Alberta has always had a taste for epic stories about itself: the frontier, the oil patch, the independent Westerner standing against a distant and meddlesome East. But lately, those old myths have begun to sound less like history than political scripture. In “Homer on the Range: From Sophocles to Danielle Smith,” I look at Alberta’s…
“I refer to the facts.” That was the response of Archbishop Luis Argüello, president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, when challenged about the Catholic Church’s handling of sexual abuse. It’s a powerful phrase—but it invites an obvious question: Which facts? That question is the starting point for my latest article, published in the Spanish newspaper…
I’ve spent much of the past few days watching the online reaction to Mariano Rajoy’s remarks about the French national football team. Most of the debate has centred on whether his comments were racist or if indeed racism is a problem in Spain. That seems to me to be only part of the story. What…
This week’s Camino a Ítaca grew out of two events that, taken separately, might seem unconnected. The first was the debate in the European Parliament over proposals that would make it easier to deport asylum seekers to third countries with which they have no meaningful connection. The second was much closer to home: the decision…
A tiger, a pope, Bad Bunny, migration, hell, the Spanish left, and the curious tendency of otherwise intelligent people to mistake agreement on one issue for agreement on everything else. My latest essay, A Tiger in a White Cassock, was published yesterday in CounterPunch and has now also appeared in Spanish translation in Nueva Tribuna.…
A few weeks ago, I found myself following yet another local controversy in Cáceres, the small Spanish city where I live. At the centre of it was the Cruz de los Caídos (“Cross of the Fallen”), a Franco-era monument that has become the latest battleground in Spain’s never-ending wars over history, memory, religion, and identity.…
Every language reveals something about the people who speak it. As an English speaker who has spent years living in Spain, one of the things that continues to fascinate me is not simply the vocabulary of Spanish, but what that vocabulary suggests about the culture that produced it. Languages do not merely describe reality; they…
This week, Nueva Tribuna published my latest article, Fans Above Us: The Politics of “We Survived.“ An English translation appears below. For non-Spanish readers, some context may help. The article was prompted by comments from a Madrid government minister who suggested that extreme heat in classrooms could be a source of ‘inspiration’ and reminded everyone…
What do a dowser in rural America and a conference on “remigration” in Porto have in common? At first glance, not much. One spends his weekends walking fields with a metal rod searching for underground water. The other gathers politicians, activists and ideologues to discuss race, identity and the future of Europe. The connection, I…
Marx, Castro, Lenin and the Pope are at the racetrack. The communists are studying the odds; the Pope is down in the paddock asking after the horse that nobody wants. As the new Pope prepares for a visit to Spain, an odd political spectacle is taking shape. The same far-right forces that eagerly borrow from…