but I have my doubts.

Many years ago I wrote an article in this very same paper that told an anecdote that my father-in-law, a wise and gentle man from the lovely village of San Martin de Trevejo once told me. One early morning on their way to climb the highest peak in the area, Jalama, they dipped into a bar to buy some bread to accompany the homemade chorizo they were carrying to help them up the mountain. The waitress happily served them coffee but said that there was no bread because the man who was supposed to deliver it was still in bed.

That’s the way the story came out in the paper but something had got mixed up along the way. The story in fact had a different ending. It wasn’t due to an alarm clock malfunction nor a night out on the town: It wasn’t the delivery man who was still in bed after all, it was the bread. 

In other words fermenting, as all good bread should do. In today’s world it seems that few places give their bread the rest it needs in order to turn into something special. Crack open most loaves of bread and instead for being greeted by the irregular beauty of odd shapes formed by escaping gasses, you simply get a pixelated vision of a brick with no mystery. It’s like comparing aerial views of medieval cities like Toledo or Trujillo with a no-name residential suburb of just about any North American city, something without taste, without intrigue, without soul.

These imposter breads that are supposedly cooked in wood burning stoves in picturesque nearby villages are in truth the gastronomical equivalent of elevator music. And it seems these bricks are all that you can find in most of the supermarkets and bakeries in the region. It’s as though we were condemned, like the Jews in exile to eat unleavened bread sin gracia.

But as some commentators havesuggested, salvation awaits those in need. Thanks to a small renaissance, there are those that are now doing things, and bread, as it should be done. Every morning I enjoy my artisanal toast from Amasamadre topped with EVOO from the nearby Sierra de Gata, Spanish ham from Montachez and tomatoes from Miajadas and on special occasions, even cachuela. Mornings like these help me relegate childhood memories of breakfasts of industrial, white sandwich bread topped with processed peanut butter to where they belong, the past.