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.

Saint George in Rafah

In this week's Camino a Ítaca, a rebranding of the global icon, the dragon slayer, with an eye on a population that desperately needs someone's help, anyone's help. Even a mythical knight. Click over to read the originally published version in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

At what point does a procession become a parade? Just when does this transformation happen? Is there a certain amount of solemnity and decorum needed to remain the former before converting into the latter? Is there some limit of mirth that needs to be crossed before it evolves into a cavalcade? Is it similar to the transformation that happens when stories become myths?

Caceres has always been a city of dragons. Long before HBO landed here with their reptilian soap opera, the city venerated the Cappadocian Roman soldier come Christian martyr, Saint George. And this past week saw perhaps its biggest celebration ever. 3200 people marched through the streets of the city accompanying 22 dragons, in what would have been called a parade given that it’s focus was a legendary dragon slayer and wasn’t celebrating semi-mythical kings of the Orient or depictions of last suppers and resurrections.

Are dragons somehow less believable than the other myths and therefore are demoted to parade status? Whatever the case, it, whatever ‘it’ truly represents, ends up in expiatory flames in the Main Square.

Like neighboring Portugal, the UK, Albania, Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Romania and even the beaches of Ipanema, Caceres looks to this medieval myth as a figure of triumph, even if he never visited their lands. Rather than choose King Arthur, Robin Hood or Achilles, they all choose to identify with this tale.

In the storied annals of Christian martyrdom, few figures conjure a more potent blend of chivalry, faith, and cultural resonance than him. But peel back the layers of history, and one uncovers a narrative rich with complexities, where myth intertwines with geopolitics, and the legend of this supposedly valiant saint intersects with the soil of a land now facing a genocide, Palestine.

In the ancient town of Lydda, nestled amidst the sun-baked hills of present-day Palestine, the legend of Saint George finds its earthly anchor. Here, it is said, George, a Roman soldier of noble birth, defied the tyrannical decree of Emperor Diocletian, refusing to renounce his Christian faith. His steadfast refusal led to his gruesome martyrdom, his blood mingling with the dusty earth of his homeland.

Yet, beyond the hagiographic veneer, Saint George's tale becomes entwined with the broader narrative of Palestinian struggle and resilience, of people who refuse to just disappear, no matter how inconvenient for Zionists, they just won’t go away.

Delving into the layers of historical memory, tracing the evolution of George's cult from local hero to global icon, we find a symbol of defiance against oppression and not necessarily one that some choose to see as a facile view of good versus evil. The far-right who try to appropriate his myth read him wrongly. This is the migrant refusing to give up his identity.

The story of Saint George transcends mere folklore, becoming a poignant meditation on the enduring bonds between faith, identity, and resistance. For in the figure of this Palestinian martyr, we find echoes of a timeless struggle, where the courage of one man continues to inspire hope in a land fraught with turmoil.

With the tens of thousands being buried under western bombs, it’s time to celebrate the legend a new way to protect the unprotected.

Leaps of Faith

In this week's Camino a Ítaca leaps of faith, both physically and metaphorically. Anthropology in action as people create their own faith. Click over to read the original version in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The bonfire was lit in a way that seemed entirely fitting with this part of the world, vodka. It had been a rainy turn of seasons and the wood piled up in the decaying square was still damp. After several attempts, a suspicious looking bottle with ‘Matador’ emblazoned on the cheap label, complete with a rather unsanitary aluminum foil lid, was produced. After glasses were poured all around, one was thrown onto the pile to propitiate Prometheus, Hephaestus, Vulcan or whoever was the current god of fire on the oily shores of the Caspian sea and suddenly the fire caught.

It was the spring festival of Nowruz and after the inequal thaw of decades of Communism, my Azeri students were mining the past in search of their religious roots. Competing mosques financed by Saudi Arabia and neighboring Iran vied for questioning souls but the deep underlying myths of the Caucasus could not be vanquished and they were infused into an amorphous syncretism with the standard dogmas.

This was anthropology in action, the very creation of belief before my eyes. It was a popular celebration of Islam, Spring, Vodka, fake Gucci track suits and uncomfortable looking pointy shoes all at once.

A shot of vodka and then a running leap over the cleansing flames and you had somehow garnered more points in the afterlife. This was a popular act of people taking agency of their beliefs and molding them to their convictions. It didn’t matter what the imams from Riyadh or Tehran were preaching, they were taking their own vision of faith to the streets on their own terms.

Here in Spain when the incense fills the air and the desolatory sounding drumbeats begin to ricochet up the narrow streets and the moldering icons and morbid statues get their springtime airing, something similar takes place. The people sidestep the ecclesiastical authorities and stake their claim to their heritage by taking it to the streets.

