No, Not Far

Snake Charmers

2022-04-09T10:32:00.001+02:00

In this week's Camino a Ítaca, a spider bite turns into a near mortal experience in a barbaric country. The populist No-Tax brigades are once again singing their siren songs from their particular hymn book. That one that sees public services disappear, while they enjoy their private plans. Click over to read the original Spanish version published in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

It was just a little black spot on the drummer’s hand with a faint white ring around it, like an inverse bullseye. It didn’t look like much to me but when we showed it to another member of the band who was from nearby Louisiana, his face immediately grew serious.

The band had a rare night off during a tour through Florida and were staying the night in one of those nameless cheap motels that dot the secondary highways that crisscross the United States. Outside, the constant hum from the insects swarming out of the swamp just behind the motel drowned out the aged, buzzing neon sign from the run-down petrol station next door. It sold soggy microwave hamburgers, beer, taxidermized alligator parts, fishing supplies and ammunition and was the only other building for miles around.

Things quickly got worse. The drummer’s body grew rigid, his pupils dilated and he began to tremble. His temperature then skyrocketed and a rash broke out all over his body as he slipped in and out of consciousness.

During the short spells where he did regain awareness, he would repeat one thing over and over again, like a mantra, “please don’t take me to the Emergency Room. I don’t have any insurance and I can’t afford it.”

This is the harsh reality of a world without a social services net: a terrified man on a lumpy motel bed undergoing convulsions who was horrified, not necessarily at the thought of dying, but at the thought of surviving and then being forced to declare bankruptcy after a visit to the ER for a mere spider bite.

With inflation sky high, the no-tax brigade has decided to escape the security of their gilded palaces and their gated communities and mix with the common folk to pass on a deceitful message: the blame for the nation’s current malaise are taxes. And their message is taking root.

Now that the pandemic seems to be moving into our rear-view mirror, the energetic support we once had for our healthcare workers at eight o’clock every evening has become something like a memory we’d rather forget. Like that time when you drank a little too much cava at the company Christmas party and insisted everyone learn the Macarena. Seemed like a good idea at the time but best to move on.

Funnily enough, I don’t completely disagree with them. It is true, some taxes should come down, as stated in article 31 of the Spanish constitution, all shall contribute to the support of public expenditures according to their economic capacity. But if we interpret this same article correctly, some should also go up.

Why is it that companies like Google and Facebook barely pay any taxes in this country? While you, me and the woman who owns the multitienda down the street pay between 24 and 30%?

How and where our taxes are used is definitely subject for debate. But basic services like public health and schools must be sacred and well financed. It’s something the vast majority of us who can’t afford private health plans and private schools must agree on. That, or imagine yourself taking an antihistamine after a simple bite and praying that you see another day.

Sacamantecas...Here Comes the Bogeyman!

2022-03-26T10:00:00.001+01:00

The specter of something dark and frightening runs through this week's Camino a Ítaca. Progressive politicians afraid of their own shadow look on with terror as real-life Bogeymen and women ride the wave of their indecisiveness and inaction. At least I learned a great new word out of it, sacamantecas. Click over to read the original article published in Spanish in el Hoy or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

I grew up in the 70s in western Canada. Back then, when an authority figure, most likely your parents, wanted to frighten children into good behavior, they would say ‘watch out or the bogeyman will get you’. Many immigrants to the area had Polish, Ukrainian or Russian roots and if their children misbehaved they were told that another creature, Baba Yaga, would come for them and use their bones to build her house in the woods.

These threats didn’t only occur in families with European backgrounds. The Inuit people of northern Canada had a similar figure, the Qallupilluit, a mythical creature with long nails and green slimy skin that was said to kidnap misbehaving children.

Here in Spain you have to look no further than Goya’s etching, que viene el Coco, to see that this figure, meant to tame and domesticate children. is universal.

Parenting has changed since then. We now can no longer imagine letting a child ride shotgun on your lap in the car, let alone traveling without a seatbelt. The idea of threatening a child with an icy death in the waters of the Artic for a small offense or suffering an eternity burning in sulfur in hell for a sin against the Judeo-Christian tradition borders on child abuse.

Yet if parenting has changed so much, why haven’t political parties evolved too? If these paternalistic empty threats are no longer considered effective or even moral, why do they continue to use them?

After months of unprecedented inflation, protests have finally erupted from two of the most punished sectors of the Spanish economy, the rural environment and the lorry drivers who transport their goods. Sectors that have seen their businesses pushed to the edge by the unfair practices of a neoliberal model whose intrinsic goal is to achieve maximum profit, no matter the costs. Yet these protests were scoffed at, said to be composed of far-right factions and señioritos on horseback. It's true, they were there, but so was the village grocer who also likes to go hunting at weekends.

What about your electricity bill? Have you turned down your thermostat because Borell asked you to do so? Or had you already done so because you had to choose between leaving it at 20 degrees or eating meat twice a week?

Yet where are the trade unions? Where are the general strikes? Has the joke of ‘just wait until the right governs and then they will see how we protest’ become reality?

The threat of the bogeyman has worn thin. The populist siren song of the extreme right only grows stronger while the left continues to fret about who can access bathrooms rather than directly confront the abusive practices that have seen petrol and energy companies registering record gains while inflating prices.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Social democracy needs to take a firm position in this world of greedy bogeymen before they take power and remove what remains of our labor rights.

Real life Baba Yagas exist. They sit in places like the Kremlin and fund extreme right groups from Puigdemont’smafia to the Calle Bambu. It’s time to act before el Coco moves from myth to reality.

How do you Say your Surname?

2022-03-12T11:40:00.001+01:00

This week's Camino a Ítaca looks back to my childhood and then turns to the deadly present. A look at War. Click over to read the originally published version in Spanish in El Hoy or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The first day of school was always an anxious time for me. My biggest worry wasn’t necessarily regarding our new teacher or how difficult the material would be. What I constantly fretted about was how my new teacher was going to pronounce my surname. Were they going to mangle it and make it sound more ‘foreign’ than it actually was, or would they make it sound somehow ‘English’? I agonized over which way were they going to pronounce the ‘u’ and if they were going to place an emphasis on the ‘h’, which is pronounced in English. Those seven letters have raised a lot of questions throughout my life.

Being born and raised in Canada, I’ve had people read my surname and surmise I had some distant First Nations ancestry simply because of the way it sounded. Conversely, I’ve also had people believe that I was Japanese, at least until they met me in person. As someone from the ‘new world’, the possibilities were endless.

It wasn’t until I moved to Baku, Azerbaijan to teach that I encountered people who instantly knew where it came from. I would write my name up on the board for my mostly Russian speaking Azeri students and they would immediately say, ‘Were you born in the Ukraine?’

I would tell them that I hadn’t, my paternal grandfather was, but it was called Poland and the time. He had escaped the Ukraine somehow in the thirties and for a reason unknown to us, like many of his compatriots, ended up in Canada. The Canadians welcomed him to the country, if only briefly, and then asked him to join a different queue. One that involved enlisting in the Canadian army and heading back across the Atlantic to a Europe he had just escaped to fight in the Second World War.

