Spain is currently gripped by yet another political corruption scandal, and as always the debate has quickly moved beyond individual wrongdoing to broader claims about the moral bankruptcy of the left itself. That reaction prompted me to write Judas Lights. The piece argues that there is a crucial difference between a corrupt politician and a…
Northlands Park was never a glamorous place. It was cigarette smoke caught in prairie heat, dust ground into shoes, racing forms folded in tired hands, and generations of men trying to read meaning into odds, instinct, and luck. In many ways, it was less about horses than about belief itself, the deeply human desire to…
The thing outsiders (and some insiders) often misunderstand about Spain is that Francoism did not end the way Nazism ended. There was no Nuremberg. No national reckoning. No purge of institutions. Franco died peacefully in bed in 1975, and much of the state simply rolled forward carrying his fingerprints into democracy. Judges remained judges. Powerful…
Cáceres undergoes a curious transformation every spring. For one weekend, the medieval city fills with African percussion, NGO stalls, craft beer, dreadlocks and the language of global citizenship as WOMAD, the travelling world music festival founded by Peter Gabriel, arrives in town. Officially, it is a celebration of multicultural openness and artistic exchange. In reality,…
There are few things stranger than watching former colonial powers attempt to market conquest as a feel-good cultural product in the twenty-first century. This month, a taxpayer-funded delegation led by Isabel Díaz Ayuso and accompanied by 80s pop-zero, Nacho Cano travelled to Mexico to stage an event titled Celebración por la Evangelización y el Mestizaje…
It began, quite simply, with reading Joseph Roth. But as I kept reading, and watching the news here in Spain fill with talk of “national priority,” something shifted. The distance between then and now began to feel thinner than it should. The phrase has been circulating in recent months, attached to new political agreements in…
At the beginning of my book Stories Left in Stone: Trails and Tales in Cáceres, Spain, my friend Carlos Blay takes me deep into the Cueva de Maltravieso. There, in the dark, is the oldest known expressions of art in Europe (it was in the world until a recent discovery in Asia): a handprint on…
A new long-form essay published in El Salto Diario Extremadura traces an unlikely line from the Pentagon to a roundabout in Cáceres. Beginning with the spectacle of religion in contemporary American politics — where faith, media, and military power increasingly blur — the piece follows a broader transformation: Christianity repurposed as political identity, its symbols…
There’s a particular kind of pride that comes from arriving late to something and still acting as if you’ve nailed the timing. You missed the drinks, the good conversation, and whatever fleeting moment of relevance the whole thing once had—but at least you showed up with confidence. And really, isn’t that what matters? Extremadura, in…
Every Holy Week, Spain performs one of its most intricate cultural balancing acts. The processions move through ancient streets with choreographed solemnity. Drums echo against stone walls. Candles burn. Brotherhoods trace routes that predate the modern state itself. For many, it is heritage. For others, devotion. For nearly everyone in Spain, it is—at the very…