The church may have illegally registered more than 100,000 properties in its name over the years, but with their processions, the people indirectly tell the Vatican who these really belong to. On paper they may belong to a foreign entity, but here on the ground they belong to the community.

The vast majority of the people thronging the streets hadn’t attended church since their cousin’s wedding a few years ago, eat meat on Fridays and carry condoms in their wallets. The costaleros were jumping over their own metaphorical fires while the penitents were atoning back to something more primeval. The only real dogma were the stories represented.

These seem to me to be the Greatest Hits of the Bible, like the entry into Jerusalem and the last supper while avoiding some of the more uncomfortable scenes. It’s true there is often reference to the flagellation but there are no good old fashioned stonings of adulterers or fortunetellers and the likes. Not even the part where Matthew tells of the earthquake and all of the other dead coming out of their tombs and entering into the city. But it seems resurrection was somewhat of a banality at the time and so many other resurrections would take away from the uniqueness of Sunday’s big magic trick.

Render unto Caesar

In this week's Camino a Ítaca a look at an endemic wrong. An ongoing robbery from the people that now looks like it's only going to get worse. Click over to read the original article in Spanish published in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

I’ve always had an inherent respect for the taxman. Irrespective of the country that I was living in, from my native Canada to the United States to semi-lawless countries like Azerbaijan, Libya and Yemen, I’ve always had a keen awareness of their presence.

After all it was Eliot Ness and not the police that took down someone like Al Capone. He went to jail for tax evasion and not for murder. In the end it probably won’t be his inciting insurrection and crimes against democracy that imprisons Donald Trump, but he just might don an orange jumpsuit to match his hair and makeup for cheating on his taxes.

Each country has its own quirks when it comes to tax time and imagine my surprise the first time I filed my taxes here in Spain. The complex language itself was complicated enough to wade through, but then I got to a series of boxes that I simply did not understand. It was something I had not seen before in other countries.

There on the form were two boxes to tick, 105 and 106. They confused me. One was for if I wanted to give 0.7 percent of my taxes to what is in effect a foreign power and the other was to give the same to unspecified NGOs. That or a combination of both, in which each get 0.7%. And if you marked neither, that money would then return to the state’s coffers.

The stark choice made it suspiciously seem like the Catholic Church was the state sponsored religion when it is in fact just another belief amid the myriad of creeds and faiths out there. Evangelists, Orthodox, Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Bahai’s, Gnostics, Jupiter and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster members it seemed need not apply.

But this anomaly looks like it might soon change with the recently created Direccion General de Libertad Religiosa, upgrading its former status from subdirectorate to directorate. Apparently one of its main aims will be the fiscal equalization of all religions. All religions recognized by the state that is. It seems that not all imaginary beings are considered equal in the eyes of the law.

With this move, rather than closing these yawning tax loopholes, more creeds would be able to take advantage of the ludicrous tax exemptions that the Catholic Church now enjoys. Exemptions which allow it to not only be exempt from paying taxes on its buildings where worship takes place, but more pertinently on the enormous sums it makes from the rental of its vast holdings of real estate.

The Government seems to have confused strengthening the necessary secularism of a modern, democratic State with a move towards a fuzzy, gutmensch multi-confessionalism. Instead of suppressing the unbridled prerogatives of the Catholic Church, especially the IBI, and the reversion of more than 100,000 properties unlawfully immatriculated by the Catholic Church since 1948, it is going to increase the privileges of other religious confessions of "well-known roots".

As Mark Twain once wrote, “(Where) No church property is taxed, and so the infidel and the atheist and the man without religion are taxed to make up the deficit in the public income thus caused."

Release the ...Bees?!

In this week's Camino a Ítaca a look at the agricultural protests that have been taking place across Spain and indeed Europe. Swayed by the siren song of the ultra right, farmers just may be delivering themselves into the hands of the very people who support the neoliberal policies that make their lives difficult. Click over to read the original piece in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

This wasn’t Mr. Burns from the Simpsons snickering and telling Smithers to release the hounds. Its vibe was more like something straight out of a 70’s James Bond movie. Except this evil mastermind wasn’t sitting above a tank full of circling sharks wearing a baby blue polyester leisure suit in front of a world map.

This would-be-mastermind had the slicked back longish hair of a bullfighter, black horned rimmed glasses, the checkered shirt of a secondary school math teacher and wasn’t necessarily looking for world domination. This headman had more regional designs in mind.

