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…
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…
I’ve got a new piece up on CounterPunch that dives into the increasingly bizarre civil war unfolding on the far right since the war in Iran. When your entire worldview is built on layered hatreds, sooner or later they start colliding. What we’re watching now isn’t strategy—it’s a movement arguing with itself about which enemy…
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…