Sidewalk detours...

A Londoner and a Canadian were walking down the street when...
Sounds like the beginning of a joke in this week's Camino a Ítaca which looks at sidewalk blockades that often take place here on the streets of Extremadura. Click over to read the original published piece in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF abajo)

The look on my companion’s face went from slightly bemused to near complete exasperation in about the same amount of time it took for the people walking behind to start bumping into us. He had just been explaining to me that he grew up in London and was living in Scotland before deciding to move his young family from the Scottish moors to the dehesas of Extremadura to teach English when our way forward was blocked by an immovable local phenomenon.

It's a circumstance that rarely occurs in the congested, fastmoving streets of cities like the British capital, but is a quotidian occurrence on the streets of Extremadura. The pedestrians in front of us had run into people they hadn’t seen in a while and in the blink of an eye, the world came to a standstill.

Our situation was dire. To our left, a rock wall rose up three meters, while to our right we were hemmed in by cars parked at an angle and then others that were double parked behind them. This barrier of vehicles blocked our only escape route, to the street, where we would have had to take our chances in the fast-moving traffic. Behind us, snapping at our heels, frustration grew as the queue quickly grew longer. Our biggest saving grace was that it wasn’t raining and we weren’t in danger of either losing an eye or being skewed from behind by inexpertly wielded umbrellas.

“That’s one thing that I can’t understand about this place. Why don’t they just move over to the side?” he said through gritted teeth as the shuffling feet behind us made our space slowly smaller. “Even in Madrid in the metro they stand to the right on escalators to let people pass, but here it’s like they become completely oblivious to the world around them when they meet up with someone.”

And he was right. No attempt was made to clear the way for those passing by. Kisses were exchanged, greetings and enquiries were made and the conversation then settled into families and the recent cold weather. The blockade of the sidewalk was complete. Neither crying children, anxious dogs nor even a bomb going off could distract them from their congenial dialogue.

However, as the Londoner became more frustrated, I found my admiration for the interlocutors in front of us grow. They weren’t fretting about where they needed to be, inflation, rising mortgages, Chinese spy balloons, COVID, the war in Ukraine or the next invented crisis. Their attention was one hundred percent focused on the conversation and the people they were talking to.

Rather than an act of selfishness, as my colleague saw it, I started to realize that it was an indicator of the level of quality of life that existed out here in this elbow of Spain. To these people nothing was more pressing at the moment than to exchange a few words with their neighbors and in the act grow the community and strengthen bonds. 

And really, was it so annoying? Would it matter if we were a minute or two late? And if it did, maybe it was us that should have left a few minutes earlier.

Whose Criteria?

Jurramacho carnival in Montanchez

In this week's Camino a Ítaca it's carnival time in the mountaintop village of Montanchez here in Extremadura. Up among your hanging Jamóns it's not your average parade though. Click over to read the original version published in Spanish in el HOY or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

As we passed the Puerto de las Camellas and the still Buddha-less Monte Arropez, the automatic BMW geared down for the last remaining curves. It was then that the wide savannah, more African than European, opened before us.

The early morning clouds had just burned off and on our right a committee of fifty vultures were riding the upswells that the warming sun had stirred. I put on my sunglasses and in the distance the blue line of the Sierra de San Pedro came into focus, framing the wide-angle scene looking south.

 Just past Casas de Don Antonio, to the left, our destination hove into view. Looming above the dehesa, like a precious stone set in a ring, the castle of Montanchez and its accompanying sierra rose up hundreds of meters.

I had seen a photograph somewhere. One that sparked my curiosity and was fortunate enough to know someone who was familiar with where it was taken and had been invited to see it take place in the carnival of Jurramacho in Montanchez.

“In case we want to dress up, I have come prepared,” my smiling hostess said as she held up two bags. “Carnival is different here. The idea isn’t necessarily to have the most elaborate costume. The aim is to efface yourself and become someone else, something completely anonymous.”

Not only had I heard that this fiesta was different but that it was also one of the oldest. I read that neither the Absolutism of the XVIII century, nor the Liberal Reform of the XIX century, nor the fascist dictatorship of the XX century managed to suppress this celebration. One that has survived, without pause, until today.