Because of this family history, you would think that the recent tragic events might have affected me more than the normal news cycle. But I can’t say it has. Even if you add to the fact that my only brother lives in Poland, someone who is constantly checking the available flights and trains west the following day, I can’t say that this war is somehow different, somehow special.

What it is, is war.

My roots may run deep in the Ukraine, but in all of my travels, it’s a place that I have yet to see, one that I have yet to experience. I know no one there. That said, I have traveled, lived and worked in places like Yemen, Syria, Colombia, Ethiopia and Libya. I have former students, friends and colleagues who have also had to flee their homes, often at a moment’s notice in equally terrifying conditions.

Yet for some, this latest war is somehow more profound. For some reason it means more than others. The Russian aggressor is somehow more insidious and the cruelty somehow more evil than the others being fought in ‘barbarous’ lands.

And here is where the inherent racism lies. War is war and each one creates refugees. It’s equally as heinous in Libya as it is in Lviv and makes me realize more and more that a surname doesn’t matter. People do.

The Great Silence

2022-02-26T12:23:00.003+01:00

In this week's Camino a Ítaca there is silence. A great silence that seems to have been purchased at an extreme and dangerous cost. If the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes, he must be told...even if he is from your political party. And if they are guilty of crimes...let them pay. Click over to read the originally published version in Spanish in El Hoy or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

Can you hear that silence? Deafening, isn’t it? It’s a silence that has gone on far too long and in the process has become convention. Its presence now seems immutable and is here to stay.

It’s a silence that first emerged when there was simply no recourse to it. Back then, breaking that silence meant risking your life. This forced gag order briefly disappeared close to fifty years ago with the jubilance that freedom can bring. But since then, it has slowly and insidiously recrudesced, reestablishing itself in the cities and dehesas of these lands.

It’s a hush born out of a cynical indifference that has metastasized among the general public over the ensuing decades. This begrudging apathy among us has been fueled by the incessant scandals that plague this otherwise wonderful country. Ongoing outrages which give rise to self-fulfilling aphorisms like ‘the rich never lose’ and ‘the powerful never concede’. Phrases that try to put into words the glaring unaccountability that the political classes enjoy.

This unaccountability didn’t just suddenly appear. It has been purposely created and then safeguarded by the very people who make the rules, thanks in large part to that very Spanish institution, aforamientos (inviolablility). Look up the word in other languages and you won’t find it. It simply doesn’t exist. In 2019 the Gonsejo de Gobierno resolved that they would begin a process to eliminate it, but close to 3 years later and, surprise surprise, no progress.

Yet another silence falls over the manmade island of Valdecañas while it awaits its definitive fate. A corrupting hush that was even heard in the pages of the New York Times. It’s the sound of what might turn out to be one of the most expensive calamities in the long and tragic history of Spanish city planning. One that may end up costing the taxpayers of this region up to 200 million Euros. To put that in some sort of perspective, more than twice what the second phase of the new hospital in Caceres will cost.

Yet where is the accountability? The only anger that seems to be heard is directed towards the ecologists that denounced the project 48 hours after both main parties approved the project in 2006. But one thing is to question whether a manmade island, created by the constant damming of a river, can be considered ‘natural’, while it’s a completely different matter to break the law simply because it is inconvenient.

Who is really to blame for this? The ecologists for whistleblowing? The owners for buying something they thought legal? The promoters who were allowed to continue building, even after a sentence from the TSJEX declared the plan illegal in 2011? While they all may share some of the blame, it’s abundantly clear that the people in power are directly responsible. These elected representatives who not only allowed this to happen but who openly encouraged it are responsible.

Yet where is the raucous call for some sort of accountability, for some sort of fairness?

There’s no need for revolution. The only thing required is responsibility and justice. A call to modify the refrain quien hace la ley hace la trampa (those who make the laws, make the loopholes) to the much more just quien rompe la ley, sin importar quien es, paga (who breaks the law, no matter who, pays).

When Woke Went Weird

2022-02-12T12:03:00.006+01:00

This week's Camino a Ítaca explores how woke went from being a genuine movement for peoples to recuperate their dignity to some catch all phrase of every pet concern out there. Time to reset the word and bring it back to its original specs. Click over to read the original piece in Spanish in El Hoy or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

Don’t look up. And I mean this seriously, at least if you’re walking along the excrement splattered street of the Arco del Cristo in Caceres. The main access to the UNESCO core of Caceres should have a warning sign at the entrance that reads: Enter at your own risk.

If you do choose to take the risk along the defile, perhaps wanting to catch a better glimpse of the belltower of Santa Maria or perhaps take a selfie before the irregular Arco de la Estrella, take my advice and walk in the middle. If not, consider that you, your hair and the shoulders of your jacket have been forewarned. Caceres, like many other cities around the world, has a serious problem with pigeons.

And I’m confused.

Something happened to us. Some sociological twist took place over the course of this new millennium that has turned the world as I had come to know it upside down. It’s a phenomenon that reaches far beyond our borders or perhaps it is one that has reached us from afar. Sure, the goddesses Ishtar, Venus, and Aphrodite may have all been represented by doves and in Christian iconography the dove is said to represent the Holy Spirit, but these are all myths. Since when have pigeons gone beyond this and have acquired the status of a protected species? In fact, in a broader context, since when did animals become more important than fellow members of our own species?

One of the most egregious instances of this growing trend recently took place in the ravaged and betrayed lands of Afghanistan as the Taliban waltzed into the capital and easily retook control of the country after twenty years of war. Multitudes of Afghani families whose members had worked with the forces braved just about everything you can imagine to get to the airport before it was too late. A desperate and dangerous attempt to flee the country before they were assassinated as traitors by the incoming maniacal messiahs. Imagine their horror as they shivered in the freezing cold and looked through the chain link fence only to see that the British had fleeted airplanes to repatriate dogs ahead of them.

Animals ahead of people.

People, I might add, who had risked their lives to work for the coalition. By saying this, I have nothing against animals. But this movement has reached a point where it raises questions as to what it means to be human.

Closer to home in Caceres, the town hall has had to go to extreme lengths in trying to solve this avian plague and not provoke this power lobby. It was finally decided that an enormous cage would be built to trap and house the birds until they could be then set free. Imagine a Disney-like avian Free Willy. But where is the wild for them? Do they think some North African country can be persuaded to take them in? Then there’s the fact that pigeons are incredible navigators. Some birds can find their way home from nearly 1,000 km away.

In these times of such alarming narcissism, I wonder if somewhere along the way we forgot what it means to be human.