Rather than threatening to use his new orbiting satellite death ray if his outrageous demands weren’t met, what this man was menacing the world with was something much more ordinary: bees. And not killer African bees either, but just your average honeybee.

In a rather surreal press conference the president of Asaja Extremadura threatened to open up the hives that they had trucked in from the countryside if the riot police were used to block them in their ongoing agricultural protests against the government and the EU. It was as if they had been trained to attack after he gave a secret signal. Words so utterly bizarre that I was convinced they were from the parody website El Mundo Today until I realized that they were in fact true.

But the deeper you dig into these ongoing protests, the more incongruities and outright contradictions you begin to unearth. Attack bees end up being simply anecdotal in the heady brew of fake news and globalist conspiracy theories that surround the protests.

In a rural milieu that is by nature conservative, the ultra-right have seen a large section of disgruntled voters ripe for the picking. They’ve doubled their efforts to harness this discontent and have tried to incite them further, using their dubious explanations for some of the real and justified demands of the farmers.

It’s fertile ground for their antienvironmental stances, creating strawman arguments against their loathed 2030 Agenda. All the while placing the blame an overreaching EU for the problems farmers face. Another of the organizations that the far right also deeply distrusts and is suspicious of.

The somewhat ironically green party has also done a complete about-face regarding government subsidies and grants. They are now calling for increased grants for things like helping to palliate the effects of the long-standing drought in some parts of the country. A natural catastrophe caused by something they don’t even believe in, climate change.

Then there are the protective measures they are now in favor of. They wave their made in China national flags and now insist on protectionist measures they normally abhor to help guarantee food sovereignty, perhaps more because it is a Muslim majority country that they want protection against rather than their preferred vulture capital funds listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Real, complex problems exist in the agricultural sector but much of these have to do with the neoliberal policies that the extreme right favor rather than their fallacious arguments against the 2030 Agenda. Farmers need to be cautious who they hitch their wagons to or in the end may end up even worse.

Swift for President

A surprising Pop Star twist in this week's Camino a Ítaca. Taylor Swift now rules the world. I'm only wondering if her message will settle among everyone. Click over to read the originally published article in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

There are few things that Americans do better than sell themselves. Substance and quality aren’t necessarily what concerns them. In their case, size does matter. From wild west snake oil salesmen to former presidents, they’ll guarantee what they have to offer is bigger and better than anything else.

Their particular carnival last Sunday was no different. In a country known for navel-gazing, they proudly tout their Super Bowl as the world’s largest sporting event. Granted, it is watched by more than 100 million Americans, but it’s an event that barely registers a blip on people’s radars outside of North America.

But this year was different. There was something new in the mix of barely concealed violence and slow-paced boredom that usually make up the game. It was even showing up on the leading pages of El Pais. Something that had nothing to do with the game itself was drawing more interest and attention to the match than ever. The woman whose recent tour grossed more than a billion dollars in ticket sales was added to the mix. America’s sweetheart, Taylor Swift was dating one of the players.

This wouldn’t have been strange had she just been a wallflower hanging off the arm of a popular sports personality. In fact, it would have seemed as stereotypically American as proms and cowboy movies.

But the case is that Taylor Swift isn’t your average shrinking violet, but instead a strongly independent businesswoman with a global army of fanatical followers unmatched by anyone else. And she’s someone who isn’t afraid of expressing her progressive views on LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, racial justice and climate change.

And this had the right in panic.

In the twisted carnival of American politics, where reality and absurdity collide like runaway rollercoasters, one might not expect to find the ethereal presence of a pop sensation. Yet, in this tumultuous era, the enigmatic force known as Taylor Swift has emerged as an unexpected puppeteer, pulling strings in the shadows of Washington like a maestro orchestrating a symphony of chaos.

In the hallucinogenic landscape of contemporary politics, where truth is elusive and conspiracy theories flourish like wildflowers in a fever dream, Swift has become an unwitting symbol of influence. One whose voice can sway hundreds of millions of voters and one that could influence an election.

Terrified speakers on the right prophesized worst-case scenarios of her boyfriend proposing to her during peak viewing time and then her announcing her support for Biden in the upcoming election. It was a potentially progressive silver bullet in the penurious heart of the conservative world of professional sports. It was their worst nightmare.

The reptilian retrogressive right greatly fear the power of those who imagine, those who create. It contrasts dramatically with their instinct to deconstruct. They will sing along to their songs but when it comes time to politics, insist on them staying inside their lane. As if the world of culture was somehow divested from everyday life.

From the Grammys to the Goyas, artists have been speaking out. Now I just hope that Taylor’s Swifties translate and adapt her speech and stem the tide of the ultras amongst the youth here in Spain.