And today was special. The town hall had once again applied for the fiesta to be declared of regional interest by the Junta (the Autonomous community's government) and expectations were high.

It was early and the streets were still quiet when I saw my first Jurramacho. It was like a chest of old, yet clean, clothes had been hung out on a line and was walking. You couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, young or old, it was completely denatured. But the most striking aspect was the mask. Like something out of a low budget horror movie, the woolen cover from Montanchez’s star product, el jamon, had been fashioned into a macabre looking veil.

“Buenas!” shrieked the figure as it shambled by. My friend laughed, “That’s another thing. Not only is the objective to be unrecognizable, but also to change your voice and even the way you walk.”

In the late afternoon the square began to fill for the pregon which was being given by a pair of Jarramplas. I looked around and was somewhat surprised to see only about half of the people yet to arrive under the dreadful plastic tent were dressed up, underscoring that this carnival was more personal than collective.

It’s always gratifying to receive outside recognition, especially for such a long running tradition. But even if the fiesta doesn’t meet the Junta’s criteria, for a one to have withstood dictators and pandemics, there’s certainly no danger of it becoming extinct. 

¡Viva el Jurramacho!

Remember the Applause for the Healthcare Workers?

Stoke the fear, Reap the rewards

Deep in the pandemic, people vented their frustration and showed their support out their windows every evening at 8pm. Where is that support now. This week's Camino a Ítaca looks at the  dangerous slide towards privatizing a world class health system. Click over to read the original piece in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation before. (PDF en castellano abajo).

One of my first experiences with the Spanish health service was as a teacher rather than a patient. A group of differing specialists were some of my very first students in Caceres and our classes were held in San Pedro de Alcantara hospital. One day class happened to coincide with a high level event being held across the street in the San Francisco complex and security was tight.

This was during the aftermath of the September 11^th attacks and events like these saw more security than ever. Security checkpoints were everywhere and the pulmonologist from the group was sent out to lead me through the successive security cordons.

We progressed through the various rings of police when we were stopped inside the hospital by the Guardia Civil and told that I didn’t have the proper access and could go no further.

At this, the pulmonologist became livid, “What do you mean our teacher can’t pass? He’s obviously no terrorist. Why don’t you stop someone who is actually doing something wrong? Like that guy over there!” At this he pointed towards a patient, complete in his hospital gown, smoking directly under a sign forbidding it.

Things have changed a lot since that rather uncomfortable moment. Smoking is no longer ubiquitous and you can’t conceive of someone smoking in a public place in front of a police officer, let alone in a hospital. True, it’s still never entirely clear which laws will be overlooked or ignored, but smoking in public thankfully isn’t one of them.

What hasn’t changed is the professionalism and dedication of our healthcare workers. Heaven forbid that anyone should fall ill or be injured abroad, but in the case that they are, they very soon appreciate just how skilled those who work here really are.

Unfortunately, what has changed is the support they receive from the public administration. Madrid may get all the negative press about their deteriorating, increasingly privatized health service, but when was the last time you tried to get an appointment with your doctor?

Long gone are the days when you could get an appointment the same day or the next at the latest. Now waits of four, five days, even a week are the norm. And that is if you don’t live in towns like Guadalupe, where there is an acute lack of specialists.

Spain’s world class health service was one of the initial attractions that made me realize just how high the quality of life is here. It’s a service that directly affects everyone regardless of their political leanings. Even if you do have enough to pay for private health insurance, when things get serious, it’s often the public health service that ends up saving lives.

The private healthcare giants are, however, devious and have infiltrated both major parties. In doing so, they have pushed for this deterioration of services across the country. A move which has directly translated into record numbers for them.

Public health is a question of equality. Unless we wish to be forced to run #GoFundMe campaigns to help pay for cancer treatments as they do in America, in the upcoming elections support the party that makes public healthcare a genuine commitment.

Showing their True Colors

Have mercy! Been waiting for the bus all day on the Camino a Ítaca. Things are going to get partisan ugly this election year here in Spain and a simple bus ride can tell the tale. Click over to read the originally published version in Spanish at el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

A lone, conscientious smoker stands downwind from the sundry crowd. With each drag on his cigarette, he checks his watch and nervously looks up the street. Less thoughtful smokers heedlessly fumigate the crowd standing around them, sharing their cancerous, time-killing smoke with bystanders and passersby alike. Under their shuffling feet, the tile is littered with relics of the legions of blithe smokers who stood there before them, waiting.