A Confused Europe

2022-01-15T10:35:00.002+01:00

Three Kings Parade

In this week's Camino a Ítaca, travel returns. But it's a return like no other...a dystopian world of conflicting messages that alarm and confuse the traveler, mostly for no reason. Click over to read the original in el HOY in Spanish or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

It always catches me off guard no matter how many times I experience it. We had dropped through the thick yellowish smog covering Madrid and coasted into Barajas just after the New Year when I heard it once again. Amidst the flight attendant’s increasingly exasperated pleading with heedless Germans to please remain seated, there they were: Christmas carols. The heady mix of her frustrated pleas and the complete disregard of some of the Germans as they fell over each other with each bump, mixed with Mariah Carey telling me that all she wanted for Christmas was me, made the scene even more surreal. We had boarded a plane in 2022 in Dusseldorf and there in Madrid we had been thrown back in time to Christmas 2021. It was the holidays on repeat.

It’s actually one of the things I truly admire about Spain. This ability to maintain its singularitywhile adapting and molding itself to our globalized world. Apart from a few crazy loons who insist that Islam was the only imported religion from the Middle East, the vast majority of the people here are able to synthesize Santa with the Three Kings, just as easily as they accept whipped cream on their roscon de reyes or Frank Sinatra singing about White Christmases alongside the eerie soundingchildren singing about fish drinking in the river. But even if I do admire it, it does take me by surprise every year.

And last year was like no other. Traveling during the reign of omicron has been bizarre. I first sensed it as we checked our luggage and saw the fear in the flight attendants’ eyes as they nervously flicked through a photocopied bunch of sheets stating the different restrictions that awaited each passenger at their final destination. The usually routine question, “Where are you flying to?” never held so much hidden meaning. The questioning continued. Do you need a test? Do you have a COVID passport? Did you wash your hands after using the bathroom? I began to envision an emergency team in full PPE gear awaiting us in Germany that would put us through all kinds of tests, but once again, my imagination was completely off the mark.

On arrival the only thing we were met with was my brother-in-law telling us that we were lucky, in two days’ time the Germans were going to enforce a quarantine for travelers coming from Spain. No PPE emergency teams, no tests, just our luggage awaited us.

My holiday travels took me across Germany and then I crossed into Poland and there protocols and routines changed again. After landing, I was asked to show my QR code for my vaccination passport, but they didn’t check it against any ID. As it was in Spanish, it could have been an ad for Mercadona for all they knew.

And it’s precisely that, these constant changes. All of these incongruities drive the distrusting to disbelieve, to reject science and to not get vaccinated. This constant improvisation makes me wish that when we landed another song was playing. A song that somehow fast forwarded us ahead to when this pandemic was well behind us.

Cielo, Tierra y Agua

2021-12-19T23:38:00.002+01:00

En el HOY

El pulso de la provincia de Cáceres fluye por un gran valle de treinta kilómetros de largo y seis de ancho en el Parque Nacional de Monfragüe. Esta Reserva de la Biosfera combina tres elementos vitales que hacen de cada visita una nueva experiencia de aprendizaje.La ultima de mi serie de seis partes sobre viajes por la provincia de Cáceres publicada por el HOY.

@Kevin Postle

The pulse of the province of Cáceres flows through a great valley thirty kilometers long and six kilometers wide in Monfragüe National Park. This Biosphere Reserve combines three vital elements that make each visit a new learning experience.

Is WOMAD a Colonialist Adventure?

2021-12-18T23:48:00.003+01:00

The Main Square during the evening concerts

In this week's Camino a Ítaca I take a look back at the legacy of the WOMAD festival in Caceres from a different perspective. Click over and read the original in Spanish or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

Winston Churchill once said that history would be kind to him. The funny thing is that his belief in this deluded fact wasn’t precisely because he had been benevolent, progressive, made people’s lives better or any such thing. It was simply because he intended to write it. With a worldview like that, how could someone go wrong?

I mean, if you consider that out of the nearly 200 countries in the world, the British have invaded all but 22. A worldview like that would make sense. My math skills aren’t the best, but that is just about 90% of all countries. Countries like Mongolia, Bolivia, Chad and Uzbekistan seem to have avoided their umbrellas, tea and questionable food. But those few that have slipped their noose, seem to have done so due to their lack of accessibility than British desire for control.

The stain of colonialism runs deep in the psyche of the country. I have sat in pubs in the U.K and have had genuinely good-natured people buy me a drink simply because I was from the colonies. Even stranger is that this misguided, yet good-natured colonialism has been freely adopted and deeply internalized by countries like Australia and my own, Canada, who continue to maintain a foreigner, the Queen of England, as head of state. They happily remain under a Wellington boot when even smaller nations like Barbados have been able to emancipate from her cold embrace.

This colonial outlook however isn’t limited to countries. Here in Extremadura we have a case where, in their ‘benevolence’, the British came to bring culture to this lost region of Spain. Back in 1992, Peter Gabriel came as a messiah that was going to bring world music to this quiet corner of Spain with WOMAD. I truly believe he did so with good intentions and the region was only too happy to be recognized.

But a lot has changed since. Close to 30 years later, we are still paying considerable tithes to a foreign company that, while happy to take our money, act like colonial leaders once did. It’s an attitude that smacks of, ‘they should be happy for what we have brought them’. But therein lies the question, should we? Seriously ask yourselves, what is the legacy that WOMAD has left behind? I can say that I have seen some great acts like Eliades Ochoa and Salif Keita. Bands like Los Lobos and others were before my time, but it is undeniable that they haven’t brought in some wonderful artists. But what else?

After a relationship that is going on three decades, what have the left behind other than what I once termed in these very pages, WOPAP, plastic and piss? Is there any real commitment with the community beyond the actual concerts? If you think of other festivals, and we need not look further than the Irish Fleadh in Caceres, with their involvement in workshops in schools across the city, where is the social exchange when we are paying them close to half a million Euros every year?

The idea of the festival is positive, but it’s time to negotiate as equals and not as colonials happy to have the queen of another country’s face stamped on your money.

La Escencia de los Valles

2021-12-12T23:25:00.018+01:00

Experiencias diferentes esperan al viajero en las laderas opuestas de la vertiente sur de la sierra de Gredos. La Vera y el Valle del Jerte atesoran esencia propia para brindársela a quienes buscan aprender y experimentar. La quinta de mi serie de seis partes sobre viajes por la provincia de Cáceres publicada por el HOY.

Different experiences await the traveler on the opposite slopes of a southern flank of the Sierra de Gredos. La Vera and the Jerte Valley have their own distinct essence to offer to those who seek to learn and experience.

Se Hace Camino al Andar

2021-12-05T23:12:00.001+01:00

En el HOY

Slow travel: El arte de viajar sin prisa y disfrutar del momento. Un recorrido para todas las edades, bañándose en los bosques que rodean el camino desde Baños de Montemayor en el Valle de Ambroz hasta Trasierra y Tierras de Granadilla. La cuarta de mi serie de seis partes sobre viajes por la provincia de Cáceres publicada por el HOY.

