Spanish views from a small town

Life is becoming more normal, bit by bit. As of today, we can go to the malls, to the beach, to tiny weddings, to small funerals, and sit inside a restaurant. All, of course, maintaining a distance of two meters with strangers, and wearing masks.  The government is being pressured to end the state of alarm and finish opening up the country. Last Saturday, the sheep of Vox took to the streets in cars, waving large flags, and chanting, "Gobierno dimisión!" In one breath they accuse the government of murder by allowing the virus to take hold, and in the next, of ruining the country by shutting it down. They should make up their minds. I really don't like to hate, because I see it as a misuse of energy and something that just makes me feel worse. But there's really no other way to feel when I think about Vox and their hypocritical, self-aggrandizing, pseudo-patriotic trills. At the protest last Saturday, one of their leaders said that this was a great moment, on a pa...

Hatred. Why do people hate? What makes someone actively do whatever is in their power to make someone's life miserable just because they hate them? This month I have been subjected to social problems that are beyond my ken. This isn't to say that I have never experienced such problems before. I have, when I was a child, and not fully aware of all the impacts. But not within my adult life. I am mostly a positive person. I prefer to do good to others, or just be there and make sympathetic noises when I have no idea what else to do. I am also realistic, and know that people will act irrationally when their own economic and social interests are challenged. But I never go out of my way to challenge anyone. We each live our own lives and do what we can to live our days as well as possible. I have enough problems of my own to try to make problems for others. It's not within me to make machiavellian plans to destroy others or make their lives difficult. I have realized th...

I have gotten wind of a couple of polls on Twitter asking a simple, trick question. "Should American schools teach Arabic numerals?" The answers to choose were two, "Yes, we should be tolerant," or, "No, this is America."  Can I just curl into a ball and lie forgotten in a corner? Does anybody know what sarcasm is, anymore? Does anybody have a working neuron in their brain? Because this poll was rigged to see who would succumb to xenophobia and who would succumb to general ignorance. The xenophobic ones answered "No" and the ignorant ones answered "Yes." So, a pox on all their houses. Arabic numbers are actually of Hindu origin. They were developed in India around 500 A.D., from where they were adopted by Arabs. They were further developed in Al-Khwarizmi's Bagdad, and then extended to northern Africa, where the Europeans adopted them for general use. We've been using them in Europe for about a thousand years. When I was a l...

Spain was sitting pretty for too long. Every time people were mown down in other European capitals, we were reassured the police here were very busy dissipating terror cells. Every time an arrest was made, the public was made very aware of it, and told a future attack upon innocents in a Spanish city was almost non-existent. The central government had been crowing how much tourism in Spain had grown because Spain was seen as a safe destination. Barcelona had become the third most visited city in Europe after London and Paris this year. Cambrils is also a tourist destination, albeit more of a national one. Am I being harsh? No, because the authorities were guilty of the sin of pride. They prided themselves on being able to dismantle small terror cells, and on sniffing out potential murderers. While they may have helped to avoid other probable attacks, they should not have blinded themselves nor the general public to the real possibility of something like this happening. At the same ti...

Hatred is a loaded word. It is loaded with all our deepest fears and most rancid beliefs. It is a rottening of the mind, with its stench and filth emanating whenever odium is declared toward anyone. The reek coming today from certain groups is nauseating, and has already caused at least one death in Virginia. Some of that reek is strong here in Spain, as well. Though the majority of Spaniards accept people from all over the world, there are some who consider immigrants the bane of society. These infelicitous souls think that immigrants are somehow favored by the authorities over the indigenous population. In Madrid an association has sprung up dedicated to giving out food and shelter to the homeless and other desperate people. But to qualify, those asking for help must be Spanish, not foreigners. This association, Hogar Social Madrid, initially occupied an abandoned building, and were thrown out by the police. They went on to occupy another building, where the judge still hasn't ...

What a mad world we are living in. I mean it in both senses of the word. The world is both insane and angry. And both are closely related. Extreme anger, unreasoning anger, can evolve into insane actions. The extreme anger of some Americans toward their economic situation has ended up in the election of a president that might be considered insane by actions he has taken, and things he has said. The anger against a dictator has led to thousands killed, and millions displaced in Syria. Anger against a country's alliance has led to the killing of the Russian ambassador in Ankara, and bombs against police. Anger against real and perceived injustice, has led to a man plowing a truck through pedestrians at a Christmas market in Berlin. Anger against a different religion has led to a hate-deranged man to shoot three men in a Muslim prayer hall in Zurich.  It seems we notice these things even more now that it happens to be Christmas time. Since we are children, in the Western, Christiani...

Spain has a prime minister with no charm, no wit, and no clarity of speech. He is the butt of jokes arising from his sputtering of mismatched sentences that make no sense. His conservative political party has driven this country to the brink of austericide , destroying social nets with every budgetary cutback mandated by the vultures in Brussels, so that our national deficit fits in neatly with the neoliberal virtues exalted by the 1%. Yet he and his party were the most voted in the last elections this past June. Call us stupid. Which is why most Spaniards are baffled and worried by Donald Trump. They are baffled that an orange-haired, foul-mouthed buffoon, who has never known what it is to be middle-class, let alone poor, has been chosen as the Republican candidate for the Presidency of one of the most powerful nations on earth. Looking at we have here, they are worried that Trump just might be elected. Every time he has opened his mouth and spit out racist rhetoric, or xenophobic p...

Poverty. Despair. Hatred. That is how extremism comes into existence. From poverty to despair to hatred. And, ultimately, action upon that hatred. It has come to light that one of the idiot terrorists that commited those acts of hatred in Paris was born in Paris 29 years ago. He had been accused of many petty crimes but never jailed. He grew up in one of the banlieues of Paris, where poverty amongst immigrants is the norm. He had left France to return to Algiers, the origin of his family, and was assumed to have fallen into the trap of radicalized hatred. Hatred toward a system that had created his poverty and from thence despair. The one thing that might have mitigated it was missing - a good education. It's the usual problem. Every child should have access to a good, free public education which teaches him to think and learn, and eventually to find the learning necessary to acquire a decent job somewhere. But, during times of economic downturns, one of the first budgets cut is ...