Impenetrable scribblings of unimaginative graffiti artists are etched into the poles and scrawled on the walls. To the left, a pair of middle-aged mothers commiserate over their grocery trolleys about their futile efforts to minimize the effect of the rising costs of living, while to the right, a young family of immigrants dote on a baby swathed in warm blankets in her carriage. The baby’s older brother sits quietly in his stroller beside her, mesmerized by a series playing on a mobile phone perched on his lap.

Groups of teenagers talking just loud enough to cut through the surrounding traffic, exude vitality and energy, striking a stark contrast to the blank, waiting faces around them. The tepid afternoon sun shines just in the spot where savvy pensioners jostle to catch the last dying rays. Those who have found a seat under the shelter sit like waiting crouching turtles as they stare down at their mobile phones.

It’s a familiar scene that repeats itself at bus stops in cities across the region. But as each rider struggles to find the still obligatory face mask as they get on the bus, they realize that not everyone is going to pay the same price.

That’s because the central government has offered to subsidize 30 percent of bus fares until June. That is provided that the municipalities contribute at least another 20 percent of the cost, thus implying a substantial discount of at least half the price. In Caceres, riders will enjoy a 50% discount while in Merida they have agreed to 100%.

But why aren’t the same benefits being enjoyed in Badajoz and Plasencia?

The answer is simple, if slightly nauseating: partisan politics.

Rather than accept the generous, albeit clearly electoral gesture from the central government, each city governed by the opposition has made the conscious decision to reject a measure that directly benefits those who use public transport to go about their day to day. Rather than offer some relief to those from all sides of the political spectrum struggling to cope with the inflationary crisis, they have declined the offer in a vain attempt to silence the measure and diminish its electoral repercussions in an election year.

Back at the bus stop, I look around and realize that someone is missing from the scene. This portrait of the city, reflected in its bus riders, is fullish but somewhat incomplete. It brings to mind the words of the ex-mayor of Bogota, Enrique Peñalosa. Words that would be better suited on the wall than all the meaningless scribble.

“An advanced city is not one in which the poor can move around in a car, but one in which even the rich use public transportation.”

And then I come to a disturbing conclusion. Maybe there’s more to their refusal than just politics?

January's Icy Blues

It's cold out there on the Camino a Ítaca this week. The cover of a New Yorker issue sparked a refection on what has brought me so far from my origins. Click over to read the original version published in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

It’s never a good sign when you wake up in the morning and from the warm, comfortable confines of your blanketed bed you can see your breath spread out above you. Each exhalation acts as a stark reminder of just how cold it is outside the welcome embrace of your nordic duvet. That fluffy shield that acts as a barrier between you and the freezing, cruel winter world that awaits just beyond your warm feet.  

Thirty years ago I set out from a frozen, snowy place somewhere near the top of the world. I happened to be born in the last city of any real size, in what some people have called the New World. A place where the fabled Alaskan highway starts and the true great north opens up and skids across the tundra and ice all the way to the North Pole.

It was only after years of travel that I came to the very Canadian realization that, in most places in the world, six or seven months of the year did not have to be lived with the painful reality of thirty below temperatures and the near-constant threat of frozen ears. Since that day, I became what I call a climactic refugee and have sought out places to live that don’t suffer from such extreme conditions. Yet I ended up, somewhat ironically, in a place that carries ‘extreme’ in its name.

As a Canadian here in Extremadura I am often asked how it is possible to survive winters in a snow and icebound place where the temperatures can often spend weeks at thirty below zero. The answer is relatively easy. In Canada, the only time that you are cold is when you are outside. A place you avoid as much as possible by traveling directly from warmed cars to heated buildings. It would be unthinkable to live in a place where there was no heating, it would literally be a question of life or death.

But here in Extremadura, shielded from the northern storms below the central mountain chain, you find many homes whose only source of heat is a brazier or plug-in radiators. Gadgets that take the bite out of the air but happily eat up giga watts from the extortionate electric companies and are only turned on when your hands start turning blue.