Slow travel: The art of traveling at your own pace and enjoying each moment. Here's a slow walk for all ages, bathing in the forests that edge the trail from Baños de Montemayor in the Ambroz Valley all the way down to the Trasierra and the Tierras de Granadilla. The fouth in my series of six travel pieces through the province of Caceres for the Spanish newspaper, el HOY.

De Perdidos al Río

2021-11-28T00:21:00.009+01:00

En el HOY

El río y todo lo que corre con él. El Tajo, sus afluentes y el arte prehistórico que lo salpica. La tercera de mi serie de seis partes sobre viajes por la provincia de Cáceres publicada por el HOY.
The river and all that runs with it. The Tagus, its affluents and the prehistoric art that is splattered around it. The third in my six-part series on travel throughout the province of Caceres published by el HOY.

La Tradicíon de lo Nuevo

2021-11-21T00:07:00.001+01:00

Recorrido por los pueblos de la Sierra de Gata, Las Hurdes y el Valle del Alagón. La segunda de mi serie de seis partes sobre viajes por la provincia de Cáceres publicada para el HOY.

A trip through the Sierra de Gata, Las Hurdes and the Valle del Alagon in the second of my six-part series of travel pieces for el HOY in Spain.

Don't Be Afraid of the ... Light!

2021-11-20T20:56:00.007+01:00

Scared of the dark nuthin'!

It's regression therapy in this week's Camino a Ítaca. An age-old fear has returned as our pockets are being openly picked. Click over to read the original article in Spanish or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

As a young boy on the vast stretches of the northern Canadian prairies, I remember being afraid of the dark. As my mother tucked me into bed at night, I would insist on having a nightlight reassuringly glowing somewhere in the room to keep the howling coyotes at bay, both real and imagined. If I felt my mother was feeling particularly generous, I would even ask her to leave a light on in the hallway. These were during the long winter nights of northern Canada when the sun sunk below the horizon from its lazy arc around four o’clock in the afternoon and didn’t return again until I had already been in school for an hour or two the next day. It’s a fear that eventually disappeared as I grew older but has recently come back to haunt me.

Age regression occurs when someone reverts to a younger state of mind. This retreat may be only a few years younger than the person’s physical age but in my case it seems to jumped several decades, and in the process seems to have become warped and somewhat inverse.

My fear is no longer turning the lights off, it’s turning them on.

I now question almost every mundane household task and chore. It might be when I’m about to turn on the kettle to boil some water, throw some clothes into the wash or try and figure out exactly is the best time to turn on the dishwasher so that my family has enough plates for dinner. It’s an ongoing neurosis that has become like a tense taxi ride in a foreign country where you are trying not to be too conspicuous as you watch the meter tick out of the corner of your eye, hoping it hasn’t been rigged.

At first I tried to adapt to the puente, valle andllano system, surely to the dismay of my neighbors as the spin cycle accompanied them in their dreams. But now, the ongoing energy crisis has even seen this system become obsolete with increasing violent fluctuations that no longer always coincide with the traffic light system that had been introduced with so much fanfare. Thus forcing the consumer to have to consult the webpage of the Red Eléctrica Española every day if they want to know exactly when the electricity that powers their lives will be cheapest.

Imagine that you walk into a bar at midday and have a caña (little beer). Satisfied with the service and the tapa of Spanish omlette you receive, you return the next day to that very same bar and order the same thing. When you finish, you lay your money out on the bar only to have the barman tell you that the price has doubled. In your astonishment you remind him that you had been there yesterday and paid half and he tells you, "That was yesterday, today is today." You then reach for the menu and see that the price listed doesn’t even coincide with what you had paid the day before and again ask the barman and he tells you, "That was the price when they printed the menu."

That was then, this is now.

Las Puertas del Oeste

2021-11-14T20:27:00.002+01:00

Las Puertas del Oeste en el Hoy

Un viaje por el Campo Arañuelo y el Geoparque de las Villuercas mientras las aguas del Tajo están tan bajas (ehem, gracias Iberdrola). Mi primera doble página en un periódico español. El primero de una serie de seis artículos sobre viajes por la provincia de Cáceres.

A journey through the Campo Arañuelo and the Villuercas Geopark while the waters of the Tagus are so low. My first double page spread in a Spanish newspaper. The first in a six-part travel series around the province of Caceres in Extremadura, Spain.

Live and Let Live (a Halloween Tale)

2021-11-06T20:43:00.010+01:00

It's the Halloween special here on the Camino a Ítaca. My latest looks at the false rage at a harmless 'tradition'. Click over to read the original in Spanish or have a look at the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo).

Sacrilege comes in many forms, though I’m not sure that putting pineapple on pizza can be categorized as such. True, it may not be your favorite type of pizza, it may even make your stomach turn somewhat, but is it really worth losing sleep over?

In today’s social media world, where people relate with each other in their echoing online bubbles, the smallest things get blown up way beyond their origins. The easily offended suddenly proclaim themselves victims and words lose their meanings overnight.

The quickly triggered choose the strangest things to get upset about. For some, and here I’m not including Neapolitans, putting pineapple on pizza is the moral equivalent of poisoning an entire city’s water system. The sin of admitting that the Vikings had reached North America half a century before Columbus is akin for some here in Spain to setting the Spanish flag on fire. Not to mention the sight of two persons of the same sex touching lips, or acknowledge the mere fact that some might desire to, become harbingers of the coming of the apocalypse for some. These subjects can provoke without warning, either by flaring up suddenly or forming part of the cyclical moaning calendar we all suffer (next comes the so-called 'War on Xmas').

One of the most perplexing of these comes up every year around about this time; Halloween or as I have seen it delightfully spelt phonetically here in Spain, Jalogüín. A day on the calendar that sparks anger in certain circles. What’s even more curious about all of the false rage that surrounds All Saints Eve is that it drives the quickly offended on both extremes of the political spectrum equally mad.

The standard bearers of the progressive leftist moral compass vigorously protest that this age-old Celtic tradition is actually an imperialist American imposition led by the CIA, specifically designed to wipe out Sephardic buñelos and the roasting of chestnuts. It is true that most of this hashtag activism takes place on their iPhones over Twitter, Facebook or Google before having a hamburger while watching their favorite American series on Amazon Prime or Netflix and then falling asleep to their favorite British rock band. I’m sure that deep down they mean what they say.

Those on the right deeply fret over the unreligious symbolism of some of the costumes depicting heaven and hell and more importantly, yet at the same time somewhat ironically, fervently maintain that the dead cannot come back to life. It’s true, a quick look at the most popular Halloween costumes of the past few years lists witches as the most popular costume but these are closely followed by morally tainting dinosaurs, fairies, cowboys and clowns, not to mention those morally reprehensible bunny rabbits. It makes you wonder if the inhabitants of the peninsula complained with the same vigour when the church coopted Saturnalia.

Both sides seem to forget that culture and cultures are not permanent, fixed states. People learn from one another. Ideas travel. Jazz may have been born in America, but it would be absurd to say it can’t be played elsewhere by non-Americans.

