For years, Spain had one of the best healthcare systems in the world. Not perfect—but fast, universal, and remarkably effective. You got sick, you were treated. No drama. No billing calculations. No quiet fear about what it might cost you. Getting sick wasn’t a death sentence. And the data backed it up. Spain sits near…
There’s a certain kind of art that appears whenever politics gets too involved in culture. It’s grand, symbolic, completely certain of itself — and often, unintentionally, a bit absurd. You see it in Stalinist skylines, Soviet statues, gold-plated presidential monuments. Different countries, same instinct: culture not as something messy and alive, but something to simplify,…
How do you understand a country that seems to contain at least two entirely different worlds? In my latest Camino a Ítaca column in the Spanish newspaper HOY, I explore a paradox I witnessed while thinking about modern Iran. In Tehran, a one-hour drive can feel like a journey across centuries — from affluent northern…
It’s a strange moment in the imperial timeline. A 79-year-old property developer with the diplomatic instincts of a casino bouncer—threatened to cut off all trade with Spain because Spain declined to let American bases on its soil be used in an illegal bombing campaign against Iran. This is apparently how alliances work now. You provide…
On Homer’s return, the right’s suicide pact, and the peculiar madness of men who invite their own devourers There is something deeply reassuring about the fact that, in 2026, we have decided—collectively, enthusiastically—that what this moment really needs is more Homer. Film studios are adapting The Odyssey. Theatre directors are reinventing Penelope. Musicals are turning…
Europe is once again debating freedom — by regulating what women wear. Yes, the burka and niqab emerged from deeply patriarchal tribal traditions. That much is obvious. But here’s the awkward question: does banning them liberate women, or does it simply replace one authority with another? Years ago, I taught in Sana’a. My classroom was…
It begins with a simple observation: across Spain—and much of Europe—the streets, plazas, and churches are named after immigrants, or at least migrant ideas, from the Middle East who arrived two thousand years ago and helped shape what is now called “Christian civilization.” Yet in today’s political climate, migrants from many of the same regions…
Where are the anthems of repression? If reactionary movements claim cultural dominance, mass followings, and moral certainty, one might reasonably expect a soundtrack to match. Where are the rousing MAGA and far-right hymns that people will still be singing in fifty years? Where are the unforgettable choruses celebrating racial division, exclusion, or the romance of…
I just published two versions of the same essay: one in Spanish, from Europe, and one in English, for Canadian and anglophone readers. They’re siblings rather than twins—similar in structure, different in inflection, each shaped by its imagined audience. The piece reflects on Canada, on Mark Carney’s Davos speech, and on that peculiar comfort of…
My brother was named after a cowboy. That detail says a lot about my father, his generation, and the way America once looked from the outside: big, confident, morally certain, the man in the white hat who did ugly things for noble reasons. My dad loved Shane (Raices Profundas), and I grew up with that…