While climate change and its effects were made only too clear this past summer, this week has seen the return of winter and its accompanying cold. This chilly reality was reflected in something a friend posted on Facebook recently. It was the cover of the New Yorker magazine where January was depicted as an advent calendar filled with various climate emergencies. Monday was grey, Tuesday wet, Wednesday foggy, Thursday freezing and Friday, cold, wet, grey and foggy, with each week getting worse and worse.

Watching my breath extend in from of me, I’m filled with the blind, illusory hope that climate change, like certain seasonal birds, will only visit in the winter months. We still have at least one more month of cold to go, but as my friend commented on her post, at least February is three days shorter than January!

Pedro's Cakes

Brioche cake

In this week's Camino a Ítaca, a cursory look at the Spanish government's reaction to the ongoing inflation crisis that is sweeping across the world. Click over to read the original article in el HOY in Spanish or read the English translation below. (PDF abajo)

It’s finally over. The marathon with seemingly no end that is the Spanish Christmas holiday season has finally finished. Today, as you ask what to do with the leftovers from yesterday’s meal, you start to take balance of what the successive holiday meals have cost and wonder: was it all really worth it?

According to El País, these costs have risen 40% over the past year in some cases. Price increases that have been ostensibly blamed on the impact that the war in Ukraine has had on production and global supply chains. This, combined with anterior increases in energy prices, have led to rises that have been especially noticeable on staple products. Day to day items such as flour, butter, sugar or the mayonnaise for your prawns have all experienced increases of 40% and sometimes more.

It's a number that seems to repeat itself, somewhat cynically, when you take into account that the profits of the five major Spanish energy companies shot up by 40% in the first three quarters of 2022. All this during an economic slowdown that has also perplexingly seen the banking sector post the highest earnings in its history. Entities like Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank and Bankinter all closed the year with record profits.

Within this scenario, Pedro el guapo, as the American press christened him, has come out with measures that parallel the famous phrase wrongly attributed to Marie Antoinette, ‘Let them eat pasteles.’

In the midst of the worst inflation crisis in decades, the government’s reaction has been to suppress the 4% VAT on certain staple items and lower others from 10% to 5%, pasteles indeed. A move that was floated by the opposition earlier in the year and criticized by prominent members of the government’s own coalition only weeks ago.

What makes the measure even more baffling is that it has been taken with full knowledge and experience that whenever VAT is lowered, large companies simply increase their unit profit margins a week later. Just as was experienced with the electric and film sectors, companies will simply absorb the VAT cut on basic foodstuffs and then tack on further increases. The delusion that they will choose to act ethically is akin to a vegan campaigner asking a lion to choose broccoli over lamb. It simply isn’t in its DNA.

What is needed are price interventions to reign in the profits of these companies that are making a fortune. Regrettably, the government has given up its legal mandate to prevent these extortionary profit margins by imposing price ceilings, as has happened in other countries.

Any tax cut in a sector such as food, without effective price controls, will simply be included in prices in two days and will solve nothing. Without price controls, lowering VAT is an amigo invisible subsidy gift to capital and results in less taxes in the public coffers, causing a further deterioration of public services.

After decades of economic deregulation, the government is either unable or unwilling to take preemptive measures in this debilitating crisis. Rather than making bold, definitive moves to proactively curb these predatory practices, it seems to have gifted the opposition with a new campaign slogan, ‘let them eat seafood’.

...and it was Christmas Eve

Bi Ali, Yemen

In this week's Camino a Ítaca a Christmas adventure on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula from several years back. Click over to read the original published in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

Behind us, a blanket of blinding white sand drifted two thirds the way up black volcanic mountains. The finger-like peaks rose up like a photographic negative taken of the Alps, that is until you looked closer and saw that palm trees rather than pines fringed the bottom of the scene. In the opposite direction the turquoise waters of a halfmoon bay ran out into the calm, deeper blue of the Arabian Sea. A calmness that was only disturbed by pods of dolphins that swam in and out of the natural harbor in search of tuna.