But really, if someone has a serious problem with kids dressing up in costumes and eating candy on a special day of the year, there truly are monsters to worry about.

The Faith Trap

2021-10-23T11:30:00.006+02:00

This week's Camino a Ítaca draws parallels between religious bigotry in two distinct places. The faith trap is lethal to inquiry and thought and is throw about with alarming regularity. Click over to the original article published in Spanish in el HOY, or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The world recently watched in horror as American forces abruptly pulled out of Afghanistan. Overnight the Afghan people were once again at the mercy of a tribalistic gang of mercenaries intent on restoring the brutal theocratic regime that the American coalition had overthrown in the wake of the September 11^th terrorist attacks. The Afghan army that had been trained and equipped by the coalition immediately folded and the heavily bearded zealots waltzed into the capital before the West could even evacuate their people.

They did so promising that they were no longer the Taliban of yore. This new 2.0 version was much more media savvy and gave their word that they would respect human rights and implement new laws that would bring peace and stability to the long-suffering land. Western commentators, desperate to paint a positive picture of such a dismal debacle, happily took them at their word or at least used them to try and spin the story away from the treasonous abandonment of the country.

The words that they didn’t spin though were the ominous phrases dropped like deadly bombs by Taliban spokesmen. These were phrases like ‘in accordance with Islamic values’ or ‘in concurrence with the Koran’ when talking about human rights and the laws that they planned to implement. In today’s politically correct world, to question these phrases, based on religious content, is seen as some sort of racism. The fact that they are faith based immediately allows them to be accepted as well intentioned.

Little stifles questioning and debate more than the concept of faith. It doesn’t matter if someone espouses the most outrageously illiberal ideas, or in the case of the Taliban, prevents half of the population from getting an education. If the word faith is mentioned it becomes an extremely effective talisman against investigation and debate. This includes faith-based ideas from Quranic literalists like the Taliban who avoid figurative interpretations of a text they believe to be the immutable word of a perfect god.

But it isn’t only these reactionary tribesmen who shelter behind this celestial shield. Here in Spain the concept of faith is also used to stifle debate around topics related to another religious text many believe to be the word of god. This week, in response to an appeal filed by the extreme right to declare the prohibition of public funding for schools that segregate boys and girls in separate classrooms unconstutional, the constitutional court emitted a draft ruling that stated that that the principle of freedom of education and the criteria of the parents are above the law. In effect, the parents’ beliefs were written in stone.

True, this isn’t quite demanding that a woman who was raped must be executed, because she didn’t cry out loud enough in order to prevent her attack, prescribing the death penalty for same-sex acts, or stoning non-virgin brides to death but the principle stems from the same source, a belief in an ancient text over the laws of the country.

Beliefs do matter and everyone has the right to hold them, but equally important is the right to question them, strip away supernatural shields and expose them to the light of reason.

Empty Promises, Empty Shelves

2021-10-09T11:54:00.022+02:00

This week's Camino a Ítaca travels back to the 1970's and some of the parrallels we see happening today. Populist, right wing sociopaths are marching once great nations into the abyss of a #me-me, all for me world. Click over to the original piece published in el HOY or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The recent images coming out of the United Kingdom take me back to the fuzzy TV images of my 1970’s childhood. Cars stretching for miles all lined up to try and fill up their tanks with gas that just wasn’t there. Back then, the cause of the crisis was external. It took place when the OPEC member states, led by Saudi Arabia, proclaimed an oil embargo on countries that were perceived as supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur war. Prices soared over 300% in North America but in the end, the embargo failed and ended up being self-defeating. Israeli forces did not withdraw, the countries that were targeted by the embargo refused to change their positions and perhaps the most longstanding consequences were that the crisis sparked increased oil exploration, alternative energy research and initiated a move towards energy conservation.

This conservation can be seen in the smaller cars that form the long queues in the U.K. They are certainly no longer the enormous land boats of my North American childhood, but what really marks the difference between these two crises is the root cause. While the 70s oil crisis was a multilateral affair involving many different actors from different continents, the crisis the U.K is currently facing is entirely self-inflicted. Try as they might to shift the blame elsewhere, there is no one to blame but themselves.

Brexit was not the result of foreign interference. While the Trump administration, knowing full well it would debilitate the U.K and weaken the EU, threw their support behind the slow-motion suicide, it can’t be said that they or any other foreign state forced the British to shoot themselves in the foot. They did it to themselves at the polls. The end result is that a once great nation, the 6^th biggest economy of the world and permanent member of the UN Security Council now finds itself with bare supermarkets shelves and shuttered up petrol stations.

Brexit was the direct result of a dangerous ideology. One that exploits the fear of the ‘other’, scapegoating immigrants and those who do not think like them as the cause of everyone’s problems. All the while diverting the attention away from their neoliberal aims of dismantling the social nets across the West and transferring public wealth into increasingly smaller yet richer hands. It’s a jingoistic right-wing populism that is eating away at the rotting traditional core of conservatism across the western world. One which may have lost its poster boy in power in the U.S, but that is still firmly represented in the U.K by someone who combs his hair with a balloon, and which has many representatives here in Spain in the House of Parliament.

This siren song that leads people to think that their problems are soley caused by someone else may lull one into a gentle sleep but it certainly won’t fix anything. The British can try and blame the EU for their misfortunes, the Catalans can accuse the rest of Spain of robbing them, Extremadura can allege that the fault lies in Madrid and xenophobes can claim that migrants are stealing nonexistent jobs but the result always turns out the same. The sooner we stop listening, the better.

The Dark Side of Surprise

2021-09-25T19:56:00.006+02:00

This week's Camino a Ítaca reminds me that after so many years, Spain can still be a mystery to me. September is in full swing and education is on many people's radars and it is definitely on mine. Combine that with the ongoing pandemia and then throw in a few negationists and you have a potent cocktail. Click over to read the original published in el HOY in Spanish or the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

After living here for so many years, Spain can still surprise me. Time and time again I find myself scratching my head and thinking, ‘Amazing that was completely unexpected.’ Whether this frequent state of bewilderment is a good thing or not, I’m not so sure. It’s wonderful when I come across a new dish in an undiscovered (for me) region, or when I stumble upon wonderfully creepy Romanic capitals on the other side of the Tagus. The sheer depth of uncharted territory for me here offers me several lifetimes’ worth of exploring. The darker side of this disorientation though comes when I’m struck with an occurrence that takes me completely by surprise.

This happened the other week when I heard about the poor little girls that were being used as politicized weapons by their malevolent parents in their infantile battle against reason. The images from abroad of misinformed lunatics injecting themselves with bleach and gargling with iodine in their deluded fight against a disease many claim doesn’t even exist had until then seemed completely foreign.