I unzipped my tent, shook out the sand and looked up at the craggy mound of black rock bordering the bay. Nestled up in the jagged rock was where, according to local lore, fed by a scarcity of pre-Islamic inscriptions, the ruins of the mythical frankincense and myrrh market of Cana were supposed to lie. Legend has it that one of the Three Wise Men set off towards Bethlehem, laden with local produce from these southern Yemeni mountains. It was already stifling hot and it was Christmas Eve.  

Further up the beach our mandatory security detail was also up. The young soldiers with feathery moustaches and patched up AK-47s squatted around a portable camp stove and were making qishr, a hot drink made from coffee bean husks, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom and generous amounts of sugar. Breakfast on the sand was fresh guava and flatbreads served with the thick black honey that local bees extract from the areas frankincense trees.

In between sips of the tea-like drink our driver Abdulilah advised, “It’s a six-hour drive to Aden from here, and that is if there aren’t too many sand dunes crossing the highway. If you want to get a last snorkel in, now’s the time to do it. We don’t want to be on that stretch of road after dark.”

As we sped down the mirage laden highway, adobe villages with whitewashed windows and tired looking date palms emerged from the sands. Live nativity scenes rolled past my window. Singing boys riding haggard donkeys up parched riverbeds happily waved as we passed. Less congenial women covered entirely in black were working the fields. They wore enormous conical straw hats perched atop their hijabs to beat back the unforgiving sun. When I asked Abdulilah to stop to take a picture I was met with a hail of stones that clearly demonstrated I should have asked first.

We pulled into Aden, a city some equate with the biblical Eden, just as the evening call to prayer echoed around the volcano crater that makes up the old city.

It was my task to find us something for dinner through the crowded streets completely devoid of any hint of flashing lights, Santa Clauses or snowmen. For our yuletide meal back in our hotel room I scrounged up a gaunt roast chicken, some flatbread and honey covered pastries to go along with the six beat up cans of Heineken we had found in one of the shadier markets.

Under the whirling blades of a rickety ceiling fan we looked back on the day’s events and enjoyed our meal. No lights, no carols and no sales, just the company of close loved ones was all that was needed for this festive evening.

Sectarian Schooling

Sectarian Classrooms

In this week's Camino a Ítaca a look into some Spanish classrooms via the Levant and its sectarian divisions. Click over to read the original in Spanish published in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF abajo)

I had never seen such provocative lingerie in shop windows anywhere else in the world. The silk strips found in the window displays in New York, Amsterdam, Paris and Tokyo all seemed like chaste winter pajamas in comparison. True, it was the Armenian quarter of the city, but this was Damascus, the heart of Syria. It wasn’t a place I expected to see such open paeans to pleasure. But in the city where Saul of Tarsus started hearing voices and fell off his horse under the Bab Tuma gate, that’s how juxtaposed things were. That is, at least before the war.

Moving from neighborhood to neighborhood was akin to changing cities or even countries by simply crossing a street. The Shia neighborhoods with their posters of martyrs and the Sunni neighborhoods that flank each side of the walled city each meet in the Umayyad Mosque. A sumptuous building that was once a Byzantine church built from the ribs of a temple to Jupiter.

These predominant neighborhoods run cheek by jowl alongside Maronite Christians on one side of the street and Syriac Christians on the other, with the Druze just a bit further down. There is even a Jewish neighborhood, if now largely in name only. It’s a sectarian fragmentation that is reflected across the region, like the divisions found across the border in Beirut or 300kms south in Jerusalem, though without the physical barriers like their apartheid walls.

I hadn’t thought of my travels through the region for some time. At least since the world’s focus had been shifted away from Russia’s interventions in Syria to their more jingoistic intentions in Ukraine. That is until my daughter told me about the difficulties her class was having to choose what to do for their Christmas representation.

She believed her class should do one thing, something secular, while the other class should be able to do something more religiously oriented. This was because the classes had been split between those who go to Catholic religion classes and those who go to Valores.

At first, this seemed practical. No one had to leave their classroom simply because some were being taught the world was created in seven days while others were forbidden to learn anything new. But then I thought about it and realized that, while the ‘solution’ may be practical, it was the complete antithesis of the entire ethos of public schooling and its democratic principles of coexistence. A public school is  a place meant to bring together all different strata of society in one place where they can learn to live and work together. But my daughter’s classrooms had been divided along sectarian lines, just as the cities in the Middle East had been sundered and disjointed.  