Spain’s response to the pandemic has been exemplary. The Spanish understand that vaccines work. They are the best line of defense against the disease and the fastest route available to us to be able to return to some sense of normalcy. Draconian lockdowns and the quasilegal imprisonment of our children aside, the measures adopted have been effective. Mask wearing has been taken to an extreme with people having to wear them while walking out in the countryside, but absolutely no one disagrees with the fact that they are the simplest, most effective measure that we can take against contagion indoors. No one at least who has the least minimum notion regarding how viruses are transmitted. My eight-year-old gets it.

But my surprise wasn’t that a few negationist nutcases were trying to impose their selfish whims on the wider community. In fact, until then my surprise was that the extreme right had yet to import and adopt, as they have done with so many other foreign positions, this anti science lunacy. My shock came about when I saw the Junta’s initial reaction and poisonous bile spilt by a large section of the general public towards the teachers, claiming they were lazy and simply did not want to work.

At a time when you can’t even conceive of stepping foot into a public administration building without a previous appointment, the Junta’s initial order to not only allow this family to flaunt the rules, rules that the teachers had been rigorously teaching and implementing for the past two years, and insist that the teachers place themselves and the entire school at risk, simply due to an unfounded caprice, was madness. Just imagine if you try to walk into a court building without a mask. How far would you get in before you are stopped by security guards or the police? But hey, these are just teachers.

Where does this deep contempt for teachers, and what they do, come from? Is it some sort of unconscious hostility that arises from suffering endured at the hands of callous and cruel nuns when they were in school? Or is this disdain based on the fact that many simply consider teachers overpaid babysitters? Whatever it is, it will never cease to perplex me.

Back to the Future or Back to the Past?

2021-09-11T12:09:00.031+02:00

Back to this?

As our children head back to school, this week's Camino a Ítaca looks back to the future and the eduaction that awaits them. What will this academic year year? Click over to read the original in Spain in el HOY or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The long Spanish summer has come to an end, at least on paper. The temperatures might still soar into the high thirties and the rains may yet to fall, but yesterday the nine o’clock traffic jams have returned to the streets. The kids are back in school.

They do so under a cloud of uncertainty regarding how the pandemic will evolve in the coming months. With the much more contagious delta variant now being the most common type in the country, it remains to be seen how the school year will develop, even with the extremely high level of vaccinations across the country.

In most cases, the measures from the previous academic year remain in effect. The general protocol remains in place for the so-called “stable coexistence groups” or “bubble groups” in nursery and primary school in a continued attempt to avoid contact with other students, even if specialist teachers move from group to group. Granted, the minimum distance between desks has been reduced to 1,2 from the previous 1,5 meters, but the importance placed on this seems to be about as incongruous as many of the other restrictions that have been imposed outside of class. These are kids that may have ridden for hours on packed buses and airplanes over the summer, sitting just centimeters from people they don’t know. But even still, schools are once again supposed to minimize the movement of groups of students throughout the center and avoid assemblies or face-to-face meetings and, where possible, avoid all activities that involve mixing different groups or classes. This socialization factor of schooling, ever so important at these ages, must once again be put on pause.

We all want the best for our kids and of course want teachers to enjoy a workspace where they feel safe, of these things there can be not doubt. But there are such things as calculated or measured risks, activities that are worth undertaking because the benefits outweigh the acceptable risks. Last year, in many schools across the region, group work in class was forbidden by certain school committees even if the Junta’s general directive clearly stated that it was permissible if the minimum distances were respected. The pandemic served up the perfect opportunity for those in the educational community who do not believe in community learning theories to drag their students back into the black and white classrooms of old with straight rows of desks and with rote learning at its core.

Working in small groups provides learners with opportunities to articulate ideas, uncover misconceptions, and negotiate with others to create projects or reach consensus, even during the first stages of education. Group activities allow students to discover deeper meaning in the content and improve critical thinking skills. Effective use of group work engages students with higher-level content that is thought-provoking and that can have multiple interpretations. But this kind of teaching doesn’t neatly fit into exam-driven teaching, it takes hard work and planning.

I appreciate the concern that the authorities have shown when faced with getting out kids back into school safely. I only wish that half of that concern was spent on what actually happens once they are there.

The Salt Market

2021-08-29T00:17:00.003+02:00

Lapiz Luzuli

The terrible tragedy unfolding in slow motion in Afghanistan reminded me of gems on sale in the open air markets of Yemen. In this week's Camino a Ítaca, I look back at the Afghan stones that were so valuable and the near hysteria of right-wing conservatives, desperate to declare their deity somehow more reasonable than others. Click over to the original version published in Spanish in El Hoy or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The souk al-Milh, or Salt market, is one of the biggest and perhaps oldest open-air markets in the old city of Sanaa, Yemen. Here time isn’t marked by passing centuries but instead in millennia in what is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities on earth. The massive doors to the walled city are still shut every evening and until relatively recently you could find the severed hands of thieves nailed to the wood, underscoring the Old Testament vision of law observed here. Under the shadows of these tapia tower houses, the adjective ‘biblical’ outplays ‘medieval’ in any attempt to describe the sights, sounds and smells. Images that evoke the thousand and one nights more vividly than any sterilized Hollywood production could ever hope to.

Traders offer everything from cardamom from the highlands of Kerala across the Arabian Sea in India, to Iranian saffron from across the Persian Gulf to highly coveted handguns from the Basque Country. Frankincense and myrrh are still commonly traded day to day commodities. If you delve deeper into the market, you come to the jewelers selling gold, silver, ceremonial daggers, ambergris and Red Sea corals.

But what always fascinated me among all the traditional jewelry were the prized royal blue gems that looked like they had somehow been extracted from folds of cloth in paintings by Michelangelo and Botticelli. These were some of the most expensive items for sale and when I asked the traders why they would quote a proverb, “If you do not wish to die, avoid the Valley of the Kokcha River, the valley where Lapis Lazuli is mined.” And just where is this valley? In one of the most remote, difficult to reach areas of the planet, the Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, the cemetery of empires, has been back in the headlines as tribal leaders from all sides gave the Americans and their allies a history lesson that is bound to be repeated (China?). Attitudes have shifted wildly since the Taliban waltzed out of the mountains and into the capital. Many pacifists have now changed their tune with a renewed interest in protecting the women who have experienced a modicum of freedom, at least in Kabul, for the past 20 years. Precisely, thanks to the military intervention they had always been against.

But the most confounding takes on the debacle have come from conservative western commentators observing this slow-motion tragedy with such zealous schadenfreude. They can’t seem to contain their delight in underscoring the barbarity that comes with the reimplementation of Sharia law and the backwardness of basing a country’s laws on iron-age texts created by men without any notion of something as basic as germ theory.

And here they are completely right.

A country’s laws must be based on reason, not faith. Laws must be argued, questioned and adapted. Religious scrolls are, by their very nature, immutable. They are dictates from a celestial dictator that cannot be questioned and perhaps, only with time and social pressure, can be ‘interpreted’. I only hope that, out of such a tragedy, they realize that the flaw isn’t a matter of which religious text is chosen to base laws, but the fact they are chosen at all.

How Many Horsemen were there?

2021-08-14T00:47:00.002+02:00

It's hot...well, it's always hot in Spain during the summer but this week has been particularly hot. This week's Camino a Ítaca circles the globe and looks at why some have such a problem with the axiom of Climate Change. Click over to read the original article in Spanish in el Hoy or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

Imagine drawing a straight line that circles the globe, crossing such diverse places as Lille in France, Mainz in Germany, Prague in the Czech Republic and the extraordinarily restored Krakow in Poland. Then continue the line east through the land of my paternal grandfather in Lviv, Ukraine and then across the arid steppes of Kazakhstan and Mongolia before you cut the enigmatic Russian Island of Sakhalin roughly in half before finally reaching the open Pacific. Cross the ocean and you make landfall just north of the beautiful port city of Vancouver before crossing the Rocky Mountains that give on to the great Canadian plains. Under those never-ending, enormous skies, you then pass through the delightfully named, yet slightly stodgy, Winnipeg before running out into the ocean again. The line you would have drawn is approximately the 50^th parallel.

The cities that connect those dots, each with their own identity, all conjure up images of birch tree forests, thick brown breads, heavy cuisine with lots of butter and pickled everything. What doesn’t necessarily come to mind are sunburns and scorching temperatures, but that is just what has happened. This summer we have seen temperatures hit fifty degrees on the fiftieth parallel. Entire towns burned in places near where I spent my summers as a child in British Colombia, Canada. Temperatures that I would have then only associated with things like toaster ovens and car engines. Just over the pole in Siberia, the Russian one that is, temperatures have also been reaching the forties, melting the permafrost that has held its secrets in stasis for millennia. These aren’t cyclical events as some might claim; this is the planet sending us a very sharply worded message that needs no translation.

It’s not only the far north. Half of California is on fire once again and a good part of the classical world in Greece and Turkey is also ablaze. As you read this, temperatures are also soaring to record highs on this side of the Mediterranean. True, high temperatures are not abnormal here in Spain, but what about the frighteningly low levels of the reservoirs. Reservoirs, I might add that not only provide us with drinking water but also help power our prohibitively expensive fans and air conditioners.

On the other extreme of the climate spectrum, devastating floods have ravaged India while torrential rain, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a thousand years, has devastated central China. Japan is suffering a similar fate. Much closer to home here in Europe, Germany and Belgium have seen tragic losses of life during the flash floods that recently swept through the area.

And it’s only the ides of August.

What is it about climate change that gives those who ‘have their doubts’ hives and nervous ticks? Do those who flat out deny its existence have a longer, more insightful view of the history of the planet than the rest of us? Is it the sheer cost that it’s going to entail to try and at least palliate the coming armageddon that drives them to refute such obvious signs? Or is it something less tangible, something less rational, something more divine? The bushes are indeed burning. What is needed are prophets brave enough to take concrete actions to divert the coming apocalypse that some so desire.

Remember Yellow Fever?

2021-07-31T11:15:00.003+02:00

This week's Camino a Ítaca looks back to when I first started traveling. Remember those Yellow Fever passorts they used to give out? I imagine they still do? Looking back and looking forward. You can click over and read the original article in Spanish en el Hoy, or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

If memory serves me correct, it was a little yellow booklet. Similar in size to those that banks used to give out when you opened an account with them. I used to carry it in the same ‘secret’ place with my passport when I travelled, which now that I think about it really wasn’t so secret at all. The first time I got one, I was so excited. Each little stamp that I got meant that I was one step closer to experiencing places I had only dreamt about. Each needle I had to endure meant that I was about to get on a plane to somewhere seriously ‘exotic’.

I think the first one that I got was for Yellow Fever. Then I remember there was one for Hepatitis A and another for Hepatitis B, but there was also talk about one that was going to be released that combined them both and maybe even added Hepatitis C. I think there was one for typhoid and I may have even got one for Japanese encephalitis. For me, I couldn’t have cared less. I’d go to the infectious disease specialist, we would look at a wonderful world map and I would tell her where I was going. She would then tell me what I needed and if there was a chance of malaria, dengue and diseases like this that weren’t covered by vaccines. That was it, end of story.

I think that the only time that I had a healthcare professional tell me that it was up to me to decide was when there was an experimental cholera pill that had come out, but as I wasn’t planning on visiting an area that had experienced a recent outbreak, it wasn’t necessary and she said it was up to me if I wanted to spend the money on it. It would have never occurred to me to ask which pharmaceutical company produced the vaccine. I simply knew that I was used to the sunburnt red color that I always turn in tropical countries and that I wasn’t particularly anxious to turn yellow with some terrible fever and got the needle, case closed.

This was long before the advent of Facebook and the millions of homegrown specialists that now spread their idiocy across the world at the click of a button. Illuminati that have emerged from their parents’ basements, convinced that Bill Gates was somehow going to implant them with a tracking device that was more powerful than the one they text on and carry in their pockets everywhere they go.

Of course people who are vaccinated are going to catch the virus, some may even get sick and a few may even die. This is what statistically happens when you are talking about vaccinating an entire planet. These aren’t the numbers that your cousin found on a blog and insists are true, these are empirical facts. Vaccinated people suffer a lot less from the illness, period.

I’m desperate to get on a plane again, to feel that sensation and excitement I have always felt when traveling to somewhere new. If it means one, two or even three shots, bring it on.

Flights of Fancy to Nowhere

2021-07-03T18:00:00.004+02:00

Saparmurat Niyazov, a.k.a Turkmenbashy

This week's Camino a Ítaca brings us to the vast steppes of Central Asia and then back again in search of the more ridiculous flights of fancy imposed upon us all by our Dear Leaders. Click over to read the original version published in Spanish in the regional newspaper, el Hoy or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

An Italian friend of mine was once sitting in her hotel room in Ashgabat. She was in the capital of Turkmenistan on official UN business and called her mother. While she was being connected through the hotel’s Soviet-era reception, she noticed some deep heavy breathing on the other end of the line that was obviously not coming from her mom. As her mom was filling her in on the latest gossip from Venice, a sharp, accented voice suddenly broke into the conversation and insisted, “Speak English, please!”

This was during the reign of Saparmurat Niyazov, the country’s first dictator after the fall of the USSR. Turkenbashy, or head of all Turkmen as fancied himself, had had himself crowned as President for Life and brooked no dissent to his rule. So, it’s not surprising that he would have officials from the UN spied upon, even if his spooks were not multi-lingual.

When he wasn’t cracking down on the opposition, Niyazov also had a penchant for making odd decrees. Things like banning news reporters and presenters from wearing make-up because he found it difficult to distinguish between the male and female presenters or prohibiting lip synching at public concerts were a near constant during his regime. One day the Turkmens would wake up to find he had abolished the Turkmen word for bread and named it after his mother and another that he had decreed that the months would be named after him and his family.