The presence of sectarian religious education rather than a comparative focus in public schools has always puzzled me. The cognitive dissonance produced by hearing in one class about Adam’s rib, to learning about evolution, science and constitutional rights like equality in others, has to be daunting.

But if it is to remain a fixture of the system, the least that can be done is avoid a Balkanization of the classroom, because we all know where that can lead.

Pomp Without the Glory

In this week's Camino a Ítaca we travel to the British Iles to see what we can learn from recent events there. Click over to read the original Spanish version in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF abajo) 

The island nation that gifted the world things like trains, the internet, parliamentary democracy and David Attenborough has fallen on hard times. Like a once respected member of society who unfortunately gets hooked on heroin, it is now a mere shadow of its former self. Come to think of it, when was the last time anyone looked to the United Kingdom as some sort of example to follow?

The once proud empire’s slow decline into irrelevance had been going on for so long that no one really noticed that it was completely under water until it was far too late. The UK public spent so much time watching endless reruns of their victories in the great wars, that they forgot to acknowledge that it was in fact their bastard son that saved them from their German nemesis: twice. Like some sort of bankrupt aristocrat, it had been living and borrowing on a reputation that had long ago cashed its last good check. The country that gave the world Cheddar cheese and the Beatles, now flogs Coldplay and anodyne marmalade sandwiches.

This death foretold exponentially picked up speed when a group of selfish narcissists handed Germany the victory it once sought without even having to lift a finger, let alone firing a shot. This cabal of greedy Oxford-educated sociopaths somehow duped the nation into swallowing the blue pill of neoliberal fiction that saw them voluntarily leave the world’s largest trading block. A monumental blunder taken under the aegis it would somehow be good for the general public, rather than simply benefiting a small group of rich businessmen who were merely looking to get rid of inconvenient EU regulations.

What did the British public end up with? First, a cheap Trump impersonator who never learned how to use a comb. nor follow his own pandemic laws. An incorrigible shyster who reveled in repealing EU environmental regulations that allowed raw sewage to be dumped onto beaches around the country. Thus, making the metaphor literal, giving industry the right to shit on its citizens.

Then came his replacement, Truss the brief (en un tris Truss). A clueless fake whose first bold move was to reduce taxes on the rich to such an extent that even the market couldn’t accept the yawning hole this would leave in the country’s budget.

The result? The pound went into a free fall and the economy almost collapsed.

But if you look closer, perhaps this nearly failed state can offer us some insight. If there is something that you can learn from a bad example, it is what not to do.

The Trump imitators here in Spain offer the same snake oil. They may know how to comb their hair, but the siren song coming out of the Puerta del Sol of lowering taxes only serves to make the rich richer while helping to speed the looming death of the welfare state. Their proposed tax cuts would actually help them afford more private healthcare coverage, while at the same time making your wait for a simple operation longer and longer.

The British have offered valuable lessons before and they still can. We simply need to be discerning enough to learn from them.

LOL Law

LOL Law

In today's Camino a Ítaca we take a look at the new education law and the (not) changes that have been introduced. Click over to read the original in Spanish published in el HOY or read the English version below. (PDF abajo) 

It’s been just over a month now since that typically Spanish matinal sound of backpacks rolling over sidewalk tiles returned to the soundscape of our cities. Have those of you with school aged children noticed a dramatic change?

Have those once burdensome backpacks filled with books been reduced to bring back and forth material for the different projects your kids are working on? Have you noticed an increased bounce in their step and willingness to go to school each day, glad that they no longer have to mindlessly copy out enunciados (instructions from their coursebooks) and complete worksheet after worksheet?

Have you witnessed a marked reduction in exams and that they do have no longer solely consist of regurgitating material that they have memorized, only to forget the next day? Have you noticed that their exams no longer are focused on mistakes, but rather concentrate on their achievements, however small they may be? Have you seen the shift away from a strictly quantitative evaluation, where the important thing was the final numerical result, to a more complete and qualitative evaluation, in which the objective is not only the numerical value, but the global learning obtained?