Strange laws however aren’t reserved for Central Asian strongmen. Deep down in Florida you can get in a prickly situation if caught fornicating with porcupines, or any other animal for that matter. If you’re caught driving without a shirt in Thailand or, heaven forbid, criticize the monarchy, expect trouble. And it’s not only the Thais that revere their Dear Leaders so. The same behavior will get you into hot water in Morocco and as recently as 2012 in neighboring France it was illegal to be rude to the President or to name a pig after the head of state for that matter.

Here in Spain we’re not immune to ludicrous laws and regulations either. Naming your pig after the king probably won’t land you in jail but you might wind up in court for insinuating that the monarchy, and in particular the ex-monarch, has secrets in Switzerland.

A deeper problem however isn’t these atavistic attempts to defend the head of state’s honor or to protect the feelings of those who believe in supernatural powers. The real dilemma is simply the sheer number of laws and regulations on the books here in Spain. Many of which are obvious anachronisms that get lost in this legislative swamp. Mislaid or perhaps, like acts of good intentions rather than laws that are meant to be enforced, they end up forsaken like decaying moribund graymonoliths in the middle of roundabouts.

I propose a challenge to our legislators, one that has its roots in the country of my birth, Canada, where they recently passed the one-for-one law. A law which states that for every new federal regulation created, the government must eliminate an equal regulatory burden.

This challenge would not only reduce the number of out-of-date laws, but force legislators to seriously reflect before enacting a new fancy. If not, soon we too may find ourselves with another word for bread.

Deuteronomy

2021-06-19T17:22:00.001+02:00

Lady of Elche statue

In this week's Camino a Ítaca we walk back to the fifth book of the Jewish torah, back to deuteronomy. Well, if not exactly back to this religious text, back to something equally atavistic: Oposiciones. The medieval method they use here in Spain to choose their public school teachers (and other public servants). That biblical plague that everyone in the country seems to think is immutable, inevitable and impossible to change. Click over to read the original version published in Spanish in the regional newspaper, el Hoy, or read the English version below. (pdf en castellano abajo)

Today is an auspicious day, for some that is. These fortunate few will begin the day as normal human beings, nervously eating breakfast while reviewing their notes in some bar, trying to avoid eye contact with nearby colleagues who are doing the same. The chosen few will then join the masses of despondent people flooding into their designated buildings, only to emerge a few hours later as demigods in waiting. The vast majority of those who aren’t so fortunate will then be thrown back on the sacrificial pyre of the interinos (temporary government workers) until the oracles prophesize that the planets have once again aligned and another round of oposiciones (public exams) is convoked. These ill-omened souls will be sentenced to once again go back to the topics they will have to study, which at least in the case of language teachers, are only vaguely related to what they actually do, and waste vital energy memorizing useless information. Energy that could be put to much better use by receiving on-the-job training.

These human sacrifices aren’t new. The classical Greek historian Strabo wrote of the Lusitanians inspecting the vitals of their victims well before the arrival of Deuteronomy and Leviticus to the peninsula. What is surprising, is that this extremely ineffectual, baffling divination still exists.

How is it possible that a tribunal can decide whether the querent in front of them is really right for a job after merely having taken an exam? Do they use some sort of necromantic sorcery to distinguish between whether the candidate really understands their profession or if they simply have a good memory and had a better night’s sleep than the previous contestant? Are they, in fact, oracles that can foresee the future and predict that this person will be a competent colleague? A colleague, I might add, that will be harder to get rid of than pagan beliefs if they turn out to not be right for the job? It is true that, technically, there is a one year trial period before someone becomes a fully-fledged civil servant, but have you ever heard of anyone not passing? I for one haven’t.

Yet the institution and, worst yet, manner of acceding to it, still exists. An enigma more puzzling than the look on the face of Lady of Elche statue, whose blank stare rivals any civil servant about to take their break. Not only is it an extremely ineffective way of vetting candidates for jobs, but it is also one of the main factors that contributes to the temporality culture of the Spanish labor market. Many blame the country’s heavy reliance on the agriculture and service sectors for this problem, and they are somewhat right, but what they overlook is that the public administration is in fact more to blame than the private sector.

You can ban bullfights, repeal the bandos de silencio (edict banning excessive noise during siesta hours), prohibit paellas, bankrupt Real Madrid and forbid vacations in August and you would still have a country with a recognizable identity. But drag the medieval oposiciones and figure of the funcionario (civil servant), kicking and screaming, into the 20^th century, let alone the 21^st, and I wonder what we would find? Surely something even better than what we have now.

Are We There Yet?

2021-06-06T20:00:00.002+02:00

In this week's Camino a Ítaca I'm reminded of the perseverance of some of my brave, female students in Yemen. If they could, I can. Click over to read the original in Spanish or the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo).

Standing in front of a new class is always somewhat nerve-wracking, especially if it’s in a new country. Looking out over a class and seeing fifty percent of your students with curved daggers tucked in their belts and Kalashnikovs carelessly slung on their shoulders like handbags, while the other half are swathed head to toe in black with their faces completely covered, with only their kohl-outlined eyes to latch on to, means taking this disquiet to an entirely new level. This was my day-to-day experience while teaching English in the only coed school in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a.

The sight was also an explicit metaphor. Even if many of the machine guns were held together with duct tape, the message they conveyed was clear. Power dictates who wears the mask and who doesn’t. There was no explicit law stating that women had to cover their faces in public and, unlike in neighboring Saudi Arabia, there wasn’t a law mandating that women had to cover their hair in public. Yet the majority still do. This message of subjugation was more a cultural phenomenon than political or even religious, even if exegetical attempts are made to justify it using the latter.

My challenge as a teacher was to recognize and differentiate between my masked students. The dehumanizing mask and veil is meant to render women invisible, but even under these difficult circumstances, they were able to pronounce their individuality, albeit subtly. These courageous women saw this rare crack in the stratified social conventions of the region as a possible outlet towards a better future and if it meant covering up to appease social conventions, then so be it.

At first it was near impossible to tell them apart but after time I began to notice the smallest of signs beyond the outline of the kohl around their eyes. Subtle, yet powerful statements that silently cried out, ‘this is me.’ It might have been an inconspicuous arabesque on the hem of their abaya or an almost imperceptible design on the edge of their niqab, but it was just enough to distinguish themselves amongst the rest. The mask may have covered them from view but it couldn’t erase who they were.

I had often thought of these women over the years. I will always remember their determination to learn and their certainty that learning was the key to their future. They have also come to mind whenever attempts around Europe arise to ban burkas in the public sphere. It’s only recently though that I have thought about them almost every day.

I think of them as I pant my way up hills, gasping for air as I near the top. I’m reminded of them as I pass by people that I know in the street without recognizing them and saying hello. Each time my glasses fog up and I have to stop to clean them before looking out at a class where everyone is now wearing a mask, they come to mind.

I relive their determination and their resoluteness, no matter the obstacles in front of them. And then I put my mask back on, keep climbing the hill and think, just a little while longer now.