Have you been surprised at a new focus on self-improvement? One which allows students to make mistakes and learn from them, understanding that it is not necessarily a bad thing to make mistakes and that learning from mistakes is an essential step towards improvement.

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Remember the doom and gloom that was being forecast during the lead up to the change in the education law, the umpteenth reform since the return to democracy? Remember the fearmongering that this emphasis on competence-based education was going to mean that our kids would no longer know the names of the principal rivers in the country and never learn to count to ten?

Well, they needn’t have fretted so, because the law may have changed but age-old practices haven’t. It’s a peculiar trait here in Spain that I have always found curious. This quixotic practice of creating laws that look wonderful on paper, yet that no one has any real intention of complying with. The successive education laws are a perfect example. On paper Spain can boast one of the most modern, progessive, up-to-date education laws in the world. Yet in many classrooms children are still lining up to the teacher’s desk to get their copia (where they literally copy out instructions from coursebooks) corrected and learning that the world was created in seven days.

Have you ever seen your child come home with a purely competence based final assessment? It could be argued that it is still too early for the new law to be implemented, but key competences have been explicit in Spanish education laws since 2006 and were understood as capacities in the 90s. Yet why haven’t these changes taken place? It’s because the teachers themselves had to get their position via an equally atavistic process.

The system of oposciones are the antithesis of learning and competence based education. Until there is real and profound change in the way that teachers are chosen and then managed, observed and continuously trained, the laws can be changed ten times more but kids will still be suffering the copia. 

The Neofascist Boogie

Zorba dancing the Sirtaki

In this week's Camino a Ítaca we take a look at the concerning trend to the right across the old continent. Click over to read the original in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF abajo)

Europe, land of traditional dances where ballet was born and from whence the waltz went global. Here in Spain, Flamenco may be better known outside the peninsula, but that doesn’t mean that the Jota is any less important. The Irish come to Santa Maria every year for the Caceres Irish Fleadh to dance the Jig and in Greece the Sirtaki became famous thanks to Zorba. We’ve seen Ukrainians jump in the air and spread out their legs between Russian missile strikes when dancing the Hopak and the chorus girls in France became famous the world over for dancing the Can-Can.

Over in Italy they have been renowned for the Tarantella for thousands of years, but this past weekend they started dancing a new dance, one that hadn’t been widely seen in the Via Apia since the thirties. A dance that is gaining acceptance and popularity across the world and has spread like a virus from country to country in Europe. Hungary, Poland, Sweden and now Italy have joined a growing number of countries that have willfully taken a hard goosestep to the right.

Major newspapers across the continent have been tepidly wringing their hands, doubting whether or not to call Meloni’s overwhelming electoral victory a win for the Far Right. Yet her party’s roots can clearly be traced back to the Italian Social Movement which was founded in the aftermath of World War II by fascist politicians who had played a significant role in the Republic of Salò, the pro-Nazi puppet regime that governed the northern half of Italy after the Allies invaded Sicily in 1943.

She is also no stranger to Spain either. She only just recently gave a speech at a Vox rally in Murcia that was shreikingly Wagnerian in tone, rolling out musty, old shibboleths and ticking off every box of Umberto Ecco’s fascism checklist. Her heremoteca is lengthy enough to know just what tune she dances to. As they say, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then… it probably is a duck.

But rather than a victory for the extreme right, this is yet another catastrophic loss for the increasingly woke-infatuated left. 25% of the less than 70% of the Italians who actually bothered to cast their vote, voted for someone that they know deep down has absolutely no interest in their wellbeing.

This wasn’t a vote for Il Duce apologists but rather a repudiation of a left that has given up fighting for its traditional causes. A left that ignores more than 30,000 signatures against the proposed mine in Caceres, a left that refuses to investigate the misdeeds of Iberdrola in Monfragüe and a left that siphons off patients to private clinics due to underfunded public healthcare services. This is an indictment against a left that has taken up marginal causes as their main platform and who still believe that Tony Blair’s Third Way will magically make multinational companies behave ethically.

If the left means to stop this slippery slide into the blackness of the thirties, they have to demand better, demand more, demand support for the middle and not only the fringes. If they don’t, what they end up demanding is less: less public services, less equality and less rights.